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Simchat Torah in Egypt

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

Brenda Gazzar has a dispatch in The Jerusalem Post on spending Simchat Torah in Alexandria, Egypt. In the synagogue with just 25 members, minyans are hard to come by.

0 Comments | Share This | Holidays, Judaism |

Karsenty pushing al-Dura probe

By Uriel Heilman · October 23, 2008

The decision by a Paris court last spring to overturn a libel ruling against Philippe Karsenty, a French media watchdog who claimed the iconic shooting of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura was manipulated by video editing, lent new credence to claims that the September 2000 shooting was staged.

The ruling has fueled Karsenty's increasingly public campaign for a probe of the shooting, which during the violent early days of the second intifada became a symbol for Palestinians of Israeli brutality.

Karsenty talks about the shooting in an interview in the latest issue of the Middle East Quarterly.

Here's JTA's latest story on the subject.

0 Comments | Share This | France, International, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Palestinians |

It’s not just about Shalit

By Uriel Heilman · October 20, 2008

The Jerusalem Post comes out with an editorial Monday warning that while captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit's parents may be justified in doing all they can to secure their son's release, the Israeli people and government should focus on the collective good – even if it comes at Gilad's expense.

If domestic pressure forces the government to make dangerous concessions, there are likely to be many more Gilad Schalits.

Our hearts go out to Schalit's parents. With their son's life on the line, we do not presume to tell them to focus on the collective good. But the rest of us have precisely that obligation...

The biggest mistake the Free Gilad Schalit movement could make would be to continue directing its energies against the government. Our democratic society has responsibilities that go beyond the welfare of a single Israeli hostage. We cannot allow either emotional blackmail - no matter how understandable its source - or media frenzy amid a political leadership vacuum to stampede the country into a bad bargain.

2 Comments | Share This | Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict |

Unwilling executioners

By Uriel Heilman · October 20, 2008

More than half a century after a notorious massacre of Arab villagers by Israeli soldiers, Ha'aretz found some of the soldiers who refused to participate in the killings at Kafr Kassem and talked to them about why, and how, and what if.

On Oct. 29, 1956, eight members of the Border Police massacred 47 inhabitants of the Arab village of Kafr Qasem. They were later convicted of murder for obeying an illegal order, but were eventually pardoned. Ha'aretz talks to those who refused the order, including Nimrod Lampert, who describes it as a directive to 'murder people in cold blood.'

0 Comments | Share This | Arab-Israeli Conflict, Israel |

Money, hate and Jewish values

By Lisa Hostein · October 20, 2008

Fears of an anti-Semitic backlash from the global financial crisis continue to simmer, though evidence beyond the usual anti-Semitic hatemongers is scant.

JTA reported on the domestic fears a few weeks ago and now the ADL has issued a news release citing some worrying examples in the international press.

I often wonder whether giving publicity to these fringe voices does more harm than good.

While Jew-spotting can have its sinister side, it can also be a source of pride when it comes to noting Nobel laureates, as a Ha'aretz columnist points out in his recent piece.

And leave it to Shmuley Boteach to argue that the financial crisis should prompt Jews to re-evaluate our priorities – and our mark on the world in Up against a Wall (Street): The financial crisis and Jewish values.

1 Comment | Share This | anti-Semitism, International |

Israel’s Christian advocate for Africans

By Uriel Heilman · October 17, 2008

The Jerusalem Post's Larry Derfner has a feature on the Christian woman who is one of Israel's leading activists on behalf of African refugees: Charmaine Hedding.

At last week's inaugural meeting of the council of South Sudanese refugees in Israel, Charmaine Hedding, who organized the group, sticks out - as usual. Tall, fair-skinned and platinum blonde, she sits surrounded by seven Sudanese men who also tend to be tall, but whose skin is the color of mahogany.

The meeting takes place in the old German Colony mansion that houses the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, where Hedding is in charge of special projects, mainly the annual Feast of the Tabernacles, which is expected to draw some 8,000 Christians to Israel this week. (Her father, Rev. Malcolm Hedding, heads the embassy, which is co-publisher of The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition.)

But in the last year and a half, Charmaine, 35, has become one of the leading activists on behalf of the thousands of African refugees who've crossed the Egyptian border into Israel. Devoting three days a week to their cause, she's put the well-funded, well-connected embassy, the pioneer among contemporary Christian Zionist organizations in Israel, at the refugees' service. With the government generally treating them as an unwanted burden, Hedding at times works with, but at other times around, Israel's powers-that-be, usually in concert with left-leaning Israeli human rights organizations.

