Improving on a HHD Mitzvah
The High Holy Days are rapidly approaching, and with it the annual appeal by “>Religious and Reform Facebook page to see additional photos and behind-the-scenes comments, and Improving on a HHD Mitzvah Read More »
Craig Taubman Takes on Wilshire Blvd. Temple Critics
A heated Facebook debate has broken out over whether the $120 – $150 million rennovation of Wilshire Blvd. Temple in Los Angeles is worth it.
A front page “>here), but it is definitely, judging by the numbers on Facebook, in the minority.
To quote Rabbi Savenor: What do you think?
Craig Taubman Takes on Wilshire Blvd. Temple Critics Read More »
Well-Behaved Jews at the Hollywood Bowl
By the time Itzhak Perlman and Cantor Yitzhak Meir Helfgot took the stage at the Hollywood Bowl Tuesday night, the 16,000 seat amphitheatre was nearly packed.
If you were Jewish, it was friends and neighbors night. There was so much schmoozing and waving, it was easy to mistake the concert for a day in synagogue.
“This counts for Rosh Hashanah,” one woman told me. “This is instead of going the first day.”
It kind of was. Cantor Helfgot is the virtuoso tenor at the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. He is Orthodox, but no-kidding-around Orthodox, with the beard, the full black coat and tails, a large black kipa. How religious is he? He is just 44, and already a grandfather.
Perlman is Perlman. Yo Yo Ma. Schindlers List. Every symphony orchestra in the world. And, on occasion, klezmer.
The two were accompanied by members of the Klezmer Conservatory Orchestra, led by Hankus Netsky.
Netsky’s not young, but he is far younger than many if not most of the people in the audience. Years ago he took it upon his shoulders to revive and perform the Yiddish repertoire. With Perlman he created the album “Eternal Echoes,” on which the concert was based.
The concert was a blend of klezmer and liturgical music, Romanian dances and Psalms. The shabbas before the wedding, and the party after.
The klezmer was raucous, the crowd was subdued. Maybe it was the classical setting, the members of the L.A. Phil—Perlman called them his “classical mishpocha”—seated in stolid order on the stage. Maybe it was the jarring shifts between party music and prayers. Whatever it was, this was an audience of well-behaved Jews.
They didn’t dance in the aisles. They didn’t stand and dance in their seats. There was no between song toasts with schnapps, no smell of garlic and schmaltz in the air, no sweat, no stomping and no shouts. The music of the shtetl had made it to the big time, and so have we.
Instead of banquet tables of kichel and herring, there were picnic baskets of chicken breast and white wine. If Cantor Helfgot waved his hands to get the crowd clapping, they followed, but then soon stopped. The audiencesat, and listened, and applauded when each song was over.
The English translations of the Yiddish and Hebrew words appeared on the giant screens, turning them into the world’s most convenient prayer books.
I couldn’t help but think back to the composers and lyricists of these songs, the original players and singers, half-crazed, half-starved dreamers in their desperate villages, pouring their souls into the music, filling each note with the yearning for safety, for Zion, for salvation, for a meal. Men whose souls burned as bright as the full moon above the Bowl, who would have danced across the chairs, and grabbed and kissed the beautiful clarinetist, in her bright red dress.
But we are well-behaved now, polite. We laughed as Perlman kibitzed.
Netsky described one tune as particularly “catchy.”
“Did you say ‘catchy’ or ‘kvetchy’?” Perlman asked.
“Catchy and kvetchy describes a lot of Jewish music,” Netsky shot back.
The klezmer was catchy, but it didn’t catch. Somewhere between Poland and the Hollywood Hills, we settled down.
Cantor Helfgot's voice was transcendent, but few seemed to be transported—no tears, no “Oys! No cries of joy.
They ended with “My Yiddishe Mama,” and there was applause, but already people were heading for their cars in the neatly stacked parking. Perlman, who arrived on stage in an electric scooter, stayed seated in it throughout the performance. During teh final applause he made no pretense of driving off and then back on. With a bit of wicked humor, he told the crowd to imagine there had just been eight curtain calls, and the musicians would consent to an encore.
