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February 21, 2002

Noshin’ Beyond Hamantashen

Leave a Comment / Celebrations/Simchas, Food /

Our family celebrates all of the Jewish holidays together, but Purim seems to be everyone’s favorite. How can you not love a holiday that tells you to dress up in costume, forget your troubles, enjoy delicious food and drink a lot of wine?

Several of our children spend days making Purim costumes for our grandkids. The girls want to be Queen Esther, and the boys identify with brave Mordecai or King Ahasuerus — no one wants to be the evil Haman!

They arrive at our house for dinner dressed in their costumes, ready to act the parts of the characters in the Purim story. As we retell the story at the table, everyone selects a gragger (noisemaker) from our collection, to twirl each time Haman’s name is mentioned.

By far, the best-known Purim dessert is hamantashen. It is said that the triangular shape of pastries represent Haman’s hat, or his pockets. Whatever the origin, they are delicious. Every family has their favorite recipe, usually it is a sugar cookie or yeast dough, rolled out, and filled with a poppy seed or fruit filling.

Over the years I have developed some wonderful poppy seed desserts inspired by these traditional pastries. One of them is the recipe for Purim Seed Crisps. They are the thinnest, most crisp cookies and were adapted from a recipe given to me by my friend Bernie Bubman. He enjoys attending cooking classes in Europe, and he brought this recipe back from France. These cookies are a novel and a delicious Purim dessert.

If your kids love Fig Newtons, they’ll love these poppy seed-filled pastries for Purim. It is a copy-cat version of the famous old-fashioned confection, only better. Roman, the chef at the Broadway Deli in Santa Monica, makes these poppy seed goodies daily, and was kind enough to share his recipe.

Make extra Poppy Seed Newtons or Purim Seed Crisps for the family to give away as gifts to those less fortunate. This is known as shalach manot and is the custom during the Purim holiday.

Purim Seed Crisps

These cookies spread out as they cook, so a small amount of dough goes further than you might think. Bake as many as you like, cover the remaining dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to one week.

5 tablespoons unsalted butter

5 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons Karo syrup

2 tablespoons whole milk

1/2 cup sesame seeds

2 tablespoons poppy seeds

2 tablespoons millet seeds

(available in most supermarkets

and health food stores)

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

In a medium skillet, over medium heat, cook the butter, sugar, Karo syrup and milk, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the butter is melted and all the ingredients are combined thoroughly. Mix in the seeds. Transfer to a glass bowl. Refrigerate or freeze until firm, about five minutes.

Line a baking sheet with foil and shape the batter into 1-inch rounds the size of a nickel (the cookies spread a lot while cooking). Place the rounds 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown. (Watch closely, they brown quickly.) Let cool and then carefully peel off the foil.

Makes about five dozen cookies.

The batter can be refrigerated for up to three days and stored in the freezer for one month, so bake only as many as you like, and have them hot from the oven any time you like.

Purim Poppy Seed

"Newtons"

3 tablespoons melted unsalted butter

1/2 cup unsalted butter or nondairy

margarine, room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 3/4 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 (8-ounce) cans poppy seed filling

1 egg, lightly beaten

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and brush with butter.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Blend in the egg and vanilla. Add the flour and salt and blend until dough comes together. Transfer to a floured board and knead until smooth, adding additional flour if needed. Sprinkle a large sheet of wax paper with flour and roll out pieces of dough 4-inches wide, 12-inches long and about 1/4 inch thick.

Fit a pastry bag with a 1/2-inch tube and fill it with the poppy seed filling. Pipe the filling lengthwise down the middle of the dough, 1/2 inch from the ends. (If you prefer, spoon on the filling.) Gently lift up one side of the dough and pull it over the filling. Then lift the other side and lap over the first. Lightly press the ends to seal. Cut into 1 1/2-inch bars, place on prepared baking sheet, seam-side down, and brush with lightly beaten egg.

Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Makes about five dozen.

Noshin’ Beyond Hamantashen Read More »

Training for Life

Leave a Comment / Education /

Dave Rabb is a personal trainer with a few secrets: bring balloons to class, reward genuine efforts with cookies and make sure all clients use the potty before climbing the equipment.

"Oh, no. It might be too late," yells Rabb one afternoon, as his client Matthew, 3, runs down the hall looking for the bathroom.

"In there, in there!" he shouts to the boy.

Gold’s Gym this isn’t, but Rabb’s Children’s Fitness Center in Culver City is more about fun and physical education than tight abs and buns of steel.

Before Gymboree and Mommy and Me, Rabb opened one of the country’s first gyms for kids ages 9 months to 10 years. More than 25 years later, he is still leading classes built around songs, games, playground skills, tumbling and basic gymnastics.

Rabb is not interested in training the next Olympian. If someone wants an intense gymnastics program, he sends them elsewhere. Instead, he is promoting physical development, the joy of movement and plenty of self-esteem.

Classes build strength, balance and coordination, and each session gets increasingly challenging. Rabb also works with kids who have special needs.

"That’s it, Paige! You’re doing the dreaded bear walk," he says to the 3-year-old crawling atop the parallel bars, her bottom in the air.

Devon, 4, does a handstand on the low bars as Rabb holds his ankles and says, "His feet don’t smell bad either." And hanging by her belly from a pulley and a string, Gabby, 3, holds her arms out and slides across the room. "A birdie, a birdie," Rabb booms in his thick Brooklyn accent.

