Hamas shows its true colors again - Holocaust denial and hatred of Jews

Hamas, the Holocaust-denying Islamist terrorist organization that runs Gaza, slams UN over "Holocaust classes" in Gaza.

Branding the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists", the Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip wrote in an open letter to a senior U.N. official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in U.N. schools....Hamas said it believed UNRWA was about to start using a text for 13-year-olds that included a chapter on the Holocaust. In an open letter to local UNRWA chief John Ging, the movement's Popular Committees for Refugees said: "We refuse to let our children study a lie invented by the Zionists."

Of course, the UNRWA schools currently do not teach anything about the Holocaust, and when asked if there were any plans to change that, the UNRWA spokesmen refused to answer.

UPDATE: Apparently, contrary to the article quoted above, UNRWA does have a new human rights curriculum for eighth graders that teaches the basic facts of the Holocaust.

Three teachers at U.N. schools said that according to the new program, basic information about the Holocaust was expected to be taught to eighth grade students as part of human rights classes.

Two of the teachers said they were told about the lesson plan by colleagues involved in the new syllabus. Another teacher said he attended a recent meeting with education officials where he was told to try to teach the new syllabus without offending parents' sensibilities.

All three said they had not received the syllabus for the human rights classes yet, even though the school year began in late August. They requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to reporters.

Madonna tours Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem

And on a happier note: Madonna tours Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem. She toured an ancient tunnel near the Western Wall. I presume this is part of the Kotel tunnels area. If one goes north of the part of the Western Wall that is open to worshippers, one comes first to a big archway in the men's section that leads into an inside area for prayer and study. Continuing northward, one walks underneath the Mamluk buildings that butt right up against the western wall of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. The area has been excavated since after the Six Day War, when the Old City came under Israeli control, and the whole length of the wall was opened to tourists in 1996, occasioning riots which led to the deaths of many Palestinians. The tunnel goes all the way to the Via Dolorosa. For more information, see The Western Wall Tunnels.

I found a couple of videos of part of a tour of the Western Wall tunnels -
Kotel Tunnel tour #1
Kotel Tunnel tour #2

Jerusalem news: still fighting over the parking lot

Haredim, seculars clash in Jerusalem.

I'm teaching a course about Jerusalem this semester (history, politics, religion, and architecture from biblical times to the present). From time to time I'll be blogging about what's going on in Jerusalem today - and the story of the day seems to be the continued riots over the Karta parking lot opening on the Sabbath. Haredi and secular people clashed, as well as the police and the Haredim.


This photo shows a policeman confronting a group of Haredi men. It's not clear to me where they are.

The Haredim were shouting "Shabbes" and "Nazis" at the policemen trying to keep them away from the parking lot.

Antiwar Movement Plans Fall Campaign on Afghanistan

The only good news in this story is that ANSWER isn't mentioned, although unfortunately the execrable Code Pink has jumped in:

Code Pink is trying to build opposition to the war among women’s groups, some of which argue that women will suffer if the Taliban returns. In September, a group of Code Pink organizers will visit Kabul to encourage Afghan women to speak out against the American military presence there.

Only "some" women's groups argue that women will suffer if the Taliban returns? As Barney Frank said recently in another context, what planet are these people on?

Although I eventually came to oppose the war in Iraq, it was not because I was persuaded by the anti-war movement, but because of my own judgment about horrendous things the U.S. has done there (especially the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other prisons, the lack of any evidence for WMDs, the evidence that the Bush administration consistently lied to us, etc.). The rhetoric of the anti-war movement repelled me, and continues to repel me. I have no respect for people like Medea Benjamin and Cindy Sheehan. For them, the U.S. is always the villain, not any other nation or group of people. It will be entertaining, in a grimly repulsive fashion, to see how they excuse the Taliban for their crimes against their own people, especially Afghan women, and for their crimes against the people of the United States, in allying with Al Qaeda and providing a base for Osama bin Laden's jihadists. Maybe Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan have forgotten the September 11 attacks and where they came from, but I certainly haven't.

