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Jewish Journal

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January 16, 2017

The Bibi investigation: A guide for the perplexed

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, News, Rosner's Domain /

There are indeed good reasons to be perplexed about the political scandal that has been engulfing Israel in the last few weeks. The Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is under investigation. He has been questioned, many others have been questioned, television newscasts are now dedicating most of their energy to exposing new details about his ways and habits – every evening brings a new revelation.

How will this all end? No one knows for sure. And it depends on one’s definition of “ends.” One question is whether a decision to indict Prime Minister Netanyahu is forthcoming (and later – whether the court will find him guilty of something). Another question is whether Netanyahu will be able to retain enough political support in the Knesset to keep his seat. Of course, the two questions are linked, but not inseparable. That is to say: It is possible for the PM to retain his job for a while even in case of indictment. It is also possible for him to lose it without indictment.

Here is a short guide to what I believe is necessary to know at this point of the investigation.

The two cases

The police is – as far as we know – looking into two matters:

The first case concerns gifts that Netanyahu received on a regular basis from businessmen. Cigars were sent to him. His wife enjoyed champagne. Netanyahu, and Israelis have known this for many years, is not exactly the exemplary abstemious leader. He likes the good life. And he likes it better when someone else pays for the good life. The essence of this case is the assumption – which Netanyahu dismisses – that getting gifts on such a scale from people who have interests that the PM can advance is a crime.

The second case concerns Netanyahu’s ties to two newspapers: his chummy relations with the Sheldon-Adelson-owned paper Israel Hayom, and his adversarial relations with Israel’s second-largest newspaper Yediot Achronot. What the investigation revealed, to the horror of journalists, is that the PM and the publisher of Yediot had a series of meetings in which they negotiated a deal. Netanyahu will tame “his” newspaper, Israel Hayom – because it is highly damaging to Yediot, commercially speaking – in exchange for Yediot becoming less hostile to the Prime Minister. The essence of the case here is the assumption that the PM was trading Prime-Ministerial power for media support.

The Legal question

In both of these cases, the facts are not going to be the issue. The gifts were given and taken, and Netanyahu, clearly, returned some favors. He says that these were friends – they gave him gifts as friends and he returned a favor as a friend. A PM is allowed to have friends.

In the second case, there are recordings. The PM asked one of his aids to record his meetings with the publisher of Yediot, Arnon Moses, and the police have the tapes. This scandal is so much more puzzling because of these tapes – because it gives us all an opportunity to watch the back allies of our political system.

But is this illegal? If the publisher acted in ways that are journalistically unethical (and there is little doubt that he did), that is a matter for him, his journalists and his readers to settle, not necessarily for the legal authorities. The Prime Minister acted the way politicians act when they see such opportunities – he was willing to ease the life of the publisher in exchange for positive coverage. The legal community is going to grapple with this issue – as it is far from being a clear-cut case of illegal behavior.

 The media

This scandal is a tricky one when it comes to media coverage because of two reasons.

The first one is obvious – and concerns many scandals: There’s a good story here, and it is a story against a powerful person that has been the PM for very long. There are many media outlets and many journalists and commentators who are covering the case against Netanyahu, whom they dislike, with much vigor and joy. It is good for the ratings, and many of them think it’s also good for Israel.

The second one is also obvious, but more unique to this case: The media is both the narrator and the star of the show. It is reporting about itself, about the most powerful newspaper publisher in Israel, about negotiations in which writers were traded as if they were cattle, about a game that is played on their field. Journalists are justifiably horrified and angry by some of the revelations made in recent days – because they cast a shadow over their profession. But there is a potential downside to such psychological impact: it makes media editorial decisions suspicious of bias.

