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Edwards’ double talk on Iran

By Ami Eden · October 31, 2007

At the Democratic debate Tuesday night, John Edwards led the charge against frontrunner Hillary Clinton, accusing her of double talk and saber rattling on Iran, especially with regards to her vote for a resolution backing U.S. sanctions against the Revolutionary Guard.

On both counts, however, Edwards might as well have been talking about himself.

Last January, at an annual gathering of top members of the Israeli security establishment, Edwards gave a Rudy-sounding speech on Iran (click here and scroll to the right to find the text). It contained more saber rattling than anything Clinton has said in recent weeks, and certainly sounded a strong note for tougher sanctions. Here are a few of the highlights:

* "Let me be clear: Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons."

* "Iran must know that the world won't back down. The recent UN resolution ordering Iran to halt the enrichment of uranium was not enough. We need meaningful political and economic sanctions. We have muddled along for far too long. To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep ALL options on the table, Let me reiterate – ALL options must remain on the table."

* "My analysis of Iran is if you start with the President of Iran coming to the UN in New York denouncing America and his extraordinary and nasty statements about the Holocaust and goal of wiping Israel off map, married with his attempts to obtain nuclear weapons over a long period of time, they are buying time. They are the foremost state sponsors of terrorism. If they have nuclear weapons, other states in the area will want them, and this is unacceptable."

Compare all that to what he had to say just a few weeks later on "Meet The Press." When asked if President Edwards would allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon, he said: "I — there's no answer to that question at this moment….I think — I think the — we don't know, and you have to make a judgment as you go along, and that's what I would do as president."

Say what you want about Clinton's recent vote or her general approach to Iran, but she's pushed a consistent message: tough sanctions and robust diplomacy, while refusing to take the military option off of the table.

She stressed all sides of the equation during a speech to an AIPAC gathering in January. That same month, during his speech in Israel, Edwards was so busy talking tough that he forgot to issue a call for stepped up diplomacy, until he was asked about the issue during the question and answer session.

4 Comments | Share This | 2008 Election, Iran |

Jewish Dems go Coulter on Huckabee

By Ami Eden · October 29, 2007

If the National Jewish Democratic Council is so steamed over Ann Coulter's saying that Jews need to be perfected by embracing Christianity, then why has it released a cartoon mocking the religious views of GOP presidential hopeful and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee?

Yes, as the NJDC notes in its accompanying press release, back at a debate in May, Huckabee raised his hand when the candidates were asked if any of them did not believe in evolution.

So what?

Huckabee was asked a question and he answered. It's not as if he said it in the context of advancing legislation that would ban the teaching of evolution or require the teaching of Creationism.

Is the mere belief in something other than evolution now grounds for disqualifying a person from the White House?

Even if you think the answer to that question should be yes, why is it kosher to mock the guy's religious beliefs?

If all that weren't enough, as it turns out, the NJDC is not only mocking his religious beliefs – it's distorting them. On at least two occasions, Huckabee has clarified that by answering no to evolution, he was rejecting the idea of a Godless creation process (see two clips below). Is the Earth billions of years old? Are human beings descended from primates? Maybe, but then God was directing the process, he says. And, either way, he asked, what does that have to do with being president?

One can certainly quibble with a view of evolution that puts God in the driver's seat, but then you're quibbling with what I suspect is a mainstream view among Americans of various political and religious stripes.

1 Comment | Share This | 2008 Election, Hate |

‘Obama Girl’ takes on Coulter

By Ami Eden · October 29, 2007

Laura Kaufman, the voice of 'Obama Girl,' gets all Jewey in her takedown of Ann Coulter.

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Does Maxim have a Jewess problem?

By Ami Eden · October 26, 2007

Forget about The New York Times Magazine. Maxim this week released its list of the five "unsexiest women alive." See if you notice a pattern:

• Sarah Jessica Parker (Jewess)
• Amy Winehouse (Jewess)
• Sandra Oh (plays Jewess on top-rated television drama)
• Madonna (Kabbalist)
• Britney Spears (ex-Kabbalist)

UPDATE: I've received some complaints from Maxim fans who say I've ignored the magazine's "Women of the IDF" tribute. Fine, so the question is whether the magazine has an American Jewess problem.

5 Comments | Share This | Media |

Does the NYT Magazine have a Jewish problem?

By Ami Eden · October 25, 2007

The public editor of The New York Times, Clark Hoyt, recently gave a real spanking to the Sunday magazine and Deborah Solomon over her approach to the weekly "Questions For" feature. Next time he has the magazine on the brain, maybe he could get to a question that's been bugging me for months: Does the NYT Magazine have a Jewish problem?

I wouldn't normally put it that way, but the first troublesome item to catch my attention was the January 14 profile by James Traub titled "Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem?"

Next was Ian Buruma's February 4 "Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue." And, finally, "Orthodox Paradox," Noah Feldman's much-discussed July 22 lament about being cut like a foreskin from his high school alumni newsletter on account of his marriage to a non-Jew.