Back in Ithaca

I returned to Ithaca this morning, and it is so green! So much is growing - the tomatoes & basil in the backyard, the rose bushes (which have been sadly decimated by the Japanese beetles), the Rose of Sharon trees, the lilac bushes, the coneflowers (echinachia), the brown-eyed Susans, the grass.... We are really blessed by abundant rain here! (At least this summer). My tenants told me that apparently some creature has been eating the tomatoes when they start to get ripe - I hope that when I pick my cat up from the kennel today, he'll start keeping whatever animal it is away from them.

Vigil for Tel Aviv attack held in Jerusalem

I wasn't able to get to this event, but there was a Vigil for Tel Aviv attack held in Jerusalem this afternoon. The Jerusalem Post is reporting that about 500 came, mostly young people.

Hundreds of people convened Sunday afternoon in Jerusalem's Kikar Zion to express solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) after two people were killed and more than a dozen injured on Saturday night.

Some 500 arrived to the square, carrying signs in with slogans including "Live and Let Love," "Why Kill?" and Tourism Ministry posters of Jerusalem on which the phrase "Senseless Hatred destroyed Jerusalem" was written in Hebrew. Some people waved flags with the rainbow colors symbolizing the gay community and others waved black flags.

Members of the homosexual community light candles at Kikar Zion in Jerusalem, in memory of the victims of the shooting at the gay youth center in Tel Aviv on Saturday night.
Photo: Ariel Jerozolimksi

Nir Katz and Liz Trobishi buried today

Gay center shooting victim laid to rest.

Nir Katz, one of the two people killed during Saturday night's shooting attack at a gay and lesbian youth center in Tel Aviv, was laid to rest in Modi'in on Sunday....

Relatives and friends, as well as representatives of various gay organizations and Deputy IDF Chief of Staff Maj.-Gen. Dan Harel all arrived at the cemetery to pay their last respects to Nir.

His mother Ayala said during the service, "Nir always had a smile on his face; and endless love for every living creature. He always had respect for himself, his life and those around him."

Nir's father, Rami, was killed in the first Tze'elim Disaster in 1990, in which five soldiers were killed by a shell during training, when Nir was only seven years old. His mother, Ayala remarried, raising Nir and his other five siblings.

I just heard on the radio that the second victim Liz Trobishi was also laid to rest today. Some memories of her from her friends:

Friends and relatives flocked until the early hours of Sunday morning to the home of Liz Trobishi, 16, who was killed Saturday night in a shooting attack at a Tel Aviv gay center.

As they struggled to digest the news, the mourners told of a happy girl who loved to write poetry....

Trobishi's friends said she participated regularly in activities held by the gay youth organization Igy, even though she herself was not a lesbian.

"Although I am not a part of the Igy community I really love being with them," the 16-year-old wrote on the youth organization's online forum a few months ago.

"I connected with a lot of people, met a lot of nice people and am not sorry for any moment," she added.

According to her friends, whenever somebody would announce online that they had come out of the closet, Trobishi would post a message of support on the forum.

"I am so happy to know it went well," she wrote to one of her friends....

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar attended her funeral, and told the mourners that it was hard to believe there could be such evil as that which cut short Trobishi's life.

"I have to say that I felt yesterday and I feel today shame for a society that is turning into a violent, cruel, inhumane society. Week after week, we hear and read about things that our brains cannot process, and I really hope that together we can create in the future a better society and protect our children."

Trobishi is survived by her parents and three brothers.

More on the attack on the gay center

The names of the murder victims have just been released for publication: Nir Katz (26) and Liz Tarabushi (17).

Shlomo Laufer, in an opinion piece on Ynet, writes about the homophobia and attacks that gays and lesbians even in Tel Aviv face every day.

Friday night on Tel Aviv’s beachfront promenade; two guys holding hands, standing at the beach line, and kissing. Three men pass by and swear at them; one man spits. Tel Aviv, Israel’s liberalism capital, the city that openly celebrates pride parades and markets gay tourism packages worldwide; a city whose leaders inaugurate gay centers, but cannot defend us from our greatest enemy – fear and hatred....

Dozens of youth groups, gay association branches, and small community groups operate outside of Tel Aviv through silent agreement. Yet it is not always silent. Eight years ago, when a youth group was established in the town of Hadera, we were ambushed by dozens of haredi thugs organized by the local Shas chairman. They raided the branch, beat us up, threatened us, and threw us out. It worked out for them; a few gay teenagers cannot face hate-filled brigades. So we spread across the country; most of us moved to Tel Aviv. This was supposed to be the ultimate shelter; a local version of San Francisco.

