Navigation:
Reporting on the Middle East, Science, and Education for July 30, 2009 - ט' אב תשס"ט
Pages
Archives
Toward a better future through tolerance and mutualism
Sponsored By:
Recent Comments:
Richard on Hamas Occupies Palestinian Lands.
Comments RSS
Washington is calling on the Arabs to take steps toward the normalization of ties with Israel "in return" for a halt to the Israeli settlement construction according to a formula that is being discussed between Americans and Israelis. The Arabs want their normalization steps to come after, not before, Israel freezes settlement construction and after they make sure that Israel is truly seeking to reach a settlement based on the principle of a two-state solution.
By Michel Abu Najm, Asharq Alawsat, July 30, 2009
Paris, Asharq Al-Awsat- George Mitchell, US special envoy to the Middle East, has made a statement in Cairo calling on the Arab countries to take measures toward the partial normalization of ties with Israel in order to facilitate launching peace negotiations on all Arab-Israeli tracks.
Meanwhile, knowledgeable diplomatic sources revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the Gulf States and the Arab countries have reservations about responding [positively] to Mitchell’s request and that they feel "annoyed" by the US insistence that they take certain steps that these countries consider "premature" and that "there is no reason to take them at this point in time."
These sources, which are familiar with the substance of Mitchell’s talks, said that the Arab party conveyed to the US envoy its reservations abut his request while emphasizing the substance of the Arab peace initiative, which provides for a comprehensive peace in return for full relations and the normalization of ties with Israel. Mitchell, defended his request, stressing two key issues: First, he said that what he calls for "is intended to help the US President" in his current confrontation with the right-wing Israeli Government. So if the Arab countries want to benefit from the diplomatic momentum the US Administration is displaying, "they should not stand by with folded arms." They "start moving" so that Washington will not look as though it "is pressuring Israel only," which is the pretext that Israel’s supporters in the United States are using in battling President Obama.
Second, he said that the Arab peace initiative, which Washington sees as one of the peace frameworks and points of reference, "has remained an empty overture, seven years after it was launched. So it is time for the Arabs to activate this initiative and give it a practical substance," which Mitchell claims to be seeking to achieve.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on July 30, 2009 - ט' אב תשס"ט at 2:32 pm
Comments Off
By Haim Watzman, Nature News, July 29, 2009
Israel’s space industry faces a financial crisis that could lead to the laying off of half its workforce over the coming year. The message came from academics and industrialists speaking at a hearing of the Science and Technology Committee of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on 28 July.
Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency, says that the crisis has been triggered by a series of cuts in the defence and higher-education budgets, combined with the expense of sustaining and replacing ageing infrastructure that was created in the 1980s and 1990s, the early years of the country’s space programme.
Ben-Israel told the committee that the Israeli government must more than double its spending on space research and development, from about US$60 million a year today to $150 million a year, to save the industry and maintain the country’s position as a small but key player on the world stage.
According to Yossi Weiss, General Manager of Israeli Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) space division, the industry as a whole has already laid off 15–20% of its scientific and engineering work force over the last three months.
Another 30% would be dismissed during the next year in the absence of extra financial support from the government. The loss of these trained and experienced workers would make the decline in the industry irreversible, says Weiss.
Ben-Israel argued that an increase in funding would be a profitable investment. The revenues of the satellite industry worldwide are about $150 billion, he said, claiming that with proper support Israel should be able to get 1% of that market.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Business and Commerce, Middle East Report, Recent Posts, Science, Science and Technology on July 30, 2009 - ט' אב תשס"ט at 5:53 am
Comments Off
Beside the Book of Lamentations and the traditional laments it is time to call, ‘Arise! Let us go up to Zion," let us go to the Temple Mount. Within the limitations of halakha and of police directives, not as a provocation or demonstration. A heritage trip to Morocco or Poland is all well and good, but going to the Temple Mount is the real heritage trip.
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz, July 30, 2009
Tisha B’Av will last forever," promised Kamal al-Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, to thousands of cheering Muslims at the Temple Mount a few days ago. Even the hearts of Jews far from the mountain saddened. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mocked us in the same spirit a few months ago when he said, "Call yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic – it is none of my business." He refused to accept Israel’s Jewish identity. We, who have drifted away from Tisha B’Av and the Temple Mount, should be grateful to both of them, because sometimes a nation needs its haters to discover its real face in the mirror again.
Why deny it? Only a few of us still feel real pain over the destruction of the Temple some 2,000 years ago. Fewer still are attached to the Temple of yore. Tisha B’Av is filled with events organized by Temple Mount movements and groups interested in negotiations and public discourse, but the general public is not part of all that.
