Phil Steger: Let Iraqis stand on their own feet
Phil Steger
February 19, 2005
The election in Iraq, because of Iraqis' bravery and the discipline of U.S. troops, was a success. More than this, the election, which was the condition set by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani for securing Shiite cooperation with the United States, kept the Iraqi insurgency from becoming an all-out civil and national war against U.S. occupation. It's now time to complete the one mission we can accomplish: letting Iraqis live in the democracy of their own determining.
For real democracy to take hold in Iraq, the United States must respect Iraqis' dignity and rights to full self-determination. Maintaining a military presence to "stabilize" Iraq would distort Iraq's sovereignty as it takes shape. This distortion would be a lightning rod for further violence and civil instability and would trigger the long-term, military bog-down that we now can avoid forever. Failing to capitalize on this opportunity would tragically add to the missed opportunities of the past and to the unnecessary loss of life.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5249391.html
Jewish Awareness
It always seems to me everyone wants to make Anti-Semitism 'go away.' Anti-Semitism needs to stop. The memory of it need not 'go away' that would only lead to denial.
Jewish Awareness
A Fair and Balanced Look At Al Franken
Best-selling Satirist Reflects On His Childhood in Minnesota, And Mulls a Run for Office
By Catie Lazarus
February 4, 2005
As political satirists go, Al Franken is in a league of his own. Five Emmy Awards reveal his sublime impact on "Saturday Night Live" as one of its original writers and later as a producer and performer. His books, including "Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot" and "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right," landed him atop best-seller lists in recent years and enabled him to produce and host a hit radio show, where he blends politics and humor.
When Franken sat down with the Forward on a recent afternoon, he was as insightful as he was funny, discussing politics, comedy and why Jews can't get enough of both.
"Everyone likes comedy pretty much, but Jews really like comedy," he said. "It's just part of our culture in the same way that scholarship is."
His contributions to the Jewish community are remarkable, even if they get less attention than his ongoing feuds with Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh. His schedule is packed with helping nonprofit organizations devoted to Jewish causes. Last year, he headlined the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta's campaign kick-off, hosted a Seeds of Peace annual Bid for Peace benefit in Manhattan, and still made time to speak at Temple Emanuel in Los Angeles. Jewish organizations are courting Franken left and right. Franken said that he likes Jewish audiences because he can discuss almost anything with them.
For Jews, Franken said, there is a connection between political activism and comedy. "Every temple has the rabbi who thinks he is a comedian," he joked. He sees satire as a chance to integrate these two passions, comedy and politics, which Jews pursue notoriously with equal fervor.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=lazarus200502021027
Neo-Nazi group plans rally on Revolutionary War Battlefield
By The Associated Press
NORFOLK, Virginia - Citing the First Amendment right to free speech and peaceable assembly, the National Park Service granted a neo-Nazi group's request to hold a rally at a national monument to democracy.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/542140.html
Antisemitism in Canada
Manuel Prutschi
IHC Abstract
Canada is characterized by a set of fundamental values that help create a multicultural democracy and are intended, among other goals, to protect vulnerable minorities. This article examines how these values, unfortunately, have not immunized Canada from antisemitism. It traces Canadian antisemitism’s domestic historical evolution and puts the phenomenon in the context of its current worldwide resurgence.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/vi/150220051
Condi’s Final Solution
By Jack Engelhard
IHC Abstract
The Wannsee Conference of 1942 exhibited the same warp being dealt with today in issues surrounding Israel’s Deportation-Disengagement Plan. It seems that no matter where they live, Jews are not at home. Jews are portable, even in their own state. This is not antisemitism, but strictly business, upon the proposition that a 23rd Arab state in the Middle East, in place of Israel, will bring peace to the world. So removing the Jews from Israel, one region at a time, is actually a peace process: “Condi’s Final Solution.”
The IHC recommends you read the article in full.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/iii/150220051
Report shows racism in France and Austria
16.02.2005 - 10:35 CET By Meghan Sapp
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Racism against Black Africans and Muslims as well as anti-semitism is very active in France and Austria, says a Council of Europe report released on Tuesday (15 February).
Although the report said progress had been made in both countries, anti-semitism has made a comeback in the school population in France, and is often practised by immigrants and Muslims against Jews.
http://www.euobserver.com/?sid=9&aid=18422
Anti-Zionism in Belgium - The Country’s Civil Religion that Reflects the New Antisemitism
An Interview with Joël Kotek
IHC Abstract
Manfred Gerstenfeld’s article is a stimulating report of his interview of Dr. Joel Kotek, professor of Political Science at the Free University of Brussels specializing in the subject of European Integration. It is an important and informative exposition of a nation’s Jewish life with implications for all Jews.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=5/e/160220051
Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center's Leo Adler Appointed to Canadian Cross-Cultural
Roundtable on Security
TORONTO, Feb. 11 /CNW/ - Leo Adler, National Affairs Director, Friends ofSimon Wiesenthal Center has been appointed as a member to the Federal Cross-Cultural Roundtable on Security.His appointment, as one of 15 Canadians, was announced by Deputy PrimeMinister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness AnneMcLellan, Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and Minister of State(Multiculturalism) Raymond Chan.
