Limited Retrospection

The 20-year-anniversary for the Crown Heights riots/pogroms (depending on who you talk to) is coming up and it's led to a fair bit of discussion among Jewish media outlets, particularly in New York.

Unfortunately, while the myths that Crown Heights was somehow a riot "between" blacks and Jews (implying that the Jews were out attacking blacks instead of hunkering down in their homes) or that the Jewish political establishment used all its resources to stop violent attacks happening in real-time are finally being exposed and challenged, one central myth not only remains unexamined, but continually perpetuated by people who should know better.

That is, the identity of Yankel Rosenbaum. Even this week, the inaccurate statements about Rosenbaum being a "rabbinical student" or a "rabbinical scholar" are being repeated by major Jewish news outlets. Only problem is, those are lies. Intended as compliments, perhaps, but fictional.

The son of Jews who survived the Holocaust in Poland, Mr. Rosenbaum was a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He had done his undergraduate work there and, later, had earned a master's degree. His adviser on his doctoral dissertation, Dr. John Foster, said he was studying small Jewish towns in Poland.

The information is out there. This article was written in 1991, as was this one in 1996. Academics have verified who Rosenbaum was, and wasn't. Friends of Rosenbaum have popped up sporadically on the internet trying to clarify who he was: frum, Jewishly literate, and, while not Hasidic (nor Lubavitch, though his family were), certainly on friendly terms with Chabad.

But that is not the same as rewriting the man's life and identity and turning him into just another yeshiva bochur! Rosenbaum was a passionate young man who had created his own business and was pursuing high-level academic studies in the secular world. He spoke five languages, he had a master's, he was working on his doctorate, and he was a lecturer at the University! These details don't detract from his life or his Jewishness, they add color and texture to them. In a small way, Rosenbaum was a living model of how to successfully, and proudly, live as an Orthodox Jew in an open environment, without needing to cloister oneself in a cultural ghetto. The Orthodox world (heck, even the larger Jewish world) needs more role models like him. If nothing else, that is what is insulting about him being turned into a faceless symbol of the Haredi everyman struck down by antisemitism. It deprives us all of a wonderful learning opportunity.

Yankel Rosenbaum was an Orthodox Jew who chose to live in the non-Jewish world and had been successful at it. But for an accident of random chance (which ironically happened when he was visiting a major Jewish enclave, as opposed to all the times in Australia when he was in part of a small minority), he would likely still be here.

There are lots of lessons we can take from his life, but to do that we first have to be willing to learn about the truth of who he was. Not the myth he was turned into.

Edit-after-the-fact: Every time I write about this, I manage to find more people who knew Rosenbaum personally. (One of the blessings of the Internet!) One of them had this to say: 

I actually knew Yankel, A"H. He was a person, not a symbol, and I don't think he would have been upset at the descriptions you're complaining about.

Melbourne even today is a much more diverse community than most places in the US, and lots of people have complicated religious and intellectual backgrounds. Yankel's family wasn't Lubavitch and he wasn't the sort of person you could easily classify, but he certainly associated with Chabad. Yankel went to a Lubavitch school and yeshiva, was a counsellor at Chabad camps, and socialised with people both within and without Melbourne's Lubavitch community. None of this is especially important, but I hope it fleshes him out a bit more.

Here was my response:

I appreciate you sharing the background about your friend more.

As I've gotten interested in Yankel's life just been frustrated by what I see as attempts to put this interesting person into a certain box, when it seems like a lot of what he was about was, as you said, being involved with and interacting with various different communities. I would like to see that spirit honored and remembered when people think of him, as opposed to immediately putting him in a neat category of "martyred Lubavitcher Hasid" and going on their way.

Talking around a subject

I came across an interesting news article at Ynet this morning:

The Romanian Academy will alter its definition of an anti-Semitic slur in a dictionary to make it clear the word is pejorative. 

The academy wrote to the Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism on Wednesday, saying it should have described the word as pejorative. The DEX dictionary says the term is used in a "familiar" sense but omits that it is an anti-Semitic slur. 

The academy said in a letter "we will do all we can to make an immediate and permanent correction of its definition".

The center had protested the usage of the word, saying it was "heard by Jews when they were put on the trains of death," referring to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews in World War II.

