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Jerusalem USA

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JERUSALEM by GIL HOFFMAN & HERB KEINON
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Real Zionists visit Papua New Guinea

Everyone knows that in the United Nations General Assembly, Israel can count on the votes of two other countries, besides the US: Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Together these two proud lands have a combined population of 211,000 (out of a world population of some 6.3 billion).

But don’t despair. During the last UN vote condemning Israel for the security fence, 12 other courageous countries bucked peer pressure and abstained. The final vote of the resolution calling on Israel to stop construction of the fence was 144 in favor, 4 against and 12 abstentions. The delegates of another 30 countries didn’t bother to show up.

And who were the 12 abstentions? Were they our friends the Canadians? Naw. Our new buddies, the Indians? Not a chance. Our strategic allies, the Turks? You’ve got to be kidding.

When planning your next vacation, and you’ve already been to Micronesia or the Marshall Islands, consider the following abstainers: Australia, Burundi, Ecuador, Honduras, Malawi, Nauru, Nicaragua, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Tuvalu (try the peanut butter in Tuvalu, I understand it is to die for) and Uruguay.

Noticeable among the no-shows were the names of two countries who always used to join in Israel-bashing resolutions, but now — because of new ownership, er, partnership — have had a change of heart: Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the lopsided tally, diplomatic officials charged with following this sort of thing saw the cup half full. Why? Because the resolution did not, as the Palestinians had hoped, include a clause sending the fence to the International Court in the Hague.

Had that taken place, one official said, a number of more weighty countries — i.e. the Europeans — would either have voted against the resolution, or abstained.

As Israel sees it, the battle in the UN these days is not for a majority of the 190-member countries, but rather for the support of some 50 or so "normal countries,‘ what is referred to in Israeli diplomatic parlance as the ’quality votes." This, of course, refers to the West — and Eastern Europe which is fast becoming the West.

Among these countries, Israel’s position is not as bad in international forums as it used to be, the diplomatic officials say, and support for anything the Palestinians put on the table is no longer automatically guaranteed.

Want proof? The Palestinians had to water down the fence resolution so that they would win 144—4, and not be faced with an embarrassing victory of, say, 100—48, with Iran, Somalia and Zimbabwe voting with them and, had they not toned down the resolution, Bulgaria, Britain and New Zealand voting against.

Clipping the special envoys’ wings

It can’t be easy being a special envoy to the Middle East these days, what with all the travel, the bloodshed, the ranting and ravings of the different sides.

Throw in the fact that one of the key parties in the Middle East — Israel — boycotts you, and you have a job that is becoming increasingly impossible.

Of the Quartet’s four special envoys, only the US’s Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns is welcome in the offices of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Silvan Shalom. And Burns, who hasn’t been here in months, doesn’t seem to have a burning desire to see either man right now.

The UN special envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen has essentially been blackballed by Sharon and the foreign minister since comments he made about Jenin last year infuriated Jerusalem. Throw in meetings with Yasser Arafat, which according to a cabinet decision is enough to get one barred from meeting government ministers, and Larsen’s access to top Israeli decision makers is minimal.

The EU’s new envoy Marc Otte, who took over his job in July, is also unable to gain an audience with either Sharon or Shalom because of a meeting he had with Arafat in the beginning of October.

"I would like the prime minister or foreign minister to agree to meet me," Otte frankly told The Jerusalem Post this week.

Sure he would, how can you be an envoy if those you are supposed to envoy to don’t agree to see you? The same problem is also besetting Alexander Kalugin, Russia’s new envoy. Kalugin, Moscow’s former ambassador to Yemen and ambassador-at-large, was only appointed to replace Andrei Vdovin at the end of September. Still, because he already met Arafat, he too is now blocked from Sharon and Shalom’s offices.

Kalugin’s difficulties are new, so Israel has not received any veiled hints that Israeli officials may be barred from seeing senior officials in Moscow. But in recent weeks such veiled threats have come from the UN and the EU.

The situation with Otte is particularly troubling, one official said, because the EU feels that it has gone a distance towards Israel by separating bilateral ties with Israel from multilateral issues, meaning that one rarely hears of threats of EU sanctions against Israel if Jerusalem doesn’t change its policy towards the Palestinians. The concern is that this "goodwill‘ may be expended because of a growing feeling in Brussels that the refusal to meet Otte is tantamount to a ’humiliation."

But, said one senior diplomatic official, Israel has no choice. Otte is a "decent man" who is not unsympathetic, the official said, but when he met Arafat he knew he was taking a chance.

