March 17, 2010 | 1:26 pm

What’s the Status of Jerusalem Under International Law?

Posted by Rob Eshman

The furor that’s erupted between the U.S. and Israel following Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to build 1,600 new apartments in a portion of East Jerusalem has is only made worse by the astonishing lack of accurate information circulating over the international legal status of Jerusalem.  To whom does it belong?  Who has a right to build there? Who recognizes that right? The worst way to answer that question is to read the op-ed pages, where each side advances its arguments as facts.  And when it comes to arguments, few engage as many deep emotions as Jerusalem.

For instance: We just received a press release from B’nai B’rith Canada condemning the “disparaging” remarks of a Canadian minister who criticized Israel’s buiding in East Jerusalem as contrary to international law.  Here it is:

B’nai Brith Canada has expressed disappointment at remarks Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon made yesterday at the House of Commons foreign affairs committee condemning Israel’s plans to build new apartments in a Jewish neighbourhood of East Jerusalem.  At the committee, FM Cannon “condemned” the Israeli decision and said that it is “contrary to international law.”  Since 1967, Israeli governments across the political spectrum have consistently expressed sovereignty over the entire city of Jerusalem.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to freeze building for 10 months was limited to Judea and Samaria, and specifically did not include East Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem has been, and always will be, the historical, national, and religious capital of the Jewish State,” said Frank Dimant, B’nai Brith Canada’s Executive Vice President.  “We regret Minister Cannon’s remarks condemning Israel’s decision to build in its capital.

“We are confidant [sic] that the Foreign Minister’s disparaging remarks do not in any way reflect a shift in the Government’s principled position with respect to its Israeli ally.”

Here’s the thing:  the minister’s comments were precisely in keeping with Canadian—and international—law. Here is Canada’s official policy regarding Jerusalem:

Status of Jerusalem

Canada considers the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. Canada does not recognize Israel’s unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem.

In fact, most countries, including the United States, do not recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem under the Jerusalem Law of July 30, 1980. The EU, the United Nations, the US, and most other countries happen not to recognize Israel’s right to build anywhere in East Jerusalem, even the neighborhoods that are solidly Jewish.  I’m not arguing whether they should or shouldn’t—or even that the international law can’t or shouldn’t be challenged—I’m just saying that’s the fact.

The problem is, American and I suppose Canadian Jews have been hearing from their Israeli and pro-Israeli counterparts about united, indivisible, eternal Jerusalem for so long, they assume everyone else thinks that way as well. So we are shocked, shocked, when something we assume is ours is actually considered not ours.

Most countries—I think one exception is Germany—do not recognize all of Jerusalem as Israel’s, and so do not recognize Israel’s right to build wherever it wants there.  Most countries say they will not recognize any final boundaries in Jerusalem until they are determined by agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  That’s why Jerusalem is always mentioned as being part of “final status” talks.

By the way, even among Jews (even?  especially!) the indivisibility of Jerusalem as a political entity is controversial.  One of the most fascinating essays you’ll read on this was written by an Orthodox rabbi, Yosef Kanefsky, who contra to the position of his movement, accepts the idea of a divided Jewish capital.

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March 11, 2010 | 12:58 pm

Howard Zinn: Israel was a “Mistake.”

Posted by Rob Eshman

The March/April 2010 issue of Moment magazine features a final interview with Howard Zinn, the counter-historian whose People’s History of the United States has become a bible of the campus Left.

Zinn died last January at the age of 87 in Santa Monica.  As we reported then:

Howard Zinn, an American Jewish historian who wrote the “People’s History of the United States,” has died.

Zinn, whose best-seller helped establish him as a central figure of the American left, died of a heart attack Wednesday in California. He was 87.

Along with another Boston-based American Jewish professor, Noam Chomsky, Zinn was a leading left-wing intellectual. His “People’s History,” published in 1980, accused Christopher Columbus of genocide while venerating labor leaders and war opponents.

“He’s made an amazing contribution to American intellectual and moral culture,” Chomsky said, according to the Boston Globe. “He’s changed the conscience of America in a highly constructive way. I really can’t think of anyone I can compare him to in this respect.”