Then the cantor sang, “Adir Hu” in Hebrew. The English translation flashed on the screen– Rebuild Your house speedily, he sang– as people began heading home.
Well-Behaved Jews at the Hollywood Bowl Read More »
August 21, 2013
The US
Headline: Untangling the fate of U.S. aid to Egypt
To Read: Aaron David Miller explains how Obama's Egypt policy actually makes perfect sense-
You may think the Middle East is a mess and Obama's approach a complete muddle. But I bet you, given his domestic priorities and where he thinks the American public is on these issues, he doesn't. Whatever the president is worrying about these days (and there's no shortage of troubles), I'd be surprised if he's tossing and turning at night over Egypt and Syria. Governing is about choosing, and for now the president has made his choices clear.
Quote: “Syria today is not about choosing between two sides but rather about choosing one among many sides. It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote their interests and ours when the balance shifts in their favor. Today, they are not”, General Dempsey describing the US' current attitude toward the Syrian Rebels in a letter to Congressman Engel.
Number: 7, here's a nice list of seven governments which the CIA has overthrown.
Israel
Headline: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators hold unannounced Jerusalem meetings
To Read: Bethany Mendel writes about Jewish professionals who support the BDS movement-
There’s a disturbing trend that seems to be emerging in the professional Jewish community: Jewish professionals, working for organizations that receive millions of dollars from stalwart defenders of the State of Israel, are increasingly becoming apathetic of and even sympathetic to the anti-Semitic BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel) movement. Despite the claim that the movement is aimed solely at “correcting” the behavior of the State of Israel against its Palestinian neighbors, the reality of what they advocate is pure bigotry, something they accuse Israelis of on a daily basis. When individuals are boycotted due solely to their nationality (which is tied to their religion in the case of Israel), not their actions, that is not a valid form of protest. Despite this, we’ve seen several recent instances of Jewish organizations and individuals that work at them engaging the BDS movement in destructive ways.
Quote: “Israel looks more or less like Switzerland during World War II, when all of Europe burned and Switzerland stayed neutral. [Except] we’re not Switzerland, [because] there is enmity against us in this Middle East”, International Relations and Strategic Affairs Minister, Yuval Steinitz, describing Israel's role in the midst of the regional turmoil.
Number: 182,000, the number of Israeli children who have been vaccinated for polio thus far as part of the national vaccination campaign.
The Middle East
Headline: 'Chemical attacks' near Damascus
To Read: Rich Lowry thinks that the Brotherhood supporters' assault on Coptic Christians shows how important it is that the Islamist movement doesn't regain power-
The militants have the same nihilistic spirit as the Taliban destroyers of the ancient Buddha statues in Afghanistan in 2001, the same poisonous arguments as anti-Semitic propagandists in every time and every place and the same sectarian intent as Slobodan Milosevic on the cusp of his ethnic-cleansing campaigns of the 1990s.
If there were any doubt that the Muslim Brotherhood couldn’t be trusted with power, the wanton hate of its rampaging backers in the wake of its ouster should remove it.
Quote: “Egypt went with the Russian military for support and we survived. So, there is no end to life. You can live with different circumstances… We need the US as much as the US needs us”, interim Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi stating that Egypt will survive without US aid.
Number: 36, the number of Egyptian prisoners who were brutally suffocated to death by the Egyptian police.
The Jewish World
Headline: Egyptian Jews: We support military’s fight against ‘terrorism’
To Read: A new book draws comparisons between Socratic dialogues and the methods of the Talmud-
Jenny Labendz’s firstling presents us with many intriguing perspectives, of which only a few could be mentioned here. Through successive close readings of a small set of texts, she manages to open up a remarkable room for discussion. By utilizing some of the vast research on Platonic dialogue, Labendz unleashes fascinating questions about the apparently “Socratic” dialogues found in rabbinic literature. Did the rabbis have a notion of eliciting knowledge from people? Did they believe that there is something to gain intellectually from fellow humans without a rabbinic background? Was the ability to engage complete Others in conversation valued? To what extent are these dialogues didactic, and are they designed to educate others or only the rabbis themselves? What does this particular literary form do for the audience? What can we learn from them about rabbinic epistemology?
