June 4, 2009 | 6:18 pm

Road rage taken out on Special Olympics kids

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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When a seemingly Jewish name gets in the news for the wrong reason, Jews cringe and ask, “Is he Jewish?”

I’m not sure about David Robert Schwartz, who was arrested today for allegedly throwing a metal bolt at children in the Special Olympics Torch Run. With that name, it seems likely the 41-year-old Valencia man is Jewish. But most people would say the same thing about a guy named Greenberg who writes for The Jewish Journal. I’m just glad he isn’t a different David Schwartz.

More from a local radio station:

Deputies from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s station were running with the Special Olympics children in the annual Torch Run at approximately 3:30 p.m. As they neared the intersection of McBean Parkway and Arroyo Park in Valencia, motorist David Robert Schwartz yelled for the runners to get out of the road, using a derogatory term referencing sexual orientation.

Schwartz then threw a metal bolt at the runners, narrowly missing two of the children. Deputies witnessing the assault used their radios to notify deputies in radio cars of what happened and they soon captured the suspect.

Schwartz, 41, was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and a hate crime because of the language used. He is being held at Santa Clarita station in lieu of $50,000 bail and is due in court on Friday.

Reminds me of this ugly scene from a bridge outside Seattle in 2001, when a 26-year-old Tacoma woman was standing on a bridge contemplating suicide. Her deliberating snarled traffic for hours, and some commuters decided give her a metaphorical push. They yelled, “Jump, bitch, jump!”

June 4, 2009 | 12:43 pm

Obama in Cairo: Muslim world and U.S. need to work together

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

By the time I woke up, President Obama had given his much-anticipated speech at Cairo University. The New York Times reported:

He dwelled on Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan but reserved some of his sharpest words for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He offered no major initiatives on the Middle East peace process although he put Israelis and Palestinians on notice that he intends to deal directly with what he sees as intransigence on key issues, evoking the concerns of both parties but asking both to shift ground significantly.

The speech in Cairo, which he called a “timeless city,” redeemed a promise he made nearly two years ago while running for president. It was, perhaps, the riskiest speech of his young presidency, and Mr. Obama readily conceded that not every goal would be easily or quickly achieved.

“I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition,” he said. “Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.”

His message was sweeping and forceful — at times scolding and combative — promoting democracy in Egypt, warning Israelis against building new settlements, and acknowledging that the United States had fallen short of its ideals, particularly in the Iraq war. It also evoked a new and nuanced tone, and some of Mr. Obama’s language drew appreciative applause from his audience of 3,000 invited guests in the Major Reception Hall at Cairo University.

The headline from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was “Obama in Cairo: See conflict through eyes of the other.” JTA noted Obama’s comment that the United States’ bond with Israel is “unbreakable,” and focused on this key statement regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

“For decades, there has been a stalemate: two peoples with legitimate aspirations, each with a painful history that makes compromise elusive,” Obama said. “It is easy to point fingers—for Palestinians to point to the displacement brought by Israel’s founding, and for Israelis to point to the constant hostility and attacks throughout its history from within its borders as well as beyond. But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.”

It seems Obama’s comments were both politically safe and inspiring. But you can judge for yourself. The entire text of his speech—in which he quotes from the Quran, the Talmud and the Bible—is after the jump:

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June 3, 2009 | 5:12 pm

Obama’s biggest battle in Cairo: Muslim conspiracy theories?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Obama at the Kotel

We’re still waiting for President Obama’s much-anticipated speech at Cairo University Thursday, which you can receive in text installments on your cell, but already Al Qaeda is pissed off about what the U.S. president might say.

Difficult as it will be for Obama to chart a course for peace in the Mideast, Jacob Bronsther opines in today’s Christian Science Monitor that Obama’s biggest challenge is not Israeli settlements or the fate of Jerusalem but “Muslim fascination with conspiracy theories.”