http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/February2005/11/c2917.html
Fighting Anti-Israelism and Antisemitism on the American University Campus: Faculty
Grassroots Efforts
An Interview with Edward S. Beck
IHC Abstract
New mutations of American antisemitism, particularly as expressed in anti-Israel bias, originate on university campuses. With a view to the growing need for pro-Israel advocacy on American campuses, Edward Beck in 2002 started a grassroots faculty group called Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). It has 17 chapters at institutions such as MIT, Cal Poly, Columbia University and Louisiana State University.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=5/b/100220051
Thirty Years Later
By Roberto Aron
IHC Abstract
In this poignant piece, Aron marks the clear contrast between 1975 U.N. Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism and the 2005 Extraordinary U.N. General Assembly commemorating the liberation of Nazi death camps sixty years ago. A witness to both these events, Aron asks whether it is possible that the struggle against antisemitism is finally beginning to bear fruit and ponders the small ray of hope that begins to pierce the darkness.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/vi/100220051
British Labour Party Slammed for ‘Antisemitic’ Ads
By SIMON ROCKER
February 11, 2005
LONDON — Britain’s governing Labour Party is under a hail of criticism following the release — and hasty withdrawal — of a pre-election poster campaign widely condemned as antisemitic.
The controversial posters, reportedly the personal handiwork of one of Labour’s top strategists, used what critics called thinly veiled stereotypes in their portrayals of opposition Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, who is Jewish. One poster showed Howard as a shadowy, mesmeric figure swinging a gold watch, with the undulating caption, “I can spend the same money twice.” Critics said the poster evoked such antisemitic literary figures as Charles Dickens’s Fagin and William Shakespeare’s Shylock.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=rocker20050209905
Columbia Students Say Firestorm Blurs Campus Reality
By NATHANIEL POPPER
February 11, 2005
Even as Columbia University faces a torrent of allegations of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias, the Jewish students at the center of the controversy say their cause has been misunderstood.
In a recent meeting with the Forward, several students involved in making and distributing the documentary film “Columbia Unbecoming,” which triggered the media firestorm engulfing the university, said that newspaper coverage misleadingly has blurred their accusations into a wholesale drubbing of the university. The students said that the press, along with outside Jewish organizations and activists, transformed what was meant to be a call for professors to adopt a more open approach to debate into an attack on the political opinions of pro-Palestinian professors.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=popper20050209853
Islamophobia Myth
By Kenan Malik
Prospect Magazine February 10, 2005
Ten years ago, no one had heard of Islamophobia. Now everyone from Muslim leaders to anti-racist activists to government ministers wants to convince us that Britain is in the grip of a major backlash against Islam.
But does Islamophobia exist? The trouble with the idea is that it confuses hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims on the one hand with criticism of Islam on the other. The charge of "Islamophobia" is all too often used not to highlight racism but to silence critics of Islam, or even Muslims fighting for reform of their communities.
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16735
Arabs and Holocaust denial sixty years later
There's good reason why so few representatives of Arab states showed up at the UN's Holocaust commemoration
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
“No one … takes seriously the lie about six million Jews who were murdered.”
— Gamal Abdel Nasser, Deutsche Soldaten, 5/1/64
To mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, the U.N. held a special session on January 24, 2005. It was reported that over 100 nations, including Arab states such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, supported holding the session.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0105/memri_holocaust_denial.php3
Fagin, Shylock and Blair
By William Rees-Mogg
IHC Abstract
British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ruling Labour Party has outraged Jewish groups with two shock advertisement posters used in its pre-election campaign. One of the posters portrays opposition Conservative Party leader Michael Howard, a Jew, as a character resembling Charles Dickens’ Jewish pickpocket Fagin in Oliver Twist, or the iniquitous Shylock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The second poster shows a pair of flying pigs with the heads of Mr. Howard and Conservative treasury spokesman Oliver Letwin, also of Jewish descent. The author concludes that while any antisemitism has been denied, the purpose of the operation is to raise the controversy and then withdraw. But the Fagin image will linger on, and those voters who do not like Jews will have been reminded of their prejudice by modern advertising techniques. It is a dirty business and it disgraces both the Labour Party and the Prime Minister, says Rees-Mogg.
The IHC recommends you read the article in full.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=4/b/vi/080220051
Antisemitism Goes Public in Russia
By Mark B. Levin
February 4, 2005
Hate crimes flourish in darkness. To name them and inform the public of their prevalence is the first step in shining a light. Natan Sharansky's recent opinion article on this page describes how "classical" antisemitism used to be "easy to recognize," "not only vulgar and illegal, but socially unacceptable throughout the free world."
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=levin200502021150
A Light Unto the United Nations...And Israel
By Roger Zakheim
February 4, 2005
On January 24, the United Nations General Assembly held a special session commemorating the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Member states gathered in New York to recall how the world failed to prevent the most sadistic and maniacal element of Hitler's war machine.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?id=2659
German President Koehler: “Germany Stands by Israel”
By Mayaan Jaffe
German President Horst Koehler addressed the Israeli Knesset Wednesday (3 February 2005) to celebrate 40 years of diplomatic ties between the two countries.
Seven Knesset members boycotted the address since it was delivered in German. They said this was insensitive to Holocaust survivors. Among those who stayed away were Health Minister Danny Naveh who called a speech in German in the Knesset “inappropriate,” and Deputy Speaker of the Chamber Hemi Doron, whose grandfather was killed in the Holocaust.
http://www.infoisrael.net/cgi-local/text.pl?source=2/a/ix/030220051
U.S. Pick of Envoy To Kiev Ceremony Ignites a Furor
By e.J. KESSLER
February 4, 2005
Elation in Washington over Ukraine's so-called Orange Revolution gave way to red faces this week after the White House was forced to distance itself from a controversial Ukrainian American polemicist who was part of the American delegation to the inauguration of Ukraine's new president, Viktor Yushchenko.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=kessler200502021122
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