Aaron HowardJewish Harold Voice
Jewish community newspaper serving the Houston and Texas Gulf Coast area since 1908

A bill before the Israeli Knesset that would give full authority for conversions to the Chief Rabbinate is causing a huge controversy in Israel and in the United States.The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved 5-4, on first reading to plenum on July 12, a bill that would give the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate a monopoly on conversions to Judaism. The bill must go before second and third readings before being brought to a vote in the Knesset and can be revised during the process.

Under current practice, Israel recognizes only conversions performed by Orthodox rabbis inside Israel. But, under the Law of Return, people converted by non-Orthodox rabbis outside the country are automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship like other Jews. The proposed legislation would give Israel’s chief rabbinate the legal power to decide whether any conversion outside Israel is legitimate.

The groups most likely to be affected would be about a half-million immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union and those who converted to Judaism abroad and could now be denied Israeli citizenship.

The bill, supported by various religious and right-wing parties, essentially would give the Israeli Orthodox rabbinate the power to decide who is Jewish and who is not. At the same time, it would delegitimize non-Orthodox rabbis outside Israel. Opponents of the bill say that passage of the bill would defeat efforts to promote a more flexible and Halakhic conversion process and would marginalize the non-Orthodox Jewish movements.

The bill has set off a storm in and outside Israel.

“I understand the concern of the Conservative and Reform movement,” said Rabbi Barry Gelman. “From the perspective of Israel, it is already a fact that the rabbinate controls conversions in Israel. They also have retroactively nullified conversions. They have already been notoriously well-known for deciding which conversions are good and which are not good – that is, not acceptable according to Halakha.

”Rabbi Gelman is senior rabbi of United Orthodox Synagogues and president of the International Rabbinic Fellowship, a worldwide organization of rabbis founded to promote Modern Orthodoxy and serious study of Torah and Halakha and to advocate policies and implement actions on behalf of World Jewry and humankind.

“The key here, which is why I’m not so concerned yet, is what this bill does is turn into law what, in fact, is already being done,” said Rabbi Gelman. “So, how much is really being lost in that part of the negotiations? That remains to be seen, which is why I’m not ready to stand squarely behind the bill.

“On the plus side, the bill would allow city rabbis in Israel to perform conversions without the need to work with the Chief Rabbinate’s rabbinical courts. That could help in two ways. One, which is significant, is it could help liberalize the conversion standards so that the close to half-million Russian immigrants who are of Jewish stock – if not Halakhicly Jewish – can convert. The new bill is taking an approach to conversion that would not necessarily require complete mitzvah observance.

“Second, the bill will generally offer a more realistic and, in many cases, a user-friendly process for everybody.

So, there is a lot of plus side.

“The American movements are looking at the bill from the American perspective. There are very few Reform or Conservative conversions done in Israel. This bill could be the answer to the problem that many people in Israel have been complaining about. But, because it may call into question some conversions done in Israel, it has caused an uproar.

”Because of the possible upsides to the legislation, Rabbi Gelman explained that he was not ready to condemn the bill. He was hopeful that Conservative and Reform movement leaders, who have arrived in Israel on Sunday to lobby the bill’s chief sponsor, Israeli Beiteinu MK David Rotem, will find a way to alter the language in a way that is more acceptable to American critics.

One important question raised by Religious Zionists: Does the Chief Rabbinate understand their responsibility toward making conversion a realistic possibility for these half-million Russian Jews?

And, a second question raised by the Conservative and Reform movements in the United States: Does this bill disenfranchise the majority of American Jews?Rabbi Gelman argues there are well-established Halakhic ways to make the conversion process doable for these Russian Jews.

“These are not necessarily methods we would use for individual converts,” he cautioned. “But because the issue of these Russian Jews and the future of their children as well as the future of the state is affected, the rabbinate should be exercising nationalist or Religious Zionist Halakhic thinking. They should realize their decision would affect the entire country.

“We have handed the keys to the kingdom to anti-Zionists.

“But, there are city rabbis who are Zionist. There are city rabbis who understand what needs to be done in regards to converting these Russian Jews. So, that’s why I think the bill has an upside for the state. I understand it has a downside for Reform and Conservative Jews.

”Danny Horwitz, rabbi of the Greenfield Chapel at Beth Yeshurun, has been a Conservative pulpit rabbi for 30 years. He views the conversion bill as a move fraught with political peril.

“Sometimes, power politics takes precedence over what’s best for the citizens – in this case, members of the Jewish people,” said Rabbi Horwitz. “The bill is designed to place total control over the definition of Jewish identity in the hands of the Chief Rabbinate, probably the most extreme ultra-Orthodox element in Israel with any power. Not only will this be a problem in terms of recognizing conversions, but in its current form, it could affect the status of people who want to make aliyah. The rabbinate has the desire to maintain control over conversions. But, they have also retroactively annulled conversions.

“The bill maintains a certain amount of power and employment within the ultra-Orthodox community. But, as we know, the current situation of the ultra-Orthodox community is not sustainable. A majority from the ultra-Orthodox community does not work. So, where does their money come from? It must come from the government. They currently have a certain amount of votes in the Knesset. But, I also foresee a situation in 10 to 20 years where you may reach a point where 50 percent of the people who are 18 years old won’t serve in the army.

”For Conservative and Reform Jews throughout the world, the bill makes no sense, argues Rabbi Horwitz.

“Given Israel’s need to deal with much more existential problems, it doesn’t make sense that Israel would create this kind of slap in the face to the communities of Jews who have stood behind Israel. That’s part of the reason why [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu came out on Sunday against the bill.

“However, I don’t take it for granted just because he came out against the bill that it may fail.

”Rabbi Horwitz also views the conversion bill as harmful to Modern Orthodox interests. “In general, modern Orthodox have allowed the status quo in Israel to continue,” he said. “They have hoped they would remain legitimized – that their conversions would remain legitimized by the Chief Rabbinate. Now, many of them are having their conversions rejected by the Israeli rabbinate. In my judgment, if they don’t stand up for the rights of those who are being undermined, they will also be squeezed out of the business of conversions.

”What should American Jews do? Rabbi Horwitz suggests that U.S. Jews must make a separation between those existential issues and the conversion bill.

