I’m not foolish enough to believe that this is the end of the campaign or even the beginning of the end. There is a long way to go till November 4th and five weeks is a lifetime in presidential politics. After all, the bailout fiasco which apparently did so much damage to McCain’s image, was a very unusual development. One doesn’t know how the fallout will play out from this. Does the bailout have “legs” as a political issue (as I suspect it does)? Or will it recede into the political woodwork as Katrina did for Bush, in a few days or weeks? As long as it continues to occupy the public’s attention, McCain remains wounded.

And this is not a helpless candidate by any means. He can still land serious blows on Obama and potentially derail his campaign in any number of ways.

Bush’s favorability rating is down to 22%! The lowest since Harry Truman in the Korean War. Who’d a thunk it only five years ago when he rode high in the saddle into the Iraq War?

One of the most delicious pieces of news from this story concerns Sarah Palin’s receding prospects:

The Pew poll found that 51 percent of respondents said she was not qualified to be president, compared with 37 percent who said she was. That is a reversal from early last month, when 52 percent of respondents said Ms. Palin was qualified to be president.

She’s lost 15 percentage points in less than a month. That’s a candidate in free fall, perhaps without a parachute given her recent performance in Katie Couric’s CBS interview. When I first started writing about her after McCain chose her I wondered why the American public wasn’t seeing what I was seeing. My hope and conviction was that this would be a process that wouldn’t happen instantaneously. But that a campaign of a thousand paper cuts, perhaps inflicted by liberal bloggers and her own hubris, would eventually bring her to her knees, which is more or less what has happened. Now, let’s see if this impression is reinforced in tomorrow’s V.P. debate.

The post CBS Poll: Obama 49-McCain 40; Palin Tanking appeared first on Jewcy.

But when you step back and really examine what he's saying it's pretty much all bilge. Well, OK, maybe not all. But so much of it is that you feel that smooth, suave delivery is a betrayal or deception of sorts.

So how much does Christopher Hitchens really know about Islam? Apparently, not terribly much. He participated in a panel discussion on Warren Olney's To the Point. Towards the end of the discussion, he responded to a Muslim scholar's claim that Islam derives from the word for "peace." Here is what Hitchens said (audio):

Islam, by the way, does not mean "peace." It means "surrender," "prostration."

As even a Jew who knows any Hebrew can tell you, Islam certainly does derive from the word salaam or shalom in Hebrew. As Svend White, an Islamic studies specialist who writes Akram's Razor tells me:

…One can spin this *somewhat* by emphasizing the fact that the type of "peace" is a kind of surrender…

What is misleading about Hitchens' statement is he neglects that "Islam" connotes the peaceful "surrender" of a believer to the will of God, but not the "surrender" of a non-believer before the force or power of Islam.  Such peaceful surrender, which some see as the essence of faith, is a feature of many of the world's religions.  Hitchens is spinning Islam as a religion of violence and domination. So it's convenient to distort the religion's name as well. We see here the power of a guileful ideologue used to stir the pot of intolerance and Muslim-bashing.

Few will argue that there are not serious issues that need to be addressed between Islam and other world religions and that some Muslims defame their own religion by claiming to embody it as they kill the innocent. But Hitchens is merely a provocateur, rather than someone willing to engage in a serious dialogue on the subject.

The post What Does Christopher Hitchens Know About Islam? appeared first on Jewcy.

But now that the Bush Administration and its agenda have become discredited by the overreaching and failure of their own policies the pendulum is shifting back. It is time that we reexamine the relevance of the Jewish prophetic tradition to issues of war and peace, environmentalism, and economic justice. In an age when war and hatred are everywhere, it would profit us to study the words of the contributors to this volume who have embraced a peaceful way to resolve such conflicts. If there was nothing else worthwhile in this volume, this comment by the editors about my favorite historic Zionist figure would make the entire venture worth it:

Our chapter on…Israel calls to mind a major–if sadly, largely forgotten–figure of the Jewish past: Ahad Ha'am…whose prescient essay This is Not the Way warned that a future Jewish nation would not succeed if it emulated colonialistic thinking. "The main point, upon which everything depends, is not how much we do but how we do it," he wrote in The Truth from Palestine after he arrived home in Odessa from Palestine in 1891. He also cautioned the Jewish settlers in Palestine to consider the rights of the Arabs living there. "We think…that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening…This is, however, a great error.

A strong dose of Ahad Ha'am is a powerful antidote to the most virulent nationalist views expressed by many on the Israeli right and their Diaspora supporters.

Murray Polner, former editor of the late, lamented Present Tense Magazine, was this book's co-editor.

