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Jewish Journal

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September 6, 2011

For young European Jews, a week of unity, partying and romance

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

It’s called Summer U, but most of the more than 500 young Jews who attend the European Union of Jewish Students’ largest annual event don’t come for the seminars.

Packed three and four to a room in two boxy white hotels in this speck of a beach town on northeastern Greece’s Chalkidiki peninsula, participants juggle workshops, speakers and the most popular option—straying from the program and heading to the beach.

Attendees bond over cocktails and nightly theme parties. Relationships blossom and, by week’s end, phone numbers have been exchanged, Facebook photos tagged and reunion plans made.

For a Jewish Europe grappling with the challenges of assimilation and intermarriage, Summer U is a success story. It is known for producing more than a few marriages over the years.

“We have to be honest: If we don’t want to disappear, we need to get married together,” said Deborah Abisror, the executive director of EUJS. “And it’s just crazy—it works for that.”

Deborah Teboul of Marseilles, in southern France, admits she came to Summer U with a specific goal in mind.

“I won’t lie to you—I wanted new friends and maybe the opportunity to meet some guy,” she said, smiling. “When you’re my age, you can’t meet Jewish people unless you go the synagogue every Saturday. It’s not easy.”

At a salsa class early in the Summer U week, Teboul danced with a Swiss man—a fellow participant she says she’s now “in a sort of relationship with.”

Stories like hers are standard fare at Summer U, which ran from Aug. 28 to Sept. 4 and draws Jews aged 18 to 35. The event, sometimes more formally referred to as Summer University, has been around since 1984.

Abisror, who is from France, said the true focus of EUJS is on smaller events—like a 50-person interfaith delegation she led to Morocco last year.

EUJS, however, has come to depend on the infusion of funding and the raucous enthusiasm provided by Summer U. And the larger Jewish world is taking notice: The gathering receives financial support from a host of international Jewish organizations.

In past years, the American Jewish Committee’s executive director, David Harris, has shown up to address the gathering. This year the AJC sent two representatives in their early 20s to lead a pair of workshops and stay for the full week.

Harris’ assistant, Ellisa Sagor, said the experience of attending the conference offers “a fuller picture of what European Jewry looks like today.”

“They don’t look afraid. They don’t look timid,” she said. “They’re happy, they’re spirited, they’re vibrant and they’re outwardly proud Jews.”

Sagor noted the value of allowing friendships and connections to develop over the course of eight days. Indeed, at last year’s Summer U, another young attendee from the AJC met her now fiance, a Colombian Jew.

Yet for all of Summer U’s success as a social event, the festive elements can overshadow the more serious components. The nightly parties with themes such as Facebook and “red carpet”—each with its own corresponding dress code—were packed, while most workshops drew crowds of about 30 at most.

After all, it’s not easy for a PowerPoint presentation on the American Jewish community’s response to the Palestinian statehood push to compete with beach volleyball.

“Of course it’s a lot of people partying. What do you want from a mass of Jewish students?” said Andrea Gergely, who was elected at the conference to be the next president of EUJS.

Still, Gergely, who lives in Budapest and will start her term in January, says she is looking to diversify the seminars and add arts and crafts, yoga and sports tournaments to the event’s schedule.

Gergely hopes that a wider array of programming will appeal to Summer U participants, some of whom may be looking for a middle ground between lectures and the beach.

Participants, for the most part, seem pretty happy with Summer U as an opportunity to socialize.

“Jewish marriage and friendship is one of the unofficial goals of any Jewish organization,” said Aleksey Krasnitsky, a project manager with the Ukrainian Union of Jewish Students and Kiev resident who has been coming to Summer U for the past six years. “I’d be very happy if after Summer U we get the news of a Jewish marriage—that’s the most important thing, in my point of view.”

In interviews about the conference, participants often would begin by discussing Summer U’s seminars and speakers, move on to speak about the importance of pan-European Jewish friendship and then lower their voices, almost conspiratorially, to discuss the relationships they came here to find.

