| |  | | | October 9, 2005 | 
|  New York Subway Attack Warning for Sunday - Report
U.S. authorities warned New York officials that a team of "terrorist operatives" planned to attack the subway on or about Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005, with remote controlled bombs hidden in briefcases or baby strollers, according to the NY Daily News. Federal authorities "have doubts on the credibility of the threat," the memo said, but New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took it seriously enough to warn the public. (Reuters) Read More. | |  Israeli Organizations Mobilize to Aid in India Quake
A few Israeli humanitarian aid organizations will coordinate a relief operation in northern India, in the area which was hit by an earthquake Saturday. (Ynet News) Read More. | |  Episcopal Panel Rejects Divestment Proposal
An investment panel of the Episcopal Church has recommended against divesting from companies that profit from Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories. The Social Responsibility in Investments Committee suggested last week that the denomination adopt a strategy of "corporate engagement," that would encourage companies to adopt practices that bring about "positive changes in Israeli government policy" toward pulling out of the territories completely, "as well as urging the Palestinian Authority to oppose violence as a means of resistance." (AP) Read More. | |  Israel's Foreign Minister Shalom Pens Piece for Indonesian Paper by Herb Keinon
Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom took his call for normalization of ties with the Islamic world directly to the Indonesian people last week, becoming the first Israeli minister to have an op-ed piece published in an Indonesian newspaper. In the piece that appeared in the English-language Jakarta Post, Shalom wrote "Israel does not see Islam as an enemy and has never seen it as such. On the contrary, history has shown us that Jews and Muslims lived in peace, harmony and friendship for many years in the past. This should be the aim in the future." (Jerusalem Post) Read More. | |  Storming Into Hurricane Relief by Liel Leibovitz
When evacuees from Hurricane Katrina fled New Orleans for the safety of Texas, Refael Eizraelov was in his new home of Austin. After growing up in a kibbutz in Israel, serving in an elite combat unit and spending time as a Peace Corps volunteer in the African republic of Mali, Eizraelov had just married his longtime American girlfriend, was waiting for his green card and was barred by federal regulations from holding a job. No one, however, said anything about volunteering. So when Katrina hit and tens of thousands of people snaked into Texas, Eizraelov drove to the Astrodome in Houston and presented himself to Red Cross representatives there. Now, the city of Austin, impressed by his dedication and meticulous planning skills, has called on him to help devise a model for dealing with people with special needs at a time of emergency. (New York Jewish Week) Read More. |
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|  What Israel Has to Do by Hirsch Goodman
The now tiresome refrain is that it's up to Israel to help Abu Mazen and the PA in its fight with Hamas, that Israel should release prisoners, ease things up at roadblocks, provide employment, encourage economic growth and take down its security barrier in the West Bank. All those gestures would be fine if they would have made even the slightest difference to the ability of the PA to gain the upper hand in containing those who still want to destroy Israel. Unfortunately, the current leadership has proved to be not only disappointing but useless. (Jerusalem Report) Read More. | |  What Drives Suicide Bombers? by Steven Gutkin
A bomb strapped to his abdomen, Rafat Moqadi walked into a Tel Aviv restaurant and saw a woman dining with her two little girls. "Seeing that, I decided not to carry out the operation. I couldn't do it," he said. A jailhouse interview with the would-be suicide bomber revealed a common thread running through the rising worldwide phenomenon: Most attackers are driven not by poverty or ignorance, but by a lethal mix of nationalism, zealotry and humiliation. (Chicago Sun Times) Read More. | |  Fragile Situation by Eitan Haber
There is no way to hide it: The world loves us [Israel] and is extending a hand to us, as it did during the 1990s, because of the disengagement program. The world, it turns out, wants this to continue. Residents of the West Bank will pay for every handshake from Tony Blair. Sharon himself wants not only to enter the history books, but to write and publish them here and now. The key to the new year, however, remains in the hands of Khaled Mashaal of Hamas and Ariel Sharon and the government. (Ynet News) Read More. |
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|  American: Visiting Prof in Israeli Studies Endowed by Eric Fingerhut
Barry Rubin is the first Abensohn Visiting Professor in Israeli Studies at American University. Rubin's visiting professorship comes as the center has raised half of the $2 million necessary to endow a permanent chair in Israel studies. Lillian Klein Abensohn said she sees the A.U. Israeli studies chair as helping to combat what some pro-Israel observers have called a pro-Arab bias in the halls of academia. Observing the current situation in the Middle East, Rubin believes there is little hope of a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians, because of the Palestinians' lack of a strong leadership and decision-making capability. (Washington Jewish Week) Read More. | |  UC-Santa Barbara: Students Sign Banner to Boost U.S. Troop Morale by Kaitlin Pike
