Eight days of renewable energy: Greening the menorahThough we don't often think of it this way, Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of renewable energy—the renewable energy of the Maccabees, who pursued with much vigor their fight against the Assyrian-Greeks, and the renewable energy of some unusual olive oil, which kept the Temple's eternal flame alight for eight days instead of one.

This Hanukkah—as American power plants continue to emit roughly 10 percent of the world's annual global warming pollution, and as UN negotiators discuss whether they will solve the problem of climate change—we can celebrate the renewable energy of old by switching over to a new form of renewable energy called Green Power. Green Power is pollution-free electricity produced by wind turbines, low-impact hydroelectric systems, solar arrays and other renewable sources. Switching to Green Power cuts the average American household's greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent.

Of course, solar panels and small wind turbines are great ways to get in on the renewable energy action. But you don't need any special hardware to join the modern Maccabees. In many areas of the country you can get green power directly from local electric suppliers . The juice will still come through the same transmission lines and will still be serviced by your local electric company.

Green Power: Because God isn't making any more of that olive oil One of the best ways to find out how to buy Green Power is to visit the website of Center for Resource Solutions, an organization that certifies renewable energy. Click on "Buy Green-E Certified," and read the "Ways to Buy" so you understand the terms. Then enter your city and state into the search criteria. You will then see a list of suppliers who can talk you through the process of making the switch. They can also explain the effect that switching will have on your electric bill. (In most places, green power costs slightly more than the fossil-fuel-generated power that's cooking the planet.)

Another way to find a green power supplier is to Google "Renewable Energy," along with your city, county or state and check out what you find.

The rabbis of the Talmud debated which was the actual Hanukkah miracle: the seemingly impossible military victory? Or, that long-lasting organic olive oil? Who knows. But today, we can power our homes and businesses using nothing but thin air and pure light, with no superhuman effort necessary. That's pretty miraculous. By pursuing with great vigor the struggle against global warming, and embracing our own sources of renewable power, we appropriately honor the story of Hanukkah.

*****

Want more environmental tips for Hanukkah? Read Solving the Climate Crisis One Menorah at a Time, Arthur Waskow and Jeff Sultar's eight-day plan for the holiday.

Calling all New York Jewcers: This Saturday night, the American Jewish Committee is hosting a free screening of the documentary Darfur Now. If you’re interested, RSVP to darfurnow@yahoo.com and we’ll hook you up, but act fast—we’ve only got room for the first 30 people.

When: Saturday November 11 at 10:30 PM
Where: The Angelica theater, 18 W. Houston St (at Mercer St)
RSVP: darfurnow@yahoo.com

Learn more at Participate.net.

 

We—the children of the boomers, the privileged progressives—have a giving problem, which is that we don’t do it. Instead, we cloak ourselves in the trappings of charity. We carve out lives that appear to be socially just, full of free range chicken and Birkenstocks. We look good, even if we don’t do-good.

Revolution: Never looked so good.Hell, we ask for money, either as non-profiteers, or as individuals with pet projects. Each year, I get a handful of e-mails from friends requesting “charitable donations.” They want to take their band on the road, or they want to fly to Nepal to read bedtime stories to orphans, and they’re asking me to fund the trip. They have feral cats to foster, and co-operative gardens to maintain, and that’s great, but it does little to repair the world. Sure it’s nice to have live music in the park, but that that just makes our lives nicer, decorates our world.

Please understand, I’m in no position to judge, because I’m worst of all. Last year, while working for a Jewish charity I “rescued” Kareem, a stray pit bull living down the street from me. Then I spent SEVEN THOUSAND dollars to kill her slowly, with a fancy veterinary specialist, on credit, and then solicited Jewish donors to fund my hopeless project. And it worked. Which is insane.

I cared enough to nurse the damn dog, just not enough to put the bill on my own credit card, or take a second job to pay the bill.

SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS TO KILL A DAMN DOG!!! I wasn’t being a do-gooder, I was sucking the system, siphoning off money that could have been going to AIDS research or literacy. I got so caught up in what looked like charity that I lost all reason, not to mention my math skills.

I realize now that for years I’ve made the mistake of mixing up my progressive lifestyle for true charity, and I think maybe you have too.

Forget dogs: This mutt doesn't need your money. Ask yourself: Do you feel better about yourself when you shop at Whole Paycheck, or when you ride your bike to work? Do you imagine the world thinks you “look” progressive?

And how do you judge the world? Let’s say you spot a thirty-ish woman in a vintage sundress, carrying a cloth grocery bag to the farmers market while sipping a soy chai, and walking beside her is a middle aged woman in a salmon colored Capri pants-and-sweatshirt ensemble that surely came from Wal-Mart. A Disney outfit. She’s drinking a Big Gulp.