For Stephen Przyrowski, a Parisian attending his third Summer U, the emphasis that many participants place on romance can be a little stressful.

“You can see they put pressure on themselves, a lot of the men, especially,” he said. “They’re searching too hard for their soulmate.”

Illan Obadia, a Parisian information technology and finance consultant who was attending his first Summer U, said he was not looking for a one-night stand.

“During the nights, several couples are created, and by the morning they are finished,” he said with a wry laugh. “If I can find a woman for my life, yes, but for one night? No.”

Still, Obadia is no cynic when it comes to Summer U.

At the entrance to the main hotel, the event’s “animation team”—a sort of Summer U motivation squad—had posted several blank white sheets with the instructions “Make a wish—we will make it happen!”

Writing in big block letters across several pieces of paper, Obadia asked the organizers to develop a Winter U, an Autumn U and a Spring U.

For young European Jews, a week of unity, partying and romance Read More »

Teen hero, Bibi’s social networking, Torah scrolls for subs

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

Here are some recent stories out of Israel that you may have missed:

Read all about it: Teen’s a hero

Arina Shestopolov Censor, 17, became a hero—and earned a full college scholarship—by reading.

Censor and her father, Tslil, saved two victims of a Aug. 20 rocket attack on Beersheba from the information she had gleaned reading a book that her father had given her five years ago about emergency situations. The heroism won her a full scholarship to Ben Gurion University of the Negev.

She and her father, upon hearing the cries of BGU student Lior George, had rushed from their building to help. George, a medical engineering student, and Nati Hachakur, a Beersheba resident, after both had been injured by one of two Grad missiles from Gaza that had hit the southern Israeli city.

Tslil determined that Hachakur had no pulse and worked to help George. But Arina saw Hachakur open his eyes and immediately worked to form a tourniquet out of a stick that she had found and some cloth. The tourniquet held on her third try and prevented Hachakur from bleeding to death, according to a statement from the university.

“The last time I had looked at the book I was 12, but the diagrams just floated into my mind,” she told university President Rivka Carmi after being offered the full scholarship.

“When Nati was brought in to the ER, we took a picture of Arina’s makeshift tourniquet. I want to use it to teach this generation how to improvise materials from what’s at hand,” said Dr. Michael Sherf, director-general of Soroka University Medical Center. “Without their help, Nati would not have made it.”

Bibi’s media blitz, one year later

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might not feel the love during the day-to-day running of the government, but his new media channels are hot a year after their launch.

The Prime Minister’s Office Facebook page has received 17,400 “likes” since it was started one year ago. More than 7 million web users have viewed the Facebook status updates in Hebrew, English and Arabic, receiving about 47,000 likes and comments from the United States, Israel, Egypt, Canada, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Netanyahu’s YouTube channel registered about 290,000 views, the most popular clip being “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s greeting for the month of Ramadan,” which received more than 80,000 views. Some 60 percent were from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

The channel is most popular with U.S. viewers, at 23.4 percent; next is Egypt at 17.8 percent. Israeli viewers comprise 15 percent of viewers, followed by Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Canada, Morocco, Germany, Jordan and France.

The prime minister’s Twitter channel has more than 10,000 followers. Netanyahu sent 773 tweets during the last year in Hebrew, English and Arabic. Some were re-tweeted by approximately 800 followers to millions of additional followers around the world , many of which were quoted on media sites, blogs and other sites.

Representing the Netanyahus

Netanyahu appointed a veteran publicist and critic of his government’s policies as the spokesman for his family late last week, a day after Israel’s attorney general ruled that he could not use a government spokesman to defend his wife against charges that she was abusing a live-in nurse.

Ofer Lefler, who has panned Netanyahu government policies in his role as a Channel 2 commentator, was retained to represent the family.

Tara Kumari, a nurse from Nepal who took care of Sara Netanyahu’s elderly and ill father, accused the prime minister’s wife of not feeding her, rejecting vacation requests, and verbal and physical abuse.

