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Jewish Journal

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November 20, 2012

From Sandy to Gaza rockets, students weather each other’s storms

Leave a Comment / Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, United States /

Between Israeli youths going through Hurricane Sandy and American youths experiencing the onslaught of rockets from Gaza, participants of November’s America Israel Friendship League’s (AIFL) student exchange rode an emotional and historic rollercoaster on both sides of the Atlantic.

Twenty-eight American high school students—members of the AIFL-sponsored Youth Ambassadors Student Exchange (YASE)—returned from Israel Nov. 19 after having witnessed Operation Pillar of Defense, and the rocket fire that prompted it, firsthand.

“I saw a bomb shelter for the first time and heard the ‘boom’ of an Israeli missile as it intercepted a Palestinian attack while we were at the school Hakfar Hayarok just outside of Tel Aviv,” Katy Hall, an 18-year-old senior at Bethany High School in Yukon, Okla., told JNS.org during her group’s layover in New York’s John F. Kennedy airport on the way home to Oklahoma.

Earlier in the month, the Americans’ 22 Israeli counterparts in the U.S. just prior to the onslaught of Hurricane Sandy, spending their first week as guests of host families in Oklahoma, Virginia Beach, and New York. The New York-based group experienced the unprecedented events of one of history’s worst natural disasters. At the beginning of week two, the entire group met in Washington, D.C., for an intense four-day learning program, and then traveled together to New York City.

YASE, a 30-year-old student exchange program that focuses on bi-national cooperation, education, and cultural understanding. YASE is the only public high school exchange between Israel and the U.S., and works in partnership with the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Association of School Administrators and the Israel Youth Exchange Council.

Following their New York schedule, the entire YASE contingent of 50 (between the American and the Israelis) flew to Israel, arriving in Tel Aviv on Nov. 8, and was welcomed into the homes of their Israeli host families. The Israeli group from Rishon LeZion who had experienced “Sandy” directly took their New York peers home.

Then came Operation Pillar of Defense, the Israel Defense Forces action intended to stop the rockets being fired from Gaza. “The first priority was to assure the safety and security of every participant,” AIFL Chairman Kenneth Bialkin told JNS.org while the American students were still in Israel. “Everyone is safe, everyone, is eager to stay for the full program. These are exceptional young people, exhibiting the highest ideals of friendship.”

The American students included delegates from many ethnic and religious backgrounds—African American, Chinese, East Indian Pakistani, Albanian and others. They were Christians (including an Egyptian Coptic student), Muslims, Hindus, and Jews. Everyone was in contact with his or her parents. During the course of the intense program, the students formed strong bonds with their Israeli peers and developed a strong sense of belonging.

The annual YASE program follows a meticulously planned curriculum comprised of academic, cultural and community activities and experiences throughout both the American and Israeli segments. When the Israeli contingent to New York—students mostly from Rishon LeZion, chaperoned by Sigal Greenfeld Mittelman— arrived there York just days before Sandy, they had no idea what awaited them.

“Sandy created a really awful situation,” Mittelman told JNS.org. “I had to keep the kids calm and assure their safety—especially without electricity.” Their parents in Israel were worried, and because there was no phone service for days, could not contact their children. Email and Skype helped Mittelman keep parents 6,000 miles away as calm as possible.

The American students scheduled to be in Rishon LeZion weathered a different kind of storm. It was the same New York contingent that had hosted their peers from Rishon LeZion during Sandy. They had to be moved from Rishon LeZion to the Israeli Ministry of Education-run boarding school of Hakfar Hayarok.        

“All the American kids were in constant contact with their parents,” Cassia Anthony, program director of AIFL, told JNS.org.

AIFL

The Youth Ambassadors Student Exchange contingent from America pictured just after landing in Israel.

Every attempt was made to maintain the students’ original schedule, although the base was moved from Tel Aviv to Haifa.  The students were able to visit schools, the Baha’i Shrine and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. But due to the rockets, the American students returned to the U.S. Nov. 19, curtailing their program by two days.

Dr. Charlotte Frank, chairman of the executive committee of AIFL and the initiator of the YASE program, praised the forbearance of the student ambassadors.

“The way these kids have responded is a miracle,” she told JNS.org. “The students survived an unprecedented encounter with Hurricane Sandy in New York lived through another ‘storm’—this time, of rockets and Israeli resilience. Their amazing experiences on opposite sides of the world will give then an even greater depth of understanding.”

“These young men and woman learned to live together, to survive together and to grow with their experiences,” Frank added.

