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Jerusalem Diaspora

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JERUSALEM by GIL HOFFMAN,
HERB KEINON & NINA GILBERT
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No room for the old man A battle for the survival of the Labor Party is taking place behind the scenes in Labor ahead of the party’s January 29 convention, say political opponents of temporary Labor chairman Shimon Peres.

Peres hopes the convention will decide to allow him to remain in office until June 2006, a year ahead of the next general election. But aides to former chairman Binyamin Ben-Eliezer defeated Peres allies on Sunday in the convention’s preparatory committee, which recommended that Peres’s tenure end in 2005 instead.

Labor leadership candidates like Ben-Eliezer, Matan Vilna’i, and Avraham Burg are convinced that if Peres is not forced out in time, the octogenarian will find a way to force Labor to field him as the party’s next candidate for prime minister.

"Peres as the temporary chairman is a salvation to the party,‘ an official close to Burg said. ’Peres as a candidate for prime minister in the next election is a disaster for the party. If he is the candidate, Labor will be running on the past. The past never wins elections, only the future."

The official said that if Peres becomes the party’s candidate for prime minister, Burg would quit the party.

Scary politicians The 10,000 Jewish college students who visited Israel this winter on birthright israel’s programs fell in love with the Israeli landscape, the tourist attractions, the food, and Israelis of the opposite gender. But when it comes to Israeli politicians, it wasn’t exactly a love story.

At last Tuesday’s birthright mega-event some 5,000 students heard an inspiring speech from Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, which left most of the crowd applauding. But many students said that Netanyahu’s speech was "scary.‘ The sentence that frightened the students was when Netanyahu explained that Israel was building the security fence ’to keep the animals out." Most of the audience realized that Netanyahu was referring specifically to terrorists, but some students thought he was talking about Arabs or Muslims in general.

But at least Netanyahu showed up. The featured speaker for the second birthright mega event two days later was Immigrant Absorption Minister Tzipi Livni, who called birthright director-general Shimshon Shoshani to cancel an hour before the event, because she wasn’t feeling well, not giving Shoshani enough time to find a replacement.

The students were told that the mega events always feature a prominent political speaker such as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Moshe Katsav, Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky or Netanyahu. Instead the students settled for comedian Joel Chasnoff.

"I was disappointed that they didn’t give us a political speaker at the Mega event, like they said they would,‘ said Rutgers University student government president Adam Cooper. ’I’m a political science major, and I was really looking forward to it. They didn’t even tell us at the event that no one would be coming. It just ended."

Omri’s Knesset debut The prime minister’s son, Omri Sharon, met in the Knesset with AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr, speaking perfect English and amusing his guests.

Sharon, who has been less of a communicator in his Israeli milieu, made his debut on the Knesset podium during the debate on the approval of the 2004 budget last week. But Sharon Jr.’s long-awaited premiere a year after taking office was like a tree falling in the forest. He took to the microphone in the middle of the night, and dedicated his speech to something close to his heart: the environment.

He attributed the government’s decision to cut back on 70 percent to 80 percent of the Environment Ministry’s activities to "constraints." Sharon said the cuts would harm certain projects, such as rehabilitating rivers and operating enforcement teams.

"Anyone who wants to pollute can do so at much lower risk,‘ he said. Sharon said the nation’s streams have turned into ’open sewage pipes." According to Sharon, the cut in budgeting to clean up the rivers would halt the project. He also added that it takes a relatively small investment to ensure quality of life.

Sharon concluded by pledging, as head of the Knesset’s environment caucus, to lobby the governmentto to rectify the situation and prevent a large part of the damage.

Turkish delight While Syrian President Bashar Assad was in Ankara last week trying to shore up his country’s ties with Turkey, Turkish Minister of State for Economic Affairs Ali Babacan was in Israel talking about the strength of Israeli-Turkish relations.

Babacan made clear that Israel has absolutely nothing to worry about concerning the Turkish-Syrian rapprochement.

Babacan, at 35, is the youngest member in the Turkish government, and was one of the founding members of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) that swept Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan into power in the 2002 elections.

The victory of the party, with its Islamic roots, caused some concern in Jerusalem that the close strategic ties between the countries would be in jeopardy.

The opposite has occurred, Babacan said, saying the ties between the two countries have, if anything, become stronger.

"We are not an Islamic party, but a Conservative party,‘ he said. ’The common understanding holding us together is that we are Conservative and Democrats — our party puts emphasis on tradition, family, ethics and morality. We call ourselves democrats because we believe in a well-functioning democratic system in Turkey, we feel a better standard of democracy is needed in Turkey."

Dispelling characterizations of the AKP as an Islamic party, Babacan said, "we also believe in secularism, are strong supporters of secularism and in favor of a total separation of religion and state, unlike in Israel."

This was Babacan’s first visit to Israel, and he came to attend a conference on economic development organized by Stef Wertheimer in Tefen last week. He said he was struck and saddened by the empty tourist sites he visited during a quick, two-hour tour around Jerusalem.

While tourism might be down here, Babacan said it rebounded in Istanbul shortly after the bombings there in November.

Despite the November bombings and the war in Iraq which the Turks feared would chase tourists away, the number of tourists to Turkey actually increased by 4 percent in 2003, spending some $10 billion.