Meanwhile, Sara Netanyahu charged that the worker stole money from her father’s bank account and neglected him after he fell in her care, which the worker did not disclose.

Conversion takes couple from Belgium to Israel

A couple from Belgium took the long way home to Judaism and Israel.

Chaim (Hans) and Tzipora (Fredrika) Maatjens-Bosmans were living in Belgium when they became attracted to Judaism. With no rabbi in their city, they began walking across the border to Maastricht, Holland, every Shabbat to worship in an Orthodox synagogue.

More than three years ago the couple, who have four children, adopted an Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, including keeping kosher, observing Shabbat and immersing in the mikvah. Rabbis they contacted in Europe could not convert the couple, so they turned to the Israeli organization ITIM-The Jewish Life Information Center, to help them convert in Israel.

ITIM director Rabbi Seth Farber was able to make a special arrangement with the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, necessitating the couple to check in every few months with the rabbinical court over the last three years.

After countless trips, hearings and meetings, the couple was summoned to the rabbinical court and converted in July, with the caveat that they immediately have a Jewish marriage ceremony, despite the fact that it was the Three Weeks, a time of mourning for the Jewish people. 

Within 24 hours, more than 50 people gathered in Raanana for a wedding in Farber’s backyard. The couple has settled in Raanana and is working in Tel Aviv.

Tiny Torah scrolls to take the plunge

Israeli submarines will be taking tiny Torah scrolls with them to the bottom of the sea.

Several religious soldiers have joined the Israeli Navy in recent months. Just as every permanent Israel Defense Forces base has a Torah scroll to be read on Shabbat, Mondays and Thursdays, the military realized that it was time to place them on their subs.

The IDF turned to a family that has donated scrolls to bases in the past and asked it to donate Torah scrolls for Navy subs, Ynet reported. But with the limited space on a submarine, the Torah scrolls had to be small. The first submarine Torah scroll is scheduled to be completed in the coming days, according to Ynet, and will be one-fourth the size of a standard one—small enough to fit in a shoe box.

The scroll will be transferred from submarine to submarine based on demand, according to Ynet. A rabbi with a high security clearance will be required to bring the Torah to the sub, Ynet reported.

Reading and riding

The city of Kfar Saba has installed libraries at bus stops on its main street. Passengers can grab a book while waiting for the bus, read it while riding and return it to the bus stop where they get off. They can also take the book home and return it the next time they ride the bus.

The city’s library, which is filling the shelves with books in several languages and genres, is not keeping a record of who borrows the books and whether or not they have been returned, Ynet reported.

New books are reportedly are appearing on the shelves as riders appear to want to share their favorites with fellow travelers.

Student on the fast track

A college student raced—and beat—the new Jerusalem light rail.

Michael Spivak, 28, an amateur athlete and student at Hebrew University, wanted to prove his theory that the capital’s new cross-city train was slow, so he decided to race the train at a “not-so strenuous jog,” he told Ynet. Despite his leisurely place for the entire 8.5-mile route, Spivak arrived at the end of the line four minutes ahead of the light rail, according to Ynet. 

The light rail, 12 years in the making, opened to great fanfare about three weeks ago. It will be free for the first months of its operation,.

A criminal is born?

Margalit (Margol) Tzanani, a judge on “A Star is Born,” has been accused of throwing her vote on the popular Israeli television show.

During an investigation of Margol, as the well-known singer is known throughout Israel, in an alleged extortion plot of her manager involving a local crime syndicate family, it was revealed that she had allegedly changed her vote on the show.  Apparently the crime ring sent Margot a text message during a live broadcast to vote for its favored contestant. The show’s producers said Margol’s actions did not harm the final outcome.

Margol remains under house arrest after being charged last month with extortion and conspiracy to commit a crime for allegedly hiring figures from the syndicate family to threaten her manager over profits she believed that she was owed. Margol allegedly brought a contestant that was voted off “A Star Is Born” to her manager in exchange for a share of the profits made in representing the young singer.