Using balloons, he leads the children through several dexterity exercises, like turning the balloon quietly, then making it squeak. Rabb lobs one-liners to the parents, grandparents and caretakers who sit behind the observation counter.

"He’s balloon-retentive," Rabb says. "If you like that sound, next week I’m going to teach you how to scratch your fingernails on a blackboard."

"What I really like is that Dave doesn’t take any nonsense from the kids," says Jody Reichel, whose two children, Sibyl, 6, and Ethan, 4, attend classes. "He gets them to try their best and he takes them to a new level. But if they don’t cooperate, he sends them out. He won’t let them have a turn."

Rabb also works with children who have special needs — including autism, physical disabilities and motor skills challenges.

These kids, who now represent about a third of the gym’s participants, are referred by the West Side Regional Center, an agency that provides services to children and adults with developmental disabilities. Rabb works with some of these children individually, while others are mainstreamed into general classes. There are also group classes dedicated to children with special needs.

"Some autistic children don’t speak, but these activities transcend speech," Rabb said. "Our activities are so graphic and visual and experiential that children express themselves through activities and feel the pleasure of that. They don’t have to verbally give us the feedback."

In 1962, when Rabb says he was "young and skinny," he had a television show pilot he calls "a Jack La Laine for kids." When it wasn’t picked up, he took a job as the athletic director at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Kansas City. He also worked at the Silver Lake-Los Feliz JCC before opening his own facility.

Rabb, who identifies as a cultural Jew, says he speaks more Yiddish now than he did growing up on Coney Island, in the observant community of Seagate. "I sound like Jackie Mason," he says, throwing in a few "oy veys" for good measure. While he’s still bending and squatting with the kids, at 67, Rabb has his sights set on retirement. He’s already got the house in Hawaii, where he’ll spend his days deep sea fishing. But now he’s got work to do.

Noticing a child who gets distracted, he shouts, "Wake up and smell the…."

"Coffee!" the youngster yells back.

"Right, Gabby," Rabb says. "Very good."

For more information contact Dave Rabb’s Children’s Fitness Center in Culver City, (310) 559-4110.

Training for Life Read More »

Kids Page

Leave a Comment / Kids & Teens /

Why do we wear costumes and masks on Purim? Well, it could be to remind us that Queen Esther hid her Jewish identity from King Ahasuerus. Because of that, she was able to save the Jewish people. It could be a way for us to turn the world upside down for a little while, in the same way that the world was turned upside down in Shushan: Haman was hanged on the gallows that had been built for Mordechai; the Jews were not killed, but were able to defend themselves; and a day of mourning was turned into day of joy.

While it is sometimes important, even life-preserving, to “put on a mask,” you might want to think about how you live your life day to day.

Do you wear a mask when you go to school? Maybe you put on the mask of the “cool skateboarder dude” or the “giggly popular girl.” After a while, it gets hard to keep that mask on. So throw it away and let your beautiful face, the real you, shine through!

Purim takes place on the 14th day of Adar. So we say: Mishenichnas Adar marbim besimcha. “In the month of Adar, we are filled with joy.”

obfban

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vjnac

Kids Page Read More »

Your Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor /

Jewish Porn Star

As representatives of the congregational arm of the Reform movement of Judaism, we are deeply disappointed that any congregation in our movement would give the appearance of endorsing pornography (“The Porn Star and the Rabbi,” Feb. 15). For the record, we want to make it very clear that Rabbi Mark Blazer, quoted in your article as stating that an adult film star is like the biblical hero Esther, does not in any way speak for the Reform movement.

The Reform movement does not condone pornography or any other exploitation of human sexuality. To the contrary, Reform Judaism considers humanity to be created in the image of God, and we encourage our congregants to approach all aspects of existence, including sexuality, in a manner that sanctifies human life.

Rabbi Alan Henkin, Regional Director

Rabbi Linda Bertenthal, Associate Regional Director UAHC-Pacific Southwest Council

My, how times have changed! My teenage son, who is student at a yeshiva, was reading this article about Nina Hartly, and her referring to herself as “a passionate hero for Jewish sexuality.” Wow! Is this the new Esther? Rebecca? The newest hero of kosher sex, a nonpracticing Jew married to another nonpracticing Jew who publishes a rag called Taboo? Are these the new role models we are to have our children, who live in a world of MTV and sexploitation, look up to? I feel, that this Reform temple can do whatever it likes, and we all have the choice to go or not to go to the lecture, however, this article does nothing to counterbalance the lack of sexual morality. An “actress” in over 570 sex films, with men other than her husband, is not the role model I want for my children. I feel this rabbi and his congregation should take a deep breath and a cold shower. Shame on them.

Allyson Rowen Taylor, Valley Glen

While visiting Jews for Judaism, I picked up my first issue of The Jewish Journal. Can you please tell me why there is a story about a rabbi inviting a woman of porn (whom he calls a “passionate Jewish hero for sexuality”) to speak at Temple Beth Ami?

Wouldn’t Judaism be better served if that space had been used to educate rather than titillate? I hope you will cover the work of Jews for Judaism or other serious and sublime endeavors.

The Jewish Journal made Judaism look foolish and crude to people unfamiliar with its wise and beautiful tradition.

Burnie Thompson, Norwalk

I am very disappointed in The Jewish Journal’s decision to continuously write stories about sex and other non-family-oriented issues. I frequently try to read your paper on Shabbat, but unfortunately I find my self putting it aside and not really getting to read it ever. I believe most Jewish households do not wish to further poison their minds and souls with your stories about sex. Please keep us updated on Jewish issues, such as which candidates endorse Jewish causes and so on.

