Noah Shachtman, editor of Wired's blog on national security, and in my mind one of the best reporters on that beat, has a great post on how Israel's military connection to Georgia is fueling increasing discord between Israel and Russia:

The Russian military blasted Israel today for supplying weapons and training to its adversaries in Georgia.

"Israel armed the Georgian army," Russian Deputy Chief of General Staff Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn told a Moscow press conference. Jerusalem provided Tblisi with "eight types of military vehicles, explosives, landmines and special explosives for the clearing minefields [sic]. "

"In 2007, Israeli experts trained Georgian commandos," he added. Georgia's Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia previously said that "Georgian corporals and sergeants train with Germans, alpine units and the navy work with French instructors, and special operations and urban warfare troops are taught by Israelis."

Tensions between Georgia and Russia ratcheted up the spring, after Russia and her allies in the breakaway region of Abkhazia shot down a number of Georgian spy drones. Those unmanned Hermes 450 reconnaissance planes were made by Israel's Elbit Systems.

The two countries have been doing military hardware deals for almost seven years, "following an initiative by Georgian citizens who immigrated to Israel and became businesspeople," Ynetnews notes. "The fact that Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew contributed to this cooperation."

 Continue reading "How Israel Trained. . " 

And if you've got the Shachtman bug, check out his still very relevant Wired feature (published in November, '07), How Technology Almost Lost the War. One of the better pieces of analytical reporting on the war-planner's miscalculations, providing what amounts to a fascinating primer on the evolution of military strategy. 

Rubashkins: not winning any prizes anytime soonSince the raid on the Agriprocessors plant on May 12th, bashing the kosher meat giant has become something of a sport. Everyone from the New York Times to failed messiah to yours truly has taken a few shots (some cheap, some well-deserved) at the Rubashkin family and the business they run out of Postville, Iowa.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Rubashkin family. In fact, I called for a boycott of their meat in January, months before Uri L’Tzedek was on the case. But I’m getting a little frustrated with the way the scandal is being dealt with by liberal-minded people like me.

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Affirmative Action: or reverse discrimination?Home Center, an Israeli home wares chain, has been offering  a secret discount to Arabs. When customer Eli Chai discovered and reported this last week, a Home Center spokesperson explained, “Home Center offers a wide range of attractive discounts throughout the year. As part of a plan to target specific communities, the chain offers different discounts for different sectors from time to time.”

The situation does seem pretty odd, but not altogether uncalled for. I wouldn’t be surprised if Arabs do more than 70% of the construction in Israel, and thus end up spending the most money at those sorts of stores. Why wouldn’t Home Center capitalize on that customer base by offering a good deal?

Of course, that’s not how it’s being framed in Israel. Chai is quoted as saying, “I didn't expect to get a discount, but I was appalled when I realized that had I been Arab I would have received one. I tried to think what would happen if it was a discount only for Jews, or Sephardim, or Ashkenazim.”

There's plenty of discrimination against Arabs in Israel, and Chai isn’t bothered by that. But when Arabs are favored, it’s a grave in justice!  It may feel inappropriate to offer a discount based on ethnicity, but it’s hardly shocking in a society that’s so clearly divided along those lines.

Ehud Olmert's announcement that he would step down from office caught no one by surprise. The drama surrounding the announcement was typical of Olmert, a Prime Minister who has always been much more style than substance.

Israel treats its politicians harshly, even by the cynical standards of the twenty-first century. Almost all leave office under a cloud of disgrace. Where American presidents, even those who left office in disgrace, are generally respected figures in their later lives, even towering figures like Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, and David Ben-Gurion, all held in almost idolatrous esteem in the United States, were treated much less ceremoniously in Israel.

On the flipside, disgraced leaders in Israel often have an easier time rehabilitating their image than do leaders in the United States, often even climbing the rungs of party politics to regain positions at the top of government. Such was the case with Ariel Sharon, who rebounded from the debacle of the first Lebanon War in 1982 to regain his position in the Likud Party, eventually becoming its leader and winning the premiership before forming his own party. Ehud Barak suffered the worst defeat of any incumbent Prime Minister ever, yet came back to lead the Labor Party and hold the Defense portfolio. Benjamin Netanyahu left office amid scandal and anger, after being soundly defeated by Barak, yet is currently the leading candidate for Prime Minister in most polls. Both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres regained the office after earlier tenures that were widely regarded as failures.

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Home Alone: but less funnyLately there have been a number of high profile neglect cases in Israel. We’ve learned that many Holocaust survivors live in abject poverty. A woman revered as a spiritual authority was found to have abused and neglected many of her children. And in just the past few weeks, there have been three cases of children neglected in airports: A four-year-old girl was accidentally left in Ben Gurion Airport when her parents failed to keep track of all six of their children en route to Paris. An 8-year-old boy was accidentally flown to Brussels instead of Munich (this appears to be the fault of his El Al escort), and a 12-year-old was sent to the UK by her mother, with no one scheduled to meet her at the airport, and only the address—which turned out to be incorrect—of a family friend. When her mother was found and arrested, she explained that she couldn’t care for her kids and wanted them to find political asylum in the UK. Turns out she’d already sent her 9-year-old to Leeds.

There are plenty of cases of severe neglect reported in America every year (this story comes to mind), but in Israel it seems to be a symptom of the political situation. Israelis walk around all day trying to distract themselves from their own suffering and trauma. It seems to me that as a result of having to push their own personal grief below the surface, they also end up ignoring all kinds of suffering that they see around them, be it the suffering of Palestinians, Holocaust survivors, or even their own children. To a certain degree, we all push those thoughts aside in order to get through the day, but we try to maintain a sense of compassion. In Israel, because it’s nearly impossible to really ignore the suffering, society has developed a sort of flat affect. Neglect happens and everyone acts shocked but quickly moves on, not wanting to dwell on any more pain.

There’s something about the Israeli machismo that appealing, and that makes me proud to be Jewish. But there’s something ugly under that machismo -- a gaping hole where I’d expect to see compassion, and it’s horrifying.

Eruv: wires on a telephone pole. not much to it.There’s a dispute brewing over whether a community in Long Island can build themselves an eruv. An eruv is an enclosed space in which it’s permissible for observant Jews to carry items (such as books, keys, and food) from place to place on Shabbat. MyJewishLearning has a great explanation of what exactly an eruv is supposed to be:

The term eruv refers to the act of mixing or combining, and is shorthand for eruv hazerot--the mixing of domains, in this case, the private (rashut hayahid) and the public (rashut harabim). An eruv does not allow for carrying items otherwise prohibited by Jewish law on Shabbat, such as money or cell phones.

Having an eruv does not mean that a city or neighborhood is enclosed entirely by a wall. Rather, the eruv can be comprised of a series of pre-existing structures (walls, fences, electrical poles and wires) and/or structures created expressly for the eruv, often a wire mounted on poles. In practice, then, the eruv is a symbolic demarcation of the private sphere, one that communities come together to create.

It sounds strange, but not hugely problematic, right? Wrong. Over the years, there have been a number of political controversies centered around the construction of eruvs (or, more accurately, eruvin). Major and minor disputes over eruvin have unfolded in New Jersey, London, Chicago, Washington Heights, and Venice Beach.

