Featured this weekBar-Ilan Ben-Gurion Brandeis Brigham-Young Columbia Eastern Kentucky Exeter, UK Florida Florida Atlantic London - UK Monash, Australia Stanford Toronto UC - Irvine | Main Issue on Olmert's Visit to Washington Is Iran Crisis
by Aluf Benn  Senior foreign ministry sources said that the main issue Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will raise with the U.S. government in his visit to Washington next week is the crisis with Iran. According to the sources, the convergence plan for withdrawal from the West Bank will only be discussed in general terms. The sources also said that U.S. officials are preparing a very warm welcome for Olmert, who will be making his first visit to the U.S. as prime minister. (Ha'aretz)
Additional Headlines Israeli Warns of Mideast Terror 'Tsunami' U.S. Poll: 80% Say No Funding for PA Now Hamas Asks for Weapons, Not Food | | Israel Will Buy Supplies for Gaza Hospitals
by Steven Erlanger and Greg Myre Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Thursday that Israel would buy drugs and medical equipment urgently needed by Palestinian hospitals in Gaza out of funds Israel is withholding. In an interview in Jerusalem, Olmert vehemently denied that there was any Palestinian "humanitarian crisis," calling it "for the time being total propaganda." "We will pay if necessary out of our own pockets," he said, and get what is needed directly to the hospitals "as soon as possible," circumventing the Hamas government. "We wouldn't allow one baby to suffer one night." (New York Times)
The Growing Anarchy in the Palestinian Territories
by Mohammed Yaghi  After its humiliating defeat in the January 25 legislative elections, Fatah leaders attempted to obstruct the new Hamas-led government's ability to function. Fatah members, who comprise the majority of public sector employees, have suffered the most as a result of the financial crisis, while Hamas supporters benefit from a social service network that continues to function. On May 7, Hamas activists responded to the assassination of one of their members by launching a shoulder-fired missile at a truck belonging to the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Service, killing two of its passengers. (Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
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Ben-Gurion & Bethlehem: Professors Bridge Mid-East Divide
by Martin Patience   The year 1948 resonates with Israelis as the year their nation was born in blood during a war for independence against all odds. For Palestinians, 1948 means something very different - the defeat of the Arab armies and the failure of Palestinians to establish their own state. Now, two university professors aim to change the way the conflict is taught, by exposing Palestinian students to Israeli history lessons and Israeli students to the Palestinian version of history. (BBC News)
Columbia: Eleena Malamed: Finding New Life
by Yelena Shuster   "I think I'm probably the luckiest person I know," says School of General Studies valedictorian Eleena Melamed. The 28-year-old Israel native has worked with choreographers Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, and Mikhail Baryshnikov as a professional ballet dancer. At 5-foot-6-inches and 90 pounds, she became a principal dancer for the American Ballet Theater. The pressure to lose weight grew and the environment was just as oppressive. Melamed developed anorexia. It was not until she was featured in the PBS documentary Dying to be Thin that she learned the power of her voice, which she has been using to lecture on the dangers of anorexia across the country. (Columbia Spectator)
| | Brigham-Young: Envoy's Visit Refreshes Utah-Israeli Ties
by Lisa Riley Roche and Tad Walch   The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Daniel Ayalon, said Thursday he believes Brigham Young University students will return soon to that school's Jerusalem Center. Ayalon sounded encouraged about his discussions with BYU officials on Wednesday. "They are making an effort," he said. "I think it is clear to them that Israel is safe because of the active measures the Israeli government took to fend off terrorism." (Deseret News)
Eastern Kentucky: Professor Headed to Israel  Dr. Gary Cordner, Foundation Professor of Loss Prevention and Safety at Eastern Kentucky University, has been accepted as a 2006-07 academic fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. As an FDD fellow, Cordner will participate in a program in Israel from May 27 to June 7. The program includes a series of lectures by academics, diplomats and military officials from India, Israel, Jordan, Turkey and the United States, as well as field trips to military, police and immigration facilities throughout Israel. He will be joined by approximately 50 other U.S. professors who teach about terrorism. (Lexington Herald-Leader)
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Point-Counterpoint - Israeli Author A.B. Yehoshua told a Washington symposium that the future of the Jewish People rests on Israeli identity alone and not on Judaism. Was Yehoshua right about his views on Israel and the Diaspora?
People Without a Land
by A. B. Yehoshua - The Zionist solution, which was proven as the best solution to the Jewish problem before the Holocaust, was tragically missed by the Jewish People.
- Jewish identity in Israel, which we call Israeli identity has to contend with all the elements of life via the binding and sovereign framework of a territorially defined state.
- And therefore the extent of its reach into life is immeasurably fuller and broader and more meaningful than the Jewishness of an American Jew, whose important and meaningful life decisions are made within the framework of his American nationality or citizenship.
