Rocket attacks on Sderot significantly increased the number of miscarriages that occurred in women from the southern Israeli city, according to a new study.
The number of miscarriages likely was increased because of the rise in stress, including the release of too much cortisol, a stress hormone, wrote Tamar Wainstock and Professor Ilana Shoham-Vardi of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Department of Epidemiology, Faculty of Health Sciences.
The study was published this month in the latest issue of Psychosomatic Medicine Journal of Bio-Behavioral Medicine.
It compared miscarriages, called spontaneous abortions, or SA in the report, in women from Sderot and Kiryat Gat, two southern cities, between April 2004 to Dec. 27, 2008, when Operation Cast Lead broke out. At that point, Kiryat Gat also came under rocket fire.
All but seven of the 1,132 women from Sderot included in the study had never experienced a siren during or six months prior to conception.
“The findings demonstrate a significantly increased risk of SA among women exposed to potentially life-threatening situations for a prolonged period, both before and during pregnancy, compared with women of similar demographic characteristics who were not exposed to missile-attack alarms or missile attacks,” according to the report.
In what seems like an annual compulsion, the writers of The Oscars telecast routinely include jokes about Jews to remind everybody in the industry — and everybody watching – that Jews indeed “rule” in Hollywood (whatever that imprecise measure of power means).
But for some in the Jewish establishment, this is akin to a crime. Talk of Jewish power is asur, forbidden. If it exists, it should be secret. Therefore the historic and enduring Jewish presence in Hollywood is publicly regarded as “myth,” a “falsity,” a “stereotype,” and should not be construed as fact. It is dangerous — much too dangerous – even to joke about.
Take for example, this year’s big Jewish Oscar joke which came courtesy of host Seth MacFarlane. It was delivered by the actor Mark Wahlberg and his snuggly-looking, smut-talking sidekick stuffed-bear, Ted, both of whom appeared in MacFarlane’s summer sleeper hit, “Ted” which grossed more than $500 million at the box office. Their whippy repartee not only mocked Jewish power in Hollywood, it provided a criterion for getting into the club: a Jewish-sounding name (duh) and a philanthropic commitment to Israel.
Here is a partial transcript of their conversation:
Ted: Look at all this talent, all this talent in one spot. There’s Daniel Day-Lewis… there’s Alan Arkin… there’s Joaquin Phoenix. And you know what’s interesting? All those actors I just named are part-Jewish.
Mark Wahlberg: Oh. Ok.
Ted: What about you? You got a ‘berg’ at the end of your name. Are you Jewish?
Wahlberg: Am I Jewish? No, actually, I’m Catholic.
Ted: (whispering) Wrong Answer. Try again.
Wahlberg: What?
Ted: (still whispering) Do you want to work in this town or dontcha? (to audience) That’s interesting, Mark, because I am Jewish.
Wahlberg: No you’re not.
Ted: I am. I am. I was born Theodore Shapiro and I would like to donate money to Israel and continue to work in Hollywood forever. Thank you, I’m Jewish.
Wahlberg: You’re an idiot.
Ted: Yeah, well, we’ll see who the idiot is when they give me a private plane at the next secret synagogue meeting.
On the surface, this exchange seems entirely unoriginal. Quips about Jewish last names, support for Israel, “secret synagogue meetings” and the like are hardly new to the canon of comedy drawn from anti-Semitic tropes. But the sketch nonetheless elicited the usual defensive outcries.
Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (and self-appointed tribal arbiter of Jewish humor) condemned the sketch as “not remotely funny.” “It only reinforces stereotypes which legitimize anti-Semitism,” he wrote in a statement. “For the insiders at the Oscars this kind of joke is obviously not taken seriously. But when one considers the global audience of the Oscars of upwards of two billion people… there’s a much higher potential for the ‘Jews control Hollywood’ myth to be accepted as fact.”
Dear me, what a horrible blight that would be on the perception of Jews worldwide. Especially since most people consider the Jewish reputation so pristine!
As Foxman pointed out, this is not the first time MacFarlane has poked fun at Jewish power. Last Fall, MacFarlane placed a “For Your Consideration” ad in Deadline.com’s Emmy Awards print supplement, Awardsline. “Come on you bloated, over-privileged Brentwood Jews. Let us into your little club,” it read, just above an image of Peter Griffin, the character voiced by MacFarlane on “Family Guy.”
It was a plea, not a provocation. But apparently it can be quite confusing to discern between diverting and disdainful. Though there must be some value in distinction; not all contexts are created equal.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, sees little difference between joking about Jewish power or simply stating it. “When Marlon Brando said [something about Jewish power in Hollywood] on the Larry King Show several years ago, there was widespread criticism throughout Hollywood for those remarks, for which Brando profusely apologized,” Hier said in a statement released on Monday.