In another alleged venture with the crime ring, Margol was to recruit the show’s finalists to a new PR firm run by the ring, and to advise them how to get out of their contracts with the production company of “A Star Is Born.” Police intervention foiled the prospective venture.

Teen hero, Bibi’s social networking, Torah scrolls for subs Read More »

Big climax to Israel’s summer of protest — but then what?

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

Demonstrations on Sept. 3 by more than 400,000 Israelis calling for social justice represented a powerful climax to an unprecedented summer of protests and activism.

The nationwide protests, billed as the March of the Million, have been called the largest demonstration in Israel’s history. Whether they ventured out in person — in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa and many smaller cities throughout Israel — or watched the protests on television, many Israelis felt galvanized by the mass mobilization.

The next morning, as some protesters headed home after dismantling the tents they had raised in city parks this summer, organizers said the movement was entering a new phase.

For now the country is awaiting the recommendations of the Trajtenberg Committee, a panel of academics, economists and policymakers appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in response to the protests. The committee will be releasing its suggestions for socioeconomic reforms in the next few weeks.

Yet Israelis are wondering precisely what sort of change will result from the summer of protest. Will it come to an abrupt end with recommendations to cut some budgets and augment others, or will there be a more far-reaching transformation of Israeli politics?

Unquestionably it is the first time that “Israelis got a sense of empowerment that they can change things, that they can get organized and protest in a peaceful way,” said David Nachmias, a lecturer in the School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya. “They want social justice; they want to change public policy.”

How this desire will translate into the realm of politics is an open question. Many signs at the protests assailed Netanyahu and his government, and the leader of the opposition Kadima Party, Tzipi Livni, urged Israelis on Facebook to attend the demonstrations. Protest organizers, however, have tried to keep the political world at a distance from their movement in the hopes of appealing to wide segments of the Israeli public.

Several leaders emerged from the tent cities and weekly protests as nationally prominent figures, including Daphne Leef, who was the first to set up a tent in central Tel Aviv to protest her inability to find an affordable apartment, and Itzik Shmuli, the chairman of National Student Union. Both were featured speakers at the main rally that drew some 300,000 people to Tel Aviv’s Hamedina Square.

Many observers have pointed to the differences between the two young leaders, which reflect tensions within the movement as a whole. Leef, who tends to speak from the gut, has blasted the Trajtenberg Committee as a cynical effort established to deceive the public. Shmuli, by contrast, has been interested in engaging with the committee and, like other student leaders before him, is mentioned as a natural for entering politics.

Shmuli is “one of the people to look for” as an emerging political leader, said Hani Zubida, an assistant professor of public policy at IDC Herzliya who helped organize a coalition of Israel’s peripheral populations for the summer protests that included single mothers, Arabs and lower-income communities.

“People are calling for his campaign tour for the next primaries,” Zubida said. “The fact that we saw him week in and week out on the stage means something.”

At the same time,  Zubida said, nobody is sure what will happen next. He believes that some protest leaders may be co-opted into the current political parties, which could be “extremely beneficial, as it might show that the government is trying to face the challenge and embrace ‘these people’ into the system.”

Nachmias is hoping that the wave of protests results in the formation of a new political party with a socioeconomic agenda rather than focusing on security issues. Israel has been in the midst of a governance crisis, he said, and the government has been unable to formulate and implement long-term public policies, partly because of its electoral system that empowers small parties representing various interest groups.

“People are sick and tired of the governance crisis,” he said. “The speakers were talking about the new Israel, the empowered Israelis. If there is a new political party, that’s the greatest achievement they can have.”

Hebrew University historian Alexander Yakobson wrote in Haaretz that the movement itself cannot be turned into “a political party, or a camp with a clear-cut political and ideological character, without losing most of its participants and all of its public influence.” Yakobson also wrote that while the movement has given a boost to more social democratic economic policies, ultimately change will have to come through the championing of these issues in the political realm.

