March 16, 2006

Forget March — Try Midseason Madness

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Shoshana Lewin-Fischer

The Olympics drama is over. The Oscar drama is over. The TV ratings drama is just beginning. Now that the networks have a handle on what worked in the fall (ABC’s “Commander-in-Chief”) and what didn’t (CBS’s “Head Cases”), it’s time to make room for some midseason replacements that — if they do well — will return to the schedule this fall.

ABC

With shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost,” ABC is now the place to be for dramas and dramedies. But how will a new family comedy fare on a network that was once home to uber-sitcoms “Full House” and “Growing Pains” — and is now the place to find “Freddie” and “Rodney” (yeah, we haven’t seen them either)?

“Sons & Daughters” (Tuesdays at 9 p.m.), created by Fred Goss (who also stars) and Nick Holly, is ABC’s answer to critically acclaimed but ratings-deprived “Arrested Development.” The modern-day family comedy about the Walker/Halbert siblings and their parents and children is a mix of improvisational and scripted humor, although it is hard to tell which is which.

Goss plays Cameron Walker, whose second wife, Liz, is Jewish. As a result, in the first episode, evil Aunt Rae tells their young daughter, Marni, that the family is going to hell. While Aunt Rae is napping, the kids use a marker to draw a Hitler mustache on her face, and Henry, Cameron’s resentful teenage son from his first marriage, gets it all on camera.

Cameron is based largely on creator Goss’ own life — he is married to a Jewish woman and is raising his kids Jewish — and facing prejudice from some of his family members.

The show airs in the “Commander-in-Chief” spot through mid-April, and while it isn’t a typical comedy (no laugh track), you might find yourself laughing at the similarity between its family and yours.

ABC also ventures into the CBS stronghold of crime solving with “The Evidence” (Wednesdays at 10 p.m., starting March 22). In every episode, the audience plays detective with inspector Sean Cole (Rob Estes) and Cayman Bishop (Orlando Jones), who get help from Dr. Sol Gold (Martin Landau).

The whodunit takes place in San Francisco (one of the few places “C.S.I.” hasn’t been) and kicks off each episode with Gold presenting clues from a videotaped evidence log. The show then goes to the day the crime was committed, and viewers can play along with the detectives as they find each clue, determine its meaning, put the pieces together and solve the crime.

Landau, who won an Oscar for portraying Bela Lugosi in 1994’s “Ed Wood” and picked up a 2005 Jewish Image Award for his work in “The Aryan Couple,” told The Journal that he’s happy to play a Jewish character again.

“They always cast me as Italian,” said Landau, who has recently been Anthony LaPaglia’s father, Frank Malone, on the CBS drama, “Without a Trace.”

If the show can draw viewers from NBC’s staple, “Law & Order,” expect it to hang around until the fall.

The WB

Switching channels, the WB (soon to be CW) adds a new guys-who-can’t-figure-out-women-but-aren’t-sure-why comedy to its lineup with “Modern Men” (Fridays, 9:30 p.m., starting March 17), from executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

Twentysomething childhood friends Tim (Josh Braaten), Kyle (Max Greenfield) and Doug (Eric Lively) each have problems with the women — or lack thereof — in their lives and seek the advice of life coach Dr. Victoria Stangel (Jane Seymour).

Adding to the mix is Tim’s dad, Tug (George Wendt), a former NFL player, and law school student and sister, Molly (Marla Sokoloff), the catalyst for the men seeking professional help, who tells them: If women don’t need men any more, it’s up to men to make women want them.

Sokoloff has been seen on the small screen as Lynette’s cutie-pie nanny on “Desperate Housewives” and as the firm’s receptionist on the late ABC drama, “The Practice.” The actress-singer-songwriter told The Journal that she enjoyed playing a young Jewish woman in “The Tollbooth” (for which she won a Jewish Image Award). She is so much fun to watch that maybe it’s time for her to get her own show.

The male-dominated sitcom concept can either work (CBS’s “Two and a Half Men”) or tank (NBC’s “Four Kings”). If “Modern Men” can keep the numbers of its lead-in — “Reba” — on a evening lineup filled with female-geared shows, it might end up in the former category.

NBC

The Donald is back for another round of hirings and firings — well, mostly firings, on the latest round of “The Apprentice” (Mondays at 9 p.m.). This year’s crop of candidates includes Orthodox Jews Lee Bienstock, 22, and Daniel Brody, 31.

Bienstock, a business analyst and Cornell University graduate who counts Israel among his top travel destinations, has already made one trip to the boardroom after his team, Gold Rush, lost the first challenge of the season. Bienstock escaped unharmed but was told beforehand by project manager Tarek Saab not to throw blame Saab’s way for the loss or Bienstock would become a “target.”

In the second episode, Bienstock became project manager, and his team won — but some early mismanagement on his part could have easily lost the task for Gold Rush. Past seasons have shown that the “young guy” always gets fired before the final two — usually for not having enough experience or being too cocky.

Brody, an alum of Yeshiva University and founder of Brody Sport, a designer brand of activewear, was also on the Gold Rush team but escaped a visit to the boardroom. In the second episode, he showed he can be relied upon to do what is asked of him. The New Jersey native and father of two could break the “entrepreneurs don’t get picked” reputation the show has exhibited so far.

Bienstock and Brody both went to shul for Rosh Hashanah during the week three task — much to the chagrin of fellow teammates, specifially 37-year-old Lenny Val, a Russian-born New Jerseyite who, when Brody said they would be gone, said, “This is f—— stupid,” and then pointed out several times in the episode that even though he is Jewish, he wasn’t taking off.

Val told Bienstock and Brody that if Gold Rush loses, he would blame them — and continued to do so after their team indeed lost their task. Though neither Bienstock nor Brody was taken to the boardroom, Val was and told Trump that he is Jewish and could have taken off, but he felt the team was more important. Trump told Val, who was not fired, that he could have chosen to take off — but “that’s life.”

It will be intersting to see how Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Simchat Torah play into the next few episodes.

Goodbye

The Journal gives a warm send-off to syndication heaven to a trio of longtime shows: NBC’s Sunday night political drama, “The West Wing” (also on Bravo), which ends its term with an election that could go either way); The WB’s Monday night family drama, “7th Heaven,” which spent 10 years offering a wholesome look at a reverend, his wife, their Jewish in-laws and seven kids who got into more trouble than the Bradford children on “Eight Is Enough”; and NBC’s Thursday night sitcom, “Will & Grace” (on Lifetime and the WB), which brought gaydar and tons of guest stars to the small screen, along with Grace’s (Debra Messing) humorous nods to the holidays: “I mean, the holidays are all about … misery and … obligation … and the Maccabees riding an elephant, or whatever the hell Chanukah is about.”

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The Leah Doll

Leave a Comment / Personals / Caroline Cobrin

Tante Mina sat on her couch and slowly tore away the wrapping. When the paper fell and she saw the porcelain doll her nieces had molded, painted and dressed for her, her breath caught in her throat and she let out a little gasp. As Tante Mina continued to stare at the doll, Mali, my mother, told her 81-year-old aunt about the next step.