The post Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition appeared first on Jewcy.

Seattle is a city that prides itself on its openness and tolerance and it proved it in this case. On the day of Pam Waechter's funeral an Arab-American representative of Haq's family hand delivered a letter from Haq's parents expressing profound sorrow and regret to the Jewish community. The victims, in turn, did not shout for vengeance or the death penalty. In fact, several victims families said explicitly and publicly that they did not the DA to file a death penalty charge.

The most severely injured victim was Layla Bush with bullet wounds to her abdomen and shoulders. One bullet barely missed tearing into her heart. She walks with a cane, cannot stand for more than an hour and has nine therapy appointments each week. Yet these are her feelings now:

"I just don't want people to forget how much damage hate can do…Nothing positive comes from hatred." Bush said executing Haq would be "too easy for him." She reiterated that view Thursday, saying she favored life imprisonment.

In the aftermath of the shooting, "what made me mad is not him, but that someone with a mental history like that can get guns…" Growing up in rural Florida, she completed gun-safety classes and shot beer bottles off fence posts. She once owned a 9 mm Beretta. "I feel that handguns are made for killing people," she said. "They're not made for hunting."

Think what an extraordinary attitude it takes to make the following statement about her volunteer work at Harborview Medical Center:

We answer questions and talk with patients who have just been recently injured," she said. "It feels good for me to just give back. I feel like I've taken so much."

Norm Maleng, the recently deceased Republican DA did not file a first degree murder charge. He reviewed ten years of Haq's mental health records and determined that a lesser murder charge was more appropriate.

While one might expect the victims of such a trauma to refuse to return to their jobs almost all have (though several cannot work full time due to their injuries). The federation in turn has raised $1.3 million to entirely redesign the interior of its former offices so that the thoughts of victims or any other community member will not linger on that tragic day and space.

It seems to me that there are many places in the world where hate rages which could learn from Seattle's example. It is true that shootings of this nature are extremely rare here so one might argue that we have the luxury of being able to respond to such tragedy differently. But are we really that different? I don't know. It seems to me that a response to murderous hatred that offers more of the same is the easy way out. A response to hate that offers sober reflection and emotional engagement is much harder.

The post Seattle Federation Shooting: One Year Later appeared first on Jewcy.

And as a recent Jewish Forward article points out, I'm not the only one. There are Jewish cyber-bullies everywhere:

Orthomom.blogspot.com, which covers Long Island’s Orthodox Jewish communities, was the subject of a recent lawsuit brought by a local elected official who charges that she was slandered on the blog. Last February, the official, Pamela Greenbaum, who serves on board of education in Lawrence, N.Y., filed a lawsuit in a New York state court in an attempt to force Google, whose subsidiary hosts the blog, to reveal Orthomom’s identity. Greenbaum claims that she was called a “bigot” and an “antisemite” on the blog.

In response to Greenbaum’s lawsuit, Public Citizen, a national public interest group that has played a lead role in defending free speech on the Internet, rushed in to defend Orthomom and filed a motion to quash. A decision in the case is still pending.

When Chaim Rubin of Life of Rubin defended Orthomom one of his commenters began berating him for his support of her. The going got nasty and Chaim banned him. The commenter decided to get even and created a blog called Ploni Baloney solely devoted to mocking Chaim. While he believes he knows the identity of the anonymous blogger he has no solid proof. That's precisely the problem with cyber-bullies. They are obsessed to the point of mania. But they prefer to lurk in dark, slimy places.

Steven Plaut is another Jewish cyber-bully who sees it as his role in life to protect the Jewish people from anyone who's ever voiced any criticism of Israel. As Rebecca Spence wrote in The Forward:

In 2006, Neve Gordon, a dovish politics professor at Ben-Gurion University, launched a civil suit against Steven Plaut, a hawkish professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Haifa, for referring to him in an article published online as a “fanatic anti-Semite” and a “Judenrat wannabe,” among other slurs. Plaut lost and had to pay more than $18,000 in fines to Gordon. Plaut is now appealing the case.

But there is one website that is the sine qua non of Jewish cyber-bullydom. Masada2000 has everything: naked men, dildos, Ariel Sharon in drag, Michael Lerner half-naked in a bath tub, and 7,000 Jews on the S.H.I.T. list. Who could ask for more? What is Masada20000 you ask? It's a strange beast run by someone who conceals his identity behind the moniker Big Al. Big Al is angry in the same way Meir Kahane was angry. Angry at Jewish peaceniks, the Fifth Column of the Jewish people. And doubly angry at perfidious Arabs. Masada2000 has a fetish for what I call Jewish porn. It's obssessed by homosexuality and Nazism. Jews on the S.H.I.T. (Self-Hating and Israel-Threatening Jews) are 'fags,' kapos' and 'Judenrats.' It's as if the site owner absorbed the poison the Nazis spewed against Jews and become what he hates–a Jewish Nazis.

