Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

M.J. Rosenberg, How Stupid Do They Think Jews Are?, IPF Friday Issue #285
Washington, DC, October 31, 2008 | Issue # 388

I have been looking to see if the Jewish “defense organizations” put out statements condemning the vicious attacks on Professor Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian-American academic.

I looked in vain. But then, these Jewish organizations tend not to get overly excited when the targets of bigotry are Palestinian or even Palestinian-American. And some of these organizations themselves play the “guilt by [Palestinian] association” game so they are in no position to criticize it.

Fortunately, the Washington Post (which happens to be a bastion of neo-conservatism) published a terrific editorial today that points out that Khalidi is nothing more, or less, than a respected Palestinian-American academic who holds views that are “unsurprising” although “complex.”

What are those views? He supports the two-state solution. He opposes terrorism. And he is strongly critical (like at least half of Israel’s population) of the occupation of the West Bank). He is neither anti-Jewish nor anti-Israeli. And he’s an American.

But even if he was a strident critic of Israel’s policies, so what? Is policy toward Israel the only issue about which an American is not allowed to hold opinions? Is it possible that it is acceptable to oppose, the US war in Iraq, President Bush and everything he stands for, and, say, social security, but you cannot oppose Israel’s policies in the West Bank? If it is, Walt, Mearsheimer, and Carter are not just right but guilty of understatement.

In the words of the Washington Post: Big deal! “To suggest . . . that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable—especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults.”

Actually, the whole Khalidi issue matters less than the general smearing of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians that has been a staple of this presidential campaign since the Democratic primaries.

Lt. General (U.S. Army, Retired) Robert G. Gard, Jr., PhD, Why I won’t vote for John McCain and why I believe you shouldn’t, War in Context, October 26, 2008

Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr. is Chairman of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation where his policy work focuses on nuclear nonproliferation, missile defense, Iraq, Iran, military policy, nuclear terrorism, and other national security issues.

During his military career, Gard saw combat in both the Korea and Vietnam wars, and served a three year tour in Germany. He also served as Executive Assistant to two secretaries of defense; the first Director of Human Resources Development for the U.S. Army; Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs; and President of National Defense University (NDU).

After retiring from the U.S. Army in 1981, after 31 years of distinguished service, Gard served for five years as director of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Center in Bologna, Italy, and then as President of the Monterey Institute of International Studies from 1987 to 1998. Since 1998, he has been an active consultant in Washington, D.C., on national security issues, including the international campaign to ban anti-personnel land mines.

The economy has become the priority issue for voters. But my principal reason for refusing to vote for John McCain has nothing to do with his admitted lack of knowledge of economics, although I did not realize the extent of his ignorance prior to his comments regarding the re-distribution of income. Since presidents encounter considerable constraints on their freedom to control economic programs and policies, this shortcoming is not critical.

It is, rather, the fields of foreign and national security policies, generally regarded as Senator McCain’s strengths, that in my view are his disqualifying weaknesses; and a president has considerable leeway to operate in these areas to the detriment, or benefit, of the United States.

I deeply respect John McCain’s service to our country; and I admire his bravery as a prisoner of war, described by a fellow prisoner as similar to that demonstrated by hundreds of other U.S. prisoners in North Vietnam who also obeyed the code of declining release before those captured earlier.

Unfortunately, however, Senator McCain has demonstrated clearly that he is a dedicated ideologue in the foreign/security policy area, unwilling to consider opinions or even credible evidence contrary to his preconceived notions. In addition, his temperament, marked not only by impatience but also by rude and sometimes hostile behavior, would discourage advisers from bringing to his attention views that might not be consistent with his preconceptions. A president with this combination of significant shortcomings would be a dangerous commander-in-chief, posing an unacceptable risk to the security of the nation.

