European High Representative for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy Baroness Catherine Ashton decided to head to China instead of participating in the Middle East stakeholders dinner hosted by President Obama in the Old Family Dining Room this week. Read More »
Huffington Post 
Malcolm Levene: The Intuitive Tailor
This blog was inspired by a friend who asked me to help him to purchase a suit. Clothes, fabric, style and design are attached to my DNA, so to speak. The kind of DNA I’m referring to is Design , Nuance and Attractiveness . These three characteristics are what make any clothing item truly desirable. Read More »
Gahl Eden Sasson: Mercury Retrograde and Politics
Mercury, the fastest planet in the Solar System, is retrograding until Sep 13. Of course the planet didn’t shift gear to reverse, but from earth it looks as if it is going backward. Imagine when you are standing at a traffic light and the car next to you moves forward, it feels to you as if you are going backward. Read More »
Palestinian Rep. Calls Yale Conference ‘Anti-Arab’
Yale Daily News : The U.S. representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization has accused Yale of hosting right-wing extremists at a recent conference on anti-Semitism. Read More »
Wiesenthal Worked For Israeli Spy Agency, Book Alleges
New York Times : “This requires us to adjust in some small way our view of history,” said Tom Segev, the author of the new book “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” which is being published by Doubleday this week in the United States and simultaneously in six other countries. Read More »
Alan Elsner: Mideast Peace talks go better than expected despite Hamas
This week’s meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas went better than expected, with both leaders saying all the right things and setting a timetable of regular fortnightly meetings for their peace negotiations. The leaders had come to Washington amid pessimism and doubts from both sides. Read More »
Craig and Marc Kielburger: Peace Talks Offer Obama a Chance to Regain Approval
Opinion polls give you numbers. But the coffee shop we recently visited in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia gave us the reason behind them. When we walked into the small establishment in the oil-rich Gulf city, the air was heavy with fruit-flavored shisha smoke. Like most cities, the patrons automatically assumed we were American. Read More »
Hoyt Hilsman: A New Path to the Two-State Solution
For more than seventy years, the “two-state solution” has been a negotiating point between Israel and the Palestinians. In negotiation after negotiation, the goal has been continuously restated, and yet seems ever more remote. Read More »
Rabbi David Wolpe: Facebook-Faith
The half life of a good sermon is like the half life of a good meal. Each Rabbi spends a tremendous amount of time preparing for the high holidays. Then we give the sermons and they are gone. Perhaps they linger with some congregants, but the obligations of life intervene. For those who regularly attend services, perhaps the sermons linger. Read More »
Simon Wiesenthal Worked For Mossad, Book Claims
JERUSALEM — Renowned Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal worked for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, providing information on war criminals and Germans working in Arab countries, according to a new book released Thursday. Read More »
Vaishali: Mosque’d in Controversy
Recently there has been so much time and energy given to the topic of building a mosque near the site of the Twin Towers, that it would be a shame to allow the opportunity for greater understanding to pass by without further examination. Read More »
Netanyahu, Abbas Begin Direct Middle East Peace Talks
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton formally opened the first direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly two years on Thursday, imploring the parties to ignore the long history of failed negotiations and make needed compromises to forge an agreement. Read More »
Robert J. Elisberg: Graham Crackers, and Other Sins of the Father
The news the other week shocked a lot of people: 18% of Americans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim. This sounds pretty dismal, until you realize that in a 2002 poll , 38% of Americans believed the United States should make Canada the 51st state. Compared to that, the 18% doesn’t sound so bad. Read More »
Amy B. Dean: Labor Day’s Legacy: A More Inclusive America
At some point in their lives, almost all parents think about making a will to ensure that their assets are passed on to the next generation. But material gains, of course, are the least of what we give our children. Far more important are the values we teach them. Read More »
Obama, Mideast Leaders Kick Off Talks With Call For Peace
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The top Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip rejected compromise with Israel in a fiery speech Wednesday, a day after gunmen killed four Israelis in a strong reminder that the Islamic militant group cannot be ignored in any Mideast deal. Read More »
Stefan Beck: The Grog Days of Summer (PHOTOS)
