JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People

Sherrod Brown’s aid record

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

A group of Ohioans are circulating a letter targeting Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) not only for agreeing to be endorsed by J Street, but for proposing cuts in aid to Israel in the 1990s.

Brown is facing State Treasurer Josh Mandel.

Here's a passage:

Opposing Foreign Aid to Israel:

Since going to Washington, Sherrod Brown has voted against aid to Israel on five separate occasions.

CUTTING Aid to Israel:

Sadly, Sherrod Brown even voted to CUT aid to Israel in the highly controversial “Campbell Amendment”, (H.R. 1486,) that singled out Israel’s aid for elimination.

We've checked the record: Brown, then a House member, like many other Democrats, including Jewish Democrats, opposed GOP foreign aid proposals because of cuts to aid to Africa.

In one case where Israel was cited, the  proposed symbolic cut was to economic, not military aid -- which was in any case being phased out at Israel's behest.

Here's a passage from the 1997 floor International Relations Committee speech by then-Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Calif.) who authored the amendment:

To those who have a very legitimate concern about military assistance to our ally and friend, Israel, and to Egypt, this is not the subject of this amendment. But economic assistance to an economy which is far above that of the poorest of the poor seems to be not the will of the majority of the American people.  Here are the numbers. Presently, the United States, on a per-capita basis in economic aid, gives $215 per person in Israel, $14 per person in Egypt, and $1.73 per person in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is wrong; it does not represent the priorities of our country—17 cents for every human in India, $1.20 for every human in Latin America and the Caribbean. I repeat, I am speaking of economic aid only. There are military interests. There is necessity to support allies. I am not touching those.

A substantial minority of Republicans similarly voted against foreign aid budgets (including aid to Israel) more recently when Democrats controlled the House, citing among other reasons the inclusion of funding for family planning groups overseas that carried out abortions.

0 Comments | Share This |

The day the rabbi turned Sheldon Adelson down

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

Rolling Stone's Rick Perlstein does not like Sheldon Adelson (he calls him "crazy and unscrupulous") and thinks Adelson's taste for union busting is more germane to understanding his relationship with Newt Gingrich than Israel. But his piece this week replays some of the highlights of how Adelson takes his fight to Jewish arenas.

Then there was the time, late in 1999, when Las Vegas's Temple Beth Shalom honored the city's new Jewish mayor with a dinner. It was originally to be held at Adelson's new Venetian, but the Democratic mayor refused to cross the picket line. So they held it at the Four Seasons instead. Adelson withdrew the $250,000 he had pledged for the temple's building fund and tossed it to another Jewish organization instead – but not before verbally dressing down Beth Shalom's rabbi with such virulence that the shaken rabbi recalled, "Nobody had ever talked to me like he talked to me." He went similarly berserk after the National Jewish Research and Medical Center announced that their annual gala would recognize John Wilhelm, then the head of the Culinary Workers. One reason they were honoring Wilhelm was because his union had donated $700,000 to the hospital over the previous 23 years. Allegedly, Adelson offered the hospital $70,000 – a payoff – if they would just honor someone else. 

Also on the gambling magnate/SuperPAC beat, Irving Moskowitz, backer of settlements, has donated $1 million to Karl Rove's American Crossroads, Huffington Post reports.

0 Comments | Share This |

Santorum’s Jerusalem swan song

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

A day before he bowed out of the race for the GOP presidential nod, Rick Santorum's op-ed endorsing Jerusalem as Israel's capital appeared in the New York Daily News.

It includes shots not only at President Obama, but at Mitt Romney, with Santorum's departure, the all but coronated GOP nominee:

Never has Israel ever offered Western Jerusalem in a negotiation, so why would the administration keep this totally Jewish section of the city in question?

The Israeli Gaza withdrawal and the missiles that are launching from there into Israeli cities demonstrates that any Israeli withdrawal from any part of Jerusalem would leave Israel without defensible borders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, as have other Israeli prime ministers, that he will never divide Jerusalem.

Unfortunately, I cannot say that my opponent for the Republican Presidential nomination has a different position from that of the President. He has not expressed his opinion about the Obama administration’s position on Jerusalem.

1 Comment | Share This |

Who is Rabbi Clueless?

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

We blogged earlier about screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' break with Mel Gibson over differing visions of a movie based on the Maccabees. Eszterhaz accuses Gibson of hating Jews and says the film advances an agenda, aimed in part at converting Jews. An intriguing reference arises in Eszterha's letter to Gibson to a "Rabbi Clueless," apparently Gibson's sobriquet for the man:

I was looking forward, too, to working with the two "biblical advisors" you had picked. But as time passed, I realized that one of the advisors, a Catholic priest -- whom you called "Father Fucko" -- a friend of yours who'd advised you on The Passion, made time for only half a day of conversation with me. And your other advisor -- whom you called "Rabbi Clueless" -- a rabbi who defended you during The Passion controversy, made time for only a forty-minute telephone conversation.

