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 Vol. 1, No. 182

          Monday evening,  October 29, 2007
 
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                               Today's Postings


Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Rabbis prepare for theological questions about the fires."

Morton A. Klein in New York: "Palestinian agenda dooms Annapolis conference to failure"

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson in Jerusalem: "Scandals, corruption weaken Israel"

David Strom in San Diego: "The danger of substituting political faith for logic"

                                 The week in Review
                            (click on dates to see back issues)



Sunday, October 28

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "And after it all, still there is music"
Natasha Josefowitz in La Jolla, California: 'Old age: A privilege denied to lots of people"

Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Jewish trainer wins Arab-sponsored Breeders' Cup race"
 
Sheila Orysiek in San Diego: "Waiting for FEMA, DEMA, SCHEMA and EMA"


Saturday, October 27

 Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Prayers amid the rubble and the ash."

Sandy Levin, Ph.D in La Jolla, California: "Women, listen to your hearts"

F. Jay Winheld in San Diego: "A century of Jewish cooking—an anthology of the good and the bad"

Larry Zeiger in San Diego: "Jersey Boys: Flashback to an era when anything seemed possible."

Friday, October 26

Shoshana Bryen in Washington D.C.: "After withdrawals from Lebanon and Gaza, should Israel risk West Bank departure?"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "As evacuation center, Qualcomm Stadium hosted all-around team."

Rabbi Baruch Lederman and Ron Cruger in San Diego: "Slipping the key out of the lock—for what may be the final time"

Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal in San Diego: "God was not in the fires, but in the 'still small voices' of responders"

Thursday, October 25

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "100+ Jewish homes lost in San Diego County fires; donations mounting"


 

Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Youkilis, 2-5, three runs, two doubles in World Series debut"

 Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: "Myths and the making of policy."
Wednesday, October 24

Shoshana Bryen in Washington, D.C.: "Turks, Kurds, and the PKK"

Garry Fabian in Melbourne, Australia: "Neo-Nazi concert too close for comfort... Jewish pilot off to Antarctica .... Bipartisan support for security funding... Carl Bernstein to tour Australia for JNF"

 Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Seacrest Village seniors return after camping out at Beth Israel"

Lynne Thrope in San Diego: "Restaurant community pitches in for victims of wildfires"
Tuesday, October 23

 Shoshana Bryen in Washington: "Gates sees U.S. consensus on Iraq"

Donald H. Harrison in San Diego: "Acts of kindness, large and small, characterize response to fires"

 J. Zel Lurie in Delray Beach, Florida: "Watching the media and the media watchers"
Joe Naiman in Lakeside, California: "Youkilis sets two LCS records,
ties mark for most LCS hits"

Ira Sharkansky in Jerusalem: "Jewish American success stories"



Archive of Previous Issues
 

____________________
The Jewish Citizen
             by Donald H. Harrison
 

Rabbis prepare for theological questions about the San Diego fires 

SAN DIEGO—Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the community chaplain who reaches out to unaffiliated Jews in times of crises, said today that with the first phase of the San Diego wildfires nearing a conclusion, a critical second phase is about to begin: the time when victims ask such questions as “Why did God allow this to happen?”


Rabbi Ralph Dalin

Initially family who lost their homes in the fires worried about pragmatic matters—where shall they stay, whom do they have to notify, how can they activate their insurance claims, and the like.  What reflection there may have been on theological matters may have been limited to a reflexive statement, “Thank God, we’re still alive!” said Dalin, who headquarters at the United Jewish Federation of San Diego.

Judging by his experiences four years ago counseling victims of

the Cedar fire, Dalin said after the immediate danger passes, for some people spiritual questions will arise.  That’s when he and his rabbinical colleagues—as well as clergy from all religions—will be kept busy.

In such situations, said Dalin, “my goal is always to draw out what their own thoughts are, rather than to offer simple answers.  I would hope that as a result of that process, they would realize that their home was not singled out because of anything that they did or didn’t do—it’s a matter of the nature of things when fires get out of control.”

He added that, “God is in the valiant efforts of the firefighters, those who want to save lives, and in the community that supports and helps the families.  God didn’t cause the fires.  The worst phraseology we have is that fires are an 'act of God,' that is not at all helpful.  Our responsibility that we have from God is to learn how to prevent fires, how to fight them, how to save lives and how to support the community.”

In bringing peace and solace to the afflicted, “we emulate God and become God’s partner,” Dalin said.

“An example came this past Shabbat, up in Ramona (a town in the mountains east of San Diego), when Rabbi Ben Leinow brought Shabbat dinner up to the community center,” Dalin said.

Reached by telephone, Leinow said that although he lives in Vista, near the North County Interfaith Community Service, from which he is now semi-retired, he became the part-time pulpit rabbi for the tiny Congregation Etz Chaim in Ramona just before the High Holidays. The congregation’s previous spiritual leader, Rabbi Marc Hurvitz, relocated with his wife, Rabbi Deborah Prinz, the former spiritual leader of Temple Adat Shalom in Poway, to the East Coast.

