Kesher Talk: 01/06/2002

Friday, January 11, 2002

The rise of green Jews: JTA reports that, "For the first time, an environmental Jewish party has gathered enough signatures to get onto the ballot for the upcoming elections to the World Zionist Congress. The Green Zionists Alliance got the boost from more than 600 signatures on a petition, which qualified them to run in the upcoming World Zionist Congress elections."

Think that they will rely on the Torah interpretation of environmental stewardship? Doubtful...

Thursday, January 10, 2002

Euro Anti-Semitism, continued: Tom Gross, writing on National Review Online, examines the Europeans' ongoing penchant for anti-semitism. For instance, there is the refusal to allow the Israeli version of the Red Cross to be admitted to the International Red Cross/Crescent:

Marc Gentilli, the president of the French Red Cross, who described as "disgusting" a request by the American Red Cross that Israel be admitted to the International Red Cross, and that the Star of David be accepted alongside its existing emblems, the cross and the crescent. Gentilli, head of one of France's leading humanitarian organizations, left little doubt about the disdain he holds for the Star of David, but lest he be thought hostile to all "foreigners," he did at the same time call on the Palestine Red Crescent Society to immediately apply for membership too — even though Palestine is not yet a state.

He also talks about the spat among the British chattering classes over anti-semitism -- is it wrong to be anti-semitic, or just wrong to quote fellow party-goers who are?

The Political Wages of Terror: Rep. David Bonior, D-Mich., is under fire for refusing to return contributions to his gubernatorial campaign from what the Lansing State Journal called "men accused of having ties to terrorists." On Monday it became known that Bonior, the former Number Two Democrat in the U.S. House, received $4,200 from Sami Al-Arian and Abdurahman Alamoudi during the previous and current election cycles.

Al-Arian is a Palestinian-born former professor at the University of South Florida who was fired last month over his connections to the Islamic Jihad. Alamoudi is a vocal supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah.

"While neither has been arrested or detained, federal officials say the groups to which they have been linked are considered terrorist," the paper wrote. Both men deny the allegations. The Journal also reported that other politicians, including President Bush, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Rep. John Sununu, R-N.H., returned money from Alamoudi because of his controversial views. (UPI's Capital Comment, Jan 10)

Howard Fienberg, Jewish Terrorist? Apparently so, according to the following commentary from the Dec. 3 Middle East Newswire (my colleague Iain just discovered this yesterday using a Google search). Mohamed Khodr, in an article entitled "Jewish Science Or Political Terrorism," accuses the two of us of some nasty things, gets his science wrong, and mis-spells my name. The typos and poor grammar are his, not mine. In case you've forgotten the Christian Science Monitor piece I wrote with Iain Murray, refresh your memory. Now, let's see what Mohamed has to say:

As a public health physician with training in epidemiology and statistics I found the timing, content, and tone of the article "How many U.S. Muslims, Our Best estimate" by Howard Feinberg and Iain Murray (Christian Science Monitor: 11/29/01) to be misleading and arrogant, especially at a time of national tragedy, war, and the reengagement of Bush in the MidEast Peace Process.
To define the issue as "the Muslim Question" is brazenly racist, anti-semitic, and offensive as it harks back to Europe's Anti-Semitism and eventual holocaust. One hopes the authors aren't implying a similar solution for American Muslims.

Funny that he should open by calling me an anti-semite. Perhaps it never occured to him that I was Jewish, despite the obvious name...

Without their own independent study the authors simply regurgitated misleading information already published by Daniel Pipes, a known Anti-Islamist and Anti-Arab bigot, in the New York Post on October 29, 2001 in his article "How Many U.S. Muslims"; where he presented the exact studies and conclusions as these authors.

Cute, but Daniel Pipes is no bigot and has no beef with Islam that I know of. If by anti-Islamist you mean against Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, then you are correct.

Despite what Mohamed may claim, our examination of the studies and conclusions differed, since Iain and I are social scientists with differing interests. We were more interested in survey methodology and statistical method than Daniel Pipes. The fact that we found similar problems in how Muslims are counted is simply ignored by Mohamed - he prefers to accuse us of plagiarism.

The Washington Post on November 24 in the article "Number of U.S. Muslims Depends on Who's Counting" by Bill Broadway reviewed the same subject with different conclusions.

Actually, the Wash Post article did not have any conclusions. It was a regular news piece, reacting to the release of Tom Smith's study for the AJC. Both my piece with Iain and Pipes' article were opinion/editorials. Perhaps, Mohamed does not understand that "news" and "opinion" differ in a society which has the advantage of a free press?