Bronsther writes:

It goes beyond Saudi schoolbooks that teach as fact the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a demonstrably bogus Jewish “plot” for world domination) and Tehran’s sponsorship of a Holocaust skeptics conference. The 2004 tsunami? That was possibly caused by an Indian nuclear test, ably assisted by experts from the US and Israel, according to Egyptian newsweekly Al-Osboa. According to the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Project, majorities in Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia, and Turkey do not believe that Arabs carried out the 9/11 attacks. And when asked in the same survey what is most responsible for Muslim nations’ lack of prosperity, about half of those in majority Muslim countries responded “US and Western policies” either first or second, beating out “lack of education,” “government corruption,” “Islamic fundamentalism,” and “lack of democracy.”

Conspiracy theories threaten American diplomacy because when Mr. Obama promises X Thursday, a great percentage of Muslims will believe he really intends Y or that some shadowy organization will ensure Z. Every culture exhibits some interest in conspiracy theories (see “The Da Vinci Code”), but they are especially resonant in Muslim contexts, and Western leaders need to find a way to mitigate this problem. The first step is to understand its origins.

One explanation is Muslims’ historical experience with double-dealing, divide-and-conquering colonial masters. But there is a deeper rationale for religious Muslims (and most Muslims are extremely religious by Western standards). This is the cognitive dissonance – the mental disturbance caused by the collision of contradictory ideas – stemming from the Muslim world’s relative lack of prosperity and power.

You can read the rest here. Also in The Monitor, an exploration of why Obama is visiting Egypt and Saudi Arabia but not Israel.

The most popular conspiracy theories, of course, are those pertaining Jewish world power. Their popularity is not limited to the Muslim world.

After the jump, a heads-up from the White House press office about what Obama will discuss in his speech. No real surprises here. This is Ben Rhodes, Obama’s speechwriter, speaking:

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June 3, 2009 | 4:55 am

Obama says U.S. could be considered a Muslim country

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember all the trouble President Obama got in when he said in April that the United States is “not a Christian nation or Jewish nation or Muslim nation?” Well, yesterday morning I heard Obama, speaking with the Washington reporter for the BBC about bringing peace to the Mideast, playing up the Muslim members of his own family and the United States’ large Muslim population. You can watch that interview above. (Thanks for the link, Alice.) Obama reiterated the Muslim population angel in another interview with a French television station.

From The Caucus blog:

In an interview with Laura Haim on Canal Plus, a French television station, Mr. Obama noted that the United States also could be considered as “one of the largest Muslim countries in the world.” He sought to downplay the expectations of the speech, but he said he hoped the address would raise awareness about Muslims.

“Now, I think it’s very important to understand that one speech is not going to solve all the problems in the Middle East,” Mr. Obama said. “And so I think expectations should be somewhat modest.”

He previewed several themes and objectives for the speech, which aides said the president intended to tinker with — and rewrite — aboard Air Force One during his 12-hour flight to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“What I want to do is to create a better dialogue so that the Muslim world understands more effectively how the United States, but also how the West thinks about many of these difficult issues like terrorism, like democracy, to discuss the framework for what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and our outreach to Iran, and also how we view the prospects for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Mr. Obama said.

The president said the United States and other parts of the Western world “have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.”

“And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world,” Mr. Obama said. “And so there’s got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples.”

By that token, I think we’d also have more members of the Baha’i faith than anywhere but Iran and India. And, until recently, the United States was more a Jewish country than Israel. Though, I guess, that one’s still up for debate.

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June 2, 2009 | 4:59 pm

Doonesbury angers Jews and their ‘crabby and snarky’ old God

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I didn’t know anyone still reads the Sunday comics, but apparently Doonesbury still has its fair share of followers. And quite of few of them are ripe pissed about a strip Sunday, which, according to JTA’s Ron Kampeas, “which manages to raise two classical anti-Jewish tropes in just six panels (most papers drop the first two panels): The ‘Old Testament’ God is vengeful, as opposed to the loving New Testament God; and the bad guys, the truly hateful villains, are the moneylenders.”

Click here to see the comic strip. It shows a young girl, pictured, reacting to a church sermon by the Rev. Sloan.