“We have to stand with Israel,” he said. “But, we also have to be willing to say to Israel: This is not the kind of Israel we want to see. You can’t expect young American Jews to support a people whose thinking is the same ilk as the folks in Tehran. When you have women attacked for carrying a sefer Torah at the Western Wall, that’s not going to warm the hearts of American Jews. It’s not realistic for Israel to expect that every Jew will give them a pass for this behavior and allow Judaism to be defined by its most extreme elements.

“Ben-Gurion said in 1939, when the British created the White Paper: ‘We will fight the Nazis as if there was no White Paper and fight the White Paper as if there were no Nazis.’

“I think we ought to fight the enemies of Israel as if we didn’t have this internal problem in Israel. And, we ought to deal with the internal problem of freedom of religion in Israel as if she did not have external enemies.”

Just because Israel is a Jewish country doesn’t mean all Jews are the same.

By Aviya Kushner

Israel’s mandate as an ingatherer of the Jewish exiles from all four corners of the earth has made it one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. This article covers the variety of Jewish ethnic groups found in Israel and the history of how these different Jewish communities have come to call Israel home.

Walk through the Carmel open-air market in Tel Aviv and you’ll hear Russian, Arabic, Yiddish, Amharic, German, Spanish, and of course, Hebrew. You’ll smell foods from Libya, Russia, and Venezuela, and your eyes will notice mounds of yellow and red spices from the Middle East displayed in large wooden barrels. If you talk to a fruit-seller, he’ll gruffly tell you he stocks three kinds of bright-orange persimmons—soft for the Russians, hard for the Israelis, and medium for Americans.

While you try to process how country of origin affects fruit-firmness preferences, and how any businessman can ever keep track, a woman will swish by in a crinkled cotton scarf with gold coins attached to the end, in traditional Yemenite style. Next, an old woman in perfectly pressed linen will bump into you, giving you a perfect snapshot of what was in style in Berlin in 1932. For anyone who thinks a Jewish country means everyone looks the same, sounds the same, or eats the same food, a few days in Israel can be a shocking education.

As you shop, the radio might blare songs with beats ranging from belly-dancing swivels to a slow ballad that feels like it could have been written on the Volga River. No wonder—these songs are written by people whose parents came from every imaginable country, and some singers have one Libyan parent and another Brazilian parent. The market stands hawk a dizzying array of prepared foods—Argentinian beef, Hungarian pastries, and a slew of Iraqi options. You can eat gefilte fish on one corner, shish-kebab on the next. Stuffed grape leaves and black olives abound, and if you tire of that, you can go eat some Ethiopian food with your bare hands. You can hear prayers in dozens of accents and intonations. In fact, some say it’s only possible to understand the magnitude and reach of the Diaspora in modern-day Israel.

A Little History

Persecution, wandering, economic interests, and adventure sent Jews around the world, and Israel has seen immigrants from Shanghai, India, Moscow, and South Africa, to name a few. The modern Zionist movement coincided with rising anti-Semitism in Europe, where pogroms, compulsory army service, and constant discrimination made the dream of a Jewish state a very attractive and somewhat crazy-sounding idea. What began as a pragmatic response to European anti-Semitism has become a living dream—the worldwide return to the Jewish homeland.

Israel’s Jewish population came in several waves. The first wave of immigrants to present-day Israel began arriving in 1882, following two years of terrible Russian pogroms, and those First Aliya immigrants were therefore from Russia. The Second Aliya, from 1904-1914, was sparked by another rise in persecution of Russian Jews. Through the 1940s, the vast majority of immigrants were from Europe, and so German, Polish, and Russian traditions were important to Israel’s major institutions.

The Nazi threat brought hordes of German Jews, or yekkes, to Israel in the 1930s, and they left their mark on Israel’s major institutions. The legal code is based on Germany’s, and the universities are also founded on the German model. German immigrants founded orchestras, art museums, and populated entire neighborhoods, such as Rechavia in Jerusalem, known for its neat, classy apartments and residents wearing perfectly pressed shirts.

During the years of the British Mandate, stiff, hat-wearing German Jews clashed with jolly, boisterous, and prank-happy Russian Jews. Israel’s socialist roots—seen in its universal health-care and generous social-welfare programs—are tied to the large number of immigrants from the Soviet Union, who were raised on Communism. German-Russian couples sometimes banned each other’s songs from the house, and Hebrew was the compromise language.

But after the War of Independence in 1948, over 700,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Arriving by foot or through Operation Magic Carpet, which airlifted tens of thousands to Israel, these Jews had darker skin, different songs, different foods, and a somewhat different outlook on life. The arrival of these Sephardic Jews changed the dynamic to Ashkenazic-Sephardic as opposed to Russian and German, or German and Polish styles.

For decades, tension brewed between Ashkenazic Jews, and Sephardic Jews in Israel. A marriage between an Ashkenazi and a Sephardi was called one of the “nisuei ta’arovet,” or mixed marriages. The stereotype was that Sephardim were less intellectual, less wealthy, and less educated than Ashkenazim. While a girl from an Ashkenazic family might wear traditional European-inspired pearls or gold jewelry, a Yemenite girl would have filigree jewelry and long, flowing skirts. A Yemenite girl might know how to belly-dance—not a skill the average German-Jewish girl has.

On Shabbat, an Ashkenazic family will serve cholent, a cold-weather food of beans, potatoes, and meat. A Sephardic family might have malawach and jachnun, fried dough and a hot red sauce. On Passover, Sephardim eat foods that Ashkenazim won’t touch for the duration of the holiday. The status of women was also different in each community, as most traditional Sephardic women stayed home and raised large families, while Ashkenazic women were more likely to work in outside jobs.

Slowly Coming Together

Over time, Sephardim and Ashkenazim have come closer together. Today, Sephardic Jews hold key political, rabbinic, and defense positions. Shaul Mofaz, who was the Army’s Chief of Staff, is a Sephardic Jew, and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who served as Secretary of Defense, was born in Iraq. The large number of Arabic-speaking Jews is a great asset to the military and intelligence efforts. Young people who study together and then serve in the army together don’t see the same differences their parents and grandparents did, and many laugh at the idea of a “mixed marriage” being any kind of mix at all.