How might you imagine they stack up to each other with regard to charity? I bet the Wal-Mart mom gives a big chunk of change to her church each year, which—among other things—supports a soup kitchen. And I bet she doesn’t have a ringer-T that says so either.

Keep in mind, it’s still good to ride your bike to work, but if it makes you feel like you’ve “done your bit” there’s a problem. If your hemp pants make you feel like you don’t need to send some money to Louisiana, you’ve gotten off the path.

For some, the solution seems to be “getting involved” but that doesn’t take the place of giving either. So if you’re working in the development office of an environmental organization, however cool that is—you should be donating to that same organization as well. Because when you’re getting paid to do “good work”, it isn’t really charity. That’s just the non-profit sector supporting you.

Look up to Grandma: She was fashionable and gave to charity. Maybe we’re screwed up because we’re just plain bad with money, raised on credit cards and take-out, but there’s an illogic in place, because we think we’re progressive. We think we want to help. We’ve taken the Sesame Street aesthetics that our hippie parents fed us, and we’ve blended them with the greed of our own me decades, and the result is a lot of bumper stickers. We buy organic milk, and then get wasted on Cosmos, or we buy ethanol for our SUVs. The image of progressive living has a price tag., and so we don’t ever have enough to give to charity. Our appetites always exceed our resources, no matter how great our resources may be.

Face it. We just really like to buy stuff, and we live in a world designed to feed that passion. Despite our aesthetics of charity, despite our rocking of the vote—what does our generation value? TiVo. High speed Internet. Very pale beers with slices of citrus fruit floating in them. Whatever the billboards tell us to value, which means our discretionary spending is beyond belief.

Three years ago, a study based on more than 7000 households showed that just over one-half (53 %) of our generation made donations of $25 or more in 2000. Compare this to our post-Holocaust/Depression grandparents, 80% of whom gave at our age. Or our hippie parents, who donated at a rate of 75%. Bubbe and Zayde gave an average of $1,707. We give $532.

But Generation X, Y, and Z?

We refuse to share our good fortune. Despite the fact that a 30-year-old today (we’ll call him Mike) is 50% more likely to have a college degree than his dad (Steve), and despite the fact that Mike earns $5,000 more a year than Steve did 30 years ago (even adjusted for inflation), he isn’t giving any of it away. In fact, Mike probably doesn’t believe he can afford to give. Like many of us, he think he’ll have the money someday, talks about what he’ll do when that day comes, and then goes out for dinner. Like many of us, he thinks he’s “just getting by.”

Gen-x: Spending all of our money on cosmos. But our generation has a strange concept of what it means to “get by.” We spend more on vacations than our grandparents ever dreamed of, and per trip expenditures have increased 66% over the past 5 years. While Steve spent a well-earned week in the Poconos, Mike flies off to Mali, and even if he has to slap it on the credit card, he feels totally entitled. In 1997, Generation X spent approximately $30 billion eating out, and we’re the highest consumers of fast food, beer, wine coolers (ugh!), and booze. When it comes to food, we lead the way with soda, chocolate, chips and beer, so then of course we spend a lot on gym memberships too.

So I’m making a resolution now, and I’m asking you to hold me to it.

I’m going to do better. In fact, I’m going to try to give away 7K next year, to make up for Kareem the dead dog. I’m going to research giving, and I’m going to stop eating out so fucking much. I’m going to try to figure out how the people who give make it work. That’s right, I’m admitting my ignorance and facing the music. I’m going to talk to my grandparents, and maybe a banker, or a rabbi, and I’ll get back to you when I have some answers.

In the meantime, what are you going to do?

* * *


Short quiz:

1.) Do you have bumper stickers or T shirts that advocate missions you haven’t actively contributed to in the last year?

2.) Do your organic purchases each week outnumber the quantity of organizations where you’ve volunteered?

3.) Have you traveled in a developing nation and then come home and bought items made in China?

4.) Is the amount of money you spend on alcohol each week more or less than the amount of money you spend of charitable causes?

5.) Do you belong to Working Assets? If so, how often do you actually make an additional donation when you pay your bill?

Jewcy Folk,

Tonight Jewcy and the Armenian-American community's No Place for Denial campaign co-sponsor a rally outside the national ADL headquarters in Manhattan. For the next few days, the national ADL will be meeting somewhere in the City to consider, among other things, whether to continue supporting Turkey's ongoing campaign to deny recognition to the survivors of the Armenian Genocide.

I wish I could be at the rally rather than out here on the West Coast, but Michael Weiss will be there along with other Jewish speakers to represent Jewcy and all those of us in the Jewish community who believe that genocide denial is not a Jewish value, and that the ADL can never represent the Jewish tradition of social justice so long as it seeks to deny recognition to the survivors of genocide and to the descendants of those who perished.