Besides the fires, the congregation had to cope with the deaths of two of its members recently but “it is a strong resilient group,” Leinow said. 

“A number of people chose to stay in Ramona up to the last moment, when they had to get out because in some places the water failed, and in other places, the power, so they couldn’t fight the fire," he said.

After the fires passed through Ramona,  residents were allowed to return but with the warning not to use the municipal water system. Under such circumstances, they did not have water for washing their vegetables, so Leinow, a widower, decided to pull together a Shabbat dinner for approximately 25 people, whom he arranged to meet at Ramona’s community senior center. 

He bought some chicken, prepared some salad, got challah, wine, candles, and rugelach, for dinner along with fresh flowers to decorate the tables.  One Ramona family, able to draw water from the well on their property, prepared beans to go with the dinner.  

L'CHAIMRabbi Ben Leinow, left, and Cantor Al Wollner of Congregation Etz Chaim join in the Kiddush at the community senior center in Ramona on Friday, Oct. 26
Although the senior center was serving dinner in another room that night, the main course, ham, simply wouldn’t have been right for Shabbat, Leinow said.

Along with the meal, Leinow brought news that other Reform congregations, including Temple Solel in Cardiff by the Sea and Temple Beth Ami of Valencia, Newhall and Saugus were concerned about their welfare and were helping him put together baskets for the rededication of their homes after the fires.

The baskets will include new mezuzot to hang on their doorposts, as well as the traditional items one takes into a new home: challah, salt, wine and candles.  “I am also going to include a note of support, and a package of hand wipes and paper towels,” Leinow said. “ Some congregations are sending gift cards that will allow our members to go to Target, or to Walmart, to get things that they need.”

Leinow said that chanting the Kiddush, the blessing over the wine, with the congregation’s 93-year-old cantor, Al Wollner, was a meaningful moment at the Shabbat dinner.  He said the news that other Jews care about them, and are trying to help in the wake of the fire, was received emotionally by the congregants.  “I thought I saw tears in a few eyes,” he said.

Normally, the small rural congregation holds services once a month. The next Shabbat services will be on November 8, which coincided with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-inspired pogrom throughout Germany that many historians mark as the beginning of the Holocaust.

The observance, said Leinow, will focus on recovery and renewal. Even as s the worldwide Jewish community recovered from a far worse, far more malicious conflagration, so too shall local Jews gather their strength and rededicate themselves, he said.


 

People of the Books

The danger of substituting  political faith for logic


Statecraft, by Dennis Ross.  Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York, 2007, 370pp., $26.00

 Reviewed by David Strom

SAN DIEGO—Getting rid of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) was the George W. Bush administration’s stated main reason for going to war against Iraq.  After finding no WMD in Iraq, “the over riding objective was getting rid of Saddam.”  Get rid of Saddam, produce regime change, and everything would fall into place, not fall apart.  That was the critical assumption, and it was based on flawed assessment.  Statecraft must start with assessments based on reality, and not on faith.  If we are to understand the failures in Iraq, this is the starting point.”


Dennis Ross will address the San Diego Jewish Book Fair 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Lawrence Family JCC. For schedule of other events, please click the logo.

Unfortunately, the Administration chose faith-based logic instead of reasoning and what Dennis Ross, Middle East envoy and the chief negotiator in the presidential administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, calls statecraft.  Statecraft is not just another way of referring to diplomacy. It is much more. However, it does include diplomacy.  Some define statecraft as the “art of conducting state affairs.”  Dennis Ross, a former policy maker, describes statecraft as knowing “how to integrate and use every asset or military, diplomatic, intelligence, public, economic or psychological tool we possess (or can manipulate) to meet our objectives.” 

Statecraft involves influencing others.  Those who are friendly and share our purposes need little convincing as they are on our side from the beginning. Reaching out to those who initially do not share our outlook begins the difficult work of statecraft.  Some of the statecraft was done by the George W. Bush administration, but was it enough? Secretary of State, Colin Powell, on just

one day “held  a dozen meetings with foreign ministers” at the UN to acquaint and influence them about Security Council Resolution 1441, which mandated unconditional  and unfettered access for inspectors and promised “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to comply.  After two months of explaining, negotiating, compromising on points, the US through the use of diplomacy and some employment of the “carrot and stick” approach was able to produce a unanimous vote in favor of Security Council Resolution 1441.

Prior to the adoption of 1441, the Congress voted to authorize the president to use force “as he determines to be necessary and appropriate” to defend the nation against “the continuing threat posed by Iraq.” (Emphasis added by this writer.)  This act of Congress demonstrated that our nation took seriously what was happening in Iraq and that we would use force if necessary to destroy the weapons of mass destruction allegedly housed in Iraq.  This act of Congress probably helped Colin Powell in being able to get the UN Security Council to pass 1441.