The two studies in question in the three articles is one initiated and commissioned by the American Jewish Congress and the other done by the City University of New York.

According to Pipes and Feinberg both studies released on October 23 and 24 concluded that American Muslims number around 1.7 - 1.8 million. Rarely do two studies using different methodologies come up with the exact number.

Unless they are both more or less correct and used similar methodology...

However according to the Washington Post, Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, who did the study for the A.C.J. by analyzing 45 existing documents concluded that his "best survey estimate" of American Muslims was 1.9 million but allowed for a range of 1.5 million to 3.4 million.

Note that our conclusion was approximately 2 million Muslims in America, give or take a million or so. How does that differ?

The CUNY study was based on a random telephone survey and the authors put the number of Muslims at 2.8 million. Even quoting these same studies Pipes and Feinberg deliberately underrepresented the actual numbers of Muslims in their articles concluding that the Muslim population is less than 2 million.

David B. Barrett, a demographer whose staff provides annual U.S. and world religion estimates for Encyclopaedia Britannica and 20 other yearbooks, was quoted in the Post as estimating last year the U.S. Muslim population at 4.1 million. Barrett was also highly critical of the ACJ and CUNY studies expressing his reservations of the methodologies used as relying on old material or undercounting numbers.

I love that he references the Encyclopedia Brittanica. It is part of an endless cycle I encounter. Whenever the numbers of the Mosque Study Project are challenged, activists point out yet another source that confirms their numbers. What they fail to mention is that those sources simply got their numbers from the MSP in the first place.

So why would Feinberg and Murray simply reprint Daniel Pipes' findings from a month ago? The answer is provided by Feinberg and Murray themselves. They simply rephrased Pipes' statement: "Why does the "militant Islamic" lobby (Council on American Islamic Relations) insist on the 6-7 million figures? Because a larger number, even if phony, offers it enhanced access and clout." Feinberg and Murray put it this way: "Delicate policy decisions require information, but knowing how accurate that information is can be at least as important as having it at all. While a precise figure remains elusive, "2 million Muslims, give or take a few hundred thousand" appears to be America's most accurate number - for now." I've never known two statisticians to be so certain in a science dealing with uncertainty.

And yet, we did not say that the number was absolutely correct. We said it was the "most accurate number." And we also included the caveat "for now," which summarizes our understanding that that number could be eclipsed by better methodology and changing demographics.

Here we finally get to the good part, where Mohamed explains why my colleague and I conspired to print this dastardly article.

Thus it's all about perceived political influence. Apparently the American Jewish Congress feeling threatened that the American Muslim population is growing rapidly and eclipsing the Jewish population wants to launch a misleading campaign to downgrade the 6- 7 million American Muslim population as determined by the prestigious Hartford Institute for Religious Research that performed the population survey characterized by the Washington Post as "the Muslim portion of the largest U.S. denominational survey ever".

The HIRR did the Mosque Study Project as a part of a larger study, true. So what? Given time, I'm sure I will find their larger study to be crap, too. Even the principal author of the MSP, Ihsan Bagby of Shaw University in North Carolina, conceded to The Associated Press that the number was a "guesstimation."

Although all demographic studies have flaws and can be challenged (including the U.S. census) scientifically it is improper for an organization like Feinberg's and Murray's STAT to stray from its scientific focus on statistical reporting to become a political pawn of Jewish American interests.

I know STATS has been accused of many things over the years, but this is a new one.

Mohamed goes on for several paragraphs, excerpting from a profile of STATS in the Baltimore Sun which points out that some people still think STATS is politically biased. Sure, Mohamed, get on the bandwagon.

Anyhow, he concludes:

Andrew Lang said in "The Harvest of a Quiet Eye" on one's use of statistics: "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts-for support rather than illumination." Ironically, STATS newsletter itself refutes the arrogant certainty of Feinberg and Murray's article when it published the quote: "Statistics means never having to say you're certain."

We made the same point in our Christian Science Monitor piece, when we emphasized that the 2 million estimate was the best, but by no means perfect, number.

It's unfortunate that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict constantly spills into an unseemly competition between Jewish and Muslim Americans that prolongs the conflict rather than resolves it. Even in this case a statistician, like a terrorist, is in the eye of the beholder.