“Now you have to name her.”

“Her name is Leah,” Tante Mina said right away. Mali looked at her twin sister, Tova, slightly stunned.

“Tante Mina, how did you do that so quickly? It usually takes people a little while to let the doll’s name come to them.” Mali said.

“No, her name is Leah,” Tante Mina said again, “she looks exactly like my sister who died in the Holocaust, her name was Leah.”

Mali and Tova slowly sat down.

“My sister, Leah, had black hair, freckles and the same face as this doll,” Tante Mina said.

“Do you have a picture of her?” Tova asked.

“No, the only picture exists in my mind, and now here she is,” Tante Mina said gesturing to her heart and then to the doll sitting in her lap.

My family talks about everything. We laugh, giggle and involve ourselves in one another’s lives. But for everything that is talked about and laughed at, there is the same equivalency of things not being said. For all of our plans and hopes, my family’s past is never mentioned. It is known, understood and remembered but never talked about. It’s a past farther back than how I’m related to a certain person. It’s all the stories of my relatives who lived and died during the Holocaust.

When I was younger I would ask questions about why some of my great aunts had never had children, and my mother would start to answer and then emotion would take over. Her eyes would start to water as she quickly explained how their bodies never recovered from what happened during the war. I was given the facts but the details were hidden behind tears and sadness that my family would rather repress then delve into again and again.

Of course, growing up, I learned in school what the Holocaust was and heard all of the horrible stories about what happened during those dreadful years to millions of Jews. The most education I received on the subject outside of school was through a trip to the Museum of Tolerance, and from the movie, “Schindler’s List,” which my mother made me go see with my dad.

There is the famous saying when it comes to the Holocaust — never forget. As long as we never forget, these horrible things can never happen again. However, there is a distinct difference between never forgetting, and remembering and honoring the lives lost.

The Holocaust survivors in my family, like Tante Mina, don’t mention the hardships they endured or the family they lost. It is something that they keep inside, never forgetting, yet never revealing. The faces of their lost loved ones, like Tante Mina’s sister, Leah, exist only in their memories, growing fuzzy with time yet always hovering near them.

When my mother called me and told me about Tante Mina’s doll, I could hear the emotion in her voice: “Isn’t that weird, of all of the choices of doll molds, of hair colors, eye colors, styles of clothing, it all turned out to be the image of the sister she lost in the Holocaust. A sister we didn’t even remember existed in the first place.”

Leah now sits on Tante Mina’s dresser in the Jewish Home for the Aging. A small, freckle-faced doll with black, braided hair, a straw hat and a beautiful green dress, a sense of loss behind her green painted eyes yet an aura of hope around her. She’s a constant reminder of the sister she had and serves as a guiding force, watching over Tante Mina as time passes, a presence to remind her that she has never, and will never, be alone.

An amazing connection can exist between past and present that, if strong enough, will present itself in ways never thought possible. This mystic connection graced my family when a doll was created that, unbeknownst to those who created her, also had a past.

There is so much sadness, pain and secrecy in the past that holds onto people’s souls for the duration of their lives. Although it is hard to recount these memories of loss, it is such an important first step to remembering and honoring — the past of who lived — while also being dedicated to not forgetting those who died.

Caroline Cobrin is a writer living in Van Nuys.

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The End of Bush’s ‘Jewish Moment’

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Raphael J. Sonenshein

Republicans once had high hopes that George W. Bush would draw American Jews away from their historic affinity with Democrats into embracing the conservative party. They believed that Jews would be drawn to Bush’s intense support for the State of Israel. Orthodox Jews, already more conservative than most American Jews, would be attracted by Bush’s faith-based initiatives. Neo-conservative intellectuals, a number of whom are Jewish and strongly pro-Israel, would be integrated into the foreign policy apparatus of the administration. And finally, the war in Iraq would remake the map of the Middle East in a way that would enhance Israel’s security. Taken together, the Bush administration would provide the Republicans with their “Jewish moment.”

The first test of this multifaceted plan was the 2004 presidential election. That seemed to be a bust. Democrat John Kerry won an estimated three-quarters of Jewish voters. But then the Republican plan was never based exclusively on winning Jewish votes. It was as much about splitting the Jewish campaign-funding base, and introducing a germ of doubt into Jewish loyalty to the Democrats, especially where Israel’s security was concerned. It was also about enhancing the gap between Republicans and Democrats in foreign policy leadership. The White House successfully cultivated pro-Israel Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) to be their favorite Democrat, while rumors swirled that he would replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense.

Many American Jews were uncomfortable with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but, after all, Israel’s leadership spoke publicly in favor of the war, remembering how Saddam Hussein had rained missiles into Israel during the first Gulf War. Jewish voters give credence to the positions of Israeli leadership on security matters, and Israel is perhaps the most pro-American nation on earth. By the same token, intense European opposition to the war counted for less, given Europe’s pro-Arab track record.

While American unilateralism might discomfort progressive Jews, many also have demonstrated a certain willingness to endure the international isolation that comes with America’s support for Israel. And older Jews remember Jewish Cold War intellectuals joining with the Nixon administration when the Democrats seemed weaker on foreign policy in the McGovern era. And it was Nixon who bailed out Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

But since Bush’s re-election, these pillars of a paradigm shift have eroded, and now totter on the verge of collapse. The poor progress of the war in Iraq stands at the heart of the matter. The neo-conservatives turned out to be second-rate armchair warriors, working with a less-than-talented administration that shared their fantasies of global domination. Despite his corruption and dishonesty, Nixon was a brilliant strategic thinker on the global scene. He prided himself on a cold-hearted realism that allowed him to abandon his own Cold War ideology, play the People’s Republic of China against the Soviet Union and conclude historic agreements with each of them. Even as his popularity at home evaporated, he still enjoyed great respect in major world capitals. He didn’t like Jews very much (as shown in the famous White House tapes), and offered little rhetoric in support of Israel, but with the Jewish state in mortal peril during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he moved quickly and effectively to mobilize critically needed U.S. aid.

The Bush group of politicians and neo-conservative intellectuals, by contrast, has relied on the fantastical notion that an American invasion of an Arab country would spark a democratic upsurge in the Middle East. New elections would install pro-American and pro-Israeli governments in the region, thereby assuring U.S. hegemony and Israeli security. They pulled out maps of the region and plotted what they proudly referred to as the new American era of ideological and economic dominance. They saw endless possibilities for positive change in the region. One administration insider gloated about Egypt, “We can do better than Mubarak.” It apparently never occurred to them that elections might bring fundamentalist, anti-American and anti-Israel forces to power. For that matter, they seemed utterly surprised by the impact of televised images of tortured and humiliated prisoners.

Wedded to this doctrine, the administration resisted Israeli entreaties to delay Palestinian elections or to insist on preconditions for Hamas involvement, with the result that a democratically elected Hamas government, unwilling to recognize Israel, now stands on Israel’s border.