Meanwhile, even within the observant communities, there are those who don’t believe that eruvin are legitimate ways of getting around the prohibition of carrying. Chabad, for instance, doesn’t generally hold by any eruv.

For those who know about and use an eruv, the idea of it being controversial is absurd. In some cases, it can be as noninvasive as already existing train tracks, or highway barriers. At its most invasive, an eruv is a wire, or a piece of string. There is no holy gravitational pull inside an eruv, no religious force field, no magical powers. An eruv is literally a loophole, a way that the rabbis devised to get around the prohibition against carrying on Shabbat. The only way a non-Jew or non-observant Jew would be affected by the construction of an eruv is if the eruv caused a glut of observant Jews to move to the neighborhood. While one may have objections to living in a neighborhood full of frummies, it’s hard to cast those objections as anything but anti-Semitism.

The world has no shortage of genuine religious controversies. Why waste time on something as relatively petty as an eruv?

Most of the time, as a society we walk in darkness, wounded by walking blindly into an economic barbed-wire fence here, an environmental open manhole there. Once a generation--if we are lucky, once a decade--there is a flash of lightning in the dark that lights up the truth of our country's politics.

For some of us, Katrina was such a flash of lightning. And now, for some of us, an allegedly kosher meatpacking plant oddly located, far from Jews, in Postville, Iowa.

Even in the dark, there is usually some prophetic voice warning of oncoming damage. In this case, prophetic calls to apply "eco-kosher" and "ethical kosher" standards not only to food but also to such consumables as coal, oil, plastics went back to the work of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in the mid-'70s and my own book Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex and the Rest of Life in the mid-'90s. Calls for Jewish support for unionization and workers' rights went back to 1911 and the 1930s, and the continuing work of the Jewish Labor Committee. Calls for a compassionate Jewish approach to immigration law went back to the work of HIAS, the Jewish Funds for Justice, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (in Chicago) in two different Jewish coalitions on immigration policy (one moderately liberal, one more progressive) in the mid-'00s.

All these warnings called out the necessity of action; few of the Jewish public got the point.

And then came Postville - not just one lightning flash but a thunderstorm, flash after flash lighting up broader and broader aspects of oppression.

First, PETA filmed the torturous killing of animals who were supposed to be ritually slaughtered in a virtually painless way. Indeed, that was exactly what made their meat kosher for observant Jews (and some other folks who hoped to be getting purer food). For some, under-cover films made of the torture suddenly lit up the whole structure of kosher certification in America, putting it deeply in doubt. Were the Orthodox certification bodies paying no attention? Were the fees they were paid by producers dulling their responses to violations of Jewish law and simple humane decency?

Then--stirred by the kosher factor to look more closely at this plant--a Jewish newspaper, the Forward, and the Jewish Labor Committee began to report rank illegal oppression of the Postville workers - many of them undocumented Guatemalan migrants who were afraid to protest for fear of deportation. That lightning flash revealed not only Postville but a little of what was true about the broader world of immigrant workers.

Whereupon, ironically tipped off by the Forward story, the Federal Migra raided the plant. They charged hundreds of the workers with criminal offenses, sent them to prison, and deported hundreds more. The raid decimated Postville's community, and when an official broke the customary silence, flashed a searing light on how Federal agents behave toward powerless "illegals": no time or lawyers allowed to shape a defense, families shattered.

But--they brought no charges against the rich and powerful owners despite visible evidence of crimes they had committed far worse than those charged to the penniless immigrants. After all, the owners made massive political contributions.

Now larger parts of the Jewish community responded: calls for boycotts; a march of support and collections of money for the workers and their families; some renewed concern about the paralyzed campaign for a comprehensive and compassionate immigration law; (less, but some) renewed interest in stronger pro-labor legislation; a somewhat beefed-up effort by the Conservative denomination to establish "hekhsher tzedek,"its own version of an eco-kosher standard.

But there are three areas in which The Shalom Center seeks a broader vision beyond the lightning flashes:

1. Repairing an unjust "justice system" in which the wealthy are not required to obey the law, while the poor, the powerless, and the desperate are sent to prison for minor offenses, without the opportunity to defend themselves. All Jewish wisdom and all Jewish history teaches: Do not shrug off a system of injustice!

2. Facing the truth that immigration is not a narrowly "domestic" issue. So long as poverty, powerlessness, and environmental destruction in Mexico and Central America drive people to despair, there will be greater numbers of immigrants to the USA than our laws, our economy, and our culture can compassionately sustain. The pressure is a set-up for driving unemployed white and Black Americans into hostility against Hispanic Americans, while the rich and powerful chortle. We must use trade agreements and all other negotiating frameworks to insist on high wages, health and safety standards, and environmental protections for ALL OF US in Anglo and Latino-America, and we must support transnational pressure to those ends by unions, environmentalists, religious communities, and others.

3. Achieving ecological respect and sanity through three factors; how animals are killed; how they live their lives (so eco-kashrut must forbid factory farming, etc); and yet it cannot stop there. It is all too clear that the obsession of many people with eating a great deal of meat is a twin to our addiction to oil and coal as a way to poison the planet. Huge farms of cows and pigs pour methane - an even more dangerous global-scorching agent than CO2 - into the atmosphere. To heal our earth as well as our own bodies, we must return to our forebears' healthier diet of eating meat no more than once or twice a week.

We must go beyond the lightning flashes over Postville -- to a steady, open, sacred light of clarity about the dangers and the damages the lightning has revealed. The light of systemic change is what the Torah calls for.

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Last week, a minor political scandal unfolded around the note that Barack Obama put between the stones of the Kotel when he visited the Wall during his tour of Israel. Dug out from between the stones by a yeshiva student, and printed in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv. Obama at the wall: maybe he should have pushed that note a bit further backRabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi in charge of the Kotel, condemned the newspaper and their violation of Obama’s privacy, saying “The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker. It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them.". The yeshiva student apologized for his actions, saying it was “kind of a prank.” Ma'ariv spread some rumors that Obama had leaked the contents of the note before he even went to the wall, but that seems to have been proved false. Ma'ariv’s third helpful contribution was the following sentence, printed the following: "In any case, since Obama is not a Jew, publishing the note does not constitute an infringement on his right to privacy."

There are a few issues here. First of all, publicizing someone’s private letter, whether it’s to God, Santa Claus, or their Uncle Ralph, is inappropriate. Rabbeinu Gershom, a rabbi living 1000 years ago in Mayence, issued a prohibition against reading anyone else’s personal mail, and that prohibition still stands today. I would have to look at the text of the prohibition to see if it seems to extend to everyone’s mail, or just the mail of other Jews. Regardless, stealing the letter and publishing it are in very bad taste. On the other hand, Obama should have and probably did know that this would happen, and had he released his note ahead of time, he may have been able to avoid all of the brouhaha that has surrounded this story. Or he may have wanted the brouhaha. Remember, when the Pope visited the Wall in 2000 he made his note public, and wrote it in English. He also, like Obama, prayed at the Wall.

Written prayer is not to be taken lightly, and I’m appalled at the craziness surrounding this letter, but it doesn’t really shed any light on Obama’s character or qualities. His note was perfectly PC, and earnest in a not-too-creepy way. If he has any secrets, confessions or great sins, he may have brought them up in his spoken or mental prayer at the Wall, but it’s hard to believe he’d be stupid enough to commit them to paper.