“The Labor Party, under new leadership, is a natural candidate to carry a banner of this kind, but of course there are also other options and combinations of options,” he said in Haaretz. “The bottom line is that this is a matter for a party or parties. It is clear that the voting public will not vote on the socioeconomic issue alone, but its importance will no doubt increase.”

In the meantime, the public is waiting to see what the Trajtenberg Committee will recommend to ease the burdens facing the middle class.

Expectations are that the panel will call for significant cuts in the defense budget, as well as recommend raising corporate, inheritance and capital gains taxes. The committee also is expected to recommend increases in the education, health and social welfare budgets; lowering income taxes for the middle class; offering tax breaks for working parents; and breaking up the country’s monopolies.

Still, Zubida said, the committee cannot meet the movement’s aspirations for change.

“This is about more than just recommending more competition and doing away with monopolies,” he said. “We need a different vision for Israel.”

Like many others, he would like to see a new political party emerge from the protest movement. As an active participant in the protests, Zubida remarked that the wonder of the tent cities was “everyone was talking to everyone else.” He would like to see the negotiations and discussions that took place in those ad hoc salons continue to happen in different neighborhoods and places throughout Israel.

Protest leaders are trying to keep the dialogue going. Instead of another mass march, 1,000 round tables will be set up the night of Sept. 10 outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art for public meetings and democratic discussions of social issues.

“This is a brand-new trend,” Zubida said. “It’s the first time in Israel that there are different social coalitions working together. It’s a semi-revolution.”

Big climax to Israel’s summer of protest — but then what? Read More »

Waste Not Want Not

Leave a Comment / Culture, News /

I am allergic to waste: I just can’t abide the thought of perfectly usable things being dumped into the garbage.  Besides the ecological consequences, there’s the offense to my compulsively thrifty nature.  If there’s such a thing as reincarnation (which I strongly doubt) I must have been a squirrel in my former life.  I totally understand the urge to dig a little hole and drop an acorn in, insuring a tasty snack on a winter’s day.

THE OLD FOOD MOVEMENT
I love leftovers.  When you heat up food the next day, the flavorful juices have been absorbed, and you have a readymade dinner that doesn’t require any work (a big plus in my book)!  Some cultures have no concept of leftovers: they demand food that’s freshly bought and freshly made.  Masaki, a film producer from Tokyo, came over and watched me place a pot of yesterday’s beef stew onto the stove.  He couldn’t contain his horror. “Annie-san! Are you serving garbage?”

There are some Americans who won’t eat yesterday’s food.  When I go to their homes for dinner, I bring my own plastic containers so that I don’t have to suffer the sight of that yummy lasagna being scraped into the trash.  By the way, those plastic containers were not bought in a store.  I just save take-out containers: no Tupperware parties for me. 

Most restaurant portions are so huge that if you finish your plate you might be well on your way to cardiac arrest.  I always take home half my meal, which means that I’m getting two dinners for the price of one.  I’m saving money and reducing calories at the same time – which makes me feel very righteous indeed.

ON THE ROAD
I haven’t bought soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, mouthwash, or ball-point pens in years.  That’s what hotels are for.  I’ll admit I sometimes overdo it.  We were about to leave for the long trip home from Sidney, Australia.  Benni was in the shower and asked for the soap.  “Too late. It’s already packed!”  He did not appreciate my suggestion of just splashing on some extra cologne.

I always travel with those tiny plastic containers of jams and honey that you get for free in coffee shops.  I learned my lesson the hard way.  We were having a croissant and coffee one morning in Paris, and I asked for some jam.  They brought a pot of orange marmalade and charged us five euros – which is about eight dollars.  Never again. 

I also carry those herbal tea packets you get in hotel rooms.  I’m allergic to caffeine and, in many places in the world, “decaf” is considered the equivalent of “boorish American” and is not available.  Even domestic airlines can be a problem.  On my last flight I was given a packet of decaffeinated coffee and a cup of lukewarm water that wasn’t hot enough to dissolve the coarse powder.  So I couldn’t drink my coffee – I had to chew it!

