Memo to Time Mag: No caution, no 'peace'

Editors at Time Magazine may be unfairly accused of anti-Semitism, but they are reckless with their semantics. As experienced journalists, they should understand that misleading language can be dangerous.

The magazine’s Sept. 13 cover headline - “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace” - brought its editors condemnation from supporters of Israel. The Anti-Defamation League slammed the Time article for stressing Israelis’ inclination to make money.

Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, a staunch gentile supporter of Israel, called Time “anti-Semitic” because of the headline and its accompanying article inside which contends that Israelis are apathetic toward the peace process with the Arabs.

Karl Vick, the writer, indeed succeeds in reaching this conclusion. Who can blame the Israelis? Hostilities resulted from the offer of a Palestinian state in 2000 and withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Personally, I long ago ceased understanding what Israel gets out of negotiating a pact with Arabs over Israel’s territories.

Vick and his editors made three mistakes. First, a Time spokesman boasted that the article is a scoop. Oh yeah? A Newsweek article reached the same conclusion last January.

The article carelessly states: “They’re otherwise engaged; they’re making money; they’re enjoying the rays of late summer.”

No doubt that claim is factually true for many Israelis, but the phrase “they’re making money” is delicate wording when applied to Jews, who have been stereotyped as greedy throughout the ages.

The most gaping blunder is the headline, which presumes that Israel is apathetic to peace.

“Peace” is not what Israelis need from Arabs in the territories. They already have a relative level of peace within Israel proper. Terrorist bombings from the West Bank ended after the security barrier started going up. Rocket attacks from Gaza and southern Lebanon dwindled after recent military confrontations with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Time would have been more factual, if tedious, had they composed this headline: “Why Many Israelis Don’t Care About Reaching Terms.”

The word “peace” is tossed around too casually in the context of this conflict, and Time is far from alone in committing this offense. “Peace” has evolved as shorthand for a process that is too convoluted to be reduced to a single five-letter word. It allows for a catchy phrase, but Time editors may disdain letting the facts get in the way of a good headline.

The only objective that seems plausible is the handover of land - namely, Gaza and the West Bank - so the Arabs can form their own society. That’s fine, but a treaty will not ensure “peace” and “peace” need not be achieved through a treaty. Even if it agrees to a near-perfect deal, Israel must still worry about Iran’s nuclear designs and the ongoing arms build-up in Gaza and southern Lebanon.

The same obstacles persist - security needs, excessive Arab demands, settler resistance, Hamas’ control of Gaza and right-wing pressures within the Israeli government.

Hawkish advocates for Israel will insist that the West Bank is not peaceful, but what do the settlers expect when they choose to live amid a hostile population? “Peace” can only be accomplished there by removing the settlers, even unilaterally; expelling the Arabs; or negotiating a pact that is fully enforced. Israelis who live in Israel proper care about West Bank “peace” when their sons and daughters in uniform are assigned to protect the settlements.

For the record, it would be valuable if an accord is reached, but it is still a feat that most Israelis can live without…in peace. Violence can erupt at any time, as was the case with riots in east Jerusalem and the murder of four settlers in recent weeks. Even if a “peace” treaty is ever implemented.

Some suburbs feast as cities starve

The contrast is infuriating.

The loss of nearly $7 million in state funds to Jewish social service agencies in New York City will mean cuts in services to the poor, elderly and immigrants and layoffs of employees who operate those services, according to a New York Jewish Week article.

The city of Newton, Mass. - home to many former Jewish New Yorkers, interestingly - is now served by a $197-million high school which The Boston Globe reports is the most expensive school ever built in Massachusetts. With the known exception of California, it sounds as if Newton North High School may be the most expensive school built in most states.

This scenario exemplifies not only America’s multiple societies but also the Jewish community’s multiple societies. The economic gap in general widens as more people lose jobs, government budgets unravel and charities contend with greater demands and reduced revenues. On Sept. 16, the Census Bureau reported that 44 million Americans struggled below the poverty line in 2009 - a 4 million boost from the previous year.

The New York/Newton contrast sharpens the clarity of this situation. Middle class flight to the suburbs persists. At one time the suburbs were the places where our rich cousins lived. Now most of our friends and relatives have moved there. Even those of us who remain within a city’s borders could one day move there. Those suburbs that were once a foothold for city expatriates is now an anchor, and many others departed their respective metropolitan areas altogether.

Left behind are the most vulnerable citizens. The cities lose tax revenues and their former inhabitants now invest their taxes to build their new communities.

Especially, they ensure that their children can attend quality schools. Seeking a good education is a traditional characteristic of the Jewish people. So it stands to reason that the residents of Newton, Mass., pop. 83,000, would support construction of Massachusetts’ most expensive school.