Quote: “The new law tramples on the rights of mental health therapists to engage freely in their profession, and it unfairly denies teenagers seeking therapy for issues that are troubling them the ability to obtain professional help”, The Haredi Orthodox Agudath Israel of America condemning a New Jersey law prohibiting gay “reparative” therapy for minors.
Number: 1, the number of German Chancellors who have visited the Dachau concentration camp.
The Anti-Judaism Exchange, Part 3: Is Anti-Zionism a Form of Anti-Judaism?
David Nirenberg is the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor of Medieval History and Social Thought at the University of Chicago, where he is also director of the Neubauer Family Collegium for Culture and Society. This Exchange focuses on Professor Nirenberg's critically acclaimed book Anti-Judaism:The Western Tradition (W.W Norton, 2013).
(Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.)
Dear David,
My last question was going to be about modern anti-Zionism, but you probably saw it coming and already began answering it in your previous response. In fact, your response is somewhat intriguing: on the one hand you mention the fact that your book leaves the question of anti-Zionism open – that is, the question of whether current anti-Zionism is the contemporary manifestation of the familiar anti-Judaism. On the other hand, your response seems to contain more than a hint suggesting that this isn't really an open question, that there are many signs supporting the suspicion that anti-Zionism is anti-Judaism (the first hint: using the word “similarly” at the beginning of the paragraph about anti Zionism).
So let me end with the following question (before I let you off the hook and send my readers to purchase and read your truly illuminating book). I see three reasons for which one might not want to explicitly state that anti-Zionism is anti-Judaism:
1. Because it is just too soon for us to authoritatively conclude what anti-Zionism means.
2. Or because delving into a discussion about anti Zionism – current affairs – will be disruptive and might spoil the chance to educate the public on an important historical phenomenon.
3. Or maybe because in the case of Zionism – and this also goes back to your previous response – Jews were no longer passive participants and thus might share more of the “blame”.
Are these some of your reasons for leaving the question open? (In the book you seem to reject option number three- again, mentioning Arendt- leaving it for the reader to wonder about). What would it take for us to be able to connect everything you describe in your book with contemporary anti-Israelism?
Thank you again for the great book and for the opportunity to discuss it,
Shmuel.
Dear Shmuel,
Only “somewhat intriguing”! Dear Shmuel, you wound me in my vanity! But in all seriousness: I'm very grateful for your questions, which push me to think about the implications of my arguments about the past for the present and future: something that is always hard for historians, since we are after all neither politicians nor prophets.
You yourself provide me with three reasons why I ended my book in the mid-twentieth century, without reaching a conclusion about Zionism and Anti-Zionism, or indeed taking on any of the times in which I have myself lived. (I was born in 1964.) I think there is some truth to all three. Time does provide some sort of test for our convictions. One can imagine, for example, a German citizen completely convinced in 1933 of the view that the Jews posed the greatest threat to the well-being of their country and of the world, who in 1948 suddenly realizes that this conviction had been mistaken. Of course we shouldn't be too optimistic about the clarifying powers of time. We can easily imagine plenty of people who never come to question their convictions, or who, after having done so, “return like a dog to their vomit.” (Proverbs 26.11)
And it is also true that there is some pedagogical advantage in not making things too immediate, too presentist. There are plenty of people who might be open to the type of argument I am making about the past, but would resist its application to the present. “Yes,” they might say, “in the Middle Ages, or in Luther's time, or in early twentieth century Europe, people had unfortunate habits of thought about Judaism. But today we are emancipated from those habits, and our view of the world is uninfluenced by them. Our views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for example, are purely realistic: they have nothing to do with any of these prejudices or habits of though.” By avoiding the present, we can open up space, as my book seeks to do, for recognition of the place of Anti-Judaism in Western thought, without raising the stakes to the level of self-indictment. And that is already a huge and I think important task. Besides, once we recognize this centrality of Anti-Judaism in our past, it might be easier to interrogate our own confidence that we have overcome it.