“But the Oscars are not Larry King,” he added. No, indeed they are not; the Oscars are an entertainment centered around movies, and Larry King at least presented his show as a serious news enterprise.
“Every comedian is entitled to wide latitude, but no one should get a free pass for helping to promote anti-Semitism,” Hier argued.
He’s not actually all wrong. For those inclined to dislike Jews, the idea that they are powerful in Hollywood – meaning, I guess, funny, creative, talented, successful, rich, populous, award-winning and in possession of top-jobs – will probably not prove endearing to their detractors. Haters, after all, are going to hate. Should Hollywood’s Jews deflect negative attention by pretending they are powerless? Does AIPAC feign weakness in Washington?
A deeper read of MacFarlane’s Jewish joke underscores other, worthier reasons for public fascination. Its unoriginality for one, was actually striking this year: The Oscars are nothing if not traditional, so even though it was utterly in character for the show to play to redundant, conventional tropes (“Jews control Hollywood: Surprise!”), it seemed to ignore a shift happening elsewhere with erstwhile sacred cows.
Take Israel, for example. The assumption of industry-wide support for Israel intimated in MacFarlane’s sketch is perhaps unsurprising. It even seems obvious considering Hollywood’s founding, its history and current Academy demography – which, according to a 2012 study conducted by the L.A. Times consists mostly of white men at a median age of 62, many of whom are presumed to be Jewish though, oddly, the Times did not account for ethnicity or religion. Still, it is an interesting choice, in 2013, to kid about support for Israel at a time when Hollywood’s presumed liberal values appear in conflict with Israeli behavior.
Of the two Israel-focused documentaries nominated for Oscars this year, itself a considerable feat, neither paints a pretty portrait. The Israeli-Palestinian co-production “5 Broken Cameras” is one Palestinian man’s account of life in a West Bank village, where he is both witness to and victim of horrors at Israeli hands. In “The Gatekeepers” each of the living former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, unanimously regret and condemn Israel’s continued occupation of the West Bank.
Neither film won the Oscar, of course. But the very same Jewish academy members who “donate money to Israel,” as Ted so illustratively put it, also voted this dual nomination onto the ballot. With their irrefutably provocative positions towards Israel, the impulse to recognize these particular movies evinces a deepening awareness (and an implicit acknowledgment) of Israel’s faults and flaws.
The inconvenient truth for traditionalists is that many of today’s Hollywood Jews are feeling far more comfortable in their Jewish skins than ever before. There is far more freedom and nuance in expressing Jewish characters, talking about Israel, and embracing the legacy of profuse Jewish power than in years past. It’s even become a bit of a joke.
Jews in Hollywood understand this; so do the industry’s non-Jews, like MacFarlane. It is simply a minority of old-time Jews with the loudest mics who see offense where most find humor. Seth MacFarlane isn’t poking fun at Jews because he’s anti-Semitic. He’s poking fun at Jews out of the seriously comic irony that in Hollywood, he is the outsider. If MacFarlane has no trouble owning the truth of Jewish accomplishment, why can’t we?
Sheldon Adelson sued a Wall Street Journal reporter for libel for calling him “foul-mouthed.”
The lawsuit filed on Feb. 22 seeks “damages, including aggravated, exemplary and special damages,” for a December article co-written by Kate O'Keeffe. Only O’Keefe is named in the suit, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
“We will vigorously defend Ms. O'Keeffe in this lawsuit,” said a Wall Street Journal spokeswoman, declining to comment further.
Last August, Adelson sued the National Jewish Democratic Council for defamation after the organization quoted news reports alleging that he had approved of prostitution at his properties in Macau, China. The suit has not been settled.
Dov Hikind apologized after coming under criticism for dressing up in blackface for Purim.
“I'm sorry people were offended,” Hikind said Monday at a press conference outside his Flatbush home, according to the New York Daily News. “In hindsight, I should have picked something else. It never crossed my mind for a split second that I was doing something wrong.”
A photo of Hikind dressed in a black wig and wearing dark makeup had been posted on Facebook. He is flanked by his wife, dressed as a demon, and son, who is sporting yin-yang facial makeup.
“I am deeply shocked and outraged by the insensitive actions of Assemblyman Hikind, to dress as a black basketball player complete with tanned skin and an Afro wig,” said Hikind's fellow Brooklyn Democratic Assemblyman Karim Camara, the chairman of the New York State Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic and Asian Legislative Caucus, in a statement picked up by various New York media.