The New McCarthyism—By Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine), October 29, 2008

By Scott Horton

The last weeks of every presidential campaign I can remember bring out the crazies. Candidates are reviled as “racists,” “Nazis,” “Communists,” and the like. But this year the process has gotten nuttier and more malicious than usual. Perhaps it is a sign of desperation, given that polling does not suggest a close campaign, and a party now long entrenched appears to be poised for a swift kick in the behind—for the second time running.

Still, I was amused at how absurd some of this is. The National Review is worth examining regularly these days–it has turned into something of a circular firing squad. I used to read and love it back in the heyday of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s editorship. It was home base for a certain rigorous, philosophically based conservatism that valued the classics. I search in vain through National Review today for any trace of the erudition and intellectual integrity that Buckley brought to the publication. And I suspect that Buckley himself was unhappy with the magazine’s course in his final years. Two years ago, I spoke at a conservative, religiously affiliated college in the South and discovered that my predecessor at the lectern, just the night before, had been Buckley. When I asked how his talk had gone, my faculty handler told me it had been a surprising experience. Buckley spoke at some length about the mistakes that the Bush Administration had made, starting with the Iraq War. When one student observed that his comments were rather at odds with the views that appeared in National Review, Buckley replied, “Yes. We have grown distant.”

In the current issue of National Review, Andrew McCarthy continues his campaign to link the Democratic nominee to various and sundry Hyde Park radicals. This time it is “PLO advisor turned University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi,” who now heads the Middle Eastern Studies Department at Columbia University. Khalidi, we learn, makes a habit of justifying and supporting the work of terrorists and is “a former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat.” And then we learn that this same Khalidi knows Obama and that his children even babysat for Obama’s kids!

This doesn’t sound much like the Rashid Khalidi I know. I’ve followed his career for many years, read his articles and books, listened to his presentations, and engaged him in discussions of politics, the arts, and history. In fact, as McCarthy’s piece ran, I was midway through an advance copy of Khalidi’s new book Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East. (I’ll be reviewing it next month–stay tuned.) Rashid Khalidi is an American academic of extraordinary ability and sharp insights. He is also deeply committed to stemming violence in the Middle East, promoting a culture that embraces human rights as a fundamental notion, and building democratic societies. In a sense, Khalidi’s formula for solving the Middle East crisis has not been radically different from George W. Bush’s: both believe in American values and approaches. However, whereas Bush believes these values can be introduced in the wake of bombs and at the barrel of a gun, Khalidi disagrees. He sees education and civic activism as the path to success, and he argues that pervasive military interventionism has historically undermined the Middle East and will continue to do so. Khalidi has also been one of the most articulate critics of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority—calling them repeatedly on their anti-democratic tendencies and their betrayals of their own principles. Khalidi is also a Palestinian American. There is no doubt in my mind that it is solely that last fact that informs McCarthy’s ignorant and malicious rants.

Informed Comment: Global Affairs: Rubin: My Friend, the “Neo-Nazi”, October 30, 2008

It is really strange to turn on the television and see actual presidential and vice-presidential candidates charging that someone who had dinner at my apartment two weeks ago — Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University — is a “neo-Nazi.” Yet John McCain actually said this yesterday. Sarah Palin also attacked him, as a “radical professor” and “former spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organization.” (Rashid never held such a position, though he did at one time try to present the Palestinian point of view to journalists in Beirut. I think this is the same PLO whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, the U.S.’s preferred “moderate” Palestinian leader, and Israel’s partner in negotiations, but maybe it is some other PLO, known only to Sarah Palin.)

But all this is beside the point. I actually find it demeaning, insulting, and depressing to have to defend Rashid. I could say, I know him, he has been a guest in my home in New York and in my rented house in Provence, he bears absolutely no resemblance to the image these despicable people are trying to project of him, and lot’s more. I could point out that I am Jewish and have VISIBLE JEWISH ARTIFACTS IN MY HOME, which did not appear to alarm Rashid, if he even noticed them, but it is all just so ridiculous I don’t know what to say.

