March 18, 2008 | 9:46 am

Dalai Lama threatens to resign if violence continues

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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From exile in India this morning, the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, threatened to step down if violent protests continued.

He said he remained committed to only nonviolent agitation and greater autonomy for Tibetans, not independence. He condemned the burning of Chinese flags and attacks on Chinese property and called violence “suicidal” for the Tibetan cause.

In a clear effort to quickly seize the higher moral ground and at the same time poke at China’s important aspirations, he complimented Beijing for having met three out of four conditions to be a “superpower” — he acknowledged it has the world’s largest population, military prowess, and a fast-developing economy.

“Fourth, moral authority, that’s lacking,” he said, and for the second time in two days he accused Chinese officials of a “rule of terror” in Tibet, the formerly Himalayan kingdom he fled for exile in India 49 years ago.

The Dalai Lama’s remarks to reporters on Tuesday, here in the seat of the Tibetan exile movement, also revealed thathe has been unnerved by the violence across the border in Tibet and by the increasingly radical calls from Tibetan exiles in this country.

The 72-year-old spiritual leader of Lama Buddhism said he would step down from his political post if things “get out of control.”

March 17, 2008 | 2:15 pm

Israel working on PR and marketing

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember that Holy Land hotties spread from last June? Well, AdWeek reports that those women of the Israel Defense Forces was “part of a larger effort to give a new face to the nation” as the Jewish state prepares to celebrate it’s 60th anniversary this May. Visiting Israel has long been the charge given to all good Zionists. But places like Tel Aviv also cater to Mediterranean and European tourists. I guess Israel is looking to capitalize on that.

Interestingly, tourist numbers in Israel were already improving before some of the ministries’ latest efforts were put into place. Since a near-decimation of its tourism industry earlier this decade, a result of ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip and stalled peace processes with its Palestinian neighbors, the country has been attracting an increasing number of tourists. Last year, a record 542,000 Americans visited the country—more than double the figure in 2002 during the height of the last intifada. But Israeli government agencies are keen to grow these numbers—and public favor—even further. ...

Israel’s Ministry of Tourism has been ramping up the PR, as well. It worked with Sports Illustrated to have the magazine’s 2008 annual swimsuit issue photographed in the Mediterranean resort town of Ceseara and on the Dead Sea coast, and worked as well with French Vogue, which dedicated two articles to Israel as a lifestyle and culture destinations in its February 2008 issue.

The tourism ministry also has been investing in more traditional marketing efforts, mostly in Europe and the U.S. For TV, Communications Plus re-cut a 30-second spot from its “Israel—you’ll love us” campaign, which ran in December. The spot, “60th Anniversary,” features a new logo—a boy flying the Israeli flag as a kite—and contrasts the youth of the nation against the country’s ancient history.

Such ads, says the Media Kitchen’s Lowenthal, “help redirect the conversation, while reaching specific target groups.”

Reaching new target groups was certainly the intent behind the most ambitious project undertaken by Israel this spring: a special 40-page supplement in British Conde Nast Traveller’s April 2008 issue dedicated solely to Israel and its 60th anniversary. Produced in conjunction with the London office of Israel’s Ministry of Tourism and poly-bagged to 85,000 magazines, the one-off supplement is “intended to expose Israel as a normal country to travelers beyond the ‘ethnic markets’ of Jews and Christian pilgrims,” explains Uzi Gafni, director of the Israel Tourist Board in London.

Adds Roberto D’Andria, cd of Bear Design in London, which develops all of Israel’s U.K. TV, print and shelter advertising: “It also provides Israel with a sense of credibility through brand association. Being linked with Conde Nast automatically gives Israel a sense of fashionability and exclusivity.”

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March 17, 2008 | 10:43 am

Luther still not on pope’s good side

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Was it rumor, innuendo, fabrication or simply sloppy journalism that laid the groundwork for the apparently erroneous article last week that reported Pope Benedict XVI was about to make nice with the long-dead troublemaker Martin Luther? Here’s what seems to have happened.

It all appears to have started on March 2, when ApCom, an Italian news agency, ran a three paragraph article, here in Italian , merely saying that the pope and some of his former PhD students (the so-called Ratzinger- Schlerkreis), would discuss Luther during their yearly summer encounter in August at the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo, south of Rome.

APcom, said the seminar would discuss whether Luther “wanted a rupture … or intended to reform the Church but without traumas”.

On March 5, two days after the APcom report, the Turin newspaper La Stampa ran a story with the headline “Ratzinger reforms Luther. ‘He had many Catholic ideas. The theologian pope summons his students for a seminar of study on the heretic.”The article, seen here in Italian,Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, as saying the choice of topics was meant “to favour a climate of encounter with Protestants.”

The only problem? It’s a minor one in journalism, but the story’s not true.