Name Withheld by Request

Chief Bernard Parks

Last week’s cover story (“A View of Two Parks” Feb. 15.) illustrates a recurring dilemma faced by the local Jewish community: whether to argue positions that further “Jewish causes” or to look beyond ourselves. In the case of Chief Bernard Parks, I respectfully disagree with Carmen Warshaw who cites the Parks’ response to the shootings at the North Valley Community Center and the Sept. 11 attacks as testimony to Parks’s competency.

The chief of police manages the front lines against crime for all Angelenos. As Parks himself requested upon his installation, his tenure should be judged against his ability to reduce crime, reform the department and lead his troops.

First, crime is up across the city. Second, the chief has been unable or unwilling to facilitate the reforms as called for in the Christopher Commission and by the independent panel examining the Rampart corruption scandal. He has not fully empowered the senior lead officers that are the sharp point of the LAPD’s community policing program, resisted gathering the data needed to determine if the LAPD is engaging in racial profiling, and continues to receive a resounding vote of no-confidence by those very officers under his command. As such, Parks failed in meeting his job requirements.

Jim Prince, Los Angeles

Carin Davis

I am one of many Chicagoans who regularly read Carin Davis’s columns. As someone who has known her since her days in the cradle, I can say we are all kvelling at her success. I hope you continue to carry her witty and poignant stories on life in the Singles’ Scene.

Dr. Robin B. Septon, Chicago, IL

Israel’s Next Move?

Israel is in a very precarious situation. For thousands of years the Jews have been scapegoats, always fighting a defensive battle for survival.

Today, Israel is again acting defensively, retaliating only when provoked, and responding by bombing buildings, but warning the inhabitants to leave before the bombing to save their lives.

The whole world is watching while Israel is dying because it refuses to do the inhumane, essential in warfare. Israel should bomb the Palestinians indiscriminately and aggressively, as the suicide bombers have bombed Israel. Otherwise, the rest of the world admires the courage of the Palestinians and waits for courage to overcome tenacity. Israel must compel the Palestinians to surrender now and not wait for the inevitable support the Palestinians will get from the United Nations, the Durban people and so much of the rest of the world. Israel can’t wait.

Jerome Greenblatt, Laguna Woods

Help Israel

I would like to appeal to our brothers and sisters here in the United States to help Israel. How? I know that not everyone can travel to Israel. However, buying Passover products and wines made in Israel is another way to help Israel economically. It is not such a great sacrifice. I often wonder why the synagogues and temples don’t use Israeli wines for “Kiddush” every Shabbat and holiday. Just imagine if everyone would adhere to this proposition how much it would help our people in the Holy Land.

Harry Langsam, Los Angeles

JDL Arrests

As my cousin sits in a Federal jail cell in solitary confinement for close to 45-plus days convicted of nothing, Earl Krugel wonders if the Constitution has been torn to shreds. He thought this type of confinement was reserved for the most odious of murders, serial killers, mass murderers, baby rapists, child killers or Middle Eastern terrorists. The crime Krugel and Irv Rubin were charged with was one of talking. They have been denied bail and punished without any sort of conviction. Until recently, there has been no contact between Rubin and Krugel nor has there been any joint meetings between Rubin and his lawyers and Krugel and his lawyer, thus effectively prohibiting both parties from mounting a successful defense.

The Jewish community, both secular and observant, are also guilty of abandoning two Jews in trouble. They have thrown the concept of “redeeming the captives” out the window.

Abraham Stern, West Hills

I was appalled and embarrassed by the reaction of the leaders of mainstream Jewish organizations to the arrests of Irv Rubin and Earl Krugel. It has always been my impression that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. What do these leaders really know about Rubin and Krugel?

I used to be a member of the JDL and I am convinced that both men are innocent of the charges. Rubin and Krugel at least deserve to be found guilty of a crime in a court of law before they are gleefully found guilty by those who have probably never confronted a violent anti-Semite face-to-face.

Alan B. Epstein, Northridge

Don’t Discount Silver Lake

I am appalled by the predatory and sanctimonious letter from the president of Temple Knesset Israel regarding the Silver Lake-Los Feliz Jewish Community Center inviting “displaced” members of the JCC to join their temple.

Our JCC is still open, the nursery school and preschool are still in business and we hope to be around for more than 75 years. We do not need the efforts of our “friends” who send letters to our nursery school parents and e-mails to the rest of us asking us to join their temple. To write about “displaced” JCC people at this time is both premature and self-serving.

Ethel McClatchey, Past President Silver Lake-Los Feliz JCC

Rudy Visits AMIT

As noted in “The Circuit” in the Jan. 31 issue of The Jewish Journal, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani visited AMIT’s Beit Hayeled child haven in Gilo on a recent visit to Israel. We appreciate the coverage of this special visit, which is notable for thousands of AMIT members in the Los Angeles region, and indeed, every reader of The Jewish Journal.

The article however, notes that “AMIT cares for 200 at-risk children.” I wish to point out that 200 children are cared for at Beit Hayeled alone. AMIT cares for over 16,000 children throughout Israel.

Roslyn Linderman, President Los Angeles Council of AMIT

Corrections

The Feb. 8 letter from Familial Dysautonomia Hope’sMavis Feinberg did not include her correct e-mail address. She can be reached atmavis.al@verizon.net .