Instead of a moderate democratic renaissance, the Iraq War threatens to spark a civil war. And the prestige and power of Israel’s major regional foe, Iran, has been enhanced in the bargain. In February, Israeli television broadcast comments by Yuval Diskin, head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, who was overhead suggesting that Israel might have been better off if Saddam were still in power controlling a stable, albeit hostile, Iraq.

The Bush administration and its neo-conservative intellectuals may have inadvertently shifted the cream of foreign policy thinkers back to the Democrats. Bush’s politicians and ideologues have driven out enough foreign policy professionals from the federal government to staff a new administration, from anti-terror specialist Richard Clarke to that famously unmasked CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The controversial port deal with the United Arab Emirates and the revelation that the UAE participates in the Arab boycott of Israel further changes the political dynamic. The ports controversy has for the first time allowed Democrats to move to the more pro-Israel side of the Bush administration. Ironically, then, the transition of the Nixon era may indeed be replayed. But in a twist of history, it may be the Democrats that benefit if they can rediscover their own long-lost tradition of foreign policy leadership.

Raphael J. Sonenshein is a political scientist at Cal State Fullerton.

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For Ilan, a Eulogy

Leave a Comment / Judea Pearl, Opinion / Judea Pearl

This week marks the shloshim, the 30th day following the death of Ilan Halimi, murdered by French anti-Semites in a Paris suburb.

“Pour Ilan” — this is what the sign says, held by demonstrators in a quiet march, in Paris, in your memory. Pour Ilan, Ilan Halimi, my newly fallen son.

When I weep for you, I weep for my son Daniel, too — your brother in pain — two treasures crushed in the claws of history. When I weep for you, I weep with my burned face, with my hands tied behind my back, with my screaming mind — my sanity that was shattered when the doors of heavens slammed your life.

They rush to your memorial, the politicians, the dignitaries and Jewish leaders, too. They talk about joblessness, crime, jealousy and greed.

“They believe,” and I quote, “that ‘Jews have money'” said Interior Minister Sarkozy.

They always speak about “them” — the criminals, the barbarians — rarely about themselves. About the silence and tacit encouragement that have created this climate in France, where a gang of youngsters would choose to target Jews over other preys. A climate in which torturing a Jew is considered a lesser form of cruelty than the unimaginable.

“We tortured him because he was a Jew,” said one of the abductors last week.

How did this climate of inhumanity infiltrate a country that gave the world liberty, equality and brotherhood? Ilan did not ask his captors this question — he knew the answer.

He understood that empathy emanates from the dignity and respect that society extends to its members. And he knew firsthand that while some members of the French Jewish community have risen to prominence, Jews, as a collective, have not enjoyed standard dignity and respect — they have been villainized and dehumanized in all strata of French society as no other group has.

Of course, only Israelis are dehumanized today in the French media, not all Jews — France is a modern country, and it knows the rules of post-World War II discourse.

Likewise, French Jews are no longer accused of killing God’s son or Christian boys; they are now villainized for one and only one crime: loving and caring for that “shitty little country,” as French Ambassador Bernard called Israel, a country that, according to a 2005 survey, the majority of Europeans consider “the greatest threat to world peace.”

Ilan’s misfortune was that the gangsters of Bagneux were quick to discover what every child in Europe knew all along — who causes the troubles in the world and who can be bashed with impunity.

It is safe for us to talk about the gangsters of Bagneux, not so safe to talk about the French media. But, if the death of Ilan Halimi is to have a meaningful and permanent mark on our consciousness, it is vital that we examine all sacred pillars of society.

By licensing unrestrained assaults against Israel and Zionism, two cherished symbols of French Jewry, and denying the Jewish community a fair opportunity to make the case for Israel, the media has effectively turned French Jewry into social outcasts. This, coupled with classical anti-Semitic broadcasts pouring over from Middle East channels, offers some explanation for the barbaric and inexplicable inhumanity of Ilan’s abductors.

Indeed, how can the residents of Bagneux respect the life of Ilan, if he cherishes the Magen David — the most despised symbol in all of Europe, barring the Swastika. A symbol that, for more than a decade, French media refused to associate with any praiseworthy idea.

How could they remain deaf, for 20 long days, to his infinite screams, blended with his mother’s pleas over the phone? Unless they convinced themselves that this young man deserved subhuman treatment, either by virtue of belonging to the “despised,” or as a cousin to those “monstrous Israeli soldiers” they repeatedly saw on TV, intentionally killing Palestinian children.

Or, perhaps they were reminded of that video (now suspected of being forged) of the dying Palestinian child Muhammad Al Dura that the television station France 2 was so eager to air in September 2000. Not one time, but day after day, night after night, with stubbornness and perseverance that only bigotry can sustain. So eager in fact that it found its way to the hands of Daniel Pearl’s murderers in Pakistan and was used in their gruesome video to justify the murder — a grim reminder of the consequences of irresponsible journalism.

But let us dig a bit deeper. How can the good citizens of Bagneux muster the courage to tell their gangster neighbors: “Stop!” when they see around them a culture of capitulation, deceit and herd pressure? A culture where frightened teachers yield to students refusing Holocaust classes, where police do not see what the government does not approve, where politicians vie with each other to proclaim the Paris riots void of religious or cultural undercurrents and where the one writer who suggests otherwise is harshly rebuked by his peers as racist. A culture where the darling of European philosophers, Tariq Ramadan, defines sympathy for a beleaguered Israel as betrayal of universal values, and where that same philosopher proclaims the West “morally bankrupt” to the mesmerized admiration of his Western colleagues.

Oh, Ilan and Daniel, two beautiful sons of the West, intellectuals and barbarians have gathered again to challenge the vitality of your moral heritage. Remind them who you are. You, two principled disciples of Abraham, Socrates and Jeremiah; two proud emissaries of Aquinas, Rashi and Galileo; two burning torches of Rousseau and Jefferson, Hertzl and Einstein; tell them what they refuse to see on your charred bodies: That Western civilization ain’t ready to surrender, that youngsters like you attest its strength and vitality, that “bankruptcy” is not in your vocabulary. And, finally, that your legacy will witness the downfall of your murderers. It will!

Danny and Ilan, my two fallen sons, it was not the barbarians alone who killed you; some twisted intellectuals were there all along, spreading the fuel while watching the barbarians light the fuse. They killed you because you are the soul of Western civilization, a soul they chose to disown.

Let there be no silence on your grave, Ilan, no rest, nor learned discussion till the racist climate of your murder stands trial in the court of history. Until another Zola rises with a lauder “J’accuse”, and this culture of deceit goes down in infamy, as did the Dreyfus Affair and the Munich Treaty.

Yitgadal Ve’Yitkadash Shmai Rabah.

Judea Pearl is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation ( For Ilan, a Eulogy Read More »

You’re Scentsational!