While differences in practice and tradition once divided Ashkenazim and Sephardim, today there are efforts to have just one Chief Rabbi of Israel instead of the two that are currently elected— one catering to the Ashkenazic and the other to the Sepharadic community. Tel Aviv already has one rabbi making decisions for all citizens. If sales figures are any indication, many Ashkenazim of all ages have come to appreciate and even love the vibrating Yemenite-influenced songs of Ofra Haza, the spicy food available in the markets, and the emphasis on large, family events that is a hallmark of Sephardic tradition. Everyone eats falafel, olives, hummus, labane, and other traditional Middle Eastern foods.

Although relations have improved, most Israelis are aware of the history of ethnic tension. During the first 40 years of statehood, the Ashkenazic-Sephardic divide was particularly salient, posing a major political problem in trying to forge governments and create a cohesive society. Menachem Begin came to power by courting the Sephardic vote, and since then, politicians have tried to appeal to one group or both. However, two waves of immigration in the late 1980s and 1990s added more spice to Israel’s ethnic mix.

Contemporary Challenges

The fall of Communism caused a flood of immigrants from the former Soviet Union. For years, Sephardim had been gaining ground in Israeli society, while Ashkenazim felt their numbers dwindling. But with the arrival of Russians, hundreds of thousands of Ashkenazim were back. Today, one million Israeli citizens are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, accounting for one in five Jews in the country. The Russian immigrants brought many accomplished musicians, scientists, and professors. Local orchestras were suddenly stocked with first-rate musicians who played classical European music, and the universities saw a surge in students and professors from the European tradition.

At around the same time, three dramatic modern attempts at creating an exodus—dubbed Operations Moses, Joshua, and Solomon—brought Jews from Ethiopia to Israel. These Jews were black, and they spoke Amharic, a race and a language that were for the most part new for Israel. Initially, Ethiopian Jews were greeted with euphoria as descendants of the 10 lost tribes, but as time passed, these immigrants faced special problems. They had little or no formal education, were used to life in an undeveloped country, and spoke no Hebrew or English. Many adults were illiterate, and their job prospects were bleak. Not understanding Hebrew during a tense security situation caused extra problems, so new steps had to be taken to accommodate the nearly 40,000 Ethiopians who now call Israel home. A television station began broadcasting the news in Amharic, and social workers created special programs for the Ethiopian community. Still, there is no Amharic-Hebrew dictionary, and while many younger Ethiopians are doing well, older immigrants sometimes complain of being bewildered and isolated.

The future of Israel has always depended on immigrants’ ability to integrate into a vibrant and changing society. The “Israeli” is a relatively new creation, and many immigrants embrace the ideals of physical vitality, commitment to the land and to the Jewish people, and the unique mix of toughness and sweetness that has come to define the country.

While a visitor to the market in 1956 might be able to tell where someone was from by his accent, today’s young Israelis often don’t have a Sephardic accent or an Ashkenazic accent. Now in the 21st century, what unites Israelis is not where their parents came from, but where they now live—one of the most diverse tiny countries in the history of the earth.

Aviya Kushner is a Lecturer of Creative Writing at Columbia College of Chicago. She is the author of And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning.

Beyond Eyruv

(2006)
Film Written and Directed by John Mounier

Best Documentary 2006 Woodstock Film Festival

I’ve read the reviews about the documentary “Beyond Eyruv,” and I can’t wait to see it.

I can only imagine how difficult it would be, to go from Hassidic to secular life. How do you learn to live amongst what you’ve never known?

Imagine knowing there was no way back to the Hassidic community (because they turned their backs on you too)?

-David Mirand

Russian Jewish Institute

Beyond Eyruv

Link to IMDb  film database

Plot Summary:

“Beyond Eyruv” is a feature-length documentary that examines the life of a young Hasidic man-20 year old Moshe Galan- who’s chosen to leave behind the only world he’s known, the ultra-orthodox community, out of curiosity for the ‘world out there’ and an urgent need to relieve himself of the limitations inherent in such a closed community. This documentary is, at its heart, about transformation and the challenges that Moshe faces as he departs from his familiar community and enters into an unknown world and culture, a secular society. This new life that Moshe undertakes is filled with struggles as he works toward earning a High School diploma, negotiates his relationship with his grandparents who have encouraged his departure, tries to support himself, all the while, lacking the basic skills to survive in our world. Ultimately, Moshe’s biggest struggle is one of faith and his relationship with God and his family who live in Israel. As the story unfolds, we see that Moshe is living in between these two worlds, not finding comfort in either. While he desperately wants to find recognition and acceptance in his new life, he’s unable to leave the past behind him, making his future unclear and questionable

Huffington Post
David Shasha
Director, Center for Sephardic Heritage July 1, 2010 

In the wake of an Israeli court ruling confirming anti-Sephardi bias in the case of the Beis Yaakov girls’ school in Immanuel, many have scrutinized the Shas party leadership’s bizarre response of defending the Ashkenazim.

The Shas party is the most prominent political representative of Sephardic Jews in Israel, so its support for the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox rabbinic leadership of Immanuel has baffled many.

In order to fully grasp the Shas leadership’s apparent acceptance of the Ultra-Orthodox racism, we need to examine how Sephardic citizens were treated in Israel’s early days.

One of the most prominent Sephardic Zionist leaders was Elie Eliachar (1899-1981). Eliachar understood that Sephardim were being kept out of the political leadership cadre because of Ashkenazi racial prejudice.

In the posthumously-published English translation of his book Living with Jews he makes the point explicit:

This phenomenon — the exclusion of Sephardim from decision-making levels — became particularly conspicuous in the process of building a civic bureaucracy after independence. Despite the fact that Sephardim had comprised the great majority in the Mandate civil service, the new government offices were staffed almost entirely without them. Not one Sephardi was found in any position of influence in the political, economic or cultural ministries. The new law courts too were established on a political basis. No Sephardi judges were appointed to the Supreme Court, and only a few of the distinguished group of Sephardi judges from Mandate times were given posts in the lower courts.

In concert with the marginalization of the Sephardi elite class was the concomitant attempt to resocialize the Sephardim. Guided by the implicitly racist assumption that Sephardim were less capable than their Ashkenazi brethren, most Israelis saw them as culturally and intellectually “backward,” like the Arabs in whose countries they once lived. The Israeli political system forced many Sephardim to live at the margins of society, where they often found themselves caught between the warring forces of religious extremism and imposed secularization.