For clarification, in community briefs, (“Educating the Educators,” Feb. 15), Music as Survival, Music as Resistance, Music as Response was not co-sponsored by the ADL. The event had 27 attendees.

Your Letters Read More »

Palestinian Peacenicks

Leave a Comment / Israel, Worldwide /

It sounds confused, if not downright contrary. Most Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip applaud violence against Israelis, yet they are eager for a cease-fire and for their political leaders to get back to the negotiating table.

The latest opinion poll registered 58 percent of Palestinians supporting violence against civilians, while an overwhelming 90 percent supported attacks on soldiers. But at the same time 60 percent backed calls for a ceasefire, a 10 percent increase on six months earlier, and as many as 70 percent wanted a return to negotiations.

There is a logic to their double-talk. Mainstream Palestinians, from the leadership to the grass-roots, recognize that they cannot drive the Jews into the sea, however much they might like to. Israel is there to stay, and somehow, some time, they have to find a way to live alongside it. There is a debate going on, however muted it is in the smoke and cordite of the war of attrition that calls itself an intifada. But the primary differences are over tactics, the efficacy of violence, not the ethics of it.

“I believe that this conflict will never be resolved by force,” said Father Raed Abusahlia, a Christian advocate of nonviolent resistance. “We are losing support all over the world by using violent resistance. Nonviolent resistance is a stronger weapon against the occupation.”

Like Israeli peacenicks, Palestinian doves are not pacifists. Even someone like Abusahlia, the 35-year-old chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem, scarcely pauses to condemn suicide or car bombers for killing innocent people. He is a proud Palestinian, born in a village near Jenin, and he wants to get the Israelis off his back. For the purpose of this debate, violence is wrong because it is counter-productive.

Among the political elite, Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s point man in Jerusalem, is the most outspoken champion of a compromise peace. “Violence leads nowhere,” he told foreign correspondents. “Neither Israel nor the Palestinians are able to impose their will. Violence breeds more violence.”

Nusseibeh, an Oxford-educated philosophy professor, is the only Palestinian leader who has said openly what many of them think. Asked by a Ha’aretz interviewer in December whether Yasser Arafat erred when he rejected Ehud Barak’s peace proposals at Camp David in July, 2000, Nusseibeh replied unequivocally: “Yes. That was a major missed opportunity. If it had been me, I would have told Barak, ‘OK, let’s sign.'”

Well-placed Palestinians report that Mahmoud Abbas (a.k.a. Abu Mazen), Arafat’s No. 2, has spoken “very harshly” behind closed doors against the strategy of violence. Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), the speaker of the Palestinian legislative council and third man in Arafat’s political pantheon, is thought to share Abu Mazen’s view, but is more cautious even in private.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Arafat’s two principal security commanders — Mohammed Dahlan in Gaza and Jibril Rajoub on the West Bank — are also counted in this pragmatic Palestinian “peace camp.” According to informed Palestinians, Dahlan was one of three members of Arafat’s Camp David team who urged him to accept what Barak was offering, then build on it.

Secular leaders like these are seeking a modus vivendi with Israel because they want their Palestinian state, when it comes, to be part of the modern world. They fear an Iranian-style Islamic theocracy, they reject the obscurantism of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. And they are keen to get on with building a 21st-century nation. But, as Danny Rubinstein, a Palestinian affairs analyst for Ha’aretz, put it, they want Arafat to sign the deal. He alone, they believe, can sell it to the Palestinian street. So talk of a palace revolution is fantasy.

With a Kalashnikov in every home and the rule of law more brittle than ever, it is not easy for those who oppose militarism to find a platform. But some have done so, though they remain a minority: academics like the Gaza psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, the Bir Zeit University political scientist Salah Abdul Jawad, and journalists Tawfiq Abu Bakr and Daoud Kuttab.

The controlled Palestinian press is nervous about printing their opinions, which could bring the censor or worse on the editor’s head. One dissenter, whose article was rejected by the East Jerusalem daily, Al Quds, posted it on the Internet. When the paper’s editor saw that no harm ensued and everyone was talking about it, he printed the article anyway. Khalil Shikaki, pollster and political science professor, frequently uses Radio Monte Carlo’s Arabic service, widely listened to across the Middle East, to advocate non-violent resistance.

They are a kind of resistance within the resistance. But they all, politicians and professors, have one thing in common: They won’t buy “peace at any price.” They acknowledge that the Palestinians will have to make concessions, but they demand equal, if not more, sacrifice from Israel as the dominant power that holds 78 percent of 1948 Palestine, even without the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Nusseibeh spelled it out more starkly (for the Palestinians and the Israelis) than anyone. The Palestinians, he said, had to recognize that the plight of the four million refugees must be solved within the borders of a Palestinian state. The other side of the equation, however, was an Israeli withdrawal to the armistice lines that served as a border before the 1967 Six-Day War.

Nusseibeh is still out on a limb, publicly at least, on the refugees’ right of return. Arafat wrote in The New York Times earlier this month that Israel’s demographic concerns — a Jewish state with a Jewish majority — had to be taken into account, though as always he left himself room for maneuver. Jerusalem, the other Camp David sticking point, is still intractable.

The outlook remains bleak, for Arabs and Jews, doves and hawks. Yet as the Hebrew novelist Amos Oz, the most articulate of Israeli peace campaigners, argues, the great achievement of the past two years of hope and despair is that everyone on both sides now knows the price to be paid if they want peace.

