Posted By David Solway On January 25, 2012, In Daily Mailer,FrontPage

I have often written, sometimes bemused, sometimes incensed, about what is surely the strangest fact of Jewish life, namely, its self-division. Since time immemorial, the Jewish people have been at war with themselves, both in the Holy Land and the Diaspora, allowing themselves to succumb to one of history’s most mordant ironies. In turning against themselves, they have effectively collaborated with those who would suppress, conquer or extinguish the Jewish community.

The template was already established in the Book of Genesis, where we read how one brother slew another in jealousy and resentment and a group of conspiratorial brothers sold their sibling into slavery. From that point on, the biblical archive presents a saga of recrimination, envy, hatred and fratricidal strife that in different degrees has imperiled the very survival of the Jewish “nation.” The pattern was consolidated in the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, the three rebels who “rose up” before Moses and challenged his authority. As the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen these people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 32:9).

Brother against brother, prophet against people, king and priest, and even nation against nation form an indelible part of the Jewish chronicle. The history of the Two Kingdoms provides a continuingly relevant object lesson. After the death of King Solomon, the Israelite communality broke apart into the two warring monarchies of Israel and Judah. The shedding of kinship blood critically weakened the two kingdoms, leading to the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians and the reduction of Judah first by the Chaldeans, then by the Egyptians, and finally by the Babylonians. The Jewish epic may be described as: divide and be conquered. Indeed, surah 59:14 of the Koran tells us something very true about Jews: “There is much hostility between them: their hearts are divided…” It seems that the wise counsel of Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah has no resonance for the backsliders: “All of Israel and those who are joined to it are to each other like brothers. If brother shows no compassion to brother, who will show compassion to him?”

The fault line in the Jewish sensibility is tectonic in its dimensions and destructive in its effect. Perhaps the single most resonant case study in self-division involves the institutional founder of the Christian faith. The story of St. Paul is too well known to require much in the way of comment, yet it is richly instructive. A rabid persecutor of the followers of Jesus, Saul of Tarsus experienced a blinding conversion to the new faith and was shortly thereafter  called by the name of Paul (Acts 13:9). He then became the Apostle of Christianity, considering his Jewish identity a mere rehearsal for a larger identity and at times expressing strong disapproval of Jews who held to their traditional beliefs and identity. (His quarrel with the Desposyni, the “servants of the Lord,” led by James the brother of Jesus who wished to preserve the purity and exclusivity of the original faith, is a matter of historical record.)

But the details of the Apostle’s former activities and subsequent religious convictions are specific to the time. Jews today do not persecute Christians. Indeed, they are the ones who are relentlessly persecuted—by Muslims, by secular antisemites and unhinged fanatics from both sides of the political spectrum (though massively from the Left), and by several Christian denominations associated with The World Council of Churches, replacement and liberation theologians, and the Quaker-Presbyterian axis promoting its BDS campaigns. More to the point, and the most indigestible perversion of all, countless Jews harry and denounce their own congeners. The tendency to a kind of binary kinesis seems inherent in the Jew, whether it is himself he loathes or his own people he reproaches and undermines. It is the psychic split itself, not its local content, that transcends the ages. In this respect, the Saul/ Paul fracture represents a longstanding Jewish archetype.

This history of self-estrangement, political strife and cultural rupture has been played out from the biblical era through the centuries of religious factionalism and reciprocal excommunication culminating in our own epoch. The profound antipathy between assimilated Jews and their irredentist counterparts in Jerusalem, Tiberias, Safed and Hebron, as well as the caste-like contempt of Western Jewish intellectuals for the Ostjuden, that is, their assumed “plebeian” and “uneducated” East European brethren, are facts of modern Jewish history. The shame of many of the Jewish Councils in Nazi Europe that collaborated with their murderers (not all, as Gershom Scholem justifiably argues in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis) cannot be forgiven, despite attempts to explain it away as the least of worst alternatives. The legacy of the celebrated Jewish philosopher Martin Buber and the equally acclaimed Jewish political writer Hannah Arendt, who could never forget their German patrimony and were corrosively suspicious of the Zionist project, has been broadly and unambiguously noxious. In the present moment we observe their offspring, that is, left-wing “peace activists,” liberal rabbis and “post-Zionist” intellectuals, who strive to erode the Jewish character of the state of Israel and so deprive it of its legitimacy. The Jewish Left, as it dances around the golden calf of a fictitious peace, represents perhaps the gravest danger to the survival of the country.

Many Jews, as I wrote in Hear, O Israel!, tend to transpose the fight against iniquity and oppression to other nations and communities rather than press for the rights of their own people. Or they believe, “in traditionally Marxist fashion,” as Sol Stern writes in City Journal, “that the way to fight anti-Semitism was through the broader struggle for international socialism.” Thus they pursue their fugitive merit. Like Paul, their main focus falls on the Corinthians and Ephesians et al. of the time. Indifferent to the reality of their own condition—ignoring the rain clouds until they are drenched and catch pneumonia, as the 19^th century Jewish philosopher Max Nordau noted—these are the ostensibly benevolent Jews who wish to “repair the world” (Tikkun Olam). That it would be a world in which their place would nevertheless remain precarious escapes them entirely.