Resolution 1441 mandated weapons inspectors’ access to search for WMD promised “serious consequences” if Iraq failed to comply.  The meaning of “serious consequences” was fuzzy and was interpreted by France and others on the Security Council in a fundamentally different way than the United States. France and Russia understood that 1441 had created a “two-stage approach,” and that noncompliance would lead “ the Council [to] meet immediately to assess the seriousness of these violations....”  Most members of the Security Council felt the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq must be given time to complete their work, even “if it means delaying the onset of hostilities.”  The French and German foreign ministers, in Colin Powell’s presence, came out against any early resort to force.  From their perspective, nothing in the Resolution justified military action.

The George W. Bush administration did not give enough time for the inspectors to do their work.  They chose an almost “go it alone approach” with the bombing and invasion of Iraq.  The US government defied and by-passed most of the nations in the UN.  They felt confident the people in Iraq would greet them as liberators.

For the George W. Bush administration statecraft had ended.

 Dennis Ross states in his new book Statecraft {And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World}, “It is hard to exaggerate the Bush administration’s fundamental miscalculations on Iraq, including but not limited to unrealistic policy objectives; fundamental intelligence failures; catastrophically poor understanding of what characterize the post-Saddam period, and completely unrealistic planning as a result; denial of existence of an insurgency for several months; and the absence of a consistent explanation to the American people or the international community about the reasons for the war.” Is it any wonder that after four years of warfare Iraq is a disaster?  Dennis Ross doesn’t think so.

Ross details several cases of positive statecraft in contrast with our government’s poor statecraft and handling of the Iraq. The first is German unification into NATO.  “It is safe to say that almost no one initially thought it conceivable that Germany could be unified and integrated into NATO.  Indeed, had one queried leaders in Europe or most of those in the State Department or in the Washington punditry class, they would have insisted that the Soviet leadership could never accept such an outcome.”  Yet, statecraft done well made it happen.

Another of Ross’s examples is the undoing of Iraqi aggression in Kuwait.  Statesmanship, political muscle, force, and the cooperation of the world community through the UN made statecraft work.  President George H. W. Bush made it happen.  He understood the need for limited goals, worked with the Security Council, and framed the issue understandably for the American public and the international community.

Ross outlines how since 1980 statecraft has shaped a new world order.  The failure of statecraft in Iraq and throughout the Middle East has made the United States a pariah state to many in that region.  He believes that only statecraft can check the rise of China and the danger of a nuclear Iran.

The book Statecraft is an important reading of where America should or could head if we had leaders who use reason, information, statesmanship, diplomacy, and not just blind faith in an ideology of the “white men’s burden” to save the world from the infidel as often implied by the current administration.

 


 

Commentary
Palestinian agenda dooms Annapolis conference to failure

By Morton A. Klein

NEW YORK—In November, a U.S. sponsored conference involving Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA) and possibly several Arab states will convene in Annapolis to frame yet another plan supposed to end the Arab-Israeli war and create a Palestinian state. This conference is doomed to fail. The reason: Palestinians' goal is Israel's destruction, not statehood. This fact has remained unchanged since Israel embarked on the disastrous Oslo process with Yasser Arafat in 1993, culminating in a terror war after Israeli Prime Minister Barak offered a Palestinian state on nearly all of the disputed territories, which was rejected.

Despite this, the Bush Administration, with international approval, is proceeding on the fiction that Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party, which he co-founded with Arafat and which controls the PA, want peace, and accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state.

If only it were true. The PA is required under signed commitments in the Oslo agreements and also in the 2003 Roadmap peace plan to arrest terrorists, confiscate their weaponry and end the incitement to hatred and murder, including against America, in the PA-controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps that feeds terror, but has failed to do so.

In April 2007, the Acting Speaker of the Palestinian legislature, Dr. Ahmad Bahar, called for the murder of every Jew and American, declaring, "Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies... Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don't leave even one." Neither Abbas nor Fatah even criticized this statement. This should not surprise us. The Fatah Constitution to this day calls for the "demolition" of Israel (Article 12); the use of terrorism as an indispensable part in the strategy to obtain that goal (Article 19); condemns Zionism as racist (Article 7); calls on countries to prevent Jews from moving to Israel (Article 25); and opposes any political solution whatsoever (Article 22). It's no wonder that since September 2000, Fatah has been responsible for as many murders of Israelis as Hamas.

Nor have these horrors been the act of renegade elements that Abbas repudiates. He has praised suicide bombers ("Allah loves the martyr"), and said of wanted terrorists that they are "heroes" and that "Israel calls them murderers, we call them strugglers." Small wonder that wanted terrorists are shielded in his own presidential compound in Ramallah, one of whom, Khaled Shawish, a Fatah figure responsible for the murder of 19 Israelis, was only captured when he ventured out of the compound.