If we learn anything from this it should be about privacy—our own, and what we expect from others. We want emails to be private, some phone calls, letters from our employers, and medical information. But who among us hasn’t forwarded a few personal emails to friends wondering about the subtext, or spoken about a private matter while walking down the street surrounded by strangers who could hear every word? Google says that complete privacy doesn’t exist, and maybe they’re right, but if there’s anything in the world that remains private, shouldn’t it be personal prayers?

The strict definition of "kosher" prescribes a way to slaughter animals and lays out rules for eating. But the word has long held a broader, deeper meaning for the Jewish community. If an idea, an action isn't "kosher," it just isn't right - because at the basis of the Jewish legal system is a demand for ethical behavior. No justice, no kashrut.

 

At Agriprocessors, Inc., the nation's largest kosher slaughterhouse, someone forgot that, and while exploitative working conditions and aggressive anti-union tactics are not uncommon in the meatpacking industry, it turns out that the Jewish community's very own Agriprocessors is, according to Esther Lopez of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), "a poster child for bad employers exploiting immigrant workers." And that's not kosher.

 

The situation came to a head in May when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staged the biggest immigration raid in history at the Agriprocessors plant. Nine hundred ICE agents descended on the tiny town of Postville, Iowa, detaining some 390 employees.

 

Prior to the raid, though, Agriprocessors had been under growing pressure by segments of the Jewish community and organized labor to address accusations that go far beyond immigration: unsafe working conditions, child labor, sexual harassment, failure to pay wages, abuse of animals, and more.

 

The Forward has been singular in its unvarnished reporting, and the Conservative Movement and Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) spearheaded investigative visits to the plant. The movement's Hekhsher Tzedek project developed a new seal for Kosher food reflecting benchmarks of Jewish ethical standards, and the JLC worked with the UFCW in a union drive. In response to footage shot by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Shalom Center protested Agriprocessors' treatment of animals and since the raid, other Jewish organizations have begun to grapple with the scandal. The Orthodox social justice organization, Uri L'Tzedek, initiated an (unfortunately short-lived) boycott, and was joined by others including BBYO, Habonim Dror, and Young Judea.

 

On July 27, the Jewish Council of Urban Affairs of Chicago, Jewish Community Action of St. Paul, and St. Bridget's Church of Postville organized a march and rally. I was among the more than 1000 protestors, standing with affected workers, supportive locals, and a large Jewish contingent calling for comprehensive immigration reform and an end to raids.

 

The leadership made three demands of Agriprocessors: a $100,000 donation to assist affected families, back pay for former employees, and transparency in addressing working conditions. I was proud to be there, and the Jewish community is right to try to clean up its own backyard. We must support those who pursue correction of the specific problems at Agriprocessors.

 

But we cannot pretend in so doing, we'll resolve the issues that allowed the Agriprocessors situation to fester: government neglect and a failing economic system. Neither can we allow this story to become a classic anti-Semitic narrative in which Jews become scapegoats for a crisis whose dimensions are much broader.

Agriprocessors' abuses didn't appear out of nowhere. Complaints had been lodged for some time, and state and federal regulatory agencies had repeatedly found the plant to be noncompliant. But in a political environment that places a low priority on enforcing workplace-related laws, the plant owners could easily look at paying fines as a mere "cost of doing business."

 

Moreover, just two weeks before the raid, the UFCW informed ICE that Agriprocessors was involved in an ongoing labor dispute. According to internal ICE regulations, this dispute meant that the plant shouldn't have been raided - raising questions about intentional sidetracking of the investigation.

Indeed, the way the raid was conducted, and the behavior of ICE in the meantime raises additional questions. The huge numbers grabbed in Postville will help justify its five billion dollar budget, and ICE unveiled new tactics in the raid: charging workers with false papers as felony criminal offenders (rather than civil violators of immigration laws), and instituting group processing of cases. The former means that hundreds of Postville's "criminals" are now serving a five-month jail sentence prior to deportation, and the latter created an assembly-line style of justice that hampered lawyers' ability to explore legal remedies for the detainees (significantly, no criminal charges have been filed to date against the company that hired them). Finally, since Postville, ICE has continued on an accelerated program of workplace raids on factories, meatpacking plants, and construction sites, places where it can readily detain large numbers of undocumented workers.

Many organizations within the Jewish community have taken eloquent positions on the need for comprehensive immigration reform; a living wage; the right to unionize; humane treatment of animals. We have developed programs that include immigration freedom Passover Seders and Labor on the Bimah; we have worked in coalition for immigration reform and worker justice. The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was particularly poignant in tying the raid at Agriprocessors to the "current de facto illegal immigration system" that "results in chaos and death on the borders, exploitation and insecurity in communities throughout the country." As Jews, we have much to be proud of in our work on behalf of social justice.

 

But as the economic crisis deepens, the temptation will grow to put demands for labor and immigration changes on the backburner. Undocumented immigrant workers with no option to legalize their status under current law will continue to be a captive audience for unscrupulous employers, who in turn sell their wares at bargain rates to consumers who themselves feel crunched. ICE will continue to tear apart families, creating havoc among immigrants under the pretense of making the country safer and improving the economy.

 

But our history, traditions, and ethical standards compel us to pursue justice, for others as much as for ourselves. The American Jewish community has a moral imperative to mobilize our community's grassroots base, to remain focused on the long-term goals of legislative changes in immigration and labor law and administrative changes in its application. The march in Postville on July 27^th was significant not only because it brought together a multi-ethnic coalition with a strong Jewish presence to address the immediate problems at Agriprocessors - but also because it sent a message of clear and uncompromising support by the Jewish community for labor and immigration reform. We need to expand on the momentum generated by this significant effort and stay united as one voice within coalitions across the nation. Without this, substantive transformation will not be possible.

 

To reform our immigration system and institute genuinely fair labor laws is no easy task, as the situation at one meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa has demonstrated. But we must stand firm. If we truly seek the justice that lies at the core of our heritage, we'll have to seek it together.

Photo: Demonstrators at a rally in Postville, Iowa, on July 27, 2008 show their support for undocumented Agriprocessors workers arrested in a May raid on the kosher meat plant. Photo by Denny Eilers. Courtesy of The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle

Bidding Adieu: to israel's first "american" prime ministerIsraeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has never been known to take the high road. Even when he was starting out, as a young Likud MK, he was known to be fierce, ambitious, and not above a good fight. He won election as Jerusalem's mayor by tarring the beloved Teddy Pollack as too old and out of touch (memo to Barack Obama?). And he became Israel's first accidental prime minister, ascending to power due to a quirk of personal politics and, of course, Ariel Sharon's sudden demise.

But today, he chose the more respectable of the two paths available to him. In the wake of corruption scandals, he had two basic choices: resign only if indicted, or choose not to run in Kadima's September 17 primary. Olmert, a lifelong fighter, might well have chosen the former, but today he took the latter, ending his political career.

Probably, it was a matter of cold calculation. What were the odds he would prevail on September 17, anyway? Even if he did prevail in the primary, would he win a general election as one of Israel's most disliked prime ministers, under a cloud of controversy? Risky bets at best -- and bruising battles. Probably Olmert reviewed the odds, and chose a graceful exit.