The benevolent Jews are bad enough. Their spirit of pharisaic charity, however, is exceeded by that of the reprobate Jews, who take their “idealism” to the next level of unctuous self-effacement. They struggle against injustice by reprehending, for example, not Palestinian terrorists and Hezbollah jihadists but Israeli Jews themselves whose right to national legitimacy they perceive as an affront and do everything in their power to misrepresent. Again, like Paul, they regard their own people as “those who please not God, and are contrary to all men” (1 Thessalonians 2:15).

But both the benevolent Jew and the reprobate Jew, the supposedly reasonable and the plainly irrational, work against their own long-term interests in a pusillanimous and delinquent flight before the Accuser. These are the “degraded” Jews whom the great Jewish patriot Vladimir Jabotinsky deplored. They are reminiscent of the spies that Moses sent out to reconnoiter enemy territory, ten of whom on returning compared themselves to frail grasshoppers before the fearsome Anakim and recoiled from their destiny (Numbers 13: 33). They do not  understand, in the words of Nurit Greenger, that “Israel is the last station in the Jews’ Via Dolorosa” and that “beyond this station is the Jews’ final crucifixion,” nor do they realize how profoundly they themselves are at risk. They have forgotten that the Jewish sense of security is always a false sense of security—that over the past 2000 years, as Melvin Konner points out in Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, Jews have been expelled from 94 countries—and do not think to ask themselves why the future should be any different.

Renegade Jews especially have much to answer for. They are always happy to become token Jews, showcased at antisemitic seminars and congresses—where, as Alan Dershowitz writes in an article titled “Why Anti-Semitism Is Moving Toward the Mainstream,” the “red lines separating legitimate criticism of Israel from subtle anti-Semitism” are now being crossed at will. These turncoats pose as principled anti-Zionists, but their anti-Zionism is nothing more or less than a kosher antisemitism. In so being and doing, they acquire what historian Robert Wistrich calls “historic dissident status” by willfully providing their enemies with the ammunition they need to advance their cause while disguising their intentions. There is not much doubt that what we are looking at is a pathology of the first magnitude, what the Talmudic sages called sin’at akhim, or brotherly hatred, an element of Jewish life sufficiently pronounced to merit a name of its own. The 1930s Zionist Labor leader Berl Katznelson was very explicit about this. “Is there another People on Earth,” he asked rhetorically, “so emotionally twisted that they consider everything their nation does despicable and hateful, while every murder, rape, robbery committed by their enemies fill their hearts with admiration and awe?” The syndrome has come to be known as Jew Flu.

Jews do not have the privilege enjoyed by all other peoples in the world, that is, the luxury of hating one another or, for that matter, of hating themselves. Other groups can get away with intramural conflict, the Islamic umma being the chief example of a community that can inflict enormous damage on itself, sundered between Sunni and Shia, nationalists and pan-Arabists, despotic regimes and the equally tyrannical Muslim Brotherhood. Due to its numbers, its domination of the United Nations, its vast oil reserves and its energy stranglehold on the rest of the planet, it survives robustly and continues to exercise global power. Jews have no such exemption.

A Jew who hates another Jew or who is mortified by his own Jewishness has given hostages to fortune and rendered his own prosperity and well-being, let alone his survival, hypothetical. The universal human prerogative of hating one’s fellow man, whether members of one’s race, ethnicity or nation, should be anathema to Jews since they of all peoples can least afford it. No less than Cain hated Abel or Jeroboam hated Rehoboam or Paul hated Saul, the pathology continues to work its harm or, at the very least, to produce an etiology of dislocation in the self. It is only a small step from this ancient matrix to the current mob of anti-Zionist Jewish Jew-haters we are all familiar with, schismatics like George Soros, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Amos Elon, Naomi Klein, Richard Falk, the late Tony Judt and, most recently, Gilad Atzmon asserting in The Wandering Who? his “contempt for the Jew in me.”

In his important book United in Hate: The Left’s Romance with Tyranny and Terror, Jamie Glazov states that “Two of the most outstanding Jewish characteristics are the love of life and the enduring struggle to survive.” There is much truth in this observation; how else explain Jewish survival into the modern world against all the odds? Yet I fear that this is only part of the story and that in our ceaseless squabbles and conflicts with one another, our misdirected skepticism and historical amnesia, we may one day bring about our own demise. It is as if there is something in the Jewish soul that, despite its love of life, paradoxically hungers for its own extinction, as if the very quick of life, of practical wisdom, ethnic solidarity, love of the better part of heritage, faith in the political miracle known as Israel, and the stubborn desire to persist, will often lie dormant.

Under these circumstances, it is hard not to sympathize with the pungent and despairing remark of the Przysucha Hassidic Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, who said: “I could revive the dead, but I have more difficulty reviving the living.”

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by Lawrence Kadish, Stonegate Institute
January 4, 2012 at 5:00 am

At year end, 2011, as Americans emptied their wallets at the gas pump and crude oil reached almost $100 a barrel, OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia reported an $81.6 billion 2011 budget surplus.

The White House action at the same time was to ask Congress to increase our debt ceiling by $1.2 trillion to $16.4 trillion to cover budget deficits.