I don’t want to treat these charges with the respect of a refutation. I just want to express my disgust with those who uttered them and my solidarity with my friend, Rashid Khalidi.

Gideon Levy, Yes, hate - Haaretz, October 26, 2008

My settler colleague, Israel Harel, his community’s champion at rolling his eyes, playing innocent and speaking with a honeyed tongue, is once again grieving and playing the victim. In a column published here last week (”Have we become Sodom?” October 23), he complained that the reason for what he termed destructive criticism of the settlers is hatred. And indeed, Mr. Harel, this time, you’re right: Large segments of Israeli society do indeed hate. But this is not baseless hatred, not hatred for the sake of hatred, to use your words. It is hatred for your enterprise. You have earned this hatred honestly - the only honest thing about your enterprise.

Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see their countrymen despoiling the vineyards and burning the fields of poor farmers. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see troops of masked settlers beating elderly shepherds with clubs. Yes, there are Israelis who do not want to see other Israelis sicking their dogs on and puncturing the tires of the soldiers who protect them. Yes, there are Israelis who are embarrassed by the fact that tens of thousands of their fellow Israelis live on privately owned lands that were robbed, stolen and extorted, both in broad daylight and under cover of darkness.

And yes, there are Israelis who think that you have brought disaster upon us, a tragedy that will last for generations. That via your actions, you have brought wars and bloodshed and the brutalization of society upon us. That if you were not there, none of us would be there any longer, in a land that is not ours. That just as we withdrew from occupied South Lebanon - solely because, fortunately, you were not there - we would also long since have been able to withdraw from the areas you have occupied. Yes, there are Israelis who hate all this.

Harel complains about the fact that Israeli society is angry at the settlers as a collective. Unfortunately, he does not get out enough, for their enterprise is flourishing. Every class and institution of Israeli society defends the settlements, finances them from its own pockets, and is a full partner in the theft, even if some of them are disgusted by it. The collective guilt is justified: Every settler and every settlement is equal. There are no illegal outposts and legal settlements - they are all illegal, according to both international law and universal justice, which have no need of legal sophistries. There are also no moderate and extremist settlements: No one who chooses to live in occupied land is a moderate.

Settlers vandalize Muslim graves after IDF razes outpost - Haaretz, October 26, 2008

Settlers smashed headstones and poured paint over graves at a Muslim cemetery near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba on Sunday, after Israeli security forces evacuated a nearby illegal outpost earlier in the day.

Right-wing activist Noam Federman had established the outpost, a farm, which was evacuated by contingents of the Israel Defense Forces, the Border Police and police earlier Sunday.

IDF tractors demolished the outpost after its residents had been evacuated.

Rightists came to the site and threw stones at the security forces in response to the evacuation. A number of them were arrested for attacking a police officer, and two young women were arrested after they tried to set a police car alight.

During the rioting, settlers hurled abuse at the members of the security forces, called for a “revenge attack” against them.

“We hope they will be defeated by their enemies, that they will all be [kidnapped IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit, that they will all be killed and all slaughtered because this is what they deserve,” they said.

In addition to vandalizing the graves, settlers also damaged over 80 Palestinian vehicles by smashing windows and puncturing tires. Two police cars were damaged during the altercations.

Adi Schwartz, The silence of the shepherd - Haaretz, October 24, 2008

In the second half of October 1943, several thousand of Rome’s Jews were arrested by the German SS and incarcerated in a detention camp. The road leading from the Jewish ghetto on the banks of the Tiber to the Collegio Militare ran by the edge of St. Peter’s Square. If Pope Pius XII had looked out the window of his residence, he would have seen the German trucks taking away the Jews, who would never return.

But despite the entreaties of the Jewish community and of British and American diplomats, Pope Pius XII, who was also the bishop of Rome, refused to speak out. On October 19, when the freight train packed with Rome’s Jews passed through the city of Padua on its way north, the local bishop urged the Pope “to take urgent action.” However, Pius XII remained mum. Three days later, 1,060 of Rome’s Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. Only 15 of the transport’s deportees survived the war.