"What did he think, that he would change our policy? He has to understand that for us Arafat is the number one enemy, and by meeting him he placed Palestinian interests above our own. It is a shame he didn’t think about this beforehand."

Israel chooses Italy

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is slated to visit Russia on Sunday, is scheduled to travel later in the month to Italy, which currently holds the EU presidency. This will be the first time since Sharon became prime minister in 2001 that he will travel to the seat of the rotating EU presidency.

Since Sharon took office, Sweden, Belgium, Spain, Denmark, Greece and now Italy have all held the top EU position. Israel, according to one source in Jerusalem, wishes Italy — at least an Italy led by Silvio Berlusconi — could hold the post forever.

But as they say in the IDF, for every Shabbat there is always motzei Shabbat (the night after Shabbat). In other words, all good things must come to end — Italy will be replaced as EU president by Ireland, a prospect that doesn’t exactly thrill Jerusalem.

Why not? For starters, Ireland’s Foreign Minister Brian Cowen opted to meet with PA Chairman Yasser Arafat rather than Sharon when forced to choose in June. Secondly, of late, voices in the Irish government have been raised calling for the EU to adopt Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo’s Geneva Initiative in lieu of the road map.

And finally, consider the following. When Sharon addressed a group of European parliamentarians in the Knesset this week, the most hostile question came from an Irish lawmaker named David Norris.

After questioning Israel’s right to call itself a democracy because cabinet ministers have called for killing Arafat, and asking the prime minister whether Israel really cares about the loss of Muslim and Christian life, he said that if Israel presumes to be able to choose the Palestinian leadership, perhaps Sharon would be so kind as to tell the delegation who will be the next pope and Queen of England.

Norris prefaced his question by speaking a few sentences of Hebrew and identifying himself as a friend of Israel, leading one observer to quip, "if this is from an Irish friend, what do those who don’t like us have to say."

PM caught jumping the gun

Five minutes before 10 on Tuesday night, the municipal polls were still open, the exit poll results were still five minutes away, and no one knew who won any of the races in the municipal elections.

Except Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, apparently.

The Likud spokesman already started handing out press releases to reporters at Likud headquarters in which Sharon declared victory.

"The Likud continues to be the leading political movement at every level,‘ he said. ’In the government, the Knesset, and in local authorities."

In the end, every party ended up declaring victory, but only Sharon got caught declaring a triumph before he knew what the facts were.

Identifying Fuad

Labor MK Binyamin (Fuad) Ben-Eliezer strode to the polling station near his Rishon Letzion home on Tuesday to cast his ballot. The cameras were running, Ben-Eliezer was smiling, but one thing was missing.

Ben-Eliezer forgot his identity card.

"But you know who I am, don’t you?" an agitated Ben-Eliezer asked the polling station clerks. They replied that they did, but that the law is the law.

Ben-Eliezer consulted with his aides, fished around for a driver’s license in his pocket, and then emerged with a Visa card with his picture on it, which the clerks (perhaps improperly) accepted as a photo ID.

Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was not so lucky in last October’s internal Likud election. When he went to the Jerusalem International Convention Center to vote, the clerk in charge of the polling station refused to let him in without a photo ID.

Netanyahu’s supporters at the convention center, who had given out pictures of him all day, were taken aback and tried to cause an uproar. But Netanyahu said the clerk was right and took the situation in his stride.

He returned half an hour later with his passport and finally was permitted to vote.

Campaign promises you can keep

The Likud’s candidates in Tel Aviv were aware that Tuesday’s municipal races were about local issues and not the heavy national issues such as diplomacy and economic growth.

After years of promising to bring peace and security, the Likud finally delivered an election process it could have conceivably delivered immediately had the Likud achieved an unthinkable upset and won the election in Tel Aviv.

The Likud’s election slogan: "Only the Likud will bring free parking."

How do you say Gorlovsky in English?

Likud MK Michael Gorlovsky has been down on his luck.

First he got punished for voting twice in late-night Knesset deliberations on the budget. Then he found out that he is one of the stars of Police Investigations Unit commander Moshe Mizrahi’s wiretapping reports.

But Monday’s Likud faction meeting discussing the wiretapping scandal was too much for him. One by one, MKs Michael Eitan, Gilad Erdan, and Roni Bar-On proceeded to slam Mizrahi in a mix of Hebrew, legalese, and English.

Gorlovsky may understand the first two, but apparently not a word of the third.

"Can you guys please stick with Hebrew?‘ Gorlovsky pleaded. ’I know Hebrew and Russian, not English."

