God Loves Me And I Can Prove It! God’s Faith In Bnei Yisrael. Rabbi David Hartman on why running away from Sinai was a bad thing.
God Loves Me and I can Prove It: Video Shiur: Rabbi Barry Gelman Read More »
Soon after Israel itself was born, it began investing significant resources in development assistance in Africa.
Israel’s official development work there waned over the decades, but in recent years Africa again has become a target for Israeli development work by nonprofit organizations and corporations. Particularly in areas like water resource management, agriculture, renewable energy, infrastructure and telemedicine, experts say Israel has much to offer the developing continent.
“In the same way we are a high-tech power, we can become a development tech power, because our problems are their problems and our expertise fits their needs,” said Aliza Belman Inbal of Tel Aviv University’s Hartog School of Government and Policy.
New thinking is beginning to take root that it is in Israel’s interest both economically and as a tool to boost its international standing to again look toward Africa.
“So many things we do are so relevant for these countries,” she said. “We have the capacity to help Africa in ways other countries cannot and to help build a positive agenda to show Israel can offer good to the world.”
Early Israeli leaders such as Golda Meir had dispatched agricultural and other experts across Africa in a policy that mixed altruism with the hope that newly independent African states might become staunch allies.
The burgeoning interest of Israeli humanitarians, businesspeople and government officials in Africa can be seen in Israeli medical missions which have gone to the furthest reaches of war-ravaged Democratic Republic of Congo and business pouring resources into developing Africa’s booming cellular phone market, which is the fastest growing in the world. Small nongovernmental organizations are getting involved, like Jewish Heart for Africa, which introduced Israeli solar technologies to produce electricity in orphanages, schools and clinics in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi.
“Israelis really do like to share their know-how, and we believe in helping build African communities,” said Shachar Zahavi, executive director of IsraAID, a consortium of Israeli and Jewish aid organizations that work in developing countries, including those like Japan and Haiti that require disaster assistance.
“We are seeing both a younger generation of Israelis who during their post-army travels want to do something meaningful with their time abroad seek out volunteering,” Zahavi said, “and at the same time we are seeing more and more companies looking to build and adapt their products for the developing world.”
On May 29, several hundred people gathered in Herzliya for an IsraAID-organized conference on Israeli involvement in Africa. Bob Geldof, the Irish rock singer who staged the 1985 Live Aid concert for famine relief in Africa and its 2005 counterpart advocating for debt relief, delivered the keynote address.
“It’s a great thing you are doing today because the world knows that this region is convulsed in its own problems,” Geldof said. In his speech, he urged Israel not to use the Israeli-Arab conflict as an excuse to refrain from engaging in the developing world.
“The Jewish people for centuries have used their intellect and culture to be open—that’s what you guys do,” said Geldof, who had a Jewish grandmother. “Do not be forced from turning away from the world.”
Israel’s development aid to Africa shrunk to its current low levels following the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when most African states severed ties with Israel. That ended a period in which Israel sent some 5,000 experts in agriculture, water management and other fields throughout the developing world.
Mashav, the Israeli government agency responsible for aid programs, was one of the largest departments in the Foreign Ministry in the 1960s, but its budget has shrunk drastically. Today, Israel gives markedly less in overseas aid according to gross national income than most of its counterparts in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Israel currently has relatively little trade targeted toward Africa. In 2010, Israeli exports to Africa excluding diamonds reached $1.3 billion, as compared to $8.4 billion to Asia or $12.7 billion to the United States, according to Dan Catarivas, director of the foreign trade division of the Israeli Manufacturers Association.
But Africa’s potential as one of the world’s fastest growing economic areas is beginning to attract attention by Israeli and international firms.
A recent report by McKinsey, the international consulting firm, suggested that the future survival of global companies will depend on their ability to focus on what they term “innovation to win in low-cost, high-growth countries” like those found in Africa. According to McKinsey, in the next decade such emerging-market economies, now on the sidelines, will become central global economic players.
Signs of change are already here. There are many Israeli companies in Africa involved in building roads and hospitals and working in water management and medicine.
The Israeli irrigation company Netafim introduced low-pressure, low-cost drip irrigation systems for subsistence farmers, providing them with enough water to raise crops year round.
“We are a private company and our luck is that we are doing well by doing good by giving answers to problems like hunger,” said Naty Barak, head of sustainable development at Netafim.