Slurs are bad. Makes sense. But, I was curious, what exactly was the slur?

There was a link to another Ynet article, so I tried that. It had more details, but still no slur.

A prominent Jewish group on Monday called on the Romanian Academy to change its dictionary definition of an anti-Semitic slur to make it clear that it is a pejorative. 

Maximilian Katz, director of the Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism, told the Associated Press in an interview Monday that the commonly used Romanian word is offensive, but that is not explained in the official DEX dictionary. 

He says the word was "heard by the Jews when they were put on the trains of death," referring to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Romanian Jews in WWII.

"The Romanian Academy have taken a deeply anti-Semitic expression and transformed it into a legitimate word," he told the AP. The dictionary explains it is used in a "familiar" sense but omits that it is anti-Semitic.

The two-page letter said that the slur "is racist, it shows hatred toward the Jewish race, hatred toward the Jewish religion, it defames Jews on ethnic grounds and incites violence against them."

It says that usage of the word is illegal in Romania because it falls under a law banning symbols with a fascist, racist or xenophobic character. Breaking the law is punishable by fines and prison. 

...The word is the most offensive that exists in the Romanian language for a Jew, but it is also used colloquially by mainly elderly Romanians who would not consider themselves anti-Semitic. 

...Csaba Ferenc Asztalos, the director of Parliament's National Council for Combating Discrimination who also received a copy of the letter said he agreed with the Jewish group. "Their request is justified," he said in a phone interview. "The word must show the real sense, that it is pejorative, that it is racist for both Jews and Gypsies."

Man, this word is one terrible bastard. But what is it?

Seriously, media. I get that the word is offensive. I really do. But since most people reading this story aren't octogenarian Romanians, you may want to actually tell us what the word is. Now you're just forcing us to use our terrible and inappropriate imaginations.  At least give us a hint! Beardies? Goldpinchers? Hemosexuals? Help me out here, my racist Romanian slur knowledge is quite poor. Not to mention that repeating "the word"and "the slur" fifteen times makes your reporting sounds downright silly.

To Google!

...Lame, Google, very lame.

Ok, what about... this?

Fine, you don't want to help. I get it. Everyone just keeps ripping off the two AP articles. Be that way. Maybe there's some original reporting somewhere.

... After ten minutes of clicking links, I finally found it, courtesy of JTA:

JTA- Romania's highest cultural forum, following a request by a watchdog group, agreed to make clear in the definition of an anti-Semitic slur that the word is a pejorative. 

The Center for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism on Tuesday had urged the The Romanian Academy to change its definition in the official DEX dictionary, or The Explanatory Dictionary of the Romanian Language, of the word "jidan."

Thank you. Was that so hard?

(I wonder if this is what it's like trying to read frum newspapers...)

Tyranny of the Majority

Why do I keep carping on Christmas in the public square? I guess it's because I think that America benefits tremendously by keeping religion separate from government. There are middle grounds, such as trying to honor and include people's religious culture and heritage. Where things get dicey is where the culture of the majority is allowed to dominate others, or even push them out of the public view entirely. People with these viewpoints are the kind that get up in arms at suggestions that America is not a Christian country. They're also the same folks that feel entitled to dictate to Americans everywhere that Christian symbols and holidays, should be given exalted status and treatment over any others. A lot of times they will misrepresent our own history to do so, often shamelessly.

In my view, this is where such attitudes lead:

The Moldovan Orthodox Church on Wednesday blamed the local Jewish community for the recent rally in which a public menorah was torn down and a cross was put in its place.

During the December 13th incident, dozens of people led by an Orthodox priest smashed a menorah in Moldova's capital Chisinau, using hammers and iron bars to remove the candelabra during Hanukkah.

...the church said in a statement, "We believe that this unpleasant incident in the center of the capital could have been avoided if the menorah had been placed near a memorial for victims of the Holocaust."
The church said it opposed the form of the protest, and that it respects "the feelings and belief of other cults that are legally registered on the territory of the Republic of Moldova, and expects a similar attitude from their side," according to the report.
"At the same time," the statement continued, "we think it inappropriate to put a symbol of the Jewish cult in a public place connected to the history and faith of our people, especially because Chanukah is classified by the cult books of Judaism as a 'holiday of blessing' that symbolizes the victory of Jews over non-Jews."