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He applauds the Armenian-Jewish* community for slamming Yerevan University's bestowal of an honorary doctorate on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"It is one thing to provide a forum to speak, as universities are environments where freedom of speech should be promoted and encouraged," said Mr. Foxman. "However, it is quite another to confer degrees and awards on a dictator who denies the Holocaust and calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. Such tributes should be reserved for those academics and world leaders who rightfully deserve them."

Whoever wrote that statement for Foxman must have been cackling at his keyboard.

*Originally said Armenian-American community. Late day typo. Irony still stands given that quote. 

Jewcy is once again teaming up with No Place for Denial to protest the Anti-Defamation League cynical and immoral posturing with respect to the Armenian Genocide. Be there this Thursday, outside the ADL headquarters. Sevag Arzoumanian has the press release:

The ADL National Meeting is in town from Nov. 1st though Nov. 3rd

Join the good folks at Jewcy and No Place for Denial for a hastily organized, totally spontaneous demonstration in front of ADL Headquarters on Thursday, November 1 @ 7 p.m.: 605 3rd Avenue New York, NY

Youthful representatives of two ancient peoples will hit the pavement in front of the ADL offices to demand that the ADL come down on the right side of a key human rights issue: unqualified opposition to genocide denial.

Spontaneous, irreverent, unscripted, a celebration of Jewish-Armenian solidarity, hard hitting political messages transmitted through irony, parody and prose.

B.Y.O signs and slogans.

In an interview published October 26, 2007, Ami Eden of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked Abraham Foxman whether he had been wrong to refuse to describe the WWI-era systematic murder of 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks--an event known to historians as the Armenian Genocide--as a "genocide." Foxman replied,

"We said it is a massacre, an atrocity, we’ve said it for 40 years. The Armenians wanted us to say genocide. To me it was sufficient for us to say I’m not a historian we don’t adjudicate all the issues...

"I respect the Armenian community for wanting their memory, their pain, their suffering to be recognized globally in the most sensitive way or the most meaningful way. So we said it is an atrocity and it is massacre, but we just don’t think that Congress should [describe it as a genocide]."

The following news story was published fifteen years later.

Foreign relations Committee calls WWII Killing of Jews "Genocide."

September 24, 2022,
Los Angeles, CA
Aris Janigian—staff writer

On Wednesday, September 23, The House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 27 to 21 to condemn as genocide the mass killings of Jews in Germany during World War II. New Germany reacted angrily, recalling its ambassador from Washington and threatening to withdraw its support for the continuing War on Terror.

"America has crossed a line with this resolution," Foreign Minister Helmut Gottschalk said. "Petty domestic politics has trumped American national interests. The New German people can only take so much insult. We will see our next steps."

It was a harsh rebuke from one of America's closest allies, and sent shock waves through the White House. The resolution comes at a time when the United States is actively drumming up support for the War on Terror, and two deputies in the State Department departed for Berlin immediately after the vote in an attempt to forestall a diplomatic disaster. At home, Secretary of State Candid Price called the resolutionStill Waiting for Recognition: For the few remaining survivors of the Jewish tragedy, this year's resolution may be the last chance "irresponsible."

In a Rose Garden press conference President Hernandez acknowledged the Jewish tragedy, but sternly warned against the resolution. "This is not the right time or the right place for this kind of resolution," Hernandez said.

Jews, along with the large majority of historians outside New Germany, say that from 1939 to 1945 the German Nationalist Socialist Party carried out a systematic campaign to kill as many as six million Jews in Europe. They claim the killings amounted to "genocide," a term that the New German government fiercely rejects.

New Germany acknowledges that between 1 and 1.6 million Jews died during the war, but contends that a vast majority of those deaths occurred in the throes of war when disease and starvation was widespread. According to New Germany the intent to exterminate Jews is historically unfounded. "There was a context for these events. Many Germans died and suffered as well, far exceeding the number of Jews. These were the sad unintended consequences of war."

Since the establishment of New Germany, the influential Jewish American lobby has sought acknowledgment of their ancestors' suffering. The authors of the resolution are from heavily Jewish districts in California and Florida and New York. They note that the United States must recognize the Jewish tragedy while the few remaining survivors are still alive.

Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Gregory Demerdjian, a descendent of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, said, "These events must be characterized for what they were: genocide. It is well documented in our own national archives that genocide of Jews occurred during the Second World War. This is merely an acknowledgment of America's own understanding of the events during that time. None of this should be construed to mean that New Germany is in the least responsible for these deaths." Demerjian said that he would soon introduce a resolution reinforcing America's strong and lasting relationship with the New Germany.