Michele Ayers, a teacher at Oklahoma’s Bethany High School and a chaperon for the nine students from that school who participated in YASE, told JNS.org from Kennedy Airport on Monday that the students “felt very safe in Israel.”

Ayers described the city of Yukon, where Bethany High is based, as “a very conservative Protestant community.” She called the YASE trip “such a growing opportunity for the kids.”

“To be immersed in the Jewish and Israeli culture and learn so much about the Jewish people was amazing… Being in Israel was a great learning experience—though perhaps not at the best time,” she said.

The students’ Israeli host families “knew exactly what to do,” and were “like having family from a half a world away,” Ayers said.

Though the students were not alarmed, Ayers said she understood why the students had to return from Israel, when rockets began to fall as far north as the suburbs of Tel Aviv.

Hall, the Bethany High senior, said the Israel experience widened her understanding of her own beliefs.

“God is so alive here,” she told JNS.org. “The Jewish people are His chosen people. Being in Israel is so surreal, so beautiful.”

“The news doesn’t tell the true story of Israel,” Hall added.

Ayers said the Bethany High delegation is “going to go back” to Israel, but even if they don’t return, the Jewish state clearly left an impression on them that won’t fade anytime soon.

“There’s a part of my heart that remains in Israel,” Ayers said. “I’ll never be the same.”

From Sandy to Gaza rockets, students weather each other’s storms Read More »

November 20, 2012

Leave a Comment / Israel, Must Reads /

In-depth

Is an Israeli-Syrian War Next?

One cannot ignore increasing signs of friction on Israel's border with Syria, writes Benedetta Berti for the Institute of National Security Studies. 

Lately, even the ceasefire line with Syria, after decades of calm, has become an issue of potential concern for Israel. In the past weeks, the ongoing internal war in Syria repeatedly spilled into Israel. Although these episodes were not the first instances of errant Syrian mortars shells landing into the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, what changed in the past few weeks is that the Israeli army decided, for the first time, to fire back.

 

A source of condemnation, not pride

Tariq Alhomayed of Asharq Al-Awsat lashes out at Hezbollah for its efforts to send weaponry to the Gaza Strip.

This suggests that Hezbollah’s involvement in the transfer of arms, and in smuggling them to our states, is a continuous process, with the help of Iran and the al-Assad regime before the Syrian revolution. The purpose of this is to ignite proxy wars in our region, and to destabilize the security and stability of Egypt and Jordan and others. 

 

Daily Digest

November 20, 2012 Read More »

The gift of life insurance

Leave a Comment / Culture, Giving, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News, Special Sections /

Todd Gindy, a certified financial planner, likes to tell a story about Johnny Carson to illustrate how nonprofits miss a big opportunity when they don’t suggest donors use life insurance policies as a vehicle for charitable giving. 

For years, the longtime host of “The Tonight Show” gave $1 million every year to Children of the Night, an organization founded by Dr. Lois Lee to rescue child victims of sex trafficking. 

But, remembers Gindy, who works for the Encino office of Northwestern Mutual, when Carson died in 2005, the donation stopped. 

“Carson certainly had the wherewithal to be able to endow that gift, and it wouldn’t have taken any meaningful amount away from his heirs,” Gindy said. 

Endowing a perpetual gift of $1 million isn’t something most people can do. Indeed, even making a onetime donation of that size is well out of reach for all but the wealthiest philanthropists. But most people don’t realize that they can name a nonprofit as the beneficiary of a life-insurance policy, and, depending on a potential donor’s age, health and how much they can pay in, their payment to the policy amounts to a tax-deductible annual donation that might cost the donor a few thousand dollars each year for 10 or 20 years, yet add up to approximately the million-dollar level when the policy matures. 

Gifting an insurance policy to a nonprofit can help donors get a bigger financial bang for their charitable bucks, although professionals involved in charitable organizations, as well as those who advise both donors and nonprofits, say that people aren’t taking advantage of the tactic very often. 

“Over the last few years, there has not been a lot of gifting of insurance policies,” said Robert Evans, founder and managing director of The EHL Consulting Group, a global nonprofit consulting firm with a mostly Jewish nonprofit client base. “It has just generally not been something that nonprofits — Jewish or not — have been talking very much about.” 

In 2011, The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles promoted life-insurance gifting as a way for donors to give to the Centennial Endowment fund, but, according to Marla Abraham, senior vice president for endowment planning and premier philanthropy at Federation, only “one or two donors out of 37” actually gave life insurance as a gift, and Federation has received fewer than 10 such gifts in the last five years. 