It should be remembered that one of the most important Israeli cultural products of the early 1960s, Ephraim Kishon’s “Sallah Shabbati” — a deeply misguided and racist portrayal of bumbling Sephardi immigrants cast in the most offensive terms possible — was produced in this racially charged climate. Its assertions of Sephardi barbarity and incompetence permeated all levels of Israeli society.

NYU scholar Ella Shohat looks at Sephardi marginalization from the religious standpoint in her seminal 1988 article “Sephardim in Israel: Zionism from the Standpoint of its Jewish Victims”:

Those Sephardim who came under the control of Ashkenazi religious authorities, meanwhile, were obliged to send their children to Ashkenazi religious schools, where they learned the ‘correct’ Ashkenazi forms of practicing Judaism, including Yiddish-accented praying, liturgical-gestural norms and sartorial codes favoring the dark color of centuries-ago Poland. Some Oriental Jews, then, were forced into the Orthodox mold.

This same point is reinforced by Norman Stillman in his 1995 study “Sephardi Religious Responses to Modernity”:

At first, the Sephardi newcomers were so-to-speak ‘religiously invisible.’ As with so much else in the early days of Israeli statehood, the new Sephardi immigrants were dependent upon establishment institutions even in matters of religion. The Ministry of Religious Affairs provided houses of worship, prayer books, and an official state-salaried rabbinate. The Ministry of Education provided religiously-oriented public schools. And the religious political parties offered various forms of patronage. Some of the traditional spiritual leaders who came to Israel with their communities experienced a loss of their authority. Young Sephardim who entered the religious youth movements or went on to higher religious education usually found themselves in an Ashkenazi environment. Since most of the rabbinical colleges were also European-founded, new Sephardi rabbis were often trained in the Ashkenazi orthodox fashion with its different world outlook, its very distinct approach to piety, and even its own distinctive dress code.

The negative outcome of this troubling socio-religious process has been marked by the Bar-Ilan University scholar Zvi Zohar in his 2006 article “Aspects of Halakhic Identity: On European Jewish Orthodoxy, Sephardic Tradition and the Shas Movement”:

In more general terms, there exists a deep gap between the education and halakhic identity of the Shas cadres, and the cultural ideal they seek to represent. Focusing on the slogan ‘To Return the Crown to its Ancient Glory,’ the party advocates leading the Oriental-Sephardic sector of Israeli Jews back to religious observance, i.e., to the religion, Torah and cultural heritage of their forefathers. However, the European ultra-Orthodox halakhic identity and ethos that the movement’s cadres internalized, are radically different from the halakhic identity and traditions of the Sephardic-Oriental Torah sages in the Middle East and North Africa - characterized by openness to general education, Zionism, new political trends, etc.

The emergence of the Shas party must then be understood in the larger context of Sephardi disenfranchisement in Israel and the ascendance of Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox religious hegemony.

In his 1989 book “Israel: The Oriental Majority”, the Israeli sociologist Shlomo Swirski presented the political weakness of the Sephardi political movements:

In fact, demands for improved and expanded welfare measures have made up the major part of the platforms of most Oriental slates in elections to the Knesset. The most recent example was provided by Tami, a party formed by young Orientals who split from the National Religious Party. It gained the support of many young activists who saw in it a means of expressing an independent Oriental consciousness. After a year and a half of very passive participation in the [Menachem] Begin cabinet (Tami obtained three Knesset seats in the 1981 elections and was assigned one cabinet post in the governing coalition), the party’s leaders threatened to walk out of the coalition if the government failed to pass a law providing special benefits to families with many children. The government accommodated them - and Tami returned to its political and social passivity.

The Shas approach has evolved from a moderate political position to an extreme one on the contentious issues of religion, the Palestinians, and the settlements; as this move has occured, the demands of the Sephardi political leaders have shifted from social justice to the flow of government money into a network of Sephardi communal institutions. The great success of Shas in getting a nice chunk of the government budget for their institutions has permitted it to relinquish the primary raison d’etre of their movement.

As the journalist Rachel Shabi states in her landmark 2008 book “We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands”:

SHAS is concerned more with religion than ethnicity or social justice - as shown by its use of the religious term ‘Sephardi’ and not the sociopolitical appellation ‘Mizrahi.’ Its solutions were religious first and social as a byproduct if at all.

The flood of statements from the Shas leadership in the wake of the Immanuel affair reflect the close ties that the party now has with the Ashkenazi Haredi leadership and its institutional cadre. The Shas rank-and-file often send their children to Ashkenazi schools — hence the problem raised in Immanuel, where Sephardi parents are fighting to have their children accepted as equals in the Ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi Yeshiva — and are often beholden to that leadership in religious affairs.

Shas has not sought to effectively redress the secular-political problems of the Israeli Sephardim, but has relentlessly pursued its own parochial interests as an Ultra-Orthodox party in the Ashkenazi mold.

The spiritual leader of Shas, former Israeli Chief Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is well known for his voluminous legal output; he has written scores of books that deal with the minutiae of Jewish ritual law, on which he is considered one of the most important experts of his generation. What often gets overlooked is how his ritual-centered approach to Judaism tends to exclude the wider humanistic learning of the classical Sephardic tradition.

While Rabbi Yosef vigorously asserts Sephardic custom in his legal rulings, his exclusive focus on the details of Jewish ritual often obscures the fact that unlike many of his Sephardic predecessors — who buttressed their legal writings with studies of philosophy, the social sciences, the literary arts, mathematics, and science — Rabbi Yosef remains almost completely oblivious to the world outside the confines of Jewish ritual. With government control of civil society, the traditional place of the rabbinical court in the everyday lives of Sephardic Jews has been blunted and left the rabbinical leadership with little to do but to focus on ritual matters, just as in the case of the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox rabbis.

The lack of a more worldly perspective from Rabbi Yosef and the Shas rabbinate has led to a more intimate entente with the Ashkenazi Ultra-Orthodox. And it has found a set of common interests in the Immanuel case despite the ethnic divide. Shas leaders are equally disdainful of life outside the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and have largely ignored the traditions of Sephardic Rabbinic Humanism that were passed down to us from Moses Maimonides in his great intellectual synthesis. Such learning is alien to the Shas faithful.