The SS was worried that the Pope - the supreme spiritual authority in the Italian capital and throughout the Catholic world - would try to prevent the deportation of the Jews. So relieved were the Germans after the operation that in its wake, the German ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsaecker (the father of Richard von Weizsaecker, who would become Germany’s president in 1984), sent the following cable to Berlin: “The Pope, although under pressure from all sides, has not permitted himself to be pushed into a demonstrative censure of the deportation of the Jews of Rome. Although he must know that such an attitude will be used against him by our adversaries … he has nonetheless done everything possible even in this delicate matter in order not to strain relations with the German government and German authorities in Rome … it may be said that this matter, so unpleasant as it regards German-Vatican relations, has been liquidated.”

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Palin: God will do the right thing on election day « - Blogs from CNN.com, Oct. 22, 2008

Gov. Palin told James Dobson that God will do ‘the right thing’ on election day.

FINDLAY, Ohio (CNN) –- In an interview posted online Wednesday, Sarah Palin told Dr. James Dobson of “Focus on the Family” that she is confident God will do “the right thing for America” on Nov. 4.

Dobson asked the vice presidential hopeful if she is concerned about John McCain’s sagging poll numbers, but Palin stressed that she was “not discouraged at all.”

“To me, it motivates us, makes us work that much harder,” she told the influential Christian leader, whose radio show reaches millions of listeners daily. “And it also strengthens my faith because I know at the end of the day putting this in God’s hands, the right thing for America will be done, at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”

Dobson praised Palin’s opposition to abortion rights, to which the governor affirmed that she is “hardcore pro-life.”

She said giving birth to her son Trig, who has Down syndrome, has given her the opportunity “to be walking the walk and not just talking the talk” in her long-standing opposition to abortion.

Dobson — who has never been warm to McCain — asked Palin if her “private conversations” with the GOP nominee had revealed a true commitment to the Republican party’s pro-life platform, which calls for a constitutional amendment banning abortions.

“I do, from the bottom of my heart,” Palin assured Dobson. “John McCain is solidly there on those solid planks in our platform that build the right agenda for America.”

She also thanked her supporters — including Dobson, who said he and his wife were asking “for God’s intervention” on election day — for their prayers of support.

“It is that intercession that is so needed,” she said. “And so greatly appreciated. And I can feel it too, Dr. Dobson. I can feel the power of prayer, and that strength that is provided through our prayer warriors across this nation. And I so appreciate it.”

The interview was taped on Monday by phone while Palin was campaigning in Colorado Springs, where “Focus on the Family” is headquartered.

Settler leader: Palestinian olive farmers destroy their own groves - Haaretz, Oct. 19, 2008
By Nadav Shragai

Many settlers say the accusations that they harassed Palestinian olive pickers are libelous.

Benzi Lieberman, the former head of the Yesha Council of Settlements and Samaria Regional Council, recalls going with tree-clearing expert Yitzhak Scali of the Scali farms outpost to examine olive trees that Palestinians claimed were cut down by settlers.

“This expert, who didn’t have any stake in either side of the dispute, saw the trees and determined they were most likely cut down by Arabs in order to maintain the grove, as is traditionally done,” said Lieberman.

Lieberman is convinced Palestinian farmers often stage scenes of destruction.

“They benefit twice,” he said. “Cutting the trees down benefits the groves, and they also benefit financially because the damage supposedly was caused by settlers.”

Lieberman also recalled how leftists “torpedoed” an agreement between residents of the Itamar settlement and their Arab neighbors.

“Village representatives would have gone to the community and, along with Itamar residents, evaluated the crops’ yield, and determined the sum Palestinians would receive for the harvest. The extreme left prevented this,” he said.

Lieberman admits, however, that the so-called “hilltop youth” of the surrounding outposts of ten clash with the farmers.