“People’s History” inspired a documentary in 2009 on the History Channel titled “The People Speak.” Zinn narrated the documentary, which highlighted those who spoke up for social change.

Zinn, a New York City native and the son of Jewish immigrants, wrote several books and three plays. His last essay, about President Obama’s first year in office, was published last week in The Nation.

He flew missions throughout Europe during World War II.

I’ve never read an extensive interview with Zinn about his Jewishness and his views on Israel, and writer Jeremy Gillick does an excellent job drawing him out, if not exactly challenging him.

The opening questions give Zinn a chance to reflect on his family, his upbringing in a Yiddish-speaking home, and his parents’ lack of strong political views:

What was your Jewish upbringing like?
My parents were not very religious. They observed the big holidays—Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover—and they kept a kosher household. They spoke Yiddish to one another and English to us, but there was enough Yiddish spoken so that even now I can pretty much understand it. I went to Hebrew school to study for my bar mitzvah and endured it, unenthusiastically. When my bar mitzvah was over, that was the end of my religious activity.

Was your family political?
Not at all. My parents were working people concentrating on survival. The only extent to which they were political is that they were aware about Hitler, Nazism and anti-Semitism, and Roosevelt and the New Deal, since poor people understood that Roosevelt was helping them in some way. Sometimes people ask me how my Jewishness has affected my radical political beliefs, and I say “slightly.” My radical political beliefs come from many sources. But you can’t say being a Jew has absolutely no effect on your thinking.

Did you ever experience anti-Semitism?
I knew anti-Semitism existed and that sometimes people looked upon Jews in a different way, but I never experienced anything overt. I suppose a lot of it had to do with living in a Jewish neighborhood. Before I went into the military I spent three years working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where I was a little more aware of being Jewish because the shipbuilding industry had few Jews. It wasn’t like the garment industry. There was not overt anti-Semitism, but I knew that the German guy I worked with was conscious of the fact that I was Jewish.

Then Zinn answers questions about Israel itself, which he calls, in retrospect, a mistake.

How did you react to Israel’s creation in 1948?
I didn’t know a lot about it, but I remember speaking at some gathering to celebrate its founding. I wasn’t a Zionist. I just vaguely knew that a Jewish state was being created and that seemed like a good thing. I had no idea that the Jews were coming into an area occupied by Palestinians.

Were you critical of Israel before 1967?
Before 1967 Israel did not loom large in my consciousness. I was aware that there was a war between Israel and the Arab states in 1956, but it really wasn’t until 1967 and the taking of the occupied territories that I realized this was a serious problem. I remember reading I.F. Stone, who was very concerned with Israel.

How do you discuss Israel and Palestine with Jews who might be resistant to claims that Israel bears some responsibility for the conflict?
As always in very complicated issues where emotions come to the fore quickly, I try to first acknowledge the other party’s feelings. In the case of Israel I try to say, yes, I understand your sympathy for a Jewish state, and I understand that you become angry when rockets fall [in Sderot] or when a suicide bomber takes needless life. But that has to be seen in proportion. I try to appeal to the experience of Jews, the experience of the Holocaust, by saying, if it’s never again, it’s not just never again for Jews, it’s never again for anybody. I also try to present facts that are hard to put aside. Rockets from Gaza killed three Israelis; Israelis retaliated with an enormous bombardment that killed 1,000 people. You can’t simply write that off or say, well, they’re morally equivalent or it was bad on both sides. Or the Lebanese send rockets into Israel, killing a number of people, and the Israelis invade Lebanon in 1982 and there are 14,000 civilian casualties. These are horrors inflicted by a Jewish state. As a Jew I feel ashamed when I read these things…I [also] try to appeal to what I think are the best legacies of the Jewish people—people like Albert Einstein and Martin Buber, who cannot be simply written off, because they’re Jewish heroes. And these are people who were critical of Israel and sympathetic to Palestinians.