The day after the article in La Stampa, the Times of London reported that “Pope BenedictXVI is set to rehabilitate Martin Luther, arguing that he did not intend to split Christianity, but only to purge the church of corrupt practices.”

From there, the story took off,was repeatedby some news organisations around the world, was the buzz on the blogs, and even prompted an editorial critical of the pope by the Financial Times, called “Papal Indulgence - Cosmetic changes cannot hide Benedict’s dogmatism”.

The Vatican itself finally weighed in on March 8, when Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s chief spokesman, told the Italian news agency Ansa, that the Financial Times editorial was “totally without foundation because no rehabilitation of Luther is foreseen.

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March 14, 2008 | 4:30 pm

‘Jewno’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Yes, that really is J.K. Simmons. No, this is not as funny as the actual “Juno.” And, man, am I glad they cast Ellen Page over this girl.

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March 14, 2008 | 4:08 pm

State: Global anti-Semitism rising

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rising global anti-Semitism has been an ongoing issue. Seriously. I could link to much more. Yesterday the State Department gave Congress a report on the matter.

It says that although Nazism and fascism are rejected by the West “and beyond,” blatant forms of anti-Semitism are “embraced and employed by the extreme fringe.”

“Traditional forms of anti-Semitism persist and can be found across the globe. Classic anti-Semitic screeds, such as ‘The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’ and ‘Mein Kampf’ remain commonplace.

“Jews continue to be accused of blood libel, dual loyalty, and undue influence on government policy and the media, and the symbols and images associated with age-old forms of anti-Semitism endure.”

New forms of anti-Semitism are reflected in rhetoric that compares Israel to the Nazis and attributes “Israel’s perceived faults to its Jewish character.”

This kind of anti-Semitism, the report says, “is common throughout the Middle East and in Muslim communities in Europe, but it is not confined to these populations.”

In fact, such vitriolic rhetoric can be found at UC Irvine, on LA college campuses and even outside the Israeli consulate.

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March 14, 2008 | 3:20 pm

McCain supporter draws more bad press

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A megachurch pastor and supporter of John McCain has called on Christians to wage “war” against the “false religion” of Islam. Liberals are calling on the presidential candidate to distance himself from an important ally. And guess what: It’s not John Hagee.

Mother Jones takes on the Rev. Rod Parsley.

Parsley is not shy about his desire to obliterate Islam. In Silent No More, he notes—approvingly—that Christopher Columbus shared the same goal: “It was to defeat Islam, among other dreams, that Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World in 1492…Columbus dreamed of defeating the armies of Islam with the armies of Europe made mighty by the wealth of the New World. It was this dream that, in part, began America.” He urges his readers to realize that a confrontation between Christianity and Islam is unavoidable: “We find now we have no choice. The time has come.” And he has bad news: “We may already be losing the battle. As I scan the world, I find that Islam is responsible for more pain, more bloodshed, and more devastation than nearly any other force on earth at this moment.”

Parsley claims that Islam is an “anti-Christ religion” predicated on “deception.” The Muslim prophet Muhammad, he writes, “received revelations from demons and not from the true God.” And he emphasizes this point: “Allah was a demon spirit.” Parsley does not differentiate between violent Islamic extremists and other followers of the religion:

There are some, of course, who will say that the violence I cite is the exception and not the rule. I beg to differ. I will counter, respectfully, that what some call “extremists” are instead mainstream believers who are drawing from the well at the very heart of Islam.

The spirit of Islam, he maintains, is one of hostility. He asserts that the religion “inspired” the 9/11 attacks. He bemoans the fact that in the years after 9/11, 34,000 Americans “have become Muslim” and that there are “some 1,209 mosques” in America. Islam, he declares, is a “faith that fully intends to conquer the world” through violence. The United States, he insists, “has historically understood herself as a bastion against Islam,” but “history is crashing in upon us.”

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March 14, 2008 | 12:02 pm

He doesn’t believe in atheists

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In light of his new book, “I Don’t Believe in Atheists,” Salon spoke with journalist Chris Hedges, who shares a common frustration with The New Atheists.

While speaking out against the Christian fundamentalist movement and its political agenda, Hedges noticed another group—this one on the left—conspicuously allied with the neocons on the subject of America’s role in world politics. The New Atheists, as they have been called, include Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and bestselling author and journalist Christopher Hitchens—outspoken secularists who depict religious structures and the belief in God as backward and anti-democratic.

Though Hedges, a Harvard seminary graduate and the son of a Presbyterian minister, considers himself a religious man, his quarrel with the New Atheists goes beyond theological concerns. In “I Don’t Believe in Atheists,” he accuses Hitchens and the others of preaching a fundamentalism as dangerous as the religious fundamentalist belief systems they attack. Strange bedfellows indeed—according to Hedges, the New Atheists and the Christian right pose the greatest threat facing American democratic society today.