The New Jewish Terrorism, By Sadie Goldman with IPF Staff, Israel Policy Forum
October 16, 2008/Volume 6.39

One of the settlers pulled out a knife, pressed it to the neck of the company commander and said: ‘well, what will you do now, Nazi?’

Attacks on Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians by West Bank settlers, like this one described by an Israeli reservist after the evacuation last month of the West Bank outpost Yad Yair, have nearly doubled in 2008 from 291 incidents in 2007 to 222 in the first half of 2008, according to a recent UN report. In the last month, the number of attacks has skyrocketed. Israeli attempts to evacuate West Bank outposts in Yitzhar, Yad Yair, and Shvut Ami have been met with groups of settlers—many of them teenagers—throwing stones, yelling curses, vandalizing cars, and worse.

The roughly 100 West Bank outposts are settlements unauthorized by the Israeli government. They usually start as either uninhabited trailers or small mobile-home communities that are meant to be used as bargaining chips with the government: “we’ll evacuate from here if you let us stay there.” These outposts are usually deep in the West Bank, far from the area that Israel would like to incorporate into its territory as part of a final peace deal, and are often built on hills that overlook Palestinian towns and villages.

The settler violence has not been random but rather coordinated in advance. As Israeli soldiers were making their way to Yad Yair, two hundred settlers were already on the scene. Text messages were sent to thousands of settlers calling on them to stop the evacuation, the daily Yediot Acharonoth reported.

In response to the removal of the settler installations at Yad Yair, settlers not only attacked soldiers who were removing the outpost’s trailers, but also launched retaliatory attacks against Palestinians in several West Bank cities and towns. Israeli newspapers reported that settlers attacked Israeli soldiers in Talmon, threw stones at Arab vehicles in Yad Yair and at Palestinian civilians in Hebron, and set fire to fields near the settlement of Yitzhar.

The recent West Bank riots have been followed by brazen threats of more to come. Extremist leaders have been promoting a retaliation doctrine they have labeled the “price tag.” Twenty-four year old, New York-born Akiva HaCohen, who is considered an architect of the price tag doctrine and one of the leaders of the violent outpost movement, has called on settlers to respond “whenever, wherever, and however.” Radical settler leader, Daniella Weiss, has also warned that there will be a response to evacuating outposts throughout the West Bank.

Biography / The making of a dove - Haaretz, October 12, 2008
By Yair Sheleg

Be’emunato: Sipuro shel harav yehuda amital (Be’emunato: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda Amital), by Elyashiv Reichner
Yedioth Ahronoth Books and Chemed Books, 301 pages, NIS 98

Over the years, Rabbi Yehuda Amital, head of the Har Etzion hesder yeshiva (where students combine compulsory military service with their Talmudic studies) in Alon Shvut, has become one of the rabbis that even secular Jews (including those on the left) love to love. There are two reasons for this. For one, he has a sunny personality. Even more critical, however, are his political views.

It was Rabbi Amital who in the late 1980s founded the Meimad movement, which, from its inception, has advocated moderation in both the religious and political spheres. Nor is he afraid to attack his colleagues, who are rabbis affiliated with the right-wing religious Zionist camp, for their views.

Journalist Elyashiv Reichner’s biography of Amital, 83, unfolds the fascinating, complex story of this man. For many years, he taught at Yeshivat Hadarom in Rehovot, which was headed by his father-in-law, until, in 1965, he decided to move to Jerusalem. Two years later, he was offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It was in the period immediately following the Six-Day War, and the leaders of the movement to renew Jewish settlement in Gush Etzion, in the West Bank south of Jerusalem, were inviting him to head the yeshiva that they were establishing there. (I myself studied at that yeshiva under Amital’s leadership.)

The book speaks extensively of Amital’s personality and educational approach, for good reason. These are the real reasons he is so beloved by students and friends alike, including those who disagree with his views. Amital is an open-minded, original thinker, difficult to pigeonhole, and his character is reflected in his work as an educator.