We are well and truly living in the Last Days. True, I tend to start complaining about summer’s imminent demise about a week after the Fourth of July. Read More »
Simon Jenkins: A Trillion-Dollar Catastrophe. Yes, Iraq Was a Headline War
Mission accomplished? The Iraq war did more than anything to alienate the Atlantic powers from the rest of the world today the Iraq war was declared over by Barack Obama . As his troops return home, Iraqis are marginally freer than in 2003, and considerably less secure. Read More »
High Holidays: Synagogues Reconsider High Price
By Nicole Neroulias Religion News Service Within a short drive from her suburban New York home, Lisa Sharp has her pick of synagogues. But she is not interested in spending thousands of dollars to join a congregation, and in recent years, she has opted against paying to attend holiday worship services. Read More »
MJ Rosenberg: US Condemns Murder of Israelis — But Never of Palestinians
The first statement to come out of the meeting today between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu was Obama’s strong condemnation of the horrific killing of four Israeli settlers on the West Bank. These were civilians who were simply driving in a car when Hamas snipers took them out. The President was right to condemn these murders. Read More »
Joshua Treviño: Why the President’s Partisans Talk Down Islam
Among the more pernicious rumors swirling about Obama are those dealing with his Muslim connections. Or so we’re told: the persons who denounce — and not coincidentally promulgate — these rumors are generally the same ones who loudly assert that there is nothing wrong whatsoever with Muslim connections per se . They’re right about that. Read More »
Daoud Kuttab: Palestinian Strategic Path Towards Independence Will Continue Despite Obstacles
There is a chance that the Israeli occupation that began in 1967 will soon end and an independent Palestinian state will emerge. The direct peace talks taking place in Washington is a necessary step towards that goal, but it is not the only option that Palestinians have. Read More »
WaPo: ‘On Faith’ The spiritual convergence of Rosh Hashanah, Eid al-Fitr and 9/11
washingtonpost.com : With both Rosh Hashanah and the feast of Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of Ramadan, falling this year on September 10–one day before the ninth anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks– American Jews and Muslims must stand shoulder Read More »
Leon T. Hadar: Obama’s Mideast Policy: An Unpromising Drive towards a Cost-Effective Pax Americana
President Barack Obama is continuing to reorient U.S. foreign policy in general, and in the Middle East in particular, along the lines of the internationalist/neo-realist approach pursued in the pre-9/11 years of Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Obama’s Tuesday’s televised address marking the end of the U.S. Read More »
Paul Jay: From Joe McCarthy to Glenn Beck — Time to End Fear of the Witch Hunt
I listened to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” speech hoping to find something of substance to write about. I found a stringing together of such empty phrases it does not bear discussion. The more important issue is why a man whose megalomania seems to have no bounds can become such a phenomena (he knows not only the truth, but truly knows God). Read More »
Terry Newell: Honoring Martin Luther King: Reflections on the “Restoring Honor Rally”
The “Restoring Honor” rally held on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28 came 47 years to the day after the March on Washington. On that earlier day, Martin Luther King, Jr. proclaimed “I have a dream … Read More »
Tony Blair Memoir: Thinks War In Iraq Was Right, Finds Gordon Brown Maddening
LONDON — It’s a political memoir with celebrity trappings – secrecy, security, a multimillion-dollar deal and, crucially, controversy. Read More »
Palestinians Crack Down On Hamas After West Bank Shooting
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Palestinian security forces arrested more than 150 Hamas members in an overnight sweep throughout the West Bank after the Islamic militant group claimed responsibility for shooting dead four Israelis on the eve of new Mideast peace talks. Read More »
Sarah Sayeed, Ph.D.: Building Shared Cultural and Spiritual Spaces: Lessons in the Mosque Debate
As an American Muslim and a mother about to send my child to a high school located just blocks from Ground Zero, I am taken aback by protests around the country about the building of mosques — the sacred and solemn spaces that I and my family seek out to find peace and prayer. Read More »
Joseph A. Palermo: An Unsanitized Look at the Origins of the Iraq War
Neo-conservatives within the Bush Administration – Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, and others, repeatedly told us on TV that individuals who opposed President George W. Read More »
Obama Tiptoes Into The Israel-Palestine Crisis
As direct talks between Israeli and Palestinian leadership commence, the Obama administration finds itself in perhaps the most delicate diplomatic position it has yet assumed on the international stage. Read More »
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach: Status Symbols and the American Express Black Card
