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Jewish Journal

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May 27, 2016

Crash kills three workers at Jewish camp in Pennsylvania

Leave a Comment / United States /

Three staff members of a Jewish camp in eastern Pennsylvania were killed when the van they were traveling in lost control and drove into a drainage pond near the camp just before 1 a.m. Thursday.

The two men and a woman, including the driver, were all seasonal workers at Camp Shoshanim, a summer camp for modern Orthodox girls associated with New Jersey Y Camps and located near Lake Como, Pennsylvania.

The victims, all Mexican nationals, were identified as Ana Rojas Lopez, 23; Diego Rivera Medrano, 22, and Ariel Jersam Galaviz Alvarez, 21. Another staff member is recovering in the hospital, and a fifth passenger was taken to the hospital and later released, according to a statement from camp directors

The staff members were preparing Camp Shoshanim and its sister camp, Camp Nesher, for its summer opening on June 29, according to the statement.

In the statement, sent to parents of incoming campers, Esther Staum Katz and Jeff Braverman said the camps “grieve the tragic loss of three members of our camp family.” The two are the directors, respectively, of Shoshanim and Nesher.

According to the statement, the staffers “had used a camp van for personal reasons without authorization, and we have been working with the authorities to clarify details surrounding the accident.”

In addition, the directors wrote, “We have spoken with the families of the staff involved in this very sad event and shared with them that they are in our thoughts and prayers, as well as in the thoughts and prayers of our entire camp community.”

Police are investigating the incident and, according to Newswatch 16, investigators said the van was going too fast to navigate a sharp turn in the road.

The chief of the Northern Wayne Fire Company told the station that rescue crews hooked up chains to the van and turned it upright, but could not save the three victims inside.

Crash kills three workers at Jewish camp in Pennsylvania Read More »

Donald Trump and the Jews

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Israel /

We Jews are an intense and nervous people. We feel our politics deeply, this year being no exception.

It’s safe to say, I think, that the vast majority of the American Jewish community has been rattled by the thought of Trump reaching the White House.

I’ve been asking myself for some time (I’ve posted two blogs on this theme in the last week alone, indicative of my anxiety), what does the Trump candidacy mean for us Jews?

First, the positive – yes, there’s a positive.

Not in some time have I sensed Jewish communal solidarity against Trump. From a Jewish values perspective, Trump represents the worst of our people’s values concerning justice, compassion, welcoming the stranger, and concern for the most vulnerable in our community. His is a dog eat dog world of ego and power, of immodesty and braggadocio. Yet, having said all this, it's possible to feel a measure of gratitude to The Donald for his bringing most of us Republican and Democratic Jews together. And so, as Shabbat falls shortly, let us sing – Hineh mah tov u-ma nayim shevet achim gam yachad!

Now the bad news – In a recent Huffington Post article, it was revealed that American Nazis and the KKK regard Trump as their standard bearer, just as do some right wing Jews and many members of the ultra-Orthodox community.

I don’t know whether Trump is an anti-Semite. One might think that given his roots in New York, his years in real estate, his second home in Palm Beach, a converted daughter and a Jewish son-in-law, that we have nothing to worry about, that he loves the Jews. He said so! Yet, Trump brings up old anti-Semitic canards left and right, such as saying a few months ago to a room full of wealthy Republican Jews that they probably won’t like him because they’re used to buying candidates and he doesn’t need their money.

Then there’s Sheldon Adelson who plopped down $100 million for Trump’s campaign (I guess he needs the money now!) after deciding that Trump will be a right-wing advocate for Israel like himself, and there are also many members of the Republican Jewish Coalition who prefer Trump over Hillary.

I don’t believe that history necessarily repeats itself so much as themes reverberate that are disturbing to the Jewish memory of the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. Times are different. We have a state of Israel today and we aren’t victims nor vulnerable as we were in Germany eighty years ago.

Yet, Trump’s call to indiscriminately bar all Muslims from our country, calling Mexicans rapists and criminals, sending 11 million non-documented Hispanic immigrants out of the country, his uber-testosterone-locker-room misogyny and sexism, his condescension to the disabled, to prisoners of war, and his cavalier and dismissive reductionist assaults on the accomplishments and lives of his opponents calling them Pocahontas, Lyin’ Ted, passive Zeb, little Mario, crazy Bernie, and crooked Hillary, would be ridiculous if it weren’t so insulting and disturbing.

What does Trump’s candidacy mean relative to the state of Israel? He said that he will be a neutral deal maker between Israel and the Palestinians because, after all, he’s a businessman and makes the best deals. Of course, he doesn’t understand the complexities of the Middle East, its history and challenges, being the Grand Marshal of New York’s Israel Day parade notwithstanding.

