After the Cleveland General Assembly concluded 11/17/04, Uriel Heilman wrote:
"It's not easy making sense of the American Jewish organizational superstructure - largely because there is none. ....There are at least as many Israel advocacy groups in America as there are positions on the Israeli political spectrum. Any attempt to provide a comprehensive list or picture of American Jewish organizations is necessarily folly, because hardly a day goes by without a new one being born. The question of which ones are relevant to the bulk of American Jews changes with each generation. The only certainty is that few ever die. "
Here's some good news: for financial efficiency, www.charitynavigator.com still gives top rankings to the Jewish Federations of Cincinnati and Dayton.
From Commentary, October 2004, "Jewish Security & Jewish Interests" by Jack Wertheimer, p. 58-59:
"....the other-worldly quality that continues to affect the work of those Jewish community-relations organizations that remain committed to fighting yesterday's wars whatever the consequences. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions around the globe have already been targeted by terrorists, at a terrible cost in human life. More attacks are hardly inconceivable. In what sense is the physical safety of real people - Jews and others who happen to be in the vicinity - less important to Jews than an intractable belief in the separationist faith? France separated church and state nearly a centruy ago. That did nothing to protect the Jews of France from the Vichy government, any more than it has shielded young French Jewish children from Arab hooligans today. How long can American Jewish organizations continue to place their obsession with an impermeable wall of separation above the physical security of the Jews for whom they claim to speak?....
In the quieter decades of the late 20th century, mandates and ambitions began expanding as Jewish organizations embraced the causes of non-sectarian groups, often with greater fervor than those groups themselves and sometime to the detriment of palpable Jewish interest. Now, as threats to Jewish security have multiplied, the time for business as usual has long passed, and the time to reconsider is urgently at hand."
Interesting analysis, emailed in full to me, but available only to subscribers. Selection below:
"....And this was Arafat's fatal crisis. He had established the principle of Palestine, but what he had failed to define was what that Palestinian nation meant and what it wanted. The latter was the critical point. Arafat's strategy was to appear the statesman restraining uncontrollable radicals. He understood that he needed Western support to get a state, and he used this role superbly. He appeared moderate and malleable in English, radical and intractable in Arabic. This was his insoluble dilemma.
Arafat led a nation that had no common understanding of their goal. There were those who wanted to recover a part of Palestine and be content. There were those who wanted to recover part of Palestine and use it as a base of operations to retake the rest. There were those who would accept no intermediate deal but wanted to destroy Israel. Arafat's fatal problem was that in the course of creating the Palestinian nation, he had convinced all three factions that he stood with them.
Like many politicians, Arafat had made too many deals. He had successfully persuaded the West that (a) he genuinely wanted a compromise and (b) that he could restrain terrorism. But he had also persuaded Palestinians that any deal was merely temporary, and others that he wouldn't accept any deal. By the time of the Oslo accords, Arafat was so tied up in knots that he could no longer speak for the nation he created. More precisely, the Palestinians were so divided that no one could negotiate on their behalf, confident in his authority. Arafat kept his position bysacrificing his power.
By the 1990s, the space left by the demise of pan-Arabism had been taken by the rise of Islamist religiosity. Hamas, representing the view that there is a Palestinian nation but that it should be understood as part of the Islamic world under Islamic law, had become the most vibrant part of the Palestinian polity. Nothing was more alien from Arafat's thinking than Hamas. It ran counter to everything he had learned from Nasser....As Hamas rose, Arafat became entirely tactical. His goal was to retain position if not power, and toward that end, he would do what was needed. A lifetime of tactics had destroyed all strategy.....The chaos and failure that marked Black September became emblematic of his life...."
"Key Facts
· There have been persistent reports that the Palestinians have used foreign aid, in particular from the European Union (EU), to finance terrorism. The EU has provided the Palestinian Authority (PA) with €2 billion ($2.5 billion) since 1993 and it is the largest single contributor of direct budgetary assistance, giving €112 million ($142 million) between January 2003 and June 2004.
· The EU vehemently denies that EU funds have been used by terrorists but has launched an internal investigation into the claims.
· Previous investigations into the diversion of foreign funds by the PA towards terrorist activities have been inconclusive and have not exonerated the PA of wrongdoing. PA accounting practices are opaque. Palestinians acknowledge that corruption is widespread. The PA routinely uses cash payments to buy loyalty from its staff and the population.
