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.

Now, Hamas is challenging the Muslim world to recognize it as the legitimate ruler of Gaza. Hamas demands that it should exercise control over the Gaza-Egypt border, a move that would abrogate an international agreement governing a security sharing arrangement between Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmud Abbas, and monitored by the European Union.

Since the early 1990s, Hamas has enjoyed substantial Iranian financial support. More recently, it has been receiving increased logistical support, including heavy weapons and extensive training, for its operatives. Hamas is eager to become a terror organization with military capabilities on par with Hezbollah, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon. As Hamas continues to solidify itself as Iran’s base on Israel’s southern border, it has shown with its recent activities that it intends to use its enhanced capabilities to threaten not only Israel but Egypt as well.

The January border breach gave Hamas an unprecedented opportunity to enhance its arsenal. As 750,000 Gazans crossed into Egypt to gather supplies, Hamas and its allies smuggled into Gaza military-grade heavy weapons, including long-range rockets, and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, which are most likely to be the next weapons aimed at Israeli cities. The same terror groups took advantage of traffic leaving Gaza to send their operatives into Egypt, with the goal of infiltrating the Israeli border from Sinai. In response, Israel tightened security measures around its air force bases in the southern part of the country.

Egypt views Hamas with apprehension. Initially, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak declared that the ruptured border would remain open. But, after a few days, the Egyptian government abruptly reversed its policy. Foreign Minister Ahmad Aboul Gheit declared that Egyptian forces would “break the legs” of anyone crossing the border. Egypt deployed a security force of 20,000 in the northern Sinai Peninsula to pick up Gazans and return them, and set a deadline for any Gazans still in Egypt to go back to Gaza. A total of 800 Palestinians were reportedly detained by Egyptian security forces, questioned and then sent back to Gaza. Meanwhile, Hamas accused the Egyptians of torturing 100 Hamas members, who had been detained after entering Egypt with explosives.

Egypt remains uneasy about the ties and influence of Hamas on Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of Hamas. Following the border breach, the Brotherhood organized 80 demonstrations in support of Hamas and in opposition to the Mubarak government. In turn, Egyptian police cracked down, breaking up protests and arresting Muslim Brotherhood activists. Egypt is also wary of its own citizens and foreign Arabs who went to Gaza and then returned to Egypt through Sinai. Egyptian security forces questioned some 2000 non-Gazans, the majority of whom were Egyptians who reportedly went to Gaza and volunteered to fight together with Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel.

Hamas has stepped up the volume of rocket attacks on Israel, and, with Iran’s aid, has upgraded its weaponry. In the first two months of 2008, Hamas fired at Sderot more than 50 percent of the total number of rockets launched throughout 2007. For seven years Sderot and its surrounding communities have been under almost daily barrages of Qassam rockets from Gaza.

In recent weeks Hamas also has launched Iranian-manufactured Grad rockets that struck Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza. There is concern that Hamas has already acquired longer-range artillery that could strike Israel’s main civilian population centers farther north.

In addition to the rockets and missiles, Hamas has never ceased its traditional methods of terrorism. Its March 6 murderous shooting attack on seminary students in Jerusalem is only part of what has become a multifaceted offensive.

Hamas’ continued acquisition of long range weapons and its intensifying attacks against Israeli civilians has left Israel with few options. As a result of these developments ground operations similar to the recent one carried out by Israel against Hamas may be Israeli’s only viable alternative to prevent its citizens from being targeted with even higher caliber weapons.

“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.

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

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

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,

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

AJC’s visit to Israel coincided with the celebration of Israel’s 60th year of independence and explored the overlapping layers of Israel’s complex society and the seemingly inescapable conflict between

But the

The country is currently experiencing economic growth in excess of six percent, which is lifting the standard of living of the entire society. It is a fertile seedbed of technological innovation, nurturing the seeds of a new generation of “green technology.” With, among other things, an electric car on the horizon,

While Israeli democracy is notoriously unwieldy, there is now a serious effort underway to write a constitution. Even if a full-fledged constitution does not materialize in the near future, the exercise will likely bolster

Once dead in the water, electoral reform is also making a come back.