Palestinian Peacenicks Read More »

Milosevic in The Hague

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

"A triumph for the civilized world." So characterized The New York Times about the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic that started this past week in The Hague.

Certainly there is cause in the international legal community for such triumphalist sentiment. When the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1993, few could have possibly foreseen that Milosevic would ever stand trial.

As Richard Dicker, a lawyer for Human Rights Watch, put it: "When I was here in 1996, it was derided as the international tribunal for small fry. Tomorrow the biggest fish of them all goes on trial."

Yet in trying the "biggest fish," the tribunal also faces several risks. A first set of concerns involves the nature of the charges and the character of the defendant.

The political thinker Otto Kirchheimer argued that all trials, at least those that are fairly conducted, must be characterized by an "irreducible risk" — the chance that the prosecution will fail to shoulder its burden of proving guilt, and that the accused will consequently be acquitted. In the case of Milosevic’s trial, this risk is not entirely negligible.

Proof that might be persuasive to a historian or neutral observer might run afoul of the court’s rules of evidence. However else one might characterize Milosevic, none gainsay his cunning, and to create a legally compelling case against him will require both a solid prosecutorial strategy and acts of great courage on the part of witnesses called to testify against their former president.

But even if Milosevic should be convicted, the trial could founder in other respects. Spectacular trials of international crimes — such as the Nuremberg, Eichmann and, now, Milosevic trials — are inevitably asked to do more than simply render justice to the accused in a conventional legal sense.

These trials are asked to clarify the historical record and to demonstrate to the world community the sober and grand neutrality of the law. In his self-pitying, yet intelligently prepared, harangues before the tribunal, Milosevic threatens these aims.

The trial promises to be long — lasting for two years, by most estimates — and the court will have to work hard to make sure that Milosevic’s attacks on its jurisdiction and self-serving presentation of history do not end up hijacking the didactic aims of the trial.

A second set of concerns implicates the larger trend of judging international politics by the standards of criminal law. Until Nuremberg, the notion that a statesman could be treated as a criminal in international law was unthinkable.

The act of state doctrine and the principle of sovereign immunity — basic norms of international diplomacy and law — barred foreign courts from subjecting independent states and their representatives to criminal proceedings. This arrangement long left international criminal law something of an oxymoron. A nation found in violation of an international convention could be punished — but only collectively through the kind of reparations disastrously imposed upon Germany following its defeat in World War I.

Nuremberg changed much of this. The charter of the ground-breaking trial of Hermann Göring and other leading Nazi functionaries adopted the radical idea that statesmen could be held personally responsible for the criminal acts of their regime, even acts committed against their own domestic population.

For years, however, Nuremberg’s legacy remained more conceptual than practical. Decades of Cold War struggle cynically cast international law as a partisan tool of geopolitics, to be championed when advantageous and ignored when not. Only with the explosion of regional violence unleashed by the demise of the Cold War’s strategic equipoise has the world community rededicated itself to the enforcement of international criminal law.

The trial of Milosevic stands as the greatest achievement of this redoubled commitment. Unfortunately, some international legal activists have aggressively sought to push the Milosevic precedent in directions that are far from salutary.

In Belgium, a nation that has adopted a remarkably liberal approach to matters of jurisdiction, legal groups have prepared cases against everyone from Ariel Sharon to Yasser Arafat and Fidel Castro. And no less a writer than Christopher Hitchens has passionately argued in favor of trying Henry Kissinger as a war criminal.

These agitations, however well-meaning, are to be regretted. For better or worse, the law is not generally concerned with political complexity; it remains oblivious to the nuances of diplomacy and realpolitik and cares only that violators of its norms receive punishment.

Long after emerging as a suspect in international crimes, Milosevic apparently received personal calls from President Bill Clinton, the tenor of which was intimate, and, on the Serb’s part, avuncular. To the legal crusader, this no doubt stands as an odious example of Clinton’s spineless kowtowing to an international thug; to others, however, it signals a politically sensitive gesture to prod a bellicose foreign leader to respect a precarious peace (in this case, the Dayton Accords).

In this regard, of equal importance to the future of international law as the opening of the Milosevic trial was the recent decision (Feb. 14) handed down by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also housed in The Hague, though institutionally autonomous from the Milosevic tribunal. In a case involving an arrest warrant issued by a Belgium magistrate for Aboulay Yerodia Ndombasi, the Congolese foreign minister at the time of the warrant’s issuance, the ICJ concluded that serving statesmen were shielded from criminal prosecution in foreign national courts.

On first blush, this decision seems to contradict the spirit of the Milosevic trial: it appears to defend the very prerogatives of statesmen that have long permitted them to flaunt international law with impunity. But in fact, the decision simply places a necessary corrective on the agitations of overzealous international lawyers, a corrective that points international law in a direction both practical and wise.

The decision, which effectively ends any effort to put Sharon on trial in Belgium, guarantees that international law is not turned into the mouthpiece of global political grievance. By limiting the opportunities to turn the law into an all-purpose tool of political harassment, the ICJ has properly increased the likelihood that international trials will be reserved for the perpetrators of only the most extreme abuses and atrocities. In so doing, it has preserved and enhanced the ultimate efficacy of international justice.

