Eideard

The orthodox alternative

Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem have protested outside the offices of the US firm, Intel, against the plant operating on the Jewish day of rest.

The demonstrators chanted “Shabbes! Shabbes!”, the Yiddish word for Sabbath when Jews are forbidden to work.

Intel has been operating on Saturdays for years – and the company defends the policy.

“We have always worked according to the company’s needs. If the needs call for it, we work on the Sabbath as well,” Intel Israel spokesman Kobi Becker told Israel’s Ynet website.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews have become increasingly militant in recent months in their attempts to enforce a Saturday work ban.

Not that the Jewish state of Israel pretends to be much more than a theocratic state. It just comes down to which sect of religious nutballs have their finger on the trigger.

Members of Congress signed up by the score when they were invited to this weekend’s “pro-Israel” conference. But then the faxes and emails started to roll in, denouncing the organisers as “Jewish Stalinists”, the “surrender lobby” and terrorist sympathisers.

Some members of Congress scuttled for cover, admitting they had little idea what the organisation behind the conference – an upstart Washington lobby group called J Street, which wants to turn US policy on Israel on its head – stands for…

They predicted that J Street and those who launched it – Jeremy Ben-Ami, a former domestic policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, and Daniel Levy, a former adviser to Israeli cabinet ministers and one of the authors of the Geneva peace initiative – would be swiftly marginalised as a niche group backed by obscure peaceniks with little influence.

But the organisation opens its first national conference in Washington…with a stamp of legitimacy from a White House that is clearly sympathetic to its view. General James Jones, Barack Obama’s national security adviser and one of his point men on Israel, is to make a keynote speech. About 140 members of Congress have pledged their support, even after others backed away, and former Israeli cabinet ministers and generals will be in attendance…

The Israeli ambassador has refused to attend the conference, while the traditional pro-Israel lobby has accused J Street of being “obsequious to terrorists and hostile to Israel” and a “disreputable pseudo-pro-Israel organisation”…

But in recent years, Aipac, the ZOA and other groups have drawn closer to the hard right in America, particularly the neocons and Christian evangelical organisations, as the conflict in Israel is framed largely in the context of terrorism while hardline governments pay little more than lip service to peace and a Palestinian state.

Levy says J Street was born out of a belief that many American Jews are now alienated from those who claim to speak in their name.

RTFA. Long article with much detail. Nothing I haven’t known or witnessed for years as a civil rights activist, as an activist for peace.

But, the average American voter is as ignorant of the divisions within the Jewish community as is Congress. And whoever lobbies the latter with enough bucks and promises of votes – is good enough as far as Congress is concerned.

A former NASA scientist was arrested during a sting operation for allegedly trying to pass along secrets to Israel, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Officials said Stewart Nozette was arrested Monday at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington by FBI counterespionage agents after he believed he was meeting with agents from the Mossad, Israel’s national intelligence agency, to pass information for cash, ABC News reported.

Nozette, 52, had been under investigation for some time, said an FBI affidavit and court records involving his firm, the Alliance for Competitive Technology. When traveling overseas in January 2009, a security check of Nozette’s bags indicated he had two computer thumb drives. However, he didn’t have the drives on his return trip, the government said.

The investigation heightened in September 2009 when Nozette was approached by an undercover FBI agent who said he worked for Mossad. During the meeting, Nozette indicated he would work for Israeli intelligence and provide them information.

When did this clown become ex-NASA. Did they let him go 48 hours before he was busted?

Netanyahu, Obama, Abbas – the usual 2 to 1 odds
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of allowing Israel to keep nuclear weapons without opening them to international inspection.

In a report on Saturday, The Washington Times quoted three unnamed sources as saying Obama had confirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that he would maintain the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The incident reportedly occurred when the two met at the White House in Washington DC in May.

Neither Israel’s embassy in Washington, nor the White House National Security Council would comment on the claim.

