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Jewish Journal

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September 28, 2007

Realists

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /


Click big arrow to see Bill Maher at a loss for words.It’s rare you see Bill Maher at a loss for words. A while back I found myself in producer Peter Guber’s pre-house — or whatever you call a large sumptuously furnished home where you host guests just outside your real home. It was a book party for David Frum, and I was standing beside Maher as he publicly mao-maoed the Bush II speechwriter. When someone called out, “Let someone else speak,” Maher grabbed his lanky model/actress/date and stomped off.

A producer on the other side of me muttered, “He should call his show ‘The Last Word With Bill Maher.'”

But last Friday on his HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher,” a guest not only caused Maher to stammer and, even worse, be unfunny, he actually pushed Maher to the right.

The issue: Israel.

Maher’s guest was Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden Unit and author of a new book, “Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq.”

Scheuer said that Bin Laden’s terror is actually a kind of insurgency against America’s policies in the Islamic world. Maher asked whether Islamic terror will ever stop as long as we support Israel, “and I’m a big supporter of Israel,” Maher added.

Then this exchange:

Michael Scheuer: I think we can reduce it very seriously, sir. I disagree with you on Israel, but —
Bill Maher: In what way? You’re not a supporter?
MS: I hope Israel flourishes. I just don’t think it’s worth an American life or an American dollar.
BM: You don’t — you don’t think the existence of Israel in the world is worth an American life or an American dollar?
MS: Not only Israel, sir, but Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Bolivia. I’m much more–
BM: You’re really — you’re really not telling me that Israel is on a par with Saudi Arabia.
MS: I’m telling you — what I’m telling you, sir, is I’m most interested in the survival of the United States.
BM: But Israel is a democracy in a part of the world that has none.
MS: What — so what, sir? It doesn’t matter to Americans if anyone ever votes again.

Imagine poor me, end of a long week, relaxing in front of the television, doing a spit take with my scotch: Did a former CIA unit director just say Israel isn’t “worth an American life or an American dollar”?

Maher’s reaction was no more composed than my own. The audience tended to side with Schneuer and fellow guest Janeane Garofalo (who knew CIA staffers adhered to the Garofilian understanding of world affairs). What the transcript doesn’t show is Maher’s stammering, his awkward comebacks, his vanished confidence as he tried, to his great credit, to process how a man once in charge of keeping us safe could be so clueless as to what endangers us.

But the sad truth is, there’s been a lot of this jaw-dropping criticism going around.

There’s a pair of Blame Israel Firsters on book tour, carrying the hechsher of two of America’s finest universities. And then there’s the Iranian president taking the stage at Columbia University Monday to present a human face to the media while avoiding direct answers to questions about his Holocaust denial and his vow to destroy Israel.

Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, authors of the book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” brought their multicity, multimedia tour to Los Angeles along with the message that critics like them are routinely and completely shut out of the national dialogue by, of course, The Israel Lobby. They’ve been busy reiterating that message in hundreds of published interviews, numerous radio and television appearances and at dozens of speaking engagements around the country.

In fact, they’ve been so busy declaring how critics of Israel can’t get a platform in America, they apparently don’t have time to debate Israel’s supporters, like Alan Dershowitz, whose offers of a public debate they have consistently rebuffed.

Last week, I witnessed a bit of their constantly suppressed rights to free speech firsthand when I went to hear them, um, speak in front of a capacity crowd at the Hammer Museum in Westwood. They delivered their remarks in an understated academic tone, the essence of graduate seminar erudition.

“The question we have to ask is only whether Israel is a strategic asset or liability,” Walt said. “It is hard to argue that unconditional support for Israel is making America safer.”

“There is a strong case for Israel’s existence,” he went on. “And we believe America should come to Israel’s side when it is threatened, but it is not.”

Funny, isn’t it, how these three men, Scheuer, Walt and Measheimer, all adopt a similar de rigueur refrain: Of course, we wish Israel well, we’d even support it in an existential war, we’d hate to see it obliterated.