Additional Facts & Analysis
· There is indisputable evidence that PA money has been used to fund terrorist activities. The capture of the PA owned and operated ship, the “Karine A”, demonstrated PA efforts to smuggle weapons into the territories for use by Palestinian terrorists. Later Israeli investigations turned up documents directly linking PA officials with the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade, the suicide terrorism subsidiary of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement.
· The PA finances the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade. According to Abdel Fattah Hamayel, who was minister for sports and youth in the PA administration of Abu Mazen, the PA sends $50,000 a month to al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade members. The current Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, has stated that "We have clearly declared that the Aksa Martyrs Brigades are part of Fatah," and that "Fatah bears full responsibility for the group." The EU has declared the al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade a terrorist group.
· The lack of PA financial accountability means that foreign aid is easily abused. While demonstrating that any specific foreign funds have been directly used for terrorism is difficult, the PA system has operated as a slush fund for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Investigations have proven that PA payrolls were artificially inflated to provide cash that Arafat could use and avoid any foreign or local oversight. The PA payrolls include 7,000 employees that cannot be identified (so-called “PA ghosts”). The salaries of these fictitious employees are a major part of the PA slush fund that supports terrorism. Members of Yasser Arafat's PLO faction, Fatah, who are directly involved in terrorism are, according to the Israeli Defense Forces, on the PA payroll. Fatah receives additional funds by levying a compulsory tax on all PA employees.
· Arafat personally approved payments to terrorists. A report by Human Rights Watch documents and criticizes Arafat's involvement in PA funding of terrorism. Given the control that Arafat had over the entire functioning of the PA, it is disingenuous for any foreign donor to feign ignorance as to whether its money could end up with terrorist groups.
· The EU encourages PA corruption by using a system of Direct Budgetary Support to the PA, essentially a cash handout. Direct Budgetary Support means that the EU has limited ability to properly monitor how its aid is being used. Once EU money is in the PA, with its bloated payrolls and “ghost” employees, tracking the end use is difficult. The EU had previously given the PA aid on a project by project basis which made monitoring the spending of funds easier.
· The EU is not alone in providing indirect financial support to Palestinian terrorists. Many governments and aid organizations have been lax in their oversight of funds provided to the PA. Recent reports have revealed that active members of HAMAS are employed by UNRWA.
...."
The last paragraph is the most interesting, and is another suggestion that much of what's happening with the EU may be the EU's way of trying to build a contest of egos with the US, rather than to really explore what's best for humanity:
"Observations:
EU Support for Assad Bolsters Syrian Dictatorship - Nir Boms and Erick Stakelbeck (Dow Jones/Australian Financial Review)
With Arafat's death, Europe has lost its oldest and dearest Arab despot. But the race to replace him as the EU's favored Middle East tyrant has already begun. On October 19, the European Commission and Syria signed an "association agreement" that strengthened Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's iron grip on power.
The EU cited Syria's supposedly newfound commitment to fight terrorism and promote human rights to justify the deal. However, Syria's record in these two areas is abysmal. American troops stationed along Iraq's border with Syria have complained of mortar attacks from within Syrian territory, presumably by Islamist terrorists. These attacks certainly could not take place without the tacit support of the Syrian military.
Syria is a tightly controlled police state based on the same Ba'ath ideology of Saddam Hussein's Iraq - nothing happens there without approval from Damascus. On the human rights front, despite the rhetoric, Syria remains a bastion of repression.
The EU - in its push to become a global counterweight to the U.S. - has proved more than willing to embrace tyrants and terrorists. In helping to revitalize the Assad regime, the EU has not only let down all the courageous pro-democracy activists who are risking their lives in Syria - it has also made the world less safe."
At the end of the Duke University PSM Conference, participants agreed to hold the next one at the University of Wisconsin. The Jewish Action Taskforce already responded with a petition (almost 2,900 signatures to date) to the University administrators to rethink their willingness to host such a conference:
Sign up at http://www.petitiononline.com/stopPSM/petition.html, but remember that alumni may have more powerful voices than others, and that the 58,000+ signatures on a similar petition aimed at Duke University leadership did not achieve their goal.