Leave a Comment / Singles / Mark Miller

When a guy — let’s say me, for the sake of argument — is lacking a romantic partner, every bit of attention I get from any woman, even a complete stranger, takes on heightened significance and pleasure. Because I don’t have a wife, girlfriend or lover, a simple smile from any woman passing me on the street is very likely to be the only, and certainly the most intimate, female contact I can expect all day. You might think that’s sad. You might feel sorry for me. And, yet, I accept it. I more than accept it — I appreciate it, am grateful for it — OK, I even treasure it. Yes, that’s right — I often treasure the smile of a woman I don’t even know. Sometimes, if I’m lucky, she’ll both smile and say “Hi,” “Hello” or “Good morning.” So I get to experience both her smile and her voice — double bonus. Triple bonus if you factor in the visual pleasures of seeing her. And a big quadruple bonus if all the above is combined with what is perhaps my favorite of the four elements — her fragrance as she passes by. That’s right, the scent of a woman.

OK, I know what you’re thinking: “This guy’s creepy. Some unsuspecting, innocent woman passing him on the street smiles, says good morning and had the audacity to apply perfume — and suddenly he thinks he’s in a relationship.”

First, in my defense, I’m not quite that delusional. I realize I mean nothing to these women beyond being a friendly smiling face. And yet … sometimes, as that powerful quadruple bonus kicks in — the visual, the smile, the greeting and the fragrance — I’ll close my eyes, inhale that fragrance deeply as we pass one another on the sidewalk, and allow myself one quick and innocent indulgence — the momentary fantasy of what it might be like to be in a romantic relationship with this particular woman. And I would guess a lot of guys do this. Hey, come on, can you blame us? In ancient Egypt, women used perfumed creams and oils as a prelude to lovemaking. Am I expected to wipe that thought from my mind as a woman’s lingering fragrance envelops me as she walks by? Of course not. In fact, if you were to order a transcript from my brain describing a few of these “encounters,” you might find something of this nature….

Sally Citrus — A refreshing fragrance for an energetic, sporty woman. We bond over tennis, hiking and biking. Over the years, we travel to exotic, little-known locations and thrill to new experiences. Eventually, we tire of one another and each drift into a series of meaningless affairs before bidding one another a deeply saddened farewell forever.

Leslie Lavender — A warm and caring scent of a woman who finds genuine fulfillment in giving to others. Together, we offer our free time to a multitude of charitable organizations, and then come home and offer ourselves freely to one another. Our relationship is founded on such honesty that even after she decides to return to her first husband, I share with her my progress on the anti-depression medication I take daily.

Olivia Oriental — A blend of excitement and mystery. Musks and precious woods are complemented by exotic essences. Our lives are luxurious, dramatic, sexy, sensual. We live fast, eat well and drive expensive sports cars. Unfortunately, one of these sports cars crashes suddenly while taking a mountain curve in Monaco, killing us instantly.

Have you picked up on the pattern? Each one of my romantic fantasies starts out with great promise and excitement, and ends disappointingly, if not tragically — just like my actual romantic relationships! What gives? Aren’t fantasies supposed to be all good? Well, I can’t worry about that right now. I’ll let my shrink sort it out. And I especially don’t want the women I encounter to worry about it. To them I’d just like to say it’s not you; it’s me. I’d also like to thank them. For their appearance, smile, greeting and fragrance. And Sally, Leslie, Olivia — to the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world. Even if it is just for 30 seconds — and even if you don’t even know his name.

Comedy writer Mark Miller can be reached at markmiller2000@comcast.net or at You’re Scentsational! Read More »

Good and Late

Leave a Comment / Torah / Rabbi Elazar Muskin

Some things never change. We all know the storyline. Moses was expected back after 40 days in heaven where he was receiving the

Torah. But he was late coming back on the 40th day: “And the people saw that Moses tarried [boshesh], in coming down from the mountain” (Exodus 32:1).

The 19th century German biblical commentator, the HaKetav V’Hakablah, notes that the word the Torah used to describe Moshe’s tardiness is most telling. There are two words in Hebrew for being late. One is ichur, while the second is boshesh. The difference between these two is fundamental — ichur always represents a voluntary delay, while boshesh refers to a delay beyond one’s control.

The Jewish people thought that Moses was boshesh and wasn’t coming back. In truth, however, they did not view the situation correctly. Some outside force did not delay Moses; rather, he was late because he wanted to be late. He was so enthralled with the spiritual experience that he wanted to stay longer in heaven. He could not get enough time with God.

So many people think that the spiritual experience cannot be an enjoyable one. They see with a vision that is blurred and foggy. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Israel’s immediate past chief rabbi, once recounted the mass immigration of Soviet Jewry that was occurring when he was chief rabbi of Tel Aviv.

While a miracle and a dream come true, the arrival of Soviet Jewry also entailed great problems because there were non-Jews among the new immigrants. Therefore it became crucial to investigate each case in order to ascertain the true identity of each oleh (immigrant).

The rabbinate in Tel Aviv was overwhelmed with this problem, and spent numerous hours meeting with olim. In each case they would ask the oleh to bring an Israeli Jew, who could testify about their Jewish status. On one occasion, as Rabbi Lau sat on the beit din in Tel Aviv, a young Russian man appeared. He had just arrived a few days before from Odessa and he knew only one person in Israel, a Russian who had made aliyah years before, whom he brought with him as a witness.

The beit din listened to the case and cross-examined the witness to ensure he was providing factual information about the oleh. The rabbis asked the witness to prove how he knew that this young man’s mother was Jewish.

The witness related the following story: “I know without a doubt that she is Jewish. In Russia, the most precious of possessions are cigarettes. If you have cigarettes they are worth more than money. You can barter with cigarettes more than with any currency. Every night, before going to sleep, this man’s mother, who is a chain smoker, would take one of her precious cigarettes and put it in a box next to her bed. She would do this every night without fail. A week before Pesach, this lady would take the box, now filled with 365 cigarettes, to the wheat farmer and barter her precious cigarettes for a sack of wheat, which she would then use to bake matzot. Rabbis, tell me, do you need better proof that this man’s mother is Jewish?”

The rabbis sat stunned. They asked the Russian young man whether his mother was still alive and whether or not she had made aliyah with him. The Russian responded that she was alive but stayed in Odessa, too old to move. The rabbis asked if they could call and speak to her. The Russian gave them a phone number where she could be reached.

Speaking in Yiddish, the only language with which they could possibly understand each other, Rabbi Lau spoke with the mother. He wished her “mazal tov” on her son’s acceptance as a new Jewish citizen in Israel. He then told her that she was more pious than the rabbis in Tel Aviv. She couldn’t believe her ears and asked why he made such an outrageous comment. Rabbi Lau answered, “We only keep Pesach for seven days, but you keep it for 365 days every year.”

How do we see our spiritual life? Is it boshesh, beyond our control, or is it like the Russian woman, who daily prepared for her freedom?

Rabbi Elazar Muskin is spiritual leader of Young Israel of Century City.

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7 Days in The Arts

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks / Jewish Journal

Saturday, March 18

Tonight’s Writers Guild 2006 Screen Laurel Award goes to “that member of the guild who … has advanced the literature of the motion picture through the years….” This year, that guy is writer-director Lawrence Kasdan, responsible for “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Return of the Jedi” and “The Big Chill,” to name but a few. The public is invited to attend this evening’s tribute and reception, which includes a screening of Kasdan’s “Grand Canyon” and an on-stage Q-and-A. There’s also a screening series of Kasdan films going on all weekend long at the Writers Guild Theatre.