During our visit to the Jewish state, we met with the impressive Nir Barkat, Jerusalem City Council member. The former high tech entrepreneur shared his vision for a better integrated and more economically vibrant “city of peace,” which would call upon the talents of Israeli Jews, religious and secular, as well as the city’s 250,000 Arab residents. Barkat hopes to increase the number of tourists by a factor of 10 in the next decade.

Two decades after the publication of “From Beirut Jerusalem,” Israeli society is not only fundamentally intact, but dynamic and thriving.

The AJC delegation then went on to Berlin, where we celebrated the 10th year of our flourishing

While in Berlin, we celebrated Israel’s 60th, drawing a crowd of 350 from

Just 19 years after the fall of the Berlin wall, a united

If German society is going to continue to thrive, it will have to do a much better job in extending economic opportunity to these immigrants and in unapologetically promulgating the country’s democratic norms.

But I have faith in today’s Germany because, like its fellow democracy

As in Israel, there is still much work to be done in

David Bernstein is associate director of AJC’s Community Services Department.

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.”

Everyone reading this by now has heard this claim and probably a good percentage still believe it is true, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Family or friends often ask me what AJC plans to do about some supposed outrage or whether a particular chain email is true (rarely), very often after the person has already sent the problem email to 200 of his or her closest friends.

I am always struck at how quick some are to send something out that they have not bothered to verify. In one instance, a man sent out an email hoax with the disclaimer “I am not certain of the veracity of the claims herein. But it’s extremely important that we get to the bottom of this.” He, too, helped spread the lie.

One disturbing email circulating since the early 2000s exaggerated the problem of anti-Semitism in France and called on people to boycott a fellow democracy. Another similar email was fabricated in the name of Senator Joe Lieberman expressing his “contempt” for France.

These misleading e-missives led some in the Jewish community to undertake ill-advised boycott campaigns that did nothing to improve conditions for French Jews. AJC’s much more carefully considered analysis of the situation in France led to an ongoing, fruitful dialogue with French government officials, and ultimately to a much more forceful approach in confronting anti-Semitism.

My all time favorite Jewish urban legend gone awry revealed that schools in the United Kingdom had stopped teaching about the Holocaust because they didn’t want to offend Muslims. It turned out that only one school in the entire country ceased teaching about the Holocaust (some of the most potent urban legends are based on partial truths).

A later version from last fall stated that the University of Kentucky had stopped teaching Holocaust education. It turns out that the rumor monger had mistaken the “UK” (i.e. United Kingdom) in the original urban legend for “University of Kentucky.” Imagine the concerned Jewish parents who, after reading that email, decided against sending their kids to the university!

In these instances, the damage was spread out across an entire country or university. But some urban legends have unfairly tarnished the reputation of individuals.

A colleague recently sent me a heartrending email from a friend maligned for raising money for anti-Semitic causes and for being a Holocaust denier. Even if one took the email at face value, the accusation was based on astonishingly flimsy evidence.

In fact, the accused has a long track record of speaking out against anti-Semitism and had even raised money for a film about a diplomat who saved Jews during the Holocaust. This man’s reputation may never fully recover.

To be sure, mass email can be a powerful force for good. The same viral phenomena that spread lies can also raise awareness of profound truths, such as the plight of the people of Darfur or the threat posed by Iran. Email campaigns can mobilize well meaning people around important issues, and lead to positive change.

But we do damage to our credibility and our cause, not to mention the reputations of others, when we send out inane and false emails to our lists. Next time you are tempted, ask a credible source and check the claim on one of several good urban legend websites such as snopes.com.

And if you can’t figure out the answer, err on the side of caution and send out this posting instead. Let’s help slow down the spread of email hoaxes.

David Bernstein is associate director of AJC’s Community Services Department.

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.

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.