Hedges spoke to Salon by phone from his home in New Jersey.

You say that “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” is a product of confrontations you had with Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. How did those debates inspire the book?

In May of 2007 I went to L.A. to debate Sam Harris, and then two days later I went to San Francisco to debate Christopher Hitchens. Up until that point, I hadn’t paid much attention to the work of the New Atheists. After reading what they had written and walking away from these debates, I was appalled at how what they had done for the secular left was to embrace the same kind of bigotry and chauvinism and intolerance that marks the radical Christian right. I found that in many ways they were little more than secular fundamentalists.

In December, I interviewed Sam Harris for UCLA Magazine about some graduate research he had done on belief and the brain. He said his hope was that eventually belief in God will carry the same social stigma as, say, being a racist, that it will “be embarrassing for somebody to know something he obviously does not know.”

“You can be called a fundamentalist atheist. When you unpack the statments, they are entirely vacuous,” he told me. “You don’t have to presume anything on insufficient evidence to reject somebody’‘s claims about magic books. We cannot prove the absence of Zeus from this universe. And the burden has never been on us to prove the absence of Zeus.

“We have done that with 1,000s and 1,000s of “dead gods” who are no longer a part of religious mythology. We don’t apply the same scrutiny to the God of Abraham, even though he has exactly the same status, which is not to say he doesn’t have value as literature or philosophical thought.”

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March 13, 2008 | 11:19 am

‘The Gaza Bombshell’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Americans are, by now, well aware of the foreign-policy failings of President George W. Bush. But now he’s getting ready to leave office and finally he seems awake to Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He wants to leave a legacy, we’ve been told about his impetus for the Annapolis conference and his interest in seeing peace achieved in the next 10 months. (There hasn’t been peace regarding Jerusalem in 2,000 years and he’s going to fix it in a year?)

Well, Vanity Fair‘s David Rose reports that there is a more layered context to Bush’s interest in the conflict and, believe it or not, his previous diddling only made the situation worse.

In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”

The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in the way of this goal: Hamas’s complete control of Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, where it seized power in a bloody coup d’état in June 2007. Almost every day, militants fire rockets from Gaza into neighboring Israeli towns, and President Abbas is powerless to stop them. His authority is limited to the West Bank.

It’s “a tough situation,” Bush admitted. “I don’t know whether you can solve it in a year or not.” What Bush neglected to mention was his own role in creating this mess.

According to [Fatah strongman Muhammad] Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas—whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea—won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

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March 13, 2008 | 10:45 am

March Madness began in January

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m skipping work today for the Pac-10 tournament. So, to remind you how awesome college basketball is, enjoy this display of unreal athleticism, also known as The Dunk of the Year by UCLA’s Clutch Westbrook.

On a religious note, there is a short story about UCLA assistant Scott Garson in this week’s Jewish Journal and Coach Ben Howland attends my church.

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March 12, 2008 | 5:56 pm

Hagee came, he didn’t conquer, but he wasn’t booed

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

John Hagee spoke in Los Angeles last night, and my colleague, Danielle Berrin, reports that, as far as controversial speakers go, he was no Karl Rove. Despite receiving a lot of press during the past few weeks for his history of incendiary comments, Hagee, Danielle writes, “was quite boring.”

Here are the verbal highlights from a night that sounded more like a bible recitation than a discussion:

  “I’d rather talk to G-d for 30 seconds than to George [W.] Bush all night.”

“Granting forgiveness without demanding a change in conduct is to make the grace of G-d an accomplice to evil.”

“Jesus, who was a reform rabbi…”

On Jews bringing the bible to the world:
“We, as Christians have a bible mandate to help you. If we have benefited from Jewish spiritual things, than we have an obligation to help Jews with material things.”

On he and his rabbi friend:
“When we’re standing in the streets of Jerusalem together and the Messiah comes, one of us has a great theological adjustment to make.”

On the Crusaders:
“They were thieves, liars, robbers and rapists.”

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March 12, 2008 | 2:11 pm

‘A man called Lemkin’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Well, Samantha Power flamed out last week when she was asked to resign as an adviser to Barack Obama. Turned out her views of Hillary Clinton were similar to the worst held by some evangelicals. That wasn’t the problem; the problem was that she was a bit too candid in sharing it.

Still, I’m enjoying the Pulitzer Prize-winning book she wrote a few years back, “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.” A central character of this story is Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish lawyer who fled Poland for the United States, losing most his family in the process, and dedicated his life to fighting “genocide,” a word that he created.

History has remembered Lemkin well, even if his contemporaries found him an obsessive annoyance. But of the Lemkin remembrances, I like Abe Rosenthal’s best.

The story in the paper reported that after 40 years of consideration the U.S. Senate voted last Friday to make it a Federal offense to commit genocide. That is the crime of acting with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The story did not mention a man called Lemkin.