Nations decline and fall when their economies and monetary policies are incompetently managed. Unfortunately, it appears to be a lesson lost on too many of our leaders who have allowed the very stability of our nation to be imperiled by budget deficits and mounting debt. Our leaders have also failed on Energy Independence, allowing the cost and supply of the strategic commodity of oil to be controlled by foreign nations.

The ominous linkage between cyclical recessions and our repeated failure to achieve energy independence and oil price stability has caused much hardship on our citizenry and severe damage to our economy.

The historical evidence is clear. Whenever oil prices spiked as they did between 1972-1980, and then again between 2003-2008 and beyond, recessions in America followed.

In 1972, crude oil prices were $ 3.60 a barrel. By 1980, the cost of that barrel was $ 37. This 1000% oil price increase contributed to a negative economic chain reaction. The CPI more than doubled during this period. Double digit Inflation ensued, causing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. This, in turn, sent the Prime Rate to over 20% by 1980. A recession followed.

Whenever the United States took serious notice of oil prices as an underlying cause of these problems, Congress would debate energy savings and energy independence. A concerned OPEC would then divert America’s attention by opening their spigots, increasing production and causing oil prices to drop to under $20 a barrel and remain relatively low for a period of time. While the immediate crisis would be averted by these actions, Congress did little to protect our future. Consequently, by 2003, oil was up again to $30 a barrel and steadily increased to over $90 in January 2008 and spiked to over $140 in July 2008.

As in the past, by 2008, the enormous increase in the cost of oil resulted in nationwide price increases and surcharges in substantially all industries. It was an assault, like a fiscal tsunami, that put too great a financial burden on the United States economy and its citizenry and set the stage for business failures, unemployment and a decline in real estate values. Rating agencies blessed mortgage investments based on a rising economy however, the chaotic oil spikes triggered the opposite effect. Thus, as in a violent storm, weak structures failed, especially the over-leveraged mortgages and the volatile mortgage-backed securities and related financial markets, which became illiquid. causing the American economy to experience the 2008 meltdown.

A significant part of this ruinous economic condition involves enemies sworn to destroy the United States. Since 911 the United States has spent trillions of dollars on Homeland Security and our military to sustain the War on Terrorism. It is grimly ironic that simultaneously, trillions of dollars have left our economy to purchase oil mostly from OPEC nations that directly or indirectly support radical Islamic fundamentalists. This absurdity has resulted in a punishing double body blow to our economy.

It is now almost 40 years since our country was first adversely affected by its failure to become energy independent. The United States has the natural resources and the technology to produce clean energy. Over time however, we have lost our way time and again because we have been confronted with a deliberate policy by obstructionists seeking to prolong the debate over energy independence for the specific purpose of preventing a national consensus on energy policy.

Are the obstructionists the sincere environmentalists or the professional anti-capitalist environmental radicals who would have us return to an agrarian society? Other suspect quiet assassins of American energy policy include: foreign interests influencing Washington, and those who own domestic oil production and seek to sustain high oil prices and unprecedented returns, and still others who sell their manufactured products to foreign oil suppliers and do not want to lose those lucrative markets.

Those who aspire to be our future elected leaders should immediately present their strategy for energy independence — one that marginalizes the obstructionists — and commit to a plan of action.

The voters are aware of the hazards of our present policies that will lead us into the role of a third world debtor nation. They want more than vague speeches. Who we are as a nation in the 21st Century will be determined by how we strengthen our economy by streamlining government operations, eliminating wasteful spending, and most importantly promoting economic growth that creates jobs. Energy Independence can be a major first step in this effort. It will help us achieve a balanced budget and genuine national security in a world of lethal threats and economic challenges.

These are the issues that should and must define all nationwide election campaigns.

Lawrence Kadish is an Advisory Board Member of the Stonegate Institute and a trustee of the Claremont and Hudson Institutes.

The destruction of the Temple and the psyche of ancient Judaism.

By Rabbi Irving Greenberg

Reprinted from My Jewish Learning

In this article, the author explores the horrors associated with the destruction of the Second Temple. In distinction to Greenberg, some have argued that the Temple, although its loss was a great tragedy for Judaism, had outlived its usefulness for the Jewish community, hence the seamless transition to a synagogue based religion. Reprinted with permission of the author from The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays.

On the ninth and 10th of the month of Av in the year 70, the Roman legions in Jerusalem smashed through the fortress tower of Antonia into the Holy Temple and set it afire. In the blackened remains of the sanctuary lay more than the ruins of the great Jewish revolt for political independence. To many Jews, it appeared that Judaism itself was shattered beyond repair.

Out of approximately four to five million Jews in the world, over a million died in that abortive war for independence. Many died of starvation, others by fire and crucifixion. So many Jews were sold into slavery and given over to the gladiatorial arenas and circuses that the price of slaves dropped precipitously, fulfilling the ancient curse: “There you will be offered for sale as slaves, and there will be no one willing to buy” (Deuteronomy 26:68). The destruction was preceded by events so devastating that they read like scenes out of the Holocaust.

