Letters to the Editor
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In the margins :: Carter and Israel
There is an excellent piece in Le Monde Diplomatique about how political the actions of the ADL in fact are, this time in reference to Carter's position on Israel. The piece is only available in French though:
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2007/09/AGUIRRE/15081
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I Just Don't Get It
I guess I lived a sheltered life as an Air Force brat. When I got to college and heard a racist Jewish joke I didn't get it. I was told "don't you get it, Jews are cheap." Well I had never heard that before.
Since that time in my entire professional life (almost 20 years) I have had a Jewish boss. I have seen and heard the racism. It is right there if you look and listen. So I understand why there is a ADL.
But that they won't just come out and say invoking Nazi and Hilter as a political slur is beyond me.
These terms are hateful. They are powerful. They have meaning. When the whole Bill O slammed Daily Kos and called the community these names I was in FL for my brothers wedding. My parents, FOX watchers, mentioned it. I was taken aback. I said, "I am an active member of that community. And if I wasn't at my brother's wedding I'd be in Chicago at their conference."
It made my parents think. And we talked about it in detail. Cause they didn't raise a son that would be apart of a community that allowed "hate" speech.
That the ADL can't response, in a direct manner, to Glenn's question is telling on many levels.
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Tig'g'er.
Bon balloon to you on this Tuesday! Bon jour! Have a bon damn good appetite too!
O, I was wondering why Winnie-the-Pooh said this to his friend Tigger. Tigger wanted a balloon to take a ride via the sky.
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How sweet to be a cloud
floating in the blue!
It makes him very proud
To be a little cloud.
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I remember Tigger (not Tiger- one 'g') liked to munch on thistles. The tiger Tigger walked around with hay-corns in his mouth. Respectfully,
I imagine you, Tiger, have dug up the fall Burdock root for health, friendship sharing, and tea-drinking for two more than once? I'll bet you are a friend of Winnie-the Pooh. There is always sweet honey around if you know what I mean. Friendship.
I can't help imagining you have Burdock thistles stuck throughout your striped hide.
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Help me remain in the outside harvest field today? I must stay away from here.
I act like a 'hog' or a baboon too much, lately.
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Greenwald, Ashbrook, Moyers: thank you
The NPR talk radio show On Point with Tom Ashbrook had a great show on this topic last February:
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/02/20070206_a_main.asp
Bill Moyers also had a great show recently that touched on these topics:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch3.html
The idea of strategic support for a Neo-con idea that in the end will be (seemingly) better for Israel makes me extremely uncomfortable. As an American Jew I've felt plenty of anti-semitism in my life but have never supported Israel right or wrong.
Both Glenn's piece and this amazing comment thread are both fascinating and depressing to read and those of you who are interested might find either the transcripts or streams of Ashbrook's and Moyer's shows interesting as well.
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Ashbrook's Show
The NPR talk radio show On Point with Tom Ashbrook had a great show on this topic last February:
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/02/20070206_a_main.asp
I can highly recommend Ashbrook's show. As I recall, Reinharz flatly asserted that any criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. Rosenfeld seemed generally sympathetic to that position. Lerner and Wolfe were aghast.
Ashbrook is one the better, more informed moderators in media.
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@ bebop-o
A balloon, yes. A very big one would be most welcome today. To take me overseas to your harvest field.
Maybe kinder and harder-to-catch words by Rumi or Hafiz can bring you some peace; a long short walk, just watching a cat lying, sighing in the sun, or a cup of tea with lots of honey.
I wish you no heavy thoughts for today. But don't stay away too long. ;-)
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ADL on torture and wiretapping
I decided that another way to investigate ADL's commitment to human rights would be to see what it has said with regard to torture. Googling "ADL torture" returned as its first hit a story from The Jewish Daily Forward written by Marc Perelman on July 6, 2006. Titled "Synagogues Speak Out Against Wiretapping, Torture", the article provides a strong parallel to kovie's comments pointing out that Jewish opinions vary widely on political issues and that the extreme right wing does not speak for all. The entire article is worth reading, but I will quote extensively from it. Note especially the quote from Foxman, as it is revealing:
The country’s two largest synagogue movements are stepping up their criticism of the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping program and treatment of detainees, in sharp contrast to the approach of the major non-sectarian Jewish civil rights organizations.
Senior figures of the Conservative and Reform movements have recently called on the White House to prohibit the use of torture and urged Congress to look into the secret wiretapping program launched by the National Security Agency in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Officials at the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee and American Jewish Congress, on the other hand, have been silent on the wiretapping program and generally less confrontational when offering any critique of the administration on the torture issue.
The two issues highlight what appear to be both substantive and stylistic differences between the non-Orthodox synagogue movements and the Jewish civil rights groups, as well as policy gaps between the Jewish community’s grassroots and the more hawkish donors who hold increasing sway on many Jewish organizational boards. While the synagogue movements can boast of representing the millions of members of their congregations, observers in Washington say that lawmakers are more likely to see the nonsectarian groups as the Jewish community’s main address on security issues.
[...]
The Reform movement’s advocacy arm in Washington, the Religious Action Center, urged lawmakers to further investigate the NSA wiretapping program in a June 23 letter to the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The domestic surveillance program, which was revealed by The New York Times in December, prompted the administration to launch an investigation into possible leaks of security information.
“We believe that to allow the NSA program to continue without full understanding of its scope and impact violates basic American values and endangers civil liberties protections enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” the letter stated. “It also accepts as normal an atmosphere of government secrecy, distrust and ambiguous legality — representing a step backward on our quest to create a just, moral and equitable society.”
Last March, at the annual convention of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly in Mexico City, delegates adopted a resolution on civil liberties that pointed to the domestic surveillance program as an example of how the Bush administration was weakening constitutional and statutory protections. The resolution called on the government to abide by the spirit and the letter of the Constitution.
The Rabbinical Assembly also adopted a resolution on the war in Iraq urging its members to “speak out against the use of torture as a tool of war” and to “maintain support for civil liberties during a time of war.”
Earlier this month, several rabbis, including the Religious Action Center’s director, Rabbi David Saperstein, and the executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Jerome Epstein, signed an interfaith ad published in The New York Times calling on the administration to ban torture without exception, stop using secret prisons around the world and cease authorizing “renditions” whereby terrorism suspects are sent to countries known for their brutal interrogation methods.
On the wiretapping issue, the nonsectarian groups have opted not to take a position. “We are monitoring the issue but we don’t have an opinion,” said Richard Fulton, general counsel of the AJCommittee.
Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said his organization had not debated the wiretapping issue. He stressed the need to recalibrate security and civil liberties by granting law-enforcement enhanced powers to fight the war on terror. “I don’t think this is a Jewish issue per se,” he added. “If rabbinical groups think so, God bless them!”
While the ADL has also not actively lobbied the administration on the issue of detainees, the AJCommittee and AJCongress have staked out similar ground as the Reform and Conservative movements, if not adopting the same confrontational tactics.
http://www.forward.com/articles/403/
Foxman's position, then, is that the war on terror calls for recalibration of security and civil liberties so that law enforcement can protect us against the terrorists. Although all of the other Jewish groups (including the otherwise right wing AJCommittee and AJCongress) speak out on torture, because Foxman does not see this as "a Jewish issue per se", torture is not worthy of comment from the ADL.
I see no way Foxman's position on torture can be reconciled with the stated charter of the ADL where its ultimate purpose is to "secure justice and fair treatment to all citizens alike".