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Jerusalem Diaspora

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JERUSALEM by GIL HOFFMAN, HERB KEINON & NINA GILBERT
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A Syrian compliment Positive feedback is always welcome, regardless of the source. Just ask the Foreign Ministry’s Arabic Press and Public Affairs Department.

Buthaina Shaaban, informally referred to as Syria’s Hanan Ashrawi, and formally the Syrian minister of expatriates and spokesperson for the Syrian government, came out with a backhanded compliment of the new department, whose job is to deal with journalists in Israel representing the plethora of Arab media outlets.

In a meeting with Arab intellectuals in Damascus, Shaaban was quoted in the Syrian press as saying she knows a department has been set up in the Israeli Foreign Ministry whose sole job is to deal with the media in the Arab world. She said that the officials who work in this department "call up all the Arab journalists and tell them what to publish." She then complained that there is not anything similar in the Arab world.

Amira Oron, the director of the Foreign Ministry department, was tickled by Shaaban’s recognition. Oron said that Shaaban, speaking from a dictatorial regime, doesn’t understand that in a democracy, with a free press, part of the game is trying to get one’s message across wherever possible.

Oron’s department was set up in August. Among the influential Arab media outlets with permanent representatives here — usually Palestinians or Israeli Arabs — are Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based MBC, and Tunisian, Yemen and Kuwaiti television. In addition, the London-based al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat newspapers also have permanent representatives here.

Oron said she has more contact with these reporters and correspondents than with representatives of the Palestinian press, who call for the Israeli official position far less frequently.

Anonymous lobbyist Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been in power now for nearly three years, and one of the trademarks of his tenure is the anonymity of those who surround him.

Go ahead, try to think of four people who work in the Prime Minister’s Office. Who knows, for instance that Sharon has an adviser on haredi affairs, or one on Diaspora matters.

Outside of Sharon’s bureau chief, Dov Weisglass, and his spokesman, Ra’anan Gissin, most normal media-consumers would be hard-pressed to name any of the other people who advise the prime minister on all kinds of issues, write his speeches, and set his schedule.

Meet Mitchell Barak, 36, Sharon’s New York-born, George Washington University-educated English speechwriter.

Barak joined Sharon’s transition team in February 2001, and since then has held the title of "communications assistant," which means writing the prime minister’s English speeches and correspondence. Before that Barak worked as an adviser to former finance minister Yaacov Neeman, and before that with Binyamin Netanyahu in his pre-prime ministerial days.

Now take leave of Mitchell Barak, who quit his post effective January 1 to set up what he calls a "strategic communications and government relations firm." The firm, Barak said, will have offices in Jerusalem and Washington to represent the interests of US companies in dealing with government ministries here, and represent Israeli companies — particularly those involved in homeland security — in the US.

Barak’s departure is the second in a month from Sharon’s communications team. The prime minister’s spokesman, Arnon Perlman, quit last month. While Perlman was replaced by Assaf Shariv, no replacement for Barak has yet been named.

Budget-crisis benefits Who says the annual, last-minute, furious drive to pass the annual budget is all bad. For instance, as a result of the need to pass a budget, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered all 23 cabinet ministers to remain in the country until this is done.

As a result, this was the first week in recent memory that none of the nation’s ministers were abroad. Indeed, 22 of the cabinet’s 23 ministers were actually at Sunday’s cabinet meeting. Only Environment Minister Yehudit Naor, out on sick leave, was absent.

At the meeting, the ministers heard Sharon say he needs the mobilization of all the ministers to pass the budget, and as a result there is no room for trips abroad "at this sensitive time." Foreign Ministry officials hope the budget is passed at least by Tuesday, to enable Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to go ahead with his three-day visit to Ethiopia, the first foreign ministerial visit to sub-Saharan Africa in years.

Bad publicity for Beilin The Geneva Accord has had a tough time attracting attention since its high-profile launching ceremony on December 1 in Switzerland. It has since been overshadowed by the diplomatic initiatives of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert, and others.