Raphael Lemkin pokes his head into a newspaper office in the headquarters of the United Nations in the village of Lake Success on Long Island.

‘‘Here is that pest, that Lemkin,’’ he says. ‘‘I have a genocide story for you.’‘

Everybody groans; Oh, Lemkin again? He makes a funny face, folds his hands in begging gestures. The reporters gather around for a few minutes. He gets his little story about the genocide convention, usually tucked away in the paper on a Sunday.

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish professor of law, a distinguished academician who spoke nine languages. He was a Jew. During the Holocaust the Germans murdered 49 members of his family; see how few words it takes to tell the whole story.

He escaped to Sweden, reached the United States, found good positions at Duke and Yale. He left them and gave himself over to his life’s work.

His work was to convince the nations of the world that they must make it a crime to plan or carry out another Holocaust of any people. He coined ‘‘genocide’’ from the Greek word for race and the Latin for killing. He wrote a convention, a treaty for the nations to sign.

Then he walked the corridors of the U.N. He stopped journalists, took junior delegates by the arm and hung on until they listened, at least a moment. To see an ambassador, he would plan and plot for weeks and sit for days in reception rooms.

He had no money, no office, no assistants. He had no U.N. status or papers, but the guards always let him pass. He carried a black briefcase stuffed with documents and his daily sandwich.

He knew that when he opened the door people would say: What, Lemkin, you here again? Sometimes it was said affectionately, sometimes with distaste. Then he would pretend he did not care. But there were many days when he sat slumped in the cafeteria over a cup of coffee, barely able to lift it for the weariness in him and the rebuff.

But if he had to wheedle and plead he did. If he met an arrogant delegate who had influence, he made himself small and fawned. Then he would turn away and make the small smacking noises of a man trying to get a bad taste out of his mouth.

He would bluff a little sometimes about pulling political levers, but he had none. All he had was himself, his briefcase and the conviction burning in him. We would say to him: Lemkin, what good will it do to write mass murder down as a crime; will a piece of paper stop a new Hitler or Stalin?

Then he put aside cajolery and his face stiffened.

‘‘Only man has law. Law must be built, do you understand me? You must build the law!’‘

He walked the halls every day from the spring of 1946 until Dec. 9, 1948, when the General Assembly, in Paris, adopted a resolution approving his convention. That day reporters went looking for him to rejoice in his triumph. But we could not find him until, hours later, we thought to look into the darkened Assembly hall. He sat there weeping as if his heart would break. He asked please to be left in solitude. Then this Lemkin came back to the corridors for years, pleading with delegation after delegation to follow through on the U.N. resolution by getting their countries to sign the treaty. There was a time when he was considered for the Nobel Peace Prize; Winston Churchill backed him.

But he died alone on Aug. 28, 1959, without medals or prizes, in a hotel in New York. There were seven people at the graveside when Raphael Lemkin was buried.

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March 12, 2008 | 12:24 pm

The Israeli behind Spitzer’s fall

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Surprising maybe only because it took two days, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned this morning. He was brought down by a sexual liaison with an odd Israeli angle, just as former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey was four years ago.

A fast-rising Democratic governor, an out of control sex drive and an Israeli enabler — it feels like deja vu all over again on the Hudson.

Unlike McGreevey, who was accused of a homosexual affair with his Israeli-born former homeland security chief, Spitzer stands accused of utilizing the services of Mark Brener, an Israeli who allegedly pimped high-class hookers.

Not much seems to be known about Brener. He has lived in the United States for 20 years, most recently in a posh Manhattan apartment, where federal agents reportedly found $600,000 in a safe.

In The Forward, Alan Dershowitz argues that, as I mentioned Monday, though without legitimizing prostitution, our endless appetite for the failings of public figures is the bigger problem behind the Spitzer scandal.

Throughout our history, men in high places have engaged in low sexual activities. From Thomas Jefferson to Franklin Roosevelt to John Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson to Bill Clinton, great political figures have behaved like adolescent boys in private, while at the same time brilliantly and effectively leading our nation in public.

The laws criminalizing adult consensual prostitution — especially with $5,000-an-hour call girls — are as anachronistic as the old laws that used to criminalize adultery, fornication, homosexuality and even masturbation. These may be sins, but there are no real victims, except for family members.

Our nation, unique among Western democracies, is obsessed with the private lives of public figures. Whether it be Larry Craig soliciting favors in an airport bathroom or Rush Limbaugh getting illegal pharmaceuticals in a parking lot, this obsessive focus on the private imperfections of public figures threatens to drive many good men — and soon, good women — out of public life for fear that they will be brought down by their private peccadilloes.

Case in point, check out Slate‘s “Map of Shame” guide to trysts within the Beltway.

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