Do you think that Zionism was a mistake?
I think the Jewish State was a mistake, yes. Obviously, it’s too late to go back. It was a mistake to drive the Indians off the American continent, but it’s too late to give it back. At the time, I thought creating Israel was a good thing, but in retrospect, it was probably the worst thing that the Jews could have done. What they did was join the nationalistic frenzy, they became privy to all of the evils that nationalism creates and became very much like the United States—very aggressive, violent and bigoted. When Jews were without a state they were internationalists and they contributed to whatever culture they were part of and produced great things. Jews were known as kindly, talented people. Now, I think, Israel is contributing to anti-Semitism. So I think it was a big mistake.

What’s interesting is that for all his radical and debatable analysis—ignoring a hundred years of PRE-war Zionism and settlement, for instance—Zinn arrives at a conclusion that Netanyahu and most mainstream Zionists and Palestinians putatively share—a two state solution. 

What sort of solution do you want to see when it comes to the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Ideally, there should be a secular state in which Arabs and Jews live together as equals. There are countries around the world where different ethnic groups live side by side. But that is very difficult and therefore the two-state solution seems like the most practical thing, especially since both Jews and Palestinians seem to favor it. It’s odd: All these people on both sides want a two-state solution, but it can’t come into being. The basic problem is the fanaticism of people like Benjamin Netanyahu and people who don’t want to give up the occupied territories. The settlements also pose a real problem. But it’s a problem that’s solvable. It was solved in the agreement with Egypt [when the settlers were removed from Sinai]. This time it’s more serious, but there are ways in which settlers can be compensated or assured of their rights in a Palestinian state as a quid pro quo for the rights of Arabs in the Jewish state.

 
This differs from the one-state solution many on the Left are now promoting, and shows an acceptance of Israel’s legitimacy that many on the Left now refuse to acknowledge.

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March 10, 2010 | 3:09 pm

The Passing of Corey Haim

Posted by JewishJournal.com

A young Corey Haim

The Passing of Corey Haim:

Haim was reported to be in two films scheduled for a 2010 release: The Pick Up and SAD (Standard American Diet).  There is a video of his interview just last month here on ETONLINE.com.

With his death, apparently from a drug overdose, reported this morning, we honor him with a list of his career highlights:

Culled from his Wikipedia page.

Born December 1971 in Toronto, Canada

-  1984:  Haim made his first cinematic appearance in the feature film, Firstborn, which starred Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr.

-  1985: Silver Bullet, playing a paraplegic boy alongside Gary Busey.

-  1986:  major break, billed as the main star alongside Kerri Green, Charlie Sheen, and Winona Ryder in the popular movie Lucas

- 1987, Haim had a featured role in Joel Schumacher’s vampire film The Lost Boys, alongside Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland.

-  1990s:  Haim’s first film after the Me, Myself and I documentary was The Dream Machine, a direct-to-video film released in 1990. Haim co-starred with Patricia Arquette in Prayer of the Rollerboys. He continued starring in direct-to-video films, including Blown Away,[9] The Double 0 Kid and Oh, What a Night.

-  On December 4, 2006, Haim began taping an improv/reality show with Feldman titled The Two Coreys. The show premiered on the A&E Network on July 29, 2007. Haim and Feldman signed on for a second season of the show, which aired starting June 22, 2008.

-  February 2008, filming resumed in Vancouver for Lost Boys: The Tribe. Haim reversed his previous decision to not participate in the film, but did not appear on-screen until the closing credits.

-  2008:  Haim joined the cast of Shark City, which filmed in Toronto with Vivica Fox, Carlo Rota, David Phillips, and Jefferson Brown, and premiered in 2009

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March 9, 2010 | 5:01 pm

Catalog Drops a Major Shin

Posted by aa No Author

While flipping through American Jewish University’s new continuing education catalog over dinner the yoga page caught my eye. Yoga practitioners have my utmost respect, and I’m in awe of instructors who find parallels between the Judaic and yogic to help Jewish students explore a deeper connect to their faith through spiritual movement.

The catalog has run the same photo with the Kosher Yoga class listing for a while now—a woman does the splits, her arms thrust forward, turning her body into a “shin,” with the letter directly behind her as a reference. But this time I noticed a troubling detail about the photo: the graphic designer left zero space between the letter and the woman.

I flipped the catalog around to show my wife: “Is it just me or is she dropping a shin?”

