Round-up

- AIPAC doesn't always represent Israel's or America's best interests-who said it? A 'moderate' AIPAC member. Interesting.

- The Israeli-Arab who founded a one-man Holocaust museum in Nazareth has been invited to Iran for a "Holocaust study conference". He says he's going to go and tell off Ahmadinejad to his face. Let's hope he stays safe.

- Mobius' snit about the Lego Ghetto is getting some media attention. And what do you know, the world didn't end.

As the Holocaust continues to occupy a central place in the American Jewish consciousness, parents, educators and the planners of communal events have been faced with a vexing question: Is it possible to teach children about the tragedy of Europe’s Jews in a way that, on the one hand, doesn’t trivialize the horrors but, at the same time, doesn’t induce nightmares?

...Schwartz worried that he was going to offend, but he persevered and today, after having done the program a number of times, he feels vindicated. “I get letters from rabbis, from educators saying this is the greatest program they’ve ever seen,” he said.

Barbara Wind, director of the Holocaust Council that brought Schwartz to Whippany, emphasized that the program includes far more than simply playing with colored blocks. After the walls are up and a few key structures are in place, Schwartz gives a lesson on the history of the ghetto, including the fact that only a 20-foot section of the outer wall still stands. This synagogue was turned into a stable, he says, and here, at 18 Mila Street, is where the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was planned.

“A 10-year-old isn’t going to see ‘Schindler’s List’ or ‘The Pianist,’” Wind said. “Here, in a non-threatening way, we can show that this was a heroic chapter. The Jews fought with bravery against what was the greatest army in the world and held out for over a month. That’s the message we’d like them to understand.”

And indeed, those who turned out for the November 5 event — a group that included about 40 children, some parents and a sprinkling of Holocaust survivors — responded positively.

Sam Bradin, an Auschwitz survivor at the event with his 8-year-old grandson, found the program to be educational and not at all inappropriate.

“Of course it doesn’t portray 100% what it looked like,” he said, “but more or less it gives the young people an idea of what went on there.”

Reid Schalet, 12, who, together with his brothers Grant, 15, and Myles, 10, built an apartment building for the ghetto, spoke of how jarring it was to be able to picture just how tight the quarters were. The project, he said, enabled him to see anew the story of his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. “It makes you realize how he had to live just to be safe,” he said.

For the curious, my response to Mobius is here.

- Some left-wing activists "seized" some tanks and checkpoints bordering the Gaza strip. Apparently all their efforts are working, because the Palestinians are finally catching on to this nonviolent resistance thing, too. Well, sort of:

Hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield around the home of a militant in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia late Saturday to prevent an Israel Air Force air strike on the building, residents said...he crowd chanted anti-Israel and anti-American slogans, and people said they were prepared to give their lives to protect the home. "Yes to martyrdom. No to surrender," the crowd chanted.

"We came here to protect this fighter, to protect his house and to prove that we are capable of defeating this Zionist policy," said Nizar Rayan, a local Hamas leader who joined the protest.

Gandhi would be proud. Maybe.

- There's more info on Lazer's supposed miracle and the continuing fall-out.

Following the shelling, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s Hamas accelerated their negotiations. The accelerated talks indicate “a siege mentality — in a siege we’ve got to be united,” said Bar-Ilan University’s Menachem Klein, an expert on Palestinian politics."

Way to go, God! Yasher Koach!

- The Jerusalem Post has a piece summing up all its coverage of the haredi reaction to the Gay Pride parade- particularly interesting is its analysis of all the different parties involved:

Continuing the three-centuries-old standoff between hassidim and mitnagim, Sephardi and Lithuanian haredi leaders Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv joined in the Eda's "holy war." In effect they legitimized groups previously considered "untouchables" in the eyes of the rabbis: shababnikim (alienated young people on the fringe of haredi society), and mizrahistim National Religious Party-affiliated hilltop youth living in the West Bank. As well, they joined with Christian and Muslim religious leaders in a rare display of ecumenicalism in a multi-faith coalition against the same-sex parade.

"We are very afraid of the cooperation with the settlers," Poppenheim said. "We don't want our young people to see that we are involved with them. For me, [extreme right-wing settler leader] Baruch Marzel is no less a danger than the participants in the parade. The haredi embrace of the Right has led to a very great moral deterioration since the days of the IZL," referring to the pre-state underground (the Irgun) which used terrorism to fight the British and Arabs. But, he added, the end justifies the means.

Funny, isn't that what the Lehi said?

- Lastly, I really, really don't get sports.