The Jewish tragedy is a sensitive issue in New Germany. Under a progressive movement called "Identity Reformation," the New Germans have radically reconsidered what an older generation had taken for granted. Historians in New Germany argue that between the First and Second World War Germany was caught between JewishTaking Pride in Our Past: The New German government has insisted that the alleged genocide is simply not consistent with the nobility of German history industrialists and Jewish socialists intent on overthrowing the German state. "They wanted to destroy the country from within," said New German Ambassador Norbert Sommer. "It was a difficult time. Everyone regrets the death of Jews, but wartime choices had to be made to save Germany's very existence."

Today, New Germany rejects the verdicts of the Nuremberg Trials that found members of the Nazi party guilty of war crimes, pointing out that Germans admitted to those crimes under duress from the prosecuting Allies. "No document has ever been produced that shows that Hitler ordered the extermination of Jews," Sommer said. "Indeed, many attempts were made by Germans at the time to find a safe harbor for Jews, including some negotiations with Zionists in Europe. It is a total fallacy that there was anything resembling genocide."

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Perhaps you missed it, the case of the "Jena 6." These were the 6 black high school students from Jena, Louisiana whom national race hucksters like Al Sharpton, the NAACP, and the mainstream media attempted to turn into the Chicago 7 or the Guildford 4. Last December, they beat the living daylights out of a white student. Yet in a bizarre (and ultimately all-too-predictable) rendering of the story, the usual suspects swept in and turned this incident into the next Selma. Nearly 20,000 people gathered there last month to protest, and it is this incident that led Jesse Jackson to claim that Barack Obama was "acting white" for not joining him in the usual race-baiting hysterics.

The source of the left-wing ire about the Jena 6 was an incident earlier last year in which black students at Jena High School sat under what was alleged to be a "whites-only tree," only to find three nooses hanging from said tree the next day. What followed was a series of tit-for-tat incidents between black and white students, leading ultimately to the violent beating of Justin Barker, age 17.

I had suspected that there was something fishy in the liberal media's telling of this story (see Stanford Law School Professor Richard Thompson Ford's dispassionate analysis of the story in Slate), which is why I was a bit perturbed to see the Human Rights Campaign, the country's leading gay rights organization, take the side of the Free the Jena 6 protesters several weeks ago. If there was any "gay angle" to this series of events (and there isn't) it would be an expression of sympathy with the white student randomly set upon by 6 students and beat beyond unconsciousness simply because he was white. According those who support "hate crimes" legislation, this is a hate crime, unless they wish to retroactively change the definition of the proposed law so that only blacks can be victims and whites perpetrators. Change, furthermore, Barker's sexual orientation to homosexual, and you have the prototypical gay bashing. But no, the Human Rights Campaign, ostensibly a non-partisan organization, apparently wants some chits with the "black" and "progressive" "communities" and decided to cast any concern for the truth of the matter to the wind and join in this ridiculous spectacle.

Well, as with the Duke case, the situation in Jena was not what Al Sharpton and the perpetually over-earnest American Prospect (which is always seizing upon faux-incidents like the "Jena 6" to call for a "national conversation" about race, labor, or purple ponies) made it out to be. In yesterday's Christian Science Monitor of all places, Craig Franklin, an editor of the local Jena Times newspaper, offers a short and devastating analysis of the "distorted story of the Jena 6." He wrote the piece mostly as a response to the "hundreds" of calls his paper has received from national media looking for an accurate version of the events that took place. To put it bluntly, nearly every single aspect of this story has been sensationalized and mis-reported by mainstream media outlets." In fact, I have never before witnessed such a disgrace in professional journalism," Franklin, a career journalist, writes.

One might hope that Jackson, Sharpton, the Prospect, the Human Rights Campaign and everyone who shuttled down to Jena and back to have their photo taken would apologize to the people they slandered -- as in the Duke case -- and perhaps exercise a little more restraint the next time The Big Story That Exemplifies The Need For A National Conversation On Race comes over the transom. Don't count on it.

Is a vegan diet better for the environment than a vegetarian diet? Today, Slate asks that question. Either way, though, giving up meat is apparently good for the Earth: "going vegetarian has the same effect on carbon dioxide emissions as switching from a Chevrolet Suburban to a Toyota Camry."

Personally, I don't really give a crap which one is better for the environment. I'm a vegetarian for bleeding-heart ethical reasons, and the same ethical concerns force me to acknowledge that recent human history would have been safer, kinder, and gentler had the modern environmental movement never existed. It doesn’t take a carnivore to see that environmentalist hysteria takes on a consistent pattern: affluent Westerners decide that some long-enjoyed privilege of modern life is evil, and set about depriving the people of developing countries of that privilege.

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I learned the hard way that the Anti-Defamation League makes it tougher to defend Israel on a college campus.