Newton is a wealthy place that is home to possibly the largest number of Jews in any town close to Boston. It is also a very liberal city that habitually votes for Democrats. It is the only city in the country that has elected black candidates for mayor, governor and president. Republican Sen. Scott Brown won the majority of Massachusetts votes last January, but Newton voters rejected him out of hand.

Many Jews in the Boston suburbs hail from New York City and vicinity. Democratic U.S. Rep. Barney Frank and the late author and professor Howard Zinn, respectively from Bayonne, N.J., and Brooklyn, had moved to Newton. Alan Dershowitz grew up in Brooklyn and joined the Harvard University faculty. Jewish New Yorkers who attend college there often remain. While visiting Brandeis University, I met an elderly couple who said they moved from New York to Waltham to be near their daughter.

In Newton, Jews from New York along with neighbors who are not Jewish or not from New York authorized spending $197.5 million to build a 413,000-square-foot facility that features two theaters, an Olympic-size pool, a print shop, an auto body shop, two gymnasiums and a student café, according to the Globe. Massachusetts Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill proclaimed Newton North a “poster child” for the need to transform the system for constructing schools.

On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, America’s most historic Jewish neighborhood, the United Jewish Council is losing $600,000 in state earmarks which means five agency layoffs and cuts to transportation programs that aid the elderly in making medical and other appointments, senior home care and a health care advocacy coalition, according to the Jewish Week article.

A loss of up to $120,000 to the Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, in Brooklyn, resulted in two layoffs and elimination of a computer literacy program that helped housewives and others return to the workforce. “Now they are up the creek,” Rabbi Yechezkel Pikus, the agency’s director, told the newspaper.

The Bronx Jewish Community Council’s $200,000 loss will prompt future staff reductions, but immediate layoffs can be offset because of previous cuts in staff, executive director Brad Silver told Jewish Week. Silver is responsible for the main JCC and satellite facilities that aid some of New York’s poorest Jews in Co-Op City, Pelham Parkway, Parkchester and the Concourse-North Bronx area.

This money was previously doled out to social service agencies under a legislative earmark program which Gov. David Paterson vetoed, due to the state’s funding crunch. Agencies large and small under the UJA-Federation of New York umbrella are losing $7 million as a result, The Jewish Week reported.

What may be the saving grace for these agencies is the coverage area of the UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish charity which partially funds these programs. It also serves affluent counties such as Westchester to the north and Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties. What would Federation have done without suburban donors?

If we do the math, this $7 million is a drop in the bucket for Newton taxpayers, not that residents were unanimous in supporting the scope of the new school. Now there are questions as to the challenges in paying off Newton North.

The principle of sharing the wealth has been progressively threatened by a refusal to tax the rich more fairly and the unexpected emergence of city and state deficits. President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress faced defiance from Republicans and some Democrats in restoring higher federal income tax rates for the wealthy.

Arguments against raising taxes for the rich make little sense. Some of the largest numbers among the wealthy live in metropolitan areas that consistently vote Democratic, particularly New York and Los Angeles. Most suburbs close to New York and Los Angeles are represented in the House of Representatives by Democrats.

We do not begrudge the people of Newton the opportunity to support their community resources, but they are feasting while New York agencies starve, somewhat literally at that. Some balance is in order here.

A Jones keeps up with the goons of August

Hillary Clinton is spot on here: That now-canceled Koran bonfire in Gainesville, Fla., pop. 126,000, would have been a “disrespectful, disgraceful act.” So was the U.S. Senate’s majority vote in October 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq.

Sure, the Rev. Terry Jones probably would have provoked Muslims around the world had he burned a pile of Korans on the his church’s property on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy. As provocations go, the catastrophic invasion of a Muslim nation trumps a stunning Koran-burning any day.

Clinton, whose vote as New York’s junior senator helped make Bush’s provocation possible, must share the blame for the creation of this new monster. After all, Jones joins a long line of Americans and others from supposedly civilized nations who have incited the Muslim world in recent years. They were especially active during their summer vacation in a drive, so it seems, to trigger World War III.

A bit ironic that World War I hostilities opened in August 96 years ago and Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.

Our government is no less responsible for inciting Muslim violence than Jones and the other goons of August. The Afghanistan operation might have been necessary, but Bush and Congress were repeatedly warned that the Iraq invasion could produce a bloody quagmire. It sure did, and despite President Obama’s pronouncement that we have turned the page, it is far from over. Congress had its chance nearly eight years ago to assess the risks of entering Iraq, but in quick order majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate voted to give Bush authorization.

While Clinton was not alone in voting for this measure, her condemnation of Jones - in her present position as Secretary of State - was both contemptible and laughable at the same time.

I try not to throw up a person’s past mistakes at them, but I nearly lost it as I learned how so many people who helped make Jones denounced him. Sarah Palin’s gross hypocrisy was expected, but Clinton is a far more accomplished person. General David Petraeus never publicly warned of the prospect of Iraq’s chaotic aftermath, yet here he is alerting us that the burning might jeopardize our troops.