Avner Cohen, an Israeli expert and author, was quoted by the paper as saying that under the deal “the United States passively [accepts] Israel’s nuclear weapons status as long as Israel does not unveil publicly its capability or test a weapon”…

In an interview last week with Israel’s Channel 2 media company, Netanyahu spoke of his confidence that Obama’s recent remarks on a world free of nuclear weapons would not apply to Israel…

“I want to remind you that in my first meeting with President Obama in Washington I received from him … an itemised list of the strategic understandings that have existed for many years between Israel and the United States on that issue…”

Probably the single best example of hypocrisy guiding American foreign policy.

Israel’s army is changing. Once proudly secular, its combat units are now filling with those who believe Israel’s wars are “God’s wars”.

Military rabbis are becoming more powerful. Trained in warfare as well as religion, new army regulations mean they are now part of a military elite.
They graduate from officer’s school and operate closely with military commanders. One of their main duties is to boost soldiers’ morale and drive, even on the front line.

This has caused quite some controversy in Israel. Should military motivation come from men of God, or from a belief in the state of Israel and keeping it safe?

The military rabbis rose to prominence during Israel’s invasion of Gaza earlier this year. Gal Einav, a non-religious soldier said there was wall-to-wall religious rhetoric in the base, the barracks and on the battlefield. As soon as soldiers signed for their rifles, he said, they were given a book of psalms. And, as his company headed in to Gaza, he told me, they were flanked by a civilian rabbi on one side and a military rabbi on the other…

Rabbis handed out hundreds of religious pamphlets during the Gaza war. When they came to light, they caused huge controversy in Israel. Some leaflets called Israeli soldiers the “sons of light” and Palestinians, the “sons of darkness”. Others compared the Palestinians to the Philistines, the bitter biblical enemy of the Jewish people.

Israel’s military has distanced itself from the publications, but they carried the army’s official stamp…

Gal Einav thinks many soldiers will refuse to close settlements down. The settlement issue could well tear the army apart, he told me, adding that most of his officers are settlers these days.

“If it comes to a clash between political orders from Israel’s government and a contradictory message from the rabbis, settlers and religious right-wing soldiers will follow the rabbis,” he said.

RTFA. Not unlike the tasks committed to Bush’s Holy Campaigners within our own military. With one significant difference. Israel’s government is so politically beholden to the Orthodox religious Right, that government endorses the participation and direction of rabbis within the rule of their army.

The Holy State of Israel will complete the task of becoming a theocracy. Civilian and military.

So, you left the envelope under the pillow?

The former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been indicted in three corruption cases, the attorney general’s office says.

The series of probes was a key factor in Mr Olmert’s resignation last year. The charges relate to the periods when Mr Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem and a cabinet minister, but before he became prime minister in 2006…

The office of Attorney General Menahem Mazuz confirmed in a statement he had decided to press charges and that the charge sheet had been presented on Sunday in Jerusalem district court…

Israelis are split over what this episode tells them about their politicians. Many believe that the political class is the lousiest in Israel’s short history.

Mr Olmert is the first former prime minister in Israeli history to face criminal charges, the office said.

I hope we catch up, soon.

One of the charges against Mr Olmert is that he accepted cash envelopes from US businessman Morris Talansky with sums amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr Olmert admits taking money, but insists the funds were legal donations to help his campaigns for re-election as mayor of Jerusalem and for the leadership of the Likud, his former party.

In the second case, Mr Olmert is accused of duplicating funding for his trips abroad. Police have said they suspect the “considerable sums” that remained after the travel expenses were paid for were transferred by Mr Olmert to a special account his travel agency administered for him.

The third case involves alleged conflict of interest. Officials have alleged Mr Olmert arranged investment opportunities for a friend, Uri Messner, while he was industry minister.

The sort of ally the United States has loved over our years of interfering with the Middle East.

This 2-year-old is an obvious danger to Israel
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Israel must investigate the “unlawful” killing of 11 civilians carrying white flags during its Gaza operation earlier in 2009, Human Rights Watch has said.

Five women and four children were among those killed in seven incidents detailed by the US-based rights group. Researchers said the soldiers at best failed to protect civilians, and at worst deliberately shot at them…

In one incident, east of Jabalya, HRW said Israeli soldiers fired at two women and three children, three of whom were holding pieces of white cloth.

Two girls, aged two and seven were killed, and another, now aged four, was left paralysed below the waist.

The five were standing outside their home after an Israeli soldier had ordered them to leave it, HRW said.

