JustASC

Tonight I’ll be in Paramus for a discussion after the screening of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea at the Westfield Garden State Plaza AMC Theatre at 7pm.

The film, being shown as part of the NY Film Critics Series, is about a teenage Israeli girl who engages in an email correspondence with a young Gaza man on the cusp of 2008′s Operation Cast Lead. “You’ve Got Mail” it’s not. Jewish film maven Eric Goldman and I will be chatting about the film’s themes and its eerie (although not  surprising) relevance after tonight’s screening.

If you can’t make this showing, I’ll also be discussing the film on Saturday night, Dec. 1, at the JCC in West Orange, as part of the NJ Jewish Film Festival’s “Extra!” event. That night I will be moderating a panel featuring participants in the interfaith mission to Israel that I took part in last month.  Showtime is 7:30 p.m., followed by the discussion.

I knew someone would get around to blaming Sandy on the Jews, but I didn’t imagine it would be God!

But according to The Final Call, the authoritative newspaper of the Nation of Islam, the superstorm seems to have specifically targeted heavily Jewish enclaves — apparently as divine retribution for Jewish participation in the slave trade.

You see, “the area targeted by Hurricane Sandy was the scene of some of the most racist acts in all of American history” (unlike, say, every other area in the United States).  Meanwhile, “Documents revealed by the Nation of Islam researchers show that the first Black slaves in New York came by way of Jewish merchants.” Ergo, “there was probably no more an historic target for this historic storm than where it hit America.”

In other words, folks living in public housing projects in Red Hook and other areas devastated by Sandy are only collateral damage in God’s war on the Jews. That must be a great a comfort to them.

Gloriously self-defeating claptrap from “Jewish Voices for Peace.” Note how the Israeli response is condemned for the trauma and death it will bring to Gaza, while the most they can muster in urging an end to rocket attacks from Gaza is concern that such attacks “only serve to derail efforts for a just resolution to the conflict.”

Israeli firepower: immoral. Hamas firepower: bad strategy.

As Israel launches operation “Pillar of Defense” in Gaza, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) calls for an immediate cessation of the air strikes and naval bombardment into Gaza and an end to the ongoing siege of Gaza. JVP urges Israel not to exploit its asymmetric power to exacerbate the instability in the region. We urge President Obama to  take a stand against these attacks and to use the power of the United States to insist that Israel pursue all diplomatic measures possible for the sake of life, safety and security on all sides. JVP opposes all attacks on civilians, and urges the end of rocket attacks from Gaza into civilian communities in Israel, which only serve to derail efforts for a just resolution to the conflict….

JVP rejects the possibility that such a military operation and escalation of violence will be of any protection for Israelis or Palestinians. As Israel continues to control Gaza by air, land and sea, Israel holds responsibility for the well-being and safety of Palestinian civilians in Gaza who will be traumatized, injured and killed through this escalation of violence.

This is sweet, but also sort of weird: The New York Sun wonders how my predecessor at NJJN, the late David Twersky, would have voted in the election:

Our guess is that Twersky would have — this is purest speculation here — been agitated over the deterioration in relations between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu. Our guess is that he would have blamed them both, and probably in equal measure. But Mr. Netanyahu isn’t up for re-election until January. The Arab Spring was still over the horizon when Twersky died. He would have been incredibly excited by it, but warning all the time about naivete. He was, when we knew him, driven nearly to distraction by the tendency of the Left to make excuses for the Islamist radicals. He would have understood down to the ground the danger of an Iranian A-bomb.