Clinton: Only so much the U.S. can do in Mideast

JERUSALEM (Press Release)– The U.S. State Department released the following transcript of an interview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by Christiane Amanpour of ABC Television Network.  It was conducted on September 16.

QUESTION: Madam Secretary, thank you for joining us.

SECRETARY CLINTON: It’s a pleasure. Thank you for being here in Jerusalem.

QUESTION: How are the talks going? Are you done beyond the sort of photo ops stage? Are you into core issues?

SECRETARY CLINTON: We really are, Christiane, and I have to say it’s been impressive to see the two leaders engaged so seriously, so early, on what are the core issues. Now, these two men know each other, they have actually negotiated before. But as Senator Mitchell has said, usually when you get into direct talks, it takes a while. There is a lot of trying to position oneself and take the measure of the other person. But these talks are already into very sensitive and important areas.

QUESTION: What’s the first issue? Is it security, is it borders? What’s actually being discussed right now?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can’t go into that, but there is an obvious lineup of issues. For Israel, security is paramount. I mean, they would be not fulfilling their responsibility as leaders if they didn’t put security first. For the Palestinians, a sovereign independent viable state is their paramount desire. So obviously, there are many other issues that have to be worked out. But in trying to derive at an agreement, if these two issues can’t be addressed and determined, it would be difficult.

Apollo signet ring found by Israeli archaeologists

HAIFA (Press Release)–A rare bronze signet ring with the impression of the face of the Greek sun god, Apollo, has been discovered at Tel Dor, in northern Israel, by University of Haifa diggers.

“A piece of high-quality art such as this, doubtlessly created by a top-of-the-line artist, indicates that local elites developing a taste for fine art and the ability to afford it were also living in provincial towns, and not only in the capital cities of the Hellenistic kingdoms,” explains Dr. Ayelet Gilboa, Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, who headed the excavations at Dor along with Dr. Ilan Sharon of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

When the ring was recovered from a waste pit near Hellenistic structures, it was covered with layers of earth and corrosion, and the archaeologists had no indication whatsoever that it would reveal the shape of a legendary figure. Only after the ring was cleaned up at the Restoration and Conservation laboratory at the Hebrew University’s Institute of Archaeology, was the profile of a beardless young male with long hair, clean-shaven and adorned with a laurel wreath, revealed.

Looming expiration of building freeze a crisis for Mideast talks

By Ira Sharkansky  

Ira Sharkansky

JERUSALEM — The pressure is building, both on Israel and the Palestinians. 

The immediate issue is the freeze on building in the settlements, set to expire in about a week.

Various Palestinians have said, time and again, that they would cease the peace talks if there is construction of even one building in the Jewish settlements.

The American President and Secretary of State have said on several occasions that it would be wise for Israel to extend the freeze on building in settlements as a gesture to the Palestinians in order keep the peace talks going.

The General Secretary of the United Nations has signed on to the campaign, along with the Chancellor of Germany.

Yale Strom authors a book on Dave Tarras, “klezmer king”

SAN DIEGO (Press Release)–San Diegan Yale Strom, himself a well known klezmer musician and musicologist, spent months interviewing people who knew Dave Taras, whom some have called the  “The Benny Goodman of klezmer.”

Tarras is considered the most influential klezmer musician of the Twentieth Century. Scion of a musical family in Ternovke, Ukraine, Tarras played at weddings for Jews and non-Jews − even playing in the Czarist army − up to World War One.  He immigrated to America and after a brief stint as a furrier, began to make a living with his clarinet. From 1925 until his death in 1989, Dave Tarras set the standard for klezmer musicianship and virtuosity.  Even the great be-bop artists Charlie Parker and Miles Davis travelled to the Catskills to study the technique of this complex and compelling virtuoso.

‘Ruined’ an evocative story of rape and war

By Cynthia Citron 

Cynthia Citron

LOS ANGELES –It’s difficult to imagine that a play based on atrocities committed during two decades of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo could be construed as an entertaining evening in the theater.   Oddly enough, though, it is.

The play s called Ruined and it is currently on stage at the Geffen Playhouse.  Written by the prolific Lynn Nottage, it is a compendium of war stories that she and director Kate Whoriskey collected in Africa from women who had been raped and tortured during the war.  This was a war, you may remember, that used rape as a weapon against women and children.  It is also a war that left more than five million people dead.

Nottage, who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as countless other major awards for this play, has brought nearly all the original New York cast to Los Angeles for this production.  And they are so extraordinary that you will be hard-pressed to believe that they didn’t come directly from Congo itself.