For younger donors, Abraham said, “The payments are ridiculously low to do something. The hard part is making that commitment at a young age.”

Other nonprofits have been more effective in promoting life insurance as a gifting vehicle, including the Jewish Community Foundation (JCF) of Los Angeles, which has been encouraging some of its donors — particularly younger women who already donate $5,000 or more every year — to endow their gifts by purchasing low-cost designated life insurance policies while continuing their annual donations.

For donors who give at this level — JCF calls it “Lion of Judah” — creating an endowment that would perpetuate a gift of $5,000 would require a $100,000 lump-sum donation. But, depending on the donor’s age, a life-insurance policy that at maturity yields $100,000 could be purchased for far less than that sum. 

“I met with somebody last year in her young 30s who took out a substantial life insurance policy,” said Elliot Kristal, vice president of charitable gift planning at JCF. The policy this young woman took out would ultimately pay out about $1 million upon her death. 

“It was very cheap for her to do that,” Kristal continued. “And while it’s going to be some time before the foundation realizes that donation, it’s a way of spending fewer dollars currently to be more impactful down the line.”

Because the immediate payout to an organization is nil and nonprofits must expect to wait years, even decades, to receive money from gifts of insurance, the tactic is primarily encouraged by larger, well-established organizations — although JCF can help donors to direct the proceeds of an insurance policy gifted to the foundation toward a smaller organization. 

JCF can afford to wait patiently for the larger payout — Kristal estimates that “several millions of dollars’ worth of insurance policies” have been gifted to JCF whose funds have not yet been disbursed because donors are still living — while many nonprofits need the cash more immediately. 

Gindy, who has served on the board of Federation for about eight years and is also a member of the board of BJE — Builders of Jewish Education — has seen this challenge firsthand. 

“Often, organizations need money today; they’re not willing to wait until a person dies,” Gindy said. “There’s this push and pull that goes on within all of our charitable organizations, that they both want an endowment for the future, but they’re also unwilling to forgo the dollars today.”

Another hesitation, Gindy said, stems from the involvement of insurance salesmen in the process. 

“Insurance is sold,” he said. “So even when somebody’s intentions are good, if the idea is brought to them by anybody who happens to be deemed a salesman, it’s always met with initial hesitation.” Gindy said he has been selling insurance for 22 years, and he believes that “if it weren’t called insurance, everybody in the world would be doing it, because what it does tends to make a lot of sense.”

The gift of life insurance Read More »

Amid conflict, Israel’s hospitals treat Gazan patients

Leave a Comment / Israel /

(The Jerusalem Post) Israeli hospitals, amid the ongoing conflict, are treating dozens of patients of all ages who came to Israel from Gaza to get healthcare unavailable there, and are making provisions for accompanying persons.    

“We at Rambam Medical Center are taking care of sick children and adults, and we are not looking at their religion or where they come from. At the moment, we have four—a baby girl in the nephrology department, two children in oncology and an adult in urology,” Rambam director-general Prof. Rafael Beyar said.    

“Family members accompanied them,” he said. “It’s absurd that we are doing this at the same time Israelis are being attacked, but there is no other way. We are used to it. We are very far from politics.”   

Working in Haifa, Beyar was “extremely upset” when he learned that Arab students at the University of Haifa last week stood for a “moment of silence” when Ahmed Jabari, the terror chief of Hamas, was killed by the Israel Defense Forces.

“I just can’t accept that,” he said.    

Beyar also said that he had received no reports of any tension among Jewish and Arab personnel in his medical center. “We are used to working together to save lives.” 

The Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem said that in the past month, it has hospitalized six Gazan patients.    

Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer said that it provides medical center to several dozen Palestinians each month, and even now, there is no change. Most are children who are hospitalized for long periods or youngsters who underwent treatment and return periodically for follow-up, Sheba spokesman Amir Marom told The Jerusalem Post.    

“Just two days ago, a nine-year-old girl from Gaza who was hurt in her palm was brought to Sheba. Her father is an Arab journalists who writes from Gaza for an Israeli newspaper. She was accompanied by her mother. An Israeli boy who was wounded by a Gazan rocket that fell in Kiryat Malachi last week is in the same room with a Gazan girl whose fingers were amputated due to injury,” Marom said. “We regard our hospital as a bridge to peace.”    

Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center said 50 patients and their accompanying relatives from Gaza are now hospitalized—both children and adults. Most of them are cancer patients. The relatives live in the hospital’s hotel, and there is a hospital employee who serves as a contact person and helps them.    