During the last few years various Cabinet departments and agencies continued to implement administratively key elements of the president’s faith-based initiative. Similarly, congressional supporters of the President’s program sought to include charitable choice provisions in a number of legislative proposals authorizing federally-funded social services programs, or to strip out of the law current provisions deemed inconsistent with charitable choice. In particular, some in Congress tried to eliminate bars against employment discrimination on the basis of religion insofar as those restrictions apply to religious organizations. AJC has argued that it is inappropriate to allow religious institutions to discriminate in the hiring of employees whose salaries are paid with public dollars.

We should remember that the history of social services in this country actually began with religious institutions. The partnership between religiously-affiliated institutions and government in the provision of those services is a venerable one. Charitable choice, however, has expanded this to permit houses of worship, and other pervasively religious institutions, to receive taxpayer dollars for the provision of social services.

And, charitable choice poses an additional concern: When institutions with a thoroughly religious environment provide social services, recipients of those services may feel compelled to take part in religious activities as a price of receiving help. It is important to emphasize that the recipients of services provided under charitable choice are often in extremis. They may not clearly understand their options and their rights, and, even if they do understand, they may be reluctant to take steps that might delay or obstruct their receipt of badly needed services. All this opens the door to publicly funded programs in which recipients of social services may be coerced to take part in religious activities as a price of receiving help.

The faith-based initiative also presents the potential for fostering divisiveness among various faith groups as they compete for public funding, a potential that will only multiply as government officials charged with determining with whom to contract are placed in the role of deciding which religion “works better” in dealing with the social problems public programs are addressing.

Finally, it is hard to see how the faith-based initiative will not ultimately lead to an undermining of the very mission of religious institutions. With government dollars comes government oversight. Faith-based organizations inevitably will be held accountable for the use of the dollars they receive just as any other recipient of government funds would be. While the President clearly feels otherwise, this intrusion into the affairs of churches and other pervasively religious organizations is exactly the type of entanglement of religion and state against which the Constitution guards.

Jeffrey Sinensky is director of AJC’s Domestic Policy Department.

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.

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.

Every one of the 41 students on the trip - Jewish campus leaders who represented 25 colleges and universities from the United States, as well as 32 ICC member organizations which span the political spectrum from Americans for Peace Now to the Zionist Organization of America - share the common bond of a love for Israel and support of the right of the Jewish state to exist in peace and security.

The trip was not about convincing us to be Zionists; on the most fundamental level we all already were. The trip was about showing us, in as objective a manner possible, the challenges that Israel faces as it moves into its seventh decade as a country. It was about hearing, from their own mouths, the differences between Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. It was about furthering our understanding the changing demographics of Israeli cities and towns and how the changing birth rates among Jews and Arabs raise some serious concerns. It was about struggling with the incredibly complicated question of how to maintain both a Jewish state and a democracy.

The mission was not about giving us the answers - every time I learned one thing, I had two more questions - but it was about enabling the 41 of us to understand and begin to engage the problems.

This trip was not Birthright Israel. It was not for people who have yet to make up their minds in support of Israel. A requirement for acceptance on this mission was having traveled to Israel at least once. For most, this was a third, fourth, or even tenth visit. Many students spoke Hebrew fluently. Some had spent extended periods of time studying in Israel. And a handful even carried both US and Israeli passports.

This was a trip for a group of students who could see the issues we encountered not only through an emotional lens, but also though a lens of intellectual inquiry. We began to realize that the issues facing Israel are not uncommon for many new countries. We took the opportunity to compare Israel to other countries that have faced - and some that face today - similar problems at such a relatively young age. The United States, our group recalled, had not yet even had its Civil War sixty years after its founding fathers declared its independence.

While for many, it would be upsetting to have to accept that Israel is not perfect by any means, and that it faces a myriad of challenges, but for me there was almost a certain degree of refreshment to hear and see these challenges first-hand.

That is not to say that I am happy Israel faces such challenges - I am not - but it was very encouraging that the trip’s organizers feel confident enough in today’s Jewish campus leaders to show us the other parts of Israel. The parts that provide the frame, not just the picture, which one needs to fully understand Israel in the context of the Middle East, a young country, and the world.