Chris Pagenkopf, a third-year political science major, laid out a banner with the message of "Support Our Troops" emblazoned across it, hoping to gather people's signatures. "Supporting our troops is completely nonpartisan," Pagenkopf said. Pagenkopf said he went to the Tel Aviv University in Israel this summer to discuss policies and measures concerning terrorism. He also spoke with imprisoned Hamas members, asking them about the motivations behind their terrorist acts. Pagenkopf said the military and police actions against terrorists in Israel are significantly stricter than those in the U.S. (Daily Nexus) Read More. | |  Columbia: Alleged Intimidator of Jewish Students Likely to Achieve Tenure by Jacob Gershman
Joseph Massad, whose fiery writings attacking Israel and alleged intimidation of Jewish students have made him the most polarizing figure on the Columbia University campus, is likely to be awarded tenure, according to a professor in his department. Mr. Massad, an assistant professor of Arab studies, easily cleared the hurdle of his fifth-year review in the spring and is undergoing a tenure review this academic year, a complicated process that often takes more than six months to complete. (New York Sun) Read More. | |  Harvard: College Loosens Travel Abroad Policy by Tina Wang
Under significant pressure from students and faculty, the College has repealed its policy of withholding funding and credit for travel abroad in countries identified by the State Department as particularly risky. That policy, which affected travel to Israel, Iran, Kenya, Lebanon, Nigeria, and seven other countries, was instituted last fall. (Harvard Crimson) Read More. | |  Kansas: Students Protest Ban Against Study Abroad in Israel by Eric Jorgensen
University of Kansas students trying to study abroad in Israel have a barrier preventing them from taking classes in the Middle East nation. Today, many students want the ban gone. To these individuals, the barriers against studying in Israel are excessive and unfair. Tanya Johnson, Dallas junior, has been to Israel many times, and said she wished to return some day to study. She said thought the guidelines of the ban were unfair to her and other students. (Daily Kansan) Read More. | |   MIT: Hibur Connects Students with Technion
Fourteen students from the Technion, Israel's premier institution for science and technology, recently got a taste of American student life during a two-week visit to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The trip was part of a program called Hibur (connection), a joint initiative between MIT Hillel and the Technion that connects like-minded students and faculty on both sides of the ocean to share their research, forge personal and professional networks and potentially participate in academic-exchange programs. (Hillel) Read More. | |  North Texas: Professor Visits War-Torn Gaza Strip by Kim Cox
Richard Golden of the history faculty strolled down the streets of the Old City in Jerusalem one month before Jews were forced to leave the Gaza Strip. This visit to Israel, the latest of five for Golden, will help him teach a history course on the state of Israel. Golden hopes to start teaching the class in spring of 2007. "I don't think it's possible for someone living in the West to be educated without knowledge of the history and contributions of Jews and Judaism to Western Culture," Golden said. (NT Daily) Read More. | |  NYU: Profs Talk on Gaza Pull Out by Aaron Greenblatt
A panel of four academics discussed the long-term implications of Israel's disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, at an event sponsored by NYU's Taub Center for Israel Studies last week. The two-hour event, called "Gaza Withdrawal and After: Implications for Israel, Palestine and the Middle East," included speakers from left to right: Moshe Shokeid of Tel Aviv University, Khaled Fahmy of NYU, Samuel Heilman of Queens College, and Ya'akov Bar-Simon-Tov of Hebrew University. (Washington Square News) Read More. | |  Pittsburgh: Jewish Students Debate Gaza Strip Pullout by Jared Trent Stonesifer
A panel of Jewish students and leaders discussed Israel's controversial disengagement from the Gaza Strip in the William Pitt Union last week. "Our main goal for the panel was to give the students more information about the disengagement and to show that we, as Israelis, share different opinions about the process," said Yael Sasson, organizer of the debate from the Hillel Jewish University Center. (Pitt News) Read More. | |  Princeton: Bishara Lashes Out Against U.S. Foreign Policy by Marc Stefanski
Azmi Bishara, a prominent Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, criticized the U.S. policy of exporting democracy to the Middle East before a packed Dodds Auditorium last week. The question-and-answer session following the speech degenerated into a shouting match across the room several times, pitting the apparent minority siding with Israel against the pro-Palestinian majority. Bishara ran for prime minister in 1999, becoming the first Arab to do so. (Daily Princetonian) Read More. | |  Tulane & Ben-Gurion: Ingathering of The Katrina Exiles by Michele Chabin
Realizing that Tulane University in New Orleans would have to cancel its fall semester due to the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, Gina Weintraub had to find an alternative - and fast. "I was very confused," the 28-year-old social work student acknowledged. "I asked myself, 'Where should I go?' I was looking for a direction, and Israel provided it." (New York Jewish Week) Read More.