I'm listening right now to Yaron Dekel's morning show on Reshet Bet, and he began the broadcast by talking about how politicians need to take responsibility for their speech - and that anti-gay hate speech can lead to murder. His discussion with Yonit Levy, the mother of a gay son, includes a mention of the murder of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 - which was preceded by wild hate speech against Rabin and posters of Rabin dressed in an SS uniform. Levy is now saying that she's going back to the hospital to be with the wounded, since for some of them, their parents have not come to visit them and they need people to be with them.

3 killed in attack on gay center in Tel Aviv

Update: According to the Israeli news sites this morning (Sunday, August 2), two were killed, not three. The original reports must have been wrong that the man in the hospital had also died. The murderer has still not been captured.

Haaretz reports that three young people were murdered at an event for youth from the gay and lesbian community in Tel Aviv. The event occurred in the basement of the Association for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Israel, at the corner of Ahad Ha'Am and Nahmani Streets in Tel Aviv. The dead were a young man of 24, a young woman of 17 and another man who died of his wounds in the hospital. About 15 other people were injured, 4 of them in serious condition. Eyewitnesses at the scene reported that a masked gunman entered the basement of the building, began to shoot in all directions and then escaped. At this point the gunman has not yet been located and the police are searching for him with a helicopter and many police vehicles.

Another report in Haaretz says that activists in the organization have gathered tonight at the corner of Nahmani and Rothschild streets and have lit candles. Members of the gay community did not hesitate to say that "there is no doubt that this is a hate crime." Mike Hamel, the head of the Aguda, said that this was an unprecedented event for the gay community in Israel. "We have joined the 'enlightened' countries in which hatred is the standard."

Hamel said that the club was located on a quiet street and that there was no obvious sign out front, to allow youth who are dealing with their sexuality to come to the place securely. For this reason, the Aguda had not thought of hiring security for the place.

Knesset Member Nitzan Horowitz from Meretz, who is gay (and who spoke at the gay pride march in Jerusalem in June) said that "there is no doubt that this is the harshest attack ever against the gay community in Israel."

I had been thinking today that I felt lucky to have been in Israel at a time when no terrorist attacks have occurred - unfortunately that feeling of safety has been violated. While the police define this attack as having a "criminal" rather than "nationalistic" context, attacking gay youth in the headquarters of the national gay and lesbian organization in Israel strikes me as a hate crime intended to terrorize gay people of all ages in Israel.

Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor

Some updates on this issue:

1. Stanley Fish has finally written a column in the New York Times that I agree with, about how the accomplishments of both Professor Gates and President Obama are being doubted because of their blackness. At Duke, where Fish hired Gates as a professor in the English department, his accomplishments were doubted because of his blackness - "Doubts were expressed in letters written by senior professors about his scholarly credentials, which were vastly superior to those of his detractors. (He was already a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the so called 'genius award.')" In a similar way, the "Birthers" - those people who do not believe that Obama was born in the United States - cast doubt on his right to the Presidency.

Gates is once again regarded with suspicion because, as the cultural critic Michael Eric Dyson put it in an interview, he has committed the crime of being H.W.B., Housed While Black....

Gates and Obama are not only friends; they are in the same position, suspected of occupying a majestic residence under false pretenses. And Obama is a double offender. Not only is he guilty of being Housed While Black; he is the first in American history guilty of being P.W.B., President While Black.

Both Professor Gates and President Obama challenge a powerful white racist stereotype about blacks - the belief that they are inherently less intelligent, and therefore inferior to whites. And if blacks are inferior to whites, anything they accomplish in life is a sham and a trick, especially if they do better than a white person. It's embarassing to my profession that senior members of the Duke faculty thought that Gates was inferior to them despite having won an award that they doubtless would have liked to receive themselves.

