Ethan Bronner of the New York Times has an excellent piece today on Hamas’s arms buildup in Gaza, based on a report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.

AJC’s Terrorism Expert Yehudit Barsky examines Hamas’s quest for legitimacy, and its quest for arms, in this AJC briefing:

The repercussions of Hamas’s border breach into Egypt in January have yet to be fully appreciated. The long-term impact on the security of both Israel and Egypt, as well as on the wider region, deserves international scrutiny so the threat of Hamas can be contained and defeated.

From Hamas’ perspective, destruction of the border wall broke the sanctions imposed by Israel and the international community on the Hamas government and brought Gaza back into the fold of the Arab and Muslim worlds. Hamas saw the action as another victory not just for itself, but for Islamist movements worldwide. Its first triumph was the July 2007 coup against the Palestinian Authority that resulted in its takeover of Gaza.

continue reading "The Hamas Offensive"

The New York Times published today a devastating report on Hamas’s increased incitement against Jews in Gaza:

“Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” Imam Yousif al-Zahar of Hamas told the faithful. “They have been traitors to all agreements — go back to history. Their fate is their vanishing. Look what they are doing to us.” …

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Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.

A new AJC-Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education study, Palestinian Textbooks: From Arafat to Abbas and Hamas, focuses on hate in Palestinian texbooks used in school is Gaza and the West Bank.

Sderot, an Israeli town under daily rocket attack from Hamas-controlled Gaza, is the focus of efforts by AJC for international attention.

The New York Times published over the weekend a letter from AJC’s Director of Communications Kenneth Bandler:

More than 7,000 Qassam rockets have landed in Sderot since 2001. Residents have barely 15 seconds to get to the safety of an air raid shelter after the “red alarm” sounds. That can happen 20 or more times in a single day, Mayor Eli Moyal told me on a recent visit.

Infolive.tv, Israel’s first web-based television news site, featured the recent visit to Sderot by AJC’s Board of Governors. AJC President Richard J. Sideman was extensively interviewed.

David Bernstein

In 1989, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published his best seller, From Beirut to

Jerusalem. A foreign correspondent initially based in the war-torn capital of Lebanon, Friedman chronicled how this once peaceful “Paris of the

Middle East” had come apart at the seams and descended into factional violence and chaos.

After spending nearly five years in Beirut, and in much need of a breather, Friedman moved to

Jerusalem, where he reported on the painful dilemmas facing a society divided along ideological, ethnic and religious lines.

The thesis of Friedman’s book was that Israelis “could end up like the Lebanese: arguing first in the parliament and then in the streets.” In other words,

Israel, too, might fall part.

Having just returned from an AJC national board mission to Israel and

Germany, I am more convinced than ever that Freidman, a commentator I greatly admire, overstated the risks of a social and political meltdown.
continue reading "From Jerusalem to Berlin"

David Bernstein

The internet has given rise to a powerful but precarious rumor mill. From claims that plastic wrap in microwave ovens causes cancer (untrue) to stories of finding a human finger in a bowl of chili (also untrue), misinformation spreads through the internet at viral speed and infects the public consciousness.

We Jews, unfortunately, seem especially susceptible to “e-missives”: we are inter-connected through a web of interlocking networks; we are highly educated users of the internet; and we sometimes feel unfairly targeted and, in the spirit of self-defense, are motivated to call our detractors on the carpet.

Some urban legends are told so many times by so many people that they harden into conventional wisdom. Because lies are often more compelling than truth, rarely does setting the record straight undo the damage. I still receive urban legends that were disproved more than five years ago.

That’s why it’s so imperative that people of good will do some fact checking before they hit the send button.

The presidential race has only poured fuel on the fire, spreading such falsehoods as “Barack Obama grew up a radical Muslim.”

continue reading "Just Say No to Jewish Urban Legends"

The New York Times, AP and the Jerusalem Post quoted Rabbi David Rosen, AJC’s international director of interreligious affairs, about the Catholic Church’s new latin prayer for the Jews.

Rosen made the following statement regarding the new prayer, which still contains languague calling for Jews to recognize Jesus:

While we appreciate that the text avoids any derogatory language towards Jews, its regretful that the prayer explicitly calls for Jews to accept Christianity.

This differs greatly from the text in the current universal liturgy that prays for the salvation of the Jews in general terms.

We hope that through further dialogue, the full implications of the Second Vatican Council’s affirmation of the Jewish covenant might lead to a deeper understanding of the value of the Torah as the vehicle of salvation for the Jewish people.

President Bush, in his State of the Union address, argued forcefully for continuing charitable choice, his faith-based initiative, which sanctions the funneling of taxpayer dollars directly to houses of worship providing social services.

AJC cares deeply about both religious liberty and the provision of effective social services. But we have long raised concerns about the advisability and constitutionality of charitable choice. By allowing government funds to flow to pervasively religious entities, charitable choice unwisely opens the door to government advancement of religion, support for employment discrimination, and a general weakening of religious autonomy.

continue reading "President Bush Wrong on Charitable Choice"

Our Executive Director David Harris, concerned about hateful emails mischaracterizing Senator Barack Obama’s religious beliefs and character, joined with heads of other national Jewish organizations in an open letter to the Jewish community:

As leaders of the Jewish community, none of whose organizations will endorse or oppose any candidate for President, we feel compelled to speak out against certain rhetoric and tactics in the current campaign that we find particularly abhorrent. Of particular concern, over the past several weeks, many in our community have received hateful emails that use falsehood and innuendo mischaracterizing Senator Barack Obama’s religious beliefs and who he is as a person.

These tactics attempt to drive a wedge between our community and a presidential candidate based on despicable and false attacks based on religion. We reject these efforts to manipulate members of our community into supporting or opposing candidates.

Attempts of this sort to mislead and inflame voters should not be part of our political discourse and should be rebuffed by all who believe in our democracy. Jewish voters, like all voters, should support whichever candidate they believe would make the best president. We urge everyone to make that decision based on the factual records of these candidates, and nothing less.

The story gained national attention through Richard Cohen’s Washington Post column , Michael Chabon’s Huffington Post response, The New York Times report , Politico’s coverage, JTA’s brief, and Shmuel Rosner’s Haaretz blog.

Joseph Rosenberg, Guest Writer

If the purpose of my first two trips to Israel, in the winter of 2004 and summer of 2005, was to paint me a marvelous picture of the country, and to enable me to affirm my support for the Jewish state, then the purpose of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) “Israel at 60″ mission was to give that picture a frame.

That frame, of course, came in the form of meetings with scholars, visits to controversial locations on the ground, and talks with people who in some way represent the “other side,” with points of view that are suitable for only the most mature, open-minded audiences.

continue reading "Reflections on the ICC Sixty at Sixty Mission"

Everyone wants to be called a “Comeback Kid.” John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and now, secular Judaism! The favorably reviewed PBS three-part documentary, The Jewish Americans, is characterized by the dean of American Jewish historians, Jonathan Sarna, as more evidence that, “now, like the proverbial phoenix, Jewish secularism is making a comeback.” What is Jewish secularism? Does The Jewish Americans take us back to a bygone era of Jewish secularism? Will Jewish secularism be the savior of 21st century American Judaism?

continue reading "The Jewish Comeback Kid?"