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It is not yet Soviet Russia, Rabbi:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A federal judge on Monday rejected prosecutors’ request to close portions of an upcoming trial for two former pro-Israel lobbyists accused of violating the Espionage Act.

The government’s proposal to keep huge swaths of evidence in the case out of public view was unprecedented and violated both the defendants’ and the public’s right to an open trial, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis said.

The defendants — Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, who had been lobbyists with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — are charged with illegally disclosing sensitive national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, including journalists and foreign diplomats.

Read the rest here…

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of AMCHA, a Jewish organization that also filed an amicus brief at the hearing, welcomed the ruling.

“How do they propose to close the court?” Herzfeld said of the prosecution. “Is this Soviet Russia?” — JTA

Technorati Tags: AIPAC, Rosen, Weissman

From the Jerusalem Post:

The Foreign Ministry on Monday expressed concern to Russian Ambassador Piotr Stegniy about an “anti-Semitic” promotional video that was shown at a Euroleague basketball game in Moscow last week.

The Russian video clip, which depicted CSKA Moscow as a train running over a hassidic-looking Jewish man meant to represent Maccabi Tel Aviv, was shown to thousands of fans in the arena.

“We view the incident very seriously,” a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman told The Jerusalem Post. She said Mark Sofer, the Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for Euro-Asia, had spoken over the telephone with Stegniy, who promised to deal with the matter. Israel also sent a letter of complaint to CSKA’s management…

The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said there was no other way to view a clip, in which Israel is represented by a stereotypical image of a haredi-looking man with side curls and a shtreimel. Anti-Semitic chants were also heard from the crowd, she added.

The Foreign Ministry behaved correctly in taking this most seriously. I hope that they have protested Russia’s continuing sales of advanced weaponry to Syria as strongly.

Update [17 Apr 1713 PDT]: Here’s the video, courtesy of YNet.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Russia

Recently I suggested that the Arab League ‘peace’ initiative is being presented as an ultimatum: accept it as written, or face war. Now the Syrian information minister states this about as clearly as possible:

“If Israel rejects the Arab League peace proposal, resistance will be the only way to liberate the Golan Heights,” warns Syrian Information Minister Muhsen Bilal, at a press conference in Damascus Monday.

The minister explained that Syria had an interest in renewing talks with Israel with support from America and Russia. “Syria wants to reach a fair, comprehensive peace,” he added. However, he also stated that “any nation living under occupation has the prerogative to resist. In Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, we must liberate all occupied Arab land.” — YNet

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria, Arab League initiative

By Vic Rosenthal

The current issue of the New York Review of Books contains an article entitled “On Israel, America and AIPAC”. It’s notable not for its contents, which are a rehash of popular pro-Arab positions, attacks on AIPAC, and a swipe at Alvin Rosenfeld’s article on left-wing antisemitism, but for its author: billionaire George Soros.

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Bill Clinton, with all due respect, needs to think before he speaks:

Former US president Bill Clinton said that peace between Israel and Syria could be achieved within 35 minutes, if Iran would stay out of the matter.

In an interview with London-based Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Clinton said that the two states were on the verge of reaching a peace agreement in 1998, adding that negotiations behind closed doors and without media intervention, such as those conducted in Oslo in 1993, were the only way to solve the conflict. — YNet

This may well be true in the sense that if there were no Iran, Israel and Syria could reach an agreement. But no matter what Iran does in the future, Hezbollah and the Syrian military buildup are facts that won’t go away quickly. Today it would be suicidal for Israel to give up the strategic advantages of the Golan.

The US is anxious to make this happen, hoping to gain influence with Syria so that she will tighten up her border with Iraq. I’m not sure that the leverage will work in that direction.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Syria, Iran

The Vatican’s ambassador to Israel has reversed an earlier decision, and will visit Yad Vashem.

Monsignor Antonio Franco, announced last week that he would skip Sunday night’s event because of a caption at the [Yad Vashem Holocaust] museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII.

The caption next to the picture of Pius in Yad Vashem’s museum reads, “Even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest,” refusing to sign a 1942 allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews…

Officials from Yad Vashem, the Vatican’s Embassy and the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed that Sunday that Franco had reversed his decision and would attend Sunday’s ceremony.

Franco told Ynet he merely wanted to draw attention to the Catholic Church’s stance regarding the picture of Pius, saying it was “only diplomacy.”

According to him, there is evidence that the pope worked diligently to help save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. — YNet

Here is a story told to my wife by a survivor now living in Israel. This woman was not given to making things up and there’s no reason to doubt her story.

Molly’s parents managed to get her family from Germany to Italy by the beginning of the war when she was perhaps 10 or 11 years old. She was hidden in a convent in Rome near the Vatican with her sister and brother and several other children; only the Mother Superior knew that they were Jewish.

Molly remembers that the Mother Superior would take the children from time to time on “dry runs” through a long underground tunnel into another building; she was told that this was part of the Vatican and that this would be their escape route if their presence and identity were discovered by the Germans.

Did the Pope know? How many children were saved through similar arrangements? Who knows?