Such automatic cold comfort from people who proclaim a so-called “realist” approach to foreign policy raises two possibilities: 1) They truly believe it is easier, less costly and somehow safer to intervene in the midst of a full scale war of annihilation than it is to offer an ally judicious, ongoing support in the face of constant threats or 2) They are being disingenuous and would celebrate with Cristal were Israel obliterated by Tuesday.

Guess which possibility I pick? In other words, let’s all be very realistic about just what these realists stand for.

Realists Read More »

Shabbat without Moses

Leave a Comment / Circuit /

And the Lord said to Moses, “This is the Land I swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your offspring.’ I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there…

And Moses the servant of G-d died there in the Land of Moab by the mouth of G-d… and no man knows his burial place to this day…

There arose not a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom G-d knew face to face.

-V’zot HaBerachah

Shabbat without Moses Read More »

No Jews allowed: Judenrein U.S. program

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

The U.S. State Department and the University of California had this genius program to give Middle Eastern businessmen a leg up. Jordan, Kuwait, Yemen, even Israel. That is, so long as you’re not an Israeli Jew. I guess some people think Jewish businessmen already have too much power.

Jerusalem-based marketing specialist and businesswoman Miriam Schwab uncovered the bias last week when she checked into applying to the university’s San Diego branch Beyster Institute program for Middle East Entrepreneur Training (MEET). She discovered that the program was open to citizens of “Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (limited to Israeli Arab citizens), Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen.”

(skip)

In response to an IsraelNationalNews.com question for confirmation of the restriction in Israel, program manager Mona Yousry verified, “It is only for Arab Israelis.” A subsequent question as to why Israeli Jews are not eligible for the program elicited the following reply from the Institute’s Director of Entrepreneurial Programs, Rob Fuller: “I’m sorry for the unfortunate misunderstanding about eligibility for the new MEET program. To be clear, for the programs for which we are now recruiting to be held in 2008, ALL Israeli citizens are eligible to participate. Sorry for any confusion we may have inadvertently caused.”

Israeli Jews originally were excluded despite the program’s stated advantage as “an important cultural exchange.” Fuller did not explain the initial “confusion” in barring Israeli Jews.

The programs are to be held in Jordan, Egypt and Morocco, all of which have relations with Israel.

Following the e-mail complaints to Beyster, the US Embassy of Yemen online document which announces the program was down for more than a day until the words “limited to Israeli Arab citizens” were deleted. [View the document announcing the program by clicking here. (I’ve disabled this link because it was virus-ridden.) When prompted with “Do you want to open or save this file,” click on “Open.”]

The US official who made the online edit, however, reposted the story in “track changes” format so that the document displays in the left margin, at the time of this writing, the words: “Deleted: Limited to Israeli Arab citizens.” (See pics below).

That story came up in our budget meeting Wednesday, but long before next week’s paper will be published it’s been making the rounds on Jewish blogs. Big time. Yid with Lid appears to have been the first to follow the INN scoop:

Where was the ACLU? How come Congressman Ellison isn’t screaming about profiling. Here we go again with another example of how the PC police only cares when things are convenient for them.

No Jews allowed: Judenrein U.S. program Read More »

The religious politics for ’08

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

I couldn’t make it to the Religion Newswriters Association’s annual conference this week in San Antonio, but fortunately Jeffrey Weiss of the Dallas Morning News has been blogging the details. I found interesting the political insights he relayed from one of my favorite religion and politics sources: John C. Green of the Pew Forum.

Recent polls, he says, show that just about every segment of religious belief in the US is breaking toward the Democrats at this point. These are very early and pretty abstract polls—asking if people would be more inclined to for Dem or GOP without any candidate involved. With the exception of evangelicals who say they regularly attend church, other segments of the US population are leaning Dem, including groups that helped elect President Bush twice.

Green thinks those Democratic attempts to be religious are working. Just as they bought the religious Republican line for the last 30 years, the public is now gobbling up the juicy pew details of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, et al.