It is doubtful whether legislation would help in this case. It may even be harmful when the public does not feel mere indifference to this day but alienation. Regrettably, many people ignore Tisha B’Av. They wonder what mourning the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple has to do with them, who are living in a sovereign Jewish state.
But there’s another way that will put not only the loss of the Temple and its existence at the center of this day, but mainly the loss of Jewish sovereignty and freedom and the beginning of the long exile. Were it not for that exile, in which we were banished from our land, persecuted, oppressed and murdered, our history as a nation could have been very different.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on July 30, 2009 - ט' אב תשס"ט at 5:15 am
Comments Off
Source: United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI)
Date: 28 Jul 2009
PAL/2119
PI/1901
(Received from a UN Information Officer.)
RIO DE JANEIRO, 28 July –- The seventeenth International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East concluded today, as the head of the United Nations Department of Public Information encouraged journalists to do more to expand the public dialogue about the situation in that region and to help bridge the divides that separated Israelis and Palestinians.
"You have enormous power to reach out to the widest possible audience to change the mindsets […] for better understanding and a peaceful future for all people in the Middle East," said Kiyo Akasaka, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. The United Nations and major actors, both old and new, would assist in the search for a peaceful solution.
"Please write about what you have heard at this seminar," he continued, expressing the hope that the discussions — touching on, among others, the importance of spreading the message of peaceful coexistence and the role of media and civil society in shaping opinions about the Middle East — would help build bridges between Israelis and Palestinians. For its part, the Department of Public Information would mobilize its forces and resources to continue the annual seminar so that understanding between the two sides could be enhanced.
The seminar, on "Promoting Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue –- a view from South America", opened yesterday and was organized by the United Nations Department of Public Information in cooperation with the Ministry of External Affairs of Brazil. (See Press Release PAL/2118) It was the first such event to be held in a South American country, and Mr. Akasaka thanked the Brazilian Government and people, noting that their keen interest in the subject and active participation had provided the setting for one of the liveliest seminars in several years.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on July 29, 2009 - ח' אב תשס"ט at 12:29 am
Comments Off
Photo: Mohammed al-Jabri/IRIN 
Thousands of Hashid tribesmen supported government troops in fighting against the Shia rebels in the north
SANAA, 24 July 2008 (IRIN) – Since 2004 hundreds of people have been killed and thousands displaced as a result of fighting between Shia rebels and government forces in the northern governorate of Saada. IRIN takes a look at the background to the conflict, and tries to shed light on why it still smoulders today.
[Read this report in Arabic]
The Shia al-Houthi rebels take their name from their leader, Hussein Badraddin al-Houthi, who was killed in September 2004, and succeeded by his brother, the current leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
Whereas most lowland Yemenis in the south of the country are Sunni, Yemenis in the northern, more mountainous areas are Shia – specifically, followers of the Zaydi doctrine. (For more on this and the history of the Zaydis in Yemen, click here).
The Zaydis ruled Yemen for 1,000 years up until 1962. During this time they ferociously defended their independence and fought off foreign powers (Egypt, the Ottomans) who controlled lower Yemen and tried to extend their rule to the north.
However, crucial to an understanding of the present conflict is that while the al-Houthi rebels are Zaydis, by no means all Zaydis support the al-Houthi rebels – something that has been exploited by the government, which has persuaded rival Zaydi clans, backed by government forces, to lead the fighting against them in the mountain fastnesses of northern Yemen.
More on Saada conflict
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Middle East Report, News Articles on July 27, 2009 - ו' אב תשס"ט at 11:57 pm
Comments Off
“Building new communities throughout Judea and Samaria is the only way we can return the State of Israel to being independent, flourishing and growing, protect our national interests, and stand up to international pressure.”
by Yehudah Lev Kay, Arutz Sheva, Av 5, 5769, 26 July 09
(Israelnationalnews.com) Nationalist activists in Judea and Samaria (Yesha) plan on establishing 11 new outposts on Monday and Tuesday this week. They say the move is in defiance of international pressure to freeze construction in Yesha, and hearkens to Zionist history in 1946, when Jews set up 11 outposts in the Negev in defiance of the British Mandate.
“The nations of the world don’t want us here,” say flyers publicizing the 11 new outposts. “We will answer by strengthening our ties to the Land of Israel and building new communities.” The flyers urge activists to participate in founding the new neighborhoods.