See also From New Orleans to Haifa by Revital Aranbaev
Sasha Solomon spent only four days in her new dorm room at Loyola University in New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina attacked the city. Solomon has chosen to attend the University of Haifa beginning this fall. She decided to give Israel a chance after visiting last winter with Taglit-Birthright Israel. (Jerusalem Post) |
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|  UC Irvine: Gaza Pullout Not the Answer by Daniel Uribe
After Israel's agonizing social and political confrontations during the last few years and the trauma of the evacuation itself, the policy of disengagement aims to restore "domestic tranquility." This policy is based on the assumption that the new boundaries will eventually be accepted by Palestinians and the international community. The weak link in this policy is the hopeful, if not naive, assumption that the Arab world will reconcile itself to it and accept the dictated borders for the future Palestinian state. (New University Paper) Read More. | | UC-Irvine: ZOA Took Legal Action on Behalf of Jewish UCI Students by Merav Ceren
Over the years, Jewish groups have had meeting upon meeting with senior administrators trying to make the university comfortable for everyone. They have repeatedly tried to engage in dialogue with other student groups to increase tolerance and understanding. They have asked experts from organizations like the Anti-Defamation League to come in and try to help. At one point, the situation became so absurd that Aryeh Green, the top adviser to former Israeli Minister Natan Sharansky, came to petition university administrators to make the campus safer for Jewish students. (New University Paper) Read More.
See also ZOA's Strategy Is the Wrong One by Alex Chazen
The ZOA's insistence upon filing this claim perturbs me most because I feel that if the Jewish students at UCI (a group I am a part of) felt the need to do something to stop the constant anti-Semitism on our campus, we would be capable of doing the research and going through the proper channels. (New University Paper) | |  Case Western: Without Israel, Jews Had No Place to Call Home by Douglas J. Guth
Without Israel, Jews had nowhere else in the world that they could call home, explained historian Gideon Shimoni to an audience at Case Western Reserve University's Clark Hall. In Ze'ev Jabotinsky's mind, the "terrible balance of need" for the Jewish case outweighed the "wants" of the Arab majority. (Cleveland Jewish News) Read More. | |  UMass: Studying Abroad Worthwhile by Gilad Skolnick
As amazing as UMass is, with its great selection of classes and its amazing library, I highly recommend you take advantage of opportunities to study in other locations, and not just through the five college student interchange. I spent my junior year studying abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and it was wonderful. One of the best bonuses of studying abroad is the opportunity to possibly take a class with a celebrity. In my Arabic classroom I sat next to Natalie Portman, who apparently also has good taste and chose to study abroad at Hebrew U. (Daily Collegian) Read More. | |  Mississippi: Time to Stop Blaming Israel by Kenneth Jones
The ideals of the Palestinian state - self-determination, equality, the ability to move about freely and to succeed - these are ideals I consider fundamental parts of my own personality. But for the Palestinians to succeed in creating their own state, they have to stop using Israel as a whipping boy. The Palestinian cause has been used like a chess piece by Arab states who care little for them. These nations are not pro-Palestinian; they are anti-Israeli. There is a huge difference. (Daily Mississippian) Read More. | |  York: Moral Relativism in Gaza by Uri Nachim-HaLevi
Where were the "peace activists" of the world when people, human beings, were being thrown out of their homes, thanks to the pressures of the world governments. Why were these people not allowed to be citizens of a Palestinian state, just as Arabs were allowed in large numbers to be full-fledged citizens of the State of Israel? These questions, and the moral relativism resulting from them, bothers me. Especially in a society where fundamental values of dignity and respect towards fellow human beings are supposed to be respected. (Excalibur) Read More. |
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|   Hebrew U: U.S. Gives Massive Vote of Confidence to Israeli's Bioterror Research by Allison Kaplan Sommer
As a young boy who spent the early years of his life hiding from the Nazis, Dr. Raymond Kaempfer was threatened by those who wanted to wage war on the innocent. Today, the Israeli scientist's breakthrough research - which won a massive $5.6 million grant from the U.S. government last week - represents an important step towards protecting the children of the future from the threat of deadly biological warfare. The award to Kaempfer in the Department of Molecular Virology at the Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine, represented the largest grant ever awarded to an Israeli researcher by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. (Israel21c) Read More. | |  Iraqi Girl to Be Treated in Israel by Nurit Paltar
A ten-year-old Iraqi girl will arrive in Israel in the coming week in order to undergo a complicated heart surgery in one of the country's hospitals. The operation is an initiative by the Save a Child's Heart organization. The organization submitted the exceptional application for a visa to the Israeli Ministry of Interior last week. (Ynet News) Read More. |
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|  Columbia: Interfaith Event on Grief Makes Political Themes Personal by Emmanuelle Day