Medical treatment for Gaza residents allowed into Israel is paid for by the Palestinian Authority or by other bodies, including the Peres Center for Peace.

This story was written by The Jerusalem Post and is distributed with the permission of that newspaper.

Amid conflict, Israel’s hospitals treat Gazan patients Read More »

Iron Dome, now protecting Tel Aviv, highly successful in intercepting rockets

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

With hundreds of rockets raining down from Gaza, Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system has saved an untold number of lives thanks to Israeli technological ingenuity and U.S. support.

According to the figures from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), since Operation Pillar of Defense began Nov. 14, the Iron Dome system has intercepted some 300 rockets, with an 85-percent interception success rate.

“The system works incredibly well, even beyond our expectations,” said David Schechter, a top official at Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Israeli defense company that designed and manufactures the system.

One of the keys to success for the Iron Dome system is that it isn’t designed to shoot down every rocket, but only those that threaten civilian areas.

“They didn’t design a system that would shoot down everything,” Jeff White, a military analyst with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told Bloomberg News. “They designed a system that would shoot down threat rockets and it works pretty good.”

The Iron Dome provides city-sized coverage against rockets with ranges between 5-70 km using its highly advanced radar system. The first Iron Dome battery was deployed outside of Beersheba in March 2011. Currently there are five batteries deployed, with the latest one coming two months ahead of schedule on Nov. 17 to protect Tel Aviv. Five more batteries will be deployed in the upcoming years.

The Iron Dome system does not come without steep financial costs, especially in comparison to Hamas’s crude rockets. Each battery costs $100 million and each interceptor missile costs $50,000. By contrast, the cost to the Israeli economy of each civilian fatality is estimated to be $1,200,000.

While initially funded by Israel, the U.S. has provided most of the funding for additional batteries. Since 2010, the Obama administration and Congress have provided $205 million with an additional $70 million on its way.

According to a White House press release, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called President Barack Obama Nov. 16 and expressed “deep appreciation” for U.S. investment in the system. 

The Iron Dome is part of a larger Israeli missile defense system. Israel’s other systems include the upcoming David’s Sling, designed for medium range rockets and missiles, and the Arrow, designed to intercept longer-range missiles such as from Iran.

A number of IDF officials were involved in the decision to deploy the fifth Iron Dome battery to the Tel Aviv area ahead of schedule, though the main force pushing the move was Israel Air Defense commander Brig. Gen. Shahar Shohat.

For the installation and command of the fifth battery Nov. 17, Maj. Itamar Abo was called away from his university studies, having finished commanding one of the other batteries just a month and a half ago. The new unit involves more advanced technology, so Abo and his team were given updated training.

Soon after the installation of that new battery, it intercepted its first rocket. Abo said, “The feeling during the interception is incredible, especially in the Dan region [around Tel Aviv] with so many citizens.”

“It demands a high level of professional concentration,” Abo continued. “There is a sense [of concentration] among all the people involved, from the low-ranking technicians to the warriors that actually shoot, and it is rare to actually see the missile hit the target. There is nothing that makes us happier, however. The battery has been very successful up to now and we hope it will continue to be successful in the future.”

Due to its more advanced technology than the other four units, the fifth Iron Dome is better able to deal with Fajr and eight-inch rockets launched from Gaza. The sixth Iron Dome is slated to be ready by the middle of 2013.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Iron Dome battery on Sunday in the central Dan region. He called it “an exceptional achievement by both the Air Defense Command and manufacturers.”

“No other army in any country in the world has a system like it; no other civilian population has this protection,” Barak said. “It is true that the threat against us is unique, but such abilities and defensive achievements are out of the ordinary.”

“With the Iron Dome and the developments that are planned for it, we have a basic ability to protect the state of Israel against most threats of both short and long-range missiles,” the defense minister added. “It will take a few years and a few million shekels, but we will get there.”

Iron Dome, now protecting Tel Aviv, highly successful in intercepting rockets Read More »

If the shoe fits

Leave a Comment / Culture, Giving, Mobile, Mobile Sections, News, Special Sections /

Kayla Tinucci would never want to walk a mile in the shoes of the disadvantaged children she has vowed to help.

“Their feet would be squeezing into shoes that were way too small for them,” she said. “I would pull off the shoes of one boy to measure his feet, and his toes uncurled because they had been in shoes that were too small.”

That’s exactly why Tinucci, 16, founded the Shoe Crew in June with her brother Justin. The small group of about 15 youthful volunteers has devoted itself to collecting new athletic footwear for area kids who can’t afford them. So far, they’ve amassed more than 3,100 pairs, earning them a national feature in the weekly classroom newsmagazine TIME for Kids.