I asked to go to Israel and to speak to biblical scholars there -- as I had gone to Jerusalem and Yad Vashem to rehearse music box. But you rejected that and said, "My guys know much more than those Hebres over there. I suspected then that your "advisors" were a smoke screen, a publicity gimmick, a priest and a rabbi making sure (for half a day and forty minutes on the phone) that I got all the facts right in our movie.

So who is "Rabbi Clueless?" I don't know. But the most prominent defense of The Passion was this one in National Review Online, by Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Toward Tradtion, otherwise known for his associations with Glenn Beck and Jack Abramoff.

0 Comments | Share This |

Cantor, Manzullo and being “saved”

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader in the House, gave money to a SuperPAC trying to unseat incumbents, including GOP incumbents in primaries.

House leadership usually stays out of primary battles, or less often, backs incumbents. I can't remember it tackling incumbents, on either side (but correct me if you know otherwise, dear reader.)

Cantor says he did this because he was, in essence, backing one incumbent against another, Adam Kinzinger, v. Don Manzullo in a redrawn district. (Kinzinger won last month.)

But, again, the pundits say that this is even more unusual -- and I can think of at least one Dem v. Dem race, Sherman v. Berman in California, where I strongly suspect there's a sentimental favorite among House Dem leaders, but they are being careful not to weigh in.

Now Politico is reporting that the Cantor-Manzullo animus predates this tussle, and originated when Manzullo, a Baptist, reportedly said Cantor, who is Jewish, would not be "saved." Manzullo denies it.

UPDATE: A reader points out that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has not been shy about speaking on behalf of Howard Berman, albeit stopping short of endorsing him -- or funding his bid. (From Politico.)

0 Comments | Share This |

Australian Catholics go wild

By Ron Kampeas · April 12, 2012

First Mel Gibson (or, first, Mel Gibson, again.):

Via The Wrap, quoting from a letter to Gibson from his erstwhile The Maccabees screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas:

"You continually called Jews 'Hebes' and 'oven-dodgers' and 'Jewboys.' It seemed that most times when we discussed someone, you asked 'He’s a Hebe, isn’t he?' You said most 'gatekeepers' of American companies were 'Hebes' who 'controlled their bosses.'" 

The slurs continued, through their work:

“You said the Holocaust was 'mostly a lot of horseshit.' You said the Torah made reference to the sacrifice of Christian babies and infants. When I told you that you were confusing the Torah with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, ... you insisted 'it's in the Torah -- it's in there!' (It isn't)."

And he said Gibson told him that his intention in making “The Maccabees” was “to convert the Jews to Christianity.”

Then, the archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Pell, in a debate with atheist Richard Dawkins.

From the London Daily Telegraph:

I've got a great admiration for the Jews but we don't need to exaggerate their contribution in their early days," he said on ABC television. "They weren't intellectually the equal of [the Egyptians or Persians] – intellectually, morally ... The poor – the little Jewish people, they were originally shepherds. They were stuck. They're still stuck between these great powers."

Later, Cardinal Pell, the Archbishop of Sydney, seemed to suggest the Germans had suffered more than the Jews during the Holocaust.

Asked why god permitted the Holocaust to occur, he said: "He helped probably through secondary causes for the Jews to escape and continue. It is interesting through these secondary causes probably no people in history have been punished the way the Germans were. It is a terrible mystery." When the debate host suggested that the Jews had suffered more than the Germans, Cardinal Pell said: "Yes, that might be right. Certainly the suffering in both, I mean the Jews, there was no reason why they should suffer."

Oddly, Australian media carries little of this, although the Australian Jewish News is on it, and has a "clarification" by the cardinal:

“My commitment to friendship with the Jewish community, and my esteem for the Jewish faith is a matter of public record, and the last thing I would want to do is give offence to either,” he said.

“This was certainly not my intention, and I am sorry that these points which I tried to make on Q&A on Monday did not come out as I would have preferred in the course of the discussion.”

These things come in threes ...

0 Comments | Share This |

Nuancing Ari Fleischer

By Ron Kampeas · April 11, 2012

 Ari Fleischer called me about an earlier blog post I wrote in which I noted that he and another Republican, Michael Hayden, had relatively nice things to say about President Obama's Middle East policy.

My point was their nuance; Fleischer asks me, fairly, to further nuance my presentation of his statements from a Republican Jewish Coalition call with supporters by adding caveats. I had made clear that he thought the GOP candidate (whom we now know to be Romney) would be better for a variety of reasons, particularly because of the impression among Republicans that Obama has distanced himself from Israel, but Fleischer is right that I should have included each of his caveats as well.

So when he said "Did President Obama retreat from military commitments to Israel, he did not retreat -- he continued the trend, and I praise him for that," he also said: "but America's relationship with Israel is not about military equipment, America's relationship with Israel is about matters of heart."

And while he credited Obama for increasing sanctions he added: "But will the sanctions be enough, the history of the world gives very little example of sanctions being enough to deter military aggressors and this is why Israel sees it through such a different  lens."

Finally, Fleischer wanted to emphasize that his perception of Obama as neutral -- as opposed to hostile to Israel -- was no compliment. On the call, he followed up, "He would like to be the great man in the middle" with the following: "You don't do it [make peace] by having America abandoning its pro-Israel stance."

