This article in Haaretz, I Want You for the U.S. Air Force (but you'd better believe in Jesus), details the series of abuses at the Air Force Academy, where evangelical Christianity appears to have become the official religion. Mikey Weinstein, who served in Reagan's White House, and whose younger son is now at the academy, initiated a public campaign, which has "exposed an intentional policy going back several years of religious guidance from above, active encouragement of Christian evangelism by senior officers and prejudicial discrimination against members of other religions. Hundreds of families have approached Weinstein, and to date 117 people have filed official complaints through him. Only eight are Jews. The majority are Christians who feel persecuted by the policy of promoting evangelical Christianity on an institutional basis while employing the power of military authority." Congress has refused to do anything about this, and in fact when the issue was brought up in a Congressional committee, criticisms of the academy's bias against non-evangelicals were turned into complaints by Republican congressmen of anti-Christian bias (surely a new definition of what the word "chutzpah" means!).

And what is the Air Force Academy doing about this? "Last Friday, USAFA Superintendent Lieutenant-General John Rosa met with Anti-Defamation League activists, and for the first time admitted to them that there was a problem at the base. He said he is losing sleep over it, but noted that it might take up to six years to correct." It doesn't sound to me like he's losing very much sleep over it!

If Jews and non-evangelical Christians are being harassed in this way, just imagine how Muslim cadets might be treated there - if there are any who dare to apply. It's becoming clear that at least some of the people who are fighting the war on terror do think that it's a religious war - evangelical Christianity vs. everyone else.

And yet another excellent op-ed essay by Anne Applebaum, about Democracy Under The Veil, in the Islamic world.

Hooray for this Washington Post editorial ('American Gulag') condemning the head of Amnesty International's recent naming of the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay the "gulag of our times." One does not have to admire what we have done there (or at Abu Ghraib or other U.S. detention facilities) to object to AI's false equivalence with the gulag of the Soviet Union. The Post editorial says:

But we draw the line at the use of the word "gulag" or at the implication that the United States has somehow become the modern equivalent of Stalin's Soviet Union. Guantanamo Bay is an ad hoc creation, designed to contain captured enemy combatants in wartime. Abuses there - including new evidence of desecrating the Koran - have been investigated and discussed by the FBI, the press and, to a still limited extent, the military. The Soviet gulag, by contrast, was a massive forced labor complex consisting of thousands of concentration camps and hundreds of exile villages through which more than 20 million people passed during Stalin's lifetime and whose existence was not acknowledged until after his death. Its modern equivalent is not Guantanamo Bay, but the prisons of Cuba, where Amnesty itself says a new generation of prisoners of conscience reside; or the labor camps of North Korea, which were set up on Stalinist lines; or China's laogai, the true size of which isn't even known; or, until recently, the prisons of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The convenient left-wing orthodoxy, on the other hand, regards only the U.S. embargo of Cuba as unjust, without ever considering the lack of freedom, injustice, and oppression of the Cuban regime itself.

Now, I don't care about these people at all, but I do love this headline - Paris Hilton Engaged To Paris . She is now engaged to someone named Paris Latsis.

On another note, I just returned from a fun visit to New York City over the Memorial Day weekend. I went to the Jewish Museum and saw two exhibits - on the Jewish salon women (of the 18th-20th centuries), people like Rahel Levin Varnhagen and Gertrude Stein, and one on the art of Maurice Sendak, which was really fun. The weekend also included enjoyable Shabbat meals with friends, and a barbecue yesterday with more friends. I'm now back in Ithaca, where it appears that my grass grew several inches in my absence, where the peonies are now blooming, the lettuce is big enough to eat (planted a few weeks ago), and everything looks intensely green.

The Ithaca Journal devoted its entire editorial page today to responses to Sandy Wold's column two weeks ago. In their own editorial, they bravely argued for the value of free speech, invoking the names of Locke and Voltaire - but without considering the professional responsibility of a newspaper to edit articles responsibly. Sandy Wold apologized for her remarks, saying that:

Rather than defend or explain myself to my critics, I decided to listen and understand, and I was surprised to see how complacent I had become with my point of view. Reading letters that came from around the world, investigating their sources, discovering new ones, questioning my assumptions, and the assumptions of my sources, I had periodic moments of feeling duped. So I went back and studied my original sources and their sources so I could feel reaffirmed. Finally, I came across an example of a battle between Palestinians and Israelis that happened over 50 years ago. According to the media representation, the Palestinians were "massacred," and according to the Israeli source I read, the Israelis were acting in "self-defense." Apparently, the media left out the bigger picture, which was that the Israelis were being blockaded by the Palestinians and facing near starvation. Also, a Red Cross witness to the aftermath of the "massacre" only verified Palestinian gore. I believe that such series of misrepresentation, misunderstanding and media bias is common to all conflict. It is no wonder many of us feel so confused and unable to help.

I commend her for her willingness to listen to and think about the remarks people made to her - some of which were fairly hostile, judging from the Honest Reporting web site, which publicized her column to their subscribers. On the other hand, she does need to do more homework on the Arab-Israeli conflict. For example, in the quoted paragraph, what battle is she referring to? The siege of Jerusalem in 1948? And another quibble: over 50 years ago, when people referred to "Palestinians," they meant Palestinian Jews, not Palestinian Arabs. She should have used the term "Arabs." (With this comment, I'm not denying the existence of a Palestinian people today.)

The Journal also published many letters from people around the world who were outraged by Wold's comments - most of whom probably knew about her column from the story about it on the Honest Reporting web site, or perhaps from LGF.

A letter that I wrote also appeared in the print version of the newspaper, but for some reason doesn't seem to have made it onto the electronic version. This is the text:

I am writing in response to Sandy Wold’s article, “Mothers can make healing a priority,” published on Saturday, May 7, 2005. I identify as a “Zionist Jew,” and ally myself with the Jews who established the state of Israel, whom Sandy Wold condemns as having “occupied Palestinian land in the name of God and victimhood.” I’m not sure exactly where to start in response to her poorly thought-out and inflammatory remarks. The Zionist movement, which fought to establish first a Jewish homeland in Palestine and then an independent state, was founded in the late 1800s, long before the Holocaust. The founders of the state were predominantly secular Jews who wanted to establish a place where Jews could find refuge from anti-semitism in Europe and build their own modern Jewish culture. Far from “getting stuck in the victim role,” as Wold accuses “Zionist Jews” of having done, the Zionist movement very actively tried to solve the problems of Jewish life through the creation of their own national movement – a nationalist movement very akin to the Palestinian national movement, which in parallel to Zionism has the aim of creating a Palestinian state.

Wold also accuses Israel of “terrorist attacks and slaughter of the Palestinians” and says that anyone who criticizes Israel is “guilt-inflicted for the Holocaust without any regard for Palestinian suffering.” This statement minimalizes the suffering that Jews went through in the Holocaust and completely avoids mentioning the Israeli victims of Palestinian violence. Is it only Palestinians who suffer in the ongoing conflict? What of the many terrorist attacks inflicted upon Israeli civilians by Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades?

Wold seems to have taken sides in the ongoing conflict, squarely on the side of the Palestinians – but does this really advance the “self-healing” agenda that she argues for in her article? Isn’t it time for both Israelis and Palestinians (and their supporters in the United States) to recognize the complexity of the situation and admit that there is right in the claims, and the historical memory, of both sides? In my view, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip should end, making it possible for a viable Palestinian state to be founded alongside Israel. This would not salve all wounds, but it would make a new beginning possible, where both peoples would suffer less than they have in the past, and perhaps begin the long process of reconciliation with each other.

My letter was also the only one written by someone living in Ithaca, who would read it in its paper form, rather than learning about it from an internet source. I'm disappointed that other people in Ithaca didn't feel motivated, or capable, of writing a response to her, but I am glad they published mine (and thus far I've only gotten positive responses to it).

In re the Newsweek story (now retracted) about a Koran being put into a toilet at Guantanomo Bay, the Washington Post reports that Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before. Perhaps Newsweek got the wrong story from their particular source, but it does seem to have corroboration from many other sources. Is such behavior a matter of policy - i.e., was it decided upon specifically in order to break the spirit of the detainees there? Or is this a by-product of the type of behavior we see at the U.S. Airforce Academy - evangelical Christian cadets, chaplains, and school administration harassing Jews and other, non-evangelical Christians by insulting them and saying that they "will burn in the fires of hell." Or perhaps a combination - they disrespect every other religion than their own, and decide specifically because of this disrespect to mistreat the inmates in this particular way? In either case, this is disgusting. Is this what we're coming to?

Haaretz reports that 5 Jews arrested for planning to attack the Temple Mount. Four of the men charged apparently were plotting to launch an anti-tank missile at the Temple Mount, while the other one was detained "over an alleged plan to fly a model aircraft fitted with a camera over the Mount and over Arab population areas as a provocation." All five men were released from detention. The intention seems to have been to provoke a renewed intifada and stall the planned disengagement from Gaza.