- For me, Jewish values are not located in a fancy spice box that is only opened to release its pleasing fragrance on Shabbat and holidays, but in the daily reality of dozens of problems through which Jewish values are shaped and defined, for better or worse.
- A religious Israeli Jew also deals with a depth and breadth of life issues that is incomparably larger and more substantial than those with which his religious counterpart in New York or Antwerp must contend.
- As long as it is clear to all of us that Israeli Jewish identity deals, for better or worse, with the full spectrum of the reality and that Diaspora Jewry deals only with parts of it, then at least the difference between whole and part is acknowledged. (Ha'aretz)
- See also A.B. Yehoshua Sends 'Deepest Apologies for AJC Remarks (Ha'aretz)
More Right than Wrong
by Hillel Halkin - Deep down, I think that Yehoshua, manners aside, is more right than wrong. Israel is the only place in the world in which one can live a Jewish life that is total.
- There is no compartmentalization between the inner and the outer, between what is Jewish and what is not. It is the only place in the world in which Jews are totally responsible for the society they live in.
- It is the only place in the world where Jewish culture is not a subculture in a greater culture but is rather that greater culture itself. It is the real thing and by comparison, Jewish life in America, or anywhere else in the Diaspora, as dedicated and committed as it may be, indeed seems like a kind of play-acting.
- Is there a way of saying this to American Jews without hurting their feelings or making them feel that they are speaking to arrogant Israelis?
- There doesn't seem to be - which is why many Israelis, though in their hearts they agree with Yehoshua, keep it to themselves. (Jerusalem Post)
Who's Living an Incomplete Jewish Life?
by Larry Derfner - Regardless of my secularism, even my atheism, the fact that I'm a Jew living in Israel, surrounded by Jews and participating in the daily life of the Jewish state, makes the life I'm living a Jewish one.
- Like Yehoshua, I think all Jews in the Diaspora, even the most religious of them, are living only partial Jewish lives.
- Life is not only personal, it's also public, it's also national, and the only country where one can live a public, national life that's fully Jewish is Israel.
- But what about the personal side of Jewish life? Is it possible to say that one's personal life is Jewish if he is basically indifferent or maybe even disdainful toward Judaism?
- I think all of us secular Jews in Israel - including Yehoshua, who referred to "the dull and worn-out value of Jewish spirituality" in a Haaretz magazine essay - are also living incomplete Jewish lives.
- We're just living a more Israeli life. It's a Jewish life, too, no question about it, but the Jewish part is in the outer shell, in the public, national, Israeli-Jewish part of our identity.
- Imagine the Jewish Diaspora without the State of Israel. Then imagine a 100% secular State of Israel in a whole world without any practicing, believing Jews. Obviously I wouldn't want to choose either one, but if I had to, as an atheist Israeli but also a Jew, I'd choose the former. (Jerusalem Post)
| | There Is No Zionism Without Judaism
by Natan Sharansky - This definition of identity grants a divorce decree to the Jewish people, to the Jewish heritage, to 3,000 years of culture, creativity, prayer, rituals, tradition and everything that is subsumed in the term Judaism, and shows a preference for the Israeli "nation," which "arose from the sea" 100 years ago.
- For Yehoshua - and many, many others in Israel - the only thing that is important, existential and relevant from the Jewish perspective is what happens here, in Israel; everything outside Israel is obsolete and its fate is to be lost. In making this claim, Yehoshua undermines and weakens the justification for the State of Israel.
- There is no Zionism without Judaism and there never has been. Just as the Israeli people has never had a right to the Land of Israel. Only the Jewish people. It was the Jewish people that received the Balfour Declaration, and it was they who were granted by the United Nations the legal right to establish a state.
- The difference between Israeli identity according to Yehoshua and Jewish identity is exactly the difference between the fact of existence and the right to exist.
- The difference is between a group of people that lives on a piece of land and speaks the Hebrew language, and the descendants of a people that is scattered throughout the world, who have returned to their historic homeland. (Ha'aretz)
Who Will Learn from Whom?
by Yossi Sarid - A number of the heads of the American Jewish Committee, insulted and shocked, asked upon hearing Yehoshua's remarks - Does everyone in Israel think that way? And my answer is: No, I don't think like my friend.
- In many respects, the Jewish community in the United States is more Jewish than the Jewish "community" in Israel, and there is no reason for it to suffer from an inferiority complex.
- Will the Jews of America learn from us a chapter in mutual support and responsibility? Will we learn from them? Who will take an example from whom as to how to raise the miserable from the dung heap, and how not to abandon people in their old age?
- And in a case of the kettle - our kettle - calling the melting pot black, nothing cooled the temper of the important writer, who arrogantly poured boiling water on his astonished hosts. (Ha'aretz)
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