Recently in Israel Category

The Christian Science Monitor has an insightful read today on Sen. Barack Obama's lackluster start courting the much needed "Jewish vote" in his quest for the presidency. (I put that in quotes because, despite the relevance of garnering the votes of Jews, God's people do not vote as one.)

Washington - For a candidate intent on courting the Jewish vote, some of the headlines for Sen. Barack Obama in recent weeks have been less than heartening.

"Obama comment draws fire from Jews," the Des Moines Register declared after the senator's unscripted remark at an Iowa campaign stop in March that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" from stalled peace efforts with the Israelis.

"Obama on the Mideast: Not quite comfortable," The Chicago Jewish Star said after his first major policy speech on the Middle East, to a pro-Israel group in his hometown.

And at last week's Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina, Senator Obama's omission of Israel in response to a question about America's top allies gave moderator Brian Williams an opening to revisit the Iowa flap in front of a television audience of more than 2 million.

No mention was made of Obama Christ.

The Forward has a biting piece tomorrow about the newfound friendship between "John Hagee, the firebrand evangelical Christian minister from San Antonio, Texas," who stole the show at Aipac's convention in March, and a growing number of Jewish federations:

“If you search through Jewish stories around the U.S., a lot of us have pieces of personal memory where non-Jews were there for us — not because they had a hidden agenda, but because they believed it was the right thing to do,” said Michal Kohane, the Israeli-born executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region. “There is a strong aspect of CUFI in which they are the descendants of that ideological concept.”

Just as liberals have criticized Aipac for giving Hagee the dais, they are now speaking out against the pastor’s grass-roots fundraising dinners. Most recently, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Betty McCollum, declined an invitation to attend an April 29 “Night To Honor Israel” in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, citing what she called “Hagee’s extremism, bigotry and intolerance.”

The blogosphere is going nuts over accusations yesterday that Israel's most outspoken Arab leader, who fled the country last month and resigned from parliament Sunday, aided enemies of the state during last summer's war with Hezbollah.

Azmi Bishara claimed on Al Jazeera TV that Israeli leaders were trying to muzzle an oppositional voice:

Israel wants to use this as a tool in order to get rid of this position in Israel which calls for Israel to be the state of its citizens and accepting the national character of the Arabs in the country.

Whether or not Bishara did anything wrong, the accusations stand to stress the tenuous relationships of Arabs and Jews living together in Israel.

"In this difficult time me must increase Jewish-Arab cooperation and not be swept up by incitement against the Arab public," Labor MK Nadia Hilou told Haaretz.

I wrote a lot of stupid things when I was at UCLA, so I am not without sin. But this gaffe from today's Daily Bruin ranks up there with Tommy Thompson's Jews-love-money comment:

Bruin Plaza was taken over on Tuesday by hundreds of students draped in the blue and white Israeli flags celebrating the country’s 59th independence day.

I assume the reporter didn't intend to imply that UCLA's Jewish students were marching in like a caravan of Israeli settlers. But it's difficult to not read it that way.

The Forward published a lengthy article last week titled, "California Campuses Gain a Reputation as Hotbeds of Anti-Israel Rhetoric."

It opens with a January protest in Irvine sparked by a lecture from Daniel Pipes, a polarizing Middle East expert and a visiting professor at Pepperdine University:

The lecture topic was “The Threat to Israel’s Existence.” The speaker was Daniel Pipes, a Middle East analyst known for his hawkish pro-Israel views and sharp denunciations of Islamic extremism. The setting was the University of California, Irvine, a campus with a national reputation as a hotbed of anti-Israel rhetoric.

Students wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs clustered in the center of the auditorium.

The stage was set for confrontation.

Sure enough, 15 minutes into Pipes’s speech, just as he had built up to one of his main points — “The Palestinians must have their will crushed so that they will no longer be trying to eliminate Israel, so they will tend to their own affairs and leave Israel alone” — dozens of Muslim students interrupted him with hostile shouts, before promptly marching out of the lecture hall, chanting “anti-Israel, anti-oppression.”

Afterward, the student protesters gathered outside, where they listened to a speaker vow, “It’s just a matter of time before the State of Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth.”

Here's the nut:

U.C. Irvine though is only the most recent in what can seem like a rotation of California campuses to emerge as the focus of Jewish communal concern. At a number of California public universities, Jewish students have long faced particularly inflammatory rhetoric from anti-Israel activists — a state of affairs that predates even the most recent intifada. While at any given school, such activity tends to ebb and flow, established Muslim student groups in California repeatedly have brought fiery anti-Israel speakers to campus, including one who regularly praises suicide bombers, expresses support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and rails against “Zionist Jews.”

“I think the tenor and the tone of the debate and the shrillness of identity politics is meaningfully different in California,” said David Harris, director of the Washington-based Israel on Campus Coalition. “There are different challenges on campuses across the country, to be sure, but at some schools in California — especially large state schools — Israel’s supporters on campus are confronted with distinct challenges, including strongly heated rhetoric and a lack of respect and common civility.”

Surprisingly, the article offers no voice of moderate Muslims. Only this from Oakland cleric Amir Abdel Malik Ali (pictured):

Last spring, Ali gave a notorious speech at U.C. Irvine during a week of activities sponsored by the campus Muslim Student Union under the rubric “Holocaust in the Holy Land.” Speaking on a campus plaza behind a sign reading “Israel, the 4th Reich,” Ali noted that Israelis are “reluctant to get on buses and things, or go to the café,” adding, “It’s about time that they live in fear.” He said that whereas Israelis are “coming to live,” they are opposed by “people who are ready to die, who say either victory or martyrdom. You can’t fight against that.”

“We will fight you until we are either martyred or until we are victorious,” he said. “That’s how we look at it. And they know that that’s how Muslims believe.”

I called Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, which overseas area mosques, to see if, in fact, Ali spoke for all Muslims.

"I categorically would dispute the myth that all Muslims feel that way," Syed said. "I don't think anybody speaks for all Muslims to beign with. And it is not right for Forward to say that all California campuses -- the only controversy that exists on this is at the UC Irvine campus. Both Hillel and the Muslim group are unable to reconcile and both have been quite hostile to each other."