Oddly neither the American Jewish Congress nor Daniel Pipes nor Howard Feinberg alluded to the population of Jewish Americans. They'd rather not reveal that at most it's less than five million (according to the World Jewish Congress) and dwindling fast due to intermarriages, conversions, and loss of interest. Even Daniel Pipes, the man with the pipes of hate, admits that: "The trouble is a generic one; religious organizations commonly inflate their membership to enhance their voice in the public square."

I did not make the comparison because that was not what the piece was about. I agree that it is a question of perceived political influence, which is presumably why the AJC commissioned Smith to do his study. But that was not the point of my piece in the Monitor. Accuracy was the point.

Sometime soon I hope to tackle the way we count Jews in America (I have no idea if that WJC estimate of 5 million is at all accurate), but more importanlty I want to write a larger article for a policy journal, to examine how we count EVERY religion in the U.S. At that point, activists like Mohamed might slink away quietly. More likely, every conceivable religiously-inclined activist group in the country will be out to get me, instead of just Islamic ones.

Mandela no friend of US: In an address in Durban´s West Street Mosque, the former South African president expressed his support for the Afghan war and the hunt for Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, indicating that he agreed bin Laden was a terrorist. Last week Mandela backtracked, even apologizing for his stance. He said it was incorrect to label bin Laden a terrorist because a court had yet to find him guilty. (JTA, Jan. 9)

A different kind of Muslim speaks: CLA law professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, 38, is a devout Muslim whose brilliant writings on Islamic law and fearlessness in public defense of human rights have made him one of the most formidable weapons in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. The Islamofascists, unsurprisingly, want the Egyptian-born legal scholar dead. He understands. He used to be one of them. (National Review Online)

Wednesday, January 09, 2002

More on "How many Muslims?": The Pakistani English-language newspaper Dawn (which I am told is very widely-circulated and well-regarded) also ran my Muslim piece.

Swiss leader clashes with Hungarian Jews: By Fredy Rom. BERN, Jan. 8 (JTA) -- Disputes over a yarmulke and a Righteous Gentile have soured relations between the outgoing president of Switzerland and Hungary's Jewish community.

On a state visit to Hungary in December, problems began for then-President Moritz Leuenberger -- who became transport minister on Jan. 1 under Switzerland's system of rotating the presidency among its Cabinet members -- when his delegation visited the Budapest Jewish Museum.

The museum honors Carl Lutz, Switzerland's World War II consul in Hungary, who helped save more than 62,000 Jews from the Holocaust by giving them Swiss travel documents against orders from Bern.

Leuenberger was annoyed that his guide, the museum director, mentioned three times how Lutz was ``condemned" by Swiss officials for years after the war.

According to the Swiss Embassy in Budapest, Lutz obtained permission from the Nazis and the Hungarian government in the last months of the war to issue protective letters to 8,000 Hungarian Jews, which allowed them to emigrate to Palestine. Using a ruse and interpreting the 8,000 not as persons but as families, Lutz and his staff issued tens of thousands of additional protective letters. He established 76 Swiss safe houses throughout Budapest and, with the help of his wife, Gertrud, liberated Jews from deportation centers and death marches. The issue of protective letters later was adopted by representatives of other neutral governments in Budapest, such as Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden, broadening the impact.

After the war, the Swiss government punished Lutz by consigning him to a low post as a consul in Bregenz in Austria, just seven miles from the Swiss border. Only in 1963, when a street in Haifa was named after Lutz did his native village of Walzenhausen recognize him as well, making him an honorary citizen. By the time he died in 1975, Lutz had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He has been recognized as a Righteous Gentile by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.

In 1991 a memorial to Lutz was built at the entrance to the old Budapest Ghetto. Bern, however, waited until the late 1990s -- when Switzerland came under international scrutiny for its role during and after World War II -- to recognize Lutz as a hero. Together with the Jewish community, the government financed a book in Lutz's honor.

Leuenberger's visit became even more uncomfortable when he refused to put on a yarmulke before entering Budapest's main synagogue. Because of that, organizers canceled the synagogue visit. A spokeswoman for Leuenberger confirmed the incident. ``The president felt manipulated, and he is not available for further comments,'' she told JTA.

Can't have that: A diplomatic storm is brewing between Britain and Iran, over Tehran's refusal to accept the appointment of David Reddaway as the new British ambassador to Iran. According to the daily Jomhuri Islami, Iran has stated that Reddaway, who is the director of public services in the British Foreign Office, "is a Jew, who is an MI6 agent." In response, Britain is threatening to downgrade diplomatic ties if Reddaway is not acknowledged by Tehran. Diplomatic sources were unable to confirm yesterday whether Reddaway is Jewish, but said that, "the range of posts Reddaway has filled in the Foreign Office prove that he is a professional diplomat, and is not involved in spying or intelligence work." A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that the department was "not willing to respond to reports on the subject," but added that "Britain is waiting for the Iranian government to approve the appointment of the new ambassador." (Ha'aretz)

Should Syria be the next target for US war on terror? Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr., tells UPI that Syria's "footprints" are much clearer than Iraq's.

