November 26, 2007 | 8:45 pm

Hook-nosed, bloodstained Jews out to trick peaceful Arabs at Annapolis summit

Posted by JewishJournal.com

OK, Olmert says it’s no big deal the Saudis and their pals won’t ‘shake hands’ with the Jews at the conference;  at least they won’t be trotting out shopworn stereotypes about conniving Jews hoodwinking the Arab world and the international community, right?

Or will they?

Yes they will, according to this batch of editorial cartoons from Mideast newspapers compiled by the Anti-Defamation League.

Says the ADL:

These caricatures have a basic theme: that while Israel may be attending the Annapolis meeting, Israel has no intention of making peace.  Rather, these caricatures depict Israel as using the conference in Annapolis to manipulate the Arab world and the international community to further its own belligerent agenda.  The caricatures appeared in newspapers in countries participating in the Annapolis conference, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman and Jordan, and in papers from Iran and those controlled by Hamas who are opposed to Arab-Israeli reconciliation.

If you love me, then thank you, if you hate me, then . . . . (Lady Sovereign)

November 26, 2007 | 12:37 am

Dateline Pakistan: First they came for the reporters

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Meanwhile, back in Pakistan, the other old boss is back in town. 

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned from exile Sunday to an ecstatic welcome from thousands of supporters.

And in Karachi, they’re beating reporters, arresting them, releasing them, banning them.  approving them with the manic energy of paranoid speed freaks or a military/police system out of control, take your pick.

And this personal update from a friend, a Pakistani journalist who spent at week here at JewishJournal.com as a Daniel Pearl Fellow.

Shahid Shah’s blog, has the latest:

45 more journalists arrested in Pakistan

Posted by Shahid Shah at 5:44 PM

Karachi police released the all journalists they arrested yesterday 20 November during a peaceful protest outside the Karachi Press Club, however, around 45 more journalists have been arrested in Pakistan.

Today, when journalists of Quetta, Faisalabad, Peshawar and other cities of the country took out processions in solidarity with the journalists of Karachi, the police unleashed their sticks on them. Journalists in Peshawar and Faisalabad were severely beaten up. Police made around 20 arrests in Peshawar and 25 in Quetta.

In Karachi, more than 500 journalists gathered inside the Karachi Press Club and condemned police action of Tuesday. They vowed to continue their struggle till withdrawal of PEMRA (Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) Ordinance and revival of constitution.

On the other hand, the government allowed ARY Oneworld on the cable network in the country, whereas, Geo News and all other three TV channels of three group remained off air.

This is worrisome, to say the least. 

Reporters aren’t Musharraf’s problem. 

The Taliban and Islamists are his problem.

Secular democracy is the solution.

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November 23, 2007 | 2:54 pm

Chicago’s cops have big troubles, but that doesn’t mean they can’t make videos about Jews

Posted by JewishJournal.com

The problems of the Chicago Police Department are well-known— a history of brutality and corruption and problems at the top—but, hey, that doesn’t mean they can’t make educational videos!

This one—entitled ‘Gaining A Better Understanding of Judaism Educational Video’—was uploaded to YouTube with the following description:

Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Assistance. Diversity Series: Religions, Cultures and Communities (NCJ 212664). The Chicago Police Department. Producer: Chicago Police Department. usdoj.gov. Creative Commons license: Public Domain.

I guess it’s better than racially profiling Muslim neighborhoods, like the LAPD proposed, but it raises a few questions:

1. Are Chicago Jews so exotic they need a National Geographic travelog about their obscure customs?
2. Are Chicago cops so uneducated about the world around them that they need a video like this?
3. Who else got the special Chicago treatment; the Police Chaplain narrator mentions a total of three—Muslims? Sikhs? Hindus? Mormons?  What are they like?

On the other hand, maybe it was a good idea, especially after cops questioned a man davening with tefillin on a train to Chicago because they thought he might have been wearing an explosive device on his head.

Update:  The rest of these USDOJ-funded videos can be found here, covering the mysterious worlds of Sikhs, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and the Eastern Orthodox. 

I love the Eastern Orthodox chanting.  Puts the Gregorians to shame! 

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November 22, 2007 | 12:51 am

Rock the vote music video, Jordanian style

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Los Angeles Times blogger Borzou Daragahi in Beirut found this fascinating YouTube hiphop video urging young Jordanians to vote in Tuesday’s elections:

Some say the election results were OK, too, with solid voter turnout (although not great) and a bigger majority for the King Abdullah-backed moderates. Others were disappointed about the lack of successful women candidates.

Cool video, to be sure, but what strikes me is that it looks so much like American hiphop videos—the gangsta baggy outfits, the poses, the gestures, even the spray-painted walls look like Los Angeles homies I see every day. 

American music pwns the world.  This is what the Islamists hate.  And, neener, neener, they lost the election.

I don’t know what what the lyrics mean, but in this case,
the medium is the message:

Jordan, like Soylent Green, is made of people, maybe even people . . . just like us.

Contrast and compare with this Israeli hiphop video by rappers Gad Elbaz and Alon de Loco:

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November 19, 2007 | 3:12 pm

FBI says hate crimes are up, but not so much

Posted by JewishJournal.com

From the Federal Bureau of Investigation:

Last Tuesday, a 22-year-old white supremacist named Gabriel Laskey was sentenced for his role in a hateful attack on Temple Beth Israel, a Jewish synagogue in Eugene, Oregon.