The Clintons, on the other hand, have proven themselves to be great friends of the people and state of Israel. In critical biographies of Hillary and in her most recent memoir “Hard Choices,” it’s clear that she knows Israel's leaders well, considers them friends, respects, understands and supports the state of Israel as few American leaders can claim to do.

A nechemta (a word of comfort) – If history is a guide, Hillary will earn upwards of 80 per cent of the Jewish vote in November, and in that sense the election will be good for American Jews, assuming she wins, which I expect. Additionally, our overwhelming support for Hillary Clinton could isolate Adelson and the Republican Jewish Coalition who have revealed themselves to be out of step with the dominant Jewish values held by American Jews and with the vast majority of the American Jewish community.

* The Jewish vote has gone with the Democratic party in all presidential elections in the past 92 years by significant majorities: 1924 (51/29), 1928 (72/28), 1932 (82/18), 1936 (85/13), 1940 (90/10), 1944(90/10), 1948 (75/10), 1952 (64/36), 1956 (60/40), 1960 (82/18), 1964 (90/10), 1968 (81/17), 1972 (65/35), 1976 (71/27), 1980 (45/39), 1984 (67/31), 1988 (64/35), 1992 (80/11), 1996 (78/16), 2000 (79/19), 2004 (76/24), 2008 (78/22), 2012 (69/30)

Note: The views I have expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of my synagogue or any other organization.

Donald Trump and the Jews Read More »

Arab states have reportedly hand-picked Palestinian leader to succeed Abbas

Leave a Comment / Israel /

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan are reportedly planning to have former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan replace Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Citing unnamed senior Palestinian and Jordanian sources, Middle East Eye reported Friday on the joint plan to bring Dahlan, the former leader of Abbas’ Fatah party in the Gaza Strip, back from exile in the Gulf.

The plan was discussed with Israel, according to the article, which did not indicate Israel’s reaction.

Abbas, 81, has headed the Palestinian Authority since 2005. Dahlan who is 54 and headed the Palestinian police in Gaza in the immediate aftermath of the 1993 Oslo Accords, “has close ties to” the UAE’s royals, according to the Middle East Eye.

The Middle East Eye said the plans key goals are to unite Fatah and strengthen it against Hamas, weaken Hamas, complete a peace agreement with Israel and seize control of sovereign Palestinian institutions in the West Bank.

“Dahlan believes that Hamas is weaker than Fatah in Gaza and that Fatah is weaker than Hamas in the West Bank and that Fatah could win if it were to be united whereas Hamas is likely to win if Fatah remained disunited,” a senior Palestinian source told the Middle East Eye.

“The parties [the UAE, Jordan and Egypt] believe that Mahmoud Abbas has expired politically and that they should endeavor to stop any surprises by Abbas during the period when Fatah will remain under his leadership until the elections are held,” the source said.

According to the report, Jordan has concerns about Dahlan, however, namely his reputation for being unpopular among Palestinians and allegations that he is corrupt and has ties to the Israeli security services.

Arab states have reportedly hand-picked Palestinian leader to succeed Abbas Read More »

Netanyahu’s government may be near collapse, report says

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government may be on the verge of collapse according to Israel’s Channel 10.

In a report Friday night, the TV station quoted unnamed “party leaders” saying that Netanyahu’s surprise move to bring the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party into the coalition may be backfiring on him.

In the past eight days, two ministers have resigned: Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, of Likud, following reports that he would be replaced with the hawkish Avigdor Lieberman, and Environmental Minister Avi Gabai of Kulanu. Both harshly criticized Netanyahu in their resignation announcements.

Gabai, who resigned Friday, said Israel’s increasingly “extremist” government was leading Israel on a path to destruction and that he “found it difficult” to be part of Netanyahu’s government for several reasons, including how it “totally upset the relationship with the world’s most important power – the one safeguarding our security interests,” referring to the United States.”

According to the Times of Israel, the pro-settler Jewish Home party is vowing not to approve Liberman and his party’s inclusion into the coalition when it is voted for in the Knesset next week. The Channel 10 report said relations between Likud and Jewish Home are “in real crisis.”

The report also said Finance Minister and Kulanu leader Moshe Kahlon is working to persuade the center-left Zionist Union to renew talks with Netanyahu about joining the coalition, while Yaalon “has already begun preparing the organizational infrastructure” for a potential return to politics.

Netanyahu’s government may be near collapse, report says Read More »

Hillary Agonistes

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

This bizarro period in American politics reminds me somewhat of the 1850s when both national parties more-or-less collapsed or imploded. The difference is that that period gave us Abraham Lincoln to shepherd us through the crisis. This period may give us Donald Trump!