This is very scary - what I don't understand is why these people were released from detention. Surely, if they had been Palestinians threatening Jews, they would not be "freed with limitations," and not face charges "on the grounds that they had been unable to implement their plan and had decided not to carry it out." Doesn't that suggest that they might try to figure out some other way to implement their plans. The police and Shin Bet also said "there was not enough evidence to charge them." When has that stopped the police and Shin Bet when it comes to Palestinian threats to Israeli security?

The reactions by two right-wing MKs also strike me as very peculiar responses to the arrests:

In response to the reports, MK Uri Ariel (National Union) said, "This is a clear attempt to stain a loyal and law-abiding community struggling justly and fairly for its values."

The chairman of the National Union Knesset faction, Zvi Hendel, accused the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur, as it had done with Avishai Raviv prior to the assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Does Uriel really think that planning to lob an anti-tank missile at the Temple Mount is part of a "just struggle"? And what does Hendel mean by accusing the Shin Bet of planting an agent provocateur. Who is the provocateur in this case?

I certainly hope the Shin Bet is keeping an eye on these men and their associates!

Via DovBear, a despicable article by Pat Buchanan on Was World War II worth it? Apparently we (and the Brits) should have let Germany and the Soviet Union carve up eastern Europe between them - and as a bonus get rid of all those pesky Jews! Appeasement, 60 years on. And this man is still considered a serious person to listen to?

The Association for Jewish Studies today sent out a message to all its members protesting the British Association of University Teachers' boycott of Haifa and Bar Ilan Universities in Israel. This is the text:

The American Academy of Jewish Research, the oldest body of North American scholars of Jewish studies, and the Association for Jewish Studies, the learned society of academic Jewish studies, condemn the British Association of University Teachers’ decision to boycott two Israeli universities for their alleged complicity in governmental policies and their purported discrimination against a faculty member on political grounds. The boycott is an egregious assault on academic freedom and a woeful misreading of the role of Israeli academics and the Israeli university. Academics have an obligation to support the free exchange of ideas and to participate in international dialogue, not to shun and restrain them. Israeli universities are an important source of the robust discussion and critical evaluation of governmental policy that characterize Israeli society. It is indeed, ironic, and offensive, that in a world where many governments muzzle their faculties, and academic freedom is rare, the AUT should focus solely on Israeli universities, which have maintained academic freedom and diverse student and faculty communities under difficult circumstances. It is also distressing that in a world where, sadly, war and the killing of civilians are far too common only one country is singled out for ostracism.

The AUT has been ill-served by leaders who pushed through the motion without proper investigation of the “facts” on which the decision was purportedly based, and without open debate within the Association itself. Academics should govern ourselves according to the standards of fairness and free discussion we expect from the larger society.

We stand in solidarity with our fellow Israeli academics. We also welcome the criticism of the AUT decision by many British university administrators and by the Times of London as well as the planned reconsideration of the boycott by the AUT. We are confident that the AUT’s declaration of a boycott will be understood internationally to reflect less upon the reality of Israeli universities than upon the politicization of certain leaders of the British academic community. We call on academics throughout the world to refrain from participating in international conferences from which Israeli scholars have been banned.

Paula E. Hyman
American Association for Jewish Research

Sara R. Horowitz
Association for Jewish Studies

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) also issued a condemnation of the AUT's boycott.

Interestingly enough, LGF has now linked to Sandy Wold's article in Saturday's Ithaca Journal - A Mother's Day Antisemitic Rant.

My local newspaper published several articles today for Mother's Day. One, titled Mothers can make healing a priority, by Sandy Wold, launched into a vicious attack on Israel in the middle of discussing how to heal oneself from anger and hatred. The author makes an analogy between her own psychological struggles and war and fascism:

As I enter the fourth year of my healing focus, I now understand war on yet a deeper level. During a recent emotional storm, I saw myself revisiting an old wounded pattern of victimization and fought back with self-righteousness. I then felt the rage of fascism pass through me, which eventually dissipated and turned into squalls. The sun came out, and there was peace. (For some people this sequence can take years or a lifetime; I can do it now in just a few days.) And, finally, in the stillness, I was able to see beyond the illusion and the victim pattern I was playing out. From this place, I found clarity and self respect and was able to find a heart-centered solution to my problem.

What war and fascism have to do with the author's own personal struggles is not clear to me from this paragraph. It does seem, however, that she is very self-satisfied about her own psychological development - "I can do it now in just a few days," as opposed to those poor slobs whose "sequence can take years or a lifetime." It does seem like she's concerned about something she calls the "victim role" - and projects her concept onto the political level. She continues in a far more noxious vein:

Most people get stuck in the victim role, however. On the global scale, for example, Zionist Jews in Israel have occupied Palestinian land in the name of God and victimhood. If anyone criticizes Israel for their terrorist attacks and slaughter of the Palestinians, they are immediately labeled "anti-Semitic" and guilt-inflicted for the Holocaust without any regard for Palestinian suffering. In response, the United States and United Nations fall into a co-dependent behavior of acquiescence and collusion.

I'm not sure where to begin to criticize this. It strikes me as very odd that in the middle of an article about self-healing, she suddenly launches into an attack on Israel, and one that minimalizes the suffering that Jews went through at the hands of the Nazis. For her, Palestinian suffering trumps Jewish suffering - as if one has to make a choice between them! For her, it's Israel that is guilty of terrorism, not Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades. What of all the Israeli civilians killed by terrorist bombers? Is it only Palestinians who can really suffer? She also evinces no knowledge of the history of Israel or how and why it was established as a Jewish state in 1948. If she did, she would know that the founders of the state were predominantly secular Jews, and that the Zionist movement had been trying since the 1880s to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine - long before the Holocaust. (And she would also know that not all the Jews living in Israel now, or then, are or were Zionists - and that most of them arrived because they were fleeing a Europe that had tried to exterminate them or Arab countries that kicked them out after the establishment of Israel). Why did she drop this anti-Semitic paragraph into her article on self-healing? What is self-healing about that? (And her argument is anti-Semitic even though she tries to inoculate herself against such a charge).

I just read a beautiful post on Rachel Barenblat's blog on doing taharah - the ritual of preparing the dead for burial. One paragraph particularly struck me: on how the body was lovingly dressed in simple white garments, which eventually left it "a bundled white human-shaped figure: no features, no distinguishing marks, only legs and arms, a torso and a head, a small still white figure." I thought back to the movie on the concentration camps I saw earlier tonight - which depicted the bodies of the dead simply thrown naked into a pit without care or dignity. What a contrast to Rachel's calm, focused description of how the body of a person should be treated when the soul is no longer there.

Tonight I watched the Frontline program - Memory of the Camps, containing footage of the Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Austria, filmed soon after liberation. It was put together right after the war but not shown until 1985 by PBS. It is very chilling. It was made apparently to show to German civilians, to demonstrate to them what they and their government were responsible for doing. Some of the footage shows German civilians being shown through the camps, seeing the emaciated survivors, and the bodies of the dead; most it seemed watched stoicly but some began to weep. At Buchenwald German civilians see lampshades made of human skin and tattoos taken from prisoners' skin and tanned, one of the many stomach-turning scenes in the film. As of Thursday (which is Holocaust Remembrance Day), it will be possible to view the film online through the PBS web site. It has very graphic footage - don't have your children watch it!

It made me think of how Darfur will be memorialized if we do not succeed in stopping the genocide. I have recently seen, both on television (the Lehrer Report) and in the New York Times really unrealistically sunny reports on the possibility of peace coming to Darfur. The Lehrer Report piece underestimated the number already dead in Darfur. And tonight on the BBC news shown on our local PBS station after the Frontline show, there was a brief article about the Darfur children's pictures (which I already wrote about below) and how they might be used in the prosecutions at the International Criminal Court. The BBC reporter said that "100,000" have already been killed. Why are programs like this continuing to underestimate the number of the dead? Even Amy Goodman's show on Democracy Now (broadcast today), which discussed the disgusting ties between the American CIA and the Sudan Government's Mukhabarat (secret police/intelligence) underestimated the number of deaths. If the numbers are consistently underestimated like this, it leads to people of good will thinking that it's not such a big deal what's happening in Darfur, makes it easier to turn the page and ignore what's going on. These news reports should be using Eric Reeves' figures - almost 400,000 have died thus far, both of direct murder and from hunger and illness.

---------------------------------------
This coming week, the Darfur Action Group at Cornell will be showing documentaries on Darfur and having a panel discussion. If you're in the Ithaca area, please come!

DARFUR ACTION GROUP | CORNELL UNIVERSITY Presents...

"Documenting Darfur" Film Forum
Featuring the best video documentary and alternative media work about the ongoing genocide in the western Sudanese region of Darfur

Monday-Wednesday
May 9, 10 + 11 @ 5:00 pm
McGraw 165

ALSO: 11 May 2005 @ 8 pm (MG 165)
Distinguished professors will take part in a Panel Discussion about the documentaries and the ongoing crisis in Darfur

FREE ADMISSION - ALL ARE WELCOME - REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

For more information contact asg29@cornell.edu.

