Late last week, Agriprocessors’ owner Aaron Rubashkin announced that he would be replacing his son Sholom as company CEO. This was not totally unexpected. A source close to the family told me he had recommended turning the plant over to professional management and that Aaron had seemed open to the idea. But during my five days in Postville last week, Sholom was still very much in charge and the one person I was eager to interview above all others.

I made a request with his spokesperson, and dropped by the plant asking to see him, but to no avail. So on Tuesday afternoon, I drove out to the Rubashkin homestead. Sholom’s house is perched quite literally at the edge of town. The family backyard looks out on — what else? — a cornfield. In any American suburb, it would be considered a modest abode, but it’s nearly luxurious by Postville standards. A Hasidic boy who looked to be about 18 answered the door and over his shoulder, in the foyer, was an enormous portrait of the Lubavitcher rebbe. “Ahh a reporter,” he said when I identified myself, his lips curled into the barest smirk.

He asked for a business card, and as I fussed in my pockets for one, Sholom’s wife appeared, holding a telephone to her ear. She was talking to Sholom who was — where else? — at the plant. “He looks like a very nice boy,” she told him as she gave me the once over. “He even put on a yarmulke.”

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The National has a helpful backgrounder on the dispute between Iran and the United Arab Emirates over three islands in the Persian Gulf. If Iran and the United States were to go to war, the islands could be key to attacking U.S. naval forces in the Gulf, the UAE newspaper notes. This week, Iran refused Russian mediation to resolve the dispute.

Meanwhile, in an editoral, The National expresses alarm over the latest IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program.

Tehran’s refusal to clarify its nuclear intentions is particularly dismaying and shows a disregard for the welfare of the people who would be immediately affected by a nuclear catastrophe: the citizens of Iran and the residents of the Gulf.

Even as Syria moves forward with peace talks with Israel, it is strengthening its ties with Iran. On Tuesday, Syrian Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani ended a three-day visit to Tehran by signing a new defense pact with the Islamic Republic. Read the Tehran Times report here.

Also on Tuesday, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, met with Khaled Meshaal, the Hamas terror chief who lives in Damascus, to urge him to keep up his fight against Israel even if Syria goes the other way.

Syrian President Bashar Assad quickly reassured Tehran, telling a group of visiting British parliamentarians that Damascus would not accede to Israeli demands that Syria cut ties with Iran. “He said if Israel could question Syria’s relations with Iran, then Syria could question Israel’s ties with other countries, particularly the United States,” a source told Reuters.

James Kirchick of the New Republic takes aim at J Street, the new outfit that has been described in some circles as a fledgling AIPAC alternative aimed at securing a more aggressive U.S. role in pushing the peace process:

A perusal of J Street’s list of supporters further undermines its pretensions to mainstream credibility. One of the most prominent Israelis involved with the group is Avrum Burg, former speaker of the Knesset. A member of a distinguished Israeli political family, he set off a political scandal last year when, in an interview with Ha’aretz, he claimed that “to define the State of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end”; he has also compared contemporary Israel to pre-Nazi Germany. Naomi Chazan is a former Knesset member from the left-wing Meretz Party, which has just five seats (out of 120) in the Knesset. Henry Siegman, a former Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has compared Israel to apartheid South Africa, accused Israeli leaders of having the U.S. government “in their pockets,” and claimed (absurdly) that the 2000 intifada “was not planned by Arafat, but a spontaneous eruption of Palestinian anger.”

Moreover, J Street’s depiction of the pro-Israel establishment–read, AIPAC– as wildly hawkish is more than a bit of a stretch.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founding executive director of J Street, responds in an interview with Shmuel Rosner of Ha’aretz:

Determining where J Street sits relative to the ‘mainstream’ of the American Jewish community depends on how you define the term. I don’t claim that the entire community agrees with J Street’s view of the world, the Middle East or Israel. Neither should Kirchik claim the community is
with the New Republic.

A large number of American Jews do hold right-of-center views. But a large number don’t. Many of us believe in a smart, tough foreign policy for America that both defends its vital interests and provides a path to peace and security for Israel. This may put us squarely in opposition with Marty Peretz and Mort Klein, but it also puts us squarely within the range of views held by large numbers of American Jews.

In the “ooops” department… Yesterday we supplied the wrong link to Rosner’s interview with Pastor John Hagee’s Jewish adviser. Click here to read the full exchange (we hope).

In the Jerusalem Post: M.J. Rosenberg makes the case for diplomacy and Caroline Glick takes aim at “Utopian peace junkies.”

Rosenberg:

There are those (and they have been quite vocal lately) who say that engaging in negotiations is a gift to the other side and that negotiating is a form of surrender. What hogwash!

In 1971, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt told the Israelis that if Israel would pull back two miles from the Suez Canal, Egypt would open negotiations on a full peace treaty. President Richard Nixon told Prime Minister Golda Meir to explore the offer and that if she didn’t, Egypt would probably go to war. Meir said “no,” Israel was strong and didn’t fear Egypt. So Sadat prepared for war.