Unlike so many rabbis and yeshiva heads, Amital explicitly discourages his students from following in his footsteps. Students frequently pepper him with questions unrelated to issues of Jewish law, and he always responds, gently but firmly, that they should think out the matter for themselves. Even on issues of Jewish law, he has been known to advise the inquirer to investigate the problem independently by consulting the sources. He always emphasizes that he is not interested in producing “Amital look-alikes.”

He has the reputation of being a determined optimist. Reichner relates that, on one occasion, when the rabbi’s daughter earned a score of only 50 percent on an exam, he consoled her: “Don’t feel bad. At least you knew half the material.”

As a Holocaust survivor (Amital was born in Hungary in 1924, and lost his entire family in Auschwitz), his attitude toward that subject is sincere and does not smack of self-righteousness: For instance, he has no difficulty acknowledging that he cannot answer why the Holocaust occurred, and he is furious with those who try to do so. The late Israeli poet Abba Kovner, himself a Holocaust survivor and a leader of Jewish resistance forces in the Vilna Ghetto, once asked Amital how he could still believe in God after the Shoah. Amital replied, “And how can you still believe in humanity after the Holocaust? After all, no one pretends to be able to understand God, yet we supposedly understand other human beings.”

Hindu Threat to Christians - Convert or Flee - NYTimes.com, October 13, 2008
By SOMINI SENGUPTA

BOREPANGA, India — The family of Solomon Digal was summoned by neighbors to what serves as a public square in front of the village tea shop.

They were ordered to get on their knees and bow before the portrait of a Hindu preacher. They were told to turn over their Bibles, hymnals and the two brightly colored calendar images of Christ that hung on their wall. Then, Mr. Digal, 45, a Christian since childhood, was forced to watch his Hindu neighbors set the items on fire.

“ ‘Embrace Hinduism, and your house will not be demolished,’ ” Mr. Digal recalled being told on that Wednesday afternoon in September. “ ‘Otherwise, you will be killed, or you will be thrown out of the village.’ ”

India, the world’s most populous democracy and officially a secular nation, is today haunted by a stark assault on one of its fundamental freedoms. Here in eastern Orissa State, riven by six weeks of religious clashes, Christian families like the Digals say they are being forced to abandon their faith in exchange for their safety.

The forced conversions come amid widening attacks on Christians here and in at least five other states across the country, as India prepares for national elections next spring.

The clash of faiths has cut a wide swath of panic and destruction through these once quiet hamlets fed by paddy fields and jackfruit trees. Here in Kandhamal, the district that has seen the greatest violence, more than 30 people have been killed, 3,000 homes burned and over 130 churches destroyed, including the tin-roofed Baptist prayer hall where the Digals worshiped. Today it is a heap of rubble on an empty field, where cows blithely graze.

Across this ghastly terrain lie the singed remains of mud-and-thatch homes. Christian-owned businesses have been systematically attacked. Orange flags (orange is the sacred color of Hinduism) flutter triumphantly above the rooftops of houses and storefronts.

India is no stranger to religious violence between Christians, who make up about 2 percent of the population, and India’s Hindu-majority of 1.1 billion people. But this most recent spasm is the most intense in years.

It was set off, people here say, by the killing on Aug. 23 of a charismatic Hindu preacher known as Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, who for 40 years had rallied the area’s people to choose Hinduism over Christianity.

Revisiting Pius XII, Jerusalem Post, October 7, 2008

By LISA PALMIERI-BILLIG, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
ROME

Pope Benedict XVI will lead a mass on Thursday during the 12th Synod of Bishops, for Eugenio Pacelli - Pope Pius XII - on the 50th anniversary of his death.

Haifa Chief Rabbi She’ar Yashuv Cohen, who addressed the bishops on Monday, said that had he known of the mass for the Holocaust-era pope, he would not have become the first Jew to speak to the top representative body of the Catholic Church.

“Although Pope Pacelli may have helped many refugees in secret… he should have spoken up much more strongly than he did against the Holocaust,” Cohen told The Jerusalem Post over the weekend.