0 Comments | Share This |

Obama vs. Reagan, Netanyahu vs. Begin and Shamir

By Ron Kampeas · April 10, 2012

 Over at Tablet, Yair Rosenberg has a piece that challenges the "Obama is the worst president for Israel, ever" meme.

What's notable is that he does not have to plumb the fraught Eisenhower years -- he digs just as far back as Ronald Reagan, an icon of today's Republican Party.

Under Reagan, the United States had withheld promised warplanes from Israel to punish it for destroying Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981 and voted to condemn the action in the United Nations Security Council. It had publicly criticized Israel’s July bombing of the PLO headquarters in Beirut and the ensuing civilian casualties. And it had suspended discussion of a memorandum of strategic cooperation after the Knesset voted to extend Israeli civil law to the occupied Golan Heights.

UPDATE: Chemi Shalev at Ha'aretz also plumbed this territory last December. I had forgotten some of the details Shalev resurfaces -- for instance, that Reagan balked at visiting a concentration camp, even as he pressed ahread with his address at Bitburg, where members of the Waffen SS were buried. It's a stunning read.

Rosenberg also takes on the "Netanyahu's is most right wing Israeli government, ever" meme:

Despite pressure and eventually threats from President George H. W. Bush, [Yitzhak] Shamir doggedly continued settlement expansion and insisted that the United States finance such building with loan guarantees. Under Shamir, the Chicago Tribune noted, “The number of housing units under construction in the occupied territories reportedly more than quadrupled to 12,985 last year from 2,880 in 1990.” And for his perceived intransigence on peace initiatives, Shamir famously earned himself the nickname “Mr. No.”

One minor caveat: Setting up the demolition of the Netanyahu meme, Rosenberg quotes Naomi Chazan, and then segues into a contemplation of Menachem Begin and his diplomatic and settlement policies.

This is deceptive: Chazan, describing at Yale what she calls "the most right-wing government in Israel's history," is referring to domestic policies, many of them having to do with free expression.

Memo to Iran: Learn the sofits

By Ron Kampeas · April 10, 2012

The BBC has a story up about how Iranians can't seem to get to the London 2012 Olympics website of late.

Why, isn't clear, but the Beeb notes the following:

Iran had previously signalled it might boycott the Olympics over claims that the official logo spells the word "Zion" - a Hebrew word used to refer to Israel or Jerusalem.

In February 2011 the Iranian authorities called for the logo to be withdrawn and the designers "confronted".

However, a follow-up letter later made clear its athletes would still "participate and play gloriously".

Now, being a parent who firmly believes in conferring unfair inherited advantages on his children, I sat with my sons during their Hebrew school years and listened to them read, and corrected them when they needed it. As a result, they consistently scored high reading and pronunciation marks. (Too bloody bad I'm not an investment banker, but it is what it is.)

And I noticed (and remembered from my own days learning the language) that one of the stumbling blocks, at last for English speakers, are the sofits: The five letters that have "final" versions.

So here's a version of the London Olympics logo:

Now, reading from the upper right to the upper left, I can make out "Mazion," I guess. With a Zayin, not a Tzaddi as the second letter, so no "Tzion".

Generously, you could clump the whole right side and make out a Tzaddi, and that would get us closer to Tzion. The dot in the middle is serviceable as a Yod, and the lower left configuration could pass for a stylized Vav.

And the last letter might be a nun, at least as rendered in classical Hebrew.

But as my kids now know, it ain't "Tzion" unless it's a nun sofit, a final nun.

So if there is a Zionist conspiracy afoot, the designers should indeed be confronted, per the Iranian authorities -- for not knowing their Hebrew.

Finally, is it notable that the Iranians have yet to complain about this alternative logo?

0 Comments | Share This |

Why didn’t Adelson give Bibi a headsup about Newt?

By Ron Kampeas · April 9, 2012

 This New York Times account of how Benjamin Netanyahu and Mitt Romney have ties that predate their political careers is fascinating. Read the whole thing.

They met as young business school grads (Romney of Harvard's, Bibi of MIT's) hired as analysts at Boston Consulting Group.

The nugget for me, though, comes toward the end:

Even as Mr. Netanyahu, a keen and eager student of American politics, has tried to avoid any hint of favoritism in the presidential election, friends say he has paid especially close attention to Mr. Romney’s political fortunes in this campaign season.

And the prime minister keeps open lines of communication to the candidate. When it was Mr. Gingrich’s turn to leap to the top of the polls, Mr. Netanyahu was startled in January by an article exploring why Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino executive and outspoken supporter of Israel, was devoting millions of dollars to back Mr. Gingrich. It described Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Adelson as close friends.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office quickly relayed a message to a senior Romney adviser, Dan Senor: the prime minister had played no role in Mr. Adelson’s decision to bankroll a Romney rival.

That Adelson would not consult Bibi about whom to back is not surprising; it would be unseemly if he did.

That Bibi, apparently, was caught off guard about the pick -- now, that's interesting. 

0 Comments | Share This |