There you have it. Christians taking back the public square, fully justified, no doubt, in their view that Moldova is a Christian nation. They even have the nerve to blame it on the Jews being provocative by not keeping their symbol in "the right place." Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this a slightly more aggressive version of what people on Fox News, World Net Daily and Stand For Christmas are calling for?

Let's be clear: I do not believe that most Christians in America are violent. But I do think that there is a danger in believing that numerical superiority translates to the right to exert/claim cultural dominance or control. The beauty of America is that it does not explicitly "belong" to any one group. I see and hear some Christians in the blogosphere and media who feel like America is uniquely "theirs" and who think that an aggressive form of cultural Christianity should be determining government policy and be trickling down to all sorts of everyday activities, be it advertising or education. I can see their perspective-- it's what they believe, after all-- but that doesn't mean I agree with it one bit.

Part of the dilemma is I think it is particularly hard for a majority group to understand how important issues of symbolism, protection and dignity are for minorities. Religious minorities in America benefit tremendously through maintaining the separation of church and state, and in ensuring that they are never made to be second-class citizens. Yes, it is possible for a state with an official religion to be benevolent towards minorities-- but that's not the same thing as a state with no official religion, with no religious preference, where ALL religious groups are on equal footing-- at least on paper. That is what is at stake.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For another perspective (and from a fellow Jew, no less), we can go to my old friend Idiot McGoo. Sorry, that's former-rabbi Idiot McGoo:

"If you can't stand the words Merry Christmas, you don't have a right to live on this earth, because that means that you're rejecting the whole idea of loving your fellow human being, of celebrating the most beautiful qualities of a person. The most beautiful qualities of a person are the qualities of Christmas."

Which qualities, exactly? Goodwill towards men?

Rebuttal to Fred Phelps

First, watch this for the tune (and rage):

Hey Mr. Phelps I know that you're no pastor
And that you're no preacher no, cause you're just a bastard
Spreadin' your hate all over the place
One day you will end up with a brick in the face

You protest funerals while the parents are there
You're so cruel and heartless but you just don't care
Claim you're working for your Lord
But it's clear that you are just an attention whore
Go away please... right now... and shut up.

You hate Catholics and Muslims and Jews
And also gays, and anyone who's not you,
You can hate, as hard as you please,
You've wasted your pathetic life on your sick disease
Go play in traffic... right now... and shut up.

Hey Mr. Phelps, now, consider this a warning
Your family's worn out their welcome and your time is coming
You say celebrities are horribly wrong,
I notice that don't stop you from stealing their songs
Take a long walk... off a short pier... and shut up.

Stupid Youtube videos

First, a real piece of dreck from the Westboro Baptist Church. The most obnoxious thing about this first one isn't the antisemitism, it's the catchiness. I think they may have just hit on a way to actually spread their message beyond their own genepool. Scary.





But the really sad thing? This isn't that different from Former-Rabbi-Schmuckles' idiotic, paranoid and race-baiting rant:


Highlights:

"Pretty soon they're going to be hiding in basements worried that people are going to be killing them for being Christian."

"Black people were persecuted before, so now everybody's nervous, if you hire a black person you have to just be happy he shows up."

"The only person that can't get affirmative action is a Jew... If a Jew wants to become a doctor he has to have a 98.9 average to get into a medical school... but because of affirmative action, if you're Hispanic, 28, close enough. If you're black, 2, you're a doctor."

Frankly, these two hateful old coots deserve each other.

Hat-tip: Jewlicious.

Why not just come out and say it?

Remember back in 2007 when Ann Coulter made her stupid comments about Jews, and then acted put upon when people called her antisemitic? Remember how jackasses like Yaakov Menken and Dennis Prager defended her? Remember how we were told that Coulter was just stating her Christian beliefs, and how there was no way any honest person could possibly find offense with her?

To hear Dennis and Yaakov tell it, Ann is one the biggest friends of the Jewish community (the "real" Jews, anyway). She would never make an anti-Jewish remark or insult. To paraphrase Yaakov's lapdog apologetics, "She's anti-secularism, not anti-Jewish."