It really isn't difficult to take apart a zealous college leftie spouting rubbish learned from some "fact sheet" about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. You can show them that their information is wrong, or selective, or that they are applying their claimed principles inconsistently. Some will listen, some won't. Some will scoff and bluster in the heat of the moment, but mull it over at a later, less theatrical moment. But one thing almost all of them will do is try to strawman you, which too frequently means shouting off about some nonsense spouted by the ADL.

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The University of St. Thomas in Minnesota has cancelled an appearance by Archbishop Desmond Tutu out of fear of offending the local Jewish community. Tutu has made several anti-Israel and anti-Zionist remarks in the past, and he’s been a proponent of divestment from Israel.

During one speech in support of divestment Tutu said:

My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?

About the cancellation, Doug Hennes, St, Thomas’s vice president for university and government relations said:

We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy. We're not saying he's anti-Semitic. But he's compared the state of Israel to Hitler and our feeling was that making moral equivalencies like that are hurtful to some members of the Jewish community.

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Hindu-Jewish Leadership SummitYesterday's New York Times ran a story about Indian-Americans finding an activist role model, and sometime partner, in American Jews.

Indians often say they see a version of themselves and what they hope to be in the experience of Jews in American politics: a small minority that has succeeded in combating prejudice and building political clout.

Sanjay Puri, the chairman of the U.S. India Political Action Committee, said: “What the Jewish community has achieved politically is tremendous, and members of Congress definitely pay a lot of attention to issues that are important to them. We will use our own model to get to where we want, but we have used them as a benchmark.”

One instance of Indians following the example of Jews occurred last year when Indian-American groups, including associations of doctors and hotel owners, banded together with political activists to win passage of the United States-India Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Act, which allows New Delhi to buy fuel, reactors and other technology to expand its civilian nuclear program.

I remember when Bush announced the passage of the United States-India Peaceful Nuclear Cooperation Act. One of the administration's finer foreign policy moments. An overlooked commitment to global outreach at a time when the U.S. was taking a lot of flack for its supposed unilateralism and cowboy diplomacy.

I think the U.S. relationship with India these days has taken on a similar tint to our relationship with Israel in the following aspect: Its a non-zero-sum game. On the biggest issue of the day The U.S, India, and Israel are up against the same menace. As the Times article goes on to say: "[A]mong Hindus, who are a majority in India and among Indian-Americans here, some assert that a vital bond they share with Jews is the threat to India and Israel from Muslim terrorists."

Although, some Indian-Americans are leery of emphasizing that commonality.

This makes me relatively suspicious, because there is the desire to reduce the complexity of the issues in a conflict,” said Vijay Prashad, professor of South Asian history at Trinity College in Hartford.

The India Community Center in Milpitas, Calif., represents the nonsectarian approach many Indian-Americans take to replicating the experience of American Jews. When Anil Godhwani began talking to other Indians in Silicon Valley about opening a center, “more than one person talked to us about making this a Hindu community center — sometimes in very strong terms,” he said. That was never his intention, though he was raised Hindu.

Indians have worked with The American Jewish Committee on immigration and hate crimes legislation. The American Jewish Committee has also organized group trips to Israel for Indian Americans.

This is a golden opportunity, one that must not be wasted. Jewish Americans and Indian-Americans must join forces and figure out how to conquer that most formidable of our common antagonists: our over-protective mothers.

A barrage of headlines came just a moment ago, all letting us know that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has followed up the deaths of 8 people in Gaza by threatening more comprehensive military action:

"We are getting closer to carrying out a widespread operation in Gaza which, for many reasons, has not taken place in the past weeks," Barak told Israel's Army Radio.

But a group of Israeli authors has a different idea--talk to Hamas about a ceasefire:

[A.B.]Yehoshua, one of Israel's most revered novelists, underpinned the call yesterday by pointing out that Israel had "many times" negotiated in the past with its sworn enemies...He said that he believed Hamas should be offered ceasefire talks before implementation of "extreme measures" against the population of Gaza.

"I do not know how Hamas will respond." But he said the offer of talks – which would be unconditional on both sides – "would throw the dice into the hands of Hamas and say stop the stupid rockets you are launching into Israel".

At this point, most of us are overfamiliar with the arguments as to whether negotiating with Hamas would be desirable or effective. The inspiring aspect of the writers' gesture, however, is that the notion that their declaration might enter the consciousness of Palestinians in Gaza "so that they would bring parallel pressures on Hamas for a ceasefire."

For whatever one thinks of the plausibility of encouraging Palestinian civil society pressure to influence Hamas, the general principle at work here is beyond reproach.

 

Special thanks to Evin Watson for filming the event for Jewcy.