“Well, whenever you read from the Old Testament, God is always crabby and snarky to everyone,” the girl says. “But the New Testament isn’t about anger at all—it’s about love.”

I’ve never read Doonesbury, so I don’t know if it’s creator, Garry Trudeau, is usually that preachy. But the girl goes on to say that Jesus was a pacifist—“he wouldn’t harm a flea”—except for when he had to deal with those awful moneychangers.

Now you can see why Jews might have been offended by the comic strip. Trudeau’s comic drew him a letter yesterday from Rabbi David Saperstein and another from the Anti-Defamation League. Here’s what the ADL had to say:

We agree with the numerous people who are contacting us that Sunday’s Doonesbury misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels. It reinforces age-old stereotypes about Judaism that have been the cause of much suffering and pain over the centuries, and which have been rejected by a variety of Christian denominations over the last decades.

Jesus’ concern in the Gospels is with money-changers, not money-lenders. The money-changers converted the coins of the Roman Empire into the currency accepted by the Jerusalem Temple, as money-changers today convert dollars into Euros. To speak of money-lenders harkens back the stereotype of Shylock, when Jews were forced by Christians to engage in usury.

Christian teaching is clear: the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Doonesbury’s Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy. He owes both Jews and Christians an apology.

Trudeau has never been accused of being an anti-Semite. Rather, he’s accused of having a sharp pen and being a keen observer. But his exegetical ability appears to be a bit weaker. Ben Weiner, a New York-based rabbi, has a good analysis at Religion Dispatches.

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June 2, 2009 | 12:34 pm

Muslim convert pleads not guilty in soldier death

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad pleaded not guilty today to the shooting death of a soldier at the Army-Navy Career Center in Little Rock.

Who is Muhammad? Well, he’s a Muslim convert accused of shooting two uniformed soldiers outsides of the recruiting center because of “political and religious motives.”

It’s not clear how those motives influenced Muhammad’s action. The AP reports, though, that a prosecutor said Muhammad had admitted to killing Private William Long and wounding another soldier “because of what they had done to Muslims in the past.”

The local Fox affiliate has more from Little Rock homicide detective Tommy Hudson’s report:

* “Mr. Muhammad stated that he was mad at the US Military”
  * “Mr. Muhammad stated he fired several rounds at the soldiers with the intent to kill them” from arrest report released this morning
  * “Mr. Muhammad further stated that he would have killed more soldiers if they had been on the parking lot.”

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June 2, 2009 | 10:31 am

Jon & Kate plus the shortcomings of evangelical piety

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If you’re anything like me, you’d never heard of Jon and Kate—and don’t forget the eight—until rumors began running wild that the married stars of a popular reality show chronicling their seemingly blissful marriage and the challenges of raising twins plus sextuplets were locked in sordid affairs. With the evangelical values Jon and Kate Gosselin espouse on their show, their troubles have been sopped up as ready-made schadenfreude.

Difficult as it has been for evangelicals to come to terms with Jon and Kate’s downfall, Julie Vermeer Elliott writes in an excellent article for Christianity Today that there’s a lesson to be learned here. An lengthy excerpt that takes the Gosselins back to happier days:

Of all the viewers who followed the Gosselins, evangelicals were among the most faithful. Jon and Kate’s refusal to resort to “selective reduction” when they found themselves pregnant with sextuplets, their membership in an Assemblies of God church, and their Isaiah 40:31 T-shirts all helped to make them icons of evangelical piety. Churches from across the country clamored to be added to their speaking tours. In the last two years the vast majority of Jon and Kate’s presentations took place at Christian conferences or at evangelical churches, most often Baptist, nondenominational or charismatic.

Zondervan, one of the foremost evangelical presses, published two books with the Gosselins, both of which hit the New York Times bestseller list. The popular tongue-in-cheek blog Stuff Christians Like listed “Watching Jon and Kate Plus 8” on its list of favored Christian products or activities. Evangelicals dependably tuned in to the television show as the family received free trips to posh resorts, when the couple underwent plastic surgery, and when they moved from a comfortable house in the suburbs to a sprawling estate in the country. If they noticed that Jon and Kate’s family and friends—most notably Aunt Jodi and Beth—were, one by one, being estranged from the family (reportedly over financial disputes), it did not stop believers from looking to this couple for inspiration on how to be a good Christian family.