In a Kenyan village called Kitui, Barak said that 200 poor, small-scale vegetable growers who adopted Netafim’s product saw a 140 percent increase of harvested yield and a 200 percent increase in income while saving about 60 percent of water resources. Previously, they had irrigated crops by hauling water from wells.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry also is becoming involved, inviting African business delegations to Israel to learn more about its industries and twinning economic attaches at Israeli embassies in Africa with Israeli companies to help scope out opportunities.
“We are sending the message that it is good to do business with Africa,” Rafael Harpaz, director of the ministry’s economic department that deals with the Americas and Africa, told JTA. “There is potential to grow, and we are looking for new markets to trade with. If the Israeli economy is going to grow, it needs these new markets.”
To that end, the Foreign Trade Administration, a department within the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor, is seeking new policies that will help harness Israel’s competitive advantage in the developing world, including Africa.
Jewish Heart for Africa said that bringing Israeli know-how to Africa is particularly attractive to its donor base of young American Jews.
“Young donors like our projects,” said Sivan Borowich Ya’ari, the organization’s founder and president, “because we are not only helping Africa but helping Israel by helping the Israeli economy and Israel’s image.”
With new investments, Israel again is looking to Africa Read More »
Last week, Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg announced his plan to move his eponymous blog, “Goldblog” to the online Jewish magazine, Tablet. This came as a surprise, since during an interview for a profile I wrote of him last fall, he expressed considerable discomfort with the term “Jewish journalist.” He said it was “ghettoizing” and that he didn’t want to be “pigeonholed” and that blogging on Jewish issues from The Atlantic’s general interest platform suited him just fine (see below). “It’s the best of all possible worlds,” Goldberg said.
Well, something changed his mind (or maybe it was Mem Bernstein, the venture philanthropist that funds Nextbook Inc. and affiliates). Because what once seemed parochial and limiting to Goldberg is now being plugged in the most flattering terms: Tablet is “entertaining, stimulating, sophisticated and complicated,” he said in a PR statement posted on Tablet’s Website. But writing on his blog last Friday, he was more honest about his ambivalence: “I don’t make this move lightly,” he wrote.
“I think we’re entering a period of huge disruption in the relationship between America and Israel, and between American Jews and Israelis, and I want to be able to focus on these conflicts in an intensely granular way, inside the Jewish community. Tablet is the most exciting Jewish publication I’ve seen since I worked, in the previous century, at the Seth Lipsky-led Forward, and it is becoming the hub of the worldwide Jewish conversation.”
Judging by the numbers, not exactly. While Tablet boasts a number of highfalutin contributors including New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier, the humorist David Rakoff, historian Deborah Lipstadt and others, it has yet to find a large enough audience to catapult its high-quality content into the national conversation.
Based on a one-year web traffic comparison between Tablet and The Forward (where Goldberg got his first journo gig) at compete.com, The Forward consistently outperforms Tablet, sometimes by a margin as wide as 62,000 unique visitors a month and other times, by a narrow 15,000. But at least according to a survey of the past year, the 2009 upstart has never gained the edge. Adding Goldberg’s blog and its devoted following to the Tablet arsenal might help sway the numbers in their favor.
In any event, I’d like to welcome the reluctant Jewish journalist back to Jewish journalism—of the “official” sort.
Jeffrey Goldberg on Jewish Journalism:
Danielle Berrin: So you’re Jewish and you’re a journalist. Do you consider yourself a Jewish journalist?
Jeffrey Goldberg: No.
DB: Why not?
JG: Oh you want me to give long answers. I’m Jewish and I’m a journalist. I don’t know what that term means. It has a kind of ghettoizing implication that I don’t like. I’m a journalist. I write a lot about Jewish subjects – but I don’t consider myself, I mean others do obviously, but I don’t consider myself acting on behalf of the Jewish people. One of the reasons I’m sensitive about the idea of Jewish journalists is you don’t want to be pigeonholed. I was a generalist for a long time and there are many advantages to being a generalist such as you don’t get bored by one subject. I think you should write about what obsesses you and I’m obsessed with these questions of Israel and the Arabs and Jewish identity but I’m also interested in other things. My longest piece this year was an 18,000 word piece in the New Yorker about elephant conservationists in Africa, which you should go look up.
DB: You started your journalism career at The Forward and have gone on to write for The New Yorker, New York Times, Jerusalem Post, The Atlantic. Did you consider yourself a Jewish journalist when you began? Can you speak to your evolution from niche journalist to generalist, in terms of what issues concern you or interest you the most?