Keeping all that in mind, I wonder what Dennis and Yaakov's followers (those who can read, anyway) made of this throwaway comment in Coulter's latest column:

Then there's Barry Lynn, alleged "Christian minister," whose stock in trade is to denounce any mention of religion anyplace, anytime. Look, I'm a Christian minister, but even I have to admit that the sight of a kindergartner praying is terrifying to most folks. (The first person to post Barry Lynn's bar mitzvah photos or birth announcement (mazel tov!) wins a free copy of my latest book...

That's odd, according to my 5 seconds of research it appears Rev. Lynn is a lifetime member of the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination. Yet, rather than criticize his church or Lynn's professional career as a Church-State Activist, Ann instead prefers to call him a fake minister, (and presumably a fake Christian,) who hates religion. A point she makes by accusing him of being a Jew. Classy.

Tell me, Yaakov, Dennis, and any of your fans out there, how best should we interpret this latest compliment to our religious heritage? (An homage to the Inquisition/Witch Trials, perhaps?)

Progress (?)

I guess Bishop Williamson has gotten tired of his ears burning. After a solid week of getting smacked around on TV, radio, print and the Internet, he made another important announcement. Will he recant his Holocaust denial? Will he apologize to the people that actually deserve an apology?

Wait for it...

"Since I see that there are many honest and intelligent people who think differently, I must look again at the historical evidence," the British bishop was quoted as saying.

"It is about historical evidence, not about emotions," he added, according to the report. "And if I find this evidence, I will correct myself. But that will take time."

That's right, he'll look into it! Well, as long as we know it's in his to-do pile, I guess all can be forgiven and we can move on to being cheerfully damned again at Easter. What a guy. I guess it just goes to show that if you have faith, everything will work out.

And there's more:

"I was convinced that my comments were right on the basis of my research in the '80s," Der Spiegel quoted Williamson as saying. "I must now examine everything again and look at the evidence."

That explains it- it was the 80s! Yes, that most intellectually stagnant period of Western history, in which absolutely zero scholarship or public discussion of the Holocaust occurred. Be honest, I bet you can't even name a single Holocaust film that came out in the 80s. But at least we know now-- after most of the perpetrators and victims are dead or extremely elderly-- he's willing to give the evidence another look. Hey, since we're apparently on a CSI-kick, why don't we go to the source and examine some of the physical locations where the Holocaust happened?

The magazine suggested that he could make a personal visit to the former Auschwitz death camp. Williamson replied: "I will not go to Auschwitz," it said.

Oh. Well, that's ok. He must be really busy packing to head back to the Vatican. And there's the bi-annual Society of Pius church picnic coming up next month, he's supposed to be in charge of the sack races and egg toss... In fact, guys, he might need a few years to sift through all this evidence before he's ready to really come out for either side. Maybe everyone can just focus on something else for a while until Dick here makes his decision? Here, I know-- talk about this guy, instead. That's still Holocaust-related, and only tangentially involves the Church. Go team.

Fun fact: Williamson presently lives in Argentina, which has a very colorful history when it comes to Nazi enthusiasts.

Huckabee proves Jew-Baiting has a long shelf life

Mike Huckabee's new show is really awful. But at least it has a good time slot- 8 pm on Saturday nights when hopefully no one is really paying attention. The last episode featured a particularly dumb segment, "Are you smarter than your Congressman?" By Congressman, Huckabee apparently meant the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, because the only clips he showed were of her, and they were both about the speech she gave on Sep 29- a scant two weeks ago. How topical!

The first clip featured Pelosi talking about the impending recess and urging Congress to remember that Americans were hurting significantly and needed help. Huckabee then asked a dimwit named Sherrod Small for his thoughts. This is funny for a few reasons:

A- Small is from New York, thereby making Pelosi actually the exact opposite of his Congressman.

B- Small is a quasi-well-known comedian from VH1's Best Week Ever, a show not exactly known for its sympathy to Huckabee's political positions. Why on earth did they pick this guy to be a participant in this segment? Small has nothing in common with anyone in this audience.

But it got better, because Huckabee's spin was that Congress was lazy for going "on a holiday." Small picked up on this and ran with it (Huffington Post has video and transcript):

PELOSI (video): But my colleagues, as you go home and see your families and observe the holiday and the rest, don't get settled in too far. Because as long as the Americ - this challenge is there for the American people, the threat of losing their jobs, their credit, their savings, their retirement, the opportunity for them to send their children to college - as long as in the households of America, this crisis is being felt very immediately, and being addressed at a different level --"

HUCK: Okay Sherrod, are you smarter than a Congressman? What would YOU have said instead of what we just heard Ms. Pelosi say?