Shoe recipients have included kids at A Place Called Home (a South Los Angeles safe haven for underserved children) and those affected by Hurricane Sandy. (They sent more than 200 pairs of shoes to New York on a truck full of supplies deployed by actress Kirstie Alley, and there are plans to send more.) 

Next up is a Dec. 8 event at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, where the group will distribute shoes to children from Camp Ronald McDonald for Good Times.

Tinucci said she got the idea after collecting items for a project operating out of A Place Called Home that outfits disadvantaged youths with free clothes for prom. The same organization had a back-to-school event, and it wasn’t long before she was off and running with her own effort to help provide shoes for it.

Free shoes may sound like a little thing, but it’s not to the person receiving them. The Santa Clarita teen recalls one event when a line of children wearing patched-up and ill-fitting shoes stretched around the block four hours ahead of time. 

“Sometimes they come hobbling in. When they leave, they’re jumping and skipping, because they can finally walk and they’re comfortable in their shoes,” she said.

Part of what makes the experience so worthwhile for Shoe Crew members is seeing the impact of their work firsthand.

“I really loved the fact that you can actually go deliver the shoes,” said Jessica Keegan, 17. “You actually get to see who you’re helping.”

The experience has been eye opening and humbling for her.

“When I outgrow a pair of shoes, my mom gives me a new pair of shoes that fit. These kids are wearing shoes that they’ve outgrown, that have been patched up, that have been passed down,” said Keegan, who splits her time between living in Toluca Lake and San Rafael, Calif., where she and her sister Olivia are starting their own chapter of the group.

“Every time I go out to the store … every time I ask my mom to get me something new, you look at it in a different way,” Jessica Keegan said. “It’s made me look at my life and see how fortunate I am.”

Olivia Keegan, 13, said she can still see the faces of the children they helped at an event in Long Beach for homeless children.

From left: Jessica Keegan, 17, and sister Olivia Keegan, 13, at a preschool for homeless children in October.

“It really touched my heart. Their faces just lit up,” she said. “This one little girl, she was so sweet. She seemed just to take everything and be so thankful for it. Then I realized that I sometimes take all these things for granted: my shoes, my clothes.”

It got better.

“Her mom afterward came
up to me and said, ‘Thanks so much,’ ” Olivia Keegan said. “I just realized how good it felt to do something good and give back.”

The Shoe Crew is a local chapter of the national organization Shoes That Fit and seeks donations through a variety of means. The public can contribute financially online at theshoecrew-org.webs.com or bring new children’s shoes of any size to one of the group’s events, for which the entrance fee is generally a pair of shoes. 

The volunteers have found corporate help as well. Vlado Footwear matched the first 1,150 pairs of shoes that were donated, and Sky High Sports trampoline park in Costa Mesa offered patrons an hour’s admission in exchange for one pair of shoes.

There’s celebrity support, too, with involvement from young television actors Dylan Riley Snyder of “Kickin’ It” and Allisyn Arm of “So Random!”

It’s hard to argue with the results. In addition to the thousands of shoes it has collected, the Shoe Crew has raised more than $15,000 that will be used to purchase more footwear.

For now, the Show Crew remains small — mostly a collection of the Tinuccis, their friends and industry acquaintances. (Justin Tinucci is an actor.) But they have plans for expansion. Starting with socks.

“We are moving to expand to other articles of clothing,” Kayla Tinucci said. “There’s a huge need. Lots of [the kids] wear shoes with no socks, and we want to help them.”

If the shoe fits Read More »

Israel’s image war

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

The Israel Defense Forces is bombing the Gaza Strip and the world is, for the most part, silent. In fact, the IDF is bombing Gaza and the world is, for the most part, supporting Israel.

How is this happening? Wars today are fought not only with bullets, but also with images. During Operation Pillar of Defense, Israel has succeeded in appearing as the victim, even though it is acting with strength and determination. But don’t get too excited. This could turn around in a moment.

Israel’s advocates have so far had a much easier time than they did during Operation Cast Lead, in 2008-9. The IDF has focused on attacking specific terrorists and has been extremely careful to not harm innocent civilians, even if this has meant calling off planned strikes. The government’s instructions on this have been clear.

Israel understands that wars today are fought not only on the physical battlefield. The war of images is no less important than the war of bullets. Israel’s public relations officials gained enough experience from the days of the Second Intifada to internalize the equation that fewer civilian casualties lead to less criticism and more international legitimacy.

