In fact, CAIR\’s sponsorship of the tour, which occurred last month, had nothing to do with improving dialogue or facilitating understanding — just the opposite.
Within hours of the bombings, which struck trains in the center and suburbs of the Spanish capital on March 11, security was beefed up in cities across the Continent as news of the carnage left Europe as shell-shocked as the United States was on Sept. 11, 2001.
Ariel Sharon\’s major policy statement at the Herzliya
security conference last week might have made world headlines, but it\’s far
from clear what the Israeli prime minister has in mind. Sharon called on
Palestinian leaders to open negotiations with Israel and threatened unilateral
This week, while fires raged, strikes festered and three or four wars smoldered, most of the urgent phone calls I received were about Chaim Seidler-Feller.
The recent clamor over Howard Dean\’s demand for U.S. \”evenhandedness\” in the Middle East was sweet music to the ears of Jewish Republicans, who hope 2004 will be a watershed in their long but frustrating effort to rally Jewish voters to their cause.
Flush with the worldwide publicity generated by this summer\’s visit to Israel by actor Christopher Reeve, Ambassador Yuval Rotem of the Israel Consulate of Los Angeles said that in September he will \”re-embark on this mission, to appeal to some people from the entertainment industry and ask them to pay a visit.\”
Because of our history, American Jews have had reason to worry about anti-Semitism and scapegoating, but we have also worked to break down barrier after barrier in virtually every aspect of American life.
Today, we have the opportunity to break down perhaps the most important barrier: that a Jew cannot be elected president of the United States. And ironically, the skepticism on this issue comes not from non-Jews but from Jews.
There is much skepticism about what will transpire in the coming weeks and months, with fears that Israel will be forced to make too many concessions or that Palestinians will get a state without first cracking down on terrorism.
On Sat., May 31, President Bush visited Auschwitz, and spoke about the horrors of that place where some 1.5-million Jews were gassed to death by the Nazis.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.