If you're an enemy of the Jewish people in their book, you clearly deserve no privacy and the List often displays images of victims and their private e mail addresses.

I have a personal confession to make. I am on the S.H.I.T. List. In fact, when one of the site's 'friends' or perhaps the owner himself notified me of my "membership" I began a campaign to get the site taken down. Besides the fact that it featured an image of me that I owned and thus violated my copyright, I thought that any site that said that Jewish female peace activists "deserved a good reaming" deserved to be reamed itself. When their webhost took the site down they moved it to a Mormon webhost who didn't seem to mind nudity and lots of F-words directed at "sand niggers" and the like.

Ultimately I failed. No matter how many examples I provided to Bluehost of multiple blatant violations of their Terms of Service, they preferred Masada2000's loot to common decency. But I'm pleased to say that where I failed, someone else succeeded. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how Masada2000 was brought down since I don't want to let any of its friends in on the secret.

No doubt, you'll read in the comment section below some Kahanewannabe pledging that 'Masada2000 will live forever' and such like. Perhaps. But making life tougher for those who spew hate is truly a mitzvah. And to the site's supporters I say, please don't talk to me about freedom of speech. Freedom of speech does not allow you to violate the law or invade the privacy of thousands of victims by printing their e mail addresses. Besides, when the site has been taken down it has not been because of its political speech, but rather because it violated the host's Terms of Service or violated other provisions that regulate websites (sorry for being so vague). There are many other websites that present a Jewish nationalist perspective without breaking laws and invading privacy.

Miriam Felton Dansky also wrote about Masada2000 in Flack-Listed at New Voices.

The post Masada2000 and Jewish Cyber-Bully Culture appeared first on Jewcy.

We Jews know about tribes and tribal gatherings. But what happens when you live among a tribe but don't feel yourself a full fledged member? Then tribal gatherings can be alternately strange and fascinating. Take Seattle's Seafair. Fifty years ago, Seattle was a real burg. Once known for its lumber and fishing industries, it did have Boeing and several large military bases as mainstays of the local economy, but little else. This was before Microsoft; before Amazon; before Starbucks; before biotechnology.

Remember when Richard Nixon killed the huge Supersonic Transport (SST) project in 1972, which Boeing had counted on as its production mainstay? The company responded by laying off thousands of workers. And there were no other major industries to take up the slack. The joke going the rounds was: "Will the last person to leave Seattle turn off the lights." That was then. Though Seafair predated the death of the SST, it was created in a similar context.

The city fathers felt they needed to dream up a way to put Seattle on the map. Why not take advantage of one of Seattle's prime attractions: the water. Thus began Seafair, Seattle's summertime festival.

Here's how the Seafair website describes it:

In the half century since Seafair was launched, the city that Seafair helped put on the map has matured from adolescence to adulthood. When Seafair debuted, the Seattle area was without major league sports teams, a symphony or the Seattle Center. Seattle was hungry for national recognition and attention and Seafair filled the bill with Thunderboats racing on Lake Washington and parades which featured the likes of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Over the years, Seafair built pride among the community which still resonates today. The Puget Sound of today is a robust, economically and ethnically diverse community and Seafair has become more important than ever. As major cities melt and become the same, Seafair is the fabric of our community that represents the Northwest lifestyle and keeps us unique.

Seafair has become a home town jewel that reaches nearly 2 million Puget Sound residents each summer. In fact, if you live in the Northwest, you look forward to Seafair and all the simple joys that it brings.

You can hear the breathless boosterism in the copy. It's as if Seattleites still need to prove they are an interesting town, worthy enough for people to go out of their way to visit. It's sort of embarrassing to the cosmopolitan Jew in me who's been all over the world and lived in many places. It makes you feel you are in Seattle but not of it. Does a modern metropolis on the cutting edge of technology and Pacific Rim trade really need a Milk Carton Derby, pirates landing at Alki beach, gas-guzzling hydroplane races, and Blue Angels flyovers? And speaking of Blue Angels, you don't know dread or terror till you've heard an F-16 screaming a mere 200 feet or so over your head. Imagine the sound of a locomotive roaring through your bedroom while you're in the midst of a deep sleep. Or as a friend said to me: "Is this how I want my tax dollars spent??" Does Seattle really need this to create a unique urban identity?