The politics

Netanyahu has many enemies. He has enemies in the opposition, looking for a way to dethrone him and replace him; and he has no less enemies within his coalition who want to see him gone. The Bibi investigation: A guide for the perplexed Read More »

Congressman John Lewis remembers the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 21, 1965

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Israel, Middle East, United States /

In celebration of Dr. King's birthday, we invite the community to be with us at Temple Israel of Hollywood tonight (Monday, January 16, 2017 – 7 PM) to view a 30-minute rough cut of a new documentary called “Shared Legacy – Honoring the Black-Jewish Alliance in the Civil Rights Movement.”

Dr. Susannah Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Heschel and Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College will be with us along with Dr. Albert J. Raboteau, Emeritus Professor of African-American Religion at Princeton and a leading scholar of the African-American community, and Dr. Shari Rogers, President and founder of Spill The Honey/Building Relationships, an organization committed to advancing public knowledge of the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement as a means of promoting cultural tolerance, fighting injustice and encouraging young people to become compassionate, global citizens.

Rabbi Fred Guttman talks with Congressman John Lewis who speaks about that day and the impact that Dr. King, Rabbi Heschel, and the civil rights movement have had upon America.

See and hear Congressman John Lewis – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEXnIhwc8K0

Congressman John Lewis remembers the march from Selma to Montgomery on March 21, 1965 Read More »

Sen. Udall’s amendment criticizing settlements rejected

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed Resolution 6 on Thursday, and it will head to the Senate floor for a vote at a later time. The Senate measure blasts United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334, which assailed Israel for its continued settlement construction.

Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) introduced an amendment to the bill yesterday, which added a line, “reaffirming that it is also the policy of the United States to discourage settlement building.” Seven Democrats supported the revision including Tim Kaine (VA) and Cory Booker (NJ). Notably, Booker “received more money from pro-Israel donors than any other Democratic candidate in the 2014 election cycle,” according to NJ.com. Nonetheless, the amendment failed to pass as the other members of the committee including three Democrats — Robert Menendez (NJ), Ben Cardin (MD) & Christopher Coons (DE) — joined the remaining eleven GOP members on the committee to oppose the provision. 

The Udall amendment also called for removing a section of the original bill noting that the Obama Administration’s decision not to veto UNSC 2334 was “inconsistent with long-standing United States policy.” The New Mexico legislator noted the dozens of UNSC resolutions passed since 1967 that condemned Israel, including during the Reagan and George H. W. Bush Administrations. The text remains in the bill given the bipartisan majority on the committee in favor of it.

Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) rejected Udall’s text since he noted that the last time that the United States abstained from vetoing a UNSC resolution specifically on settlements was in 1980—during the end of President Jimmy Carter’s term. Therefore, he argued that 37 years would be an appropriate usage of the term “longstanding.”

The Senate leadership will decide when to bring Res. 6 for a full Senate vote, as of now an undetermined date. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Rubio sponsored the resolution that received 67 cosponsors. The text “rejects efforts by outside bodies, including the UNSC, to impose solutions from the outside.” A similar House resolution castigating the UNSC already passed last week by a 342 to 80 vote including Republican and Democratic members.

“We have violations of the Iranian agreement, and the UNSC cannot deal with it. We have land being taken in the South China Sea and the UNSC cannot deal with it,” said Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) at the hearing’s conclusion. “And yet, this (Israel resolution) with applause is what the UNSC deals with. You’ve got major issues with this institution.”  

Udall Amdt. 2 to S.res.6 (1) by Jacob Kornbluh on Scribd

Sen. Udall’s amendment criticizing settlements rejected Read More »

Fighting Racism Starts in the Heart

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

When we think of relations between Jews and African-Americans, we naturally think of our proudest moments. And we should.

Abraham Joshua Heschel marched side-by-side with Martin Luther King in 1965, helping America to repudiate the racist sins of its past. Jewish activists worked in segregated areas where they risked abuse, beating, and even death to win equal rights for African-Americans. Even further back, Jews were central figures in the early decades of the NAACP and other organizations that opposed racism.