A press conference called to promote the difference between the initiative and unilateral separation didn’t attract any press, because it was scheduled for the same day that American troops found Saddam Hussein. A Hanukka candle-lighting ceremony hosted by the accord’s architect, Yossi Beilin, didn’t draw attention because political reporters went to Olmert’s Hanukka party instead.

And when a group of politicians who signed the accord went to visit the King of Morocco, the only news that came out was that Labor MKs Amram Mitzna and Yuli Tamir were upset that the king insisted on meeting with Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo alone. One of the disgruntled MKs then leaked to Channel 2 a story about infighting in the Geneva camp among MKs upset that the initiative might help Beilin’s political career.

The Israeli and Palestinian signers of the pact are now touring the country sponsoring events to try to increase support for the deal. At one such event at Jerusalem’s Dan Panorama Hotel on Sunday, Beilin spoke along with a professor from Bir-Zeit University named Nazmi Juaba.

In answering a question on confronting the histories of each other’s people, Juaba said that while he studied in Germany in the 1980s, the students didn’t feel the need to confront the needs of their grandparents until the neo-Nazi movement started gaining support. Juaba said Israelis are also only now starting to accept that "they may have had some role in what happened to the Palestinian people."

Unlike in the Geneva launching ceremony when Beilin at least gave a lukewarm defense of Israel against scathing attacks from the Palestinian side, he remained silent at the comparison between Israelis and Nazis. Luckily for Beilin, the Hebrew press was not there to see it.

Is Sher sure? At the same event in the Dan Panorama, Beilin lashed out at critics of the accord on the Left, whom he accused of hypocrisy. He singled out Gilad Sher, who was bureau chief for former prime minister Ehud Barak.

Beilin said he involved Gilad Sher in the drafting of the accord. Before the accord was publicized, Sher told him he opposes dividing Jerusalem but praised the accord’s plan for Israel to accept a limited number of Palestinian refugees and the rest to be limited to a Palestinian state.

"It’s a good solution and I salute you," Beilin quoted Sher praising the refugee section of the plan.

A few weeks later, Sher attacked the initiative, including the section on refugees in an opinion piece in Haaretz, toeing the line of his former boss, Barak, who has been the initiative’s harshest critic.

A lesson from Shinui A mission of teachers from MetroWest and Bergen County New Jersey met at the Knesset this week with Shinui faction chairman Reshef Cheyne, in order to hear his views on Jewish identity in the Jewish state.

When the teachers sat down with the soft-spoken young attorney from Haifa, they knew he was a representative of a secularist party, but they were unprepared for the anti-haredi vitriol he provided.

"There’s no polite way to tell a parasite that he’s a parasite," Cheyne told the group to their amazement.

"How would you like it if one segment of the population decided to windsurf instead of working and to force you to support their families?" Cheyne scolded the teachers, who were from all denominations for not protesting Israeli policies that discriminate against Reform Jews.

"It’s terribly wrong of the State of Israel to send a message to Reform Jews that they are not full Jews and they are not wanted and it’s terribly wrong for you to be quiet about it,‘ Cheyne said. ’When the state crosses lines a Jewish state shouldn’t cross, Jews around the world must get involved."

The teachers, who left the Knesset in shock, said his strong language didn’t help him get his message across.

"Once you put something out there, there’s no air freshener that can take that away,‘ one of the teachers said. ’If you put the country in hands like his, I’m afraid that in a few generations there will be no Jewish people."

Not immune Labor MK Ophir Pines-Paz came to the conclusion this week that "it is no great honor" to be a member of the 16th Knesset.

Pines-Paz was among a group of MKs who gathered to enlist support for a reform of the Knesset’s procedure of lifting the immunity of MKs from prosecution. He said MKs must do something as a result of the image of the 16th Knesset, whose House Committee has refused three requests this year to allow MKs to be indicted.