Then everything changed. Reports surfaced that Jon was out partying with co-eds and getting too friendly with a 23-year-old teacher. Shortly thereafter the tabloids claimed that Kate was having an affair with her bodyguard and that she had given Jon the go-ahead to see other women, as long as he showed up for filming. The truthfulness of all of these claims has yet to be established. But one thing is clear—the marriage is crumbling. In fact, on the season five premiere, which aired on Memorial Day, the couple expressed no love for one another and made no promises about being together in the future. Both appeared ready to file for divorce.

Viewers, and especially evangelical viewers, are aghast. How could such a loving, Christian family disintegrate so quickly? Is the failure of their marriage due to the stress of parenting multiples? Can it be attributed to Kate’s love of celebrity versus Jon’s desire to retreat from the limelight? Might it be the result of living under constant (albeit self-imposed) surveillance? I suspect that each of these theories tell part of the story. But the story that has not been told is the one that sees in Jon and Kate the shortcomings of evangelical piety itself.

If your interest is piqued—mine was captivated—you can read the rest here. Money quote in the penultimate paragraph:

“As such, the breakdown of Jon and Kate’s marriage is but a symptom of the larger weaknesses of ethics in the evangelical community. We are easily seduced by wealth and fame. We are easily contented by the shallow rhetoric of hot-button issues. In short, we are easily deceived by cultural values painted in Christian veneers (or clothed in Isaiah 40:31 T-shirts).”

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June 2, 2009 | 1:04 am

Swine flu: La Voz de Aztlan blames it on the Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When we last checked in on La Voz de Aztlan, “the Jew-bashing, gay-trashing” online publication, in the words of Gustavo Arellano, was blaming the Jews for landing “La Causa” host Augustin Cebada in hot water.

Now, Arellano blogs, the La Voz de Aztlan publisher, Hector Carreon is blaming the Jews for something more serious: the spread of swine flu. Arellano writes:

He mentions the recent completion of a project that mapped out the Mexican genome and claims it was probably used to create the swine flu in a laboratory in order to target Mexicans. The principal evildoer? Mexico’s former Minister of Health, Julio Frenk, whom Carreon identifies as a Jew by using the crayons with which all La Voz de Aztlan articles are originally scrawled out to draw a crude yarmulke on a picture of Frenk. Carreon then ties Frenk to neocons at Harvard, whom he ties to Israel, and then provides a grabbag of links in which he previously claimed Jews were trying to destroy Mexico.

Carreon’s article, under the pseudonym Ernesto Cienfuegos, can be read here. It’s wacky, as are all the “Protocols of Zion” conspiracy theories on the Aztlan homepage.

Here is an excerpt from a 2001 article Arellano wrote for The Jewish Journal about the L.A.-based Website:

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June 1, 2009 | 6:31 pm

Reason mag: ‘Why is killing abortionists wrong?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“One of the stupider things I’ve seen about the Tiller murder.” I’ve got to agree with you on that, Mollie.

George Tiller was one of the few doctors in the nation who provided the late-term abortions, and yesterday he was gunned down while attending church. Now, I don’t know how a good, God-fearing Christian could perform late-term abortions. But I can find no biblical justification for murdering someone who does. Still, Reason magazine’s Hit & Run blog asks “Why is killing abortionists wrong?”—and argues that it just might not be:

Nor is it sufficient to note that killing Tiller was against the law. When the law blesses the murder of babies, it is hardly worthy of respect, any more than laws blessing the enslavement of Africans or the gassing of Jews were, and violent resistance against such enactments surely is justified in principle. Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry implicitly condemns Tiller’s murder, saying, “We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God.” Yet Terry continues to call Tiller a “mass murderer” and insists “the pro-life movement must not be browbeaten by Obama or the child-killers into surrendering our best rhetoric, actions and images.”