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March 9, 2010 | 4:36 pm

Yentabytes and Shiksabytes

Posted by aa No Author

This is from Vanity Fair, written by David Friend:

“One petabyte is equivalent to million gigabytes. A zettabyte is a million petabytes. A yottabyte is a thousand zettabytes.”
—The New York Times, March 2, 2010

Linguists who study changes in Internet-related terminology have discovered an increasing use of ever-more-bizarre and sometimes Yiddish-sounding phrases when it comes to characterizing large quantities of digital information. As a service to Web users, VF Daily offers this handy glossary of new terms:

Yentabyte: a thousand hectoring emails

Centayentabyte: a million yentabytes

Placentabyte: an overbearing mother snooping around her child’s Facebook account

Shiksabyte: the Sports Illustrated Bathing Suit Issue online photo archives

Read the full article at http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/03/yentabytes-and-shiksabytes.html.

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March 8, 2010 | 3:43 pm

Ben Stiller’s Throws Jewish Into his Bluish

Posted by Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Somewhere between the hisses and tongue clicks, Ben Stiller threw some Hebrew into his Avatar spoof at last night’s academy awards when he presented the award for Best Makeup. Decked out in Na’vi blue-face and cat eyes, complete with tail and braids, Stiller seemed to offer a Seder preview.

“Pesach,” he hissed, then trilled and elongated his rrrs in “borei perrrrrri” before busting out with “hagafen.”

“Pesach” is Hebrew for Passover, and “borei peri hagafen” blesses the fruit of the vine in the blessing over wine.

Stiller followed his Na’vi tirade by saying, “that means, ‘this seemed like a better idea in rehearsal.’ It was between this and the Nazi uniform, but the show seemed a little Hitler heavy,” he said, referring to the nominations for WW II fantasy movie “Inglorious Basterds.”

Maybe Stiller, who is Jewish and often plays Jews, was channeling a prophetic impulse in his Na’vi rant? (Get it? Na’vi is Hebrew for prophet?)

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March 3, 2010 | 3:32 pm

Harman Declines Jewish Journal Debate Invite

Posted by Rob Eshman

In my column of January 12, I offered to moderate a debate spopnsored by The Jewish Journal on Middle East issues between Rep. Jane Harman and Marcy Winograd, who is challenging Harman for the 36th Congressional seat.  Winograd, the challenger, quickly accepted. It’s taken a while to get a response from Harman, but yesterday her chief of staff e-mailed me a firm but polite no.

Hi Rob—thank you for your message and your invitation.  However, Congresswoman Harman declines the kind offer and believes her views on Israel are very clear.  John H.

Too bad, we even had a venue: Rabbi Dan Shevitz of Temple Mishkon Tephilo had offered his 800-seat sanctuary gratis.

I understand why Harman, who beat Winograd in the last race has little to gain from exposing herself to her opponent.  But my reason for holding the debate had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the state of The State of Israel and the American Left. Both Harman and Winograd are Democrats.  Harman represents a broad concensus view for a two state solution to the Israeli Palestinian issue, and strong American political and financial support for Israel. Winograd made clear in a speech that she supports a one-state solution and a deep reconsideration of America’s stand vis a vis Israel.  This divide is a crucial one among Democrats on the Left, Far Left and Center, and the more open and intelligent debate on it, the better.  That’s my point of view.  Clearly, it’s not Harman’s.

Too bad.

Here’s what I wrote in my column:

One Shabbat morning several years ago, Dan Shevitz, one of my two favorite Venice rabbis, was walking down Abbot Kinney Boulevard toward his synagogue, Mishkon Tephilo. He came to a narrow stretch of sidewalk in front of Abbot’s Habit, and stopped, not wanting to walk over a large dog standing guard beside its owner.

“Pardon me,” he said. “I just want to get by. Do you mind moving your dog?”

The owner looked up at him in a post-pot, pre-caffeine haze. “Hey, it’s Venice man,” he said. “Step around it.”

If the Chicago Rule, per David Mamet, is, “They send one of your guys to the hospital, you send one of theirs to the morgue,” the Venice Rule is, “Step around it.”