The 11 new neighborhoods are to be established as follows:
Inbalim (Bells)– next to Maaleh Michmash in Binyamin
Oz Yonatan (Jonathan’s Might)– near Kochav Yaakov in Binyamin
Givat Egoz (Nut Hill) – near Talmon in Binyamin
Tzurya (The Rock of G-d) – near Avnei Hefetz in Samaria
Mitzpe Avichai (Avichai’s Lookout) – near Kiryat Arba/Hevron
Netzer (Stem) – near Efrat in Gush Etzion
Reches Sela (Boulder Cliff) – south of Shechem in Samaria
Gat Yosef (Joseph’s Winepress) – south of Shechem in Samaria
Nofei Yarden (Jordan Horizons) – near Shilo in Samaria
Maalot Hevron (Hevron Heights) – near Hevron
Havat HaRo’im (Shepherds’ Farm) – near Susya in Judea
“We call on the entire public to come and support the new communities,” said Daphna Ronen, a member of the Land of Israel Faithful, which is organizing the new outposts. “We are sending a strong message to the people of Israel and the people of the world that we love the land and we are here to stay.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Judaism, Middle East Report, News Articles, Recent Posts on July 26, 2009 - ה' אב תשס"ט at 11:46 pm
Comments Off
By MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS, Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009
Israel has been willing to accept a two-state solution since the United Nations partition resolution for Palestine in 1947, but the Arabs have refused. They are not interested in creating a separate Palestinian Arab state but in destroying Israel as a Jewish state.
In foreign policy, President Barack Obama has demonstrated a disturbing propensity to curry favor with our adversaries at the expense of our friends.
The Czechs and Poles are rightly concerned that they will be sacrificed on the altar of better U.S. relations with Russia. And the Israelis fear that the Obama administration’s desired opening to the Muslim world will be achieved at their expense. Mr. Obama’s attempted bullying of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a case in point.
Mr. Netanyahu was sworn in as Israel’s prime minister on March 31. Shortly thereafter, the Obama administration confronted Israel’s new leader in a very public way regarding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an area partially controlled by the Palestinian National Authority. This was an extremely unusual way for an American president to greet the new leader of a liberal democracy that’s a close ally of the U.S.
The Obama administration was not satisfied with a series of understandings crafted by the Bush administration that, while not freezing settlements, had nonetheless achieved a significant reduction in settlement construction. During a May press conference with the Egyptian foreign minister, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Mr. Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements—not some settlements, not outposts, not natural-growth exceptions.”
Subsequently, Mr. Obama demanded that Israel freeze construction in east Jerusalem. Of course, Mr. Netanyahu rejected Mr. Obama’s demand. He declared that Jerusalem is an open, undivided city “that has no separation according to religion or national affiliation.” Mr. Netanyahu added that “we cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem.”
If Jews were prohibited from buying property in New York, London, Paris or Rome, there would be an international outcry. Why, Mr. Netanyahu wondered, should the standard be different for Jerusalem?
Mr. Obama is woefully wrong if he believes that his confrontational style will provide an incentive for the Palestinians and the members of the Arab League to resolve the Arab-Israeli dispute. It will simply reinforce the long-standing Arab belief that the U.S. can “deliver” Israel if it only has the will to do so, thereby reducing Arab incentives to make concessions in direct negotiations with Israel.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Middle East Report, Opinion, Recent Posts on July 25, 2009 - ד' אב תשס"ט at 2:29 pm
Comments Off
By Steve LeVine, Business Week, July 23, 2009
Nine years ago, Robert J. Nowak, an electro-chemicals expert for the Defense Dept., learned that senior generals weren’t happy with their troops’ electronic gear. While the night-vision, laser, and GPS devices worked well, the batteries that powered them weighed some 25 pounds per soldier, heavy enough to hurt some of the troops.
So Nowak, who worked at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Dept.’s famous research branch, solicited bids for a new device that would power a soldier’s gear at a tenth of the weight and a fraction of the $100 cost of the batteries. Today, the original 18 companies that took up Nowak’s challenge have been whittled down to two: Livermore (Calif.)-based UltraCell and Adaptive Materials of Ann Arbor, Mich. Their solution: small, sturdy fuel cells that can power a soldier’s clutch of mobile devices for a week on a gallon or so of methanol or propane. Battle-ready versions of the fuel cells will be available this year.
DARPA regards the result as a game-changer for the military—akin to the potential shift in the automobile market from gasoline-driven to hybrid or electric cars. Before the fuel cells, "If you were in Afghanistan and had a battery, you basically had to go to another country to get it recharged," says Nowak, now retired.