Hillary Clinton’s political woes have worsened from a case of the flu to double pneumonia with the release of the State Department’s Inspector General’s Report on her e-mail follies. Nothing may be criminally actionable, but the damage to her electability is none-the-less extreme.

The panicky buzz has resumed among Democratic pols about replacing her, not with the socialist poison pill Bernie Sanders, but with a helicoptered-in Joe Biden-Elizabeth Warren ticket. This is slightly reminiscent of 1948 when the panicky Democratic Convention—including many Jewish progressives—fantasized about nominating anybody-but-Truman, including especially General Eisenhower.

Jewish Democrats with any self-respecting regard for Israel have to be horrified, not only by the appointment of the Sanders’ members to the Democratic platform Committee—“Mr. Palestine” James Zogby, Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison, and hippy-dippy Professor Cornel West who wants to indict the Israeli PM as “a war criminal”—but some of the Clinton appointees including Congressman Luis Gutierrez who is jetting off to a “fact-finding” trip to “occupied” Palestine sponsored by a pro-Palestinian lobbying group. One wonders whether this year’s Democratic platform plank on Israel, yet unannounced, has already been written in the West Bank or Gaza’s “Hamastan.”

And then there is Donald Trump smiling like a Cheshire cat as he purrs hints about humiliating Hillary by debating Bernie Sanders in California while he meets in New York with Henry Kissinger for a tet-a-tet. According to Trump, Herr Kissinger is now his back channel to world leaders who are already making nice to the Orangefuhrer just to cover their bets if he’s elected.

In the late 1500s, Protestant Henry of Navarre converted to Catholicism as the price to become France’s King Henry IV. His explanation: “Paris is well worth a mass.” If Trump is smart, he will abandon his Border Wall folly as the price of the White House. Indeed, I would not put it passed him to convert, if necessary, to Islam! I would not yet right off Hillary, but this country is showing signs it’s getting ready to go merrily down the road to perdition.

Hillary Agonistes Read More »

Transgender Israeli Arab wins historic Tel Aviv pageant

Leave a Comment / Culture /

A Christian Arab-Israeli ballet dancer won Israel’s first-ever transgender beauty pageant.

Ta’alin Abu Hanna, 21, was named “Miss Trans Israel” in Tel Aviv Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Abu Hanna told reporters she is “proud to be an Israeli Arab,” noting, “If I had not been in Israel and had been elsewhere — in Palestine or in any other Arab country — I might have been oppressed or I might have been in prison or murdered.”

The Nazareth resident will represent Israel at the Miss TransStar International pageant in Barcelona in September — the first time an Israeli will participate.

She also will receive $15,000 worth of plastic surgery treatments from a hospital in Thailand, plus airfare and a hotel stay during the treatments and recovery.

Abu Hanna beat out 11 other finalists, a diverse group spanning Israel’s geographic, ethnic and religious diversity, including a Russian, Muslims and residents of Beersheba, Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. At least one finalist grew up in the haredi Orthodox community.

Several finalists told reporters they had struggled with the disapproval of family members — with some eventually finding acceptance and others not. Caroline Khouri, of the Arab town of Tamra, told NBC News her male relatives tried to murder her after learning of her plans to transition from man to woman.

“My cousins, my father, my brother-in-law all came and beat me and took me by force and cut my hair, tied me to the bed and left me there for three days with no food,” she said. Rescued by the police, the 24-year-old said she remains estranged from her family.

A formerly Charedi Orthodox contestant, Aylin Ben-Zaken, said she “looked like a rabbi” before her transition, and ran away from home at age 15. But many in her family accept her now, she said.

“Three years ago I didn’t talk to my mom. Now she loves me, and I go to Shabbat dinner,” the 27-year-old told NBC News.

According to the Post, most of the contestants work as dancers or designers.

Friday’s pageant consisted of a swimsuit competition, two formal-wear competitions and a question-and-answer portion.

Asked about “pinkwashing,” the accusation that Israel exploits its LGBT rights record as a PR coup to hide its alleged abuses of Palestinians, pageant organizer Yisraela Stephani Lev said, according to the Post: “Listen, there isn’t propaganda here. We live in Tel Aviv, in Israel, the only sane country in the region where people can live as gays or transgender and no one is going to throw them off the rooftop or slaughter them. This is just the reality here. It’s not some sort of brainwashing or pinkwashing or whatever.”

Lev said hundreds of trans women contacted her “from Dan to Eilat, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Bedouin,” and that they held three auditions beginning in March to select the finalists. Criteria included not just physical beauty but a “sort of coexistence and diversity,” Lev said, adding, “We are looking for coexistence, because this is the beginning of peace.”

Transgender Israeli Arab wins historic Tel Aviv pageant Read More »

Trump: World leaders relaying message of reconciliation to Kissinger

Leave a Comment / Election 2016, Jewish Insider, United States /

World leaders are seeking to make peace with Donald Trump, relaying that message in conversations for former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger,  the presumptive Republican nominee said on Friday.