 

Waste Not Want Not Read More »

Ten years later, terrorists still using immigration loopholes

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, Opinion /

Terrorism and U.S. immigration policies are closely linked. We have made some progress since terrorists killed 3,000 innocent people in New York and Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, but clearly not enough.

All 19 of the 9/11 hijackers entered the country with valid visas. All had backgrounds that should have excluded them from getting visas. Yet 10 years later, the United States still does not conduct extensive screening in many countries with terrorist activities. The United States also still gives random visas through a lottery system rife with fraud.

Congress needs to change these policies. Terrorists have taken advantage of our lax immigration system several times since 9/11.

Currently, the United States only operates the Visa Security Program in 19 high-risk consular posts. The Secure Visas Act, of which I am an original cosponsor, would expand the Visa Security Program to provide more extensive screening in high-risk countries.

According to the Government Accountability Office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not implemented its five-year expansion plan or even covered all high-risk posts. The Secure Visas Act would require Visa Security Units to be maintained at the 19 consular posts that already have them and expand these units to the posts that ICE has designated as “highest-risk.”

Some of these “highest-risk” countries include Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Morocco, Lebanon, and Algeria. VSUs are critical for national security: At VSU-staffed consular posts, 100 percent of applicants receive additional screening; at non-VSU posts, fewer than 2 percent of the applicants get extra screening.

The Secure Visas Act also would make it easier to revoke a visa.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and kill over 200 innocent people on December 25, 2009, refocused attention on the responsibilities of the Departments of State and Homeland Security with respect to visa revocation.

Abdulmutallab was traveling on a valid visa issued to him in June 2008. The State Department acknowledged that his father came into the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19, 2009, and told State Department and CIA officials that his son had vanished and expressed concern that he had “fallen under the influence of religious extremists in Yemen.” According to news reports, the father’s visit with the U.S. authorities was arranged by Nigerian intelligence officials, who his father had contacted after receiving a call from his son that made him fear that his son might be planning a suicide mission in Yemen.

Despite the father’s visit and the warning he conveyed, the State Department made no effort to revoke the visa.

The case of Abdulmutallab demonstrates that clearly, we need a way to quickly revoke a visa.

I am also an original cosponsor of the SAFE for America Act, which would eliminate the visa lottery program, under which 50,000 individuals a year are chosen completely at random to receive immigrant visas.

The visa lottery, first implemented in Fiscal Year 1995, has long been a subject of concern for those of us who believe it important to have a credible immigration system. The program is riddled with fraud. The State Department’s Inspector General said so in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The Government Accountability Office said so in 2007. During a congressional hearing I chaired in April, we learned that it continues today.

Fraud is a concern because terrorists have already used the visa lottery as a means of entering this country. In fact, the Egyptian terrorist who murdered two Americans at LAX in 2002 was a diversity visa recipient after his wife was selected for the lottery.

In addition, a Pakistani national who received a diversity visa when his parents were selected for the lottery, pleaded guilty in 2002 to conspiring to wage jihad by plotting to destroy electrical power stations, the Israeli consulate, and other South Florida targets. He had reportedly told his friends that he wanted to wage war against the United States.

U.S. immigration policy should be based on something more than just luck of the draw.

We will never forget Sept. 11, 2001, or the people who perished in that wanton act of terrorism. We need to strengthen our immigration procedures so it makes it harder for terrorists to attack us again on American soil.

Rep. Elton Gallegly represents Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties in Congress and is chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement and Vice Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Ten years later, terrorists still using immigration loopholes Read More »

Museum of Tolerance and political group to hold ‘provocative’ 9/11-themed event

Leave a Comment / Community, Culture, Entertainment, Is Featured?, News /

On Sept. 7, just days before the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the Museum of Tolerance (MOT) is set to host two political pollsters for an event the museum is calling “provocative.”