The Anti-Defamation League blasted Hikind's costume as showing “terrible judgement.”
“There are so many myriad costumes available to Jewish kids and adults during Purim, but putting on blackface should not be one of them,” Abraham Foxman, ADL's national director, said in a statement. “This is especially true for a politician living in an environment where ridicule and prejudice of African-Americans has a long and sad history.”
Also questioning the photo was Deborah Glick, an assemblywoman from Manhattan, who was quoted by the New York Times as saying the photo was “beyond offensive.”
Earlier, Hikind wrote on his blog that the criticism was “political correctness to the absurd.”
Hikind is a leading pro-Israel Democrat in New York who has at times sided with Republicans and slammed President Obama on Israel policy.
Last week, he slammed fashion designer John Galliano, who had apologized for past anti-Semitic outbursts, for “mocking” hasidic Jews when he was photographed in Manhattan wearing a fedora and a long coat.
In the ” target=”_blank”>International Women’s Day was celebrated in 1909. By 1911, over a million people demonstrated worldwide to promote equal rights for women. Nothing compared to that momentum of international scale until the One Billion Rising campaign organized by global movement V-Day on their 15th anniversary this year. V-Day is a global activist movement founded by playwright and activist Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues. The numbers aren’t out yet, but there were One Billion Rising events throughout the world on February 14, 2013, including several in Los Angeles. Women and men rose up to demand an end to violence against women through speaking, performing, dancing, and writing.
In marking the time between V-Day and International Women’s Day, I think it’s time to remind ourselves of the reasons why it’s still just as important as ever to demand an end to violence against women. According to ” target=”_blank”>International Violence Against Women survey, a comparative survey of 30 countries from all continents whose findings were published in 2008.The survey clearly proves that violence against women occurs all over the world, against women of all ages and economic groups:
• Between 35-60% of women in the surveyed countries have experienced violence by a man during their lifetime.
• Between 22-40% have experienced intimate partner violence during their lifetime.
• Less than one third of women reported their experience of violence to the police, and women are more likely to report stranger violence than intimate partner violence.
• About one fourth of victimized women did not talk to anyone about their experiences.
The goals of commemorative days like International Women’s Day and V-Day are to remind us that women have yet to achieve full equality, respect, and freedom from violence and to promote the sharing of experiences between women and with men worldwide. I encourage you to use the time between now and March 8th to intentionally share these statistics and the definition of “violence against women” with people in your own community and to find your own creative ways to call for an end to violence against women.
No one sends out press releases to announce that something is not anti-semitic.
That’s why this morning’s media is full of reports that host Seth MacFarlane’s Oscar performance last night was just shy of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech.
The Anti-Defamation League was first out of the gate, calling MacFarlane, “offensive and not remotely funny” — which in and of itself is funny, the idea that the ADL is not just the arbiter of anti-semitism, but of humor.
Then came a press release from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, seeing the ADL’s umbrage and raising it to world-historical levels.
“It is unfortunate that at a time when anti-Semitism is so prevalent throughout the world,” said the Center, “that Seth MacFarlane used the pulpit of the Oscars, before an audience of more than a billion people to contribute to the myth that Jews own Hollywood.”
I found these reactions more annoying than MacFarlane’s comments, which varied from the very funny to the remotely funny, but never came close to anti-semitism.
Seth MacFarlane was joking. He was poking fun. He was mocking the widespread understanding that Jews are disproportionately represented in the entertainment business. This fact comes as a shock to exactly no one, and the idea that joking about it “feeds” anti-semitism misunderstands both the nature of humor and of anti-semitism.
One thing humor does well, even better than press releases, is difuse prejudice. It does that through mockery, exaggeration and sometimes by just bringing prejudice to light. That explains everything from Charlie Chaplain in “The Great Dictator” to Sascha Barron Cohen’s character of Borat, who got hundreds of Arizonans at a rodeo to sing the “famous” Kazhakstan folksong, “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” Cohen wasn’t out to whip up Jew-hatred, he was out to expose human — hmm, what’s the word? — stupidity.
MacFarlane doesn’t really believe you have to change your name or give to Israel to make it in Hollywood, he was riffing on the simplistic belief that that’s all it takes.
Billy Crystal could make a dozen Jewish references at the Oscars and no one would do anything but kvell. Granted, MacFarlane’s humor is more in-your-face — but it goes nowhere that Crystal, or Adam Sandler in his “Chanuka Song,” or Lenny Bruce in his Jewish/Gentile rift, or a hundred other comedians, haven’t gone before.