Hear the words of the ancient Jewish historian, Josephus:

Famine: “Famine overcomes all other passions and is destructive of modesty… Wives pulled the morsels that their husbands were eating out of their very mouths and children did the same to their fathers and so did mothers to their infants, and when those that were most dear to them were perishing in their hands, they were not ashamed to take from them the very last drops of food that might have preserved their lives…”

Carnage: On the ninth day of Av: “One would have thought that the hill itself, on which the Temple stood, was seething hot from its base, it was so full of fire on every side; and yet the blood was larger in quantity than the fire, and those that were slain were more in number than those that slew them. For the ground was nowhere visible for the dead bodies that lay on it.”

Civil war between Jews: “The shouts of those [Jews] who were fighting [one another] were incessant both by day and night, but the continual lamentations of those who mourned were even more dreadful. Nor was any regard paid by relatives for those who were still alive. Nor was any care taken for the burial of those who were dead. The reason was that everyone despaired about himself.”

The exhaustion from all-out sacrifice of lives and fighting in vain was in itself debilitating, but the religious crisis was even worse. God’s own sanctuary, restored after the return to Zion in the sixth century B.C.E., the symbol of the unbroken covenant of Israel and God, was destroyed. This cast doubt on the very relationship of the people and their Lord. Had God rejected the covenant with Israel?

The Focal Point of Jewish Worship

The Temple was central to Jewish religious life in a way that is hard to recapture today. Many Jews believed that sin itself could be overcome only by bringing a sin offering in the Temple. Without such forgiveness, the sinner was condemned to alienation from God, which is equivalent to estrangement from valid existence. But the channel of sacrifice was now cut off.

For many Jews, the whole experience of Judaism was sacramental. The Priests served; the ignorant masses watched; their religious lives were illuminated only by those extraordinary moments when multitudes gathered in Jerusalem. There, in the awe of a Paschal sacrifice or at the Yom Kippur atonement ritual, they felt an emanation of divine force that showered grace and blessing on the people and made the Lord’s power a stunning presence. For these people, after the destruction there was only emptiness.

Responses to the Destruction

The majority of the Jews refused to quit. One element in this community reacted with overwhelming despair. The Talmud speaks of “mourners of Zion”who would neither eat meat nor drink wine. They rejected any possibility of normal life and chose not to marry or have children. Simple human activities–having a child, getting married, doing acts of kindness in a community–are sustained only by enormous levels of faith and life affirmation, and trust in ultimate meaning. Considering the tragedy and the threat that still hung over the Jewish community, these people felt they simply could not go on with life as usual. Yet by refusing to live normally, they harnessed despair into a force for action: to make an all-out effort to restore the Temple. Only rebuilding the sanctuary could reduce the terrible angst and restore life to normal.

The two major remaining sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, shared a common conviction that the Temple must be rebuilt, although the Sadducees, who included the court nobility and priests, were particularly unable to envision Judaism without a Temple. This consensus drove people to drastic action. In the years 115 to 117 C.E., there were widespread rebellions by Diaspora Jewry, which were bloodily suppressed.

In 132 C.E., the remaining population of Judea revolted, led by Simon Bar Kokhba. But again, the overwhelming might of Rome was brought to bear. Bar Kokhba and his troops were destroyed, and the remaining population of Judea was deported. With this defeat, hopes for an immediate restoration of the Temple were set back indefinitely.

Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg was the president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation and founding president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He also is the author of For the Sake of Heaven and Earth: The New Encounter Between Judaism and Christianity (2004, Jewish Publication Society).

By JONATHAN SACKS
23/03/2011

The anti-Israel campaign has added further weight to the evidence that British campuses have become centers of anti-Western radicalism.

Jewish students in Britain have been bracing themselves for the annual Israel Apartheid Week assault. This time, though, there was a difference. Twenty-four Israeli students have come to British campuses to mount a counter-campaign called Israel Awareness Week. Their presence has been good for Israel, good for British Jewish students and good for universities that once were places where we put prejudice aside and pursue truth.
Truth has been the first casualty in the vicious campaign against Israel. The charge of apartheid, which began with the notorious United Nations 1975 resolution identifying Zionism with racism, and continued with the equally notorious Conference against [sic] Racism in Durban a week before 9/11, is both outrageous and untrue. Given all the pressures Israel has been subjected to since its birth, its record in the field of ethnic and religious tolerance has been commendable.
You have only to visit an Israeli hospital to see how people of all faiths and ethnicities are treated alike. All have the vote. All can attend universities. All can be elected to the Knesset. A Druse Arab, Majallie Whbee, briefly served as president after Moshe Katsav’s resignation while acting head of state Dalia Itzik was out of the country. A Christian Arab, George Karra, headed the panel of judges that found Katsav guilty. Are any of these conceivable in an apartheid state? Israel is one of the most religiously diverse societies in the world. Only under Israeli rule have all three Abrahamic religions enjoyed unrestricted access to their holy sites in Jerusalem. It is the only place where an Arab Muslim can freely criticize the government on national television. Israel is not perfect, but its ethnic and religious minorities have greater rights – vigilantly defended in the courts – than anywhere else in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, in December 2010 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared: “We have frankly said, and always will say: If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it.”  