Two years later Egypt attacked. Israel lost 3,000 soldiers and almost the state itself. Only then did it agree to negotiations that ultimately led to the Camp David agreement, which has saved countless Israeli and Egyptian lives over three decades. It also led Israel to a situation where it relinquished not a few miles of Sinai but every last inch.

In other words, it is not diplomacy that rewards aggressors and would be aggressors. It is the absence of diplomacy or inept diplomacy.

Glick:

All along and still today, standing against these voices of sane reality were voices preaching utopian peace. Men and women like Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, Shulamit Aloni, Tzipi Livni, Yuli Tamir, Sheli Yachimovich, Amnon Shahak, Uri Saguy, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Olmert and their chorus of “peace” operatives in the media castigated all proponents of reality-based policymaking as nothing more than fear-mongering fanatics and enemies of peace almost indistinguishable from the likes of Hizbullah, Hamas and all the rest.

And of course the voices of reason were correct every time and never thanked for their wisdom. Indeed, they continue to this day to be condemned as fear-mongering fanatics.

This video of Bob Dylan’s pro-Israel song “Neighborhood Bully” is making the rounds on the Internet:

• The Comics Journal has a super-lengthy interview with Will Elder, the recently deceased Mad Magazine illustrator who helped introduce Yiddish humor into the mainstream American cultural landscape.
• Fresh Jive, the urban street wear company, has drawn the ire of pro-Israel activists over a series of t-shirts in its current line that feature images of Yassir Arafat and armed Palestinian children. Owner Rick Klotz responds on the company’s website here.
• A Brazilian anti-smoking campaign designed by Saatchi & Saatchi features illustrations of Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden drawn with tens of thousands of cigarettes along with the slogan “Smoking kills more.”
• A southern California Ford dealer ran a radio advertisement insisting that non-Christian Americans speaking out on political issues should “sit down and shut up.”
• A spokesperson for Amy Winehouse denied allegations that the drug-addled singer planned to check herself into an Israeli rehab.
• Passaic, NJ shut down a local Hatzolah squad for failing to meet city regulations. The squad claims that they’re being unjustly harassed.
• New York magazine asks, are Crown Height’s Jewish security volunteers vigilantes?
• Israel’s national currency, the shekel, is now trading on the global market.
• The Orthodox Union offers several reasons why Jews should say a mishaberach (healing prayer) for ailing Senator Ted Kennedy.
• And finally, courtesy of JTA staff reporter Sue Fishkoff: Healthy, clean restaurants in Baltimore will soon get a decal from the city’s health dept to display outside their front door: a crab. Really nice touch for local kosher restaurants, as one owner explained.

Abe gives the speech at this year’s Y.U. graduation… (more…)

David Brog, the executive director of Christians United for Israel, has sent out a mass e-mail to followers urging support for Pastor John Hagee and the organization. The money line: “Make no mistake about it, many who attack Pastor Hagee seek not only to hurt him, but to silence all Christian friends of Israel. We need to give a bold and unified response!”

He also did a Q & A with Shmuel Rosner of Ha’aretz. [UPDATE: Sorry, I had the wrong link up for a while.]

Here’s Brog’s full e-mail: (more…)

The Jewish Labor Committee is calling for a boycott of Agriprocessors, and says the recent federal raid “buttresses the conviction shared by many undocumented workers that our government is not only indifferent to worker abuse, but works in collusion with management to penalize workers who challenge it.”

Here’s the JLC’s full statement:

Jewish Labor Committee Policy Statement:
Agriprocessors

New York: May 23, 2008
As an organization committed to the defense of human rights, the Jewish Labor Committee has long condemned the abuse of workers by any employer for any reason. For this reason, the JLC has vigorously opposed the employment practices of Agriprocessors, Inc. since we first learned of them two years ago.

In reviewing the complaints of Agriprocessors’ employees, the JLC learned that there is a clear pattern of employer negligence and even lawlessness. Among the most troubling practices by Agriprocessors are:

· abuse of child labor laws;
· failure to pay workers the full amount of wages they have earned;
· unnecessary exposure of workers to dangerous — even life-threatening — working conditions;
· sexual harassment.

The JLC has also learned that Agriprocessors is actively waging a campaign of intimidation and harassment against workers who have expressed an interest in exercising their legal right to union representation.

In this atmosphere, it is clear that the recent ICE raid at Agriprocessors, though apparently legal, only buttresses the conviction shared by many undocumented workers that our government is not only indifferent to worker abuse, but works in collusion with management to penalize workers who challenge it.

While there are many differing perspectives regarding immigration reform, the American Jewish community shares a common conviction that all workers — regardless of their immigration status — must be free to exercise their rights and challenge employer abuses. Our belief is grounded in the collective memory of American Jewry of the gross exploitation of Jewish immigrants by employers who, like Agriprocessors, abused and robbed them of their right to dignity in the workplace.
Judaism is clear on the topic of treating workers with dignity and respect. We understand that we must treat our workers decently and justly, ethically and legally.

For this reason we call on Agriprocessors to live up to the responsibilities of corporate citizenship, end its campaign of worker abuse, and respect the rights of its employees including their legal right to union representation. Until Agriprocessors establishes its commitment to these responsibilities, we urge consumers of kosher meat products to seek alternatives to the Rubashkin labels.