But despite Clinton’s best efforts to put on a faithful face, her most unfavorable ratings are among people who don’t think she’s religions.

(Somebody better let Elisha Shapiro know that now is the wrong time to run for president.)

The religious politics for ’08 Read More »

Listen, kids, and you shall hear — it ain’t gonna be easy

Leave a Comment / Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, Entertainment /

Listen my children, and you shall hear
The bar mitzvah course that we shall steer.

The purpose of this speech is to prepare you for your bar mitzvah. And to let you know — as Noah thought when he received the blueprints from the Master Shipbuilder — this ain’t gonna be easy.

First, you must memorize this sentence so it’s clearly engraved on your heart and head: “It ain’t gonna be easy.” You can either write it 500 times in your notebook or pronounce it slowly and with passion before thou riseth up and before thou goeth out. Say it out loud: “It ain’t gonna be easy.” (Don’t say it in front of your sixth-grade English teacher. If you do, don’t tell her you learned it from me.)

Nothing you have accomplished so far in your 12 years of life has demanded the hard work and dedication this task will require, unless your name is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who gave up soccer for symphonies at 6 years of age.

I don’t want to exaggerate the difficulty. Your bar mitzvah will not demand months of constant hard work — just a little time daily, like 30 minutes. It’s always better to overestimate an assignment. If you like to wade streams, don’t assume it’s two feet deep if, in fact, it’s six feet.

You are both lucky and unlucky to be approaching the age of 13 in the 21st century. You’re as fortunate as David the shepherd boy, who with one great pitch dusted brawny Goliath and made the biblical big leagues. You’re lucky because friends and relatives will shower you with gift cards, iPods and digital cameras.

The bad news is that had you approached the age of 13, say a few-hundred years ago, you’d have received a free pass to adulthood in the Jewish community — no speeches, no haftorah. Nothing. Of course, “nothing in, nothing out,” as the computer folks say. No speeches, no presents.

Isaiah, who would have had no trouble with his haftorah, was never a bar mitzvah celebrant. At least there was never a formal ceremony. And neither Miriam nor Deborah celebrated a bat mitzvah. Isaiah never had a decent wallet or a fountain pen — no ceremony, no presents. And Deborah grew up — believe it or not — without a subscription to CosmoGIRL!

Times were hard. I think the worst of all times was the Great Depression, when all the bar mitzvah requirements were in force, but generosity was not yet in style. It was the fountain pen era, and if your speech was sparkling and your haftorah rang the rafters, you got 27 fountain pens.

One other topic: For some reason, 12-year-olds specialize in losing b’nai mitzvah materials, like the copy of their haftorah and the audiotapes we’ll be working with. This is a great mystery, like why you can’t talk when you’re face to face with the prettiest girl or most handsome boy in the sixth grade. Kids have a burning, irresistible compulsion to lose this material.

Once or twice is OK. But after the third, there’ll be a penalty. Twenty bucks, which I’ll donate to my favorite charity: the old broken-down bar mitzvah teacher’s retirement fund.

You’re a lucky boy or girl. We don’t have to whisper our haftorah. We don’t need a sentry by the synagogue door on the lookout for the mob, the hoodlums, the anti-Semites. The bar mitzvah boy — your predecessor — in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and other dark times studied in stealth and recited his lessons in fear. But you can shout.

Our Pesach hagaddah tells us, “Now we are slaves; next year may we be free men.” Well, today we are free — free to sing your haftorah with passion, like David, the sweet singer of Israel. Surrounding you are the less-fortunate bar mitzvah children of yesteryear. Sing for them.

Ted Roberts, a longtime b’nai mitzvah teacher, is also a Jewish humorist and commentator whose work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Disney Magazine and Hadassah.

Listen, kids, and you shall hear — it ain’t gonna be easy Read More »

‘Europa’ docupic tracks Nazi looting and the fate of art masterworks

Leave a Comment / Entertainment /

The Nazi regime was not only the world’s greatest murderer, but the biggest thief as well. High on the list of loot were Europe’s master paintings and sculptures, with failed artist Adolf Hitler and his avaricious henchman, Hermann Goering, personally spearheading the plunder.