If this vision of a judenrein Palestine is not apartheid, what is? As soon as the anti-apartheid campaigners start working against Palestinian racism, the intimidation and murder of Christians throughout the Middle East, and the brutal denial of human rights that is leading to civil protests in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, then they will have earned the right to be taken seriously. Until then, they should be seen for what they are – political pawns in a very dangerous game.
THE ANTI-ISRAEL campaign has added further weight to the accumulating evidence that British campuses have become centers of anti-Western radicalism. Often it is moderate Muslims who have raised the alarm, saying university authorities are not doing enough to counter the extremists.
In 2007 Ed Husain, an ex-member of Hizb ut Tahrir and now a fighter against extremism, published a book called The Islamist. The first 70 pages are among the most terrifying I have ever read. They tell of how a tiny handful of radical students instituted a regime of intimidation across an entire campus, and show how easy it is to scare the academic authorities into silence and inaction.

That intimidation seems to have worked. With some shining exceptions – Manchester is one – university authorities have not acted when radical, hate-inciting, anti-Israel speakers are invited to address students, nor when pro-Israel speakers are abused or banned. Challenged on the first, they tend to invoke freedom of speech. Challenged on the second, they tend to invoke security concerns. So freedom of speech exists for some, but not for others.
It is not Jewish students alone who are concerned at the failure of university heads to take action. So is the government. Fifteen individuals implicated in terrorist plots and attacks have had some link to British universities. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with attempting to blow up a passenger plane in the US, was president of the Islamic Society at University College London.
University vice chancellors, in their recent review of the situation, concluded that universities should “engage, not marginalize” extreme political views. Lord Carlile, the government’s independent reviewer of terror laws, said the report represented “a total failure to deal with how to identify and handle individuals who might be suspected of radicalizing or being radicalized while within the university.”
MY OWN grave concerns come from a sense of history. In 1927 a French-Jewish academic, Julian Benda, published a book whose title became famous: Le Trahison des clercs, “The treason of the intellectuals.”
In it he says that academics had historically been guardians of the truth, but had been drawn into politics with potentially devastating consequences. The academy had become the arena for “the intellectual organization of political hatreds.”
That phrase has resonated in my mind for close to a decade now, as university lecturers have sought to boycott their Israeli counterparts while failing to protest some of the most antidemocratic, anti-free society, anti-Israel and anti-Jewish speakers ever to speak on British campuses.
This is not academic freedom. Academic freedom means the freedom to hold and express views without fear, even when they run against the consensus, even when they are the views of a minority. It means the willingness to let all sides of an argument be respectfully heard.
Like all freedom, academic freedom requires restraint, so that the freedom of one group is not won at the cost of another’s.
When restraint is not self-imposed, it must be ensured by the university authorities.
Which is why it is important that this week Israeli students have visited British universities to present the other side of the case. Whether they are respectfully heard will be the best test as to whether academic freedom is still honored in British universities.

The writer is chief rabbi of the United Kingdom.

Mar 23, 2011 11:01 PM|By CHARL DU PLESSIS

The University of Johannesburg has officially cut all ties with Israel’s Ben Gurion University after it failed to find a single Palestinian university willing to be part of a collaboration between the two universities.

Professor Adam Habib during the board meeting held, 21/12/2007, about the ANC Polokwane conference. Pic. Kevin Sutherland.

Late yesterday evening, 60% of UJ’s senate committee voted to allow the relationship to lapse on April 1.

Professor Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, yesterday told The Times that it had recently sent a delegation to Palestine to determine whether a Palestinian university would participate in the academic relationship between Ben Gurion University and UJ, focused largely on research into clean water provision.

"All the Palestinian universities said they would not be party to such an agreement because they felt academic freedom was not prioritised by Israeli universities," said Habib.

This follows a preliminary decision by UJ’s senate in September last year to allow its relationship with BGU to lapse if the Israeli university could not find a Palestinian partner.

At the time, a petition calling on UJ to sever ties with BGU included the signatures of over 400 academics and prominent South Africans including Kader Asmal, Allan Boesak, Breyten Breytenbach, John Dugard, Antjie Krog, Barney Pityana and Sampie Terreblanche. It was also backed by Desmond Tutu, Ronnie Kasrils and Zackie Achmat.

Habib downplayed allegations that BGU was actively collaborating with the Israeli military, saying these issues merely formed part of the "spirited" two-hour senate debate yesterday.

But Brenda Stern, spokesman for the Friends of Ben Gurion organisation, slammed the decision, saying Habib had "intentionally sabotaged" the fact-finding mission by including the word "university" in the requirements "knowing full well there is a Palestinian boycott" of Israeli universities.

"There are numerous projects the BGU has with private Palestinian organisations . but the inclusion of the word ‘university’ was done to sabotage any attempt to salvage the relationship," she said.

She said BGU was among the world’s top 250 universities and that yesterday’s decision was "not important", but that BGU felt a "strong moral obligation to assist in the upliftment of South Africans by helping to provide them with clean water".

"We will continue our projects with other, more important, universities in the country," said Stern.

Woman killed and dozens injured in bus station blast that has damaged hopes for Middle East peace process

• Conal Urquhart and Phoebe Greenwood in Jerusalem
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 23 March 2011 20.32 GMT

Israeli police patrol the scene of a bombing at a Jersualem bus station. Photograph: APAimages / Rex Features

A suitcase bomb exploded in one of the busiest parts of Jerusalem just before rush hour, destroying years of relative calm in the city and damaging hopes for a resumption of the Middle East peace process.