If you want to visit my brother's blog, he's started blogging again about My Popular Music Tastes. His profile photo depicts my grandmother (holding my blogging brother), my mother, my other brother, and myself (at age 6? 8? I'm not sure).

For an excellent blog on issues of racism, voting fraud, and most recently, the shocking case of a 5-year old African-
American child handcuffed (!?) by police in Florida, see my friend Ben's blog, HungryBlues.

Rachel Barenblat (of Velveteen Rabbi) sent me a link to these heartbreaking drawings - Children’s Drawings from Darfur. These are drawings from children about what they saw and experienced when the Sudanese army soldiers and the Janjaweed invaded and destroyed their homes and villages. They were collected by Human Rights Watch workers sent to refugee camps in Chad.

Here is one of the images:

While cruising on the Ha'aretz web site, I found this hilarious guide to street Hebrew - The Hebrew they never taught you. I think that most of these words come from Army slang, Arabic, or Russian. I knew some of them but the more outre or more Army ones were less familiar. Ahla!

Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica.com has an extensive post on the Association of University Teachers' proposed boycott of three Israeli universities, quoting the proposals and criticizing them in much the same terms as Frances Raday's letter to the Guardian, which I quoted in a previous post. The amazing hypocrisy and anti-semitism of these proposals knows no bounds. If they are so exercised about human rights abuses, perhaps they should consider the repression in almost all Arab countries of political dissent, the prohibition of the open practice of any religion except Islam in Saudi Arabia, the exceptionally bloody war in Chechnya, etc. No, nothing is terrible except what is done by Israel (and probably by the U.S. as well).

Somehow, I knew this: Some Extra Heft May Be Helpful, New Study Says. Can we now stop with the hysteria about being fat? And note: this new study says that in 2000, in the United States, it is estimaged that 33,746 people died of health problems associated with being underweight, while 25,814 died of health problems associated with being overweight or obese.

The British Association of University Teachers is debating a motion to boycott three Israeli universities for their supposed support of Israeli government policies in the occupied territories. (See also Don't Boycott us, plead Israeli academics). Frances Raday, a distinguished Israeli professor of law at the Hebrew University and President of the Israel Association of Feminist and Gender Studies has published a letter on the Guardian's website protesting this attempt to ostracize Israeli academics. I received a copy of the letter because I'm on a Israeli feminist listserve. I thought it deserved more publicity and copy it here:

Open letter from Israeli feminist academics to their colleagues in England

Dear Colleagues,

We recently learned that the (British) Association of University Teachers, at its forthcoming council, is to debate a decision to boycott three Israeli universities for their alleged complicity with the Israeli government's policies on the Palestinian territories. Such a decision would reflect an assumption, widely shared by academics on the left (particularly in Europe), that Israel is a colonialist if not an apartheid state, which systematically and gratuitously violates the human rights of Palestinians both in the territories and in Israel. It is an attitude that stigmatises us Israelis as lepers, beyond the pale, not fit for human interaction. Israelis have become the one currently legitimate case for social exclusion in the eyes of those very people who are fighting social exclusion in all its forms.

Those of you who support the resolution will no doubt say to yourselves: 'but they (the Israelis) deserve it'. And the point of this letter is to ask you to question that rationalisation. The resolution is misguided on two grounds. First, it targets Israel in a disproportionate way. On a graded scale of evil intent, can it really be said that Israel is the worst offender in the world, deserving of the one and only boycott by left wing intellectuals? In condemning Israel, how many of England's academics have employed Karl Popper's empathy test? Would they like to change places with the Israeli population and have to deal with our problems: 60 years of mass immigration of refugee populations, a territory the size of Wales, 3 wars in which the State's survival was threatened, deaths from terrorism and suicide bombings relatively equivalent to recurrent 11th of September tragedies? Second, the resolution ostracises and silences the academic community - one of the most important sources of criticism and debate of the Israeli government's policies.

As feminist academics, many of us, too, are highly critical of our government's policy on occupation and settlement. In order to disseminate our work and our criticism, we need open channels of communication in the international academic community. Boycotts such as the one proposed, by undercutting the international and consequently the national status of the academic institutions within which we work, only weaken the ability of those institutions to serve as forums for the voicing of critical and alternative views - a role in which Israel's universities serve honorably.

Many of you surely have opposed the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. We wonder whether you are considering resigning from your University positions, refusing to lecture to English students and refusing to pay taxes to a government which uses them to kill Iraqis. To the best of our knowledge, the coalition forces have killed in the space of a year at least 5 times as many Iraqi civilians (16,000 as of October 2004, most of them women and children - BBC 29.10.04) as the Israelis have killed in the past 5 years of Intifada (3,574 according to the Palestinian Red Crescent - most of them Palestinian fighters, not civilians). And this - along with the preceding starvation of the Iraqi civilian population as a result of Western sanctions - was not preceded by any Iraqi attack on Britain's population, such as Israel's civilians have repeatedly suffered at the hands of organized Palestinian irregular fighters and suicide bombers; even the evidence of a potential threat of attack, on which Britain went to war, was flimsy and proved false. Is this perhaps a case of seeing "the speck that is in your brother's eye, but not the beam that is in your own eye?"

The academic community in Israel enjoys full academic freedom, as is clear from the wide divergence of views that emanate from it. The proposed boycott by British academics thus must be seen as an attempt to curtail academic freedom. We are convinced that our time as academics would be better spent not in ostracising and silencing other academics for the moral messiness in the world around us, but in encouraging research and exchange of information and ideas as to the most effective ways of rectifying it.

Frances Raday
President of the Israel Association of Feminist and Gender Studies,

Professor of Law
The College of Management Academic Studies
Lieberman Chair, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

This kind of boycott is very injurious to Jewish Studies in particular, because we have close contact with Israeli colleagues all the time, and it would be very damaging to our continued collaboration if this kind of official boycott were declared.

As pointed out by Jim Davila at Paleojudaica, the Yeshiva University Museum Presents A Journey Through the Talmud's History. The exhibit will be up through August 2005.

I'm curious whether they deal also with the anti-Talmud slanders frequent among anti-Semitic writers, and now to be found online as well. (I'm thinking of Carol A. Valentine's website, where she has put up a good deal of the Soncino translation of the Talmud into English, following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Dilling's publication of those passages in her book "The Jewish Religion: Its Influence Today." Dilling, a notorious anti-Semite, also published "The Plot Against Christianity"). (I'm not providing the links here because I don't want to have direct links from my site to hers!)

And I still wonder why the Soncino publishing company has not sued Valentine to force her to take down her site, since she's clearly violating their copyright.

Cardinal Ratzinger elected new Pope. We will see. Andrew Sullivan is very unhappy that Ratzinger is the new Pope, given Ratzinger's theological conservatism and role as enforcer of Catholic orthodoxy.

Here's the report from the IC student newspaper about yesterday's rally: Hundreds rally to 'Erase the Hate'. A detail that I got wrong from yesterday's posting - Emily Liu is the name of the president of Asian Culture Club.

And also, an important part of the rally I forgot to report on: before the rally started, a new rainbow flag was raised, along with a flag reading "Erase the Hate" with a rainbow fringe. As the Ithacan reported: "Freshman Taryn Michelitch announced that from 9 p.m. Thursday to 7 a.m. Friday, prism will hold a vigil underneath the flagpole to make sure the flag stays in the air."

To see some nice pictures of the rally, go to the "Erase the Hate" photo gallery.

Today's "Erase the Hate" rally was very exciting and hopeful. It was wonderful to see how well students organized the rally, how energetic they were, and how wide a coalition they had brought together to protest against the recent racist and homophobic acts on the Ithaca College campus. There were speakers from the African-Latino Society, including one young man very powerfully leading chants and energizing the crowd. Michelle Berry, the Ithaca Common Council member from the second ward, who also teaches at IC, gave a poetic and encouraging speech, as did Leslyn McBean Claybourn, one of the representatives on the Tompkins County Legislature. Amy Liu, from the Asian Culture Club, gave a powerful speech against racism. Representatives from prism, the student LGBT group, and from Created Equal, the gay-straight alliance, spoke very well. A student from Hillel spoke up about an incident that happened to her last semester, when a swastika was written on her door (an incident I hadn't heard about before). The student trustee (on the Board of Trustees), spoke out, as did the president of the student government, a gay man. There were many others as well. Peggy Williams, IC president, spoke very powerfully (I keep using that word, but it fits) against racism, homophobia, and other forms of xenophobia that destroy community - speaking directly and angrily to the perpetrators and telling them that there was no place in the IC community for hateful acts like these. She said that she wished she were speaking to them in her office and telling them directly what she thought of their acts. About 500 people came to the rally - mostly students, but also many staff and faculty, as well as deans and other administrators. I was very happy to see the seriousness of the student speakers (the president of the Caribbean Student Association was particularly eloquent) and their determination. Many people were wearing white t-shirts with slogans written on them, or holding up the student newspaper, which was published today - the entire back page was a very elegantly designed "Erase the Hate" poster.

