Featured this weekAmherst Arizona Ben-Gurion Berkeley Columbia Connecticut Florida Georgetown Harvard Hebrew Illinois - Urbana Indiana Oregon Oxford San Diego State Stanford Toronto Virginia Wake Forest Washington U., St. Louis Wesleyan | Hamas Takes Over Palestinian Parliament  Hamas has taken over as the dominant party in the Palestinian parliament and swiftly rejected President Mahmoud Abbas' call to pursue his peacemaking efforts with Israel. The swearing-in of the parliament paves the way for Hamas to form a government that will be on a potential collision course with Mr Abbas and faces a boycott by major powers unless it renounces violence and its vow to destroy Israel. Israel is considering tougher restrictions on Palestinians as a way to pressure the government. (Telegraph-UK)
Additional Headlines Gallup Poll: Support for Israel among Americans Highest since Gulf War U.S. House of Representatives Urges Halt to PA Aid Hamas Video: We Will Drink the Blood of the Jews | | Secretary Rice Meets Arab Journalists, Discusses Hamas  "The only path to a good and peaceful life [for Palestinians] is to have a government that is prepared to seek a two-state solution, that is prepared to recognize the other party to that two-state solution. You can't say you want the destruction of Israel and be committed to a two-state solution. Hamas needs to do that. They also need to renounce violence, because you can't have one foot in violence and terrorism and another foot in the political process. So, the international community is making, I think, what is just a very practical case. You can not be a responsible government and - govern responsibly and call for the destruction of the Israeli state and resort to violence." (State Department)
Sharon's Legacy and Hamas
by Henry Kissinger  The emergence of Hamas as the dominant faction in Palestine should not be treated as a radical new departure. Hamas represents the mind-set that prevented the full recognition of Israel's legitimacy by the PLO for all these decades; kept Arafat from accepting partition of Palestine at Camp David in 2000; produced two intifadas and consistently supported terrorism, on occasion explicitly, always tacitly. (International Herald Tribune)
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Amherst: In a Land of Unrest, Jewish Students Rediscover Heritage
by Virginia Lora  A group of 11 Amherst College students traveled to Israel thanks to Taglit-birthright israel. They went in three different groups, along with other college-aged men and women. From day one, the jet-lagged students traveled up-and-down the country. The best part of the trip, several students seemed to agree, was the visit to the Western Wall. "They had us close our eyes, hold hands and led us into a balcony that overlooked the Wall. They organized us so that we would all have a view," said Daniel Lees '08. "That was probably the best moment in Israel." (Amherst Student)
Berkeley: Jewish, Arab Students Work Toward a Better, Greener Israel
by Bryan Thomas  Israeli graduate student Maya Negev described the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies with Rabbi Michael Cohen, one of the center's founders. Rabbi Cohen and Negev, who is Jewish, joined Israeli Arab Mazin Zoabi in speaking to about 15 students and Berkeley community members about the multi-ethnic institute, which seeks to educate future environmental leaders of the Middle East. (Daily Californian)
| | Ben-Gurion: Ya'acov Blidstein Wins Israel Prize in Jewish Thought  Prof. Ya'acov (Gerald) Blidstein of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has been awarded this year's Israel Prize in Jewish Thought for the year 5766. The prize, Israel's highest honor, was announced by Minister of Education, Culture and Sport Meir Shitreet last week. (Jerusalem Post)
Columbia: Israeli and Arab Mothers Tour U.S. for Peace
by Adam Phillips   The classroom at New York's Columbia University was packed earlier this month with students for the Mothers for Peace event. The two mothers on tour are Nonie Darwish (pictured right), an Egyptian who grew up in Gaza and moved to the U.S. over 25 years ago, and Miri Eisen (left), a recently retired colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces, where she worked for 20 years in Army Intelligence. Each woman is the mother of three. (Voice of America)
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Point-Counterpoint - What Is Behind the Cartoon Wars?
Enough Political Correctness
by Adi Schwartz - The feeling that the large and established parties in Europe were not doing enough to deal with the problem also contributed to the strengthening of the far right.
- The clear lesson is that ignoring the problem - the rising feeling of discomfort among many Europeans over the amount of Muslims on the continent - is liable to lead to the growth of weeds whose strengthening is dangerous to the Europeans themselves, to European democracy and to Muslim citizens.
- After all, what does the average European think when he sees the pictures of the Danish and Norwegian embassies being set on fire in Beirut and Damascus?
- The question of whether it was appropriate to publish the cartoons is secondary. In Europe, Israel, and the Muslim world, much harsher cartoons have been displayed in the last few years.
- The primary question is whether Europe is capable of recognizing the problem that has been placed on its doorstep.
- Mainstream politics and media must set aside political correctness and say in a clear manner what kind of continent they want and why they have been fighting for it for so long. (Ha'aretz)
Governments Playing with Fire
by Anders Jerichow - In European countries, minorities - Muslim as well as Jewish - have been subject to demonization and immigrants have been targets of discriminatory practices and exclusivist policies.
- In the great cartoon affair, governments have been playing with fire. In Denmark, the government tried to reduce the affair to a question of freedom of speech. In the Middle East, governments insisted on seeing the affair as a question of religious respect and made the most of the issue.
- In Europe traditions do call for sensitivity to religious feeling, just as hate speech generally - and wisely - is banned.
- In Europe, marginalized immigrant societies have found a cultural symbol in the cartoon affair of their sense that they are being denied opportunities, equality and respect.
- In the Middle East, populations who would otherwise find plenty of reason for local frustration - the continued political oppression in their own countries, the Iraq war, the continued Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, the Darfour genocide, lack of freedom of speech - were allowed to let off plenty of steam.
- But when the dust has settled, European exclusion of immigrant minorities will continue to nurture growing frustration. (Bitterlemons)
| | The Relevance for Jews and Israelis
by Dina Porat - Many commentators now consider the Danish caricatures as a mere excuse seized upon by Muslim radicals to start a wave of violent reaction against the West and one of its most sacred values, freedom of speech.
- The most logical reaction to this proposal among Jews is, first, how come we never launched a loud campaign to protest against thousands of far more abusive caricatures, published worldwide for hundreds of years, which have defamed everything dear to us?
- Why did Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinezhad announce a "scholars" conference and a caricatures contest on the Holocaust, and not, say, on Theodor Herzl?
- Let me suggest a less well-known reason for the Iranian anti-Holocaust crusade: that same legislation against Holocaust denial, especially in western and central European countries, has put in jail a number of its central figures.
- I would suggest, though I naturally cannot prove it, that the Swiss Jurgen Graf, the Austrian Wolfgang Froelich and the German Horst Mahler, who are either residing in Tehran or visit there frequently, are the moving spirits behind the Iranian campaign.
- My pessimism notwithstanding, let us call upon the UN Third Committee on Discrimination to ask the representatives of each religion to define precisely what are its most sacred values, and then to reach an agreement signed by all nations not to abuse freedom of speech in order to defame them. (Bitterlemons)
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