Would a moral outcry have helped stop the Holocaust or simply extended persecutions to Catholics, making further rescue efforts impossible?

Survivors and historians are strongly divided on the issue.

Radically opposed views of Pius XII’s wartime policies periodically kindle passions anew as his beatification process (the third of the four steps on the way to being declared a saint) moves forward. It is expected this issue will be mentioned again during a summit meeting of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee in Budapest next month.

Italian historian Alberto Melloni calls the conflict between Pius XII’s devotees and his critics “a stupid match between fanatical followers of ‘the defamed pope who saved the Jews’ and those of ‘Hitler’s pope’… with exaggerations, simplifications, banalities, basic errors.”

A symposium organized in Rome last month by Gary Krupp, the Jewish president of the Pave the Way Foundation, to present new, favorable evidence on Pius XII, was boycotted by the Jewish community and Catholic critics who considered the conference format biased.

The symposium presented testimonies by Catholic and Jewish scholars and witnesses, videos, including an interview with British historian Martin Gilbert, documents from the files of the OSS (the World War II forerunner of the CIA), and The Palestine Post (The Jerusalem Post’s previous name) supporting the thesis that Pius XII did more than any Allied government to save Jewish lives, although no written orders will ever be found because he worked through prudent, officially neutral diplomacy.

This line challenges the idea of a noncaring and silent pope held by many Holocaust survivors.

Pius XII’s photo exhibited at Yad Vashem among those who did nothing was deemed very offensive and the printed criticisms accompanying it were rebutted line by line at the Rome symposium.

But this issue may soon evolve.

“I am happy to have learnt recently that serious attention is being given to the matter in the wake of concerns expressed by the papal nuncio in Jerusalem to the leadership of Yad Vashem,” Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s chairman of the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations - the umbrella body of Jewish organizations engaged in interreligious dialogue, told the Post from Jerusalem.

In Rome, Krupp said he intended to nominate Pius XII for recognition by Yad Vashem as a “righteous among the nations” - listing as partial evidence the Haitian visas issued under his personal orders from 1939-45 that saved 11,000 European Jews.

Pius XII was also credited with having tried to stop the October 16, 1943, deportation of more than 1,090 Roman Jews, negotiating a halt to further round-ups and opening Rome’s churches, convents, monasteries and the Vatican itself to Jewish refugees.

“No doubt after October 16, generous, organized efforts to save Jews and others were made by all Catholic institutions in Rome,” Italian Jewish historian Anna Foa said. “This could not have been done without specific orders by Pacelli.”

A DPA German news agency report recently estimated that more than 7,000 Roman Jews owed their lives to this activity.

Rome Chief Rabbi Dr. Riccardo Di Segni disagreed, telling the Post that Pacelli failed to prevent the October 16 deportations from happening.

“The train to Auschwitz was not stopped,” he said. “Seven hundred and fifty Roman Jews were gassed immediately on arrival. Another thousand were deported during the following nine months. In Bulgaria, where the Bulgarian government intervened forcefully, a similar train never left the station,” therefore saving his own grandfather, he said.

Hamas: Jewish Lobby in U.S. to blame for global financial crisis - Haaretz, October 7, 2008
By News Agencies and Haaretz Services

The Palestinian militant group Hamas on Tuesday accused a “Jewish Lobby” in the United States of fomenting the global financial crisis.

The crisis was the result of “bad administrative and financial management and a bad banking system put into place and controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhum said in a statement.

Barhum said that despite approving a bailout plan of $700 billion dollars, the U.S. government was ignoring the role of “the Jewish lobby that put the U.S. banking and financial sector into place.”

This lobby, said Barhum, “controls the U.S. elections and defines the foreign policy of any new administration in a manner that allows it to retain control of the American government and economy.”

The Anti-Defamation League reported last week a major upsurge in the number of anti-Semitic postings on the Internet relating to the financial crisis engulfing the United States.