The start of Operation Pillar of Defense went well. Israel opened the operation by killing Hamas military wing chief Ahmed Jabari and taking out long-range missile sites. It would be hard for the West to criticize strikes on such targets.

At the same time, Israel asked the West this question: What would you do if Paris or London were attacked? Pictures were broadcast of sites in Ashkelon, Ashdod and Kiryat Malachi that had been hit by Hamas missiles. This time, the world saw an injured Israeli baby, not just a Palestinian one. In the world's eyes, the heroes in Israel are not the country's pilots, but the civilians taking cover in bomb shelters. An image of a civilian huddling in a bomb shelter is received much more favorably than one of a pilot in a fighter jet.

The IDF’s pinpoint attacks have spoiled Hamas’s public relations efforts. Hamas, along with its allies in the radical Arab world, can continue to talk about “barbaric” IDF attacks, but it has no photos to back up such accusations.

There is no cause for euphoria, however, because everything can change in an instant. One mistake and the picture is reversed. Do you remember Qana (where the IDF accidentally killed large numbers of Lebanese civilians in both 1996 and 2006)?

Also, the diplomatic clock is continuing to tick. The French foreign minister is hurrying to come here, ahead of the United Nations secretary-general. The world’s support is conditional and time-limited. Israel is walking on very thin ice.

The first days of the operation have been very successful, even with the air raid sirens that sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem over the weekend. Paradoxically, these long-range rocket attacks showed the limits of Hamas’s potency.

Israel will not resolve the conflict with the Palestinians in this round or the next one. But the current military operation is meant to bring quiet to the south, restore Israel’ss deterrence and weaken Hamas. As a bonus, Israel is receiving support from the West and understanding from the media.

In a war of images, victory does not necessarily come on the battlefield. So a ground operation must be considered cautiously. It may be tempting, but it would also be risky.

 

Boaz Bismuth is a correspondent and columnist for Israel Hayom, whose English-language content is distributed in the U.S. exclusively by JNS.org.

Israel’s image war Read More »

ZOA fires L.A. director Orit Arfa

Leave a Comment / California, Mobile, News /

Orit Arfa, executive director of the Zionist Organization of America’s (ZOA) Western Region, was fired from her job on Nov. 19, one day after she addressed a crowd at a pro-Israel rally in Los Angeles that she helped organize, telling the crowd she was “proud” to work for the ZOA. National Executive Director David Drimer informed Arfa in person that the ZOA will close its Los Angeles office and move its West Coast operations to San Francisco.

Drimer said a donor, whom he declined to name, has offered to fund the new office and pay the salary of a new executive director.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for the ZOA to expose its message to an important Jewish community that has not been fully targeted by us in the past,” Drimer said in an interview when contacted by the Journal.

The ZOA has had a tumultuous last few months, during which time the organization canceled its annual fundraising dinner and has been working to mitigate the negative consequences of its losing of its 501(c)(3) status in February 2012.

Prior to her termination, Arfa, who before joining ZOA a year ago was a regular contributor to this newspaper, and who continues to blog for the Journal, wrote at least one internal memorandum to her bosses opposing the ZOA’s decision not to proactively mention the loss of the organization’s tax status.

ZOA national vice chair Steven Goldberg, an attorney who has publicly criticized various aspects of the ZOA’s operations and vocally called on the organization to be more proactive in disclosing its loss of tax-exempt status, said he believes the decision to close the Los Angeles office was done in retaliation against Arfa for speaking up, and that the ZOA’s national leadership could be subject to litigation for taking such action.

“You can’t be fired because you’ve insisted on behaving legally and ethically, because you resist an illegal order,” Goldberg said on Monday.

Drimer rejected any speculation that Arfa is being targeted.

“She was assured in writing that she was in no trouble for expressing her concerns,” Drimer said. “There’s nothing retaliatory about it.”

Arfa has been mentioned frequently in articles since the ZOA’s lost tax status became public in September, but she has not consented to any interviews. She confirmed on Monday afternoon only that she had been terminated, but declined to answer further questions.

Drimer said he believes the ZOA’s lay leadership in Southern California will be strong enough to sustain the organization’s local operations without the help of a paid executive director. But, according to Goldberg, the ZOA’s chapter in Orange County disbanded recently.

Goldberg shared with the Journal an e-mail sent by Jesse Rosenblum, president of the ZOA’s Orange County chapter, to ZOA National President Mort Klein on Nov. 18, in which Rosenblum informed Klein that he had resigned his position as chapter president on Nov. 12, and that the chapter had subsequently passed a motion to disband.