In their vocal support for the Ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazi leaders, the Shas figures, led by Rabbi Yosef and his disciple Eli Yishai, have shown the myriad ways in which they have not only abandoned the classical Sephardic tradition, but have forsaken the Sephardic community in Israel in its struggle to achieve social justice and dignity in its battle against Ashkenazi prejudice. As a political party originally designed to serve the interests of the Sephardic community, Shas has now thrown in its lot with those who would continue to denigrate Sephardim.

Tens of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews protested in Jerusalem, Israel against a court order to desegregate a religious school and force Jewish girls of European and Middle Eastern descent to study together

Thursday, Jun. 17, 2010

By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem

TIME

Israel’s domestic culture war between religious communities and the secular courts took to the streets on Thursday as tens of thousands of ultra-orthodox Ashkenazi (European) Jews paralyzed the streets of Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak in a protest march. The target of their outrage was the imprisonment of 43 couples for refusing to allow their daughters to attend a religious school where they would have to mix with the daughters of religious Mizrahi Jews (a term sometimes conflated with Sephardi and referring to those who hail mainly from the Arab world). Dressed in their Sabbath finery of tall fur hats and delicately embroidered long black silk coats, men bound for prison were carried shoulder high by a dancing, singing throng through the streets of Jerusalem to the city’s Russian Compound police headquarters. Some wore a red sash emblazoned with the legend “Holiness for the sake of heaven.”

“We are going with gladness in our hearts,” said Rabbi Eliyahu Biton as he walked toward jail, although 22 of the convicted women and four of the men failed to appear.

The parents at the center of Thursday’s drama, followers of Rabbi Shmuel Berzovsky who leads the tiny Slonimer Hasidic sect, chose two weeks in jail rather than sending their daughters to the Beis Yaakov school near their homes in the religious West Bank settlement of Emanuel. Their reason? At the school, the Ashkenazi kids would mingle with religious Mizrahi kids, some of whom come from more secular extended families and therefore, say the Slonimers, could expose their sheltered daughters to unwanted influences from the wider world. And their imprisonment was the culmination of a two-year battle between the ultra-orthodox sect, which effectively controls the school, and Israel’s secular Supreme Court. Before the Beis Yaakov controversy, few people had heard of the Slonimer, named for the town in Belarus where their first rabbi lived 200 years ago, and the sect’s internal power struggle between rival leaders in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. But the fight over the schoolgirls has united the tiny group and transformed it into the latest torchbearers of a festering feud between the ultra-orthodox and the secular establishment. (See pictures of Jerusalem and its divisions.)

Thursday’s demonstration was the largest in Jerusalem since ultra-orthodox protesters gathered in similar numbers in 1999 in a show of strength against the supposed antireligious bias of Israel’s Supreme Court. A decade on, the gap between the two entities is wider than ever, with running debates over such issues as the power of religious courts, state subsidies for religious students, religious exemption from military service and access to public roads on the Sabbath.(How the Sephardim gained political clout in Israel.)

In August 2009, the Supreme Court ruled that a separate stream created in Beis Yaakov school two years ago for the Slonim amounted to “rampant discrimination” against the rest of the pupils, who are 95% Mizrahi. The court ordered the school, which is financed by the state, to remove the physical barriers and integrate the classes. For six months, the parents defied the court. When the barriers finally came down, 43 families removed their daughters and then sent them to another state-funded school in Bnei Brak, an hour’s drive away. But parents are not allowed to move their kids from one school to another in the middle of a school year without permission from the education authorities, and their departure left the Beis Yaakov school with too few kids to be viable.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the parents must return their daughters to the now desegregated school by Thursday or report to jail.

The open defiance of the parents led opposition leader Tzipi Livni to wonder aloud at the future of the rule of law in Israel and the deafening silence of government ministers scared of offending ultra-orthodox parties that hold the balance of power. “I have heard that there is a group of people who have said ahead of time that they refuse to accept a Supreme Court decision,” Livni told supporters this week. “There is no room for such declarations in a democratic state. I am not a fan of the Supreme Court’s involvement in all issues, but when the political and state leadership does not accept decisions based on the values of the State of Israel, the Supreme Court has no choice.”

Aviad Hacohen, the lawyer who filed the Supreme Court petition on behalf of Yoav Lalum, chairman of the Noar Kahalacha association, which battles ethnic discrimination in religious schools, tells TIME that the Slonimer refusal to have their kids attend school with the Mizrahi girls has resulted in the school excluding dozens of Mizrahi girls since last fall. And, he warns, the problem in Emanuel is the tip of an ultra-orthodox iceberg threatening to sink the rule of law in Israel.

“This can lead to real anarchy,” says Hacohen. “I hope the rule of law will prevail, otherwise it won’t stop with the ultra-orthodox and others will do the same. I wish I could tell you the law will win, but I’m not sure.”

AFP

JERUSALEM — An Israeli man arrested in Poland who is believed to be a Mossad agent linked to the January killing of a Hamas chief in Dubai must be brought home and not extradited to Germany, ministers said on Sunday.

According to German weekly Der Spiegel, which broke the story on its website on Saturday, Uri Brodsky was arrested at Warsaw airport on June 4 on suspicion of obtaining a German passport by fraudulent means — a passport used by one of the killers involved in the assassination of a top Hamas official.

Germany issued an international arrest warrant for Brodsky several weeks ago and prosecutors are pushing for Warsaw to extradite him.

But it was unclear whether Poland — one of Israel’s closest allies — would agree to a German request to extradite Brodsky.

“Poland needs to tell Germany that it is sending an Israeli citizen to Israel and if there is some complaint against him, we have legal procedures (that) have great credibility with the international legal system,” Tourism Minister Stas Misezhnikov told reporters in Jerusalem.

“First they have to prove that he has done what he is accused of,” he said. “(But) for the time being, we are talking about an Israeli citizen. We are obliged to bring him home and this is what we shall do.”

Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz also voiced opposition to any attempt to extradite Brodsky to Germany for prosecution.

“Israel should oppose the extradition of any Israeli citizen to another country and act to bring him back to this country,” he said.

The Dubai hit has sparked a diplomatic crisis for Israel after the team of assassins — widely believed to be from the Israeli spy agency Mossad — was found to have used 26 forged passports from Britain, France, Germany, Ireland and Australia.