2. Charles Blow, NYTimes op-ed columnist, writes about his first experience with a white policeman in Louisiana who threatened to shoot him and his friends at a traffic stop: Welcome to the Club. He also brings some useful statistics into the debate:

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last July asked: “Have you ever felt you were stopped by the police just because of your race or ethnic background?” Sixty-six percent of black men said yes. Only 9 percent of white men said the same.

These views are not without merit. A series of racial-profiling studies across the country have found that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be stopped and searched than whites.

In fact, last year the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York law firm specializing in human rights, released a damning study of the racial-profiling practices of the New York Police Department. It found that more than 80 percent of those stopped and frisked were black or Hispanic. The report also said that when stopped, 45 percent of blacks and Hispanics were frisked, compared with 29 percent of whites, even though white suspects were 70 percent more likely than black suspects to have a weapon.

3. The President has also issued a new statement about the arrest and subsequent controversy arising from his words:

He did not apologize but softened his language. “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station,” he said. “I also continue to believe, based on what I heard, that Professor Gates probably overreacted as well.”

Mr. Obama described Sergeant Crowley as an “outstanding police officer and a good man” who has “a fine track record on racial sensitivity.” But he said the incident showed that “because of the difficulties of the past, you know, African-Americans are sensitive to these issues.”

Original Post

The officer who arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr. last week has said that he won't apologize since he didn't do anything wrong (Officer Defends Arrest of Harvard Professor).

Sergeant Crowley said that he arrested Professor Gates because the professor got angry after being asked for identification and proof of his address, and continued his “tirade after being warned multiple times.” The sergeant was adamant that he was following police procedures in making the arrest.....

Next, the sergeant said, he warned Professor Gates to calm down and lower his voice, and to step outside to his front porch. Sergeant Crowley said he gave the professor two warnings, the second while holding a set of handcuffs, but that the professor continued berating him. “The professor at any point in time could have resolved the issue by quieting down and/or by going back in the house,” he said in the radio interview.

I don't understand why getting angry and yelling inside one's own home or on the front porch is grounds for an arrest. What did Professor Gates do wrong? Why would the police consider yelling to be something wrong? Aggravating, yes. Who likes to be yelled at? I'm starting to wonder if this isn't just a case of racial profiling, but of a cop reveling in the power of being a cop - of having that power to stop someone else's yelling by arresting them. I still strongly doubt that a white professor in the same situation would have been arrested.

Pleasant day in Jerusalem hills

Today began like most of my weekdays in Jerusalem - with a visit to the National Library to work on my research and course planning. (Today I was working on planning my Jerusalem course - there is so much to learn about the history and communities of Jerusalem. I feel like I'm just scratching the surface). In the middle of the afternoon, as I was sweating again over a hot photocopier (this is not meant metaphorically, by the way - it's hot here now, which I'm sure is a surprise to my readers), a friend called to say that she was going horse-riding.

I seized the opportunity to flee the library, and went with her and another friend on a pleasant drive in the hills of Jerusalem to חוות נטף (Nataf Farm), where she climbed on the horse and we sat around and watched her, the other horses, and the beautiful landscape. After she finished her lesson (the first time in many years, with the goal of getting over her fear of horse-riding engendered by past falls from horses) we went to another beautiful place to have dinner - a restaurant called בר בהר ("Bar in the Mountain" - it rhymes in Hebrew). I didn't have my camera with me, but we went there last year too and I took some photos of the surrounding mountains then.

We had a very nice dinner and then headed back to the sweltering city via a road I had never traveled on before, the מנהרות (the tunnels). This meant crossing the Green Line (out of Israel proper) into the West Bank, passing by a Jewish town named Betar Illit ("Upper Betar") and an Arab town just across the road from it named Bittir, and then arriving at the tunnels into Jerusalem. Before we entered the first tunnel we drove right along the separation wall, and then between the first and second tunnels there was another wall, this one not completely filled in however. We entered Jerusalem from the south and passed by a sign directing us to the tomb of Rachel, which is just at the entrance to Bethlehem and is on the Israeli side of the Green Line. When I last visited it, which was about twenty years ago, there was no wall, no checkpoint, and no massive building that enclosed Rachel's tomb. I wouldn't go there now - I can't imagine how it would be a particularly spiritual experience now. A sobering end to a pleasant afternoon in the Jerusalem hills.