However, relations between Jews and African-Americans have not been all sunshine and flowers. Even apart from extremist organizations such as the Nation of Islam, black anti-Semitism has been a problem. In his book What Went Wrong? The Creation and Collapse of the Black-Jewish Alliance, Murray Friedman recounts the positive and negative sides of that history. A good companion volume, from a black perspective, is Shelby Steele’s White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.

Friedman wrote that anti-Semitic incidents:

“… have taken place against a background of intensifying mutual recrimination, with charges of Jewish racism and paternalism on the one hand and countercharges of black anti-Semitism and ingratitude on the other.”

That reminded me of a matching passage in Steele’s book about his rage at the feeling of racism and paternalism (from all whites, not just Jews) that Friedman described:

“I had become terrified of the Faustian bargain waiting for me at the doorway to the left: we’ll throw you a bone like affirmative action if you’ll just let us reduce you to your race so we can take moral authority for ‘helping’ you. When they called you a —— back in the days of segregation, at least they didn’t ask you to be grateful.”

Both books are excellent, but I’d like to address a broader question: Why is it so easy, often almost irresistible, for people in different groups to distrust each other?

To say that it’s because of Yetzer Hara doesn’t really explain it. It just says that we do bad things because we feel like doing bad things. Why do we feel that way?

In this case, at least part of the answer is clear. Whether it’s because of evolution or because God used some of the same design elements, we share our biological nature with lower animals.

Animals of the same species have the same biological “niche:” that is, they need the same kind of food, use the same kind of shelter, and of course, seek mates of their own species. For that reason, they tend to regard non-relatives of the same species as competitors who threaten their well-being. Conversely, they tend to help and support their relatives, even to the point of sacrificing their own lives to protect them. Based on biologists’ field observation, there’s a formula to predict whether or not an animal will altruistically help another member of its own species:

c < r * b

where c is the survival cost to the altruistic animal (in risk, food, etc.), r is the percent of genes shared because of some family relationship, and b is the benefit to the recipient of the animal's altruistic act.

How do animals determine which other members of their own species are relatives? They use four main criteria: appearance, behavior, familiarity, and location. Animals are inclined to help others if the others look like them, act like them, are already familiar to them, or are in a shared location.

Of course, we are not merely animals. We can think. We can distinguish right from wrong. But our perception of other people is biased by our animal instincts to cooperate with relatives and to feel hostile toward genetic competitors.

Does that mean racism is inevitable? No. But it requires sustained individual effort to defeat it. It cannot be defeated institutionally, once and for all. It must be confronted by each person, one at a time.

The good news is that because we can think, we also use non-biological cues to tell us who is a relative. For us, “appearance” isn’t just bodily appearance. Our instincts react to other cues that we can deliberately manipulate to increase social harmony. One experiment found that wearing team t-shirts had a stronger effect on people’s behavior than did the race of the people wearing the shirts.

That doesn’t mean the solution to racial tensions is to make everyone wear matching t-shirts. However, we know some of the factors that trigger racial hostility: appearance, behavior, familiarity, and location. By changing some of those factors, we can decrease racism significantly. And that’s good for everyone.

Fighting Racism Starts in the Heart Read More »

Community Advocates’ Op/ed in today’s Times

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Hollywood /

Community Advocates' consultants Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of seminal books on the millennial generation (Millennial Makeover, Millennial Momentum, and Millennial Majority), wrote this piece for Community Advocates and the LA Times.


 

President Obama, the millennial whisperer
By Morley Winograd and Michael Hais*

President Obama will be seen by historians as the first president to bring millennial values to the challenges of the Oval Office. He isn't a millennial (in fact he has two millennial children), but his leadership style and beliefs reflect America's largest and most diverse cohort. And while much of the rest of America is divided on how well he has performed as the nation's 44th president, Obama has won overwhelming approval from the millennial generation, born 1982-2003.