I hope that the students remain active and involved, because I think that the administration is behind them, from the president on down, and that if they keep on pushing, there will be real change on this campus.

On the depressing notes of racism and indifference.... at my college this semester there have been several notable racist incidents that are finally giving rise to energetic student activism. Earlier in the semester, an African-American student was harassed in a elevator by a white student, who jumped up and down in the elevator, and when she asked him to stop, he called her a racist slur. A few weeks later, as an Asian-American student was walking past a group of white male students, they yelled at her and called her names. She had earlier been harassed in the same way when using the communal dorm kitchen. This past weekend, across the front doors of one of the residence halls, and on the door of the student convenience store, more racial slurs (anti-Black) were written in green and black marker. The same weekend, the gay pride flag was stolen from the flagpole (this is the third year that's happened). Tomorrow a coalition of student groups is sponsoring an "Erase the Hate" rally and march to protest against these racist actions. The school president, Peggy Williams, expressed her anger in a talk with the student government on Tuesday night. "'I just want to say that I’m so angry I could actually just spit, and you’re going hear it in my voice as I’m just ready to scream,' Williams said. 'I actually am someone who has not grown up with hate as part of my sense of sentiment, and at this point I’m ready to throw whoever these people are off the highest roof I can find on the Ithaca College campus.'" Williams also said in a notice sent to all faculty and staff that

I was outraged and deeply saddened when I heard that acts of bias have once again taken place on our campus. This past weekend, explicit and angry racist graffiti were found written in several locations around the Towers Concourse and the rainbow flag symbolizing gay pride was stolen from the “free speech” flagpole.

As I said at my all-College address on March 15, heinous actions of this type, obviously born of ignorance and intolerance, have no place in a community that values diversity. And let me assure you that we are such a community. All of us -- students, faculty, and staff members alike -- must feel free to pursue our education and our work in a nurturing and safe environment. I urge us to not let these acts tear us apart but instead to bring us together. While I truly believe that these actions are being carried out by a small fraction of our community, we are all responsible for working together to build a campus that accepts and embraces our diversity, individually and collectively.

Once again, I'd like to invite my readers (whoever you are!) to pay a visit to the Coalition for Darfur and to Passion of the Present in order to learn what's going on in Darfur. Passion of the Present posts many current stories and editorials on Darfur, while Coalition for Darfur often posts analyses. Both are attempting to raise awareness of the ongoing genocide in Darfur and arouse citizen activists to action.

I keep being struck by the similarities to world inaction during the Holocaust. We may know more than we knew then (although a lot was known by the U.S. & British governments), but we still occupy our time with useless conferences, useless statements by diplomats (see under: Kofi Annan, Colin Powell, Condaleeza Rice), and general indifference. Somehow the Michael Jackson trial is more important. Terri Schiavo's death is more important. Reality TV shows are more important. Britney Spears' pregnancy is more important.

Do we want to spend our time ten years from now commemorating the tragic slaughter, rapes, death from starvation and disease, as we now commemorate the tragic slaughter in Rwanda in 1994 - or do we want to remember that finally the genocide was stopped by organized political action?

In this article, In a Judgmental World, She Was Ashamed of Getting Sick, the author writes about her mother who died of emphysema. She had been a heavy smoker, and felt shame about her death.

I wonder if this kind of shame is why lung cancer, or other lung diseases linked to smoking, gets far less public attention than other forms of cancer, like breast cancer and prostate cancer. It bothers me that when I tell people that my mother died of cancer, they often jump to the conclusion that it must have been breast cancer, even though far more people die every year of lung cancer than of breast cancer. And then when I tell them that it was lung cancer, they ask me if she was a smoker. Does it matter if she was a smoker? I wonder why people ask. Does it make them feel better somehow if the person was a smoker? Is it easier then to blame the person for her own death?

I ask too, when I hear that someone has lung cancer. Earlier this year, when a friend of mine died of lung cancer, I also wanted to know if he had been a smoker. It was disturbing to me - very disturbing - that he had not been a smoker. Since he wasn't a smoker, perhaps that meant that I - also not a smoker - might be vulnerable to lung cancer. It seems to me that being able to point to a definite cause - smoking - makes it easier for people to blame others who get lung cancer for their own illnesses, and simultaneously distance themselves from the sick person. It gives one a sense of having some control over one's death.

But should we gain this sense of control at the expense of shaming another human being? And what is more, what do we gain for ourselves by turning away from the fact that we will all die, from one thing or another, and that in the end, we don't have control over whether we will die?

Once again, Avi Shafran, the "Director of Public Affairs" of Agudath Israel, the ultra-Orthodox Jewish group, tries to claim in this letter to the editor of the New York Times - Judaism and the Pope - that ultra-Orthodoxy is more than 3,000 years old, even though it, like the Reform movement, is a creation of the 19th century.

To the Editor:

A word of clarification regarding the contention of Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the president of the Union for Reform Judaism, that "our religious traditions led us to different conclusions" than Pope John Paul II's regarding gender roles, abortion and homosexuality ("People of All Faiths Recall Pope With Fondness," news article, April 4).

The religious tradition to which the rabbi referred is the less-than-200-year-old Reform theology.

Traditional Judaism, which is more than 3,000 years old and continues to be embraced by Orthodox Jews worldwide, is much closer on all those issues to the stances taken by John Paul II.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
Director of Public Affairs
Agudath Israel of America
New York, April 4, 2005

It continues to amaze me how spokesmen for ultra-Orthodoxy can continue to maintain, against the historical evidence, that Judaism has never had a pluralism of views on various controversial issues, and that the current views of ultra-Orthodox rabbis are the only correct Jewish ones. Shafran is correct that ultra-Orthodoxy and Reform differ on these issues - but he is incorrect to think that all of Jewish history corroborates his view of Judaism. If we were to step back 3,000 years, approximately to the time of the building of the First Temple, I think we would find a very different religion than the one practiced by Jews (of any stripe) today. (For one thing, of course, Jews no longer sacrifice animals as part of worship). If we stepped back 2,000 years we would find evidence of some synagogues where women were leaders (see Bernadette Brooten's work, "Women Leaders of the Ancient Synagogue"). If we stepped back a thousand years we would find Jews in the Middle East who rejected the authority of the Talmud and the midrash (the Karaites).

This scary story in Thursday's Haaretz tells about a "High alert amid warnings of Temple Mount attack."

The Shin Bet security service has raised the level of alert in Jerusalem amid indications that extremist Jews are planning to carry out an attack on the mosques of the Temple Mount, and on the basis of new intelligence has beefed up police and security around the site in the heart of the Old City....

Police on Wednesday announced plans to close the Temple Mount compound to Jews on Sunday, when a right-wing extremist group called Revava was planning to hold a mass rally there. Police fear the activists could clash with Muslim worshipers. Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra and Police Commissioner Moshe Karadi have approved an operational plan meant to prevent Revava activists from holding the event. Police will prevent Jews from ascending to the mount Sunday, and will work to prevent any friction between Jews and Muslims in the Old City's alleys. Jerusalem's police chief, Ilan Franco, announced several days ago that Revava activists would not be allowed to enter the Temple Mount compound. The statement came after reports in the Arab media expressed dismay at intentions of Israeli authorities to grant the right-wing activists permission to approach the compound, revered as holy by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. Channel One reported Wednesday night that these security concerns have been made known to the political echelon. The radical rightists apparently aim to attack the mosques in the hope that will disrupt the execution of the disengagement plan.

The secret service created a ranking from 1-10 with 10 being the highest security risk. Three months ago, the Shin Bet was ranking the security threat at 7, meaning that "there are signs of planning for an attack," and that there are activists "talking about what to do and as soon as possible." Now, however, the ranking has moved to an 8 - and it is based on much more solid information.... A senior security source said recently that the mosques of the Temple Mount, known to Muslims as Haram el Sharif, have become a "hot topic" among radicals, on the assumption that an attack on the mosques would shock the Muslim world, drag Israel into a new war and prevent the disengagement. The source defined the chances of the threat against the mount being actualized as greater than the threat to the prime minister's life, where the security risk remains stable at 6, largely because of the difficulty of protecting the mount....

Jim Davila at Paleojudaica has been following this story much more carefully than I. It does sound dangerous. Before Israel's pullout from the Sinai Peninsula in the early 1980s there were plots by an armed Jewish underground to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount. They were caught before they could do anything - I hope that the Shin Bet will manage to catch these folks too, this time around. (The 2002 Israeli movie Time of Favor dramatized this story, adding [of course] a romantic plot to spice things up).