No, but condoning one murder for the sake of saving others is moral relativism. It seems ridiculous to even take the Reason blogger’s argument seriously. Unless he is talking about a real war between pro-lifers and pro-choicers—not one that is political or cultural or religious or even medical, but one fought with guns and explosives—than his entire argument completely falls apart.

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June 1, 2009 | 2:17 pm

Got a permit for that Bible study?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Bible studies are a common feature of Christian life. They supplement what is learned each week in church and facilitate closer communal bonds. And they typically meet in a member’s home. A Bible study is an informal gathering, like a book club or a weekly poker game. It’s not the kind of thing that would need government approval.

At least, you wouldn’t think so.

But a San Diego County code enforcement officer would disagree. On Good Friday he visited a Bonita home where 15-20 people attend a Bible study each week hosted by David Jones, a pastor. WorldNetDaily reported:

“Do you have a regular weekly meeting in your home? Do you sing? Do you say ‘amen’?” the official reportedly asked. “Do you say, ‘Praise the Lord’?”

The pastor’s wife answered yes.

She says she was then told, however, that she must stop holding “religious assemblies” until she and her husband obtain a Major Use Permit from the county, a permit that often involves traffic and environmental studies, compliance with parking and sidewalk regulations and costs that top tens of thousands of dollars.

And if they fail to pay for the MUP, the county official reportedly warned, the couple will be charged escalating fines beginning at $100, then $200, $500, $1000, “and then it will get ugly.”

Geez, I wonder what this guy would think of the House Church movement.

The Bible study story, which got picked up by CNN, led to international outrage. Damage control from county officials followed. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Saturday that the county wouldn’t force the Bible study to obtain a permit:

“No one respects the right to free religious expression more than I do, and no one would find the infringement of such rights more abhorrent,” county Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard said in a statement.

Chandra Wallar, the county’s general manager of land use and environment, said the county has re-examined the situation and decided that the Joneses don’t need a permit after all.

Religious assembly, under the county land-use code, is defined as “religious services involving public assembly such as customarily occurs in synagogues, temples, and churches.”

Wallar said that definition, which doesn’t spell out specific thresholds on when a religious gathering becomes a religious assembly, probably needs to be clarified and that more training may be warranted for code enforcement officers.

She said the county was not targeting the Joneses because they were exercising their religion, but rather it was trying to address parking and traffic issues.

“We’ve advised the pastor he has the authority to continue to hold his meetings just as he’s held them,” Wallar said. “My hope is we will be able to resolve the traffic concerns.”

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June 1, 2009 | 1:51 pm

An AIPAC must-read: ‘No American solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

President Obama, on his first visit to Egypt later this week, will give a speech at Cairo University in which he is expected to talk about what needs to be done to bring peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to bring calm to the greater region. (Here’s a little handicapping of his speech.) But ahead of the president trip to Egypt and the Mideast, Jim Hoagland urges in the Washington Post a bit of caution about just how much influence the president can have over Mideast peace:

Cling to one thought as you work on your greatly anticipated speech to the Muslim world Thursday in Cairo, Mr. President: There is no American solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that you can heroically deliver from on high. Peace must be built from the bottom up by the warring sides. Cling to that thought but keep it to yourself.

It would be pleasing to your hosts to suggest the opposite—a made-in-the-USA plan for the Middle East. Some of your aides believe this is a special moment that can end the region’s Sixty Years’ War if you intervene forcefully enough. But that neglects history and the internal logic of the conflict…

(skip)

Today the Arab side lacks a leader as visionary as Sadat to save a failing U.S. effort or a Palestinian leader as skillfully duplicitous as Arafat to keep a homegrown one afloat. It is a moment for what George Shultz, Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, called the “gardening” phase of diplomacy—pulling weeds and planting seeds—rather than overly ambitious plans that raise expectations too high.

I did not read Hoagland op-ed in the paper yesterday, but just received those excerpts in my e-mail inbox. The message was from AIPAC, and the subject began “must read clip.”

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