As a seventeen-year-old student at Rabbinical college, a riddle was put to me. A beggar is invited to a billionaire’s home for dinner. The homeless man has never had such scrumptious food. He throws his entire being into slopping down his soup and devouring his chicken. Read More »
Daniel Levy: Want that Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, Mr. President? Perform a c-section
After more than 20 months of trying, the Obama administration will this week convene direct Israel-Palestinian peace talks in Washington D.C. Read More »
Taufiq Rahim: Imam Feisal Abdul-Rauf Praises America as Muslims Applaud Him
” There is a deep linkage between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – structurally. We have to shift the divide and elevate the discourse… Read More »
Sharmine Narwani: Khaled Meshaal Interview: Hamas Chief Weighs In on Eve of Peace Talks
With pundits in most capitals already predicting failure for the US-brokered Palestinian-Israeli peace talks to begin on Thursday, it seems only natural to start asking the question: “What’s next?” To get a jumpstart on what surely will be an Read More »
Alan Dershowitz: Three Myths About the Peace Process
In the days leading up to the initial meeting between President Obama, Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas, the op-ed pages and blogs have been filled with opinion pieces about the dynamics of the upcoming peace process. Read More »
Shai Baitel: Hot or Not? About Climate and Peace Talks
The summer of 2010 will be remembered as one of the hottest in many cities around the world. This is particularly true for Washington DC and Jerusalem, even if for different reasons. It is little wonder then that words such as ‘chill’ and ‘freezing’ have become popular terms. On September 2, U.S. Read More »
Jon Foreman: The Economy of the Garden — Part Two
Watermelons want to rule the world — at least the two that we planted in our backyard. They took a long time to get started. For a while, they looked almost dead and we wondered whether they were going to make it, but gradually, the two watermelon vines began to grow. Read More »
Dilara Hafiz: Understanding Muslim Fireworks on 9/11/10
The 9th anniversary of 9/11. Silent vigils, memorial services, and commemorative events will be held around the USA. Foreign press outlets will undoubtedly devote a few minutes to replay the horrific footage while remarking on the solemn observances across our country. Read More »
Donna Baranski-Walker: 30 Days Before Dawn: A Non-Muslim Celebrating Ramadan, Day 14
The moon was full when we chose to end our Ramadan fast and so begin our trip across the world to Poland, where I am to receive an international award. The requirements of Ramadan — though always a personal choice — state that one may break the fast during travel. Read More »
Ed Koch: A Film Unfinished (A Mayor Koch Review)
Writer-director Yael Hersonski takes the footage from a never-completed Nazi propoganda film and turns it into a documentary that examines what the Nazis hoped to accomplish with their portrayals of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto . You should see it….it’s a stark reminder of the anti-Semitism that still exists throughout the world. Read More »
PHOTOS, VIDEO: The World Testicle Cooking Championship
Associated Press : OZREM, Serbia — In a remote Serbian mountain village, they’re cooking up delicacies to make your mouth water – or your stomach churn. At the seventh annual World Testicle Cooking Championship, visitors watch – and sometimes taste – as teams of chefs cook up bull, boar, camel, ostrich and even kangaroo testicles. Read More »
Dan Abrams: Please Stop Complaining About the Media’s ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ Coverage
Now that the initial furor has died down, much of the media is quickly coming to a consensus that the debate over building a Muslim community and prayer center two blocks from Ground Zero was overblown. It is/was part of a “summer of fear ,” a “ginned up rage ,” or “a frenzy over a story that doesn’t really exist . Read More »
John Boehner’s Pre-Emptive Strike Against Obama: Speech Touches On Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel And …
Hotline On Call : House Min. Leader John Boehner (R-OH) will get the jump on Pres. Obama’s prime time address, offering his second major address in as many weeks and setting up Boehner as a viable opponent to Obama if the GOP takes back the House this year and Boehner becomes Speaker. Read More »
Harold Yong Park Arrested In Hollywood Triple Homicide
LOS ANGELES — A man found with “multiple pounds” of marijuana has been arrested in the shooting deaths of three men in a West Hollywood apartment, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said. Harold Yong Park, 31, of Los Angeles, was arrested Monday during a traffic stop in Lomita, about 20 miles south of West Hollywood, authorities said. Read More »
Anita Diamant: My (Jewish) Daughter’s Tattoo
My little girl sat on the bench beside me. It was summertime; we were on vacation near the sea while waiting for the clock to chime our dinner reservation table. This would be one of her first grown-up restaurant meals, and we were excited at the prospect. We were people-watching and the newly popular belly-button ring was on display. Read More »