SHERROD: Well, first of all, what she said was, 'Before you go home and enjoy your holidays and buy gifts and a Christmas tree, and turkeys, just keep in mind that some people are losing everything.' Which I think was the wrong thing to say. I would have said, before we go on vacation, let's straighten all this out.

HUCK: Yeah. I think that might be a good idea.

SHERROD: [inaudible]...before we go buy a Christmas tree.

HUCK: Sherrod, I think you ARE smarter than a Congressman.

Minor problem. The "holiday" Congress was adjourning for was Rosh Hashanah. Not so many Christmas trees associated with that one. (Also, who has a Christmas tree in September?)

Not only is this little bit of misinformed Jew-baiting disturbing, it's also old news. The past two weeks have seen plenty of stupid commentary on the fact that Congress was taking off during the middle of the financial meltdown. Never mind the fact that the Senate REMAINED in session, or that using the Jewish holidays as the beginning of the recess has been standard practice for years:

Representatives get a break for Easter, Passover, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Christmas Day. The Senate operates according to a very similar schedule, except it remains in session for Yom Kippur and, at least in 2008, for Rosh Hashanah.

The holiday schedule can vary from year to year. Leaders from both parties set up a tentative list of days off every January, before Congress convenes. Lawmakers can adjust the schedule as needed and suspend holidays in case of an emergency. The tentative 2008 schedule for the Senate, for example, listed two days off for Rosh Hashanah. The chamber remained in session anyway, although no votes were scheduled to take place between Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon.

The AP has more:

The first Jews weren't elected to the House and Senate until the 1840s, and through most of the 19th century, Congress only met from December through the spring. Because lawmakers could not easily return home in those days, they often met on Christmas Day, according to Senate historian Donald Ritchie.

Even after the schedule changed in the 1930s, Congress generally worked from January through the middle of the year, not conflicting with the Jewish holidays.

Even when circumstances required Congress to be in session during Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, the day's agenda was usually planned so as to require very little to do, and no voting to take place, which doesn't seem to be very disimilar from the practice of meeting as infrequently as possible around Christian holidays like Christmas or Easter.

The griping about the recess being poorly timed and specifically complaining about the Rosh Hashanah thing seems to be focused in two areas. Some people are using it as a quasi-dig that somehow its the Jews' fault that Congress went home (sorry folks, math dictates it was going to be the same date this year whether there was a crisis or not).

The other point, which I accept to varying degrees, is that given that most members of Congress are not Jewish, perhaps it would have been a good idea to reassess the recess by a day or so. (Then again, how would they have handled not having forty-odd Represenatives present?) Also, I don't buy the line I was seeing throughout the blogosphere that a lot of people would demand Congress stay in session if it coincided with Christmas, too (I can think of a few Congressmen who probably would complain about it, and certainly some conservative commentators who would probably have some line about us not respecting our Jesus-Christian heritage).

Either way there seems to have been a bit of an unfair (and insulting) "it's just the Jewish New Year" attitude circulating around this issue. Which is funny, given that taking a break was probably helpful in getting both parties to regroup and pass the bill.

Oh, and FYI, some people have been bashing Rep. Roy Blunt for possibly suggesting that Republicans were stressed out over the bill because of Rosh Hashanah, accusing him of being anti-semitic (or pandering to that sentiment). Just one problem- Blunt's wife is Jewish. Whoopsies.

Jews and Chavez: Part 3

Apparently Chavez just won't stop going after the Jews:

One of the first points of tension was the April 2002 coup attempt against Chavez. Michael Penfold-Becerra, a political scientist at Caracas’s institute of superior administrative studies, said that among some government officials, suspicions against Jews were fueled by the alleged support of prominent rabbi Pinchas Brenner for the authors of the short-lived coup, as well as by the perception that Israelis and Jews were active in the arms business.

The first raid, in 2004, heightened the tensions, especially since it took place early in the day when hundreds of children were on their way to school.