So why the outrage? Maybe because against the backdrop of increasing anti-semitism in Europe and elsewhere, Jews are extra sensitive. Maybe because an older generation of Jews is unfamiliar with a newer brand of Family Guy/South Park humor. Even Amy Davidson, writing on the New Yorker blog, took offense — this from a magazine whose editor David Remnick once wrote a much-deserved, flattering profile of Howard Stern. Stern's brand of satire paved the way for comedians like MacFarlane.
Or maybe the outrage arises because Jews are still uncomfortable with the notion of being powerful. But here's the fact: Jews are disproportionately represented in Hollywood. The Jewish state has over 200 nuclear weapons and a hegemony of power in the Middle East. Jews are also disproportionately represented in government, finance, law, publishing and medicine. Only Jews can read these factual statements and think, Oy! I often wonder if our instinct to cringe and keep quiet, to not publicly own our power, as a self-help guru might put it, is also a way of avoiding having to think about what the responsibilities of that power are, what our true potential is, and what it means to be both Jewish and powerful.
The ADL and the Simon Wiesenthal Center not only miss the humor, they are missing the opportunity. MacFarlane’s jokes, like all good comedy can get people thinking, can open a conversation: Why are Jews so prevalent in Hollywood? How does their Jewish identity inform their creative choices? How would Hollywood look if it were composed, disproportionately, of WASPs, or Thais, or anti-semites?
Hollywood is one of the Jews' greatest gifts to the world — why else would 2 billion people tune in to see “Lincoln” get robbed of Best Picture? There is nothing to hide, and plenty to joke about.
Rob Eshman is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Jewish Journal. You can follow him on Twitter @foodaism.
Masked Palestinian gunmen fired in the air on Monday as thousands marched at the West Bank funeral of a prisoner whose death in an Israeli jail has raised fears in Israel of a new uprising.
Arafat Jaradat's death on Saturday and a hunger strike by four other Palestinian inmates have raised tension in the West Bank after repeated clashes between stone-throwers and Israeli soldiers in recent days.
Israeli troops, on high alert, took up positions outside Jaradat's home village of Se'eer, in earshot of bursts of automatic fire from the half-dozen masked Palestinians in full battle dress.
“We sacrifice our souls and blood for you, our martyr!” mourners chanted.
In confrontations with stone-throwers elsewhere in the West Bank, Israeli soldiers wounded at least six Palestinians. Doctors said some of the injuries were gunshot wounds, though the army said it used non-lethal weapons only.
The scenes were reminiscent of the Intifada, Arabic for uprising, that started in 2000 after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks failed. A previous Intifada, in 1987-1993, led to interim accords and limited Palestinian self-rule.
Israeli Civil Defence Minister Avi Dichter, former chief of the Shin Bet intelligence service, warned that a new uprising may start if confrontations with protesters turned deadly.
The Israeli military said dozens of Palestinians had thrown stones at soldiers in various parts of the West Bank on Monday. Troops responded with teargas and stun grenades, the army said.
“The previous two Intifadas … came about as a result of a high number of dead (during protests),” Dichter told Israel Radio. “Fatalities are almost a proven recipe for a sharper escalation.”
With Palestinian protests in the West Bank increasing in frequency in recent months, and Israeli crackdowns often causing casualties, both sides worry about a wider eruption of violence.
Masked Palestinian gunmen atop a roof during the funeral of Arafat Jaradat in the West Bank village of Se'eer, near Hebron, on Feb. 25. Photo by Darren Whiteside/Reuters
THROWING STONES
Jaradat, 30, was arrested a week ago for throwing stones at Israeli cars in the West Bank.
Palestinian officials said he had died after being tortured in prison. But Israel said an autopsy carried out in the presence of a Palestinian coroner was inconclusive and that injuries such as broken ribs could have been caused by efforts to revive Jaradat.
Robert Serry, the U.N. coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called for “an independent and transparent investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Jaradat's death, the results of which should be made public as soon as possible”.
“The United Nations is closely monitoring the situation on the ground where mounting tensions present a real risk of destabilisation,” Serry's office said in a statement.
Palestinian frustration has been fuelled by Israel's settlement expansion in the West Bank, peace negotiations in limbo since 2010 and a rift between President Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority and the armed Islamists of Hamas who run Gaza and reject coexistence with the Jewish state.
“We have no choice but to continue the popular resistance and escalate it in the face of the occupation, whether it be the army or the settlers,” Mahmoud Aloul, a senior member of Abbas's Fatah movement, told Reuters.
In Se'eer, local merchant Abu Issa, 45, said he was unsure whether what he described as Palestinian opposition to Israeli occupation would lead to an uprising.