Who knows -- if Kadima withers after this election, Olmert might make a comeback someday. Ehud Barak was widely despised also, and now -- thanks to his own deft maneuvering -- he could be prime minister again himself. And only Olmert knows the whole truth about the scandals. Maybe by stepping down in this way, he can cut himself a deal -- or at least avoid being indicted while in office.

In many ways, Olmert is/was Israel's first "American" Prime Minister. Not just because he allegedly took bribes from a smarmy American Jewish political operative, but because he worked his way up through the system by wheeling and dealing, finding pressure points and exploiting them. Olmert was (Bill) Clintonesque in his moves to the Israeli center, (W.) Bushesque in his ability to say one thing and do another, and, perhaps most importantly, the first Israeli prime minister clearly beholden to big money.

As mayor, Olmert never met a development plan he didn't like, and Jerusalem bears the scars of his administration to this day. As prime minister, Olmert may or may not have been corrupt, but the wealth gap in Israel has grown during his time in office, Israeli politics now seem as cynical as American politics, and there is no Israeli Barack Obama on the political horizon.

All of this reflects Israel as a whole. Israel is more American now than at any time in its history, for better and for worse. For worse, Israel is a land of strip malls and superhighways. For better, it is competing favorably in an international economy, and has attracted significant investment. If America ever kicks its oil addiction, Israel is primed to become the sole economic superpower of the Middle East.

So, in a way, Olmert was exactly the prime minister Israel deserved at this point in its history: lacking the heroic stature of his predecessors, a bit mediocre, but at home in the marketplace and the cultural world of the American empire.

And like Israel, Olmert was dealt a tough hand. He was stuck with an unwinnable peace process, lousy coalition partners, and a series of no-win situations (like the recent exchange of live Palestinian terrorist prisoners for dead Israeli soldiers). His military judgment was tested early, and he failed. And of course, he was an apparatchik in the wake of a juggernaut.

For some reason, I always liked the guy. I don't know if he took those cash envelopes, or what was promised in exchange, but I'm sure many politicians have done that before. I don't think of myself as naive, but somehow I always felt as though Olmert was trying to make the best decisions he could, for the good of Israel. Befitting his less than heroic stature, his fall from grace seems less like the result of a tragic flaw than of a few tough breaks. He just didn't have the moves this time.

Of all the stories that have surfaced about Barack Obama in light of his election campaign, I bet he wasn’t expecting this particular bit of information to appear in the morning paper. Secrets, Secrets are No Fun: maybe he should have reached for a higher space

Barack Obama just got back from a tour abroad (you might have heard something about it?), including a stop over in Israel. There, in the city of Jerusalem, the presidential hopeful donned his Obamulke and put in his two cents to The Big Guy in the form of a personal note he wedged into a crack in the kotel.

Obviously, he thought the note was going to stay private. But, no – thanks to an anonymous (though now easily identified by the egg on his face) yeshiva student, the note was snatched out of the Western Wall cracks and handed over to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

So while American media outlets were still LOLing over their own satirical versions of Obama’s prayer note, they were getting totally scooped by the Israeli press. Oh, snap.

The note, handwritten on King David Hotel room stationery went like this:

Lord -

Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.

Hey, you didn’t read it here first.

After the whole note publishing affair was condemned by head Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinovitz, the same note-snatching yeshiva student appeared on Israeli Channel 2 news to publicly apologize. Or, at least as public as you can get when your face is totally obscured and your name is listed only as “Alef,” the first letter of your name.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was kind of a prank. I hope he wasn’t hurt.” Only time will tell whether the note will help or harm Obama, we’re guessing it will probably only add a hint of mystery and charm to Obama’s mystique. But for now, thanks in part to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the note has been safely returned to the kotel cracks.

Breastfeeding: now we know God's opinion A series of new public service billboards in California, which tout the importance of breastfeeding, are borrowing heavily from the notorious GodSpeaks campaign.

If you’ve done any long distance driving in America in the last decade, you’re probably familiar with the GodSpeaks billboards. You know, those big black billboards that say things like, What part of “Thou shalt not…” didn’t you understand? and Have you read my #1 best seller? (There will be a test.) The GodSpeaks advertising campaign is an amazing, if somewhat creepy, story:

In 1998, an anonymous donor contacted an advertising agency with an idea for a local billboard campaign that would create a spiritual climate and get people to think about a daily relationship with a loving and relevant God. The agency came up with the idea of creating a series of quotes from God to be placed on billboards.

The billboards would be simple and easy to read—black boards with white type, and all “signed” by God. No logo. No address or phone number. Not religious or condemning. Just straightforward messages that would rightly represent God.

Eighteen sayings were selected to run on billboards in south Florida, ranging from serious to moving to funny; all intended to make the reader smile and think about God—perhaps in a new way. The campaign was scheduled to run for three months.God Speaks: on Route 66?

As the original billboards were coming down, following their planned three-month run, the agency got a call from Eller Media, one of the largest billboard companies in the world. Eller wanted to run the campaign nationwide if the client would donate the sayings.

Then, the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), the trade group made up of all the companies who own and rent billboards, offered to use the sayings as their national public service campaign for 1999. The result was that GodSpeaks sayings appeared on some 10,000 billboards in 200 cities across America—and all free-of-charge! The donated billboard space was valued at $15 million.

Now, the same anonymous, original donor is back with more billboards (As my apprentice, you’re never fired. The real Supreme Court meets up here.)

What Would God Say: to bottle-feeders? I don’t love the idea of advertising agencies marketing God and billing it as a public service. I mean, marketing God to me on billboards, like car insurance and adult bookstores, just seems kind of cheap. Plus, the ads are blatantly Christian, with some saying things like Let’s meet at My house Sunday, before the game and You think it’s hot here?

If something is going to be a public service, I’d like it if it served more than just people who believe in Jesus. You know--like infants who might benefit from breast milk. Which brings us back to the California campaign.

Adfreak offers this analysis:

...as a bottle-feeding parent (who heartily supports breastfeeding), I’d be less annoyed by those graphic ads about how I’m probably giving my kid diabetes or asthma. At least they're backed up by science. These white-on-black billboards, blatantly riffing on the “God Speaks” campaign, just come off as preachy—and scientifically debatable. Some humans were born to have dozens of offspring and die in their 40s. That doesn’t make me want to do that. Still, I admit the goal is a commendable one, and I suppose the space could be used for something far more obnoxious.

 

The advertising council seems to want us to think that God encourages breastfeeding, which is not exactly a leap of faith, considering breastfeeding is something women's bodies are designed for. But why does it matter if God wants us to breastfeed? It's healthier, easier, and cheaper than buying formula. That's the sell. God's take on what I do with my boobs? Kind of awkward.

JFK Went to Germany: obama should go to pakistanOne of the most interesting things about the Obama-McCain showdown is that for the most part, most of the world, including the Americans, have already begun treating Obama as President. The sort of coverage he gets, and more importantly, the kind of international reverberation and impact his actions create, are Presidential in every way. One need only follow the way that Obama was received in Kuwait or the kind of noise his appearance in Germany has been creating.

Obama's plan in Germany, to hold a JFK-style rally in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate has come under attack from Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, as well as a host of critics who suggest that perhaps the Senator should wait before he's elected to make such a bold statement.

Yet, the interesting question to me is whether holding such a rally is anything but a great PR move. It certainly doesn't evoke any substantive benefit, to the world, or to America.