Joseph Rosenberg is the chair of AJC’s NYU Society.

Let’s first understand the term. Jewish secularism, as it is commonly understood, is the embrace of Jewish culture as a unifying force for the Jewish people, without the structure and strictures of Jewish religious life. It is Judaism sans synagogue. Jewish secularism flourished in the early 20th century, the heyday of Yiddish, socialism and American Jewish propinquity, that is, dense and intense Jewish urban neighborhoods like the legendary Lower East Side in New York and old West Side of Chicago. Jewish secularism waned when Jews moved to diffuse suburban communities and the synagogue became for many the new anchor of their ethnic Jewish identity.

Most suburban Jews in the late 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s emulated their Christian neighbors’ church-consciousness and embraced synagogue membership and community, particularly during their child-rearing years. Increasingly, though, that generation’s children and grandchildren were neither religious nor secular. They became recreational Jews who embraced intermittent Jewish expression but eschewed a Jewish lifestyle. Nonetheless, the synagogue was and, notwithstanding all its current challenges, continues to be the primary creator and glue of Jewish community in America.

Fast forward to the 21st century. Today, outside of a growing and increasingly youthful Orthodoxy, Jewish 20- and 30-somethings, descendants of late 19th and early 20th century immigrants, are marrying less, later and/or out of the faith, are distant from synagogue life, and clustered (once again) in urban centers. Some long for their Jewish roots and are embracing a revived secular Judaism reminiscent of the Jewishness portrayed in The Jewish Americans, but with a very modern flavor. They move to the beat of Matisyahu, blog on Jewcy.com and empathize with Shalom Auslander, Orthodoxy’s Philip Roth. They are leading a Jewish cultural renaissance in America. Yet many fully embrace American openness and are uncomfortable with Jewish peoplehood, and its preference for in-marriage.

Are they the harbingers of a nascent movement towards a new secular Judaism? Maybe, but if so, the movement appears more different from than similar to its predecessor of a century ago. Above all, today’s young Jewish adults have not yet succeeded in creating Jewish community within a secular context the way their forbearers did. By contrast, the secular Jewish community of the early 20th century was able to go beyond the celebrated arts and wisdom of the Yiddish theater and the Forward to produce a fraternal and social structure that bound Jews together with a sense of shared values, traditions and destiny. These included a common language, Yiddish. But this secular Jewish structure did not last beyond a couple of generations. It did not have the power of generational continuity in an open America that both seduced and invited Jews to assimilate, particularly following World War II.

We are living in a challenging and transitional moment in American Jewish religious life. The synagogue as an institution continues to be under attack as uninspired, slow to change and unable to retain its membership rolls. But the synagogue will and can change – many congregations have already – and must endeavor to incorporate within its ethos the Jewish cultural emergence that a new generation of American Jews has produced. Why the synagogue? Because it continues as the Jewish institution that, more than any other in Jewish communal life, has the ability to attract the greatest number of Jews at some point in their adult lives. The synagogue is still perceived as the standard-bearer of Jewish authenticity, where the ancient mystery of congregational prayer and song, the compelling nature of Jewish life-cycle events and the pull of community can all crystallize. Those federations that are serious about rejuvenating Jewish life in their communities have now invested in synagogues, affirming their status as primary gateway institutions. Without religious community, there is no Jewish continuity.

Perhaps the new secular Judaism will engage our disengaged 20- and 30-somethings. That’s the good news. But how can we ensure that its expressions will become treasures to be passed down to children and grandchildren, rather than phenomena of the here-and-now? The answer is to imbue these cultural expressions of Jewish identity with substance and make them transmittable. The first task requires strong and persistent Jewish education. The second goal, to facilitate the bequest from one generation to the next, ultimately requires a formal religious structure. And for that, there’s simply no substitute for our synagogues. For the last 2,000 years, no institution has rivaled its power to sustain the Jewish people.

Noam Marans is the associate director of AJC’s Department of Contemporary Jewish Life.