“One day the Palestinian people will take a stand, but I don't know if that day is today,” he said.
Abbas has said he will not allow a third armed Intifada.
“The Israelis want chaos… We will not allow them to drag us into it and to mess with the lives of our children and our youth,” Abbas told reporters in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
TREAD CAREFULLY
Dichter said Israel had to tread carefully in dealing with protests, accusing the Palestinians of trying to portray themselves as victims before U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to the region next month.
“I don't think the Palestinian Authority will gain from an Intifada, just as it didn't achieve anything from the first or second Intifadas,” he said.
“But I would say that, after conducting themselves with poor and warped thinking over the years, they don't always recognise what's in their best interests.”
Israel demanded on Sunday that the Palestinian Authority curb the protests, many of which have taken place in areas outside the Authority's jurisdiction.
“They (the Palestinians) are trying to drag us to a situation where there will be dead children,” Dichter said.
Palestinians have rallied to the cause of the four hunger-strikers, two of whom are being held without trial on suspicion of anti-Israeli activity.
Some 4,700 Palestinians are in Israeli jails and Palestinians see them as heroes in a struggle for statehood.
The death of any of the hunger-strikers, one of whom has been refusing food, off and on, for more than 200 days, would likely lead to more widespread violence.
Israel killed more than 4,500 Palestinians in the second Intifada, and more than 1,000 Israelis were also killed, half of them in Palestinian suicide attacks mostly against civilians.
Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Louise Ireland
President Barack Obama urged state governors on Feb. 25 to pressure Congress to prevent $85 billion in across-the-board government spending cuts from going into effect on March 1, saying he is willing to reach a compromise with Republicans.
But the president gave no indication that he would try to start negotiations or take steps to blunt the effect of the cuts. He bemoaned what he described as a confrontational atmosphere in Washington, where budget battles have provoked one near crisis after another since the summer of 2011.
“Some people in Congress reflexively oppose any idea I put forward,” he said before a meeting with governors at the White House.
Officials in his administration continued a week-long effort to portray what they describe as the dire consequences of the cuts to popular programs.
The latest warning came from Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who said the cuts — known as a “sequestration” — threatened to slow research on cancer and Alzheimer's disease, and development of a new flu vaccine, among other things.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have scheduled a brief news conference for 4 p.m. EST on Monday to discuss the cuts, but they are not expected to announce any new initiatives, according to a senior House Republican aide.
“Congress is poised to allow a series of arbitrary automatic budget cuts to kick in that will slow our economy, eliminate jobs and leave a lot of folks who are already pretty thinly stretched scrambling to figure what do,” the president told the governors on Monday.
With the deadline drawing closer, Obama asked the governors, who are in Washington for their annual meeting, to persuade Congress to come to terms with the administration and break a stalemate over taxes and spending.
“While you are in town, I hope you will speak with your congressional delegation and remind them in no uncertain terms exactly what is at stake,” the president said. “These cuts do not have to happen. Congress can turn them off any time with just a little bit of compromise.”
The White House has sought to highlight in recent weeks in stark terms the disruptions that would result if the $85 billion in spending cuts go into effect as scheduled March 1.
Obama has asked Congress to buy more time for a broad budget deal with a short-term measure that boosts revenues by ending some tax breaks that benefit the wealthiest Americans.
But congressional Republicans have rejected his call for more tax revenues, saying their agreement in early January to let taxes rise for those earning above $450,000 a year was the only concession they are willing to make in the form of higher taxes.
Republicans have long sought deep government spending cuts, and while the sequestration was originally designed to be so harsh that it would force both sides to compromise, many lawmakers appear ready to let them go into effect.
Senate Democrats have put forward a plan that focuses on those tax loopholes, and this week Republicans are expected to propose alternatives.
A Palestinian wounded in a clash with Israeli soldiers and settlers near the Palestinian West Bank city of Nablus was taken for treatment to Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem.
Hilmi Hasan, 27, was wounded by gunfire several days ago and taken to a hospital in Nablus for treatment. Doctors at the hospital realized that they could not treat Hasan and asked Hadassah Hospital to handle his case. On Monday, he was in the intensive care unit at Hadassah and in severe but stable condition.
According to reports, Hasan is the first patient from Nablus to be treated at Hadassah Hospital, which is 40 miles away.
Senior Hadassah anesthesiologist Micha Shamir traveled to Nablus and accompanied Hasan back to Hadassah. Some local residents protested Shamir’s arrival but did not otherwise threaten him.
“It was a bit unpleasant, but at no time were we under any real threat,” said Shamir, according to a news release. “We were guarded by so many policemen and security people.”