Sat. evening tribute: $25. Weekend screening series: $45 (weekend package), $30 (screenings only), Free (minors accompanied by paying adults, daytime screenings only). 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills. (323) 782-4692.

Lawrence Kasdan

Sunday, March 19

Film legend Eli Wallach and his wife and fellow actor Anne Jackson get personal tonight only, in a special one-night performance of “Bits and Pieces,” a collection of poetry, scenes, tales and letters that tells the couple’s story. The event benefits Theatre 40 professional theater company on its 40th birthday.

7 p.m. $25. Reuben Cordova Theatre, Beverly Hills High School Campus, 241 Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. R.S.V.P., (310) 364-0535. www.theatre40.org.

Monday, March 20

American Israel Defense Forces’ sisters-in-arms discuss their experiences volunteering to fight for Israel in an event sponsored by the Pacific Southwest Branch of Women’s League for Conservative Judaism. They share their stories at the University of Judaism this morning.

10:30 a.m. $6. 15600 Mulholland Drive, Bel Air. R.S.V.P., (310) 476-5359.

Paddi Bregman, left, and Ruth Giden.

Tuesday, March 21

April Fools comes early at the Skirball. Their “twice monthly on Tuesdays” free film series honors comedy duo Abbott and Costello beginning with today’s screening of “The Naughty Nineties.” Attend later this month to see “One Night in the Tropics.” In April, see “Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein” and “Little Giant.”

1:30 p.m. (March 21 and 28, April 4 and 18). Free. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 440-4500.

Abbott and Costello in “The Naughty Nineties.”

Wednesday, March 22

William Shatner, the Rockumentary? Apparently it’s just the beginning. Tonight, TV Land begins airing new series of its “Living in TV Land” music-reality hybrid show, with the ex-Captain Kirk as their first subject. In this episode, they boldly go everywhere Shatner goes, into the recording studio where he records his spoken-word albums, to Trekkie conventions and his home. Future, um, “rock star” subjects include Barry Williams, Fred Willard, Sherman Hemsley, Adam West and Davy Jones.

10 p.m. www.tvland.com.

Thursday, March 23

Tonight, the Skirball presents Langston Hughes’ words as the poet intended them to be heard — accompanied by jazz. Hughes’ ’60s poetry series “Ask Your Mama” told of America’s history of racism and of African American civil unrest in the late 1950s and 1960s. In those lines, Hughes included musical cues, and today the Ron McCurdy Quartet follows them, layering jazz music onto the spoken-word performance. Adding a visual element, images of the Harlem Renaissance by African American artists and photographers will be projected.

8 p.m. $8-$15. 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. R.S.V.P., (866) 468-3399.

Langston Hughes

Friday, March 24

The Purim parties just won’t stop. Tonight’s variation at Valley Beth Shalom features a Persian-themed Shabbat dinner and musical program. “A Night in Shushan: The Mystical Music of the Middle East” is its title, and the show features The Yuval Ron Ensemble with guest singers and dancers Iman Sufi and Tamra Henna. Come for the meal or just the music.

8 p.m. 15739 Ventura Blvd., Encino. R.S.V.P. for dinner, (818) 530-4009. www.vbs.org.

Tamra Henna. Photo by Sherif Sonbol

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Bruins Prep for Tense Tournament

Leave a Comment / Community / Carin Davis

It’s March Madness, so brush off your brackets, enter your office pool and cheer for two Jewish UCLA Bruins, one male, one female, as they head into the big dance.

Sophomore point guard Jordan Farmar led UCLA to their most successful regular season play since the season leading up to the team’s 1995 National Championship. The 13th-ranked Bruins (27-6) nabbed the Pac-10 Conference regular season title, won the Pac-10 Conference Tournament title and are headed into the national championship tournament as a No. 2 seed.

Last year, the Bruins fell in the first round of March Madness to Texas Tech. But this year, the team is playing much improved basketball, and Farmar considers himself a better team leader.

“I’m just more mature,” said Farmar, who gritted through a season plagued with severely sprained right and left ankles. “When you step up in big situations and do the little things, your teammates respond to you better as a leader. I just had time to improve on that from last year to this year.”

The 6-foot-2, 180-pound guard, averages 30.1 minutes, 2.7 rebounds and 13.6 points per game. He has 164 assists on the season. He started in 31 games. Considered one of the elite point guards in the nation, he was named to the all Pac-10 team, the all Pac-10 Tournament team and is a John Wooden Award, Bob Cousy Award and Naismith Trophy candidate.

In conversation, Farmar is polite, bright and courteous. On the court, he runs a successful offense, plays aggressive defense and can steer his team to victory in tight game situations. He’s fiercely competitive and stays focused, even when his team falls behind.

“It’s not nerve-wracking at all. We just have to stay composed and keep doing what we’ve been doing. When we play defense, rebound and play together, good things happen,” said Farmar, whose Bruins let their 16-point lead slip to just 3 points at the half, before coming back to a 71-59 victory over the Cal Bears in last Saturday’s Pac-10 Tournament Championship. Farmar scored 19 points in the game.

Although he doesn’t consider himself religious, Farmer says he is proud of his Jewish heritage and is happy to speak about his Jewish upbringing. He was bar mitzvahed at Temple Judea and is very close to his mother and stepfather, Melinda and Yehuda Kolani, who raised him in a Jewish home and took him to Israel on family vacations. He is also tight with his father, former pro-baseball player Damon Farmar, who mentored his son in sports.

“My family always comes out to the games; it’s the main reason I stayed at home. It’s great to be able to play in front of them,” Farmar said with a smile.

A Van Nuys native and Taft High School graduate, Farmar enjoys playing for UCLA, especially in front of his hometown crowd.

“I love it. To always have some people behind you is a great thing. It helps you out defensively, with intensity, and gives you that extra edge,” Farmar said.

The Bruins will kick off this week’s NCAA tournament playing close to home, meeting No. 15 seed Belmont in San Diego.

Next year, Ortal Oren will return home to play professional basketball in Israel. But this year, the UCLA guard is thrilled to be playing in the NCAA tournament. On March 6, the Bruins (20-10) rallied from a 13-point second-half deficit to win its first-ever Pac-10 Women’s Basketball Tournament title over the 11th-ranked Stanford. With their 85-76 overtime win, the Bruins clinched an automatic NCAA Tournament bid. “Nobody expected us to win; we went in as the underdogs. The win feels great,” said Oren, who wears the number 00 because it doubles as her initials.

Oren and the Bruins are under more pressure than other teams in the national tournament, whose schools run on the semester system. UCLA, which runs on the quarter system, starts winter finals next week. Both the men’s and women’s teams will take their exams and are expected to juggle studying for finals with intense pre-tournament practice.

“This week, I don’t have time for anything but basketball and school,” said Oren, a psychology major. “I have to do well in both.”