The trial of Milosevic goes forward, but not that of Sharon. And so it should be. To treat Sharon as a Milosevic would not demonstrate that such law binds the strong as well as the weak, the triumphant as well as the conquered. It would simply demonstrate that a fervid breed of legal crusaders had placed diplomacy under the majestic tyranny of the law.

Milosevic in The Hague Read More »

Escalation, Redux

Leave a Comment / Israel, Worldwide /

The killings came so fast that Israel’s online newspapers couldn’t keep up. This week’s surge of Mideast violence and hints of a new level of sophistication by Palestinian terrorists have once again forced Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to reconsider his government’s strategy in what looks more and more like a war of attrition.

The explosion of violence included Tuesday’s attack on an Israeli Defense Force checkpoint outside Ramallah that left six Israeli soldiers dead and new rocket attacks inside the Green Line.

Facing mounting political pressure from both right and left, Sharon on Wednesday ordered intensified retaliatory strikes against Palestinian Authority targets, including heavy bomb and rocket attacks against Yasser Arafat’s headquarters in Gaza and Ramallah, but once again stopped short of directly targeting the Palestinian leader.

In Washington, there were rumbles of concern about the dramatic rise in violence, but no indication that the Bush administration is getting ready to step up its own involvement — or pressure Sharon to ease up on the Palestinians despite a spiraling pattern of tit-for-tat attacks.

Some analysts predict the administration will not object too strenuously if Israel tightens the restrictions on Arafat still further, possibly preventing any contact with outsiders or even forcing him into exile.

"The level of frustration with Arafat is enormous," said a longtime pro-Israel analyst in Washington. "The administration doesn’t advocate direct action against him, but there are some in the administration who wouldn’t weep if Sharon went ahead and put him on the target list."

But other important officials argue that any direct attack on the Palestinian leader would quickly end Sharon’s extended honeymoon with Washington — especially since the White House explicitly told him not to harm Arafat.

Any Israeli attack on Arafat, they say, would make it all but impossible for Washington to block calls for international peacekeepers in the region and an expanded role for the Europeans.

This week’s violence was among the bloodiest since the start of the new Palestinian intifada 17 months ago. It included a series of suicide bombings that left several Israelis dead, intense new Israeli retaliatory strikes that have resulted in a rising Palestinian death toll and Tuesday’s well-executed raid by Palestinian gunmen at an army checkpoint near Ramallah.

There were also shootings in Gilo and Hebron, and Palestinians fired at least four Kassam missiles across the Green Line.

The State Department has labeled the Palestinian deployment of the new rockets "a provocative escalation," and the Israeli government has warned that continued use of the weapons would provoke harsher retaliation against Palestinian targets.

Israeli right wingers responded to the new violence by intensifying their demands for harsh new military action; former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, expected to challenge Sharon for the premiership, this week called for Arafat’s removal as a precondition for new peace negotiations.

Sharon also faced growing pressure from the other side of the political spectrum as a group of senior reserve officers called for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and most of the West Bank.

Despite the mounting crisis, U.S. officials do not plan any new peace initiatives, and there are no efforts underway to change recent policy that has given Sharon a relatively free hand in dealing with Palestinian violence.

Asked about the crisis on Tuesday, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher repeated what has become a mantra for U.S. officials — that "the crucial first step remains for Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to make every effort to arrest terrorists and to dismantle the terrorist organizations that continue to carry out attacks against Israel."

Edward S. Walker, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and now president of the Middle East Institute, said that at least for now, the administration green light to Sharon is unlikely to turn red.

"The administration’s policy remains the same: you can’t ask Israel to make concessions under the threat of terror," Walker said. "The administration will remain solidly behind that position."

U.S. officials believe that other political factors — including his desire to keep Labor in his unity government — will keep Sharon from overreacting.

"The problem is that if he goes too far on the military side and tries to reoccupy parts of the West Bank and Gaza — which would be the next step — he may lose his coalition," Walker said. "The minute [Foreign Minister Shimon] Peres walks, Netanyahu is in with a narrow Likud government. I don’t believe Sharon will go that far. He has to play this very carefully; the last thing he wants is to open the door to Netanyahu."

The administration, sources in Washington say, believe that those political realities will keep Sharon from trying to remove Arafat from the scene or reoccupy land.

But even if Sharon dramatically escalates the military pressure, the administration may not rescind the green light it has flashed for the Israeli leader.

"Sharon’s instinct after this week will be to crack down hard," said Robert O. Freedman, a leading Mideast analyst and longtime peace process supporter. "We may see them begin to attack in Ramallah; he may decide to take Arafat out."

Sharon came to office promising security in a year, Freedman said, "but didn’t produce it. Now he may be coming close to the decision that the current policy isn’t working. He won’t accept unilateral withdrawal, so he will move inexorably toward a direct assault on the [Palestinian Authority] — even if that takes out Arafat."

Freedman said that Sharon may be ready to accept a period of chaos as Palestinian leaders vie to replace Arafat.

Bush administration officials will never openly approve of that kind of assault, he said — but given their frustration with Arafat, they may not work hard to restrain Sharon. In fact, Freedman said, there may be advantages to quick action by Sharon.

"Most people believe a [U.S.] move against Iraq is three or four months away," he said. "While the administration would prefer quiet on the Israeli-Palestinian front, they may assume [a direct assault on Arafat] is inevitable. So they may prefer Sharon do it sooner rather than later."

But other analysts say that despite the despair over Arafat’s unwillingness to curb the terrorists and the mounting pressure from the right, Sharon still may not be ready to remove him from the scene.