Tony Campbell at the excellent The Moderate Voice blog makes this point rather clearly when he suggests that rather than Berlin, Obama should go to Mecca.

"My suggestion to Obama: forget Berlin, go to Mecca. If you really want to be seen in a Kennedy / Reagan light in the diplomatic arena, you should use your popularity and your unique heritage to address the Christian and Muslim worlds. A thoughtful speech that focuses on our similarities, rather than our differences, is clearly needed between both communities of faith. Kennedy and Reagan in their speeches addressed the major foreign policy concerns of our country. Obama has the opportunity to do something similar if he takes up this challenge. However, the issue is much trickier and more dangerous than either Kennedy or Reagan had to face. Instead of disarming conventional and nuclear weapons, Obama has to disarm fear and prejudice on both sides, Christian and Muslim." 

 

Putting aside the various security and bigotry related reasons (Saudis don't allow non-Muslims in Mecca) that this can't happen, Campbell is, on the whole, right. When JFK went to Germany, it was the country at the heart of the conflict between Communism and the West. Today, Germany plays no role in the greater conflict enveloping the world -- that of West versus Islam. In other words, if Obama wants to make something as historic as JFK's speech, he needs to tackle the perception that there is a war between Islam and Christendom, and he needs to make such a speech in a Muslim country.

Where I disagree with Campbell is that Obama needs to go to Mecca (or to Tehran). JFK didn't go to Moscow or Beijing. Obama needs to find a place near to Mecca, with a sufficiently Islamic flavor, where the principles he wants to espouse -- those of open government and freedom of conscience and trust-building -- are present in sufficient qualities among the people. The recent (secular) democratic mini-revolution in Pakistan suggests that it is one such place. Pakistan has the benefit, unlike Egypt and Jordan and other Muslim countries where the democratic spirit is also high, of actually having a democratic government by virtue of having removed their tyrant. Security would be the only issue but there is no reason that it can't be surmounted. I also recommend Pakistan because Obama went there in college, has friends from Pakistan and his mother worked for Pakistani development in the World Bank, so that he has serious connections to the country. He can say that he witnessed Pakistan under Islamist Tyranny under General Zia ul Haq, and begin from there.

Pakistan, incidentally, also happens to be the place where the so-called confrontation between Mecca and Washington is the most blatant.

Obama should consider it. But wait till he's elected.

In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte of France, head of the largest army in the world, began the worst military campaign in history. His ill-fated and tragic invasion of Russia led to nearly two thirds of the French army getting killed. The effects of the doomed maneuver were so long-standing that France never again recovered its military potency. Senator Barack Obama recently stated that if he's elected president the US will engage in a military maneuver just as foolish.

Within Senator Obama's recent pronouncements on Iraq is an ominous and troubling prescription about the small land-locked country of Afghanistan. The proposal involves sending "at least" two additional combat brigades to support the 50,000 NATO troops already present in Afghanistan. He goes on to ask for more helicopters, more nonmilitary assistance, and more intelligence gathering.

All of this, in Senator Obama's eyes, is supposed to suggest his greater military aptitude; his attempt to show that he will finish the job -- capturing Bin Laden and defeating the Taliban -- that his Republican predecessor was unable to finish. It is also a lot of politics, because increasing troop presence in Afghanistan allows Obama to say that he supports troop withdrawal from Iraq without appearing like the "surrender monkey" that the Republican opposition will inevitably try to paint him as around election time.

Yet Senator Obama's proposal is one of the worst military ideas in recent history. Here is why:

Afghanistan is considered the "graveyard of empires." Shortly after 9/11, in his 2001 Foreign Affairs essay, Milton Bearden, the CIA station chief in Pakistan in the 1980's, stated that unless the US proceeded with caution it would end up "on the ash heap of Afghan history."

The list of emperors and nations that have tried to hold Afghanistan is long and there is not a single success story. The Soviet Union spent ten years there, with helicopter gunships and tactical nuclear weapons, and failed. The British Empire spent nearly a hundred years trying to alternatively invade and control Afghanistan and veritably failed at both. The Ottoman Empire, which considered itself the inheritor of Roman power, never bothered with Afghanistan. In fact, they were actually dealt crippling blows by invaders from Afghanistan. In the seventh century, even the heaving Arab armies that had been able to take over then world power Persia in a mere five years after the death of Muhammad were unable to take Afghanistan. For Afghanistan to become Muslim more than a hundred years later it took a local ruler from within, and even then power was not centralized in one man. In other words, Senator Obama is setting the US up for failure of world-historical proportions.

Unfortunately most American policy makers don't quite understand the difficulty associated with holding Afghanistan because they think that successful invasion is tantamount to a successful occupation. That, of course, is the same tragedy that befell everyone from the Soviets to the armies of Muhammad. Afghanistan allows itself to be invaded. It doesn't allow itself to be held. Testament of this lies in the fact that it has now been seven years since the US military entered Afghanistan and yet just the other day an American base was actually infiltrated and 9 marines were killed. It will only get worse.

The reasons that Afghanistan is impossible to hold have to do with geography. Because of its centralized and landlocked location insurgents can disappear into any number of neighboring countries and use them as a base to launch attacks on the occupier. These days the base of insurgent operation are the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even if, miraculously, the US is able to clean out the tribal areas - an operation to which no sane Pakistani politician or military dictator would agree - it would simply mean that the Taliban would move to another one of the neighboring countries. It could be Turkmenistan or Tajikistan or most likely, Uzbekistan, which is now, as the noted journalist Ahmed Rashid pointed out in his aptly titled book Descent Into Chaos, producing militants at an alarming rate.

It would perhaps behoove Senator Obama to look at some of the ways the current Afghan insurgency uses the Afghan geography to its advantage:

- Recently US and UK forces captured one stash of Taliban heroin worth nearly two billion dollars going out from an Iranian port.

- Before that, an investigation by the Independent UK discovered that the Taliban are going to the northern border to purchase weapons directly from the Russians.

- Simultaneously an investigation by the NYTimes revealed that the Taliban have taken control of the marble mines in Pakistan's tribal areas.

All this doesn't even include any mention of the vast number of foreign fighters that come to Afghanistan from across the world, using the countless entry points into the country.

Historically, issues of geography have perhaps been at forefront of any military planning with respect to Afghanistan, but with Senator Obama, they barely register.

For someone who previously disparaged the Iraq war as a "dumb war" and a "rash war" his suggestions about increasing troop presence in Afghanistan is a mistake. It is the sort of thing that led Napolean Bonaparte to destroy France.

But perhaps the only thing worse than Senator Obama's ideas are those of Senator McCain. No doubt dueling with his opponent, he recently announced that under his plan the US will commit even more troops to Afghanistan than it would under Senator Obama's plan. Such breathless scheming taking place by the leading presidential contenders will lead to disaster.

Getting bogged down in Afghanistan would be infinitely worse for the national interest than any Iraq.

Zeek's Editor-in-chief, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, talks with Rabbi Rebecca Alpert about social justice, feminism and her book, Whose Torah?

Zeek: When people hear your name, Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, they tend to think, "Jewish feminist lesbian." Has that label been useful or helpful for you?