More than 60 years after the fall of the Third Reich, the fallout from the great Nazi robbery is continuing, with thousands of art works still missing or sought by their original, largely Jewish, owners.

The story, as meticulously tracked in the two-hour documentary, “The Rape of Europa,” is complex, but even those unenthused by visits to galleries or museums will find the plotline riveting.

Numbers alone don’t tell the story, but they are staggering. In total, the Nazis seized some 600,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures and Judaica artifacts during their 12-year reign, according to historian Jonathan Petropoulos of Claremont McKenna College, one the top experts on the subject.

As one small example, a detachment of the U.S. Army’s “Monuments Men” found 6,500 paintings and sculptures in one Bavarian salt mine alone and sent them to a collection point, which held 27 Rembrandt paintings.

Petropoulos said in an interview that up to 100,000 looted artworks might still be missing; some were destroyed but others may not be rediscovered for generations.

Hitler’s obsession with art was as monumental, and as fervently anti-Semitic, as his other manias. As a struggling young artist, Hitler was twice rejected for admission to Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. The film’s narrator ponders how the course of history might have been changed if Hitler had not been turned down by the academy’s heavily Jewish faculty.

Hitler’s revenge fantasy included the construction of a grandiose Fuehrer Museum in his hometown of Linz to house the greatest of his looted artworks. Up until his last hours in his Berlin bunker, Hitler reworked his delusional plans for the museum.

Following their leader’s example, his top honchos became avid art collectors, none more so than Goering, Hitler’s chief deputy and commander of the German air force. At the height of the Battle of Britain, which Goering promised would bring England to its knees through ferocious air raids, the corpulent field marshal found time to visit Paris 20 times and select paintings from Jewish homes and art dealers.

During the course of wartime battles and air raids, some of the great architectural landmarks of Europe were damaged or destroyed. In the fighting in Italy for Pisa, for instance, the Leaning Tower was spared, but the famed frescoes of the Campo Santo were heavily damaged.

As Nazi armies retreated, they vented their fury by blowing up Florence’s 13th century bridges and trashing the homes of Tchaikovsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy in Russia.

“Rape of Europa” opens and closes with shots of Maria Altmann, the 91-year-old Cheviot Hills resident who battled the Austrian and American governments for seven years to recover five paintings by Gustav Klimt taken from her Viennese family and valued at $300 million.

In one of the landmark cases in the history of looted art, E. Randol Schoenberg, Altmann’s lawyer, took the case up to the U.S. Supreme Court and won.

The film is the work of three San Francisco-based veterans of PBS documentaries, Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen and Nicole Newnham. Cohen is also the founder of Actual Films, which produced “Rape of Europa,” and she and her colleagues worked seven years on the documentary, basing it on Lynn H. Nicholas’ book of the same title.

The filmmakers have crammed a remarkable amount of information and historical context into their work, enlivened by vintage footage of Hitler and other Nazi art connoisseurs and the work of Allied recovery teams.

Among the most vivid images is a ghost-like Louvre in Paris in 1939, emptied of its 35,000 works of art in advance of the German onslaught. Another is the picture of cheering Florentines lining the streets to welcome the return, on U.S. Army trucks, of the city’s looted paintings.

The saga is not over yet. Many paintings will likely never be recovered, and the tedious work of returning others to their original owners is still continuing.

Schoenberg told The Journal that he is now involved in a suit by the descendants of a Dutch Jewish family to recover two life-size painting of “Adam and Eve” by the 15th century German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena.

“The Rape of Europa” opens Sept. 28 at Laemmle’s Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles, Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, Town Center 5 in Encino and Claremont 5 in Claremont.

For additional information, visit http://www.therapeofeuropa.com and http://www.menemshafilms.com.

‘Europa’ docupic tracks Nazi looting and the fate of art masterworks Read More »