JG: I was interested in those [Jewish] subjects, but I didn’t want to be limited by them so I wanted to get away from it. For a long time I was all the way away from it, covering organized crime for New York magazine, and then when I went to The New Yorker ten years ago, I picked up the Middle East issues again more in earnest. And then you know, 9/11 happened, and then after that obviously the appetite for stories about that part of the world increased. The funny thing is, you know, when you start a blog, you don’t know what’s going to happen to it, and obviously it’s become pretty damn Jewy. And I think that’s because a blog is a pretty organic extension of yourself and your interests. I’m glad to have the blog located in a general interest magazine. It’s the best of all possible worlds; I get to pursue some of these obsessions—there is a certain appetite in the general world for coverage of JStreet but not that much—but on my blog, I can go at it fairly intensively and nobody seems to mind.
Jeffrey Goldberg backflips on Jewish journalism with move to Tablet Read More »
Spain’s Jewish community has slammed a ruling by the country’s Supreme Court that overturns the conviction of four people connected to a Barcelona bookstore that sold Nazi literature.
The four connected to the now defunct bookshop, Kalki, had been found guilty by a lower court of fostering xenophobia and anti-Semitism through the selling of Nazi literature. The acquittals include a publisher in the nearby town of Molins de Rei.
In 2009, the four were each sentenced to 3 1/2 years in jail after being found guilty of selling publications that justified the Holocaust and praised the Nazi regime.
In the Supreme Court’s ruling, Justice Miguel Colmenero wrote that the selling of Nazi propaganda that promotes genocide is only a crime when there exists a danger that it could create a climate of hostility that would incite violence.
“Jews in Spain view with extreme concern the fact that the Spanish judiciary, so sensitive in certain situations, does not consider as criminal conduct the sale of books denying the Holocaust and promoting racism, in spite of standing criminal legislation to the contrary,” the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain said in a statement.
The Israeli Embassy in Madrid in a statement said that Israel was “sad and concerned” to hear of the acquittals, “allowing for the circulation of books that incite hate and deny the Holocaust.”
Spain’s high court overturns Nazi bookstore conviction Read More »
A Canadian court has ruled that a suspect in the 1980 bombing of a Paris synagogue may be extradited to France.
Hassan Diab, a 57-year-old Canadian of Lebanese descent, was arrested in Ottawa in 2008 in response to a request from France, where he is wanted on charges of murder, attempted murder and destruction of property in the Oct. 3, 1980 bombing.
The bomb exploded outside the Rue Copernic Synagogue during a Shabbat service, killing three French men and one Israeli woman. Dozens were injured.
Though Diab must be surrendered under Canadian law, the Canadian court also found that France had presented “a weak case” that makes the prospect of his conviction “unlikely.”
Stamps in Diab’s 1980 passport indicated that he was not in France at the time of the bombing, The Associated Press reported. But his handwriting allegedly appears on a hotel registration card—evidence his lawyers have vigorously disputed.
French analysts compared his handwriting with that on the registration card, but three French handwriting experts testified that the analysis was flawed and did not match Diab’s.
The appeals process could delay the extradition of Diab, a one-time sociology professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University, for years.
Canadian court OKs Paris bomber’s extradition Read More »
” title=”God hates Jews” target=”_blank”>God hates Jews, but they knew they couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder with Westboro because of the added backlash against Westboro. So maybe it’s a faux protest.
Westboro Baptist Church protested by … Ku Klux Klan Read More »
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday accuses Syria of deliberately attempting to inflame tensions along its border with Israel in order to divert attention from its bloody crackdown on internal protests.
A day after Syria reported that 23 people were killed in a Naksa Day rally along the border marking 44 years since the 1967 Six-Day War, Netanyahu told MKs from his Likud party that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime did not “use its weight to stop the events from happening.”
“The Syrians allowed these people to instigate provocation, to challenge Israel’s sovereignty,” said Netanyahu. “This was an attempt to divert international intention from what is happening with Syria, and from the difficult events occurring in the city of Homa,” said Netanyahu.
Read more at Haaretz.com.
Netanyahu: Syria provoking Israel to divert attention from internal bloodshed Read More »
U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner skipped the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York as reports emerged of a second illicit Internet interaction.
Weiner (D-N.Y.), who is Jewish and one of the most ardent supporters of Israel in Congress, is usually a reliable appearance at the annual parade and other Israel-related events.