A 60-year-old woman was killed and dozens of people injured when the 1-2kg suitcase bomb detonated close to the main bus station and government ministries.

Most of the blast was absorbed by commuters waiting at a bus stop, leaving more than 20 wounded – at least three of them seriously. The blast also broke windows in two buses that were operating nearby.

Ambulances, first-aiders and security personnel rushed to the scene with sirens and horns blaring. While medics tended to the wounded, uniformed and plainclothes police with sniffer dogs fanned out through the area to check for secondary bombs. Checkpoints were set up at all exits to the city and regular traffic and the mobile phone networks ground to a halt.

Yair Zimerman, 29, who was lightly injured, said he had been aboard a bus when "there was a very loud blast… I immediately called the paramedics and told them", he told the Israeli news website, Ynet. "I began treating people. There was one who couldn’t be treated on the scene and another two in severe condition."      

Samuel Conik, 20, told the Associated Press he ran to the scene when he heard the explosion and saw fire coming out of a phone booth. A badly burned man with bloody legs and his skin peeling off was lying nearby. At the scene, a group of ultra-Orthodox Jews began chanting "death to Arabs", AP reported.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but authorities blamed Palestinian militants and threatened harsh retaliation.

The recent escalation of tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis began with the murder of an Israeli family living in the West Bank settlement of Itamar on 11 March. Earlier this week eight Palestinians, including four civilians, were killed inside Gaza in two Israeli military strikes. Israel said it was responding to increased rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.

Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, strove to reassure visitors that the city was safe. "Security in Jerusalem is very high. We patrol the city on a daily basis. This is a safe city, despite today’s events. I would say to people in other countries, Jerusalem is still one of the safest cities in the world. Come and visit us," he said as he visited the site of the explosion.

Since 2004 and the cessation of bombings, West Jerusalem has been undergoing a renaissance. More than a million tourists visit the city every year and city officials say they are aiming for 10 million visitors per year. The city has invested in major developments such as a mall that links the Old City to West Jerusalem and a new light rail system which is expect to carry its first passengers over a suspension bridge near the site of the bombing later this year.

Chief Inspector Micky Rosenfeld of the Israeli police, said there was no warning for attack. "There was no specific intelligence about an explosion in Jerusalem today," he said.

"We are still searching for the people who carried out the attack. One suspect was seen leaving the scene. Our units are continuing to search the area."

Barkat said that he did not know if the attack was connected to recent events in the Gaza Strip. "There are many excuses for terrorism, but none are acceptable. Residents of the city should return as soon as possible to their normal lives. We will not let terror interrupt our lives."

In response to the events around Gaza, Israeli politicians said the army might need to carry out a second major attack on Gaza to prevent the firing of rockets at Israel.

Silvan Shalom, the vice-prime minister, told Israel Radio that the situation was similar to the run-up to the 2008-09 Gaza war which led to the death of more than 1,400 Palestinians.

"We may have to consider a return to that operation," he said. "I say this despite the fact that I know such a thing would, of course, bring the region to a far more combustible situation."

Eli Yishai, the minister for the interior, speaking at the scene of the bombing, said that recent events could require retaliation.

"The series of incidents from Itamar until today without a doubt requires us to consider anti-terror operations. It will not be possible to refrain from launching an operation … No concrete decision has been made but we will weigh different options," he said.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister said: "I harshly condemn this act of terror regardless of who is behind it." US defence secretary, Robert Gates, described it as a "horrific terrorist attack".

Arabs should follow Israeli revolution in respect to attitude to disabled population

 Shlomit Grayevsky, YNet News, March 10, 2011

As revolution sweeps across the Middle East at a dizzying pace, cries for freedom, equality and an improved standard of living ring out, touching millions around the world and bringing hope to millions more. Finally, their voices are being heard. Progress is being made.

Still, an important segment of the population goes unheard as they cannot participate in high-profile protests or even voice their grievances and concerns. The mentally and physically disabled are underrepresented throughout the Middle East and there are few signs of this changing any time soon. Progress is at a standstill.

Everywhere, that is, except for Israel.

Over the last few years, Israel has launched a quiet revolution of its own. Residential and treatment centers for the disabled, once funded and run exclusively by private individuals and initiatives, have now garnered government funding, support and participation. Influential Israeli corporations in the fields of technology, defense and telecommunications are making projects to support the disabled population a priority, contributing significant amounts of time and money to the cause.

In addition, public discourse on equal access for the disabled has set in motion a heroic effort by the management of thousands of eateries, malls, schools, office buildings and theaters to ensure that their facilities are accessible to one and all. And the discussion extends well beyond government offices, corporate boardrooms and activism meetings.

A recent conference in Jerusalem gathered religious leaders, teachers and celebrated thinkers together to publicly address the need to include the disabled in religious life. In an effort to “ground” their soldiers, institutions like the IDF, Mossad and Shin Bet have all made assisting the disabled a crucial part of the training process for advanced officers.

So, what brought about these dramatic changes?

The key has been a national re-evaluation of life and what makes it worth living. Israel has transitioned from its obsession with identifying one’s abilities – due, in part, to a history fraught with trials, persecution and an ongoing struggle for survival – to a deeper commitment to the value of human life. Instead of gauging one’s worth according to his or her military profile, we have come to the realization that every human life should be treasured, even those who will never contribute to society. An example from my own life should help clarify the point.