President Obama: "Cambridge Police acted stupidly"

Why do I love the fact that Barack Obama is now our president? This is one big reason.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

No previous president could address racism in this direct, personal, intelligent, and politically aware way.

Cambridge 02138: Harvard professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home

UPDATE - apparently the person who called the police was not a neighbor, but someone who worked in a nearby building. In that case, it makes a bit more sense that she would call the police. (Via Ta-Nehisi Coates).

UPDATE - Cambridge Police are dropping charges, according to a Harvard Crimson story.

This is my home town - Harvard professor Gates arrested at Cambridge home.

Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the nation's pre-eminent African-American scholars, was arrested Thursday afternoon at his home by Cambridge police investigating a possible break-in. The incident raised concerns among some Harvard faculty that Gates was a victim of racial profiling.

Gates

Police arrived at Gates’s Ware Street home near Harvard Square at 12:44 p.m. to question him. Gates, director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard, had trouble unlocking his door after it became jammed.

He was booked for disorderly conduct after “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior,” according to a police report. Gates accused the investigating officer of being a racist and told him he had "no idea who he was messing with,'' the report said.

Gates told the officer that he was being targeted because "I'm a black man in America.'' [To read a copy of the police report, click here]

Friends of Gates said he was already in his home when police arrived. He showed his driver’s license and Harvard identification card, but was handcuffed and taken into police custody for several hours last Thursday, they said.

The police report said Gates was arrested after he yelled at the investigating officer repeatedly inside the residence then followed the officer outside, where Gates continued to upbraid him. "It was at that time that I informed Professor Gates that he was under arrest,'' the officer wrote in the report.

Get this - he was arrested in his own home. I cannot imagine that this would happen to any distinguished white Harvard professor. What is wrong with the Cambridge police? I grew up in Cambridge in the 1960s and 70s, and the Cambridge police certainly engaged in many dubious actions then, but I had hoped that they had improved since then.

The article in the Harvard Crimson on the arrest.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic online.

Apparently it was one of his neighbors who called the police on him. She didn't know what he looked like? He's pretty distinctive looking, and his photo appears in the local papers pretty often. Why did she call the police?

The painful cost to Israel of its settler adventure

Bradley Burston's new column today, on the painful cost to Israel of its settler adventure, explains why it's important for the U.S. administration to stand firm in its demand that Israel stop all building in the settlements.

Is this how to talk about war and peace in the Jewish tradition?

I just received a notice on the H-Judaic list about a conference on "War and Peace in Jewish Tradition" which will be happening on July 28 in Jerusalem. This seemed very promising to me, until I looked at the schedule of presentations, which does not deal at all with how the State of Israel should conduct war. I would have thought that a conference held in Jerusalem would have at least one session dealing with the contemporary debate on "just war" in the Jewish tradition and how and whether beliefs about just war should affect the actions of the state of Israel, but there is not even one paper on the topic.

I became very interested in this issue during the Gaza War and taught a section of my introduction to Judaism class in the spring on the ethics of war. (For those interested, see the relevant pages on the wiki that I created for the course: War in the Jewish Tradition; War and Ethics; and War and Ethics - Gaza War).

The first session is on "War and Peace in the Bible: From Release of Prisoners to Holy War." The second session is on "War and Reality and in Image." The three talks start with another paper on war in the Bible, the second deals with "Wars among the Jews in antiquity," and the fourth is on how Jewish immigrants in New York at the outbreak of World War I thought about the war. The last talk in this session, by Dr. Carol Lea Clark of University of Texas at El Paso, is the only one in the entire day-long conference that deals with the Gaza War: "Images of Technological and Moral Ambiguity: The New York Times' Coverage of the Gaza War, Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 19, 2009."

Session 3 is on war and peace in rabbinical literature. Session 4 deals with war and peace in contemporary Israeli society, but also does not deal with how Israel does or should wage war. In fact, this session includes a discussion by Dr. Nissim Dana of the Ariel University Center, on "The Wars of Muhammad as a Model for Arab Wars against Israel." What this has to do with war and peace in the Jewish tradition I do not know.