Technorati Tags: Holocaust, Pius XII, Vatican

My ability to employ irony is getting severely strained:

Abbas and his associates presented a deployment plan for Palestinian presidential guards along the Philadelphi Route, as part of the effort to prevent weapons’ smuggling to Gaza via Egypt.

The plan was derived as part of an effort to increase the strength of the presidential guards, using US support, in coordination with Israel, Jordan and Egypt. — YNet

Keep in mind that the EU and Egyptians had little success at this. I suppose the idea is that the Egyptians and EU had no interest in preventing smuggling which strengthened Israel’s enemies, while Abbas has a real interest in weakening his enemies in Hamas.

There is something profoundly disquieting in the idea of Israel being forced to put all its eggs in the Fatah basket, when this organization is no less hostile to the Jewish state than Hamas.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Gaza, Abbas

The FresnoZionism award for the ‘guy we most wish wasn’t Jewish’ was hotly contested this year. With nominees like Israeli President Moshe Katsav and Justice Minister Haim Ramon, we were sure the prize (a jar of oxidized horseradish from last Pesach) would find a home in the Jewish state. But Israel has enough trouble without that horseradish, and we’re happy to announce that it is on its way to (we hope soon to be former) World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz.

Showing a combination of arrogance, greed, stupidity, and plain tackiness that even outdoes last year’s winner Jack Abramoff, Wolfowitz negotiated a contract that would make a sports star blush when he joined the World Bank in 2005. Now he’s been caught arranging a new job for his girlfriend with a salary of nearly $200,000/yr.

The irony of Wolfowitz telling borrower countries that they have to clean up corruption while he feathers his own nest is striking. The girlfriend is said to be a former ‘gender consultant’, and while I would be the last to make jokes about exactly what that entails, I wonder if it’s worth $200,000.

Technorati Tags: Wolfowitz

Everyone knows about the absurdity of the UN Human Rights Council, which since its formation has passed 8 resolutions condemning Israel and none against any other nation. But it’s not the only UN body that behaves, er, strangely. Take the UN Commission on Disarmament (please):

On April 9, 2007 there was a United Nations believe-it-or-not moment extraordinaire. At the same time that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad declared his country was now capable of industrial-scale uranium enrichment, the U.N. reelected Iran as a vice chairman of the U.N. Disarmament Commission…

So in Iran at the Natanz nuclear facility Ahmadinejad gloated: “With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale.” And in New York, courtesy of his U.N. platform, Iranian Disarmament Vice-Chairman Seyed Mohammad Ali Robatjazi railed against “noncompliance with the NPT [nuclear nonproliferation treaty] by the United States” and “the Zionist lobby”…

Following the election on Monday of Iran as vice chairman, the U.N. Disarmament Commission elected Syria as its rapporteur. — Anne Bayefsky in NRO

Yes, of course, the real problem is the Zionist lobby.

Technorati Tags: UN, Zionist Lobby

Why announce this?

Israel is seriously considering participating in an Arab League working group to be set up as part of efforts to implement the decision taken at the League summit last month endorsing full normalization in return for a withdrawal to the Green Line, senior diplomatic sources said.

It would mark the first time Israel and an Arab League body have held diplomatic contacts, but the discussions would be limited to Arab League states that have ties with Israel: Egypt, Jordan and Qatar.

However, the sources cautioned that Israel had still not received any formal invitation to take part in working group discussions, and the Arab League had not yet set up the group. — Jerusalem Post

“Senior diplomatic sources” apparently didn’t explain how Israel could help ‘implement’ a plan that it is specifically not permitted to have input to: representatives of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt have all explained that the plan must first be accepted in toto before there can be any talks. And as it stands it is a plan that Israel cannot possibly accept, since it includes a right of return for refugees, and a full return to the Green Line.

I understand that Israel needs to show that she is willing to talk, wants peace, etc. But the Arab league initiative is not an invitation to talk, it’s a take-it-or-leave-it package that Israel can’t afford to take.

Olmert has already suggested a summit between Israel and the Arabs on the principle that the Arab League initiative is a starting point for negotiations, not an end point. But the Arabs immediately rejected this.

Now Israel is inviting itself to a forum that doesn’t exist. The obvious next move is for the Arabs to announce that as soon as Israel accepts their initiative, they are ready to talk about practical details of the withdrawal and refugee return. Let’s see how long this takes.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Arab League

Condoleeza Rice will be visiting the Mideast on a monthly basis, the US State Department says:

Israelis and Palestinians could start to explore fundamental peace issues this summer, US officials said, in a sign they believe some progress is possible despite myriad obstacles.

In interviews this week, senior US officials acknowledged the challenge of getting two politically weak leaders - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - to engage seriously on peace.

The problem is not in getting them to talk. The problem is in anything either of them says mattering.

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From the BBC:

Oxfam has called on the European Union to resume sending aid to the Palestinian government or risk its territories becoming a failed state.

Earth to Oxfam and the BBC:

• It’s not a state.

• Could things get any more ‘failed’?

• Since the PA has gotten more aid since the ‘boycott’ started, perhaps the problem isn’t the lack of money but the allocation thereof?

Palestinian priorities never change: always guns before butter, killing Jews before feeding Arabs.

Technorati Tags: BBC, Oxfam, Palestinian Authority