To read more about what we were doing two weeks ago, and why:

* Check our always up-to-date list of Jewcy's posts on the ADL/Armenian Genocide issue

Thank you to Paul for bringing this to my attention in the comments section. Please watch this video if you have any doubts about the ADL's miserable policy on the Armenian Genocide. Watch it even if you don't.

What explains the counter-intuitive phenomenon of Arabs nominally on the left coming to the defense of the Muslim far-right?

This question will not get old or tired until the phenomenon itself ceases to exist.  It gets some rigorous treatment in an excellent issue paper by Hussein Ibish for the American Task Force On Palestine.  The above question as well as three further points--

What exactly have these left-wing sympathizers with the far-right been saying in recent months? What actually happened in Gaza and the West Bank? And, most importantly, what should friends of Palestine in the United States do now?

--are explored in this eminently quoteworthy and nicely argued piece.

Friends of Palestine in the United States must be clear about the principles that inform their activism. If people are genuinely in sympathy with the aims and methods of Hamas, then that is one thing. But these of us who seek first to end the occupation and then support the development of a democratic and pluralistic Palestinian state have to hold firm to those commitments. This means at the very least not defending those whose stated policies and concrete actions run strictly counter to those aims...Dismissing those who hold firm to these important values and goals as "diplomatic fronts" or "Washington lobbies" for narrow Palestinian political factions, or, most preposterously, as "neoconservatives," is beneath contempt. To be principled to is be honorable and sincere, even if possibly mistaken.

Daily commentary on the ADL/Armenian Genocide uproar

JOIN JEWCY AS WE PROTEST ABRAHAM FOXMAN'S UPCOMING APPEARANCE IN MANHATTAN:

Foxman's "friend and mentor" Elie Wiesel has described the denial of genocide as like "killing the victims again," and the ADL itself says "A denial of the reality of genocide is, at its core, an appeal to genocidal hatred." But rather than apologizing to the Armenian community for his past statements, Foxman instead apologized to the Turks for his impertinence in ambiguously stating that they were not responsible for an actual, planned genocide during the years of 1915-1923. And all the while, Foxman has continued to assert that a congressional resolution affirming the genocide would be a "counterproductive diversion."

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Josh mentioned that it's the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, but I wanted to add that a couple supremely worthy Jewish organizations have teamed up to create a landing point for people who want to help contribute to an effort that by all rights should have been finished months ago.  Happybirthdaykatrina.com offers ten ways to get involved in the clean-up, from e-mail lobbying to service trips to the gulf.  Ten ways, people!  That means you have no excuse for not helping make Katrina's third birthday a little better than her second.

Daily commentary on the ADL/Armenian Genocide uproar

HA'ARETZ OP-ED CALLS FOR FOXMAN'S RESIGNATION: Today Ha’aretz published "The Politics of Hypocrisy," an op-ed by Friend of Jewcy Evan Goldstein in which Evan calls for Abraham Foxman’s resignation.

Evan laments Foxman’s decline from an “ardent champion of civil rights” to a “morally obtuse and ethically challenged” embarrassment. He's also exasperated by Foxman’s explanation that his “reversal” on the Armenian Genocide issue was motivated by his "concern for the unity of the Jewish community.” Asks Evan, “What does the unity or disunity of the Jewish people have to do with distinguishing between historical fact and malicious fabrication?”

"Morally obtuse" is a pitch-perfect description of the following Foxman comments: “This is not a time for Jews to be attacking each other over an issue that is really not central.” “Now, they’ve insisted on the g-word. Fine.” “I still don’t think it’s our issue, but so many people believe it is our issue… I said okay.”

Unbelievable. But okay, so Foxman didn’t quite summon the moral fervor of the Jewish prophets when he made these comments to reporters. Let’s put aside the moral issues for a moment. I'm also blown away by the jaw-dropping political incompetence here.

There was an uproar over Foxman’s denial of genocide because people consider this a morally salient issue, and one that should transcend politics. Foxman's underlings at the national ADL must be mortified that Foxman would tell every reporter within earshot that he only revisited it because he didn’t want Jews wasting their energy arguing about something this unimportant. How can a man who spent four decades engaged in public debate on sensitive issues be so profoundly tone-deaf to sensibilities about genocide? It gobsmacks.

So when one member of the ADL frets to the Boston Globe over the question, “Are we an organization of principle?” Um… how about, “no.” Not so long as the guy responsible for the above comments is calling the shots.

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On Tuesday August 14th I loudly booed Andrew Tarsy because he was simply reiterating Abraham Foxman’s phony lines about the ADL's position on the Armenian Genocide. At the time, you could almost tell he was struggling with himself because he knew he was lying.

Today I praise Andrew Tarsy for having the courage to risk and lose his livelihood for the truth.