Session 5 is about "War in Jewish Law: From 'Justified War' to the Draft of Yeshiva Students." Three of the papers are on historical issues, the last one is on the draft of yeshiva students. Again, nothing on the very considerable contemporary Jewish discussions on "justified war" in the context of the state of Israel, conducted by distinguished scholars such as Michael Walzer, who wrote specifically about the Gaza War earlier this year.

The last session is on "War and Peace in Jewish Thought," which again does not appear to deal at all with how Israel should act in war. The only talk which seems to touch at all on contemporary issues is the last one, by Rabbi Yuval Cherlow on "Media Ethics in Times of War."

The conference is sponsored by Ariel University Center of Samaria - The Department of Israel's Heritage, and Beit Morasha of Jerusalem, Robert M. Beren College, The Ernest Schwarcz Institute for Ethics, Judaism and State. From looking at Beit Morasha's website, and specifically at the Schwarcz Institute, I am even more surprised at the lack of discussion on contemporary issues. The current focus of the Schwarcz Institute is on issues of war:

Coordinated by political scientist Dr. Moshe Hellinger, the Schwarcz Institute is currently focusing on ethics during times of war. Its explorations of “morality under fire” are delving into issues such as the concept of a “just” war, guerrilla warfare and collateral damage to innocent civilians, the use of human shields, and collective punishment of civilian populations. With a multidisciplinary approach, the Institute integrates content from Jewish studies, history, law, and the social sciences, and places emphasis not only on academic research and writing, but also on active involvement in education and in the public sphere.

It seems to me that a real opportunity is being lost to discuss the serious questions of ethics of war in Israel, especially after the recent release of testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence about violations of the laws of war in the Gaza War. The group has just published 54 testimonies from "Operation Cast Lead" (the Gaza War), providing evidence for numerous violations of human rights committed by Israeli soldiers during the war, and charging that these violations were not committed by rogue soldiers, but were military policy.

To read the testimonies (which are divided into a number of topics), read here. Topics include: Vandalism, Bombardment, Rabbinate Unit, Briefings, Use of White Phosphorus, Atmosphere, Home Occupation, Rules Of Engagement, House Demolitions, Human Shield.

The Breaking the Silence report is also available as a PDF at Operation Cast Lead report. Gershom Gorenberg has discussed these testimonies in a couple of recent articles. The first one was published in The American Prospect - New Testimony from Gaza. On his blog, South Jerusalem, he has posted his own commentary on the testimonies.

Why is this conference not dealing with Israel's own conduct of war?

Illusions of the Israeli political consensus

I think that the Netanyahu government is making a serious mistake in thinking that the Obama administration is not serious about stopping building in the settlements and in East Jerusalem. And it's not just the current government that is making this mistake. Ehud Olmert's statement a couple of days ago that the U.S. administration is making a mistake in insisting on moving on the settlements now is also ill-considered. Perhaps in the current Israeli political consensus the settlements are no big deal, but that is certainly not how the Palestinians think about them. The Palestinians look at the constant increase in the area of the West Bank taken by the settlements (especially those that cut off the northern from the southern West Bank, and those that cut off Arab East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, like Har Homa) and see any hope of a viable Palestinian state dissolving before their eyes.

Another article in today's Haaretz spells out the U.S. administration's position on building in Jerusalem:

The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that "Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem."

The statement by Netanyahu yesterday that Israel has sovereignty (ריבונות) over all of Jerusalem is not accepted by any other nation on earth, and certainly not by the United States (if the U.S. accepted the Israeli claim, then American passports issued in Jerusalem would read "Jerusalem, Israel" instead of the current "Jerusalem," [and I include the comma because that's how my passport, issued in Jerusalem in 1999, read]). Netanyahu also apparently thinks that Jews in the Obama administration (like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel) should agree with the right-wing positions of the Likud Party, instead of working for the president who appointed them (as Akiva Eldar says in today's Haaretz: "We want our Jews in the administration to be blind to the settlements and deaf to the complaints of the Arabs").

Eldar's column today is one of the few I've read in the Israeli press these last few weeks that reveals any real understanding of the position of the Obama administration - a position which I, for one, believe is necessary for any kind of peace-making to go forward between Israel and the Palestinians. And American Jews support Obama in his actions. From my discussions with friends here, I've definitely gotten the impression that they misread how American Jews feel about Obama and about Israel - they seem to think that most American Jews are right-wing and religious and support the settlements. The opposite is true.