All three articles contained a Jews-should-get-over-it-already bias: Traub's piece was a critique of Abe Foxman's crying "gevalt" over anti-Semitism, with the underlying message that the Jewish community in general needs to stop stifling debate on Israel. Buruma basically told American Jewish organizations to stop picking on Tariq Ramadan, a controversial Muslim scholar whose chance to teach at Notre Dame fell through because the State Department would not give him a visa. Feldman portrayed any effort by Orthodox institutions to uphold a communal taboo against intermarriage as a primitive obstacle to "reconciling the vastly disparate values of tradition and modernity."

Of course, harping on bias in the NYT Magazine is like complaining about chocolate chips in a Toll House cookie. If you expect straight cookie, then stick to the newspaper – the magazine is a place for writers to open up, both in terms of space and voice.

Still, creative freedom doesn't mean creative license. Each of these stories either danced up to or crossed the line on pertinent facts – in a way that served to bolster the writer's agenda. In at least one case, the journalistic misdeed was serious enough for the public editor to urge one Jewish organization to write a letter to the editor – which the magazine then failed to print. Let's start with Traub's Foxman problem.

Traub did a masterful job in terms of capturing Foxman's personality, of getting a sense of what it feels like to be in a room with the ADL leader when he gets rolling, and Traub's not wrong to suggest that Foxman has become a polarizing figure. But the piece was plagued by several major mistakes or omissions. Perhaps the biggest doozy was this assertion: "Foxman upset many of his colleagues by extending a welcome to Christian conservatives, whose leaders tended to be strongly pro-Israel even as they spoke in disturbing of America's 'Christian' identity. Foxman was willing to cut them some slack on issues of social justice, and even of church-state relations, in the name of solidarity toward Israel."

Prior to the recent controversy over Foxman's initial refusal to classify the massacres of Armenians as genocide, his loudest critics in recent years have been those who complain that the ADL leader spends too much time bashing religious conservatives. Jewish and Christian right-wingers slammed him for his criticisms of Mel Gibson and "The Passion," and were livid in 2005 when he gave a major speech warning of a campaign to "Christianize America." Given the slant of Traub's story, it was also unfair not to mention that Foxman was attacked by Jewish hawks for giving a prominent platform to NYT columnist Thomas Friedman, a frequent critic of Israel's Likud governments. Readers probably also deserved to know that Foxman, during both the Oslo process and the lead up to the Gaza disengagement, spent serious political capital in pressing American Jewish groups to line up behind Jerusalem's peace moves.

In Feldman's story, the main topic of dispute has been the opening anecdote:

A number of years ago, I went to my 10th high-school reunion, in the backyard of the one classmate whose parents had a pool. Lots of my classmates were there. Almost all were married, and many already had kids. This was not as unusual as it might seem, since I went to a yeshiva day school, and nearly everyone remained Orthodox. I brought my girlfriend. At the end, we all crowded into a big group photo, shot by the school photographer, who had taken our pictures from first grade through graduation. When the alumni newsletter came around a few months later, I happened to notice the photo. I looked, then looked again. My girlfriend and I were nowhere to be found.

Combined with the graphic (see below), the clear implication was that the couple had somehow been removed from the photo.

But, as the New York Jewish Week reported, it turned out that Feldman and the magazine editors learned shortly before deadline that this is not what had happened. The real story was that the school had selected one of several photos – each containing only about half of the people at the reunion.

The magazine has insisted that it did nothing wrong. Here's what Alex Star, senior editor at the magazine, had to say about it in an e-mail to the Orthodox Union:

In his essay, Mr. Feldman does not assert, as the Jewish Week claims, that he was "erased" from the photograph or that he and his wife were "stricken from the photo." Nowhere does he say, as you put it in your letter to us, that he was "deliberately cropped out" of the picture. The assertions that you and the Jewish Week attribute to the essay are assertions that are not made in the essay.

In researching the article, we obtained the original contact sheets for the pictures taken by Lenny Eisenberg. The record shows that Eisenberg took five wide-angle photos of the entire crowd at the class reunion. In addition, he took a photo of the crowd from the left side, which includes Mr. Feldman and his wife; and a photo of the crowd from the right side, which does not include Mr. Feldman and his wife. The Maimonides School newsletter chose to publish the photo of the crowd from the right side - the photo that does not include Mr. Feldman and his wife. These facts are entirely consistent with the essay we published, where the author writes that a "group photo" was taken and yet when the alumni newsletter appeared, he and his girlfriend were "nowhere to be found."

Go back, look at the graphic (which Star does not mention), and then read the opening paragraph again. Then decide if the magazine is being straight with readers, both in the original article and the subsequent letter.

At least an editor at the magazine addressed the issue.

Jack Rosen and the American Jewish Congress are still waiting for a response to their complaints about this passage in Buruma's piece on Ramadan:

Ramadan himself says that it was because of his views on Israel and U.S. policy in Iraq that he was deprived of his visa to teach in the U.S. He told me: "I was asked to take part in a dialogue in Paris with representatives of American Jewish organizations, including Jack Rosen, head of the American Jewish Congress. It turned out to be less of a dialogue than an interview about my opinions on the Palestinian conflict. Rosen promised to talk to President Bush. But after this interview, I knew I would never get a visa."