Last week, the race for California’s 36th Congressional District seat, which includes that stretch of crippled nirvana called Venice, tested the Venice Rule. Incumbent Congresswoman Jane Harman decided to go after challenger Marcy Winograd — really go after her. The primary isn’t until June, but what brought the candidates swinging out of their corners was Israel.

On Harman’s behalf, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) recently sent a letter attacking Winograd’s stand on Israel to Jewish supporters on a list created by the Harman campaign. Waxman quoted liberally from a speech Winograd delivered in February 2008 at the Friends of Sabeel Conference at All Saints Church in Pasadena. In that speech, Winograd said she not only opposes a two-state solution, she supports the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

“Not only do I think a two-state solution is unrealistic,” Winograd said, “but also fundamentally wrong, because it only reinforces heightened nationalism.  You cannot establish a democracy in a state founded on the institutionalized superiority or exclusivity of one of [sic] religion, ethnicity or culture.  I do not support the notion of an Islamic state or a Christian state any more than I support a Jewish state” (for the full text, visit this column at jewishjournal.com).

Winograd went on to accuse Israel of “crimes against humanity,” “institutional racism” and “extermination.”

Waxman’s response was unequivocal. “Ms. Winograd’s views on Israel I find repugnant in the extreme,” he wrote. “Ms. Winograd is far, far outside the bipartisan mainstream of views that has long insisted that U.S. policy be based upon rock-solid support for our only democratic ally in the Middle East.

“In Marcy Winograd’s foreign policy, Israel would cease to exist. In Marcy Winograd’s vision, Jews would be at the mercy of those who do not respect democracy or human rights.”

Waxman’s fundraising letter exploded on the Internet like those Hamas rockets did in Ashkelon last week.

Winograd’s supporters, among them Huffington Post columnist Linda Milazzo, accused Waxman of picking an issue of little concern to the 36th’s constituents to gloss over Harman’s positions on issues that matter more: health care, civil liberties, jobs.

“It’s high time that [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman, Waxman and Harman, who’ve been elected to serve this nation, direct their passions toward the best interests of America, and not the interests of Israel,” Milazzo wrote — forgetting Waxman was often the lone voice against Bush-era secrecy, and the architect of landmark legislation on issues ranging from clean water to open government.

Judging by Milazzo’s post and the comments of other bloggers, this controversy will be a big issue in a campaign taking place more than 7,500 miles from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. The district is solidly Democratic — it’s Venice, man — so it’s a given that whoever wins the primary will likely go to Congress. What isn’t a given is how Democrats will finally face their differences over Israel.

This is not a question of “He said/She said/She said.” Waxman’s, Harman’s and Winograd’s positions on Israel each could not be clearer. Waxman and Harman represent the Jewish, Israeli, American and Palestinian consensus for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That’s right: An April 2009 poll commissioned by the Israeli-Palestinian peace group OneVoice found that 74 percent of Palestinians and 78 percent of Israelis were willing to accept a two-state solution.

Meanwhile, many on the left-of-left see America’s support for Israel, and the struggle for a negotiated solution, as part of some colonialist policy that props up a “racist” Israel at the behest of a juggernaut lobby. The danger of such a worldview — beyond the threat it poses to Israel — is that it blinds its believers to the real causes of Islamic extremism and the real reasons much of the Muslim world is blanketed in political oppression and economic backwardness. That blindness endangers all Americans, even Venetians.

Progressives who like Winograd’s stands on many other issues — and there are many to like — will be forced to choose how far they’ll follow her into Blame-Israel-First Land.

“On most issues, we agree with Marcy, who has been a stalwart in the Westside Progessive Democratic Party,” Venice residents Tom Laichas and Donna Malamud e-mailed me after finding Winograd’s Sabeel speech. “And we have since the Iraq War found Jane Harman on what, for us, is the wrong side of a lot of issues. But over the past several years, we’ve seen the idea of a binational unitary state gain even more ground on the left. We can’t vote for someone who will give the idea greater legitimacy.”

I invite Winograd and Harman to discuss this issue in a public forum hosted by The Jewish Journal at a mutually convenient date. Israel, it seems, is a fight the left can no longer just step around.

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