But who can argue with the hoopla and excitement? Many thousands of tourists actually fly long distances to witness the spectacle. What they see in it I couldn't precisely tell you. I view it something like Christmas. The goyim love this thing. It's loud, annoying, in your face, and the music makes you want to tear your hair out; but they seem to be having fun and part of you doesn't want to deprive them of their pleasure. But another part wants to scratch your head in wonderment at all the foolishness.

I guess Seattle is a number of major ways remains a small town. You can feel it in the crazy fan allegiance to every hometown sports team from Huskies football to the Mariners. And that is the charm of the place and the bane of it as well. I've lived in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York, Dublin and Jerusalem. I truly love living in this city. But despite it's cultural offerings, it simply lacks the sizzle of a few of the above cities. There is no Koreatown, no Symphony Space, no Knitting Factory, no Carnegie Hall, no MOMA, not even LACMA. On the other hand, none of these places have the Cascades, a 20 minute commute from a home in the woods to downtown, or one of the best places in the world to bring up young children.

The post Seafair: Seattle’s Gathering of the Tribe appeared first on Jewcy.

“Masked” was something of a sensation when it opened in Israel 17 years ago. Mr. Hatsor’s first play, it won the top prize at the Acco fringe festival. His inspiration was both contemporary and ancient, specific and universal. The occupation was continuing, but there was “no reaction in the Israeli theater to the big drama happening 30 to 40 kilometers from our houses,” Mr. Hatsor, 42, said in a telephone interview from his home in Israel.

For this particular story line, however, he borrowed from the essence of Greek drama. “Conflicts between brothers are one of the oldest conflicts of all nations,” he said in a thick Israeli accent, noting that the same story has played out in Ireland, Bosnia and now Iraq.

Israelis as well as Palestinians embraced “Masked,” which was translated from the original Hebrew into Arabic and produced in Palestinian villages and cities, Mr. Hatsor said. His family comes from Iraq and Morocco, and he took it upon himself to learn Arabic, an unusual choice for a Jewish child in an Israeli school. But of his characters, he said: “I didn’t imagine them as Arabs or Palestinians, but brothers torn apart by larger forces. I asked myself, ‘What would happen if this was my brother?’ ”

As for the Jewish response, Mr. Hatsor said that at the time “many Israelis felt more and more sympathy for the Palestinian struggle,” and so were open to watching a depiction of the occupation’s awful toll on an Arab family.

Masked is a profound act of empathy by an Israeli playwright attempting to imagine the plight faced by a neighboring people with whom his own people is at war. Perhaps Ilan Hatzor is not his brother's keeper, but he definitely is his brother's witness.  Such acts of empathy in times of war can be profoundly subversive. They make you question the assumptions that led you to believe your neighbor was your enemy. They lead you to see potential bonds where only walls existed before. There is, of course, much that divides Israelis and Palestinians. Much bad blood lies between them. Plays like Masked cannot work miracles nor does anyone expect them to. But they plant seeds. They raise questions. They provoke emotions. All of which can lead to hope for a better future for the two peoples.

It is interesting to compare the theatrical response to Masked to that of another controversial play about the Occupation: My Name is Rachel Corrie. In that case, the New York Theater Workshop got a case of cold feet when it realized it might've taken on a dramatic hot potato in the Corrie play. While NYTW came out of it with a black eye for having betrayed a play they professed to like, no such thing has happened with Masked. Perhaps DR2 has learned a lesson from the Corrie imbroglio because it schedules post-performance discussions with panels including rabbis, imams, peace activists, the director and cast. These allow the audience to ask questions, argue and find catharsis after an emotional encounter.

The post Masked: Israeli Play About Palestinian Intifada Opens in NYC Today appeared first on Jewcy.

“President Assad has repeatedly declared his willingness to renew the negotiations for peace with Israel,” it says. “The Israeli government has rejected these calls, but in recent months has checked their authenticity with the help of a third party. “We call on President Bush and Tony Blair to facilitate the negotiations with American presence or representation from the Quartet. We believe such talks could remove the threat of the missiles that are currently flowing from Iran into Syria by the thousands and may soon land on our heads.”

Will Ehud Olmert and his new Labor partner, Ehud Barak, listen to this voice of pragmatism and vigorously pursue the chance for peace with Syria? Stay tuned.

The post Peace in Our Time With Syria? appeared first on Jewcy.

The Jewish media pretty much ignore blogs entirely as a social phenomenon or news source. And they do this to their peril because many of us are both covering important stories and breaking news that no one else is. I regularly encourage news outlets like Haaretz, JTA and The Forward to do more to include Jewish blogs in their coverage of the Jewish world–with decidedly mixed results. And it's a shame. Because you won't find Yudit Litany's Israel on any UJA or Birthright Israel mission. You'll hardly find her in the pages of any of the Israeli dailies and especially not in the American Jewish publications I mentioned above.