He canceled all appearances this weekend, however, apparently laying low after a lewd photo was sent last week from his Twitter account to a 21-year-old college student in Seattle, Wash.
Weiner has said his Twitter account was hacked, and he deleted the photo almost as soon as it appeared. The student has denied any interaction with the congressman.
Weiner has said also that he cannot say “with certitude” if the picture is of him.
Andrew Breitbart, a conservative provocatuer, said Monday that he had evidence of other Internet interactions with women. By midday, Breitbart had posted two inoffensive pictures that Weiner apparently had taken of himself.
Wiener, plagued by photo flap, skips Celebrate Israel Parade Read More »
Police, family and friends are searching for Lauren Spierer, a sophomore at Indiana University who is missing.
Spierer, 20, who is Jewish, has been missing since early on the morning of June 3, the Indiana Daily Student reported.
Fliers with the native New Yorker’s picture and information about her have been posted throughout Bloomington, the site of the university.
She was last seen leaving an off-campus sports bar less than two blocks from her apartment where she had spent the evening with friends, according to the student newspaper. She never made it to her apartment.
Spierer’s parents, Robert and Charlene Spierer, flew to Bloomington from New York on June 4 to coordinate the search, which has included the campus, the town and area woods and parks. Police said they had her cell phone and wallet, though it is not clear whether Spierer left them at the bar, according to the Daily Student.
A Facebook page, Lauren Spierer Missing, has been created. As of Monday morning it had nearly 1,700 friends.
Jewish college student missing in Indiana Read More »
As someone who has spent his entire political career opposing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Gov. Henrique Capriles Radonski is accustomed to rough handling.
But even he was taken aback by the viciousness that erupted two years ago outside the yellow walls of the old colonial home that now serves as his government seat.
“They came here and they called me Nazi, when my grandmother was in the Warsaw Ghetto,” he said, his voice rising. “My great-grandparents were killed in a concentration camp. My grandmother’s mother and father were killed by the Nazis in Treblinka.”
By “they” he means the red-clad mob, led by the city’s pro-Chavez mayor, who chanted “Nazi fascist!” and sprayed red swastikas onto the outer walls of the Casa Amarilla (Yellow House) in 2009.
Since taking office three years ago as the governor of Venezuela’s second-largest state, Miranda, Capriles has become a lightning rod for anti-Semitic attacks from the state’s most radical corners even though he says he is a fervent Catholic and subject to what he describes as a campaign of “permanent sabotage” by the government.
Capriles, 38, last month declared his intention to seek the nomination to run as the opposition candidate against Chavez, who will be running for his third consecutive term.
Recent surveys show that the lanky Capriles, a grandson of Holocaust survivors who does not identify himself as a Jew, is the most popular politician in Venezuela.
Sensing its best opportunity to defeat Chavez as the nation struggles with rampant crime, double-digit inflation and deteriorating services, the opposition for the first time has agreed to unite behind a single candidate chosen in a primary scheduled for February.
This makes Capriles the opposition’s most credible chance of defeating Chavez since he assumed power 13 years ago.
“He represents the next generation of Venezuelan political leaders,” Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard University’s Center for International Development and a former Venezuelan minister of planning, said of Capriles. “He honed his political skills during very conflicted times and has been able to garner support from a very heterogeneous voting bloc.”
Capriles is used to confronting the government. He was imprisoned in 2004 for 120 days for charges related to his activities as mayor of a middle-class district of Caracas during the 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. After several trials he was exonerated, allowing him to move on from mayor to governor.
In 2008 he defeated a powerful Chavez ally to lead Miranda, which has nearly 3 million people. His victory unnerved the government by finding thousands of new votes in the overcrowded slums surrounding Caracas, which traditionally voted with Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. Incensed at the loss of such a key state, Chavez immediately ordered the central government to take over Miranda’s hospitals.
By presidential decree, Chavez dismantled the state’s infrastructure, taking over police units, asphalt plants and state employees, slashing budgets and crippling the governor’s ability to effectively administer power.
To many it looked like revenge, an attempt to paralyze a potentially dangerous political foe. However, the effort seems to have backfired: Some polls are showing that as many as three out of four voters are blaming the Chavez government and not Capriles for reduced services.
Capriles notes that while he believes he was targeted by the Chavez government, all of Venezuela’s states, regardless of their political affiliation, have had their powers diminished by the central government.
“Chavez has won through elections, but his daily maneuvering isn’t democratic,” Capriles told JTA. “The challenge is to democratically overcome a government that isn’t democratic.”