The tensions escalated again during the 2006 summer war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, when Chavez accused Israelis of behaving like Nazis. He recalled the charge d’affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy in Tel Aviv, and Israel, in turn, called back its ambassador. Although the Israeli diplomat returned to Caracas a month later, and Venezuela sent a low-level envoy to Tel Aviv, the relationship remains fraught.

The Jewish community turned to Argentina’s government to intercede with Chavez, and last January the self-described “Bolivarian” leader agreed to meet with CAIV following a request by Nestor Kirchner, then president of Argentina.

Through it all, Benshimol and others have stressed that there has been no instance of physical violence against Jews in the country. And they have, on occasion, defended Chavez against accusations of antisemitism aired by such American Jewish groups as the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

But the atmosphere has worsened lately, first and foremost because of Chavez’s increasingly inflammatory talk about Israel and its supporters. A television program called “The Razor,” broadcast on a state-owned channel, has featured lengthy rants about the presence of Mossad agents allegedly in the country working to unseat the Chavez regime with the support of the United States and opposition forces in Venezuela. The host of the show has also questioned the loyalty of leading Jewish figures to their home country. Despite repeated complaints by CAIV, the authorities have taken no action.

In March 2007, there were no government officials in attendance at the 40th-anniversary celebration of CAIV. Benshimol said that the government has had no official ties with his organization for the past year.

The deteriorating atmosphere has prompted a sizable exodus of Jews from Venezuela. While precise numbers are hard to come by, the number of children attending the school at the Hebraica center has dropped some 37% in the past decade, while membership at the club has slipped 30%.

Kind of scary, but at least there's been no substantial violence... yet.

Mona Charen wonders why the world Jewish community isn't speaking up about this more.

You might expect an outcry from other Jews around the world -- and there has been some. But within the U.S., many of the leaders of large Jewish organizations are seeking to stifle those, like Rabbi Avi Weiss and Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, who are urging members of Congress to hold hearings on the matter. Weiss reports that Rep. Elliott Engel (D., NY) was willing to call a hearing but was dissuaded by the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations.

Dina Siegel Vann, speaking of behalf of the American Jewish Congress, published an op-ed in the Miami Herald scolding those who want to make as public a protest as possible. "Shouting and screaming from the safety of the United States may feel good to some," she wrote, "but the goal of the exercise is not to satisfy their needs; rather it's to ensure the safety and well-being of thousands of Venezuelan Jews . . ." Her title: "Let's use diplomacy, not public protests."

Well, diplomacy has its place, but this isn't it. When the Soviet Union was denying exit visas to Jews wishing to emigrate and persecuting those who sought to leave, only the loud and persistent protests of Jews in the United States and elsewhere (combined with congressional action) caused the Soviets to relent. Bill Buckley quipped at the time that he hoped the Soviets would release every Jew who wanted to emigrate except one -- to keep alive the Jewish pressure that was so helpful in the larger Cold War. The Venezuelan Jews themselves have asked for such international pressure. They believe Chavez is very sensitive about international opinion. It would be naive to place faith in diplomacy alone.

Charen is correct that diplomacy can only go so far, but you do need to strike a balance when you're dealing with a very vulnerable population whose fate can rise or fall at the whim of a totalitarian government (or in this case, dictator). Calling Chavez out to treat his country's Jews better does no good if it makes their lives even worse.

On the plus side, the Forward says that Venezuela's Jews are getting sick of Hugo's crap and are starting to stand up for themselves.

When two dozen heavily armed policemen came to search the Hebraica community center in the Venezuelan capital one night last month, the Jewish community here finally snapped.

The government officers who entered the sprawling, country club-like complex were ostensibly looking for a stash of weapons and for evidence of “subversive activity.” They found neither. In the subsequent days, the Venezuelan Jewish community’s umbrella organization, the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela, fired off a statement denouncing the raid as an “unjustifiable act” aimed at creating tensions between the community and the government of socialist President Hugo Chavez.

This would not be remarkable in the United States, where Jewish groups routinely state their views with little trepidation. But their counterparts abroad have tended to be less confrontational, especially in countries with small communities and a volatile political environment. In Venezuela this has been the case until recently, despite a long series of problems that includes an earlier raid on the Hebraica center, antisemitism on state-controlled media and anti-Israel pronouncements by Chavez. The calculated quiet ended with last year’s December 1 raid.

