Friday, May 12, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Palestinian officials lobby for negotiations
Three top Fatah officials lobbied congressional and administration officials to press Israel to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority president.
Ziad Abu Amr, a legislator, Nabil Amr, a former P.A. minister, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a top Palestine Liberation Organization official, were in Washington this week to meet with officials and speak at think tanks.
The Fatah officials said Israel and the United States should bypass the Hamas-led P.A. Cabinet and instead negotiate directly with P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads Fatah, and with the PLO, which they said are constitutionally empowered to negotiate with Israel.
Israel and the United States are isolating the Palestinian Authority because Hamas does not recognize Israel and advocates terrorism.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is arriving in Washington on May 21 to seek endorsement for unilateral withdrawals from the West Bank unless Hamas changes, but the Fatah officials said unilateralism is a recipe for disaster.
Specter wants to talk with Iran
Sen. Arlen Specter called for dialogue with Iran.
“I would like more attention paid to a dialogue with Iran,” the Pennsylvania Republican, who is Jewish, said Thursday at the annual Senate luncheon sponsored by the Orthodox Union. “Talking with people is never harmful.”
Specter did not elaborate, but the Bush administration is refusing to reply to an 18-page letter sent this week by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the first of its kind since the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
In his letter, Ahmadinejad defends Iran’s nuclear program and continues to reject Israel’s existence.
O.U. lauds senators for synagogue security funding
The Orthodox Union presented awards to two senators for allowing non-profit groups to receive federal homeland security funds.
The Orthodox Union presented its “Friend of the Synagogue” award at its annual Senate luncheon Thursday to Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) for their work in making sure religious non-profits such as synagogues were eligible for funds that have been used to bolster security.
Civil liberties groups lobbied against the funds, saying they violated church-state separation.
Group seeks funds for anti-Semitism education
Efforts to combat hate crimes and anti-Semitism in Europe are in dire need of funding, experts told a Congressional committee.
“We need financial support,” Paul Goldenberg, a special adviser on hate crimes to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said at a hearing Tuesday of the U.S. Helsinki Commission. “We spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and again rightfully so, on things that help us enforce the law.”
Kathrin Meyer, an adviser on anti-Semitism to the 55-member OSCE, said she used 10,000 euros to develop guidelines on teaching Holocaust commemoration and contemporary anti-Semitism, but had no money to make copies.
“Teachers in the U.S. and France and Germany, they can easily download documents, but when it comes to Ukraine, Belarus, Russian Federation, these people do not have access to the Internet,” she said.
The Helsinki Commission, a bipartisan body monitoring human rights, recommends funding for such program to Congressional appropriators.
http://www.jta.org/
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