But Likud MK Daniel Benlulu said MKs shouldn’t be so concerned how their actions are perceived by the public. Whatever MKs do "it won’t look good," he said.

In another immunity procedure that began this week for Shas MK Yair Peretz, Shas MK Nissim Ze’ev blamed the judicial authorities, including Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, for "making us look like a group of criminals who are protecting each other.‘ He said there is an attempt to ’scare MKs."

But Labor MK Michael Melchior said he had never witnessed "such a farce‘ as the House Committee hearings on Likud MKs Michael Gorlovsky and Yehiel Hazan. He said MKs would have to ’try very hard to make the image of the Knesset worse than it is.‘ However, Labor MK Eitan Cabel said MKs are ’always surprising" themselves.

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DIASPORA by MELISSA RADLER
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Swastika felony Following a rash of anti-Semitic graffiti in Brooklyn and Queens, a member of the New York State Assembly is planning to introduce a bill next week that would make swastika graffiti a felony punishable by up to four years in prison.

"This is a symbol of hatred and it simply cannot be tolerated, no matter what," said Brooklyn Assemblyman William Colton, the bill’s sponsor. Over the Christmas holidays, Colton said he received support for the bill, which would also reclassify cross-burning as a felony up from a misdemeanor, from about a dozen state legislators, and he predicted the bill’s adoption within months.

"These are two symbols that stand for hatred and violence and intimidation and fear," he said.

Over in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, Assemblyman Dov Hikind said he hopes to see state legislators deal with the root causes of swastika graffiti, namely the education system.

"I’m not against the bill, but I don’t think that’s the answer. I would like to address where that’s coming from,‘ he said, calling for mandatory, state-wide Holocaust education. ’When you make something a felony, that’s serious business," he added.

UN achievements Syria may have threatened to spend the last days of 2003 debating Israel’s weapons of mass destruction in the Security Council, but all in all, the Jewish state fared well at the United Nations this year, Israeli envoys in New York have noted. Accusations of massacres, land grabs and man-made humanitarian disasters aside, Israel experienced unprecedented acceptance at the UN this year with positions on seven committees, including the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, Commission on International Trade Law, Disarmament Commission, the UN Environmental Programme’s governing council, UN-HABITAT, the General Assembly’s special session on disarmament, and the role of vice chairman on the assembly’s Sixth (Legal) Committee.

The boost in Israeli representation in the world body is due to Ambassador Dan Gillerman’s decision this year to involve Israel in areas other than the Middle East conflict, and Israel’s membership in the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), which was granted in 2000 at the prodding of the US, after decades of banishment from its own regional group, Asia.

At the close of the 2003 session, Israel received more good news from Turtle Bay: Yad Sarah, a Jerusalem-based volunteer network that aids sick, disabled and elderly Israelis, was accredited by the UN Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations.

Greasy Latke Awards Four Jewish women dressed as owls caused quite a stir this holiday season among Jewish organizations. Known as Jewish Women Watching (JWW), the women, who refuse to disclose their identity, handed out their first annual "Greasy Latke Awards‘ mid-month in front of the United Jewish Communities headquarters in Manhattan. Among the recipients are the federation system, which JWW accused of hiring only men to fill its top slots; the Anti-Defamation League for honoring Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and philanthropist and birthright israel co-founder Michael Steinhardt for ’promoting a Judaism utterly devoid of values.‘ The group also presented ’Jewish Organizations Everywhere‘ with the ’Rotten Family Values Award‘ for being ’hypocritical" on paternity leave, adoption support and on-site daycare.

Responding to the awards with an editorial, the Forward, which was attacked by the masked women after refusing to print an ad listing their awards, called the women’s anonymity a "distraction that trivializes the significant progress being made by like-minded activists on many fronts.‘ The Jewish Week, which was also heckled publicly for declining to publish the ad, quoted an anonymous Jewish leader of its own, who termed the women’s tactics ’cowardly."