Even the Vatican weighed in against Jones, a few years after Pope Benedict XVI spent part of a speech to quote a passage that denigrated Islam. He was not worried about provoking the Muslim world at that time. We will not count the Crusades and the Inquisition against the modern-day church.

Jones could especially draw inspiration from the assorted goons of August who abrasively assailed the proposed mosque two blocks from Ground Zero; a taxi passenger who charged in the stabbing of his driver in Manhattan after asking if he is a Muslim; a suspected arsonist who set fire to construction equipment on the planned site for expansion of a Murfreesboro, Tenn., mosque; and opponents to mosque proposals in small towns never stung by Islamic violence.

Across the Atlantic, a right-wing mob threw rocks, bottles and a smoke bomb at police in Bradley, England, which contains a large Muslim community; a bank official in Berlin accused Turkish immigrants of exploiting Germany’s social welfare system; and an ultra-Orthodox rabbi sermonized that God should strike “these Ishmaelites and Palestinians with a plague, these evil haters of Israel.”

For the record, many lovers of Israel like myself never heard of this rabbi; many opponents of the Manhattan mosque are genuinely concerned solely about its location; and the hoodlums in England and the Berlin banker are in the minority in their countries.

We were all as relieved as Hillary Clinton when Jones called off his bonfire, but Jones did not emerge in isolation. All this hypocrisy should, well, burn us up.

Ambush underscores settlement danger

“Everybody loses if there is no peace.” So stated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to herald the revival of peace talks.

Too bad Israeli troops were not around to keep the peace the night before on the road to the West Bank settlement of Beit Hagal. What two women and two men had to lose were their lives, near Hebron.

Nothing justifies how these savages fired upon their car and removed the victims from the vehicle when they shot them again to ensure that they were dead. The New York Times carried a photo of Hodaya Ames, 9, as she wept next to the draped body of her mother, Tali Ames, 45, who had been pregnant and was also a grandmother.

However, the Israeli government under the current and past administrations - whether right-wing or left-leaning - knows that the Aug. 31 slaughter is the latest in an ongoing pattern of Arab attacks in the decades since the settlements swelled in the West Bank.

In October 2000, two Israeli reservists mistakenly drove into Ramallah where a mob stabbed and beat them to death, The Los Angeles Times reported. Two months later, the son and daughter-in-law of the controversial Rabbi Meir Kahane were killed by terrorists while traveling near Ramallah, leaving six orphaned children, according to the Ynet Web site.

The West Bank has been relatively calm during the last two years, but Jews there are nonetheless vulnerable because the isolated settlements are difficult to protect. They exist in the midst of a hostile Arab population, and many settlers and the soldiers assigned to protect them have been killed or injured.

Because of these dangers, Israel should never have allowed settlements to be built in Gaza and the scattered sections of the West Bank. The government could have acted unilaterally any time, as it started with Gaza, to evacuate the settlements.

Fortunately, many of these settlements are obvious objects for removal in the revived talks, if they are still on, while the government plans to retain communities located near Jerusalem because a greater amount of Israelis live there, making these areas easier to protect.

Jews do have a right to live in the West Bank, but the isolated sites are unmanageable. Jews lived there prior to 1948 and Israel captured the territory in 1967 in a war effectively begun by its Arab neighbors. Advocates for the Arabs will cite international law which they say prohibits an occupying power from developing land that it conquered in war. They also claim that Israel stole land from Arabs who lived there, an accusation which Israelis sharply dispute.

Settlers may well resist any attempts to evacuate them, a likely complication that might have been averted had Yasser Arafat accepted a peace settlement at Camp David in 2000. At the time, settlers were reportedly somewhat resigned to the prospect of leaving, but they have become more hardened since the Gaza evacuation in 2005. Case in point: The Hebron slaughter prompted settler leaders to declare a resumption of settlement expansion.

Jeff Jacoby, a Boston Globe columnist, recently characterized the Gaza evacuation as “a disaster in every respect.” Jacoby and other hardliners correctly point to the Hamas takeover and the excessive rocket attacks on southern Israel.

They neglect to mention that settlers and troops in Gaza are no longer vulnerable to terrorist violence because the settlers no longer live there and troops are no longer stationed there. There were plenty of grisly incidents similar to the West Bank assaults chronicled above.

If Israel erred at all in Gaza, it was probably in the removal of all the soldiers. They might have left a smaller contingent behind to block arms smuggling and prevent attacks on southern Israel. That is probably what they should do in the West Bank.

As the settlements continue to function as a powderkeg, maybe Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will resolve the issue to everyone’s satisfaction, including the settlers and their Arab neighbors. There is scant reason to be optimistic.