This stands in stark comparison to politicians who jumped in front of this citizen-led parade and are now seeking glory on television and radio.

Watertown owes a great debt of gratitude to Mr. David Boyajian of Newton. We ought to give him keys to the city. A citizen from a neighboring community wrote a letter to the editor and the rest of us jumped on the bandwagon.

But back to Tarsy and the ADL: Tarsy’s firing speaks volumes about the so-called independence of ADL ancillaries, as it speaks volumes about the very nature of the ADL.

As I said Tuesday night, 90 years or 90 days will not move ADL to change its position.

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Unbelievable! Remember Andrew Tarsy, the ADL regional director for New England who was booed out of the Watertown City Council for defending the ADL's Ahmadinejad-esque position that it can neither confirm nor deny an Armenian Genocide took place?

Well, the Boston Globe reported today that at an emergency meeting Tarsy and the rest of his regional board voted to break ranks with the national office of the ADL.

"I strongly disagree with ADL's national position," Tarsy said in an interview with the Globe, declining to explain his change of stance. "It's my strong hope that we'll be able to move forward in a relationship with the Armenian community and the community in general."

Then, twenty minutes ago, the Globe confirmed what a commenter said several hours ago in the comment thread to our petition: Andrew Tarsy has been fired.

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The Town of Watertown is the first community in the nation to officially sever ties with the Anti-ADL And Its Program Run Out of Town for Genocide-Denial: Photo from the Watertown TAB & PressDefamation League and the No Place For Hate program. Watertown rescinded the certification of No Place For Hate tonight with a vote of 8-0.

Here are some jewcy details:

Andrew Tarsy, New England Director and Minister of Disinformation for the Anti-Defamation League, got up and repeatedly lied about the ADL’s lobbying effort to defeat the congressional resolution. He then tried to interrupt an Arab American woman who was describing all the civil rights violations the ADL commits against Arab Americans. He was finally booed out of the Council Chambers.

Rumor has it, one Armenian fellow who is shorter than me (I'm 5 ft tall in my shoes) actually chased him down the hall. I didn't see it, but an unnamed member of the executive branch of our municipal government told me the story at an after hours meeting of the tri-lateral commission in a secret undisclosed location.

All told over 100 people were there. Mostly Armenians but a lot of others stood shoulder to shoulder with them. I suggested we take the sign down and ship it back to the ADL postage due. Other's took a less caustic approach and simply read from Foxman's anthology of asinine quotes. Suffice it to say that when the vote was finally taken the room exploded in applause. One Councilor asked the Town Manager to have the sign taken down first thing in the morning. But, within one hour of the vote, the sign was down thanks to an exceptional department of public works.

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Chances are you won’t have heard of last week’s flood in Rockford, IL. I was dispatched on Friday with other members of an emergency team I volunteer on to assist with the Red Cross's disaster relief effort. As always, poorer areas were hit hardest, and even though the scale of the event was nowhere close to, say, Hurricane Katrina, things were particularly hard for the folks whose homes were hit again for the second time in less than a year.

 

Since Jewcers are all about doing good and helping out, I thought I’d mention you can get some honest-to-goodness social status not just by giving money but also by giving time. Help is badly needed. Red Cross is just one suggestion, and just so that you know, yes I joined and left the Red Cross previously in Europe; but thankfully the American Red Cross is much better. Anyway, as Tamar suggests, go do something good.

Tonight the city council of Watertown, Massachusetts, will debate whether a local diversity-education program called "No Place for Hate" should be kicked out of town. The problem with the program is that it is supported by the"No Place for Hate!" proclaims ADL!: (some exceptions may apply, inquire no further for details, says fine print) Anti-Defamation League. And the problem with that is that the ADL has promoted a hate-campaign against 20 percent of the population of Watertown. So you can understand why the townsfolk are perturbed.

I say "hate-campaign" because I assume that "hate" is how the ADL would normally characterize genocide denial, which is precisely what Abe Foxman's ADL has promoted at the expense of the Armenian community, which includes one in five Watertown residents. The Armenian Genocide, the murder of up to 1.5 million Armenians from 1915-1923, is a historical fact. As Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt puts it, “It's not a matter of debate. There is an overwhelming consensus among historians that work in this area that there is no question that this is a genocide. You can't deny this history."

Yet as I’ve written before, Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL, has sought to please his Turkish friends by announcing that iPioneering Historiographer Abraham Foxman: Foxman (here demonstrating Claw manuever) applies his theories differently to Jews and Armenianst is not the place of the Jewish community, nor the place of the U.S. Congress, “to be the arbiter of other people’s history.” The Armenians and Turks need to work out their own history, he says.