At the event, titled “9/11 + 10: Public Attitudes about Security Threats—Domestic and Global,” pollsters Pat Caddell and John McLaughlin are expected to release the results of a new national poll looking at American public opinion about security threats.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said that the MOT would be commemorating the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sunday, Sep. 11, in much the same way as in previous years—with public candle lighting and a reading of the names of the attack’s victims.

But Cooper said that on Wednesday, he hoped people would hear from “two articulate veterans” who would bring “objective data” to a discussion of how safe Americans think they are today.

“I’d really like to know how people feel ten years later,” Cooper, who helped organize the event, said.

The Wednesday evening event is being co-sponsored by Secure America Now, a political organization co-founded by Caddell and McLaughlin in the summer of 2010. The group, which claims to be nonpartisan, focuses much of its attention on opposing policies promoted by or associated with the Obama Administration.

In an interview with the Jewish Journal, McLaughlin said that what inspired him and Caddell to begin surveying Americans about national security was a sense that Americans don’t feel safe—and that citizens attribute their new vulnerability to the policies pursued by the current occupant of the White House.

“It’s really because of the kind of policies that the administration is advocating,” McLaughlin said, noting that the trend he has observed is a national one. “A lot of the surveys I’m seeing were conducted in different parts of the country. There’s definitely shifts in attitudes.”

McLaughlin’s polling firm currently counts House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R – Va.) among its clients. Caddell is a frequent guest on Fox News, where he is referred to as a Democratic Pollster, a title that bloggers for the progressive nonprofit Media Matters consider to be misleading.

Caddell, whose polling firm does not appear to have a website and who could not be reached for comment, was described as a “Democratic Pollster” on a flyer for the Sep. 7 event at the MOT.

The flier (pdf), which uses red and blue fonts and shapes, apparently to suggest that the event will feature differences of opinion, does not mention the two pollsters’ connection to Secure America Now or to one another.

Caddell and McLaughlin may have started out on opposite sides of the political divide—when McLaughlin volunteered for Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign in 1976, Caddell was working as Jimmy Carter’s pollster—but Caddell has since become better known for his critiques of Democratic policies and candidates. In 2010, one writer suggested Caddell might be labeled a “self-loathing Democrat.”

Caddell and McLaughlin have given presentations about American public opinion on security matters before. In February, they presented results of an earlier Secure America Now-sponsored survey into public opinion on the subject to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). The pair also spoke at the Heritage Foundation in May as part of the conservative think tank’s “Protect America Month.”

When McLaughlin presented that survey’s findings to CPAC in February, he talked about the opportunity it offered to Obama’s opponents. Caddell and McLaughlin found that Americans disapproved of President Obama’s handling of foreign policy by 54 to 42 percent and disapproved of his work to defend and secure America by a similar margin.

When asked “Who or what is the GREATEST threat to the United States?” a full seven percent of respondents actually identified the president himself, who came in second only to “terrorism,” which was identified as the most pressing threat by 14 percent of respondents.

“When people don’t think we’re safe, that’s his glass jaw,” McLaughlin told the crowd at CPAC, referring to the president.

The poll presented at CPAC wasn’t the only poll Caddell and McLaughlin conducted this year under the Secure America Now banner that appeared to include good news for Obama’s opponents.

In June, Caddell and McLaughlin released a survey that concluded President Barack Obama was losing support among Jewish voters.

The survey was hotly contested. Adam Serwer, blogging for the Washington Post, called it “laughably bogus,” in part because certain questions asked in the poll were “phrased in as leading a manner as possible.”

Serwer pointed to one question that asserted that President Obama had “proposed for Israel…a return to the 1967 borders, dividing Jerusalem, and allowing the right of return for Palestinian Arabs to Israel,” and then asked respondents “how concerned [they] would be if [Obama] were re-elected.”

That question, McLaughlin said, drew on Obama’s Middle East policy speech in May at the State Department, in which the president put forward as a basis for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians borders “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

As for the right of return and dividing Jerusalem, “He [Obama] put it on the table at the State Department speech, towards the end,” McLaughlin said. “He didn’t call it the right of return but he said it should be negotiated.”