With the memory of last year's MEALAC controversy still fresh on their minds, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian students gathered last week to talk about religion, pain, and grief. But for the students, the night was not about politics, but about using art to express the personal. "There is room for tolerance and dialogue and respectful deliberation. Here's a project that's doing just that, through art," said Edoe Cohen, a JTS/GS student and founder of the interfaith group Amen that sponsored the event. (Columbia Spectator) Read More. | |  Princeton: Israeli Director Explores Conflict Through Film by Elissa Harwood
Eran Riklis, an internationally renowned Israeli filmmaker, screened his newest movie, "The Syrian Bride" last week in preparation for its American debut next month. The film, a collaboration between an Israeli director (pictured with actress) and a Palestinian-Israeli writer and cast, is about the human aspect of the Syrian-Israeli conflict in the Golan Heights. "It is a very human film," Esther Robbins, a lecturer in Hebrew, said. "It shows that politics can interfere with daily, simple human activities. It does not blame the Israelis or the Syrians. It blames the bureaucracy of the two countries in conflict." (Daily Princetonian) Read More. |
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Reflections on the Jewish New Year
| A Democratic Year - Editorial
5765 was a tumultuous and traumatic year. It was a year in which Yasser Arafat, the author of the terror war that resumed with particular fury five years ago, finally departed the scene, leading, along with the IDF's successes, to a great reduction in the number of Israeli victims of terrorism. It was also a year in which we seemed about to tear ourselves apart over disengagement, the most divisive government decision since the Oslo Accords of 12 years ago. Ironically, it was a former pariah figure in our politics, Ariel Sharon, whose rise to the premiership marked the formation of a new consensus. That the nation remains whole, and that many of the worst scenarios predicted - including by Sharon himself - were avoided, should be a source of some measure of relief and even pride, both in our security forces and among former residents of the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria, whose homes were destroyed and whose lives were thrown into such turmoil. There continues to be widespread support for completing the security barrier and for the general process of separation from the Palestinians, rather than pinning hopes on a sweeping peace agreement. The existence of this foundation of agreement, however, does not provide a license for further traumatic unilateral steps. Indeed, the lesson of disengagement should not be that the process that led to it was ideal, or close to ideal from a democratic perspective. This newspaper consistently held that many of the criticisms of Sharon's methods were correct, but that if the government's decisions were overturned by force, the result would have been even less democratic. Trial balloons have already been set aloft regarding the next steps the government might take after disengagement. Before those balloons float too high, Sharon should signal that this time he will operate differently - using more cumbersome but legitimate tools of persuasion and less political elbow grease. (Jerusalem Post) Read More. | | 5765, the Good and the Bad by Isi Leibler
Even most supporters of disengagement would agree that, by any benchmark, this has been an annus horribilis, an awful year on the Israeli domestic scene. The prime minister bypassed procedures which are normally taken for granted in a democratic country. Noisy extremists on both sides of the debate, bolstered by the media, behaved irresponsibly and without any semblance of concern about the repercussions of their words and actions. On the political level all the indicators suggest that, far from reducing terror, the disengagement has in fact provided a new lease of life for the terrorists who, at the time of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to withdraw, had been in disarray and in fear of their lives because of effective IDF action. They are now triumphantly hailing the withdrawal as a reward for armed violence. Yet, having painted this extraordinarily gloomy and pessimistic review, I am bold enough to say that contrary to predictions by the prophets of doom, the public exposure and debate concerning these ugly events may actually bring about positive results. We may be a small nation, but we are still the greatest success story of the 20th century. The Jewish state is here to stay. And, yes, we have social problems, including poverty, that must be resolved. But we have created a remarkable society, absorbed millions of refugees and developed a financial infrastructure and economy with hi-tech industries second only to the United States. (Isreally) Read More. Sharon, Abbas, Had Not a Bad Year by Roland Flamini
Though the common tendency is to look on the dark side of Middle East developments, the past year was - on balance - a good one for both leaders. Sharon's plan to end Israel's presence in Gaza was carried out with skill and without the violence that many had predicted. The first Palestinian presidential election with multiple candidates went without a hitch, ending an era of autocratic rule and the installation of a fledgling democracy for the Palestinian people. Last week, Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah ruling party, won 55 municipal councils in elections held in 104 West Bank towns and villages, and the rival Hamas movement took clear control of 13. This is far from the swath some analysts anticipated that Hamas, the popular Islamist militant organization responsible for suicide car bombs and other attacks against Israelis, would cut through the Palestinian territory. As Mahmoud Abbas begins his month of day-long fasting and prayer his prayers may well focus on Hamas making a transition from armed militant organization to political party. He has called for militant groups not to carry weapons or to wear masks in public, but this is still only being honored in the breach. (UPI/World Peace Herald) Read More. |
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