2 Comments | Share This | International, Israel |

The coming winter

By Uriel Heilman · October 17, 2008

What does the U.S. economic crisis mean for Israel? Mainly, that the government in Jerusalem won't be able to bug a distracted Washington too much about threats to Israel's security, writes Aluf Benn in Ha'aretz:

In the long run, a resilient America will be of greater help than anything else to Israel's security-related and international standing. Obama will aspire to improve the status and image of the U.S. internationally, after the nadir reached under Bush's eight years in office. That effort will oblige him to take an interest in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, if only to placate those who supported him in his run for the presidency. Israel will have to be careful not to give the impression that it is hampering Obama's foreign policy, like a kind of vestige from the Bush period. Accordingly, Jerusalem will have to shy away from moves that will look like provocations in the international arena, such as authorizing extensive building in the settlements, at least until it becomes clear who Obama is and how he is going about the business of being president.

Obama will not have time on his hands to mediate between Israel and the Arabs. He will have to decide whether to appoint a special presidential emissary to the region. Perhaps someone like Richard Holbrooke, who mediated between the factions in former Yugoslavia, with rich experience, a broad mandate and an open line to the White House. The Israelis and Palestinians have neutralized quite a few such mediators in the past, and can succeed in doing the same with the next emissary, but, as in the case of Rice, they will have to go about it very carefully, without offending the new president.

Livni will find it difficult to depend on the Jewish establishment in the U.S., which for the most part worked against Obama. She will need a close liaison with the president. Perhaps Lester Crown, the 82-year-old Chicago billionaire, who was one of Obama's first Jewish supporters in the primaries against Hillary Clinton. Crown is closely connected to Israel, takes an interest in its strategic problems, and will undoubtedly be able to intervene at moments of crisis.

And crises there will be. Israel's strategic arena is fraught with points of friction that are liable to erupt at any moment: Hezbollah's threatened revenge for the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, the renewal of rocket fire from Gaza, a third intifada in the West Bank, settler violence against Palestinians and much more. How the new leaders here and in Washington handle these problems will determine their place in history.

0 Comments | Share This | International, Israel, Politics |

Jews rule

By Uriel Heilman · October 16, 2008

The latest depressing dispatch from Ynet:

Jews don't know how to rule. This is clear to anyone observing the Israeli chaos. After all, too much time has passed since Jews were in power, and we completely forgot the meaning of sovereignty and the way to impose order.

Observing the Israeli authorities' middling response to last week's Arab-Jewish riots in Akko, Assaf Wohl writes:

Often I ask myself why we cannot just send a regiment of Hebrew mounted police to put Akko in order. Why can't we dispatch a Zionist platoon to punish the drug dealers in Lod? Or why can't we construct a small-scale Alcatraz on an island in the Sea of Galilee? Of course we can, we simply don't want to do it. And what do you mean "why not?" It's because we're Jewish. And Jews simply don't do some things...

We do not have the self-confidence of the kings of Israel or the power of the Hasmoneans. We are much more similar to the customs of the Diaspora Jew, the kind who tells a Yiddish joke when things are really bad, or at most reads some psalms. But, heaven forbid, he will not undertake an overly aggressive act.

Therefore, it is very difficult for us to grasp that we are the ones who are required to exercise power in practice. We have still not internalized the fact that the responsibility for running the Jewish State is exclusively ours, and therefore we shall always keep on hoping that someone will do the dirty work for us.

1 Comment | Share This | Israel |

A Jewish festival where there are no Jews

By Uriel Heilman · October 16, 2008

From "Studio 360:" For 18 years, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow, Poland has been home to a Jewish cultural festival – nine days of dancing, lectures, and concerts. 25,000 people attend, most of them Poles with no Jewish family. Stephanie Rowden wondered what Jewish culture can mean in a place where it has been absent for 60 years.

0 Comments | Share This | History, Interfaith, Judaism, Yiddish |

Why a chicken?

By Ami Eden · October 13, 2008

Ben Harris filed a report on the feud between animal-rights activists and Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim over kapparos. Here's his interview with Rabbi Shea Hecht about why the pre-High Holiday ritual must performed with a chicken.

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