U.S. consumers and businesses might someday gain as well. Both companies are testing models for the U.S. commercial market. First targets: city police forces and makers of recreational vehicles.
The big drive to create a viable alternative-energy future— by Detroit, multinationals such as IBM (IBM) and BP (BP), and Silicon Valley startups—is well-known. But there’s another serious player in this sphere: the U.S. military, and especially DARPA.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Alternative Energy, Business and Commerce, Climate Change on July 25, 2009 - ד' אב תשס"ט at 3:55 am
Comments Off
Gilder reveals Israel as a leader of human civilization, technological progress, and scientific advance. Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world’s paramount example of the blessings of freedom.
Hatred of Israel, like anti-Semitism through history, arises from resentment of Jewish success. Rooted in a Marxist zero-sum-game theory of economics, this vision has fueled the anti-Semitic rantings of Hitler, Arafat, Osama, and history’s other notorious haters.
Faced with a contest between murderous regimes sustained by envy and Nazi ideology, and a free, prosperous, and capitalist, Israel—whose side are you on?
By David Pryce –Jones, July 23, 2009
Gilder sees Jews since their emancipation as the vanguard of human achievement. They may be few in numbers, but their creativity has brought prosperity to themselves and those around them, and that prosperity in turn has brought freedom.
George Gilder was one of the speakers on the recent National Review cruise round the Mediterranean, and he gave me a copy of his new book The Israel Test — there, I’ve declared an interest. He can be relied on to say striking and original things. At the moment, Israel is treated as a pariah among the nations, blamed for defending itself against the various Arab and Muslim states or terrorist groups trying to destroy it. To support the Arabs and Muslims in this endeavor has become a moral imperative for the Left everywhere. So figureheads like Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have revived and updated anti-Semitism: That is their contribution to the world we live in.
Nobody but Gilder could have written this book. Israel of course has its defenders, but they use arguments based on nationalism, territory, ethnicity, defence of minorities, rights, historicism, and so on. Gilder sees Jews since their emancipation as the vanguard of human achievement. They may be few in numbers, but their creativity has brought prosperity to themselves and those around them, and that prosperity in turn has brought freedom. Thus Jews spearhead capitalism and the democracy indispensable to its proper functioning. Marxists, Nazis, and now Muslims and their apologists envy Jews because they cannot emulate them, and so set out to destroy the success that shows up their failure. The attitude you take towards Israel and Jews decides whether you love or hate freedom, and beyond that, mankind — that’s the test he is proposing in the book’s title. And just in case the reader risks failing this test by jumping to a false conclusion, Gilder has a portrait of his very non-Jewish ancestry, saying, “We were classic WASPS all.”
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Education Report, Judaism, Middle East, Recent Posts on July 24, 2009 - ג' אב תשס"ט at 12:19 am
Comments Off
Indeed, we must keep in mind that the Sages continued to counsel a calm sober reason and judiciousness in our political affairs. We are not taught to stand idly by and be massacred – turning the other cheek is not an absolute concept for the Talmudic rabbis. But neither have we been taught to ignore our responsibilities as citizens of this world. We are taught that even our enemies are God’s children, formed in His image. We are taught that we must act in accordance with the dictates of human dignity and the respectfulness and humility that ensure all members of the human family their basic civil rights and protections.
by David Shasha
Reprinted from American Muslim, July 21, 2009. Originally published August, 2005.
The Lord is exalted above all nations,
His glory above the heavens.
Psalm 113:4
The Jewish liturgical calendar contains a number of different historical strata: There is the ancient cycle of nature which preserved a number of harvest holidays in the Fall and the Spring. These Holidays were transformed into historical commemorations of what the Bible scholar Gerhard Von Rad called the events of the “Saving History” in Israelite culture; events such as Passover and Tabernacles. The original Harvest festivals were transformed and supplemented with the emergence of cult Holidays such as what we now know as New Year, originally taking place not in the first month which was Nisan, but in the seventh month Tishri, and the Day of Atonement which came ten days after New Year. Perhaps the only Holiday that continued to maintain its original context was Pentecost whose primary purpose was to celebrate the end of the ‘Omer cycle; the time when the First Fruits of the Spring harvest were brought to the Temple. With the exception of the Day of Atonement, there were no liturgical fast days in the Pentateuch’s calendar. Later in the Diaspora period there was a celebration of Purim, marking the deliverance of the Jews from the grip of a pogrom in Persia, which began with a Fast day in commemoration of Queen Esther’s own Fast as related in the Book of Esther.