US Giving Israel $28M To Fight Terror: The Jerusalem Post (Jan. 8) reports that "The US is giving Israel" $28M to buy "counter terrorism equipment, primarily robots that perform controlled explosions on suspected bombs." The money "was found in the" '01 "Pentagon budget" and is "currently being transferred" to the State Dept., from which "it will be awarded to Israel." A US official: "The Israelis suffered a horrendous amount of bombings over the past several months. The US has helped out with some equipment to save lives in the past. Much of that equipment has been damaged or destroyed, so a request was made to see if we could come up with the money to replace the damaged equipment and we did."

Tuesday, January 08, 2002

Wuddn't me: Muslims of the Americas has called a news conference to deny allegations that they are linked to terrorist organizations. A statement from the group says, "The national organization of the Muslims of the Americas ... is again being harassed and smeared by government officials and the media. We have spent years separating ourselves from the false allegations of those who have used their resources and positions to propagate unfounded charges against the Muslim community. Now links are being alleged to the criminal Taliban. This is unfair, unjust and untrue. We have committed no crimes for which we must defend ourselves, however, it is important to us that Muslims and our religion do not lose the headway that has been accomplished in this country during the past two decades." (UPI's Capital Comment, Jan. 8)

Monday, January 07, 2002

PLO Gun-running: Gerald M. Steinberg, of the Bar-Ilan University in Israel, writes in the Wall Street Journal Europe:

Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority has certainly come a long way since its creation in 1994. Instead of a weak and demilitarized proto-state, with only a "small gendarmerie" to keep law and order and prevent terrorism, the PA has an army, navy, and full-fledged arms acquisition network. While often advertised as too poor to feed its own people, the Authority clearly has plenty of spare change to buy freighters, outfit them with secret water-proof compartments, and fill them with tons of weapons and advanced explosives for terrorists attacks.

The 4000-ton Karin-A was captured last Thursday by Israeli forces in the Red Sea, on its way through the Suez Canal before delivering its cargo to Gaza. It was crewed by top Palestinian naval personnel, and its cargo included long range Katyusha rockets, Sagger and LAW anti-tank missiles, mortars, mines, advanced explosive equipment, sniper rifles, crates of ammunition, and other implements of destruction. These weapons, which have markings in Farsi, were purchased in Iran, and the operation was supervised by PLO officials. The cost of the weapons, boat, and related expenses are estimated to have been at least $15 million, all paid for by the Palestinian Authority and under Arafat's direct control.

... The case of the Karin-A weapons ship is by no means the first example in which Mr. Arafat's minions have been caught directly smuggling weapons into the territory under their control. Instead of the limited weapons specified in the Oslo agreements, the Authority has smuggled in tens of thousands of illegal Kalashnikovs, M-16s and other weapons, along with the tons of ammunition. These arms are brought through tunnels connecting Gaza with Egypt, in trucks crossing the Jordan River, and by sea.

Last May, the Israeli Navy intercepted a fishing boat, the San Torini, which was loaded with SA-7 anti-aircraft missiles, grenades, grenades, mortars and shells, mines, rifles, and ammunition from Lebanon to Gaza. On December 16, Israeli security agents arrested Osama Zuhar Hamed Karika, 28, who was on his way to Saudi Arabia, ostensibly for medical treatment. Mr. Karika was caught with documents related to the production of the Kassam rocket in Gaza and the West Bank. The rockets are based on a North Korean design, and are similar to the ones passed from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which then provided prototypes to the Palestinians.

... As is now painfully obvious, the tens of millions of euros, yens and dollars given to the Palestinian leadership are used primarily to buy weapons and explosives. Palestinian statehood may yet come one day, but not as long Mr. Arafat and his colleagues are running the show. Instead, it will take a new leadership and a more pragmatic and realistic generation to reach this goal safely. In the meanwhile, the first task is to stop throwing good money after bad, declare bankruptcy, and reorganize.

Kesher Talk

Friday, January 11, 2002

Thursday, January 10, 2002

Wednesday, January 09, 2002

Tuesday, January 08, 2002

Monday, January 07, 2002

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