Muslims Go Green For Ramadan
By Michele Chabin Religion News Service JERUSALEM (RNS) When Mohammad Rabah prays during the holy month of Ramadan, he makes a special effort to conserve water during ritual purifications. Read More »
Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Iraq’s Remains of the Day
On Tuesday evening, President Obama will address the nation to mark the end of America’s official combat role in Iraq. Read More »
Marcia Dawkins: Multiracial Advocates Change Race-Based Mississippi School Policy
Last week Nettleton Middle School was forced to drop its 30-year policy of race-based selections for school government and homecoming positions. The selection rules were brought to light by Brandy Springer, a mother of four multiracial children in Nettleton, Mississippi. Read More »
Earl Ofari Hutchinson: President Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal is A Great Deal for Progressives
Much has been made by some critics that the scheduled Iraq withdrawal is much less than meets the eye. Their points of criticism are that 50,000 troops will stay in the country, at a cost of billions more of US tax dollars, and there’s no firm guarantee that they’ll go packing, one and all, any time soon. Read More »
Dora Levy Mossanen: The Dangers of Gossip
I attended services at Sinai Temple last Saturday, as always, looking forward to Rabbi David Wolpe’s sermon and making a silent pact with myself to apply any lesson from his sermon to help me reach some peaceful resolution regarding any difficulty de jour I might be facing, which seemed quite gloomy that day. Read More »
Bar Refaeli Tweets About ‘Shaky And Hungry’ Teen Models
Model and Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriend Bar Refaeli has taken to Twitter to post her thoughts on body image. Although her account isn’t “verified,” we’re reasonably sure it does indeed belong to the Israeli beauty since it’s linked to from her official Tumblr . So what did Bar have to say? Some candid thoughts before Fashion Week… Read More »
Alon Ben-Meir: God Has Already Spoken
As direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are launched this week, it will be critical that the talks address the religious dimension of the conflict. This has been given only scant attention thus far, despite the fact that it has, and will continue to have, a tremendous impact on the ultimate outcome of the negotiations. Read More »
Spread ArtCulture: New Visions of the Apocalypse (VIDEO)
By Kiša Lala “Acqua Alta in Venice, An image from “Beautiful Islands,” Horizon Features” A recent surge in apocalyptic films indicates the mood of the zeitgeist. Read More »
Heather Ferguson: Why Islamic History Offers New Reasons to Support Democracy in Egypt, the Middle
Islamic democracy is a contradiction in terms — at least that is the implicit message coming from the Obama administration. In Egypt, where an opposition movement led by Mohamed ElBaradei — a Nobel laureate and the former head of the International Atomic Agency — has presented the U.S. Read More »
Dan Collins: The Coronation of Andrew Cuomo
“News endorses Cuomo,” said a headline on the front page of Sunday’s Daily News . Doesn’t this seem a bit early? The election isn’t until November, and the Republicans don’t even pick a gubernatorial candidate until the Sept. 14 primary. Exactly the point, said the News . Read More »
Influential Israeli Rabbi: Abbas Should ‘Perish From This World’
JERUSALEM — An influential Israeli rabbi known for his vitriolic pronouncements against Arabs says Palestinians and their leader should “perish from this world.” Israel Army Radio quoted Ovadia Yosef Sunday as saying the Palestinians were “evil, bitter enemies of Israel” and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should be struck with a plague. Read More »
Giving Your Way Out Of Difficulty: A ‘Jewel Of Elul’ By Ketra Oberlander
Editor’s note: There is a great Jewish tradition to dedicate the 29 days in the month of Elul to study and prepare for the coming high holy days. The time is supposed to challenge us to use each day as an opportunity for growth and discovery. Read More »
Sherman A. Jackson: Sharî’ah: Between Two Popes
While it started out as a minor footnote, opposition to sharî’ah has now morphed into the mantra by which many justify their opposition to the so-called “Ground Zero mosque. Read More »
Alanna Zabel: An Enlightened Plastic Surgeon?
On Aug 16, 2010, around 4: 30pm, Dr. Frank Ryan died when his 1995 Jeep Wrangler went off the side of Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu and landed on its roof. As I periodically checked the internet for any accident investigation results, I gathered my thoughts and memories of this great man. Read More »
Christian Avard: Dr Jack Shaheen: “More leadership needed on Park 51 conversation.”
The national conversation on the Park 51 Islamic Community Center has taken a turn for the worst. Opponents claim it’s too close to the Ground Zero and is offensive to families who lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. Others call it a breeding ground for Al Qaida terrorist networks and have protested at the proposed site. Read More »