One more hurdle to overcome

Many of the children in my care suffer from severe disabilities as a result of complications during childbirth. Extreme prematurity, prolonged lack of oxygen and other traumas have left these children in a very difficult state. They are the babies that you don’t normally hear about. They aren’t the ones that “passed away too soon,” or the miracle children celebrated far and wide. They are born injured and their limitations are extreme. They will never speak, write or walk on their own.

There was a time when families were so ashamed of such children that they would leave them at our doorstep and disappear, sometimes even fleeing the country. But today, this is simply unheard of in Israel. The families of disabled children, and the communities in which they live, see a soul – like yours or mine – trapped in a damaged body. Not something to be ashamed of but rather someone who needs more love and support. This is the principal upon which our silent revolution continues to thrive.

As Major General (res.) Doron Almog, one of the most vocal champions of the disabled population in Israel, has often said, "Our generation will be judged by the way we treat the weakest members of society.”

Not surprisingly, the revolution has benefited all who embrace it on many levels. When one spends less time seeking out those who can advance his own position and more time seeking out opportunities to give of himself, life becomes more rewarding and truly worth living. As an entrepreneur who supports our work recently said, “I have never seen such an investment in a project that exhibits no clear results for a bottom line, and yet the results for those involved are truly invaluable.”

While the revolution marches on, progressing like previously unimagined, Israel still has one more hurdle to overcome. We must find our voice and share our story with the rest of the Middle East, with the world. In short, the revolution can no longer move forward in silence.

Our successes must be shared and our achievements must be applauded, not just to give us our due for a job well done, but to allow those who will never have a voice to finally be heard.

Shlomit Grayevsky is the founding director of ALEH Jerusalem and Assistant Director General of ALEH, Israel’s largest network of residential facilities for children with severe physical and cognitive disabilities.

By Mary Agnes Welch, Winnipeg Free Press , March 1, 2011

New research by an Israeli scientist suggests vitamin A could act almost like an antidote to the effects of alcohol on very early embryos during the critical development of the head and central nervous system. That’s when the worst effects of FASD start.

WINNIPEG — It’s too early to call it a cure, but plain old vitamin A could curb the devastating effects of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

New research by an Israeli scientist suggests vitamin A could act almost like an antidote to the effects of alcohol on very early embryos during the critical development of the head and central nervous system. That’s when the worst effects of FASD start.

"Scientifically, this is a very interesting story," said Abraham Fainsod, a professor of genetics and biochemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "If we can continue our research, we could do some good."

On Monday, Manitoba pledged $750,000 to help set up a joint FASD research consortium between the Hebrew University and the University of Manitoba. Sorting through the vitamin A issue will be among the projects earmarked for funding.

"This has the possibility of being a relatively simple solution," said Geoff Hicks, Fainsod’s counterpart at the University of Manitoba. "That’s why everyone is so excited."

What research Fainsod has done on frogs, Hicks will now try to reproduce using mice, which are the model for mammals.

They’ll be looking at retinoic acid, one of the main biological forms of vitamin A and a critical element in cell development and revitalization. That’s why so many wrinkle creams tout vitamin A as a key ingredient.

Alcohol prevents the conversion of vitamin A to retinoic acid because both compete for one particular enzyme and the alcohol usually wins. While the body is processing alcohol, it’s not making any new retinoic acid, which, in embryos, interrupts the normal development of the head and brain cells.

Fainsod’s research suggests adding more vitamin A to the equation — rebalancing the amount of alcohol and retinoic acid — can reverse or curb brain defects caused by alcohol.

But Fainsod is quick to say vitamin A can never be seen as a licence to drink while pregnant. Too much vitamin A can cause birth defects that mimic the effects of alcohol. And scientists haven’t yet figured out what the correct balance might be.

But vitamin A could one day be added to food as folic acid was added to white flour to reduce birth defects like spina bifida.

Or it could be given to at-risk populations or chronic alcoholics who are unable to quit drinking but who risk having multiple children with FASD.

© Copyright (c) Winnipeg Free Press

New research by an Israeli scientist suggests vitamin A could act almost like an antidote to the effects of alcohol on very early embryos during the critical development of the head and central nervous system. That’s when the worst effects of FASD start.

Photograph by: Ian Waldie, Getty Images

It is the public Shabat more than any other public sign of Jewishness – flag, language, culture, etc. – that defines Israel as being a Jewish state.

Rabbi Berel Wein

Friday, February 25, 2011

Rashi points out that the section of the parsha that deals with the observance and holiness of Shabat was related to the Jewish people in a public manner with all of the people in attendance. Moshe gathered all of Israel to him to declare the concept of the sanctity of the Shabat.

We are taught that almost all of the other precepts, values and commandments of the Torah were taught by Moshe firstly to a select group of his relatives and then to the elders of Israel and then finally they taught the general public the understanding of Torah and the workings of the Oral Law. Apparently this method was deemed insufficient when it came to the core principle of Judaism which Shabat represents.

Shabat needed a public forum and its importance needed to be emphasized in front of the entire gathering, similar to the granting of the Torah itself at Sinai or the final covenant with Israel at the end of Moshe’s life as recorded for us in the book of Dvarim.