One of the foundations of that confidence is the sense we have that today Jews are active rather than passive participants in the creation of Anti-Judaism. “It isn't Anti-Judaism that shapes my views of Israel,” many people might say. “It is the actions of the Israelis/Zionists/Jews themselves.” To this I'd reply that people have always said this. Anti-Judaism has always nourished itself on the conviction that it was accurately perceiving reality, and criticizing the actions of real Jews. This is as true of the 1930s as of the 1530s, as true of places where there were indeed living Jews with certain types of active agency (albeit not a country of their own), as of places where there had been no living Jews for centuries. Are Jews today more active and less passive than they were in the Diaspora? Perhaps: that is a subject for a different book. But whatever their activity, power and agency in the present may be, it does not suffice to explain how Jews or Israel are seen today, any more than it suffices to explain the Anti-Semitism of the early 20th century, or the Anti-Judaism of the earlier periods my book touches upon. Always, everywhere, Anti-Judaism has understood itself to be opposing a real and an active entity.
The goal of my book is to provide a sense of just how central Anti-Judaism has been to the formation of our concepts and tools of thought. With that sense in hand, it should be easier for us each to interrogate our own sense of reality, and to want to cultivate a sensibility of critical reflection about those moments when we might be projecting Anti-Judaism into our vision of the world. But that cultivation is something that must be left to each reader, indeed to each person in the world (wouldn't I be happy if they would each buy a copy of my book!). My own sense is that there are countless such moments, and that many of them do revolve around the State of Israel and the importance we attribute to it today in our understanding of the world's complexities, challenges, and dangers. But rather than simply state my sense and expect others to share it, I think it much more useful to provide readers with an explanation of the cultural formations that may be shaping their views of the world's “realities.” To reiterate the psycho-therapeutic metaphor from our first exchange: by becoming more conscious of the ways in which our past has shaped our sensibilities, we can hope to be happier in the future. Of course a stimulus to consciousness is no guarantee of improvement. But perhaps as in psycho-therapy, a stimulus to consciousness is all that the historian has to offer.
With warmest gratitude for your questions and your interest,
David
The Anti-Judaism Exchange, Part 3: Is Anti-Zionism a Form of Anti-Judaism? Read More »
Let’s Move Bar/Bat Mitzvah
Last week, you would have hardly known that there were peace talks happening in Jerusalem. That wasn’t the biggest Jewish news.
No, that prize goes to the viral Sam Horowitz bar mitzvah dance video.
I have spent the better part of my career thinking about bar/bat mitzvah. Ever since I wrote Putting God On The Guest List: How To Reclaim The Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah (Jewish Lights) “>http://www.jewishlights.com/page/product/978-1-58023-458-0
The not-so-good news: The American Jewish cult of the self has spawned the private bar/bat mitzvah industry. Rabbis and free-lance teachers hire themselves out to families. They’ll bring a Torah and do the ceremony….wherever. It could be a local restaurant, or an exotic locale, with no one there except the family and the scenery. Communal connection? Nope. Responsibility? Nope. Synagogue affiliation? Nope.
Approximately fifty per cent of our post-pubescent Jewish kids drop out after bar/bat mitzvah. And so do their families. You can practically hear the synagogue doors slamming right after Ein Keloheinu at the last child’s ceremony.
All of this leads to a heretical question: Is thirteen still the “right” age for Jewish maturity?
The Bible didn’t think so. There, the age of majority is twenty. That age doesn’t get reduced until the sages decide, as quoted in Pirkei Avot: “at thirteen, ready for mitzvot.” That age of thirteen becomes a legal category of Jewish ritual and moral responsibility.