"Frankly, Arafat is still more valuable to Sharon alive and kicking than dead," said former Ambassador Edward Walker. "Arafat has managed to totally alienate this administration in ways that have made it very easy for Sharon."

This week the administration reacted cautiously to hints of a new peace play by Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, Crown Prince Abdullah said that he had considered making a speech calling for normalizing Arab ties with the Jewish state if Israel would return to its 1967 borders. But the prince said he decided not to give the speech because of what he called Sharon’s "oppression" of the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed the Saudi proposal, but Israeli officials dismissed it as vague.

On Monday, Boucher called the proposal a "significant and positive step." But he added that the administration has few details about the plan — and that any new plan is "subject to negotiation by the parties."

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World Briefs

Leave a Comment / United States, Worldwide /

Peres: Saudi Proposal ‘Interesting’

Shimon Peres described a peace proposal by Saudi Arabia’s crown prince as “positive.” In an interview with Saudi television, Israel’s foreign minister said Crown Prince Abdullah’s proposal for Arab League states to normalize relations with Israel, in exchange for full withdrawal from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem, was “interesting and positive.”

In a column this week in The New York Times, Thomas Friedman recounts a recent interview in which the prince said he had been just about to make the proposal — but then decided not to, because of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s policies. Still, he said, his idea had been to “find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don’t reject or despise them — but they reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive.” Arafat said this week he would consider the proposal.

Hamas Leader Calls for Worldwide
Jihad

The spiritual leader of Hamas called on Muslims around the world to launch a holy war to liberate their countries from U.S. influence. “Sons of Islam everywhere, the jihad is a duty, to establish the rule of Allah on earth and to liberate your countries and yourselves from America’s domination and its Zionist allies,” Sheik Ahmed Yassin said in an open letter.

P.A. Linked to ‘Axis of Evil’

The White House referred to the Palestinian Authority as one of a number of regimes that “invite terrorism and that practice terrorism.” On Feb. 13, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer also linked the Palestinian Authority to the “axis of evil” that President Bush described in his State of the Union speech.

Fleischer told reporters that the president placed great importance on education in countries “known to foster terrorism,” citing Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the Palestinian Authority as examples.

Ruling May Void Sharon Trial

A ruling by the International Court likely will block any chance for Belgium to try Ariel Sharon for war crimes. The court ruled Feb. 14 that Belgium cannot prosecute former and current world leaders because they have diplomatic immunity.

A Belgian court is slated to rule March 6 whether the Israeli prime minister should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. Sharon faces lawsuits filed by Palestinians and Lebanese accusing him of responsibility for the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, which was carried out by Lebanese Christian militias allied with Israel.

AJCommittee Helps Afghan Refugees

The American Jewish Committee gave $50,000 to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees for relief in Afghanistan. Monday’s contribution is the second major donation from the AJCommittee to the U.N. agency, and the second time the group has worked with them to aid Muslim refugees.

Boycott Threat Gains Momentum

A Catholic group joined a proposed boycott of an upcoming show at New York’s Jewish Museum. “Usually, it’s Catholics whom the ‘creative types’ in the artistic community like to offend. Now it’s Jews,” William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said in a statement. The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors earlier called for a boycott. The museum says the exhibit, slated to open March 17, seeks to present Nazi horrors in a thought-provoking manner. Critics say the exhibit is an affront to the Jewish community in general and Holocaust survivors in particular.

This Ain’t Barbie

New dolls featuring Nazi leaders are sold out. Mike Fosella of suburban New York said he created 50 dolls of Hitler and Josef Mengele, the notorious concentration camp doctor, only for serious collectors and history buffs. The dolls cost $170 each. Kenneth Jacobson of the Anti-Defamation League told the New York Daily News that Fosella “has the right to conduct business, but society can determine what is offensive.” Fosella plans to continue the series with dolls of Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.

Briefs courtesy of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Israeli Court: Liberal Conversions OK

Leave a Comment / Israel, Worldwide /

Non-Orthodox Jews both inside and outside Israel are celebrating a historic court ruling recognizing Reform and Conservative conversions as valid and binding upon the Jewish state.

Given the complexity of Israeli society, however, Wednesday’s ruling by Israel’s High Court of Justice is not binding on the Israeli rabbinate.

The result is that the Interior Ministry must now register Israelis who had Reform or Conservative conversions as Jews on their national identification cards — but the rabbinate will not consider them Jews for "personal status" issues such as marriage or burial.

Orthodox leaders have condemned the ruling, and it is not clear if the Interior Ministry, which is run by the fervently Orthodox Shas Party, will abide by it.

In addition, efforts are already under way in the Knesset to undermine the ruling through legislation.

Still, leaders of the non-Orthodox streams rejoiced after Wednesday’s ruling, which decided some 50 cases that had wended their way through the court system for years.

"The ruling has historical consequence because it strengthens Jewish pluralism in Israel," said Rabbi Uri Regev, head of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, the umbrella agency for Reform and other liberal organizations in 40 countries.

"It effectively repels the Orthodox establishment that holds that Reform and Conservative converts aren’t worthy of being recognized because of the liberal identities of the rabbis that convert them," he said.

The conversion issue has sparked vicious fights over the question of "Who is a Jew?" and strained relations between Israel — where the Orthodox largely control religious life — and the Diaspora, where the liberal streams are stronger.