 

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert: All labels are problematic, but I don't mind taking on this label, and people do think of me that way - though they are often shocked that my current work is on Jews and baseball, or that my earlier work was on Reform rabbis developing an understanding of healing in the early part of the twentieth century. The label, though, was helpful back in the 1970s and 1980s when the idea of a lesbian rabbi was shocking. I was perfectly happy to stand up and confuse people.

 

Zeek: I was impressed to learn in your new book,Whose Torah, that you have deep experience in peace and poverty work.

 

RA: I do see feminism and gay rights work as part of a larger progressive agenda, both within the Jewish community and in the world at large. I have always understood feminism as being about more than just equal rights for women. Feminism opened my eyes so I realized that if you make life better for women, you make life better for everybody. Social justice is the grounding for the movement. Coming out of Reform Judaism, I believed social justice was the main way we Jews could make a contribution.

 

Zeek: How do you see social justice and spirituality connected within Judaism?

 

RA: I am very moved by Arthur Waskow's vision linking social justice to spirituality. That connection has not been the main impetus for me. The older I've gotten the more secular I've become, but I really see the importance of people seeing that there is a religious vision for social justice. There are so many people in the Jewish world today for whom spirituality is the center of their Jewishness: it's great when they make that connection to social justice.

 

Zeek: In your book, you frame Judaism as a kinship network as well as a spiritual source of faith. One element we lack in contemporary America is strong community, and you need strong community for justice work.

 

RA: I'm with you 100%. We see ourselves as Jews, fundamentally, as both a cultural network and a religious community. They are intertwined. That understanding that Jewishness is not only about spirituality throws people sometimes. People are surprised that religious people don't think you are any less a Jew because you are not spiritual. I am a post-Zionist, but I am always deeply moved by the Israeli world, the way they need to deal with the secular-religious connection. For instance being gay in secular Israel - as long as you are not in the chareidi camp - people say 'they are our brothers because they are Jews, they deserve rights.' Of course, it's a problem if our community is limited only to Jews.

 

Zeek: If the social justice impetus comes from Judaism as an ethnic tradition, why not just do social justice work from a purely secular position, or from another community that one is part of-for example, you talk about African-American Jews, Arab Jews. If you are a Jew with that kind of dual community, why not do social justice from an African-American position as opposed to a Jewish one?

 

RA: I guess it's the "as opposed to" that I don't agree with. People find a place from which they do their work. I don't think one place is better than another. I am a Reconstructionist Jew, which means I don't believe Jews are the chosen people. Every group has something to contribute. If doing the work from the Jewish perspective is meaningful, then great. If doing it from a different perspective is meaningful, then great. The connections are more important to me than the divisions.

 

Zeek: I can hear people saying, "Oy vey! This rabbi is saying we don't have to believe in God and we don't have to be Jewish just because Judaism is better, so why bother? Why bother learning Torah? It's too difficult! Why would anyone be Jewish! This will kill Judaism!" You must get this sometimes.

 

RA: I wish I was so powerful, that I singlehandedly could kill Judaism. I would have to be a bit careful about what I ever said to anybody.

 

Zeek: (laughs)

 

RA: Seriously, I don't do this because I believe in God or because it's the best way, but because it's my way. I see great wisdom and beauty and truth in Judaism. If I didn't find Judaism a tremendous source of wonderful ideas I wouldn't be a rabbi. I think Judaism holds up to rational scrutiny. It holds up to my questions. I feel I am in the tradition of Abraham arguing with God. You know, God in the Bible does not get along so well with the Jewish people, and the Jews didn't get along so well with God. There is always an argument, always questioning. That is the most wonderful part of the Judaism I grew up with.

When Sarah Cohen of Monsey and her husband were arrested for welfare fraud last month they both had to have mug shots taken, and the police asked Sarah, a Chasidic Jew, to remove her sheitel (wig) for her mug shot. Traditionally, Chasidic Jewish women don’t uncover their heads in mixed company, and some don’t uncover their heads except to bathe, so the request and subsequent mug shot have caused quite the controversy. Wigging out: good disguise

The issue here is whether the police can force someone who’s accused of a crime to do something against their religious beliefs, and whether the government can allow someone to avoid a legal obligation because of his or her religion.

It’s worth noting that the police department in Monsey does provide kosher meals to those prisoners who request it. But allowing Cohen to keep her wig on is different. Wigs are a fairly typical disguise, and Chasidic women have access to many wig options within the community. While they’re not made in order to conceal a woman’s identity, they certainly can have that effect. Would the police allow someone to leave on a mask? What about a woman wearing a hijab or a jilbab? There have been similar cases with Muslim women, and though the ACLU has filed a few suits, all are still pending. No word yet on whether Cohen plans to sue, but the entire Ramapo PD is undergoing “sensitivity training” in an effort to avoid similar situations in the future, and the officer who ordered who to take off her wig is being “sharply criticized.” 

Shortly before the beginning of seventh grade, when I entered the public school system for the first time after spending my earliest formative years at Nebraska’s only Jewish day school (student body: 37), my mother came to me with a warning. It wasn’t her intention to scare me, she explained, but she wanted to make sure I was prepared for some of the challenges that lay ahead.

“What challenges?” I asked. “What do you mean?” I wasn’t expecting the schoolwork to give me any trouble, and my grandmother had recently furnished me with several new back-to-school ensembles from the Limited that I was certain could at least partially smooth over my problem of not having any social skills.

My mother paused for a very long time before she spoke. “It’s possible that you may have to face some…anti-Semitism.”

Anti-Semitism. It wasn’t precisely clear to me what a Semite was, but I knew what it meant to be anti one. It meant you hated Jews and wanted them dead.

The existence of such a prejudice was hardly news; the bookshelves in my room groaned under the weight of solemn tales of the Holocaust and the pogroms, stories festooned with grim illustrations of terrified children laden with bundles, peering helplessly through pen and ink fence of barbed wire. My parents had their own stories: anti-Semitism was the reason my immigrant grandmother refused to let her children go swimming with the non-Jewish neighbors, why my father had been beaten up several times a week on his way home from junior high by roaming gangs of feral Gentile children.

But that was years ago.

“I’m not saying it will happen,” she continued, “but I want you to prepare for it if it does.”

As I had not yet learned that my mother’s general pessimism towards the human race was not always based in tangible reality, her warnings filled me with a consuming, atavistic sense of dread. When would the assault come, and in what form? Would I be shunned in the cafeteria or disinvited from birthday parties? Would I be physically attacked: trapped in lockers or forced to gather change from the floor as a gang of Esprit-clad Aryans mocked the parsimoniousness of my race? At the very least, I assumed I would be taunted verbally with cries of “kike” and “yid”; “heebie” and “hook-nose” and “Red Sea pedestrian” and other racial epithets I learned from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian.

“You forgot sheeny,” said my mother.

“I thought that was an Irish person.”

“Nope. You’re a sheeny.”

As time passed, I would hear all those words and more. What my mother didn’t tell me is that they would mostly come from other Jews.

Everywhere, young Jews are eagerly, even gleefully appropriating the traditional iconography and language of anti-Semites faster than you can say “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” We howled with laughter at Borat, at the grotesque puppet in “The Running of the Jew” laying its “filthy Jew-egg” as Sacha Baron Cohen spewed der Sturmer-worthy invective in pidgin Hebrew. We read publications with names like Heeb and Jewcy, and cheerfully throw around terms and stereotypes that would have sent previous generations straight to the local ADL office. Recently, I was watching TV at home when I received a phone call from a co-religionist friend.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m at home, watching The Jewish Americans on PBS.”