Even Abbas' official negotiating positions are inimical to peace making: he has repeatedly reaffirmed that the 'right of return' is non-negotiable, meaning Israel would be inundated with millions of Palestinians, ending Israel as a Jewish state. In English, he speaks of recognizing Israel, but tells Arab audiences "It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel."

Under the terms of the 2003 Roadmap, which Israel accepted only with deep misgivings and 14 objections, support for a Palestinian state was conditioned upon a first phase of sustained and effective effort by the PA to dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure and end incitement, and a second phase of provisional statehood with provisional borders and limited sovereignty. In contravention of this plan, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's push for a conference on core issues at Annapolis simply jumps to the third phase – creating a fully sovereign Palestinian state, in her words, "as soon as possible" – although the PA has complied with neither the first nor second phases of the Roadmap. This constitutes a huge reward for Palestinians non-compliance, terror and incitement. It is equivalent to marrying an abusive person, hoping that marriage will convert them to kindness.

Clear majorities of the Israeli public oppose any concessions to the Palestinians. A May 2007 poll found that 72% oppose uprooting of Jewish communities within the framework of further Israeli unilateral withdrawals in Judea and Samaria; and 58% reject the "land-for-peace" formula whereby Israel has made territorial concessions to the PA. An October 2007 poll also demonstrates that a clear majority of Israelis oppose, even in return for a peace agreement, Israel handing over any part of Jerusalem to the PA, as do a majority of Knesset members.

Israelis concessions in Judea and Samaria and in Jerusalem to the PA would bring Palestinian terrorist groups within rifle and rocket range of the rest of Jerusalem and other major population centers, thereby endangering all residential neighborhoods of Jerusalem and civilian aircraft landing and taking off from Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport.

At the very least, the U.S. and Israel should be insisting on the observance of the Roadmap plan, not discarding the checks and balances it was supposed to provide to ensure a genuine peace process. The Annapolis talks will proceed in flagrant disregard of these requirements. For any negotiations to proceed, Palestinian action on ending terror and incitement to hatred and murder and creating the minimal conditions in Palestinian society necessary for peacemaking is vital. Logic dictates that such steps are a prerequisite for any peace talks and no concessions or rewards for the PA should be forthcoming from either the U.S. or Israel until these things happen.

Klein is the national president of the Zionist Organization of America


A Herald in Zion....
 Notes from Mevasseret Zion
              Dorothea Shefer-Vanson

Scandals, corruption weaken Israel 

JERUSALEM—As is its yearly wont, the Jerusalem Academic Association met to toast the New Year. Apart from the usual greetings and light refreshments, the programme also included a lecture by Mudi Levine, a retired police officer, on 'Corruption in High Places'.

The speaker began by declaring that Israel is falling in the list of countries graded by the extent to which they fight corruption. No-one in Israel can fail to be aware of the scandals and accusations of sleaze which are our daily fare in the media. Our speaker had inside knowledge of his subject, having belonged to one of the special police units investigating white-collar crime and dishonesty among Israel's senior officials and politicians.

It turned out to be a very depressing occasion. The police investigate white-collar crime and political corruption on the basis of tip-offs, information from the media and subjects tackled by the State Comptroller. They do not tap phones or conduct surveillance without having been granted permission by the legal system. In other words, they are limited by the bounds that constrain every democratic regime.

Sadly, various instances come to light in which officials are found to be using their position for personal gain or to favour cronies. Worse still, elected representatives are known to use their power for dishonest and dishonourable purposes. The police endeavour to investigate these suspicions in order to verify or dismiss them. This is done, the speaker assured us, in the most thorough and professional way. If the suspicions are found to have a basis the material is handed over to the State Attorney so that the offenders can be prosecuted.

What often happens, however, is that the prosecution mechanism turns out to be ineffective. The legal staff of the Attorney General’s office, our speaker claimed, is not always of the highest calibre. The best and the brightest young lawyers generally leave after a few years for better-paid employment in the private sector. When confronting high-powered legal counsel in the courts, the lawyers representing the State are not always able to prevail. In addition, judges are loth to incarcerate white-collar criminals

 together with violent offenders. In many cases the end-result is a plea bargain, in which the wrongdoers are let off with a far lighter sentence than would otherwise be the case.

Our speaker concluded with an ominous warning. The venom of corruption is pervasive throughout Israeli society and could eventually undermine the very foundations of our democratic society, being potentially more destructive than any threat posed by terrorism. It is up to the media, the State Comptroller, the police, and the Attorney General to remain on their guard and protect our society.

Dorothea Shefer-Vanson resides in Mevasseret Zion, a short distance from Jerusalem