If we want to truly see Israel as it IS, both its strengths and weaknesses, we must peer into the dark alleyways of places like Ajami and Yaffo. Otherwise, we'll only be seeing the economic miracle, the "only democracy in the Middle East." Not that there anything wrong with seeing Israel's virtues. That's part of the picture too. But not the whole thing. That's where OCCUPIED comes in. One of the things I appreciate most about it is that she focuses on Israel writ small–the everyday joys and injustices that make Israel such a fascinating and distressing place to live.

Yudit was once a social worker and focuses with laser-like intensity on issues of social injustice and inequality within Israeli society. Her blog is a treasure for anyone who cares about making Israel a better place for all its citizens. Sometimes Yudit's posts just break your heart. Life is so unfair and things can be so unjust in Israel especially for its children. Read The Jaffa Heiress and try not to weep:

Intissar is seventeen, bright, funny, streetwise, the youngest of 10 children and until yesterday, full of hopes and dreams.

A knock on the door of the small apartment where she lives ended those dreams. Her sister's little 3 year old boy opened the door and several police men entered with arrest warrants for Intissar, her elderly disabled mother and all of her nine sisters and brothers (2 of them disabled as well). That's 11 arrest warrants in one go. Why? Because of debts, not even theirs. Debts they inherited. The story goes back a long time.

Intissar's mum developed a mental disease, when Intissar was very young, a tiny toddler, and became unable to care for her children. Intissar's father was addicted to to drugs and alcohol. The welfare department removed all children from the home and placed them in boarding schools. Intissar was only 2 years old when they took her from her parents' care and placed her in a home, in order to give her a chance… Intissar's father died about 4 years ago. Junkies with alcohol problems don't live long. After his death, all minor children were returned home by the welfare department. Their mum is still suffering from the same severe psychiatric disorder she's had for many years, and not really able to care for her daughters.

But Intissar is strong and in spite of many difficulties, she copes, somehow. But how can a 17 year old girl cope with her "heritage of debts"? Because that's the problem here. In Israel, when a person dies, and he or she leaves behind money or other possessions, these are shared by the inheritors according the the person's last will or, if there is no will, according to the law on inheritance. BUT, if the person died owing money, his or her survivors inherit [the] debt. If the person owned a house, usually the house can be sold, the debts covered and the remainder shared among the family, the cat or dog or whoever else.

Yet, in Intissar's case there is no home to be sold, there are no possessions. Her large family lives in a tiny public housing apartment in one of the worst slums in Jaffa. …Their father was interested in one thing: getting high before cold turkey sets in. Over the years he made incredible debts. How exactly is only partially clear. Each time the water, electricity or phone were cut, he renewed the connection not by paying the bills, but by putting the new bill in the name of the next child of his 10 children. Thus, all of the 10 kids, while they never lived at home and were minors, ran huge debts at the various utility companies without knowing anything about it. I do not exactly understand how the utility companies accept contracts made by minors who are not present at all. Minors who have been made "wards of the state" and are under the responsibility of the welfare department…There is an "inheritance" of over a million NIS shared by all of the family members, and arrest warrants against all, including minor Intissar (which is illegal, by the way) because of those debts.

This story reminds me of Bleak House and the family living together in debtors prison until one of them can work off the debt. But of course, Dickens story takes place in 'backward' Victorian England. While this is the 21st century, right?

The Torah says that the sins of the fathers must not be visited upon the children. How in heaven's name can such injustice exist? Who protects the children? Anyone?

Here's some backgrouind on Yudit by way of self-description:

Photographer educated at Hebrew U and Hadassah College of Technology, both in Jerusalem, Israel. Worked as documentary photographer in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Europe, specializing in "the story behind the news" and portraits. Works as art photographer using of combinations of digital and ancient techniques such as cyanotype, van dyke browns etc, printing on various media, including stone, cloth and metal. Occasional graffiti maker (when I'm extremely pissed off at what's happening in society). Does graphic design and photography for various NGO's and non profit orgs. Also for many people in the 'hood. Usually for free. Teaches photography and cinema as a tool of empowerment, especially with young women. Participates in different community art projects. Participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions and about to open another one (if all goes well) this september

Likes: art in all forms, shapes and smells, reading, hiking and espresso

Hates: meeting jellyfish & cheese

Distrusts: house-owners & lawyers.

I hope you'll be able to spend some time getting to know, if you don't already, how the "other half" of Israel lives.

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