Another great Op-Ed piece by Nicholas Kristof on Darfur - The Pope and Hypocrisy. As he says, "'Throughout the West, John Paul's witness reminded us of our obligation to build a culture of life in which the strong protect the weak,' Mr. Bush said. Well, what about that reminder? What kind of a 'culture of life' is it that allows us to shrug as Sudanese soldiers heave children onto bonfires?" Or that allows us to stand by as Sudanese soldiers rape girls and then imprison them for adultery when they get pregnant (after their families have thrown them out of their huts in the refugee camps)?

For two of my classes, I (and hopefully the students as well!) have been reading two fascinating new books - one by Arthur Green, Guide to the Zohar, and one by Harvey Goldberg, Jewish Passages: Cycles of Jewish Life.

The first one is assigned for my Jewish Mysticism class as an introduction to the Zohar. It is a beautifully, lyrically written induction into the Zohar, seducing the reader into loving the text of the Zohar as Green does. He explains the symbolism of the sefirot, traces the history of Kabbalah before the Zohar, and describes the midrashic and narrative techniques of the Zohar. I would recommend it for anyone who wants to know what the Zohar is. It was written as an introductory book to the new translation of the Zohar that Daniel Matt is doing (the Pritzker edition of the Zohar) but certainly stands very well alone.

The second one is an introduction to Jewish rituals of the life-cycle by an eminent Israeli anthropologist. It is also beautifully written and accessible to undergraduates. He traces the history of Jewish rituals (for example, circumcision), beginning with the Bible, going into rabbinic and medieval developments, and talks about how the ritual is practiced today. He explores the meaning of Jewish rituals within a wide range of Jewish cultures and brings in his own experiences as a Jewish ethnographer. He provides as well the relevant anthropological theoretical framework - for example, from Arthur van Gennep's Rites de Passage or from Victor Turner's The Ritual Process. He engages the material with a full awareness of his own personal role as an anthropologist/ethnographer. He is also admirably non-judgemental, thus allowing the reader to make up his or her own mind about the information he is providing.

Both of these books provide much information delivered in an effortless manner. I think they are challenging to undergraduates but ultimately very rewarding.

I cannot say the same of a book I used last semester for my Hebrew Scriptures course - John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. The book is marketed as an introductory Hebrew Bible textbook suitable both for undergraduate and graduate courses. I found that it was not appropriate for my 100-level course, which has many first and second-year students in it. They complained that it often assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader. I agreed, and think it is much more appropriate for a introductory Bible course taught at a seminary, in other words for first-year graduate students who have probably already studied the Bible as undergraduates. In many respects it does not work very well as an introduction - for example, it would have been very helpful if each chapter had summarized the biblical book (or part of biblical book) that it dealt with and outlined the main points it was going to deal with. It was a good summary of contemporary scholarship on a given biblical book, but I found that more useful for preparation for my lectures, rather than for the students to read. In addition to these drawbacks for an undergraduate course, I objected to Collins' political slant that popped up at various points in the book, in particular what seemed to me to be his dragging in contemporary politics to the biblical text. I particularly objected to what he said about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but there were other tendentious political remarks that I also disliked. This aspect of the book seemed to embody what I often find obnoxious about liberal Christian academics' approach to politics.

Previous to using this book I used another introductory textbook, Reading the Old Testament, by Barry Bandstra, which was written at the right level for my undergraduates, but also had occasional superficial excursions into contemporary liberalism that I objected to. If the author of a textbook for undergraduates wants to introduce contemporary politics into the book, I think that he or she should somewhere in the book justify that importation of politics, rather than simply citing his or her political views as if they had the same authority as the scholarship that the book presents.

I just read the article in today's New York Times Magazine about the Dutch-Somali ex-Muslim member of the Dutch Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and found it very disturbing for what it says about the relationship between liberalism and extremism. The author of the article, Christopher Caldwell, argues that it was Dutch liberalism that permitted the growth of an alienated Muslim immigrant population in the Netherlands that now includes many people who have embraced the ideology of Al Qaeda and militant Islamism.

Until recently, the Netherlands adhered to a national policy cumbersomely known as ''integration with maintenance of one's own identity.'' It arose partly out of unspoken guilt over the country's failure to save many Jews under German occupation during World War II and partly out of a modish multiculturalism. But letting ethnic communities go their own way also had a long history in the Netherlands. The ''Pacification'' of 1917 formalized a system in which different groups - Catholics, Protestants, secular citizens and others - lived in separate institutional universes, or ''pillars.'' A Catholic would typically attend a Catholic school, read a Catholic newspaper, join a Catholic trade union and social club and vote for a Catholic political party.

The system withered in the 1960's, but many Dutch clung to the hope that its virtues could be revived for an age of immigration. In the early 1990's, Frits Bolkestein, then the leader of the country's pro-free-market party, the VVD, warned in articles and speeches that they could not. He argued that certain identities, unlike the old Catholic and Protestant ones, would, if maintained, undermine the individual rights that are at the heart of the Dutch constitution. He cited the practice of bigamy, for instance. Where clashes occurred, Bolkestein insisted, Dutch norms must prevail. For this observation, he was condemned as a rightist and a racist. Today, most Dutch accept the validity of Bolkestein's critique, even if they can't agree on what to do about it.

Hirsi Ali says that it is not just militant Islam that is the problem - it is much of traditional Islam as well. She began to speak up after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: " She took the floor at a conference in an Amsterdam political club to say that what Islam needed was not understanding from others but its own Voltaire. The national daily Trouw had her write an op-ed on the matter. Asked her opinion of Pim Fortuyn's characterization of Islam as a 'backward religion,' Hirsi Ali replied that by certain measures, including the treatment of women, Fortuyn's statement was not an opinion but a fact."

Eventually, she and Theo van Gogh, an outrageous Dutch filmmaker, made a movie called "Submission" - "It presented four fictional episodes. All involved violence against women and the Koranic verses that had been, or could be, used to justify it. These verses were written on the skin of the actresses' seminaked bodies." Van Gogh was murdered by an Islamist terrorist, and "Hirsi Ali says she felt guilt over van Gogh's death - guilt that van Gogh's mother publicly insisted was misplaced -- but she continues to reject any suggestion that the film they made was sensationalist, or gratuitous in its use of see-through clothing. 'Maybe Americans think, "This is a naked body,''' she says. 'But this body is why half the nation in Saudi Arabia is not allowed to drive.'''

The predicament of individual Muslim women has become a public concern in the Netherlands. In February, the daily Volkskrant ran an expose of widespread bigamy among Dutch Moroccans. Muslim views on virginity have led to other clashes. There are clinics that specialize in the surgical repair of broken hymens, a practice that was often covered by national insurance until the ministry of health blocked it last May. Genital mutilation, of the sort practiced on Hirsi Ali and 98 percent of girls in Somalia, has been illegal in Holland since 1993 but still occurs.

Hirsi Ali says of herself, "I confront the European elite's self-image as tolerant,'' she says, ''while under their noses women are living like slaves.''

Hirsi Ali raises the question of whether a liberal society that values multiculturalism must accept all possible values in order to be tolerant. Are there certain liberal principles, such as the belief in the equality of human beings, or the emphasis on individual rights, that must override tolerance for the principles of other cultures? In the U.S., this has certainly been true. For example, Utah was only able to become a state when it outlawed polygamy, which had previously been permitted by the dominant Mormon church. If people come to the U.S. from countries where polygamous marriages are permitted, they can't continue to engage in polygamy here. The Supreme Court has generally upheld the ability to hold different religious beliefs, but frowned on accepting different religious practices that collided with the dominant Protestant model of what religion is - for example, not upholding the rights of Native Americans to eat peyote as part of a religious ritual. [My former colleague, Eric Mazur of Bucknell University, is the person who taught me this approach to religious freedom in the United States - see his recent book, Religion on Trial: How Supreme Court Trends Threaten Freedom of Conscience in America.]

Zachary on the washing machine

Zachary on the washing machine
Originally uploaded by reb-lesses.

And here's the man himself, lazing around as usual (when not catching mice, birds, or bats!)

I was out working in the garden today. I dug up all the old vegetables from last year, including some extremely large kale trunks, which were starting to stink. I also cleared out all the old tomato vines, and discovered things starting to grow underneath them. It's still a chilly early spring here in Ithaca, but the crocuses are starting to bloom - I have a couple of little purple ones putting their heads out. The daffodils and tulips are starting to come up. When I cleaned up everything, I discovered that in one vegetable patch, the oregano was coming back, and it looked like (smelled like too) there were little garlic shoots coming up. Other things starting to peek above the ground were the beginnings of day lilies and irises, and possibly some pansies (if the hard winter didn't kill them).

Other signs of spring are that the cat has taken to staying out all night and stalking little creatures. For the last few days I've gotten up in the morning and discovered a new mouse carcass on the kitchen porch (fortunately not inside the house!)