This is a novel approach to the study of history. Normally, believe it or not, historians determine historical truth, and we expect the warring parties to accommodate themselves to it. Thus, we don’t expect Bosnian Muslims and Serbs to decide between themselves what took place at Srebrenica. But in this case, Foxman bypasses the historians and asks the Armenians to negotiate their history with those who both perpetrated the genocide and deny the genocide.

For Jews, of course, Foxman takes the more traditional approach to history. He has no time for those who reject the historical record of the Holocaust, and hasn’t yet asked Jews to negotiate a compromise with such people.

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America has strict laws about discrimination.  No town or building can forbid a person to live there according to his color or religion.  Yes, you agree; don't you?

Jews can live in Hebron, Nebraska, or Jericho, New York.  So why can't they live in the original cities of those names?  Look at the destruction of Jewish homesin Hebron by the Israeli army.

Home Game LogoLast night, Israel Time, I went with a group of veteran (as old as I am, I was the youngest) activist friends, to see Home Game, the movie about the Gush Katif Basketball tournament.

We were turned away, allegedly because there were no available seats.  My friends had been told that there was no need to reserve places in advance:

"Just get there 10 minutes early."

After some of us insisted they let us watch:

"We'll even just stand."

"There won't be room.  I can screen it again at 10pm."

I left on my trek home,  as did another couple.  I shouldn't have been such a wimp.  Here's what happened:

You wont believe this but we did all five of us get in with seats! The officious little man let us in to pay later and "move if anyone came" and nobody did. I am so sorry I didn't insist on booking.  It is a very very disturbing film on many levels with absolutely idyllically beautiful youngsters as the narrators - articulate, Hollywood beautiful  wonderful teens - even the hand held cameras made it moving - the rest of the people were amazing too - the absolute best of the best that Israel can produce -

Try to see it if you can.  Try harder than I did, please.

My friend, Stefan Merken, has just published Peace, Justice and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition, a book that argues that peace is one of the "purest and highest" values in our tradition. If there are any skeptics reading this they will say--been there, done that. How many similar books have already been published on precisely the same subject before? While this is true, I believe that this book comes at a most opportune time. In the period since 9/11, the world has become obsessed with terror as THE only important issue facing us. In this country, all that has been important to our government has been security. Everything else has fallen by the wayside. The neocons, prominent among them many Jews, have ruled the roost for the past six years.

But now that the Bush Administration and its agenda have become discredited by the overreaching and failure of their own policies the pendulum is shifting back. It is time that we reexamine the relevance of the Jewish prophetic tradition to issues of war and peace, environmentalism, and economic justice. In an age when war and hatred are everywhere, it would profit us to study the words of the contributors to this volume who have embraced a peaceful way to resolve such conflicts. If there was nothing else worthwhile in this volume, this comment by the editors about my favorite historic Zionist figure would make the entire venture worth it:

Our chapter on...Israel calls to mind a major--if sadly, largely forgotten--figure of the Jewish past: Ahad Ha'am...whose prescient essay This is Not the Way warned that a future Jewish nation would not succeed if it emulated colonialistic thinking. "The main point, upon which everything depends, is not how much we do but how we do it," he wrote in The Truth from Palestine after he arrived home in Odessa from Palestine in 1891. He also cautioned the Jewish settlers in Palestine to consider the rights of the Arabs living there. "We think...that the Arabs are all savages who live like animals and do not understand what is happening...This is, however, a great error.

A strong dose of Ahad Ha'am is a powerful antidote to the most virulent nationalist views expressed by many on the Israeli right and their Diaspora supporters.

Murray Polner, former editor of the late, lamented Present Tense Magazine, was this book's co-editor.

I'm in the process of writing a piece examining the Jewish nonprofit world's antidemocratic, intensely insular culture and how it's impacting the larger community. There's still more reporting and research yet to be done, but I wanted to mention one of the organizations that will be in my piece. It's currently in a time-sensitive contest that you can help it win, and it's utterly deserving.

The organization is DonorsChoose.org, which is at the forefront of a galvanic shift in philanthropy, from elitism toward democracy. Donors Choose uses an eBay-like online marketplace to connect teachers directly to donors. If a Bronx middle school teacher needs $300 for, say, the kind of earth science books wealthy children take for granted, she can simply posts her request on the Donors Choose website and anyone with $10 can contribute to helping make that lesson plan a reality.

That’s the kind of philanthropic experience that will force the young to feel called to give, and as a consequence, help bring America’s nonprofit tradition into the next generation. The central idea fueling Donors Choose is so powerful it has the potential to help flatten, democratize, and eliminate those petty nonprofit bureaucratic middlemen from many more philanthropic sectors than education.

Right now, Donors Choose is one of five finalists in an American Express contest that will reward $5 million to a charity selected by AmEx cardholders. Vote now for DonorsChoose.org.