It has also threatened the stability of previous Israeli governments, when Orthodox parties vowed to leave the governing coalition if changes to the so-called religious status quo were enacted.

At one point, Israel’s non-Orthodox groups had agreed to freeze the court cases while compromise solutions were sought, but ultimately renewed the cases when the standoff continued.

Outlining the court’s reasoning in its 9-2 decision, Chief Justice Aharon Barak wrote: "Israel is not a state of a Jewish community, Israel is the state of the Jewish people."

"It’s obviously a complete and total victory," said Rabbi Andrew Sacks, executive head of Israel’s Masorti Movement, as the Conservative movement is known in Israel.

The court’s language emphasizes the importance of not enshrining one stream of Judaism above others, Sacks said.

The ruling pertains to conversions performed in Israel; those converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside of Israel already are being registered as Jews.

Nevertheless, the decision carries no weight with Israel’s powerful Orthodox establishment.

The court’s decision recognizes the concept of religious pluralism in Israel, but Reform and Conservative conversions still are not recognized by the Israeli rabbinate, which maintains its monopoly on issues such as marriage.

"So what if they have an identity card that says they’re Jewish," said Avraham Ravitz, leader of the fervently religious United Torah Judaism bloc.

"It doesn’t mean they’re recognized by Jewish law as being Jewish. It’s just bureaucratic."

That raised the prospect of Israelis receiving some of the privileges of being Jewish in the Jewish state, but not others.

"The decision will very much confuse these ‘converts’ whose conversions, in my view, do not hold," Israel’s chief Ashkenazic rabbi, Yisrael Meir Lau, told Army Radio.

Indeed, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, head of the fervently Orthodox Shas Party, said that he could not bring himself "to register a non-Jew as a Jew."

One solution, he said, was to note on the converts’ ID cards that they are Reform Jews or Conservative Jews.

Already on Wednesday, Shas’ Knesset faction presented a legislative proposal to bypass the court decision. Under the bill, conversions would not be finalized until they received the chief rabbinate’s approval — even if they were performed overseas.

That seemed to indicate the issue is not yet closed.

The fervently Orthodox community views the decision as a critical change that effectively ends the dream of Jewish identity as a glue binding together the Jews in Israel, he said.

That kind of reaction gives pause to those in the Reform and Conservative movements

There could be complications following the ruling, said Nicole Maor, the attorney for the Israel Religious Action Center, the activist arm of the Reform movement here.

"It’s historic in that the court has ordered the Interior Ministry to register conversions in Israel," added Maor. "Even though it’s symbolic, most government bodies don’t look any further than ID cards."

Still she expects the Interior Ministry to try to avoid fulfilling the judgment.

Moreover, the issue of marriage remains unresolved.

Until they are recognized as Jews by the rabbinate, Reform and Conservative converts can’t be married by an Orthodox rabbi — the only Jewish marriages legally recognized by the state.

"It’s going to change sometime soon, because this is probably the only democratic country in the world where a significant part of its citizenry can’t marry," said Sacks, referring to the large number of Russian immigrants whom the rabbinate doesn’t recognize as Jews.

"Over the next couple of years, the Knesset is going to have to find a way to marry [people] outside the rabbinate," Sacks said.

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From L.A. to Germany

Leave a Comment / Education, Travel, Worldwide /

Dr. Dagmar Weiler, whose Bridge of Understanding program sponsors tours to Germany for American Jewish students and young professionals, wants to make one point perfectly clear:

“What we are offering are not memorial trips to the past but a chance for first-hand encounters with today’s Germany, warts and all,” she says.

Such face-to-face meetings are vital, she believes, as a reality check for both Germans and American Jews, who wrestle, often obsessively, with the Nazi era and its legacy.

Bridge of Understanding was launched in 1993 by the Office of German-American Cooperation at the German Foreign Ministry, and Weiler has been the project’s director almost from the beginning.

But for a faint German accent, the perky Weiler comes across at times as more American than the Americans. She received her doctorate in U.S. history from Washington State University, with a focus on the labor movement in the South, is up on the latest slang and loves baseball.

A typical Bridge tour, largely underwritten by the German government, lasts three weeks and consists of some 20 people with similar interests. The initial trips were for college students affiliated with Hillel, but now are tailor-made for young Jewish legislators, journalists, rabbis and rabbinical students and professional community workers.

Bridge, with a $500,000 annual budget, generally organizes six such tours during the year.

Although the trips concentrate on contemporary Germany, with its Jewish communities and large foreign minorities, the past cannot be ignored entirely. There are usually visits to the memorial sites at the Dachau or Sachsenhausen concentration camps, with talks by survivors.

So far, participants in the program have come mainly from the East Coast, and Weiler says that the main purpose of her current trip was to establish ties with West Coast institutions.

Weiler met with leaders of Mazon, a hunger-fighting organization, and the Board of Rabbis, but her main host was Dr. Steven Windmueller, director of the Irwin Daniels School of Jewish Communal Service at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Windmueller views the Bridge program as a likely test run for many of his students who plan careers with international Jewish communal organizations, such as the Joint Distribution Committee and the American Jewish Committee.

“The Jewish world is getting smaller,” he observes, and Germany in particular, with the fastest growing Jewish community in Europe, “is not just the story of the past, but also of the future.”

Additional information on Bridge of Understanding,headquartered in Munich, is available on its Web sitewww.bridge-understanding.de or by e-mail to info@bridge-understanding.de .

From L.A. to Germany Read More »