“One of the biggest diplomats of the country, he’s a friend of mine – you saw recently I have actually met with him, it was all over the place  – and he said, ‘Donald, I thought you were wrong in your approach; I thought it was too tough. But you know what? All of those countries are calling me [and asking], What do we do, what do we do? How can we make him happy? If he wins, what can we do?’” Trump told his supporters during a campaign rally in Fresno, California.

Trump met with the former Secretary of State at his home in New York last week.

“I am with this man, and he said they are all calling. He knows all nations. He is a highly respected guy. A great guy,” Trump said about Kissinger without mentioning his name. “And he said they want to know, they want to get along.”

“Respect us,” Trump said was his response. “That’s really it. We want to be respected. We don’t want to be the dummies anymore.”

Trump also responded to President Obama’s statement during a press conference at the G-7 summit in Japan on Thursday, saying that Trump’s campaign statements had his fellow world leaders concerned. “They’re rattled by him and for good reason,” Obama said. “Because a lot of the proposals that he’s made display either ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude or an interest in getting tweets and headlines instead of actually thinking through what is required to keep America safe.”

“First of all, he is not supposed to be talking when he is in Japan about politics in our nation,” Trump said. “I think I got him rattled. He is the one that is rattled, if you want to know the truth.”

Trump: World leaders relaying message of reconciliation to Kissinger Read More »

US health firms, Haifa hospital team up to ‘incubate’ digital medicine start-ups

Leave a Comment / Health, Israel /

IBM Watson Health and Medtronics are teaming up with an Israeli hospital to create a high-tech “incubator” to encourage innovations in digital medicine.

Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa announced the partnership, to be called “MindUP,” on Friday. Funded by the the Israel venture capital firms Pitango and Impact First, the incubator is to be housed at the Haifa Life Sciences Technology Park in northern Israel.

MindUP will eventually be home to some 40 start-ups, according to the release from Rambam, in a field that includes telemedicine, cloud computing, wearable and implantable diagnostic sensors and information technology systems for hospitals.

“Digital medicine draws from a broad range of technological fields, and Israel excels in virtually all of them,” Rafi Beyar, director general of the the Rambam Health Care Campus, said in a statement.

IBM and Medtronic won an economic stimulus grant last year from the Israeli government to launch the incubator. In announcing the grant, Israel’s Economy Ministry said budgets for incubators range from $500,000 to $800,000, with the grant covering 85 percent of that amount. The start-ups pay royalties until the grant is repaid, according to a website for the program.

US health firms, Haifa hospital team up to ‘incubate’ digital medicine start-ups Read More »

NY Times removes quotation marks from Israeli ‘occupation’

Leave a Comment / United States /

The New York Times removed quotation marks originally used around “occupation” in one of its news stories.

The word appears in the phrase “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza” in the article published Wednesday about the Bernie Sanders-led push to change the Democratic Party’s stance on Israel.

The quotation marks were removed Thursday. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald had criticized the Times’ use of the quotation marks as “abject cowardice” Thursday morning.

“This is journalistic malfeasance at its worst: refusing to describe the world truthfully out of fear of the negative reaction by influential factions,” Greenwald wrote in an article on The Intercept.

The Times did not add an editor’s note to the article or offer an explanation. The print version of the article published in the A1 section of the Times’ Thursday includes the quotation marks.

The article — titled “A Split Over Israel Threatens the Democrats’ Hopes for Unity” and written by Jason Horowitz and Maggie Haberman — reports on the effort by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and his representatives to “upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel.”

Other journalists who are left-wing on Israel, including AlterNet contributor Adam H. Johnson and +972 magazine contributor Noam Sheizaf, seconded Greenwald’s criticism Thursday.

News articles in the Times, however, regularly use the term “occupation,” without quotes, to refer to Israel’s presence in the West Bank, as recently as May 24:

Israeli officials estimate that a few dozen hilltop youth are responsible for the most violent acts on the West Bank. But Dror Etkes, who runs Kerem Navot, a human rights organization that opposes the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, said that there were about 100 far-flung outposts in the West Bank, with “many hundreds” of residents, and that large numbers of them participate in arson and vandalism of mosques, churches and olive groves.

The word also appeared in this article from May 16:

Mustafa Bargouthi, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, a nonprofit organization, said that the list of institutions struggling under occupation and other difficulties is lengthy. Among the groups that have suffered, Mr. Bargouthi said, are the Palestine National Orchestra, the Popular Art Center in Ramallah, dance groups across the West Bank, and road, agricultural and medical projects.

NY Times removes quotation marks from Israeli ‘occupation’ Read More »