Israel, he said, contributed no small part to this overall figure, with a record 330,000 Israeli visitors to Turkey in 2003. That number, he said, is expected to rise in 2004.

UN bright spot? Who says the UN is completely stacked against Israel?

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week appointed Jeremy Issacharoff, a deputy director-general in the Foreign Ministry and the head of the ministry’s strategic affairs division, to his Advisory Board on disarmament.

Though not the first Israeli to sit on this board, the appointment still represents a badly needed breath of fresh air from the UN.

"We are very proud of Issacharoff’s appointment to the Advisory Board,‘ said Arye Mekel, deputy head of the Israel mission to the UN. ’This marks yet another important step towards the full integration of Israel as a member state of the United Nations."

While Mekel’s comment about full integration may be a tad too sanguine, Issacharoff’s appointment is not without significance. The Advisory Board on Disarmament is a prestigious group of some 20 senior diplomats and experts from around the world selected for their knowledge and experience in the field of disarmament and international security. The job of the board is to advise Annan on disarmament and arms limitation issues — a subject that, with Libya’s declaration of intent to dismantle its WMDs, and the continuing sagas surrounding Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs — has a rather high international profile.

The first meeting of the new board is slated for February 4. On the agenda: WMDs, their delivery systems, and terrorism.

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DIASPORA by MELISSA RADLER
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Our friends the Iranians The Zionist Organization of America, which is not known for being soft on terror, sent out an unexpected press release last week. Iran, one of the world’s foremost sponsors of terrorism, was lauded for changing a Teheran street named after one of Anwar Sadat’s assassins, "Khaled Islambouli Street,‘ to the much more peaceful-sounding ’Intifada Avenue."

"Iran’s decision proves that international pressure can work," wrote ZOA president Mort Klein, who also praised Egypt for insisting on the change (but critiqued the new pick) as a prerequisite for the restoration of ties between the two nations, which were severed in 1979 when Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel.

The mullahs don’t have a new friend in Klein, though; the release urged the Bush administration to withhold aid to the Palestinian Authority until streets, summer camps, soccer tournaments and public squares named after terrorists are changed.

Meanwhile, over at the United Nations, the Iranian, Palestinian and Egyptian missions to the UN were three of more than 200 recipients this week of Alan Dershowitz’s new book, The Case for Israel. Operating on the assumption that a change of heart can accompany a street-name change, Israel’s UN mission sent out copies of the book to rogue regimes and democracies in an attempt to bring the truth of the Middle East conflict to the anti-Israel world body.

"We decided to seize a unique opportunity to dispel many of the egregious anti-Israel myths epidemic in international politics today," said Israel’s deputy ambassador Arye Mekel.

A call seeking Palestinian envoy Nasser Al-Kidwa’s thoughts on the book was not immediately returned.

Winter break in Israel Ten students from Rambam Mesivta High School in Lawrence, Long Island, are giving up their two-week winter break to volunteer in Israel — and commemorate Dr. David Applebaum, an emergency-room doctor and rabbi who was killed in a terrorist attack along with his daughter, Nava, on the eve of Nava’s wedding.

The students, who arrived in Jerusalem on Tuesday, are spending six hours a day through January 27 at Shaare Zedek Hospital, where Applebaum worked until his death in September, and Zichron Menachem, a facility for children with cancer where Nava Applebaum volunteered.

"When Dr. Applebaum was tragically killed in the suicide bombing, at Rambam Mesivta we were very upset by this,‘ said 17-year old Moshe Laster, one student volunteer. ’We felt it was appropriate that we would volunteer at a hospital where he saved countless lives."

Jeffrey Thurm, also 17, said he’ll be looking at post-high school yeshivas during the visit, but his main focus is helping the Jewish state.

"As American Jews, we feel very connected to Israel, and this trip is showing that we really want to do our part," he said.

In the past, Rambam Mesivta has sent students to volunteer at the Hatzerim Air Force Base and at the Julius Armor and Supply base. The winter break volunteer program, initiated by Rambam principal Rabbi Yotav Eliach, who served in the IDF as a volunteer and still returns for reserve duty, is in its third year.

Chicken Soup Challenge In a bid to find the best kosher chicken soup recipe in America, the first annual Chicken Soup Challenge was launched last week by the National Jewish Outreach Program (NJOP).

Open to amateur Yiddishe mamas, both Jewish and gentile, aged 18 and up, contestants are asked to send their best recipe to NJOP’s Manhattan headquarters by February 2. Three weeks later, five finalists chosen by a panel of renowned chefs, including cookbook author, TV chef-host and Abigael’s executive chef Jeff Nathan, will be flown to New York for a kosher cook-off at Nathan’s posh Broadway restaurant. Held the Tuesday before the presidential primaries, the contest is also being referred to as "Souper Tuesday."

"Unfortunately, many people associate Jewish observance with a lack of eating — fasting on Yom Kippur, the restricted diet of Passover, and the foods forbidden by kosher law," laments NJOP director Ephraim Buchwald in the soup contest’s promotional material.

"Through the Chicken Soup Challenge, we hope to reinforce the notion that Jewish life can be fun, and delicious."

For more information, visit www.njop.org or call 1—888-SHABBAT. The deadline for entry is February 2, 2004.