Oren comes from a family of athletes. Her father, Ronen Oren, is the director of the Maccabi Tel Aviv Basketball Academy, and her mother, Ronit Gazit, was a competitive Israeli high jumper. Oren was heavily recruited by colleges after leading Kiriat-Sharet High School to back-to-back Israeli championship teams, and says she is proud to have spent four years as a Bruin.

“I would never trade this UCLA experience for anything in the world. It’s the place I matured as a player, in personality, in everything, and the relationships I created with my teammates — I couldn’t ask for anything else,” the 5-foot-9, Rishon-Lezion native said. “It’s my second home.”

She hopes to return to the United States to play in the WNBA.

The No. 5 seed UCLA will meet No. 12 seed Bowling Green in the first round of tournament play. Going far in the NCAA tournament means a lot to Oren, not just as a graduating senior, but also as an Israeli.

“Israel is my home. And when I play, I’m not just representing my family, but my whole country,” said Oren, who averages 11.1 minutes, 1.2 rebounds, 1.2 assists and 3 points per game.

For UCLA fans, it’s a treat to follow two Bruin teams, both featuring Jewish players, in March Madness 2006.

“It’s nice to have both the men’s and women’s programs at UCLA sweep the conference tournaments this year,” UCLA men’s coach Ben Howland said. “That’s a fun thing for our program and our school.”

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Lawyer Floats Own Peace Plan at UCLA

Leave a Comment / Community / Tom Tugend

Josef Avesar is a successful Encino lawyer who has a plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It may be a pipe dream, he acknowledged, but the concept was intriguing enough to keep 300 Israelis, Arabs and Americans engaged during a recent three-hour symposium at UCLA.

They shouted their approval or objections at eight experts debating the pros and cons of the Israeli-Palestinian Confederation, Avesar’s blueprint for changing “the dynamics of the conflict.”

Included on the panel were such heavyweights as Gen. Shlomo Gazit, retired head of Israeli military intelligence, and, via video, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. Others were mainly academics specializing in Middle East, public policy and environmental studies.

The confederation plan contains dozens of specific proposals, but the key elements are:

• The confederation would serve as a mechanism for establishing projects of mutual benefit, such as utility grids, transportation systems, hospitals, airports, monetary system and so forth.

• Israel and the Palestinian territories (or state) would be divided into 300 districts, each district sending one delegate to the confederation legislature. To pass a law would require a 60 percent overall majority, including at least 25 percent of the minority party vote.

• The confederation would not infringe on the authority and sovereignty of the established Israeli and Palestinian governments, each of which would have a veto over any confederation legislation.

• District representatives would be chosen in private, nongovernmental elections.

A rough equivalent of the confederation, one panelist suggested, is the European parliament, which deals with issues affecting all member countries without infringing on the sovereignty of any nation.

One concrete example cited in the confederation plan would be establishment of a utility grid of water, electricity, trains and highways connecting Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. If the proposal were to pass with the required majority and minority votes and was not vetoed by either the Israeli or Palestinian governments, it would become law.

In the ideal scenario, the confederation concept would be accepted by both governments if it shows considerable popular support, receives strong political and financial backing from the United States and Europe and improves living standards for Israelis by 100 percent and for Palestinians 500 percent.

Avesar defended his vision by asking, in effect, what do we have to lose? “In the last 55 years, every other solution has failed,” he said. “You don’t go back to a surgeon if all his previous patients have died.”

The panelists represented many shades of opinion, ranging between the technocratically inclined optimists to pessimistic political realists. While the former argued that concrete joint projects on the ground could gradually lead to cooperation in other areas, the latter countered that no progress could be made without settling such basic issues as borders, refugees, terrorism and Jerusalem.

Speaking for the technocrats was professor Saleem H. Ali, an environmental planner and professional mediator from the University of Vermont. Ali, born in Pakistan, drew parallels between the Israeli-Palestinian and India-Pakistan conflicts and urged that the proposed federation focus purely on economic problems, before tackling political differences. Citing the resolution of the East Timor conflict with Indonesia as an example of applying “creative tracks,” he suggested that there are “different ways to climb a mountain.”

The most skeptical and experienced arguments were raised by Gazit. “The Oslo agreement failed because we postponed the political issues,” he said. “Dealing with economic or environmental issues first is putting the cart before the horse.”

As representative of the middle ground, professor Nancy Gallagher, who chairs the Middle East history program at UC Santa Barbara, saw some merit on both sides.

“This plan is not yet ready for prime time,” she said. “But bold and radical ideas are always welcome, even if they seem naïve.”

The UCLA discussion was moderated by John K. Van de Kamp, former California attorney general, and was conducted in a largely civil tone. The exception was historian Mahmood Ibrahim of Cal State Poly, who never tired of citing Palestinian grievances.

Avesar, the godfather of the confederation project, was born in Israel into an Iraqi Jewish family. He came to the United States as a student when he was 21.

He traces his present preoccupation back to a 1997 visit to Israel with his wife and four children. Avesar took his family to a restaurant in Jerusalem, and one week later while watching CNN in Los Angeles, he saw that the same restaurant had been blown up by a suicide bomber.

“That sent an e-mail to my brain,” he recalled in an interview. “In my work as a personal injury lawyer, I frequently engage in dispute resolution, which requires that I understand the concerns and emotions of both sides.

“It dawned on me that if the Palestinians and Israelis came to me and presented their cases, I might be able to apply the same approach.”

Three years ago, he presented his concept to a group of 70 people, mostly Israeli friends. Their response encouraged him to hold meetings on a monthly basis, which gradually included interested Arabs and Muslims.

The UCLA symposium was his first attempt to reach a wider public, and he is now planning a conference next year, featuring former U.S. secretaries of state.

Avesar has no illusions that his plan will be immediately accepted.

He has spent about $20,000 out of pocket on promoting his idea. “My wife thinks I’m crazy, but some men spend their money on golf, others on buying a Ferrari. I might as well put it into something I enjoy doing,” he said.

Asked about the odds of reaching his vision in his lifetime, the 52-year-old Avesar responded, “In my lifetime, maybe 5 percent. But in 100 years, 100 percent.”

For more information, visit www.aboutipc.org.

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A Question of Fairness

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Michael J. Jordan

As Washington and the West weigh a cutoff of aid to a Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) could become a crucial lifeline to millions of Palestinian refugees who depend on it for vital services.

However, the recent Palestinian parliamentary elections have revived a long-standing Israeli concern: that some of UNRWA’s staff are members of Hamas or at least sympathize with the terrorist group’s anti-Israel cause.

Israeli concerns were not eased by the fact that nine UNRWA staffers resigned to run for office in the late-January elections that Hamas swept. Furthermore, they had to be firmly reminded, in a letter from the agency’s commissioner-general, that participating in Palestinian politics is incompatible with UNRWA’s ideal of neutrality.

To many supporters of Israel, however, UNRWA’s efforts in the region have rarely been impartial. During the Palestinian intifada, the agency routinely blamed Israel for bloodshed, eliding the Palestinian contribution to the cycle of violence. Its one-sided criticism played a significant role in shaping international opinion against the Jewish state — helping to prolong the war, critics charge, by emboldening Palestinians to attack.