“We’re facing the first anti-Jewish government in our history,” Simon Sultan, president of Hebraica, told the Forward in an interview in his office, located in a tony Caracas neighborhood.

The December operation took place on the night preceding a crucial referendum on proposed constitutional reform that would have granted Chavez broad powers and the possibility to run indefinitely. The reform was rejected by a thin margin.

“It seems that the only interpretation is that this was an intimidation by the government,” Abraham Levy Benshimol, president of CAIV, told the Forward.

...In the end, though, it was not the immigration but the raid that convinced the community to speak up. The operation was led by the equivalent of the FBI, whereas the more recent raid was done by officers from a police force under the control of the Interior Ministry and, as such, closely tied to the presidency. While there is no evidence that Chavez himself ordered the latest raid, the all-powerful Interior Ministry is one of his strongest levers.

...Jewish communal leaders also believe that another element might be at work. Sultan noted that Tarek al Assaimi, a former far-left student leader whose father was the representative of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party in Venezuela, is the deputy Interior and Justice minister in charge of internal security and, as such, could have been involved in initiating the raid.

A few days after the raid, Sultan and Benshimol went to the interior and justice ministries to meet with a prosecutor who opened a probe into possible irregularities surrounding the police operation, which was ordered by another prosecutor. A previous probe into the 2004 incident never produced any official outcome — and neither leader expressed much optimism that the outcome would be different this time.

I know biting our tongues and letting other people take the reins isn't really the forte of American Jews, but maybe the American Jewish community would do better to ask the Jews in Venezuela how we can help them HELP THEMSELVES rather than try to take everything onto our shoulders, regardless of what result it will bring.

Gandhi's Grandson Gone

I almost feel sorry for the guy- he's resigned (entirely voluntarily, I'm sure) of the peace center he helped found more than 15 years ago. Guess there's a lesson there- if you're not big on the Jews, might want to avoid talking about them. Or at least have some sounding board people before you write screeds against them in the Washington Post. The sad thing is that some of Gandhi's points- that Jewish identity must go beyond historical persecution, for instance, are legitimate. Of course, they also aren't anything new, and at this point, nothing that anyone in the Jewish community would really contest.

"My intention was to generate a healthy discussion on the proliferation of violence," Gandhi said on Friday, a day after the board of the MK Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence at the University of Rochester accepted his resignation. "Instead, unintentionally, my words have resulted in pain, anger, confusion and embarrassment. I deeply regret these consequences."

...Gandhi's resignation "was appropriate," because his remarks "did not reflect the core values" of either the university or the institute, University of Rochester president Joel Seligman said in a statement.

The Anti-Defamation League's Abe Foxman said it was "shameful that a peace institute would be headed up by a bigot. One would hope that the grandson of such an illustrious human being would be more sensitive to Jewish history."

God dammit, Abe, go read a freaking book and stop sucking up to people who only know about Gandhi from that Ben Kingsley movie. Jesus.

More background and news coverage here, including some very interesting snippets of how the media in India is receiving the news. (Spoiler: it's not helping their views of Jews.)

America’s omnipotent Jewish community has forced Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, to resign from the institute he founded in the US 17 years ago to spread the message of the Father of the Nation.

New Delhi cannot afford to even tangentially annoy the American Jewish community because successive Indian governments have relied on this community for at least 15 years to bring Indo-US relations to its present health. The nuclear deal between India and the US would not have got to its present phase of implementation without the active involvement of the American Jewish community in its favour.

Arun’s offer to resign follows several days of grovelling apologies by him, by the moderators of the online discussion on the Post website and defensive statements by University of Rochester president Joel Seligman for having associated with the M.K. Gandhi Institute for Non-violence.

Hundreds of messages assailing Arun and The Washington Post were posted on the website, most of them clearly by Jews. The powerful American Jewish Committee’s executive director David A. Harris pre-empted any Indian reaction by hinting in a statement that India was being ungrateful for all that his organisation did for New Delhi.

Wow. And India's going to be one of the new superpowers. That should be fun.

Hugo Chavez gets Bitchslapped

Good. Up yours, Hugo. Seriously.

Of course, Hugo not being a very good loser, decided to play with some of his favorite whipping boys, Venezuela's tiny Jewish community. For the second time in three years.

Kudos, Hugo. How big of you.