The passage from Pirkei Avot continues: “At eighteen, ready for the huppah.” Actually, in America today, it’s “at eighteen, ready for the meal plan.” So, why cling to thirteen as the age of Jewish maturity — especially when people are living longer and adolescence now actually lasts longer than ever before? (Watch re-runs of “Girls” on HBO and you will see what I mean).
My Reform ancestors got it. They invented the group ceremony of confirmation. It was more intellectual, academic and about what Jews believe. It wasn’t about biological age; it was about being in, say, tenth grade. It was also highly social. And we have come to understand that Jewish education is far beyond the formal stuff. It's the Jewish Holy Trinity: youth activities; camp; Israel trips.
So, my modest, even Swiftian, proposal. Move bar/bat mitzvah from thirteen to seventeen – that is, to the senior year in high school.
Introducing a new American Jewish ceremony: Ben/bat Torah, “old enough for Torah.” Same basic arrangement as bar/bat mitzvah: Torah portion, haftarah, lead service, give devar Torah. Keep it as a solo ceremony. Kids need individual rites of passage — a test, an ordeal, a moment of public wrestling.
Why move it to that age? Because, in American society today, thirteen just doesn't matter the way it once did. What's the real moment of passage? When you’re ready to leave home and go to college, work, the military. By then, our young people are more intellectually mature. It would be a way for the community to say: “We have educated you, nourished you, nurtured you with all the wisdom that we have at our disposal. Now, take this Torah and enter the world with it.” (You want a biblical source for seventeen? That's how old Joseph was when he left home. True — it didn't start that well, but it all worked out in the end).
Look at what American Judaism invented in the last century alone: bat mitzvah, baby-namings for girls in synagogues, same sex wedding ceremonies. When certain ceremonies lose their historical rationale (i.e., pidyon ha-ben, redemption of the first born), we either re-interpret it or put it in the liturgical attic. We have ceremonies and blessings for everything — and those that we don’t have, we invent.
At the very least, can we have a large communal conversation about the meaning of Jewish maturity? What Jewish hopes and expectations do we have for our children? What do we want them to experience? What do we want them to feel? (Note to self: mission statements for Jewish families. Help families create them. Think about it.)
What should they know? A Jewish way of looking at abortion, stem cell research, sexuality, torture, drones, the ethics of war, assisted suicide?
How about this: a huge number of Jewish kids are going to be having their first major conversation about Israel at around the same time they are unpacking their duffel bag in the dorm room. It’s going to come from their suite mates or from their professors. It's going to be about Israeli “apartheid” or something like that. It will not be pretty. By the time they leave home, shouldn’t our kids have learned how to have meaningful conversations about Israel?
And, with all due respect to our thirteen year olds, it will not have happened by then. No way. It can't.
Jewish parents of America: are we ready to articulate Jewish expectations for our children? Rabbis, cantors, educators, lay leaders: are we making sure that our programs are compelling? What kind of metrics are we prepared to use? How attentive are we to educational and societal trends? Jewish organizations like the Union for Reform Judaism and the United Synagogue: your professionals are asking all the right questions. Keep 'em coming.
You know all that time we spent discussing how a Jewish kid dances?
How about some time discussing what Jewish kids know?
Everything else is the sideshow.
Let’s Move Bar/Bat Mitzvah Read More »
Syria rebels: Chemical attack killed hundreds
Syria's opposition accused President Bashar Assad's forces of gassing many hundreds of people — by one report as many as 1,300 — on Wednesday in what would, if confirmed, be the world's worst chemical weapons attack in decades.
Western and regional countries called for U.N. chemical weapons investigators – who arrived in Damascus just three days ago – to be urgently dispatched to the scene of one of the deadliest incidents of the two-year-old civil war.
Russia, too, urged an “objective” investigation but Assad's biggest foreign ally also heaped skepticism on his enemies' claims. A foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow said the release of gas after U.N. inspectors arrived suggested that it was a rebel “provocation” to discredit Syria's government.