Eldar writes:

Back during his election campaign Obama made it clear that he did not have to join Likud to be a friend of Israel. Opinion polls in the United States revealed that the views of most Jews are closer to the attitudes of organizations like the Reform movement, American Friends of Peace Now and J Street, which support a two-state solution and eschew Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's doctrine - and above all, largely object to the settlements.

The conversation Obama held with representatives of the Jewish community last week confirms that Netanyahu is drafting them for the wrong war. Even his oldest supporters did not attack the president's position on the settlements, and made do with a complaint about the high profile given to disputes over the issue of natural growth in the settlements. One of the guests at that meeting said that history showed that exposing the differences between the U.S. and Israel does not help to advance peace. [This was Malcolm Hoenlein of the mis-named Organization of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, who never saw anything wrong with the Bush administration's effectively doing nothing about peace during its entire eight years].

"This was not my reading of the lessons of the last eight years," Obama responded without flinching. Moreover, he said he would not shy away from a willingness to pressure all parties, including Israel, if that is in the best interests of the United States and Israel. Obama did not hesitate to tell his Jewish interlocutors that beyond the special commitment to Israel's security, his policy would be completely even-handed. If it became necessary, Obama said, he would speak to Israelis, as he had done to the Arab and Muslim world, to help them to achieve some kind of self-reflection.

Obama has internalized what his predecessors refused to understand: the traditional supporters of the Israeli right are growing old, or losing their relevance. They are giving way to younger, liberal forces who identify with Obama's values. In the "best" case, Netanyahu's incitement against the "self-hating Jews" will do to them what his whispered comment in the ear of Rabbi Kaduri "those leftists are not Jews" did to Israelis a decade ago - it turned them against him.

Eldar is absolutely correct.

Street cats in Jerusalem

When I first got here in June I arrived just in time for Hebrew Book Week (שבוע הספר). I went off with a friend to the book fair at Gan ha-Pa'amon and bought a few books, including on on the development of the Old City of Jerusalem during the 19th century (Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century: The Old City, published by Yad Izhak Ben Zvi Institute in 1984). Another one is called חתולי הרחוב שלי ("My Street Cats") by Raphaella Bilski (published by Carmel, 2007). It's about her adventures with Jerusalem street cats over the last 14 years. She is a professor of government at the Hebrew University, focusing on politicaly philosophy.

This is a very sweet book, which reveals quite a bit about the author as well as the cats she writes about. She writes about the first cat who came to her garden - Kitsoshi, about how families of cats established themselves in her garden and in the cat pergola which she set up for them, about the friendship between cats (including two female cats who raised their kittens together), about the trauma when her neighbors become angry with her because she had so many cats in the garden and she has to send some of them away, about the territories of cats, about how the mothers train their kittens to be good hunters, etc. In the back of the book she gives several cat genealogies, including one for Kitzoshi. She gets very involved in the life of the cats, worries about them, raises abandoned kittens by hand, cries when they die - she is truly a fine cat lady and expresses well the untoward affection that some of us develop for cats.

Elms in the Yard, a Jerusalem blog, frequently posts photos of Jerusalem cats.

To the left is a photo I took in 2004 of a street cat in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

More on cats

A friend just stopped by and told me about one of her projects while she's here in Jerusalem - she's photographing one cat a day and sending the picture to her daughter back home in the U.S. I told her about my interest in cat ancestry and the link between domestic cats and wildcats from the Middle East, which made me go back and look again at the New York Times article from 2007 that first piqued my interest in this question. The Times website provides a link to the article in Science from which the information was taken. Amidst the technique discussion of genetics, which I was not able to follow very well, there were some little poetic gems that expressed the conclusions of the article in more understandable language.

The domestic cat may be the world's most numerous pet, yet little is certain of the cat's origin. Archaeological remains and anthropological clues suggest that, unlike species domesticated for agriculture (e.g., cow, pig, and sheep) or transport (horse and donkey), the cat probably began its association with humans as a commensal, feeding on the rodent pests that infested the grain stores of the first farmers. The earliest evidence of cat-human association involves their co-occurrence in Cyprus deposits determined to be 9500 years old. Domestic cats are generally considered to have descended from the Old World wildcats, but they differ from these hypothesized progenitors in behavior, tameness, and coat color diversity....