So within the Jewish liturgical calendar there are ancient Holidays that have been transformed in various ways.
But within Post-Biblical Judaism, while there are no Holidays of the magnitude of the ancient Jerusalem festivals – outside of the celebration of Hanukka, the commemoration of the re-dedication of the Temple at the hands of the Maccabees – there are a series of Fast Days first noted in Zechariah 7-8, to mark events having to do with the Destruction of the Temple.
There is the oldest of these Fast Days, the Fast of Gedaliah, which looks back to the Destruction of the First Temple prophesied by Jeremiah. Gedaliah ben Ahikam was a Jewish captain commanding the garrison in Jerusalem who was killed by other Jews who sought to turn back Babylonian rule. The rebels were ultimately unsuccessful and a Fast day was eventually instituted to mark his assassination. Other days that were marked in the Jewish calendar were the 10th day of Tevet and, most famously, the bookending of the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Ab. The period between these two days are known in observant Jewish circles as the “Three Weeks” which serve as a semi-mourning period that becomes progressively more stringent until the Fast of Tish’a be-Ab which is the day that marks the Destruction of both Temples – and is also, oddly enough, the day on which Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews from Spain.
The Jewish Sages, the Hakhamim, were an extraordinary lot. They were able to do a number of different things to develop Jewish culture in the wake of the crushing defeat at the hands of the Romans. Unlike nascent Christianity, which conducted a fierce struggle over the efficacy of the Jewish law, Halakha, through the schools of James in Jerusalem and Paul of Tarsus who both fought over the role of Gentiles in the Church, with Paul winning the battle, the Rabbis recalibrated the Biblical religion in a sophisticated and absolutely uncanny manner.
The Sages founded a series of academies outside of Jerusalem, most famously under the aegis of the Sage Johanan ben Zakkai who received permission from Titus to establish his school at Yabneh. While these academies began to flourish in the wake of the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple cultic center – a center that had for many years been the site of contention between the forerunners of the Sages, the Pharisees, and the ruling class of Hasmoneans whose legitimacy had been questioned after the first couple of generations and had completely evaporated by the time of the Idumean pretender Herod who had married into the Hasmonean clan – the Sages developed a number of different cultural strategies that would in the long run not merely preserve Judaism, but would transform the very foundations of Jewish life.
The first act of the Sages which had everlasting significance for the future of Judaism was to organize the literature of the Israelite past into a single book. The Sages debated the canonical status of many different works and in the end settled on twenty-four books that were then edited into one very large volume that we today call the Hebrew Bible. But their work as scholars was far from complete. They undertook to compile the scores of laws that had been accumulated over time in what they called the “Oral Tradition”; laws that were part of the old cult, now destroyed, which ran the gamut from obscure rituals to the essence of civil legislation. There were laws regulating almost every aspect of human life in its religious as well as its secular variants.
In this sense, there is no separation between the two realms within the rabbinical system.
Ritual laws such as the law of Fringes, Sisit, are laid out in the same context as the Tort system of civil damages. The Sages began to address the historic changes that had taken place in the Judean society since the close of Biblical history: The Sage Hillel created what is known as “Perozbul” which was a legal fiction that permitted the financial solvency of the Jewish lender inasmuch as it set into abeyance the laws involving debt remission known as Shemittah and Yobel. These laws were perfectly reasonable for an agrarian economy where debt accumulation would bankrupt the farmers, but extremely dangerous for the new commercial urban economy in the Greco-Roman world.
The Sages produced a literature that stood in dialectical relation to the Hebrew Bible. The collections of Mishnah and Tosefta were created to compile the Jewish Law, Halakha, in a condensed format that could be taught and discussed at the academies. Groups of trained reciters, Tannaim, would be the repositories of this wisdom that was greatly expanded over the centuries and would eventually take the form of the two Talmuds, the Jerusalem and Babylonian, that served as the final written expansion of this ongoing discussion. The Mishnah form was started in the wake of the Temple’s fall in 70 CE and was distinguished by its terse and sometimes obscure form which had to be unpacked in the Academy. The Tosefta is merely the Mishna traditions that were left outside the official Mishna compilation which was produced by Judah ha-Nasi. The Talmuds would famously return to these varied traditions and provide even more commentary on the laws.
Posted by CNP Webmaster as Islam, Judaism, Middle East, Monotheistic Religions, Recent Posts on July 22, 2009 - א' אב תשס"ט at 3:42 am
Comments Off