The Canadian geese are flying north in big v-shaped formations. We've had songbirds for about a month, now, if not longer, and I think that there are cardinals around too. Also crows, although I'm not sure they've ever left.

Now that the sun is setting later, it's more hazardous driving home from work. A couple of weeks ago I nearly hit a deer crossing the road at dusk.

And, we just had Purim! Lots of masks & funny costumes - one friend dresses as Mr. Potato Head. I came as an elegant flapper - my hair in a black and magenta wig, wearing my party dress & feather boa, as well as my grandmother's mink coat (which I probably wouldn't wear any other time in Ithaca, certainly not out walking around, given the presence of some fairly militant animal rights folks here).

Another good Washington Post editorial about Darfur: Don't Move On

The best shot at breaking this cycle of violence and hunger is to put a serious peacekeeping force into Darfur. But all sides are engaged in an outrageous pretense of seriousness. The African Union, which has provided about 2,000 peacekeepers when 25,000-plus are necessary, is infatuated with rhetoric about "African solutions for African problems"; the United States and its powerful allies defer to this slogan, partly out of a virtuous desire to see Africa develop its own capacity to manage crises but mostly out of a base desire to pass the buck. The Bush administration's policy is to draft U.N. resolutions and dispatch humanitarian assistance. But it refuses to spend real military or diplomatic capital to stop killings that, by its own admission, amount to genocide.

Don Cheadle and John Prendergast say about the genocide in Darfur: Enough excuses. The time to act is now. Reading this article, which criticizes the U.S. government for all the excuses it's making about not really doing anything to stop the genocide, reminds me of an article republished earlier this year on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, from the Dec. 11, 1942 edition of the (UK) Guardian. The article discusses the newly available information about the ongoing massacres of Jews in Poland, which the Polish government in exile in London made known to the countries of the United Nations and goes on to say:

The situation obviously calls for something more than a reaffirmation of principles or a condemnation of the indescribable deeds being done in fulfilment of a predetermined policy. There is a growing feeling that in spite of all the difficulties involved practical measures of help must be sought and found.

But it would seem that a change of outlook and approach to the problem must precede any undertaking of the kind. There should in the first place be a relaxation in the official methods which have hitherto so impeded the work of rescue as to make it almost impossible. In the case of countries still liable to an illegal influx of Jewish refugees certain assurances should perhaps be considered. It should be made clear to these States that they will not be left responsible for chance immigrants indefinitely but that provision will be made for them in the general reconstruction after the war.

The German scheme for total extermination can only be combated by radical means, and any plan of rescue must be evolved on a really broad and constructive basis. It is clear, therefore, that whatever body may be chosen to put into practice decisions made by the United Nations must start with a generous mandate, unfettered by petty limitations.

The Polish Note forms an important contribution to the documentation of this black chapter in history. The situation as outlined in the Note has already taken a turn for the worse, according to the most up-to-date information. It is feared that of the weekly average of 25,000 Jews reaching Eastern Poland from the countries of occupied Europe the vast majority are going to a ghastly death.

Emphasis mine. The article also says that since the German invasion of POland in 1939 over one million Polish Jews have been murdered and mentions "new methods of mass slaughter" - probably a reference to the death camps.

This article, if anything, shows that U.N. indecision in the face of genocide has a long and inglorious history, not that the U.S. has any better record. When will it be possible for us to learn from history, rather than simply babbling about "never again"?

This is a good editorial on the Terri Schiavo case - Support for life, politics and money. The author points out that in a case in Texas last week, a boy named Sun Hudson was taken off life support against the wishes of his mother, because she didn't have money to pay for the care. "She also had to deal with a Texas law that allows the withdrawal of life support from terminally ill patients, even against the wishes of the family, if they don't have money to pay for the care. Ironically, this law was created with the signature of then-Gov. George W. Bush, who made an emergency trip back to Washington this weekend to sign a bill to help restore life support to Schiavo. Congressman Tom Delay called the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube "medical terrorism." But what would the congressman from Texas say about Sun Hudson? Wanda Hudson would like to know." So much for Bush's statement about Schiavo: "In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life."

As I said before, when has he ever had a "presumption for life" except where it helped him politically?

For extended analyses of the situation in Darfur and what is (not) being done to save people, read Eric Reeves. From the reading that I have done in the last few days for my class discussion of Darfur, it seems that the only way to stop the genocide will be an extensive military intervention of around 50,000 troops, in order to protect civilians and fight off the Janjaweed and Sudan army troops. Eric Reeves is arguing for this, as is Brian Steidle, the former U.S. Marine who was a ceasefire monitor in Darfur for several months. In order for this intervention to be approved by the U.N., the U.S. will have to exert vast pressure on the other members of the Security Council (including Russia and China, both of which have economic interests in Sudanese oil and don't want to see them threatened). Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Jon Corzine of New Jersey have introduced the "Darfur Accountability Act" which has gone the farthest toward advocating military intervention of this type, essentially by strengthening the presently-existing African Union force in Darfur (currently only at about 2,000 troops, and without a mandate to protect civilians).

And will this happen? The lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, hang on what we are willing to do.

Kevin Drum has a good post on "Terri Schiavo and the limits of cynicism," where he reports that of two recent polls, by ABC News and CBS News, large majorities of the American population oppose Congressional and Presidential interference in the case, and agree that Congress has gotten involved to advance its own political agenda. Feh.

One wishes that an equal amount of political attention could be devoted to the thousands of people who are dying in Darfur each week, as well as the thousands of other people in the Congo who are dying each week, not to mention the thousands of people in South Africa who are dying each week - almost all of them of PREVENTABLE CAUSES!

The triviality of American politics and American culture knows no bounds.

I've just browsing the Net to find more information on Darfur for my Judaism class, which will be discussing Jewish responses to the genocide in Darfur this week (last week we discussed Elie Wiesel's Night and in both sections had very rich discussions that touched on contemporary issues as well). The United States has spent about $588 million since 2003 on Darfur. According to a report from USAID, we have given money to CARE, the World Food Program, the International Rescue Committee, and other groups for many different needs - for food security, health, shelter, management of refugee camps, emergency relief supplies, environmental protection (water safety), etc. The USAID information can be found at USAID: Sudan: Darfur Humanitarian Emergency. The latest report can be download in PDF format.

The latest report from Passion of the Present on the Crisis in Sudan. This is the transcript of a report on PBS's Newshour on Darfur - a conversation between Senator Sam Brownback and Refugees International President Kenneth Bacon.

And then let us consider this article from the Week in Review section of today's New York Times - Beyond the Bullets and Blades. In the last few years, 3.8 million people have lost their lives in the Congo. 2 million people have died in the southern Sudan in the 21 years of fighting between rebels and the government. In Darfur, around 300,000 people have died in the last two years (and 2 million people are displaced and living in refugee camps). 100,000 people have died in northern Uganda. And this is not to speak of the many thousands of people in other parts of Africa who have died of preventable diseases like malaria, AIDS, dehydration from diarrhea.

Have we no shame? Our government is exercising itself to "save" the life of one poor woman in Florida who should be allowed to die quietly, in dignity - and ignoring the many Africans who are dying horrible deaths, much too young. Of course, it's not just our government that is to blame. Why are Catholic bishops and the leaders of other conservative Christian groups seemingly so much more upset about the life of Terry Schiavo than they are about the killing and dying in Africa? Why is Randall Terry, the leader of Operation Rescue, the radical anti-abortion group, in Florida advising her parents, rather than trying to save lives in Africa?

For some of the details on the consequences of the wars in Africa, read on:

Horrible though the genocidal spasms in Rwanda and the aerial bombings in Sudan have been, the vast majority of those who die in African war zones are not done in directly by warriors. Rather, it is the disruption that a few thousand armed men in ragtag militias can create in the lives of millions of civilians that send so many innocents to their graves.

In recent months, aid workers have begun providing a clearer picture of exactly why so many Africans die when conflict flares. Studies of two different war zones, by Physicians for Human Rights and by the International Rescue Committee, concluded separately that the major blame lies with the conditions created by wars in extremely fragile societies.

The first killer is flight. Desperately poor people are driven from their subsistence existence into even more hostile environments as they seek safety - deep into the forest in the case of eastern Congo, across the desert into Chad to escape the unfolding violence in Darfur. Typically, the few hospitals that may exist are emptied, their supplies are looted and members of their staffs are forced to run, alongside everyone else. Fields that once fed families lie fallow. Livestock die. Relatives and neighbors who depend on each other become separated.