In my opinion, the Torah alludes in this fashion to the fact that the survival of the Jewish people is dependent not only on the private observance of the Shabat by every Jew but that Jewish society must recognize and incorporate within itself a public observance of Shabat as well. It is not only the Jewish home that must be recognizable as being special and holy on Shabat but the Jewish street must also be so recognizable and special on Shabat as well.

The private Shabat observance has made positive strides over the past few decades. The public Shabat however has regressed both in Israel and in the United States. The JCC centers in almost all major Jewish communities in the United States have abandoned the Shabat.

Many of them claim that it is because the majority of their clientele is no longer Jewish. The irony of this excuse is apparently lost on them. The reason that the Jews have abandoned JCC centers is because those Jews also previously abandoned the Shabat. Here in Israel the public Shabat many times is observed mainly in the breach of the existing Shabat laws rather than in observance and conformity with them.

Again, the irony of those who want Israel to be a Jewish state but are not at all supportive of a public Shabat is exquisite. For it is the public Shabat more than any other public sign of Jewishness – flag, language, culture, etc. – that defines Israel as being a Jewish state.

And its continued erosion by greedy kibbutz shops, city malls, open businesses and nightclubs – and, by the way it appears that Friday night, leil Shabat, is the most violent and crime ridden night of the week – have only made our country not only less Jewish but less safe, less civilized, more emotionally unsatisfactory and less secure.

Most of the children here in Israel receive no education regarding Shabat, its history and importance in Jewish history and life. That is a sure fire recipe for diminishing our chances to have a Jewish state here in our holy land. The public Shabat should be strengthened in all ways in order to guarantee a meaningful future for Jewish generations that are yet to come.

Shabat shalom.

Rabbi Berel Wein

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Edward Yeranian | Cairo, 01 January 2011, VOA News

Photo: AP

Egyptian firemen try to put out a fire on a vehicle following a car bombing in front of a Coptic Christian church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, 01 Jan 2011

Eyewitnesses say at least 21 people have been killed and scores wounded in a suicide bombing attack at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt. Tensions between Christians and Muslims have been on the rise in Egypt and nearby Iraq following recent threats by the al-Qaida terrorist group.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak denounced the explosion at a Coptic church in the port city of Alexandria overnight, calling on Christians and Muslims to unite in confronting such acts of terrorism.
He says that this act of terrorism points to the involvement of foreign gangs that wish to turn Egypt into a terrorist playground in the region. He warns that he and the Egyptian people will stop these forces from carrying out their plots to destabilize the country and destroy the cohesion and unity of its people. The plotters, he adds, will ultimately be captured and punished.
People inside All Saints Coptic church began screaming after the initial blast, as a priest urged them to stay calm. The New Year’s eve midnight mass had just drawn to a close and worshippers were preparing to leave. Many of those who began leaving early were either killed or wounded.
Firemen doused the flames after the blast while friends and rescue workers ferried the wounded to local hospitals.

A heavy set man who was burned across his face explains what happened, saying he was leaving the church when he felt a massive explosion. He said he was dazed by the force of the blast and woke up in the hospital.
The Egyptian Interior Ministry issued a statement saying the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber although several eyewitnesses claim a car bomb was responsible for the blast.
Other eyewitnesses say angry Coptic Christians tried to attack a mosque across from the church after the explosion and that fights broke out, causing more casualties. Al-Arabiya TV showed a crowd of mostly young Coptic men waving their fists and shouting as police intervened.
The local TV news channel, Nile News, reported that despite the angry reactions of many people, dozens of ordinary Egyptians rushed to area hospitals to donate blood for victims of the blast.
The Sheikh of Egypt’s venerable al-Azhar University, Ahmed Tayeb,  condemned the explosion, insisting it was carried out by evil outside forces trying to damage the image of Islam.
He says that al-Azhar expresses its deep sorrow for this odious crime which troubles everyone’s conscience. No Egyptian, he insisted, could have committed such an act, which was the deed of outside forces. He said that such people are strangers to Islam, because attacking a church is to attack a house of worship. Such people, he added, are aiming to damage the image of Islam in the West and create sectarian strife in the streets of Arab and Islamic countries.
Former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali also condemned the explosion. He told Egyptian TV that this type of explosion takes place regularly in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, but is not a normal event in Egypt.  He said such acts must not be allowed to proliferate.
Said Sadek, who teaches political science at the American University of Cairo, argues that the danger of the explosion is that it could set off further sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians.
"Alexandria has been a bastion of the Muslim brotherhood and there is a lot of extremism in Alexandria anyway and so we saw the reaction afterwards," said Sadek. "You saw attacks by the Copts at a nearby mosque because they felt maybe the Muslims are happy with what happened and so they made their attack and then the Muslims attacked back. So the real alarm is the reaction afterwards from the people in the area."
Sadek points out that many of the underlying sectarian conflicts in Egypt, including building churches, freedom of religion, and conversions between one faith and another are difficult to resolve. "No one is addressing these problems," he notes, "because there are no easy solutions."

Find this article at:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/Egyptian-President-Urge-Citizens-to-Denounce-Terrorism-Following-Church-Bombing——112743749.html