Jerusalem spends a day without traffic lights

By Judy Lash Balint

Judy Lash Balint

JERUSALEM — I know most Jews call Yom Kippur by other names, but here in Jerusalem, it’s the Day of No Traffic Lights. There are no traffic lights because there’s no traffic on Yom Kippur in Jerusalem. The city just turns off the lights for 25 hours. Imagine—an entire country without any motor vehicle traffic apart from emergency vehicles and security patrols. The quiet is absolutely stunning. Starting from sundown on erev Yom Kippur, 25 hours of blissful peace and quiet. Think of the negative carbon footprint impact! No traffic; radio and TV stations are silent; no phones ringing; no home appliances whirring; no airplanes overhead—you can actually hear the wind in the trees and the song of the birds.

Pedestrians share the road with bicycles ridden by hundreds of secular Israelis who savor the day as a safe opportunity to try out their biking skills with no annoying traffic lights or crazy Israeli drivers. But the overwhelming sense is of a people taking a complete day to evaluate and perhaps change their lives.

Walking to Kol Nidre, the streets are thronged with people clad in white, to signify purity and a withdrawal for one day from the vanities of our usual fancy clothing.

Every synagogue is packed to overflowing, and several hundred community centers around the country also offer Yom Kippur services with emphasis on discussion and openness for those who might never before stepped foot in a synagogue.

Commentary: A crucial settlement concern

By Bruce S. Ticker

Bruce S. Ticker

PHILADELPHIA — “Everybody loses if there is no peace.” So stated Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the White House to herald the revival of peace talks.

Too bad Israeli troops were not around to keep the peace the night before on the road to the West Bank settlement of Beit Hagal. What two women and two men had to lose were their lives, near Hebron.

Nothing justifies how these savages fired upon their car and removed the victims from the vehicle when they shot them again to ensure that they were dead. The New York Times carried a photo of Hodaya Ames, 9, as she wept next to the draped body of her mother, Tali Ames, 45, who had been pregnant and was also a grandmother.

However, the Israeli government under the current and past administrations – whether right-wing or left-leaning – knows that the Aug. 31 slaughter is the latest in an ongoing pattern of Arab attacks in the decades since the settlements swelled in the West Bank.

Nachas for Garry Fabian, our Australia bureau chief

Our Australia bureau chief Garry Fabian's grandchildren, Ruth and Seamus Carr bookend their father, Senator Kim Carr and Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard at recent reception

American group grants $600,000 for Israeli cancer research

BEER-SHEVA, Israel (Press Release) – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) Professor Varda Shoshan-Barmatz has been awarded a three-year, $600,000 grant from the U.S. Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to develop target-specific, anti-cancer drugs.

Professor Shoshan-Barmatz, the Hyman Kreitman Chair in Bioenergetics at BGU, has developed a peptide that targets and kills cancer cells while sparing normal cells. The drugs she will be developing target B-CLL (B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia), one of the most common and incurable hematological malignancies.

“Conventional chemotherapy is limited by its lack of specificity, multi-drug resistance of tumor cells, and toxicity to normal cells,” says  Shoshan-Barmatz. “The benefits to be gained by this new drug are enormous. These therapeutic peptides have a great potential as ant-cancer agents due to their target specificity and potential for reduced side-effects.” 

Prof. Varda Shoshan-Barmatz is also the Director of the BGU National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev. Only 10 per cent of The Leukemia & Lymphona Society grants have been awarded outside the U.S., and about one-third of the non-U.S. grants are awarded to Canada.

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Preceding provided by American Associates of Ben Gurion University of the Negev

U.S. has turned 180 degrees in its Israel policy

By Shoshana Bryen

Shoshana Bryen

WASHINGTON, D.C. –On the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and the yartzeit this month of more than 2,500 Israel soldiers who gave their lives in a war for the very survival of the State and the protection of their homes and families, the United States has nearly completed the turn of its policy.                                                                    
 
The objective of American diplomacy used to be to ensure that Israel received the recognition of the Arab States that it was due as a member of the United Nations. That recognition was to have resulted in the “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” that Israel is due under the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 242. The American position was that as long as the Arab States threatened the security of Israel, we would provide the means for Israel’s defense.  
 
Now the goal of American policy is the establishment of a Palestinian State – or at least a rump state on the West Bank (Gaza is ignored). Now the Administration views Israel as the bigger, stronger country able to provide inducements to the smaller, weaker Palestinian Authority.  And if it doesn’t…
 
Israel’s security requirements are sometimes mentioned in the context of relations between Palestinians and Israelis, but the threat to Israel still posed by states in the region is off the table. The threat of Syria; of Iran – where there is evidence that the Administration is considering talking with the Mullahs about Afghanistan, even as Iran offers rewards for the killing of American soldiers; of the submission of the Lebanese government to Syria, Hezbollah and Iran; of weakness in Jordan and Egypt; of the continuing unwillingness of key Arab states to recognize Israel; of a $60 BILLION arms sale to Saudi Arabia; of Hamas firing white phosphorous shells from Gaza into Israel… what?