The Jewish-American organization cited hundreds of posts regarding the bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers and other institutions affected by the subprime mortgage crisis.

The messages railed against Jews in general, with some charging that Jews control the U.S. government and finance as part of a “Jew world order” and therefore are to blame for the economic turmoil.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said: “We know from modern history that whenever there is a downturn in the global economy, there will be an upturn in the level of anti-Semitism and bigotry, and that is what we are seeing now.”

A tale of two parliaments, by Amira Hass, Monde diplomatique, October 2008
West Bank and Gaza, Fatah and Hamas

By Amira Hass

Fathiya Barghouti, the mayor of Qarawat Bani Zeid, north of Ramallah in the West Bank, has to lie every time she submits the draft budget to the ministry for local government – under the law, it cannot be approved if it shows a deficit. She is not the only one: not a single local council has managed to avoid a chronic deficit, especially since 2006, when the international boycott of the Hamas government began and the impact of the Israeli siege hit more severely than ever. “They promised us they would change the law and make it correspond to reality,” says Barghouti. “But they can’t, because the Legislative Council [parliament] isn’t functioning.”

Palestinian politics has bigger problems than these. Neither of the two governments is constitutionally legal: one has been dissolved, but continues to govern; the other is provisional, and should have organised elections a long time ago. But parliament is not completely paralysed: its Gaza half, made up mainly of Hamas members, regularly meets and drafts bills.

In theory the Legislative Council – which has 132 MPs, of whom 74 are from Hamas – has authority over both Gaza and the West Bank. In order to fulfil quorum requirements, it uses its power of attorney over the votes of the 40 or so Hamas MPs resident in the West Bank who were arrested by Israel over the past two years.

In Ramallah, parliament does not meet. The government of Salam Fayyad set up its own special department for legislating, and President Mahmoud Abbas issues presidential decrees, which serve as laws. According to Reuters, 406 laws and presidential decrees have been produced in this way since June 2007 (1). Palestinian legal experts and members of the Legislative Council warn of the risk of a dictatorial regime as a result of the non-separation between legislative and executive powers. Officials respond that it is not possible to govern without legislating, and say the laws can be annulled when the crisis is over.

Things may be set to get a lot worse. The mandate of Abbas, who was elected in January 2005, runs out next January. Hamas has made it known that it will not recognise his presidency beyond that date. It says Palestinian basic law takes precedence over an electoral law adopted by the Legislative Council in 2005. According to that law, elections to the council and to the presidency should take place at the same time, which would mean Abbas’ mandate being extended to January 2010. Meanwhile, the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Fatah have not even managed to hold their own internal elections.

When you strip away the legalistic jargon, the core message is the same: for most people, the role of the two governments comes down to the provision of basic services and the payment of salaries. It is only when people fear their salaries aren’t going to be paid that they return to the question of the dual regime. Both Fatah and Hamas have shown they are only interested in clinging onto power. They do so selfishly, people here say, not caring about the growing divisions (this year Gaza put its clock back three days earlier than the West Bank) nor the threat to the entire national struggle for Palestinian independence.

Hamas has shown itself to be no better than Fatah. Many Palestinians – even some from within the Fatah movement – voted for Hamas because they hoped it would act differently. But as one legal expert in Ramallah put it, Hamas is merely “Fatah with a beard”. Those who thought it would be different complain of nepotism, corruption and impunity for armed groups and their leaders.

But even worse charges are levelled at the government in Ramallah: it acts as a subcontractor to the Israeli security service, and takes part in endless “peace talks”, while Israeli settlement building carries on unabated. It gets its sense of legitimacy from western support, not from the people. The government in Gaza also clings to power at all costs, to prove that Islamic rule is possible even in such a small, cut-off enclave.

“What has been done to us?” asked one friend in the West Bank, a fervent opponent of Hamas. That was when she heard the details of how badly the strike called by Ramallah is affecting the lives of the people of Gaza.