Der Spiegel was on Monday to publish a fuller article on the incident, which reportedly ties Brodsky to the team involved in the January 20 killing of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas’ military wing, at a luxury Dubai hotel.

Dubai police have released extensive surveillance footage which they say shows suspects from the hit squad who drugged and then suffocated Mabhuh.

Twelve British, six Irish, four French, one German and three Australian passports were used by 26 people who are believed to be linked to the murder, according to Dubai police.

In many cases, the travel documents appeared either to have been faked or obtained illegally.

The issue caused a huge diplomatic row, with London and Canberra both expelling an Israeli diplomat over the passport scandal.

By Associated Press
Sunday, June 6, 2010 - Added 3h ago

JERUSALEM - Israel’s prime minister claimed yesterday that the Turkish activists who battled Israeli naval commandos in a deadly clash last week prepared for the fight ahead of time, before boarding the ship in a different city from the other passengers.

Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet “dozens of thugs” from “an extremist, terrorism-supporting” group were waiting for the Isaeli commandos.

“This group boarded separately in a different city, organized separately, equipped itself separately and went on deck under different procedures,” he said. “The clear intent of this hostile group was to initiate a violent clash.”

Huwaida Arraf of the Free Gaza Movement, which organized the flotilla, called Netanyahu’s claims “another pack of lies.”

Meanwhile, Israel has rejected the idea of a having an international commission look into the raid, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said yesterday. Michael Oren said Israel has the ability and the right to investigate its own military, adding that Israel will not apologize for the incident, but is talking with the Obama administration about ways to deal with it.

“We are open to any ideas on how to somehow deal with the Gaza situation,” Oren said on “Fox News Sunday.” He added, however, that “there is no simple idea.”

Last Monday’s operation, in which nine activists were killed on a ship running the Gaza blockade, damaged Israel’s ties with Turkey - its main Muslim ally - and brought heavy international pressure on Israel to lift the 3-year closure of Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Videos released by the military have shown a crowd attacking several naval commandos as they landed on a ship from a helicopter, beating the soldiers with clubs and other objects and hurling one soldier overboard.

The military has displayed pictures of knives, slingshots and metal rods confiscated from the activists, and video from security cameras show men brandishing clubs and other weapons before the soldiers arrived.

Israeli youths wave national flags during a rally in Ashkelon to show solidarity with the country’s military. A group of top Israeli naval reserves officers said it was wrong to blame flotilla organizers for the deadly raid, which they characterized as a “failure.” (Amir Cohen, Reuters / June 7, 2010)

Facing pressure from the United Nations and others, Cabinet leaders are leaning toward an Israeli-led probe that might include international observers.

By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times

June 7, 2010

Israeli officials said Sunday they would reject U.N. pressure to establish an international commission to investigate last week’s deadly raid of a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.

Instead, leaders are leaning toward an Israeli-led inquiry that might include international observers or participation, officials said.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, told “Fox News Sunday” that Israel was “rejecting an international commission,” as proposed over the weekend by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Ban suggested a panel headed by former New Zealand Prime Minister Geoffrey Palmer with representatives from the U.S., Israel and Turkey. More than half of the flotilla’s activists were from Turkey, including eight of those killed when Israel raided the ship, to prevent it from breaking its three-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Israel has rarely submitted voluntarily to United Nations review, saying its enemies dominate the organization and that U.N. probes are one-sided. Israel was furious over a U.N. Human Rights Council panel investigating its Gaza Strip offensive in 2008-09 and refused to cooperate with it. The so-called Goldstone Commission led by a respected South African jurist accused Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during Israel’s 22-day assault in 2008-2009.

“We’ve had experience with the U.N. and kangaroo courts,” said an Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Likud Party leaders that Israel was “looking into other possibilities” for investigating the raid. No decision has been made, officials said. According to Oren, the government is working closely with the United States to devise a process that will be seen as credible.

Several Israeli Cabinet leaders expressed support for a government-run panel that would either include international observers or share its findings with an international body. Most also said they would endorse only a commission that does not investigate the specific actions of Israeli soldiers during the operation, focusing instead on policymaking and operational planning.

Critics said Netanyahu should announce a decision quickly to prevent international pressure from building and cut off calls for an outside investigation.

“The government is procrastinating and thus may visit upon us a Goldstone-style international investigation,” Haim Ramon, chairman of the opposition Kadima Council, told Israel Radio on Sunday.

In his Cabinet meeting Sunday, Netanyahu reiterated his attack on the activists who organized the pro-Palestinian ships that attempted to break Israel’s naval blockade, calling them “thugs from a terrorist organization.”

Nine Turkish activists were killed May 31 when Israeli commandos raided their ship, the Mavi Marmara, and encountered fierce resistance from some of the passengers. Several countries have condemned Israel for using excessive force. Israel blamed the activists for attacking its soldiers with iron bars and knives. Netanyahu alleged that those who resisted appeared to have boarded in a different city from the rest of the passengers and had not been checked. Blockade organizers deny have denied that claim.

In a letter to Netanyahu made public Sunday, a group of top Israeli naval reserves officers said it was inappropriate to blame flotilla organizers for the raid, which they characterized as a “failure,” according to the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. The group, delivering one of the first public criticisms from Israel’s military community, called for an “external inquiry and said raid commanders should shoulder the blame.

A seventh protest ship, which had been delayed due to mechanical issues, the Rachel Corrie, arrived Saturday off the coast of Gaza, but it was intercepted without violence. Most of its passengers were deported Sunday.

Free Gaza, the group that organized the aid flotilla, is vowing to send additional ships in the future.

Meanwhile, fallout from the incident continued Sunday. South Korea downgraded this week’s planned visit by Israeli President Shimon Peres from “official” to “working.” Vietnam had previously called off Peres’ stop there.

American rock band the Pixies cancelled their upcoming tour date in Israel, saying in a statement that “events beyond all our control have conspired against us. We can only hope for better days, in which we will finally present the long-awaited visit of the Pixies in Israel.” Two British bands, Klaxons and Gorillaz, also canceled appearances.

And an Iranian spokesman said the elite Revolutionary Guard were prepared to supply a military escort to cargo ships seeking to break the Israeli blockade.

” Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces are fully prepared to escort the peace and freedom convoys to Gaza with all their powers and capabilities,” Ali Shirazi, a representative of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency.