“What’s surprisnig [sic] is that only 67 percent of Jewish voters in the poll said they were concerned about Obama’s policy towards Israel should he be reelected,” Serwer wrote in his Washington Post blog, “this, even though McLaughlin and Caddell invented out of thin air the idea that Obama supports a “right of return” for Palestinian Arabs.

Speaking to Commentary in July, McLaughlin acknowledged that particular question was based on a hypothetical—even as he defended the findings of the survey as a whole. “Whether the president supports those ideas or not, we’ll see,” McLaughlin said.

Although they are the co-founders of the group, no mention of Caddell, McLaughlin or any other individual appears on the Secure America Now website.

The “About” section of the Secure America Now website describes the organization’s backers as “Democrats, Republicans, Independents, conservatives and liberals who share a common concern about our security and liberty.”

But significant chunks of Secure America Now’s statement of purpose seem likely to appeal more to Republicans and conservatives than to Democrats and liberals.

“We have been frustrated by misguided government decisions to support a mosque at Ground Zero and to try terrorists in civilian courts while radical Muslims operate a training camp in New York State,” reads one line from the statement.

A CNN poll taken in Aug. 2010, when the controversy over the proposed Islamic Center near Ground Zero was at its height, showed that Democrats opposed the project by a small margin (54 to 43 percent) and liberals were narrowly in favor of it(51 to 45 percent). Contrast that with Republicans and conservatives, 82 and 87 percent of whom opposed the project, respectively.

The same partisan divide holds true for the issue of whether terror suspects should be tried in civilian court or by military tribunals. When Americans were asked in Feb. 2010 by Qunnipiac University where terror suspects should be tried, Democrats narrowly preferred civilian courts (48 to 45 percent), while Republicans and even independent voters were more likely to favor military trials for terror suspects (73 to 23 percent, 61 to 33 percent, respectively).

McLaughlin said that he and Caddell might differ on some issues, but they both agreed that “national security should be more bipartisan and not so much a partisan issue.”

Cooper said that he hoped to hear differing opinions on Wednesday.

“I imagine we’re going to get the full gamut of left to right and back and forth,” Cooper said, “and if that happens it’ll be a successful evening.”

And if those differing opinions don’t come from the people on the stage, Cooper said he would welcome them from the audience—but only during this particular “provocative” evening event.

“People can emote that night,” Cooper said. “On Sep. 11th, they should come and bow their heads in prayer.”

Museum of Tolerance and political group to hold ‘provocative’ 9/11-themed event Read More »

Serenity in Samoa (Video)

Leave a Comment / Travel /

Serenity in Samoa

Here is 40 seconds of serenity for you!
The beach at Lalomanu, Samoa near Taufua Beach Fales

 

The United Nations, Durban III and Israel [VIDEO] Read More »

Ukraine razes the ruins of 16th century shul to build a hotel

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

The Ukraine government has begun the allegedly illegal demolition of a 16th century synagogue to build a hotel.

The ruins of the elaborate “Golden Rose synagogue, ” a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1998, in the city of Lviv are being torn down to construct a hotel for the European soccer championships.

The synagogue was partially burnt down by the Nazis in 1941 with Jewish residents trapped inside. The Nazis destroyed 42 other synagogues in Lviv, which had a majority Jewish population in 1940.

Tom Gross wrote in the National Post that the demolition is illegal under Ukranian and international law. Gross witnessed the demolition.

According to Gross, Ukrainian law protects historic sites like the synagogue.

“It is not only morally wrong for bulldozers to drill through the last traces of this vibrant past without first giving the handful of remaining Jews here a chance to restore this site, or turn it into a place of memorial, It is legally wrong, too,” he wrote. “Ukraine’s own laws are designed to preserve such historic sites.”

Ukraine razes the ruins of 16th century shul to build a hotel Read More »