When contacted on Nov. 19, Rosenblum declined to comment, and Drimer said he had no knowledge of the chapter’s having disbanded.

ZOA fires L.A. director Orit Arfa Read More »

Life in Southern Israel on hold during Gaza situation

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

Two weeks ago, Noami Cohen and Uzi Madar had a traditional engagement party for Jews from Arab countries called a “hina.” They dressed in colorful costumes, danced and partied with 120 of their friends. They were looking forward to their wedding and were expecting 500 guests.

But one day before the wedding scheduled to be held at the Agamim hall in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, Israel killed Hamas military commander Ahmed Al-Jabari. Soon afterwards, rockets began landing throughout the south of Israel. The phone started ringing – was the wedding on or not?

“The Israeli Home Front Command (in charge during conflict) said we could go ahead with the wedding but we could only have up to 100 people,” Naomi, 23, told The Media Line. “I’m getting married once in my life, and I don’t want to make it smaller or be afraid during it.”

So Naomi and Uzi postponed the wedding. They went on Facebook and made dozens of phone calls. Relatives from Tunisia and France who had come for the wedding turned around and went home. The hall, the flowers, the DJ, and the honeymoon in the southern resort town of Eilat were all cancelled.

“I just couldn’t stop crying,” Naomi said. “I just feel so bad. Now, I have to start planning all over again. I waited for this so long, and then, boom, it’s just gone.”

Her fiancé Uzi, 27, who works for the army, said he watched the clock on Thursday night.

“Right now I was supposed to be breaking the glass, (a traditional Jewish custom to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD),” he remembers thinking. “It’s very depressing. We planned this for a whole year and then we couldn’t do it.”

Hundreds of weddings and other celebrations have been cancelled all over the south Israel – the region of the country most frequently targeted by Hamas rockets. Throughout the rest of the country, even when events have been held as scheduled, guests who live in the southern area have cancelled, afraid to be out driving when a missile hits.

“Everything has been cancelled since Thursday,” Shalom Gibli, the owner of the Agamim wedding hall, told The Media Line. “Usually we make people happy, and it’s always happy here, but now it isn’t. I told most of my workers to stay home.”

Agamim has two halls – one that can seat 1000 guests, and the other 500. Both are normally full every night, he says, and sometimes during the day as well for circumcision parties or other events. Gibli estimates he has already lost almost $200,000 in income. He says that even though legally he can charge Naomi and Uzi one-third of what they should have paid, his conscience won’t let him take any money.

But even without the wedding hall, Naomi and Uzi are already out thousands of dollars.

“We have to make new invitations, and we had already cooked a lot for the special Sabbath meals after the wedding,” Naomi said. “We will have to pay a cancellation charge on the honeymoon. We can’t get the DJ we booked so we’ll have to take someone more expensive. I cried for six hours on Thursday.”

Naomi lives in Moshav Zimrat, a small farming community just a few miles from the Gaza Strip. She says she hears the booms of rockets sent from Gaza exploding daily as well as Israel’s return air strikes.

“I don’t remember being as scared in my whole life as I was this past week,” she said. “I had to leave the house after being inside for almost a week – I was going crazy.”

She said her two-year-old niece is terrified every time the warning siren goes off. She freezes and is unable to move. Naomi says she lives in an old house and there is no reinforced room as is required in newer homes. She and her family go to an inside room when they hear the sirens.

Naomi says she’s tired of living with uncertainty, and Israel must strike hard against Hamas in Gaza.

“We’ve been living like this for too long,” she told The Media Line. “We have to deter them once and for all. We should cut off electricity and food. This is our country.”

She and Uzi have not yet set a new wedding date. She says she couldn’t bear to cancel a second time and will wait until the fighting ends before she gets married.

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Funding kidney research

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Entertainment lawyer Ken Kleinberg was hospitalized for five weeks when he became seriously ill in 1999. His doctors eventually diagnosed him with kidney disease, but they couldn’t find a cause.

“It was the eve of the millennium and I thought: How is it we do not understand this?” said Kleinberg, whose clients include Jack Nicholson, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

An aggressive recurrence a year later nearly killed Kleinberg, forcing him back into the hospital for 13 weeks. At one point, medication damaged his skin as well as his white blood cells. 

During weeks spent in medical isolation, he thought, “If I recover from this, I will make sure to advance this research.”