“Yeah? What’s happening?”

“Oh, I guess this episode is on Leo Frank. But as far I as can see, the whole thing is mostly about how we’re ugly and everybody hates us.” We dissolved with laughter.

There are a number of possible reasons for this change in attitude. The age we are living in is a peculiar one, equal parts irony and genuine turmoil. Festering internecine and tribal hatreds have once again become a very real part of how the world operates; as a result, political correctness has died an unceremonious death, while multiculturalism is dying a somewhat more tortuous one. At the same time, overt intolerance has become nearly obsolete, to the point that one can perpetuate almost any form of prejudice with the implicit understanding that if the speaker is of a certain social class or education level, he or she cannot possibly be a bigot. On a strictly Jewish level, I think my generation has simply lost patience with our Hebrew school educations, with the constant focus on victimhood and hardship, and the sometimes reactionary politics of the Jewish establishment—with the powerful lobbies and their professional outrage, the shell-shocked parents and grandparents ever at the ready to pick up a phone or file a formal complaint the second a Jewish child is made to sing “Silent Night” or assigned a biology midterm on Yom Kippur (I speak from personal experience here.) There are better things to do with one’s time than to be constantly on guard against closet Nazis. Or maybe after 5000 years of the being on the wrong end of the world’s general shittiness, we’ve just stopped taking it so personally.

But to borrow a phrase from David Mamet in The Wicked Son, his provocative and occasionally infuriating book on the subject, “The world hates the Jews. The world has always and will continue to do so.”

Fine.

In this, my mother was right. All of our mothers were right. My generation, we American Jews in our 20’s and 30’s, may have missed having taunts and dirt clods thrown at our heads as we waited for the school bus, but you don’t have to look very far to find our people held in general contempt. In fact, don’t look hard at all—just look in the comments section of any major internet blog that so much as mentions the State of Israel, the Holocaust, Steven Spielberg, or boiled chicken.

So welcome to The Protocols, named of course for the famous (and forged) Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or as I like to think of it, the book that started the international craze, the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone of twentieth century anti-Semitism. Here, I’ll strive to answer the important questions—not so much “Why do they hate us?” but “So what if they hate us?” I’ll look at how Jews have, for better and for worse, internalized the tenets of anti-Semitism and turned them inside out, how Jews judge other Jews, and what it means to be a self-hating Jew (as opposed to a Jewish self-hater.) I’ll examine anti-Semites through history, anti-Semites in the news, and once every few weeks or so, anti-Semites we love. (And yes, I’m taking recommendations.)

My qualifications for this mighty task, taken on by everyone from Moses Maimonides, Mark Twain, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Adolf Hitler? None whatsoever; except I’ma writer, I’m a Jew, and I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of my life worrying about who doesn’t like me.

So, my fellow filthy Christ-killers, if you can stop counting your golden ingots and draining your neighbor’s kids of their blood long enough to actually read something, I hope you’ll join me. We may not win any hearts and minds, but in the words of the immortal G.I. Joe, knowing is half the battle.

And after all, we’re supposed to be so smart.

Daniel Lubetzky: with an assortment of his nutritionally and spiritually fortifying products If you don't know who Daniel Lubetzky is, you should. The founder of PeaceWorks, a hugely successful international company that promotes peace through business, and OneVoice, a movement of Israelis and Palestinians joining forces to achieve a grassroots, tangible means towards working together for peace in the region, Lubetzky is a proven master at turning theory into action. PeaceWorks offers a range of popular specialty food products and currently does business with Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Turks, Indonesians, Sri Lankans and Australians. Meanwhile, over 640,000 citizens have signed on as supporters of the OneVoice Mandate.

In this interview, Adam Neiman of No Sweat submitted eight questions to Lubetzky, Helen Jupiter submitted four, and Joey Kurtzman tacked one on at the end.

ADAM NEIMAN: Your father was a holocaust survivor. How has this informed your engagement with the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the occupation?

DANIEL LUBETZKY: I think everything I do is through the prism of the son of a Holocaust survivor, for both good and bad; the positive way to explain it is that I made myself a promise to do whatever is in my power not to allow what happened to my father to ever happen again to anyone else; the more neurotic explanation is that I live under a shadow of persecution and feel an enormous drive to build bridges and create better bonds on a personal basis as well as between cultures, religions, nations, and peoples.

Specifically as it regards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I first approached this as a progressive Zionist who felt very strongly that Israel has to be the homeland for the Jewish people, a haven for those escaping the type of persecution that my Dad was not able to avoid when he was taken to Dachau as a little kid; as I began working deeply on the issue, I also felt a strong affinity with Palestinians who were deprived of freedom and dignity in ways that did painfully remind me of stories my Dad would share about his experiences at the Kovno Ghetto (NOT AT ALL like the dehumanization and death faced in a concentration camp, but with restrictions of movement and denigrations that serve nobody but extremists who prey on despair).

Israelis and Palestinians are destined to share a future – each needs the other to achieve the full potential of freedom and security for their offspring; they can either get their act together and make the difficult but necessary historic compromises to achieve a comprehensive peace, or they can be deluded by absolutist visions that will eventually drag them to a truly intractable and eternal war.

AN: I read that you wrote your master’s thesis on economic cooperation between Israelis & Palestinians. This issue seems to have called you for many years. What’s the Daniel Lubetzky genesis story that brings you to this intensely charged place and time in Jewish history?

DL: It was a Senior College thesis, not a masters, but it was 268-pages, the first time I was intellectually stimulated to become a real nerd, in 1989-90; the son-of-a-holocaust-survivor experience and education certainly got me committed to forging peace between Israel and its neighbors; the concept of economic cooperation as a means for fostering peaceful relations came from combining my passions for the Middle East peace and for entrepreneurship; since childhood I had run a few businesses, from being “Houdani” (instead of Houdini) the Magician during middle school, to setting up “Da’Leky Times” and “Watch-U-Want” kiosks at shopping malls selling watches and clocks while in high school and college; when I went to Israel for my year abroad and was studying at Hebrew University and searching for a thesis topic, the idea hit me that market forces could be powerfully channeled to advance peaceful relations.

Good Theory: good practiceAN: You started with a for-profit venture, PeaceWorks, marketing food products created by Israeli and Palestinian partners back in the 1990s during Oslo. Now your focus seems to be largely political, with OneVoice calling for negotiations leading to a two-state solution. How did that evolution come about?

DL: PeaceWorks was my effort to turn theory into practice. It evolved from my college thesis, and subsequent work in law school on how to create incentives to encourage joint ventures among neighbors striving to co-exist. When I realized the theory was making people fall asleep and going nowhere, I decided to give it a shot. Around the time that I was finalizing my research, I came across this obscure little jar of sundried tomato spread that was delicious, and when I found out the Israeli company that made it had gone out of business because they were sourcing their glass jars from Portugal and their sundried tomatoes for Italy, I realized there could be a way to prove the theory by sourcing glass jars from Egypt, sundried tomatoes from Turkey, and olives and olive oil from Palestine, etc. That is how MEDITALIA and Moshe & Ali’s started – and it is still goes on 15 years later, with relations that have withstood the test of time and the vicissitudes of the conflict.