New-old haredi party joins political fray

Four days before municipal elections is an odd time to form a party, but that didn’t stop Poalei Agudat Yisrael.

Stalwarts of the age-old nationalist haredi party decided on Friday to restart the party’s activities with a goal of being ready for the next general election.

The party has not been in the Knesset for seven years, but it has a representative on the Haifa city council.

Poalei Agudat Yisrael aims to serve the rights of haredim who work. They serve in the army and recognize the Jewish state as a step toward redemption like the national-religious, but they say they are "more stringent on commandments like haredim [are]." The party hopes to take votes away from both United Torah Judaism and the National Religious Party.

Haredim give Y a mazal tov

Every newspaper in the country struggled with the limitations of deadlines in reporting Tuesday’s election. The polls closed at 10 and with few real final figures, most newspapers relied on exit polls.

But the haredi newspaper, Yated Ne’eman, the organ of the Lithuanian non-hassidic haredi community, had an additional limitation. The newspaper has a policy of not quoting women for modesty reasons.

In the paper’s election round-up, it reported that Zvi Bar won in Ramat Gan, Shlomo Lahiani in Bat Yam, and Y. German in Herzliya.

Yated Ne’eman’s readers might assume the Y stands for Yehuda or Ya’acov, but it’s really Meretz’s Yael German.

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USA by MELISSA RADLER
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Best of Kosher New York

For the second year in a row, kosher foodies across New York designated Prime Grill, the Midtown steakhouse and sushi bar, the city’s best Jewish law-abiding restaurant. The 2004 Zagat Survey, the bible of New York restaurant-goers, gave Prime Grill 24 points out of 30 based on diners’ food experiences in an updated survey published last Monday. Runners up, with 23 points, included the Second Avenue Deli on the Lower East Side, and Pongal, a vegetarian Indian eatery in Murray Hill that is certified kosher. A trio of somewhat less well-regarded kosher eats, Le Marais, a noisy French steakhouse; Box Tree, a newly-kosher East Side bistro; and Darna, an Upper West Side restaurant specializing in Moroccan fare, each received 20 points.

Letters to Malaysia

Jewish groups continuing to seethe over Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s anti-Jewish tirade at the Organization of the Islamic Conference’s mid-October summit initiated several letter-writing campaigns this week. In a move that Mahathir, who is scheduled to retire today (Friday) after 22 years in power, is likely to see as further evidence that Jews really do rule the world, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sent letters to 109 world leaders in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa urging them to "stand up, to say that you can no longer excuse or rationalize this kind of incendiary rhetoric, this kind of hatred and scapegoating, this blaming of Jews for the ills of the Muslim world."

At the American Jewish Committee, online browsers can send pre-written letters condemning anti-Semitism to the Malaysian ambassador to the US, Dato Sheikh Abdul Khalid Ghazzali, and the secretary-general of the OIC, Abdelouahed Belkeziz.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is urging its 400,000 members to sign a petition supporting cutbacks on tourism and investment in Malaysia, "until the new Malaysian political leaders show that they do not share outgoing Prime Minister Mahathir’s anti-Semitic animus."

Also this week, the US Senate approved a bill tying $1.2 million in military aid to Malaysia to religious freedom, "including tolerance for people of the Jewish faith."

Anti-Semitic fringe groups in the US, meanwhile, have also been calling on their members to react to Mahathir’s comments, but in praise rather than disgust. Groups lauding the tirade, according to an ADL report released Monday, include the National Alliance, a neo-Nazi group; Stormfront, a Web site targeted at the extreme Right, and Resistance Records, a music label that produces tunes promoting hate.

Christians pray for Israel

Millions of Christians prayed for Israel this past Sunday at churches across the globe as part of the second annual Day of Prayer and Solidarity with Israel.

"I hope this will really emerge in the coming years to become a major event on the American Christian calendar and the American Jewish calendar," said the president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, who planned the event with political strategist Ralph Reed.

Some 20,000 services were held in the US, Canada, Israel, Korea, Japan, Indonesia and US military bases in Pakistan, and in the US, Israeli Ambassador Danny Ayalon and consul generals addressed the crowds, said Eckstein.

Themes included reflecting on what Christians can do in the coming year to help Israel, and in a sign that the crowds took the reflection seriously last year, IFCJ, which raises money from Christians for needy Jews in Israel and abroad, recently made it onto the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual list of top 400 charities. The survey, released last week, ranked IFCJ the 351st largest non-profit in the country, with just under $35 million in private contributions for 2002.

"We’re trying to take [Christian support for Israel] from just praying with your mouth to praying with your hands and your feet," said Eckstein.