More than three-fourths of millennials (77%) approved of Obama's job performance in a mid-December Pew Center survey, surpassing even the previous high mark the group gave him – 73% – just after his first inauguration in 2009. For much of his administration, millennials were only marginally more positive about the president than the rest of the population, but once his departure from office drew closer and the contrast between him and either of his potential successors – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – became clearer, millennial approval of the president's job performance shot up by about 15 percentage points, accounting for just about all of the increase he has enjoyed in his final year in office.

Some of the enthusiasm stems from millennials' perception that Obama tackled the issues they care about most. Almost half of millennials (46%) credit the president with making significant progress “toward solving the major problems facing the country,” a far greater percentage than for any other generation. Only 10% of millennials, compared with 30% of older generations, think he made things worse.

Millennials will represent more than one out of three Americans by the end of this decade.
Millions of millennials have health insurance because Obamacare allowed them to remain on their parents' plan. Theirs is the only generation in which a majority tell pollsters they support the Affordable Care Act. Millennials in particular have also benefited from Obama's initiatives to reduce the interest rates on student loans and allow millions to convert loan repayments to a percentage of income rather than a more onerous flat amount. In addition, the president's improved job-performance marks, especially their latest rise, reflect improvements in the economy that millennials now see in their incomes.

But more than any specific benefit, millennials appreciate the way Obama has championed their causes and created a more tolerant America.

One in five millennials has an immigrant parent, and most in the generation credit the president with trying to find a comprehensive solution to the immigration issue, especially for the youngest “Dreamers” who found new hope under the president's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order. By carefully building a foundation of support of gay rights, Obama's leadership also helped enshrine same-sex marriage among our constitutional protections. According to Pew surveys, close to three-quarters of millennials view immigrants and immigration positively (76%) and support gay marriage (73%); less than a majority of older age groups agree.

Finally, Obama's daily demonstration, as our nation's first African American president, that race should not be a barrier to achievement has reinforced millennials' desire to include everyone in the group and to celebrate their own diversity. In fact, some of the president's finest millennial “whisperer” moments happened when he addressed the question of race in America, including his eloquent speech on the topic as candidate Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary. In an interview with NPR, he couched his answer to a question about political correctness with a defense of tolerance that fits millennial attitudes: “Don't go around just looking for insults,” he said, quoting advice he has given his daughters. “You're tough. If somebody says something you don't agree with, just engage them on their ideas.”

It's not surprising that the same set of Americans that overwhelmingly approve of Obama would disapprove of the man who will replace him as president on Jan. 20. Already 64% of 18- to 29-year-olds disapprove of Trump's performance as president-elect, the highest disapproval rating of any age group in Pew's January survey.

Millennials will represent more than one out of three Americans by the end of this decade. Despite Trump's electoral college win in November, it seems likely that millennial attitudes will dominate American political discourse and policy decisions in the coming years. It's not clear now how much this generation's demographic and political importance shaped Obama's presidency and how much the cause and effect ran in the other direction. But it is clear that the optimism the president expressed in his farewell address is based in large part in his faith in his children's peers:

This generation coming up – unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic – I've seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair, just, inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America's hallmark, something not to fear but to embrace, and you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You'll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result that the future is in good hands.

And with that the country's first millennial president left the stage.

*Morley Winograd and Michael Hais are co-authors of “Millennial Makeover, Millennial Momentum and Millennial Majority.” They wrote this essay in association with Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles.

Community Advocates’ Op/ed in today’s Times Read More »

Community Advocates’ Op/ed in today’s Times

Leave a Comment / Hollywood /

Community Advocates' consultants Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, authors of seminal books on the millennial generation (Millennial Makeover, Millennial Momentum, and Millennial Majority), wrote this piece for Community Advocates and the LA Times.


 

President Obama, the millennial whisperer
By Morley Winograd and Michael Hais*

President Obama will be seen by historians as the first president to bring millennial values to the challenges of the Oval Office. He isn't a millennial (in fact he has two millennial children), but his leadership style and beliefs reflect America's largest and most diverse cohort. And while much of the rest of America is divided on how well he has performed as the nation's 44th president, Obama has won overwhelming approval from the millennial generation, born 1982-2003.