The PeaceWorks Family: of products Eventually my company PeaceWorks, expanded to include a venture in partnership with a women’s cooperative in Indonesia – Bali Spice – bringing Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist women together to make a line of Asian sauces. We also created a new division to market healthy snacks not made in conflict regions, but donating 5% of their profits to the PeaceWorks Foundation, which is how KIND Fruit and Nut Bars were born.

The evolution into creating the PeaceWorks Foundation’s OneVoice Movement came about as I realized that economic cooperation is a positive but not sufficient ingredient in the equation for ending the conflict. After the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations and the breakout of the second intifadah and the cycle of violence in 2000-2002, I was enormously depressed and initially did not understand where all my Palestinian business partners and all those Palestinian moderates I knew had gone. Why weren't they raising their voices? They were shocked when I confronted them with this question, and showed me that from what they saw in the Arab media, it appeared that the missing moderate voices were those of the Israelis.

We then realized the huge problem society faces: that it is in the nature of the overwhelming majority of moderates to be passive, and uninteresting, while a passionate minority of extremists – including violent extremists with absolutist visions that deny the humanity of the other side – will stop at nothing to spread their message. We also realized that traditional media magnifies the influence of this extremist minority because it’s what makes for “compelling” TV and news coverage.
So we recognized that we needed to build a human infrastructure of moderates across Israel and Palestine, and to create tools that would amplify the voice of moderates to help them seize back the agenda for conflict resolution.

Today OneVoice has offices in Ramallah, Gaza City, and Tel Aviv; it has chapters in pretty much every Palestinian and Israeli University, as well as across most refugee camps, villages, and cities; over 640,000 citizens have signed on to the OneVoice Principles or OneVoice Mandate, and over 3,000 Israeli and Palestinian youth leaders have participated in OneVoice programs to organize themselves and their communities at the grassroots level to propel their elected representatives towards a two-state solution.

AN: What are your thoughts about the recent economic initiatives and the Palestinian Investors Conference?

DL: The day the investor conference took place coincided with our 6th Annual Board Meeting in Jerusalem, so I regretted I was not able to attend. A few of our Palestinian and International Board members attended, as did our Israeli Honorary Board member MK Ephraim Sneh. I heard good things about it, but don’t have first hand info. It's easy to be skeptical about it and paint it as a PR stunt, but it seems to me that it generated hope and interest in Palestinian economic development, both of which are very important. I was also told by several Palestinian friends that this was the first time they saw enormous effort on the part of the Israeli government to truly create a very comfortable environment for the conference attendees and the people of the region, with far less checkpoints and very courteous relations. The week to me seemed filled with energy and buzz.

I am extremely supportive of economic development at this stage, and consider it critical to building a vibrant Palestinian civic society and Palestinian State. It has to occur in tandem with political progress, but it is certainly vital. Tony Blair and Prime Minister Fayyad both seem very committed to achieving progress on the ground, which is also important to contrast this approach in the West Bank to Hamas’s apocalyptic and totalitarian governance in Gaza.

AN: Recent polls say that a significant majority of Palestinians consider peace talks futile or counterproductive. Most Palestinians I know think talks are just window dressing for the occupation and that Israeli deeds--expanding settlements, checkpoints, and constraints on movement of goods and services--are all that matters. And many Israelis also believe that Palestinian talk of peace during the Oslo period was just a smokescreen for expanding “security” forces that turned into terrorists when push came to shove. Has the very word “peace” become degraded in this context? Has language lost all currency?

DL: Yes, most Palestinians and Israelis have lost the ability to visualize that peace can be achieved, and the word “peace” has indeed been devalued. Everyone says they want “peace,” but they hang on to this word while hanging on to absolutist or unrealistic positions that are not consistent with peace. That's why OneVoice launched the Imagine 2018 Campaign this year: To compel people to dare to visualize what their lives could look like in 2018 if a framework agreement was achieved this year (as the Heads of State committed to) and implemented over the next year, and to deal with the problem of restoring some meaning to the word "peace." We also instituted a “Breaking the Taboos” series of Town Hall Meetings.

Can OneVoice Accomplish Enough: for World Cup 2018 to be hosted in Israel/Palestine?AN: Last year, OneVoice had to cancel long-planned simultaneous concerts in Jericho and Tel Aviv because of security threats on the West Bank. OneVoice’s current focus is on the latest round of peace talks, with a clock on the OneVoice site ticking down to 12/12/08--my 52nd birthday, by the way. These talks were initiated by three very weak leaders, with an outcome that at the very best cannot be implemented before the next Palestinian elections--again assuming a Fatah candidate can run and win in Gaza. Does this strategy carry a huge risk of increasing people’s cynicism and despair? Have you created a large target and sent an invitation to the extremists to blow it up?

DL: The reasons for postponing the OneVoice Summit are thoroughly (and painfully but earnestly) discussed on my blog, in the entries between September and November 2007. The "clock" started ticking on 12/12/07, your 51st birthday, which coincided with the date when the Israeli and Palestinian Heads of State started their negotiations. In our OneVoice Mandate, signed by hundreds of thousands of people over the course of 18 months, we demanded that the elected representatives immediately restart negotiations, which should remain uninterrupted until the achievement of a comprehensive agreement, within a framework of no more than one year.

When we made this demand, even our Board members thought we were taking too big a risk, as negotiations had not been conducted for 7 years, and the conflict hadn’t been solved for decades. We explained that it is the role and duty of citizens to push and propel their leaders to do this, without us worrying about political repercussions, and that we would rather try and fail than not try at all. In fact, we succeeded: At Annapolis, Bush, Olmert, and Abbas all agreed not only to rekindle negotiations, but to our surprise, they even committed to a framework agreement within a year. So the Clock is an effort to hold them accountable.

That said, I sadly feel that you may be correct, as given all the internal problems Prime Minister Olmert is facing, not to mention the challenges Abbas faces in Palestine and the fact that Hamas controls Gaza, most observers feel there is no chance an agreement will come through in 2008.

We are indeed evaluating whether we should change our call to action. That said:
1) We should also take into consideration that part of the reason why “Leaders are Weak” is because we as citizens make too many excuses not to act to strengthen leaders with moderate agendas; and so instead of making excuses for why it is futile to act, if we are able to again galvanize public support, it is at least more likely that progress will be made.

2) We should bear in mind that some progress in the negotiations and political environment is critical, as we are not just at risk of giving up the upside of an agreement, but also of seeing Hamas spread its reign into the West Bank if the political track does not show that diplomacy and a two-state-solution are a better alternative to nihilistic absolutism.

AN: I spent a couple of weeks in the holy land at the beginning of the 2006 war with Hezbollah, half on each side of the green line. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians were absolutely convinced that the Western media was hopelessly biased against them. Are they both right, or both wrong? How is US and European reportage informed by anti-Semitism and/or racism? Is there a feedback loop between the conflict and what could be described as the world’s longest running reality horror show?

DL: The media is biased towards news that sells, and news that sells tends to be news that exacerbates conflicts, reinforces stereotypes, and plays into our primal defensive instincts. So, in a sense they are both right and they are both wrong: They are right that the media is biased, but it is not biased in the favor of the other--it is biased in the bent towards extremist views. The only way to change that is for citizens to vote with their feet and demand deeper and more nuanced