Images, including some by freelance photographers supplied to Reuters, showed scores of bodies including of small children, laid on the floor of a clinic with no visible signs of injuries.
Reuters was not able to verify the cause of their deaths. The Syrian government denied that it had used chemical arms.
Noting the “criminal act” took place as the U.N. team got to work, the Russian spokesman said: “This cannot but suggest that once again we are dealing with a pre-planned provocation … We call on all those who can influence the armed extremists make every effort to end provocations with chemical agents.”
George Sabra, one of the leading opponents of Assad, said the death toll was 1,300 killed by poison gas released over suburbs east of Damascus.
“Today's crimes are … not the first time the regime has used chemical weapons. But they constitute a turning point in the regime's operations,” he told a news conference in Istanbul. “This time it was for annihilation rather than terror.”
An opposition monitoring group, citing figures compiled from medical clinics in the Damascus suburbs, put the death toll at 494 – 90 percent of them killed by gas, the rest by bombing and conventional arms. The rebel Syrian National Coalition said 650 people had been killed.
If the cause of death and the scale of the killing were confirmed, it would be the worst known use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.
Activists said rockets with chemical agents hit the Damascus suburbs of Ain Tarma, Zamalka and Jobar during fierce pre-dawn bombardment by government forces.
The Damascus Media Office monitoring center said 150 bodies were counted in Hammouriya, 100 in Kfar Batna, 67 in Saqba, 61 in Douma, 76 in Mouadamiya and 40 in Irbib.
Residents of the capital said mortars later hit government-held areas in Faris Khoury Street and the Malki district, where Assad has a residence. There were no reports of injuries.
Heavy air strikes continued throughout the day against the rebel suburbs of Mouadamiya and Jobar.
SYMPTOMS
A nurse at Douma Emergency Collection facility, Bayan Baker, earlier told Reuters the death toll collated from medical centers was at least 213.
“Many of the casualties are women and children. They arrived with their pupils constricted, cold limbs and foam in their mouths. The doctors say these are typical symptoms of nerve gas victims,” the nurse said. Exposure to sarin gas causes pupils in the eyes to shrink to pinpoint sizes and foaming at the lips.
The U.N. team is in Syria investigating allegations that both rebels and army forces used chemical weapons in the past, one of the main disputes in international diplomacy over Syria.
The Swedish scientist leading the team, Ake Sellstrom, said the reports should be looked into, but doing so would require a request from a U.N. member state. [ID:nS3N0EQ023] A U.N. diplomat said France and Britain were about to write to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to make just such a request.
France and Sweden said the mission must be sent to the site to investigate without delay. “They need to immediately get access to this site – it's 15-20 minutes from where they are currently,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia made similar calls. Britain said it was deeply concerned and would raise the issue at the U.N. Security Council, adding the attacks would be “a shocking escalation” if confirmed.
Extensive amateur video and photographs appeared on the Internet showing countless bodies, with victims choking, some of them foaming at the mouth, and no sign of outward injury.
A video purportedly shot in the Kafr Batna neighborhood showed a room filled with more than 90 bodies, many of them children and a few women and elderly men. Most of the bodies appeared ashen or pale but with no visible injuries. About a dozen were wrapped in blankets.
Other footage showed doctors treating people in makeshift clinics. One video showed the bodies of a dozen people lying on the floor of a clinic, with no visible wounds. The narrator in the video said they were all members of a single family. In a corridor outside lay another five bodies.
A Syrian military officer appeared on state television and said the allegations were untrue and a sign of “hysteria and floundering” by Assad's opponents. Information Minister Omran Zoabi said the allegations were “illogical and fabricated”.
The head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition said Assad's forces had carried out a massacre: “This is a chance for the (U.N. inspectors) to see with their own eyes this massacre and know that this regime is a criminal one,” Ahmed Jarba said.