That's a serious charge, reminiscent of classical anti-Semitic canards about Jews pulling the strings of power behind the scenes. Buruma immediately acknowledges as much, writing that the remarks "might sound like just the kind of conspiracy theory anti-Semites tend to indulge in." He then proceeds to assure that reader that Ramadan is not an anti-Semite, without addressing the substance of the initial claim about Jews conspiring to block his visa.

Rosen and other officials at the AJCongress say that Buruma never called them for comment. Just days after publication, Rosen wrote a letter to the then-public editor Byron Calame, in which he said that the visa was never discussed during the meeting and denied that he or any other AJCongress official ever discussed the matter with the State Department. According to Rosen, the AJCongress sought out Ramadan as part of their effort to open a dialogue with moderate Muslims.

In a February 26, 2007 e-mail in response, Calame wrote :

It is my view that Mr. Buruma should have given Jack Rosen an opportunity, before publication, to respond to Tariq Ramadan's description of the Paris gathering. Failing to do so, it seems to me, does not represent The New York Times at its best. I have no authority as public editor, however, to require the magazine or the newspaper to acknowledge and deal with such situations.

I would suggest that you consider sending a letter to the editor to the magazine for possible publication. It would give you an opportunity to present the American Jewish Congress perspective on the meeting. I can't make any commitment on behalf of the magazine, but I would urge you to try this route.

AJCongress officials say they followed the public editor's advice, and sent a nearly identical letter to the magazine, but never heard back. It was never published. (Click here for the full correspondence.)

Mistakes happen, and – despite what left-wing and right-wing bloggers might tell you – mistakes are often not the result of bias. But this pattern of mistakes – and the response or lack of response on the part of the editors – is enough to raise some legitimate questions.

Or maybe I just need to get over worrying about keeping things kosher.

UPDATE: Andrew Silow-Carroll responds to my post.

13 Comments | Share This | Hate, Media |

Hadassah: A better world, one foreskin at a time

By Ami Eden · October 23, 2007

Hadassah, the largest Jewish women's organization, wants you to know: it has launched a campaign to circumcise men.

That must be one engrossing pamphlet.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, the campaign (aimed at reducing AIDS in Africa) is a good thing. It was the photo that made us smile (and cringe).

3 Comments | Share This | Jewish Orgs, Ritual |

Youkilis!!!

By Ami Eden · October 21, 2007

Kevin Youkilis just hit a 2-run homer to put an exclamation point on the big Red Sox comeback. The dude hit close to .500 in the American League Championship Series.

That calls for another look at the first baseman's greatest moment ...

0 Comments | Share This | Sports |

Sorry, Mr. Bishop

By Ami Eden · October 21, 2007

Nearly a decade ago, back in my days at the Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia, a co-worker and I were working late. His phone rang and he picked up.

The caller was screaming. My fellow editor kept saying, "Yes, Mr. Bishop. Sorry, Mr. Bishop."

Yes, it was the Joey Bishop.

If memory serves (the Web is of no help on this one) we had published a letter from a reader who was upset that the Rat Packer – who died last week in Newport Beach, Cali., at 89 – didn't stick with his given name: Joseph Abraham Gottlieb. The letter-writer suggested that Bishop must have been embarrassed by his Jewish roots.

The hell he was, Bishop let my fellow editor know. (And, I should add, he had no problem exposing Johnny Carson as a Midwestern Morano).

So, one last time: Sorry, Mr. Bishop.

0 Comments | Share This | Pop Culture, video |

What if Noah Feldman were a SY?

By Ami Eden · October 17, 2007

Noah Feldman doesn't like that his high school's alumni newsletter won't publish his mug and/or family milestones becuase he married a non-Jew?

Good thing he wasn't born a Syrian Jew …

[The Syrian Jews] of Brooklyn are bound by an invisible fence known as the Edict – a rabbinical threat of excommunication so dire and so powerful that it has fixed the true parameters of the community for generations.

The Edict was issued in Brooklyn by five Syrian rabbis in 1935. They had a simple goal: to preserve the age-old Syrian Jewish community in the New World. … It proclaimed, "No male or female member of our community has the right to intermarry with non-Jews; this law covers conversion, which we consider to be fictitious and valueless."

A 1946 clarification added specifics: "The rabbi will not perform Religious Ceremonies" for such unkosher couples. "The Congregation's premises will be banned to them for use of any religious or social nature. . . . After death of said person, he or she is not to be buried on the Cemetery of our community . . . regardless of financial considerations." With these words, Chief Rabbi Jacob Kassin effectively excommunicated any member of his flock who married a partner with gentile blood.

0 Comments | Share This | Ethnicity |

Peres gets taste of his own medicine

By Ami Eden · October 17, 2007

Check out Israeli President Shimon Peres getting an earful from David Lynch. Now Peres knows how the Arabs and right-wing Jews felt listening to all his talk in the 1990s about a new Middle East …

0 Comments | Share This | Film, Israel, video |