More than three-fourths of millennials (77%) approved of Obama's job performance in a mid-December Pew Center survey, surpassing even the previous high mark the group gave him – 73% – just after his first inauguration in 2009. For much of his administration, millennials were only marginally more positive about the president than the rest of the population, but once his departure from office drew closer and the contrast between him and either of his potential successors – Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton – became clearer, millennial approval of the president's job performance shot up by about 15 percentage points, accounting for just about all of the increase he has enjoyed in his final year in office.

Some of the enthusiasm stems from millennials' perception that Obama tackled the issues they care about most. Almost half of millennials (46%) credit the president with making significant progress “toward solving the major problems facing the country,” a far greater percentage than for any other generation. Only 10% of millennials, compared with 30% of older generations, think he made things worse.

Millennials will represent more than one out of three Americans by the end of this decade.
Millions of millennials have health insurance because Obamacare allowed them to remain on their parents' plan. Theirs is the only generation in which a majority tell pollsters they support the Affordable Care Act. Millennials in particular have also benefited from Obama's initiatives to reduce the interest rates on student loans and allow millions to convert loan repayments to a percentage of income rather than a more onerous flat amount. In addition, the president's improved job-performance marks, especially their latest rise, reflect improvements in the economy that millennials now see in their incomes.

But more than any specific benefit, millennials appreciate the way Obama has championed their causes and created a more tolerant America.

One in five millennials has an immigrant parent, and most in the generation credit the president with trying to find a comprehensive solution to the immigration issue, especially for the youngest “Dreamers” who found new hope under the president's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals executive order. By carefully building a foundation of support of gay rights, Obama's leadership also helped enshrine same-sex marriage among our constitutional protections. According to Pew surveys, close to three-quarters of millennials view immigrants and immigration positively (76%) and support gay marriage (73%); less than a majority of older age groups agree.

Finally, Obama's daily demonstration, as our nation's first African American president, that race should not be a barrier to achievement has reinforced millennials' desire to include everyone in the group and to celebrate their own diversity. In fact, some of the president's finest millennial “whisperer” moments happened when he addressed the question of race in America, including his eloquent speech on the topic as candidate Obama during the 2008 Democratic primary. In an interview with NPR, he couched his answer to a question about political correctness with a defense of tolerance that fits millennial attitudes: “Don't go around just looking for insults,” he said, quoting advice he has given his daughters. “You're tough. If somebody says something you don't agree with, just engage them on their ideas.”

It's not surprising that the same set of Americans that overwhelmingly approve of Obama would disapprove of the man who will replace him as president on Jan. 20. Already 64% of 18- to 29-year-olds disapprove of Trump's performance as president-elect, the highest disapproval rating of any age group in Pew's January survey.

Millennials will represent more than one out of three Americans by the end of this decade. Despite Trump's electoral college win in November, it seems likely that millennial attitudes will dominate American political discourse and policy decisions in the coming years. It's not clear now how much this generation's demographic and political importance shaped Obama's presidency and how much the cause and effect ran in the other direction. But it is clear that the optimism the president expressed in his farewell address is based in large part in his faith in his children's peers:

This generation coming up – unselfish, altruistic, creative, patriotic – I've seen you in every corner of the country. You believe in a fair, just, inclusive America; you know that constant change has been America's hallmark, something not to fear but to embrace, and you are willing to carry this hard work of democracy forward. You'll soon outnumber any of us, and I believe as a result that the future is in good hands.

And with that the country's first millennial president left the stage.

*Morley Winograd and Michael Hais are co-authors of “Millennial Makeover, Millennial Momentum and Millennial Majority.” They wrote this essay in association with Community Advocates, Inc. in Los Angeles.

Community Advocates’ Op/ed in today’s Times Read More »