JustASC

Norman Samuels, a Rutgers prof and past president of the New Jersey Jewish News board, has an article up on Tablet about Israel-Turkey relations:

The hope that a moderate Islamic party in democratic Turkey would become a model for the Middle East and indeed for the Muslim world is still a necessary bet. But supporters of Israel will have to swallow the reality that the energy of international Islam will constrain the ability of any Islamic party to be seen as close to the Jewish state. Israel maintains ambiguous ties to other Muslim countries, ranging from its cold peace with Egypt to its publicly cold but privately close ties to Jordan. Turkish-Israeli relations will not return to their earlier status, but if a new relationship based on mutual respect and common interest is to be built, there will have to be a recognition that Israel may now need Turkey more than Turkey needs Israel.

I drive a 2005 Prius (as I discussed here), and have taken the recent bad news about Toyota with a mixture of relief (my model is apparently okay) and deep hurt. My car has never given me any problems (kinahora, as we say in Japanese), and I’ve always seen Toyota as a beacon of quality, durability, and accountability. If you can’t rely on Toyota, what can you rely on?

What’s next — abstinence-only education actually works?

Not to pick on my old colleagues at the Forward, but I got a kick out of this headline:

Israel, Hamas Respond Differently to Goldstone

The ZOA and Marty Peretz say Obama dissed Israel when he failed to list Israel in remarks given on Jan. 15 about countries extending aid to Haiti. Can you spot the glaring discrepancy that makes this complaint total b.s.?

From the ZOA release, quoted by the R0ute 17 blog (curiously, the release is not on the ZOA web site):

“The Zionist Organization of America is critical of the fact that President Barack Obama” for having [sic] “mentioned several other countries helping Haiti but conspicuously omitted one whose assistance to Haiti has exceeded that of all others apart from the U.S. itself – Israel.”

Here’s what the president said:

At the airport, help continues to flow in, not just from the United States but from Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others. This underscores the point that I made to the President [of Haiti] this morning: The entire world stands with the government and the people of Haiti, for in Haiti’s devastation, we all see the common humanity that we share.

Here’s the rub: The president’s remarks were given at 1:08 P.M. EST on Fri., January 15. According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Office and Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the IDF Aid Delegation in Haiti did not land in Port-Au-Prince until Friday evening, and opened for operations on January 16.

This is an unfortunate sign of the times: Mindy Stein, National President of Emunah of America (the women’s religious Zionist organization), is asking UPenn Hillel to rescind a speaking invitation to Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of J Street, and asking others to do the same. Apparently Penn Hillel is feeling the heat on this one –  director Jeremy Brochin has posted a statement “Regarding Presentation of J Street at Steinhardt Hall.”

The assumption of Stein’s upset, and Jennifer Rubin’s here, is that J Street is so far out of the mainstream that they should be denied forums by Jewish organizations lest they be given “legitimacy.”  But even if you accept as true the worst things its critics are saying about J Street (and for a good summary, go to  J Street’s own web site here), I’m not sure what harm is done by renting a hall to a person at a university and letting Ivy League students figure it out for themselves. What are we protecting them from, exactly?

As for the legitimacy argument – I’m not even sure what that means, or who gets to decide. What are the “spoils” of gaining legitimacy? In this context, I think ”legitimacy” means you are perceived as speaking to or for a Jewish audience, one that is significant in terms of size or influence, and thus your ideas themselves need to be taken seriously or at least into account. Those who challenge J Street’s legitimacy want to deny this significance or influence, or nip it in the bud. Why? What’s at stake? What harm do they anticipate should J Street be seen as representative of a certain population or idea?

Honestly, I would like to see J Street’s critics articulate this for me. I think if they are going to challenge J Street’s legitimacy, they should also explain the specific effects should J Street gain legitimacy. And not just say “it’s not in Israel’s interests.” Jews and Jewish groups, like Israelis, remain deeply divided in terms of politics. Ostensibly, one side or the other will turn out to be wrong and thus “bad for Israel.” But we don’t challenge their legitimacy. What is it about J Street?

Here’s the text of Stein’s letter to Brochin, which she distributed to a synagogue listserv in Teaneck:

I implore you to reconsider and rescind your invitation to Jeremy BenAmi, the Executive Director of J Street. When Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, was invited to address the J Street Conference in October, Israel’s response was that he should decline the invitation. In an article, “J Street and Michael Oren: It’s about legitimacy”,

 [Actually, the article was titled "J Street and Michael Oren: It's about legitimacy, stupid" -- ASC]  

dated October 21, 2009, Ami Isseroff wrote: “One could argue that addressing J Street was an opportunity for dialogue. It would allow Ambassador Oren to address J Street supporters, many of them college students, and explain why J Street policies are not “pro-Israel” and are in fact harming Israel and why comparing IDF soldiers to Nazis is not “pro-Israel.”

[Stein's punctuation is iffy, but Isseroff's original quote ended here. -- ASC]

However, his presence, as well as Ben Ami’s presence on your campus, would give them the legitimacy that they are so desperately seeking and would present them as a”Kosher” pro-Israel organization.

J Street is generously funded from Arab sources and support from the American Iranian Council, and the Israeli government has determined that the policies J Street advocates are not in Israel’s best interests.

Mindy Stein

National President of Emunah of America

Member of the Conference of Presidents

Penn Hillel’ statement on the J Street invitation is after the jump.

(more…)

28 Days, 28 Ideas is a collaboration of six blogs and organizations that will be putting forth daily ideas “to transform the Jewish future.”

Day 1 belongs to Jewish journalism. Ami Eden of the JTA suggests more collaboration, but not of the “let’s have fewer but better Jewish media” variety:

The bean counters out there might say: Did the Forward, New York Jewish Week and JTA need a total of four Washington reporters during the 2008 election season? Why not just share one, or maybe two? I’d put it another way: Keep all four, but instead of having them chase the same stories, bring them together to create that robust D.C. bureau of my dreams, capable of competing with any media entity in the world and, more important, producing the sort of specialized, high-quality content that would attract more readers, keep Jews better informed and, if done properly, create new revenue streams that weren’t there when we all were doing our own thing.

Along those lines, JTA’s philanthropy blogger/reporter Jacob “The Fundermentalist” Berkman is formulating a proposal for creating a new Jewish philanthropy news service — Little Tin Box — that would bring together the reporting of several media entities. The assumption is that readers (and business interests) would be better served if three or four reporters working independently for their respective publications found a way to coordinate their efforts to create a specialized brand featuring more reporting and new premium content.