Chavez does not usually refer to his opponents individually but has begun telling the nation it must be vigilant against political elements “looking to set the nation on fire.”
Shortly after Capriles announced his intention to run, Chavez warned that the opposition was planning to destabilize the nation. Such remarks harked back to 2002, when the opposition tried to overthrow his presidency and carried out a devastating strike in the national oil industry.
In an interview with a local private station, Chavez said he was sure he would win.
“If they don’t kill me or some other catastrophe doesn’t occur, I’m certain—though there will be much work to do—that I will be re-elected for six more years,” Chavez said earlier this year.
While Chavez’s approval rating has dropped from its peak level of about 80 percent, he still commands the support of about half the electorate. The half that is against Chavez is fractured among the opposition candidates.
Chavez has benefited as well from more than a decade of political organization at the grass-roots level, and he remains popular among many members of Venezuela’s underclasses.
Capriles argues that he can more effectively bring about the social improvements Chavez has promised. Acknowledging that Chavez has brought attention to the vast inequalities that separate Venezuela’s rich and poor, Capriles says Chavez is too ideologically driven to successfully manage the nation.
Capriles’ non-ideological focus on improving lives has found a receptive audience among many who have grown tired of Chavez’s tirades and a seemingly growing list of unfulfilled promises.
In the last few weeks, rolling power outages again have struck the nation, resulting in citywide rationing in Caracas and beyond. In 2009, Chavez claimed the blackouts were due to a drought that severely curtailed the nation’s hydroelectric capabilities. This year, the blackouts are occurring after months of unusually heavy rains have displaced thousands of people throughout the country.
“[Chavez] has in his hands all the tools to make this country function, and if he did so everyone would support him,” said Josefina Arias, 36, a vendor who described herself as a former Chavez supporter.
Arias had gathered with several hundred other people at Casa Amarilla to receive state-funded vouchers worth about $3,000 to repair her rain-damaged cinderblock home.
“There are many people who want this country to change,” Arias said. “Unfortunately, I believe that Chavez has lost his vision of what Venezuela could be.”
While voicing her own disenchantment with Chavez, Arias noted that many in her family still support the president. They fear that if the opposition wins, Chavez’s social programs, like providing subsidized groceries or free clinics, may be reversed.
Many expect an ugly electoral fight ahead, warning that Chavez is unafraid to use the full force of the state’s considerable media and financial resources against his enemies.
“Chavez, of course, has every interest in sowing conflict among the opposition, and he will have considerable resources to do so,” said John Carey, a political scientist at Dartmouth College.
For Jews, this could mean the resurgence of anti-Semitism that many hoped had been put to rest through recent overtures made by the president toward the community.
Despite the fact that he says he’s Catholic, Capriles consistently has been the target of anti-Semitic attacks. During the governor’s race in 2008, state media described him as a member of the “Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie” and “genetically fascist.”
Though the campaign hasn’t officially begun, the state press continues to refer to Capriles as Jewish. Observers say that may be an attempt to generate opposition against him.
“We have already begun to see a species of feint referring to him as Jewish, which we believe is an attempt to carve out the votes of anti-Semites and especially anti-Israel [voters],” said a Jewish representative who asked to not be identified. “The campaign hasn’t even begun yet, but we’re sure there will be [anti-Semitic] attacks.”
Local Venezuelan Jews say Capriles has “very good relations” with the community, even though he doesn’t identify spiritually with it.
“Because of my mother and grandmother, for Jews I’m Jewish, but I’m Catholic,” Capriles said.
Describing himself as a fervent Catholic, Capriles said he adopted religion in prison, becoming a “strong believer in the Virgin Mary.”
“When you’re in jail, if you attain a spiritual connection, that connection is then very strong,” he said.
While he no longer has a religious connection to the Jewish community, their story of survival affects him deeply, he says.
Responding to whether he believes he will be singled out for personal attacks in the upcoming campaign, he says it doesn’t matter.
“I have the blood of struggle running through my veins,” said Capriles. “My grandparents arrived in Venezuela with just a suitcase full of clothes, fleeing Nazi persecution.”
While he expects an exhausting fight, Capriles says he is ready for whatever lays ahead as he seeks to win the opposition’s endorsement and defeat Chavez.
“I’m not here to be a candidate,” he said. “We are in this competition to win.”
Rival to Chavez, demonized for his Jewish roots, is opposition’s new hope in Venezuela Read More »