“We spent seven to nine minutes waving the flags, and our faces were looking at them [the soldiers],” HRW quoted the girls’ grandmother as saying.

“And suddenly they opened fire and the girls fell to the ground…”

In five of the seven incidents, Israeli soldiers shot at civilians who were walking down the street with white flags, trying to leave the areas of fighting, HRW said.

“All available evidence indicates that Israeli forces were in control of the areas in question, no fighting was taking place there at the time, and no Palestinian forces were hiding among the civilians or using them as human shields,” the report said.

I realize that reports of Israel committing war crimes are nothing new – and I expect as little to come from this as usual – within the land and territory controlled by Israel. But, their continued violation of norms of civilized nations – while claiming to be one – puts the lie to all the rationales for military and fiscal aid delivered without question by Western nations. Like, the United States.

A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.

About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars. The flight’s aim was “to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it”, Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

The flu is often called simply “H1N1″ in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean.

So they can’t say the fracking word, “swine”.

According to Israel’s health ministry, there have been more than 2,000 cases of swine flu in the country, with five fatalities so far.

“We are certain that, thanks to the prayer, the danger is already behind us,” Mr Batzri was quoted as saying.

Next time, spend the cost of the fun air trip on providing medical care for the sick. It will do a lot more good.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

President Obama’s decision to bestow one of the nation’s highest honors on Mary Robinson, the first woman to serve as Ireland’s president, has touched off protests by Jewish groups and lawmakers, who claim she has shown a persistent anti-Israel bias in her work as a human rights advocate.

Mr. Obama plans to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, to Mrs. Robinson and 15 others at a ceremony next week at the White House…

The White House has defended the decision to grant her the honor, saying it also recognizes her role as a crusader for women’s rights. Mrs. Robinson, a lawyer, was elected in 1990 as Ireland’s first female president.

“We don’t necessarily agree with every statement she has ever made,” said Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman. “But it’s clear that she has been an agent of change and a fighter for good…”

“This is old, recycled, untrue stuff,” Mrs. Robinson, who now runs Realizing Rights, a human rights group in New York, said from California. “I have been very critical of the Palestinian side. My conduct continues to be on the side of tackling anti-Semitism and discrimination.”

The honor has also been opposed by Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The spat over Mrs. Robinson comes amid rising tension between the United States and Israel over the Obama administration’s insistence that Israel halt construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Claiming any concept of human rights must center on Israel First is the sort of crap revisionism that thrives among reactionary politicians. Claiming ethnicity as a fear – usually is seated at the table of the worst xenophobes – whether it’s the White Citizens Council types in the Republican Party or leftovers from Irgun and Haganah in the Knesset.

Marvin Berkowitz in a Tel Aviv courtroom – between Israeli coppers in casual dress
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

An American-Israeli crime ring conspired to defraud United States tax authorities of tens of millions of dollars for at least five years, according to Israeli and American court documents.

The suspects filed thousands of fraudulent requests for tax refunds in the names of prisoners in federal penitentiaries, without the prisoners’ knowledge, according to an indictment filed in Chicago. They then laundered the money through Israeli bank accounts, the authorities said.

Two Americans and seven Israelis went to a Tel Aviv court for a hearing on Monday in connection with the case. Other Americans have been arrested in Chicago and other parts of the United States.

The man accused of leading the ring, Marvin Berkowitz, 62, fled the United States for Israel in 2003, according to the Israeli authorities, and has been living in Jerusalem…

The American indictment states that the suspects sought to get more than $35 million in federal and state income tax refunds. Israeli investigators say they have found $12 million worth of tax refunds in Israeli bank accounts controlled by Mr. Berkowitz and his accomplices…

Federal officials said the men had sought tax refunds using the identities of about 3,300 federal prisoners. Mr. Berkowitz, who was charged with six counts of identity theft, is suspected of recruiting and paying others to travel to federal courthouses to collect personal information about federal inmates, including Social Security numbers.

I know our government has been inept for years when it comes to communicating between departments; but, I think folks are starting to talk to each other – and especially to the IRS.

Mayhap we’re reaching the point where the only thugs who escape detection for tax fraud are those who own the right Congressman.