UNRWA camps, including the infamous West Bank refugee camp that is part of Jenin, became engines of the intifada, with terrorists using them as bases from which to plan and carry out attacks — sheltering themselves, all the while, under the United Nations’ vaunted neutrality.

Tensions between UNRWA and Israel have lessened in the past year, as the number of terrorist attacks and concomitant Israeli reprisals dropped significantly.

But with many observers warning of an imminent resumption of the intifada, this time centered on the West Bank, whether UNRWA camps are again allowed to become incubators of terrorism may go a long way toward determining if peace will come to the Middle East. It could also help determine if UNRWA’s Palestinian charges can become citizens of their own independent state, ending their long status as refugees.

For 56 years, UNRWA has helped ensure Palestinian refugees’ basic survival — yet also, some say, has helped make the Palestinian refugee issue one of the most intractable and incendiary political problems on Earth.

Following Hamas’ electoral victory and the West’s threat to choke off financial assistance, UNRWA is poised to play an even more critical role. The majority of Palestinians living in Gaza, and a sizable portion in the West Bank, are registered refugees and recipients of some form of UNRWA services. Officials in Washington, Brussels and Jerusalem all say they don’t want to harm humanitarian aid.

In response to a bleak forecast about Gaza and the West Bank, the European Union on Feb. 27 offered $144 million in aid to the Palestinians, $76 million of it earmarked for UNRWA.

UNRWA lists 4.3 million Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East, including 1.6 million in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where it operates 27 refugee camps. Not all of the refugees live in the camps, which long ago evolved from tent cities into dilapidated, densely packed urban neighborhoods.

For more than half a century, UNRWA has provided the refugees with food, jobs, shelter, medicine, health care and education. The agency runs schools, health clinics and housing, operating as a virtual statelet within the Palestinian Authority.

UNRWA was the main source of sustenance during the intifada in Gaza, where three-quarters of the coastal strip’s 1.3 million residents are registered as refugees and a half-million live in eight cramped, sprawling UNRWA camps. Others live in the immediate environs.

At the same time, UNRWA has done nothing to help resolve the Palestinian refugee problem. In contrast to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, the agency responsible for the world’s 19.2 million other refugees, UNRWA is not tasked with helping to resettle Palestinian refugees but merely with providing services.

Critics, however, say UNRWA has served to exacerbate the problem by taking sides in a highly politicized conflict and by allowing its camps to become bastions of militarism.

Nothing illustrates how UNRWA’s approach impacts both Israel and the agency’s own clientele better than the events in the Jenin refugee camp during spring 2002, a particularly bloody period of the intifada.

Some Palestinians had nicknamed the place “the suicide bomber’s capital,” and Palestinians and Israelis alike knew the Jenin camp as a major hub for terrorists to recruit, plan and launch attacks against Israel. Everyone knew except for UNRWA — or at least, the agency said little publicly about the terrorist activity in its midst.

On March 27, 2002, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself in the dining room of Netanya’s Park Hotel, killing 29 Israelis at a Passover seder. That attack, which capped a month of mounting casualties, came to be known as the “Passover Massacre.”

Israel responded with one of its largest anti-terror operations of the intifada, including a two-week assault on the Jenin refugee camp that leveled the camp’s center. Twenty-three Israeli soldiers were killed in the fierce, close-range battle, Israel’s largest military death toll during more than four years of the intifada. The Palestinians, their supporters and much of the world media branded the battle a “massacre,” claiming that approximately 500 Palestinians had been killed.

Peter Hansen, UNRWA’s head at the time, helped stoke the flames. First, he urged Israel to “end this pitiless assault on civilian refugee camps.” Then, after the smoke had cleared, Hansen proclaimed in an UNRWA news release widely quoted by the media, “I had hoped the horror stories of Jenin were exaggerated and influenced by the emotions engaged, but I am afraid these were not exaggerated, and that Jenin camp residents lived through a human catastrophe that has few parallels in recent history.”

Hansen never recanted, yet his comments were quickly exposed as a wild distortion. A U.N. probe later determined that 52 Palestinians were killed — corroborating Israel’s estimate — and noted that “up to half may have been civilians.” That wording downplayed the flipside: The other half were armed combatants whose presence represented a breach of U.N. resolutions and international law.

The media widely ignored the U.N. report’s fine print: “According to both Israeli and Palestinian sources, there were 200 armed men in the camp at the time.”

The battle of Jenin was illuminating on many levels, showing not only how UNRWA helps heap international calumny on Israel, but also how the agency’s laxity toward the militancy in its camps helps bring catastrophe upon the very population UNRWA is duty-bound to assist.

“UNRWA has not been ambivalent about the manner in which the refugee camps, and the civilian population within them, have been cynically and callously used in the intifada,” said Harry Reicher, an international law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the former U.N. representative for Agudath Israel World Organization.

“UNRWA has actively become complicit,” Reicher said, by allowing “conversion of civilians into human shields, protecting terrorists and arms. They’re protected by UNRWA, knowing full well that no condemnation will come from them, and that if Israel takes strong steps, it is Israel that will be condemned by UNRWA, as well as others.”

In defending itself, UNRWA tends to take responsibility only for what occurs within its facilities, such as its schools, health clinics and food-distribution centers. That allows it to wash its hands, for example, of Hamas’ new Al-Aksa TV station — located in a mosque in UNRWA’s Jabalya refugee camp, a site that offers a double layer of political protection from Israeli attack.

UNRWA notes that its mandate for what goes on in its camps is limited.

“The agency has never been given any mandate to administer, supervise or police the refugee camps or to have any jurisdiction or legislative power over the refugees or the areas where they lived,” the agency’s Web site (www.unrwa.org) says. “The agency has no police force, no intelligence service and no mandate to report on political and military activities. This responsibility has always remained with the host countries and Israel, who maintained law and order, including within refugee camps.”

The U.N. General Assembly — dominated by Arab and Muslim states and long hostile to Israel — has never done anything to sharpen UNRWA’s role. Both the Palestinian Observer Mission to the United Nations and the U.N. mission for the 22-member League of Arab States declined to comment for this series.

Yet regardless of its stated mandate, UNRWA has moral authority and international legitimacy — assets it doesn’t hesitate to use to condemn Israeli military actions, and which it could use to condemn terrorism in its midst as well.

UNRWA says it criticizes Israel often because of concerns about refugee welfare. But critics wonder why that same logic doesn’t compel UNRWA to speak up when, for example, rockets fired from refugee camps bring Israeli reprisals that end up hurting UNRWA’s charges.

“Among our staff, they certainly understand that as long as Kassams are going out, there’s going to be something coming in,” said Karen Koning AbuZayd, UNRWA’s current commissioner-general. But, she said, “there’s always an excuse given for it. Whenever they do it, they say it’s because of this or that. There’s always this tit-for-tat, and it’s not always clear who started it.”

Such analyses only bolster those who say the agency should be more balanced in its criticism.