A few years earlier, Laskey, his brother Jacob, and two other men had thrown rocks etched with swastikas through the stained glass windows of the temple, right in the middle of religious services. You can just imagine how the peaceful worshippers felt.

It’s just one recent example of a hate crime—traditional offenses like vandalism, arson, or even murder motivated by various forms of prejudice that not only impact individuals and families but often escalate fear and tension across communities. . . .

Here’s an overview of the findings…and you can delve into the full report for many more details:

Incidents and Offenses:  A total of 7,722 incidents and 9,080 offenses were reported by participating agencies in 2006.

Offense Type:  Nationwide, 5,449 offenses were classified as crimes against persons, with intimidation (46 percent) and simple assaults (31.9 percent) accounting for most crimes. There were three murders during the year. Of the 3,593 crimes against property, the overwhelming majority (81 percent) were acts of vandalism or destruction.

Offenders:  Of the 7,330 known offenders, 58.6 percent were white and 20.6 percent were black.

Victims:  A total of 9,652 victims were identified. More than half—52.0 percent—were targeted because of their race.

Locations:  Most incidents, 31 percent, took place near or at homes and residences. Another 18 percent occurred on highways or streets.

I don’t know whether to feel relieved that the increase was so small or horrified that the rate remains high.

Blacks are still the top targets, Jews second, and gay men third, according to the FBI’s numbers, available as HTML and/or Excel.  Heh.

What kind of person throws rocks at a shul or hangs nooses on a black family’s tree?  No one I know, that’s for sure.  No one I think I know, anyhow.

It’s probably those same folks you see on Cops.

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November 15, 2007 | 9:51 pm

Don’t click on this story about a ‘circumcision accident’

Posted by JewishJournal.com

Really, you can try and find out what’s behind that provocative headline on our home page nifty JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) Java [tm] news ticker, but why would you?

It’s much better if you make up your own story.

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November 15, 2007 | 8:26 pm

¡Hasta la lingua! Goodbye, tongue! Hello, pastrami!

Posted by The Web Guy

From the BBC:

An indigenous language in southern Mexico is in danger of disappearing because its last two speakers have stopped talking to one another.

Of course, this begs the question “If two Jews means three opinions, how many languages do two Jews speak?”

OK.  Maybe not ‘of course,’ but with the writers on strike, it’s hard to get a good segue in this town!

At The Jewish Journal, people speak English, Hebrew, and Farsi;  sometimes the odd Yiddish or Yinglish word sneaks in.

I’d post some more—I’m fascinated with words—but I’m not speaking with you anymore.

Instead, let’s all sing along to the only song I know that mentions pastrami—the klezmer classic ‘Rumania, Rumania’

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November 14, 2007 | 12:21 am

Times are a-changin’, Mobius tells Jewish establishment

Posted by JewishJournal.com

One of the inspirations for my work here at JewishJournal.com was a guy I at first knew only from his blog.

He called himself ‘Mobius,’ and founded the Jewschool blog which talked about being Jewish in the 21st century in a way I could relate to, and, arguably, started the JBlog onslaught online.

Passionate, smart, and impatient,  Mobius was recently plucked from blogistan and hired as The Web Guy at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (The Al-Jazeera of the Jewish International Media Conspiracy, Inc.).

Mobius—real name Dan Sieradski—is in Nashville for this year’s General Assembly of The United Jewish Communities. The 2006 ‘GA.’ was a real snoozer, according to the coverage we ran last year.

He blogged about the GA earlier this week (pointing out some of the rampant BS in the air) and spoke to the part of the august assemblage today, reinforcing Stanley Gold’s insistence that the Federation system as we know it is largely irrelevant.

Mobius used the ‘web as empowering agent’ model to illustrate one way to the future. The WWW is two-way conduit, and the future lies in helping people connect and work together, on their own ideas, on their own initiatives, on and offline. 

(I like how he was described in the news story.  I wonder how many editorial hours were were spent on the wording!)

. . . Closing the plenary was JTA’s director of digital media, Dan Sieradski, a Jewish Web maven. Known outside JTA as Mobius, the Orthodox Anarchist, Sieradski started the influential and iconoclastic blog Jewschool, and is prone to post-Zionist outbursts.

The speakers offered some critical advice. Sieradski scolded the established Jewish community as too parochial in its funding, and he called grant makers “disconnected” and “soul crushing.”

The next big Jewish idea, in fact, “has probably already come and gone, and been shot down by no less than a dozen Jewish grant-making organizations,” he said. “And because the innovator will have no resources at his or her disposal with which to continue his project, he will probably walk away from it crushed and discouraged. And a revolutionary idea that could have transformed American Jewry forever will never come to be.”

Still, Sieradski envisioned a future federation system much like the one described by Kanfer, in which the federation is not the seed bearer for new Jewish initiatives but the system that nurtures those ideas by accepting and funding them.

The full article is here.

Anyhow, right on, Mobius, and let’s go, Stanley Gold.  Enabling and empowering are the most important parts of your job. 

Chabad’s Bob Zimmerman said it in 1963, too:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

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