Dependency and depression can come to many who find their way to the relative safety of camps, and when these uprooted souls return to razed villages, there is little time to rest from the trauma. Life begins again, and now their social network of neighbors and health workers and people to trade with - the thin fibers that knit lives together for survival - may have been torn beyond repair. The numbers who die in Africa's wars are almost too high to contemplate. The fighting in Congo - an amalgam of rebel insurgencies, tribal rivalries, competition for resources and just plain butchery without a cause - has taken an estimated 3.8 million lives since 1998, making it the most deadly conflict since World War II, the International Rescue Committee estimated. Another two million lives have been lost in southern Sudan, where a war between the government and rebels ground on 21 years before a peace deal was signed in January. And Sudan's Darfur region, in the west, has lost more than 200,000 additional lives over two years of tribal pillaging. Fighting in northern Uganda, where rebels who purport to fight for the Ten Commandments abduct children to reinforce their ranks and chop off the lips and ears of those who dare resist, has taken an estimated 100,000 lives.

When I read articles like this I just feel despair. What can we do? What can I as an individual begin to work for to alleviate this vast human suffering? Any suggestions would be welcome!

Let us consider two articles in today's New York Times. On the front page is an article about Terry Schiavo, the woman in Florida who has been in a "persistent vegetative state" for over a decade after a heart attack. The U.S. Congress is in the process of passing a bill to "save" Mrs. Schiavo by restoring the feeding tube that has kept her alive all these years, and which a Florida court permitted to be removed on Friday.

Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas and the House majority leader, who is at the center of the Congressional intervention, said on Saturday: "We should investigate every avenue before we take the life of a living human being. That is the very least we can do." In Crawford, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said: "Everyone recognizes that time is important here. This is about defending life."

The hypocrisy of these men's statements is simply stunning - they have the unmitigated chutzpah to claim that "defending life" is their highest value, after having gotten the United States into a war that seemingly has no end, where over 1,500 American soldiers have been killed, hundreds of American civilian contractors have been killed, and many thousands of Iraqis, many of them just as innocent as Mrs. Schiavo. (And we don't even allow our military to try to figure out how many Iraqis have been killed, as if their lives had no meaning for us!)

(And I say this as a person who supported the Iraq war and I still - barely - think that at least we aren't as bad as Saddam Hussein and have done some good in Iraq, amid the suicide truck bombs and the shootings and the barbers in Baghdad who are being killed by Islamist hooligans because they are shaving off men's beards!)

Here's a voice of reason on the results of removing a feeding tube:

To many people, death by removing a feeding tube brings to mind the agony of starvation. But medical experts say that the process of dying that begins when food and fluids cease is relatively straightforward, and can cause little discomfort.

"From the data that is available, it is not a horrific thing at all," said Dr. Linda Emanuel, the founder of the Education for Physicians in End-of-Life Care Project at Northwestern University.

In fact, declining food and water is a common way that terminally ill patients end their lives, because it is less painful than violent suicide and requires no help from doctors.

Terri Schiavo, who is in a persistent vegetative state, is "probably not experiencing anything at all subjectively," said Dr. Emanuel, and so the question of discomfort, from a scientific point of view, is not in dispute.

Patients who are terminally ill and conscious and refuse food and drink at the end of life say that they do not generally experience pangs of hunger, since their bodies do not need much food. But they can suffer from dry mouth and other symptoms of dehydration that can be treated effectively.

Once food and water stop, death usually comes in about two weeks, and is caused by effects of dehydration, not the loss of nutrition, said Dr. Sean Morrison, a professor of geriatrics and palliative care at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. "They generally slip into a peaceful coma," he said. "It's very quiet, it's very dignified - it's very gentle."

For more information on the dubious quality of Ward Churchill's academic writing, see this article from the Denver Post: CU prof's writings doubted.

University of Colorado officials reviewing Ward Churchill's writings and qualifications will find questions about his scholarship and accuracy dating back at least eight years.

"If he is going to get fired, it is going to be for making up data, and that's one thing you can't get away with in the academic community," said Thomas F. Brown, who holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins and is an assistant professor of sociology at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

...But today, Churchill's intellectual rigor is the third area to face scrutiny in the academic and political world since his views about the Sept. 11 attacks - he called some of the victims "little Eichmanns" - became widely known.

It's about time his intellectual rigor is being questioned.

On a completely non-political note - I'm sitting here in the quiet evening and listening to the calls of the Canadian geese flying high above, returning south for the spring. Yesterday I saw a big v-formation of geese flying south. And today it got up to about 60 F, and I could smell the wet, saturated soil! It's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow, but spring is on the way!

More on Ward Churchill

More on the Ward Churchill controversy. It is becoming ever more clear that Churchill's "Indian" or "Native American" identity is very doubtful, and that his "scholarship" is even more dubious. An editorial in Indian Country Today, a Native American news service, casts doubt on Churchill's Indian identity and condemns his harsh language about the victims of the 9/11 attacks - Churchill's identity revealed in wake of Nazi comment.

We will defend a good Indian argument in these pages any time. But, again, there is no evidence that Churchill is Indian. Further, Churchill's statements are obviously devoid of even the most basic humanity that American Indian peoples hold dear. In no way does his insult reflect the views of Indian country. To know the response of Indian country to the 9/11 tragedies is to reflect on the humanitarianism shown by Eastern Native communities: from the Mohawk to the Oneida, the Pequot, Mohegan and many others who immediately put their people - ironworkers, ferry-boat crews and medical personnel - into the rescue and recovery operations, to the California Indian nations that expressed their solidarity with America and donated generously to the rescue efforts, to the Lakota families who brought their Sacred Pipe to pray at the site, leaving their quiet offerings early one dawn. This is always the preferred way of human beings - to understand the kind of empathy required to belong to the human race is essential in all political and economic discourse. To call the people who were murdered on Sept. 11 ''little Eichmanns'' is a hideous expression that when combined to Churchill's mistaken Native identity can only poison the public discourse concerning American Indians.

In an opinion piece in the Rocky Mountain News, Truth Tricky for Churchill, Professor Paul Campos of the University of Colorado law school points out how academically weak Churchill's position is.

Consider: Churchill has constructed his entire academic career around the claim that he is a Native American, yet it turns out there is no evidence, other than his own statements, that this is the case.

Churchill has said at various times that he is either one-sixteenth or three-sixteenths Cherokee, yet genealogical reporting by the Rocky Mountain News and others has failed to turn up any Cherokee ancestors - or any other Native Americans - in Churchill's family tree.

Why should we care one way or another? We should care because Churchill has used his supposed Indian heritage to bully his way into academia. Indeed Churchill lacks what are normally considered the minimum requirements for a tenure-track job at a research university: he never earned a doctorate, and his only degrees are a bachelor's and a master's from a then-obscure Illinois college.

Campos also cites evidence found by two other scholars of fabrications by Churchill in his scholarly work:

Thomas Brown, a professor of sociology at Lamar University, has written a paper that outlines what looks like a more conventional form of academic fraud on Churchill's part. According to Brown, Churchill fabricated a story about the U.S. Army intentionally creating a smallpox epidemic among the Mandan tribe in 1837, by simply inventing almost all of the story's most crucial facts, and then attributing these "facts" to sources that say nothing of the kind. . . . (Brown's essay can be read here).

Similar charges have been leveled against Churchill by University of New Mexico law professor John Lavelle, a Native American scholar who has documented what appear to be equally fraudulent claims on Churchill's part regarding the General Allotment Act, one of the most important federal laws dealing with Indian lands. (Lavelle also accuses Churchill of plagiarism).

This is the full citation for LaVelle's article on the General Allotment Act:
“The General Allotment Act ‘Eligibility’ Hoax: Distortions of Law, Policy, and History in Derogation of Indian Tribes” Wicazo Sa Review 14 (Spring 1999) (reference taken from Brown's article mentioned above).

Lavelle also wrote a scathing review of Churchill's book, Indians R Us, in the American Indian Quarterly 20/1 (1996). Lavelle says, among many other things:

Through the course of all his writings, Churchill gradually has emerged as a spokesman of sorts for those persons derisively referred to as Indian "wannabees"-individuals with no American Indian ancestry or tribal affiliation who nonetheless hold themselves out to the public as "Indians" by aggressively inserting themselves into the political affairs of real Indian people. Churchill's appeal among the "wannabees" lies both in the boldness with which he expresses contempt for Indian tribes, and in the scholarly facade he gives his anti-tribal propositions; indeed, many Churchill fans appear to have been won over by the mere fact that Churchill's books contain an abundance of endnotes. By researching those copious endnotes, however, the discerning reader will discover that, notwithstanding all the provocative sound and fury rumbling through his essays, Churchill's analysis overall is sorely lacking in historical/factual veracity and scholarly integrity.

One does wonder how the man ever got tenure!

I just received an e-mail from the American Jewish World Service about the U.S. House of Representatives eliminating $150 million of humanitarian aid for Darfur. Ruth Messinger, the head of AJWS, wrote: "Last Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives eliminated $150 million in emergency humanitarian aid to Darfur. Send your elected representatives an email demanding the aid be restored, by using our simple take action system." If you are outraged by this example of legislative indifference to human suffering, go to the AJWS web site to send a letter to your representative. The sample letter reads as follows:

I am horrified that, even as violence continues daily in Darfur, the House of Representatives is preparing to eliminate $150 million in emergency food assistance for Darfur from the emergency supplemental. Two million people in Darfur need food. Currently, only one million are receiving any food assistance, and nearly one quarter of children under the age of five living in refugee camps are malnourished.