“So infiltrated does the U.N. agency in Gaza appear to be with Hamas operatives that it would probably be dangerous for any UNRWA official to speak out against terrorist attacks planned or launched from UNRWA facilities,” said Harris Schoenberg, a U.N. reform advocate and author of 2003’s “Combatting Terrorism: The Role of the U.N.”

However, he added, “when UNRWA doesn’t speak out against extremism, as a U.N. agency should, through its silence it condones and thus encourages terrorism.”

Israeli officials take the threat of violence seriously, and some suggest that UNRWA camps could again serve as bases to plan and launch terrorist attacks if the intifada is renewed under a Hamas-led government.

“The camps could be used in a third intifada for everything from production of Kassam rockets to launch areas for attacks,” Dore Gold, Israel’s former U.N. ambassador and author of 2004’s “Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos,” said in an interview. “Not only that. One has to anticipate they will try to lodge themselves in and around U.N. facilities, to find some kind of immunity.”

AbuZayd defends her agency’s record.

“UNRWA has publicly condemned violence on both sides on many occasions,” she said in an interview.

She declined to give examples, but a review of UNRWA public comments in recent years yields only rare references to Palestinian violence, typically only a single line.

Critics suggest several factors behind UNRWA’s unwillingness to regularly denounce this violence: built-in bias at the United Nations; a de facto “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about UNRWA staff members’ and clients’ activities, and intimidation by various Palestinian groups.

There also is the perceived tilt of UNRWA itself. Virtually all of the agency’s 25,000-plus staff members are Palestinian, with most of them refugees themselves. Staff members must sign a pledge of neutrality, but critics say that hardly inures them to their society’s pervasive anti-Israel animus.

One staffer, for example — Sayed Seyam — became a spokesman for Hamas after he left the agency in November 2003.

An Israeli soldier runs past demolished houses as he secures the area in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank, April 14, 2002. Pool Photo BP Images/JTA

The blurred line between serving the refugees and advocating for them was illustrated by the recent Palestinian Authority elections. Nine UNRWA staffers were forced to resign their jobs in order to run for Parliament, including one who won office on the Hamas ticket, the agency said. Six have since applied for reinstatement, and their actions and statements during the campaign are being reviewed.

UNRWA declined requests for more information on the subject, citing the agency’s privacy policy. It remained unclear how many more staffers might have been interested in running for office but were unwilling to relinquish jobs considered lucrative and desirable.

It reached the point that AbuZayd felt compelled to remind staff that they were not supposed to be active partisans.

“I can well understand the questions raised by those who wonder why it is not possible to combine employment with UNRWA and active participation in local politics,” AbuZayd wrote in the Feb. 9 letter, which was posted atop the agency’s Web site for two weeks.

Given UNRWA’s status as a representative of the international community, she wrote, “We must at all times maintain a neutral and impartial attitude to events that surround us. This may be easier said than done, but it is crucial if we are to continue to enjoy the trust of so many different partners.”

In Washington, the issue of staffers-turned-political candidates drew the ire of Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill), a member of the House Appropriations Committee. A reporter’s inquiry led Kirk’s office to pursue the matter. UNRWA refused him details as well, citing its privacy policy, said Kirk, who sits on the Appropriations Committee’s Foreign Operations Subcommittee.

“For representatives of the people like me, who actually sit on the committee that approves funding for UNRWA, to hear we can’t be told who’s leaving to run for what office, indicates we need a much higher level of transparency to reassure taxpayers,” Kirk said in an interview.

“If UNRWA were a private company, I could understand wanting to keep records confidential,” he said. “But UNRWA is a public body funded by U.S. taxpayers.”

The Heritage Foundation — an influential conservative think tank — recently called for a halt to U.S. funding until Washington investigates spending practices, due to “a major risk that a Hamas-led P.A. will exploit UNRWA to further its anti-Israel agenda.”

Sitting on a panel March 5 titled, “Has UNRWA Outlived Its Mandate?” at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, Kirk announced that he would author a bill requiring regular audits of UNRWA.

“What we hope to do is increase the level of transparency at UNRWA, so we can reassure U.S. taxpayers that money is being spent wisely and not being spent to support Hamas terrorism or their political agenda,” he said.

Kirk isn’t the only one who wants to hold UNRWA’s feet to the fire. Calls for reforms ratcheted up last fall after Israel’s Gaza withdrawal ushered in cautious optimism about the future. Some lobbied for the agency’s activities to be scaled down.

“The terrorism-breeding culture of poverty and dependency in the refugee camps must be brought to an end,” Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said in an interview. “Palestinian refugees should be encouraged to leave the camps and trained to assume normal, productive lives. If the oil-rich Arab states were willing to part with just a tiny sliver of their windfall profits, they could vastly improve the lives of these refugees.”

While the United States, Canada and Europe together provide the lion’s share of UNRWA’s annual budget — now approaching $500 million — Arab governments combined contribute only 2 percent. Other groups, such as the Syrian Arab Popular Committee for the Support of the Intifada and Resistance to the Zionist Enterprise — innocuously referred to in UNRWA materials as the “Syrian Arab Popular Committee” — have given the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, mainly to rebuild suspected terrorists’ homes that Israel has destroyed.

Others call for UNRWA to be folded into U.N. High Commission for Refugees. AbuZayd, however, defends the existence of two separate U.N. refugee agencies.

The General Assembly “has decided that Palestine refugees’ unique political context requires a unique agency,” she said.

In fact, UNRWA’s supporters say the reform calls are a smoke screen designed to distract attention from what they contend is Israel’s real agenda.

“Israel has accused UNRWA of a lot of issues, like involvement in terrorism, helping terrorism and such, but it’s been proven false,” said Raji Sourani, director of the Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. “Israel and the U.S. basically want UNRWA to be abolished, because they believe abolishing such a body will ultimately abolish the refugee issue itself, or at least make it only a theoretical issue.”

That’s unlikely. Even Israel and some of the agency’s harshest critics understand that if UNRWA were dismantled, the responsibility for refugee welfare would fall to the “occupying power” — which in the West Bank, at least, still means Israel.

That leaves Israel and its supporters urging UNRWA to steer clear of politics and just stick to its humanitarian role. Despite the calls for reform, however, observers don’t expect the proposals to go anywhere.

First, UNRWA remains low on the U.S. agenda for overall U.N. reform. Second, with the Palestinian Authority’s ineptitude on display in the months since the Gaza withdrawal and now with Hamas’ ascension, some critics in Israel and Washington view UNRWA as a rare point of stability in a lawless region.

Finally, the U.N. General Assembly remains the greatest obstacle to any meaningful change. Altering UNRWA’s mandate would require two-thirds approval of the 191-member body, but the Arab-Muslim bloc voting numbers make that almost impossible.

“I don’t think dramatic reform is realistic because for years, it’s been a bargaining chip for the Arabs,” said one former Israeli diplomat, who requested anonymity since he still does Mideast-related work.

“UNRWA is not the problem; it’s the manifestation of the problem. The problem is the Palestinian and Arab leadership that has maintained the position of using the refugee issue as a political tool against Israel.”

A Question of Fairness Read More »