Jewish Agency chairman institutes $1 million prize for distinguished achievement to be granted to Jew for ‘contributing to humanity.’ Prize money funded by Genesis fund, led by Jewish oligarch Mikhail Friedman

Itamar Eichner

Published: 05.16.10, 15:14 / Israel Jewish Scene 

Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky is promoting a program that will grant a Nobel-style prize, worth $1 million, to be granted once a year to a Jew from Israel or the Diaspora for making a significant contribution to all of humanity.

Sharansky asked President Shimon Peres to endorse the prize. However, the legal advisor to the president’s residence ruled that the president’s residence will not be able to endorse the prize on a permanent basis, but that there is nothing preventing the president from granting the prize from year to year.

Sharansky also contacted Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin to ask him to head the prize’s panel of judges. It was also agreed that the first prize would be granted in the Knesset. The Jewish Agency chairman declined to comment on the matter. The president’s residence, however, confirmed that they were contacted by Sharansky.

Known as Golda Meyerson from 1917–56) was the fourth prime minister of the State of Israel.

Uriel Hellman

NEW YORK (JTA) – If Knesset member David Rotem has his way, Israel will enact a new law to make it easier for non-Jewish Israelis to convert to Judaism.

This will have the effect of better integrating tens of thousands of Israelis of Russian extraction, if not hundreds of thousands, into Israeli Jewish society, according to Rotem and Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, whose party, the Russian-dominated Yisrael Beiteinu, is sponsoring the bill. Most important, they say, the measure will make it easier for the Russians to marry other Israelis.

“This is not a one-time placebo but a real, serious effort to keep the Jewish people together,” Ayalon told JTA.

But critics, including some Diaspora Jews and non-Orthodox leaders in Israel, are not happy with the proposal. They say the bill does not go far enough to ease the conversion process, expands the power of the Chief Rabbinate, delegitimizes non-Orthodox conversions and does nothing to secure recognition in Israel for conversions performed in the Diaspora.

The objections are part of what prompted a U.S. explaining tour this week by the two legislators from Yisrael Beiteinu, whose leader, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, promised in the last campaign to tackle marriage and conversion issues. Rotem and Ayalon spent three days visiting American Jewish organizational leaders in a bid to allay concerns about the proposed bill.

The point of the tour, Ayalon explained, was “to alleviate any concerns from our brothers and sisters in the Conservative and Reform movements that they would be adversely impacted by any form of the bill.”

Rotem and Ayalon also met with the Orthodox Union and federation executives, among others, to discuss the proposed legislation.

“I want them not to worry it’s going to harm them,” Rotem said. “This law doesn’t deal with conversions done abroad. We have to solve an internal Israeli problem.”

Rabbi Uri Regev, a leading Reform rabbi in Israel and now president of Hiddush, a group that advocates for religious freedom in Israel, says that American Jewish leaders should not be distracted from the real harm the bill does in Israel.

“The devil is in the details,” Regev said. “What he’s not telling you is that the bill would result in serious ramifications in terms of the legal status of converts in general, of non-Orthodox converts in particular, and will not provide Russian olim with the kind of access and protection he claims.”

The conversion bill aims to address several problems with the status quo in Israel, according to Rotem, the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee.

In the 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people from the former Soviet Union immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants the right to Israeli citizenship to anyone with a Jewish grandparent. While most of the Russian-speaking immigrants were Jewish according to halachah, or Jewish law, many did not have a Jewish mother and so were classified in Israel as non-Jews. That has led to all sorts of problems for the estimated 350,000 to 400,000 Israelis in this category, particularly when it comes to marriage, which is controlled by religious authorities.

Israeli law makes no accommodation for civil marriage, whether between a Jew and a non-Jew or between two people of no religion. So the only way these Israelis can wed is if they convert to Judaism — no easy process in Israel.

Would-be converts must take classes, pass exams and pledge to be religiously observant, and the approval for conversions is subject to the whims of special conversion courts. Complicating matters further, rabbinical courts in Israel in the past two years have invalidated a number of conversions performed years ago, casting doubt on thousands more conversions and provoking a firestorm of controversy. The Israeli Rabbinate also has circumscribed acceptance of conversions performed overseas, including Orthodox conversions, rankling Diaspora rabbis.

Rotem says his bill would address some, but not all, of these problems.

The measure would empower any rabbi who is or was on a district rabbinate in Israel, or was or is the chief rabbi of a city or town, to perform a conversion for any Israeli regardless of place of residence. This would free would-be converts from the whims of the special conversion courts. It also would eliminate the current curricular requirements for converts, instead leaving conversion to the discretion of local rabbis.

Under the proposed law, conversions could be voided only if the rabbinical court that conducted the conversion determined it took place under false pretenses, subject to the approval of the president of the national Rabbinic Court of Appeals. And under Rotem’s proposal, a convert seeking to marry but encountering obstinacy at his local rabbinate could return to the rabbinical court that converted him to acquire his marriage license.

A few months ago, Rotem managed to get a separate bill passed to enable couples with no religion to enter into civil unions. Critics complain, however, that the law’s limitation to couples of no religion limits its impact to some 100-200 couples in Israel per year, and that it leaves unclear whether these unions will be recognized overseas as marriages. The bill does nothing to help interfaith couples, who are barred by law from marrying in Israel, or Jews who want to get married civilly rather than through the rabbinate.

The conversion bill faces significant hurdles in the Knesset. Ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, parties are fighting provisions of the bill that would ease the conversion process, and some non-Orthodox leaders complain that certain provisions of the bill may make matter worse for converts.

Rotem says the conversion bill is essential for Israel’s future. Without it, he warns, the non-Jewish, non-Arab population of Israel will swell to 1 million by 2035.

“There is a historic opportunity here to solve and dismantle a ticking time bomb that when it explodes, we in Israel won’t know what to do with ourselves,” Rotem told JTA.

Regev, a staunch critic of the bill, says that while well meaning, the measure contains several dangerous provisions. For one, it expands the Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate’s jurisdiction by bringing conversions, until now the province of special conversion courts, under the explicit authority of the Chief Rabbinate.