Kleinberg, 70, made good on his promise in 2002. Working with Dr. Vito M. Campese, professor and chief of the division of nephrology and hypertension at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, he founded the University Kidney Research Organization (UKRO) to support medical research that prevents, treats and cures kidney disease. He currently serves as its president and director.

The American Society of Nephrology indicates that more than 80,000 people die each year from chronic kidney disease (CKD), making it America’s ninth leading cause of death. There are more than 20 million Americans — one in 10 adults — with some form of CKD, a condition that leads to reduced kidney function over time, and many are unaware they have it, according to the National Institutes of Health’s National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse.

Current treatment for CKD involves either transplant or dialysis. Both are costly and pose risks for the patient. Dialysis can replace only about 10 to 15 percent of the kidneys’ filtering capacity, and two-thirds of dialysis patients have a life expectancy of less than five years, according to the American Society of Nephrology.

Campese says that that even after transplants, patients must take expensive immunosuppressant drugs to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new kidneys, and they are sometimes hospitalized to prevent and treat possible complications. Statistics from the Congressional Kidney Caucus show that Medicare spends $106,373 per patient in the first year of a kidney transplant and $16,844 annually thereafter. 

Dr. Vito M. Campese

Still, treatments for kidney disease today are much better than they were in the past, and Kleinberg says knowing how much treatment has improved recently has made him a firm believer in current medical research. 

The first successful use of dialysis in treating kidney disease occurred during World War II. In the 1960s, most communities still did not have dialysis machines, and those that did formed committees to decide which patients would receive access to the limited number of machines. Now there are several major suppliers of dialysis machines to the United States, and patients can do dialysis from home with more effective and less expensive machines.

“As a result of these changes, [kidney disease] was no longer a death sentence, but a chronic illness,” Kleinberg said.

However, in many cases, such as Kleinberg’s, the cause of CKD remains unclear, and no cure exists besides transplantation. To encourage scientific research for kidney disease, UKRO gives seed grants to new projects in order to gather data necessary to qualify for larger grants. In 2010, UKRO granted $60,000 each to three special projects, one of which studies how small interfering RNA affects renal failure and hypertension.

Kleinberg says that donors to kidney foundations sometimes think their money will go to research when in fact it funds other activities, such as awareness campaigns.

“There is a lot of misinformation about who is doing research,” he said.

In the United States, diabetes and obesity are responsible for 70 percent of kidney ailments. Inherited conditions, injuries, infections and drugs can also damage the kidneys. Kleinberg says people with kidney disease often are unaware they have it. 

“They call [kidney disease] a silent killer, because all the sudden your whole internal system goes bad,” he said.

UKRO CFO Ronald Taubman experienced renal failure and was on dialysis for about 10 years after living for more than 40 years with Type 1 diabetes. (Fluctuating blood sugar levels associated with diabetes erodes kidney function.)

“Dialysis is a godsend, but there are many people who just do not survive on dialysis,” he said. “It is very hard on the body.”

Taubman nearly died twice during his years on dialysis, and long stretches of time spent with a needle in his arm led to infections. He slipped into a 10-day coma when his brain swelled. 

“Kidney transplants usually last for only eight years on average,” Taubman said. 

In Kleinberg’s case, there were emotional challenges in addition to the medical concerns when he underwent a successful kidney transplant in 2007. 

“Even after someone receives a transplant, the kidney can fail,” Kleinberg said. “I was afraid to accept a transplant from my family.” 

Ronald Taubman

He did not think he could live with the guilt if he asked one of his children to give up one of their kidneys and his body destroyed it. Eventually, a transplant became available.

Kleinberg, who still doesn’t know what led to his kidney disease more than a decade ago, is optimistic about the current discussions about health among public leaders. 

“You see the first lady making children’s nutrition a priority, and it is becoming socially important to do certain things … like stopping kids from drinking soft drinks, and removing the amount of salt and sugar in foods and removing artificial enhancements from food, which are certainly not good for the body. All this is coming of age right now.”

He’s optimistic about the future of kidney disease research. Stem cells appear to be a particularly promising area of kidney research, Kleinberg said. In the future, patients with CKD might be able to use their own stem cells to grow new kidneys that will be perfect matches for their bodies, bypassing the need for antirejection drugs. 

“They have grown a bladder from stem cells and have done work in correcting heart valves, but the kidney is large and complex,” he said. “It is a matter of time, money and effort. … Eyes, hearts, and brains are more difficult, but eventually they will get there. This is the reason why I felt the need to start a research organization.”

To learn about kidney disease, prevention, treatment and current research, visit ukrocharity.org.

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