These 15 individuals [Middle Eastern wildcats] had concordant mtDNA and STR phylogenies identical to those of domestic cats and were collected in remote deserts of Israel, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, or Saudi Arabia. These data suggest that these Near Eastern wildcats may represent the ancestral founder population of domestic cats, supporting a domestication origin in the Near East....

The domestication of wild species to complement human civilization stands as one of the more successful "biological experiments" ever undertaken. For cats, the process began more than 9000 years ago when the earliest farmers of the Fertile Crescent domesticated grains and cereals as well as livestock. In parallel, the endemic wildcats of the region may have adapted by both regulating the rodents in the grain stores and abandoning their aggressive wild-born behaviors. The archaeological imprints left in the genomes of living cats here weigh into inferences about the timing, steps, and provenance of domestication—a dynamic exercise depicted in art, in history, and in human cultural development since recorded evidence began.

Much more pleasant to contemplate than humans rioting!

Still more riots in Jerusalem!

I'm listening to the reports tonight on Reshet Bet about the renewed riots tonight in Jerusalem. Apparently, there are thousands of Haredi rioters on Rte. 1 in the Bet Yisrael neighborhood throwing rocks and attacking police. Many have been arrested. Ten police have been injured by the rioters. The reporter speaking now on Reshet Bet mentions a big demonstration on Zaks St. in the Shmuel ha-Navi neighborhood, as well as speeches in Yiddish by rabbis speaking now in Kikar Shabbat telling the Haredim not to give up.

According to an article on the Hebrew Ynet page, the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, is involving himself in the conflict, contacting the Jerusalem municipality, the police, and the Haredim, in an effort to calm tempers.

Jerusalem Police Chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco said Thursday evening that over the past day there "was a marked escalation" in the rioting of haredim in Jerusalem, warning that the level of violence was rising, "both towards municipal workers and towards public infrastructure."

Franco, who was speaking in a press conference, directed some veiled criticism at the government for failing to find a solution to the incessant friction between the extremist elements in the haredi community and the police. "We're talking about a capital city and not enough has been done on the national level in order to calm down the situation," he said.

Warning of further dangers that could arise due to the rioting, Franco said, "They've dismantled traffic lights, and without traffic lights deadly accidents could take place. They've disconnected systems in electricity poles and people could be electrocuted.

"I have not found a single place in the Bible where it is written that these actions are permissible," he added.

According to Haaretz, Franco also criticized the leaders of the Haredi community for not doing anything to cool the tempers of the rioters.

"There is not one sane voice within the Haredi community that will rise up and cry out against this phenomenon," Franco said. "They have rabbis, they have leadership, and I haven't heard the rabbis or sages crying out."

For those curious to know exactly where today's rioting occurred, Haaretz has helpfully put up links to Google maps.

The rabbi of the Toldos Aron group (to which the woman arrested for abusing her son belongs) announced today at a demonstration in Kikar Shabbat that the members of his group should continue fighting the woman's arrest "until the last drop of blood."

I just discovered a blog called Shearim, whose author is a woman who lives in Jerusalem and is fascinated by Hasidim and goes to many Hasidic events, although she is apparently not Haredi herself. Her blog describes many visits to the Toldos Aron synagogue and other Toldos Aron events.

Neturei Karta meet with Haniyeh in Gaza

Some things you just cannot make up. While Neturei Karta in Jerusalem is rioting against the arrest of a woman accused of starving her son, other members of Neturei Karta meet with Haniyeh in Gaza. They apparently arrived in Gaza on one of the boats that international "peace" activists have been trying to land there.

Today, in Jerusalem, three people were hurt by stones thrown by rioters, workers were evacuated from welfare bureau offices when threatened by stone-throwing Haredim, Haredim also threw stones at the windows of the Education Ministry, hurled stones at police officers, set fire to trash cans, and the police stopped dozens of Haredim trying to reach Jaffa Rd. See also the Jerusalem Post report on today's occurrences - Workers evacuated as haredim stone welfare office.