For another, it requires the consent of the president of the nation’s Rabbinic Court of Appeals for a conversion to be revoked. While that might be an improvement over the current situation, in which lower rabbinic courts are unilaterally voiding conversions, it also raises the specter that the position could be taken up by a fundamentalist who would take a tougher line against converts. Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who is seen as a relative moderate, occupies the post until 2014.

Moreover, the conversion bill does not guarantee that rabbinates in Israel will recognize conversions performed overseas. While Israeli law recognizes such conversions as valid, in practice Israeli rabbinates often disregard them and bar such converts from marrying Jews — particularly in the case of non-Orthodox conversions.

Rotem dismisses this problem, saying that a convert from the United States always can find some rabbinate in Israel willing to grant him a marriage license — it’s just a matter of “legwork” going from city to city to find one.

Regev says this is ridiculous.

“Instead of allowing people to marry as they see fit, with the starting point being freedom of marriage, there are acrobatics when the chief rabbi of the city makes problems for a convert who wants to marry,” he said.

This scenario also opens the door for fundamentalist rabbis to exercise whatever coercive power they can — from ostracization to intimidation — to compel members of lenient district rabbinates to fall into line.

Just how liberal a district rabbinate can be in Israel remains to be seen. They are exclusively Orthodox and frequent battlegrounds between moderate and fundamentalist Orthodox rabbis.

Ultimately, Rotem acknowledges that his bills may not go far enough, but says they are an improvement over the status quo.

“Let’s start with this,” he said.

They cannot get Israeli permission to live in the place their father calls home.

Today, Kawamle lives beyond a 21st-century wall that skirts Jerusalem’s eastern rim. His home is technically within the city limits, as drawn by Israel, but beyond the “security barrier” it has built with the stated aim of keeping out suicide bombers.

Jobless, he has turned down work because the commute through checkpoints in the wall can take hours. And he cannot move home; Kawamle has an Israeli-issued permit letting him into the city but his four children, aged 14 to 24, do not. Like many, they are caught in the bureaucratic tangle of “Jerusalem ID.”

The obstacles placed between Kawamle, his family and the city where he grew up have led him to a simple conclusion about the Israelis: “They are trying to keep us out of Jerusalem.”

Forty-two years come June since Israel captured Jerusalem, the city remains at the heart of the Middle East conflict. For Israelis, it is their “eternal and indivisible” capital, the home the Jews dreamed of through 2,000 years of bitter exile.

For Palestinians, there can be no peace deal until Israel cedes them control over at least part of the city, a symbol of their national struggle and home to Islam’s third holiest site.

Israel’s military conquest of Jerusalem from Jordan in 1967 was for the Palestinians just the start of a campaign they think still aims to force them out, deepen Israeli control and render impossible any two-state peace deal that would divide the city.

Jewish settlement building around the city, pursued by successive Israeli governments, is now at the heart of a row between Israel and its main ally the United States, which says the policy is endangering its latest attempt to advance peace.

As Israel builds in Jerusalem, and encourages foreign Jews to settle there, Palestinians say it is pushing them out. Their leaders say Israel is working ever harder to “Judaise” the city.

Palestinians who face eviction and demolition orders from the Israeli authorities complain of planning restrictions that make it near impossible to build legally and residency laws that lawyers say treat them as foreigners in their own city.

But Naomi Tzur, the Israeli deputy mayor, said claims that Palestinians are being pushed out were “absolute nonsense.” “We see in numbers that the Palestinian population of Jerusalem has grown faster than the Jewish population,” she told Reuters.

Read More

(Reuters) - In the 42 years since Israel captured Jerusalem, the rhetoric of leaders in the Middle East has reflected the deep division over the fate of the city. Jerusalem remains at the heart of the conflict in the region.

Here are some of the statements made since 1967:

* Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president from 1970 to 1981, in a speech to the Israeli Knesset in Jerusalem in 1977:

“There are Arab lands which Israel occupied and continues to occupy through armed force. We insist on the complete withdrawal from them, including Arab Jerusalem … It is inadmissible that anyone should conceive the special status of the city of Jerusalem within the framework of annexation or expansionism.”

* Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, to Time Magazine in 1973: “Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided — not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing. The only way we will lose Jerusalem is if we lose a war, and then we lose all of it.”

* Yasser Arafat, Palestinian president and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization until his death in 2004, said more than once:

“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Palestinian state. Whoever accepts this, fine. Whoever does not, let him drink from the sea at Gaza.”

“There is absolutely nobody among us who will surrender one grain of the soil of noble Jerusalem.”

* Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of Israel, in a speech to the Knesset in 1995, the year of his assassination:

“I said yesterday, and repeat today, that there are not two Jerusalems; there is only one Jerusalem. From our perspective, Jerusalem is not a subject for compromise. Jerusalem was ours, will be ours, is ours and will remain as such forever.”

* Ban Ki-moon, U.N. secretary-general, in a March 20 statement made alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah:

“The world has condemned Israel’s settlement expansion plans in East Jerusalem. Let us be clear: all settlement activities is illegal anywhere in occupied territories and this must stop.”

“We can and must find a way for Jerusalem to emerge from negotiations as the capital of two states with arrangements for holy sites acceptable to all.”

* Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999 and its current leader, in a March 22 Washington speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC):

“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It’s our capital.”

In a March 15 speech: “We will continue to ensure that Jerusalem is an open city accessible to all religions; a city where Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims co-exist and enjoy freedom of religion and access to religious sites.”

* Mahmoud Abbas, current Palestinian president and PLO chairman, in a speech to the 2007 Annapolis peace conference in the United States:

“We want East Jerusalem to be our capital — a capital where we will have open relations with West Jerusalem and where we will guarantee for believers of all religions the freedom to practice their rituals.”

* Khaled Meshaal, leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, in a March 16 speech:

“Jerusalem belongs to its people, to the Arab and Muslim people of Palestine. It’s the gate to heaven and it is not fitting to make Jerusalem a gate to surrender and sellout. No Palestinian, Arab or Muslim leader, regardless of his stature, can sign a deal that gives away Jerusalem, or provide cover for such a deal.”

* Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the Islamic revolution in Iran, in a 1981 address marking al-Quds day (Jerusalem day), which he declared as falling on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan:

“In order to liberate al-Quds (Jerusalem), machineguns relying on faith and the power of Islam must be used, and political games redolent of compromise and keeping the superpowers happy laid aside.”

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)