As a supporter of American Jewish World Service, I call on Congress not to stand idly by as those in Darfur suffer. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. will offer an amendment in the House Appropriations Committee to restore the funding for food aid. While it will not end the violence, $150 million for food assistance will save the lives of tens of thousands. The amendment also provides $100 million in funding for disaster and refugee assistance in Darfur, and other emergencies in the region. I ask that you vote in favor of the Jackson Amendment.

I added the following paragraph:

I write as a Jew who is aware of how the world "stood idly by" when Jews were being massacred by the Nazis. Can we, the United States, "stand idly by" when innocent people in Sudan, men, women, and children, are being murdered? The least we can do is offer humanitarian aid to the survivors. Please vote for the Jackson Amendment.

I urge all of my readers to send a letter to your congressman or woman expressing your support for the Jackson Amendment.

Why Jewish Students are really silent

I meant to blog about this earlier. Guy Spigelman at Ha'aretz wrote on Why Jewish students are really silent. He was writing about the lack of activism on university campuses about Israel. He says,

At universities across the world from Europe to Australia to the U.S., Jewish students - inclined, as are all students, to lean towards the left during this period of life - are in a bind. They are torn between the communal message of unquestioning support for the state of Israel and their real concerns about the corrosive effects of occupying another people. There has been no room for a middle ground, one that says: "I love and support Israel, our fundamental rights to settle in the land of our forefathers, to live securely, etc. And at the same time I do not and cannot support Israel's continued status as an occupier."

So these Jews remain silent. With no place to feel "at home" ideologically they feel there is no point in confronting their anti-Israel professors nor debating the leaders of official Jewish organizations, most of whom defend Israel's every action.

Isn't it amazing that pro-Israel advocates repeatedly shout from all possible podiums that we are the only democracy in the Middle East (even though this claim may be a little out of date), yet as soon as we go out into the world we are only allowed to express one point of view?

I feel this is true not just on the level of college students, but also of adults teaching on campuses or part of local Jewish communities.

His point is made even more strongly by a visit he paid to Australia, where he visited Australian trade unions and put forward a leftwing Zionist pro-Israel stance - which they had not heard before.

Recently I visited Australia and took the time to visit some powerful and militant unions. When I walked in the door at one union, the first thing I saw was a large poster that shows a boy about to be trampled by a tank and has "Free Palestine" plastered on the bottom. The general secretary of the union explained that they have had two presentations to their executive about the Middle East, one from the PLO and the other from the Palestinian Labor Federation. Needless to say their public statements about Israel aren't exactly filled with praise for us.

Not feeling bound by the policies of Ariel Sharon's government (it was before Labor joined the coalition) I told him that Israel would be a lot better off if we left Gaza and the West Bank and I pointed to the polls that said that a majority of Israelis would agree if they could be guaranteed peace and security. He was shocked....

By relentlessly attacking Israeli policies and our right to defend ourselves, unions, academics and politicians around the world are doing a disservice to the cause of peace, as it weakens the left camp in Israel. "Where is the solidarity for our suffering?" I challenged the union's secretary general. He hadn't heard this perspective. At the end of the meeting he invited me to address his executive: a first, the Australian Jewish community told me. This is not rocket science, it simply shows that presenting a plurality of views can convince opinion leaders, especially those on the left, that Israel has a complex story and outright rejection of everything Israel does is unjust and unhelpful.

I think that he is absolutely correct.

Further from Mahmood's Den on hopes for democracy in the Arab world. Mahmood writes about three Bahraini bloggers who have been imprisoned for their criticisms of the Bahraini royal family on their blog, (in Arabic) BahrainOnline.org. A web site has been put up to protest the detention and to call for their release - Free Ali.

David Adesnik at Oxblog, on liberals and Lebanon - what he said.

I find the political position that I'm in very strange. I did not vote for George W. Bush and did not want him to be re-elected. When I'm asked what my political beliefs are, they tend to fit into the "liberal" or "progressive" box. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I fit pretty securely into the "left-wing Zionist" box. But when it comes to a lot of current American foreign policy, I find myself agreeing with Bush and Condoleeza Rice!

I'm thrilled about what's happening in Lebanon, especially if it leads to a Syrian withdrawal and a genuine democratic government there. I was pleased at how well both the Palestinian and Iraqi elections went. I'm glad that the U.S. government appears to be withdrawing its support for horrible Arab dictatorships. I found the events in Ukraine positively inspiring. Why aren't my fellow liberals as excited as I am? Just because George Bush might have had something to do with some of these moves towards democracy and political freedom? (Differing amounts in different places, of course - the death of Yasser Arafat was the major factor in Palestine, for example).

I do genuinely wonder what John Kerry would have done in foreign policy if he had been elected. I pretty sure I would have preferred his domestic policy (since he wouldn't be in thrall to the Christian Right, wouldn't have proposed an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution, and probably wouldn't be trying to gut Social Security in the name of saving it), but would he have done what I wanted in foreign policy?

Another fascinating blog that I've just learned about, on the practice of taharat ha-mishpacha, or "family purity" - Mayim Rabim.

Miriam at Bloghead just mentioned a fascinating set of posts from Biur Chametz about the question of women and Torah reading at Orthodox synagogues - specifically Kehillat Yedidyah in Jerusalem. Mr. Biur just went to a halakhic forum on the issue at Yedidyah and reports on the discussion between Rabbi Henkin and Rabbi Sperber.

This discussion dovetails nicely with the topic we are now considering in my Gender and Sexuality in Judaism course - women and the mitzvot. I'm going to show the discussion to my students when we return to class in a week (we are now having our spring vacation).

This Anne Applebaum article (from the Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2004), The Freedom Haters, illustrates the point I made in my previous post: "The larger point, though, is that the 'it's-all-an-American-plot' arguments circulating in cyberspace again demonstrate something that the writer Christopher Hitchens, himself a former Trotskyite, has been talking about for a long time:  At least a part of the Western left -- or rather the Western far left -- is now so anti-American, or so anti-Bush, that it actually prefers authoritarian or totalitarian leaders to any government that would be friendly to the United States. Many of the same people who found it hard to say anything bad about Saddam Hussein find it equally difficult to say anything nice about pro-democracy demonstrators in Ukraine.  Many of the same people who would refuse to condemn a dictator who is anti-American cannot bring themselves to admire democrats who admire, or at least don't hate, the United States.  I certainly don't believe, as President Bush sometimes simplistically says, that everyone who disagrees with American policies in Iraq or elsewhere 'hates freedom.' That's why it's so shocking to discover that some of them do." She was talking about the recent revolt in Ukraine that led to new elections and a new democratic government.

I am happy that Amnesty International has taken on the cases of the 75 men arrested and held in jail in Cuba for political dissidence, as the wife of one of them reports in this article in the Washington Post - Standing Up to a Dictator , but I eagerly await the opportunity to hear from the American left to protest against the Cuban dictator. It continues to be amazing to me that various groups, including ones in the Jewish community in America, sponsor "educational" trips to Cuba without protesting Castro's dictatorship. (See, for example, this 1998 press release from the president of the AJCongress, which nowhere mentions political repression in Cuba). Is oppression only really oppression if a right-wing dictatorship (for example, like the former Argentinian regime) engages in it, while a leftist dictatorship somehow escapes condemnation because of its universal health care?

Berta Soler Fernandez reports of her husband, "My husband, Angel Moya Acosta, is enduring his fourth detention since 1999, when he openly declared his dissent -- a not-so-frequent attitude among black people in Cuba. Until then, he was a simple technician earning his 135 pesos ($5) a month, although I must say that after fighting for a year and a half in Angola he was less convinced of the rightness of everything the Cuban regime was doing."

And where is the leftist condemnation of the Cuban regime's past military intervention in Angola?

I have to say that I have always found it disgusting when people on the left refuse to criticize leftist dictatorships, while people on the right refuse to criticize rightist dictatorship. It makes all of their agitating for human rights suspect, as if there is not a universal standard of human rights, but only one that is dependent on one's politics. Another version of the same thing is pro-Palestinian activists who condemn every human rights violation by Israel, but pay no attention to human rights violations by the Palestinian Authority, or pro-Israel activists who point out every murder of a Palestinian collaborator with Israel by Palestinians, but pay no attention to the torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

I think that if one is a partisan of a particular cause that one must be careful to hold one's own side to a high standard of human rights. As someone who is pro-Israel, it is important for me to see Israel act in a fashion that as much as possible safeguards human rights for Palestinians. Otherwise, it seems to me, Israel loses much of its ability to argue on its own behalf. And the same is true for people who argue against the U.S. embargo on Cuba - they must hold Castro and the Cuban regime to a high standard of human rights, rather than simply condemning the U.S. government for what it is doing.