ACCUSATIONS
Syria is one of just a handful of countries that are not parties to the international treaty that bans chemical weapons, and Western nations believe it has caches of undeclared mustard gas, sarin and VX nerve agents.
Assad's officials have said they would never use poison gas – if they had it – against Syrians. The United States and European allies believe Assad's forces used small amounts of sarin gas in attacks in the past, which Washington called a “red line” that justified international military aid for the rebels.
Assad's government has responded in the past by accusing the rebels of using chemical weapons, which they deny. Western countries say they do not believe the rebels have access to poison gas. Assad's main global ally Moscow says accusations on both sides must be investigated.
Khaled Omar of the opposition Local Council in Ain Tarma said he saw at least 80 bodies at the Hajjah Hospital in Ain Tarma and at a makeshift clinic at Tatbiqiya School in the nearby district of Saqba.
“The attack took place at around 3:00 a.m. (8 p.m. ET). Most of those killed were in their homes,” Omar said.
An activist working with Ahrar al-Sham rebel unit in the Erbin district east of the capital who used the name Abu Nidal said many of those who died were rescuers who were overcome with poison when they arrived at the scene.
“We believe there was a group of initial responders who died or were wounded, because when we went in later, we saw men collapsed on staircases or inside doorways and it looks like they were trying to go in to help the wounded and then were hurt themselves,” he told Reuters by Skype.
“At first none of us knew there were chemical agents because it seemed like just another night of air strikes, and no one was anticipating chemical weapons use, especially with U.N. monitors in town.”
The timing of the allegations – just three days after the U.N. experts checked in to a Damascus hotel a few kilometers to the east at the start of their mission – was surprising.
“It would be very peculiar if it was the government to do this at the exact moment the international inspectors come into the country,” said Rolf Ekeus, a retired Swedish diplomat who headed a team of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s.
“At the least, it wouldn't be very clever.”
Additional reporting by Erika Solomon in Beirut and Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Niklas Pollard in Stockholm and Thomas Grove in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff and Dominic Evans; Editing by Will Waterman and Alastair Macdonald
Syria rebels: Chemical attack killed hundreds Read More »
Iron Dome battery deployed to central Israel
An Iron Dome anti-missile system battery was deployed to central Israel.
The battery was moved to the Sharon region north of Tel Aviv for the first time, according to the Israel Defense Forces. The region, which includes Netanya and Hadera, is believed to be within range of rockets fired by Hezbollah from Lebanon.
According to the IDF, the battery is being deployed as part of the regular operational process. Israel now has six operational Iron Dome batteries.
An Iron Dome battery deployed near Eilat in southern Israel intercepted rockets fired from Sinai at the tourist enclave last week.
Iron Dome battery deployed to central Israel Read More »
Meet our future diplomats!
Last week, the IsraMUN conference, the first academic international MUN (Model Uniited Nations*) in Israel, takes place in Rishon LeZion, Israel. This year’s IsraMUN theme is “Modernity and Traditionalism,” when the aim of the conference is “to raise awareness to the importance of science and technology and the human rights to gender equality and education in the face of the claims for tolerance and understanding of traditionalist faiths, religions and cultures.”
Between making statements at the MUN and meeting the actual UN Secretary-General who came for a visit, two well-known Israeli MUN delegates, kindly agreed to interview to Israelife, and tell us all about their MUN experience and its contribution to real-life politics and diplomacy:
Roee Snir (28) is senior in the Tel Aviv University majoring in political science and East Asian and the current President of the Tel Aviv MUN Society. This year, Snir participated in tow delegations abroad, one the Harvard National Model Conference and another to the European championship, EuroMun, in Maastricht, the Netherlands where the Israeli delegation won 2nd place.
 is a Photographic Communications student at Hadassah Academic College. This past March, she joined the IMUNA (Israel MUN Associations) delegation to the NY-GYLS Summit in Manhattan, where she and her group were the only Israeli representatives at a conference of over 600 students from all over the world. A small delegation, of 4 women, they managed to take home the Best Delegation award.</p>
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