National briefs

By JTA

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Lieberman’s children Israel bound?

JERUSALEM (JTA)—The wife of U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman said at least one of their children plans to immigrate to Israel.

Hadassah Lieberman, who made a brief visit to Israel in recent days for the inauguration of a Jewish study center for women, described her family’s devotion to Zionism in an interview with Ha’aretz on Oct. 2. Asked if any of the four children that she and the independent senator from Connecticut have between them might move to Israel, she said, “One or two will do it. And if they make aliyah, we will be here.” Lieberman decried what she said was a failure among American-Jewish leaders to build ties between the younger members of their communities and Israel. “If after 2,000 years we have a problem in describing the importance of Israel to our fellow Jews, we would do well to examine it very closely,” she said. “And we should ask whether the religious institutions are dealing with this in the appropriate manner.”

AIPAC members repudiate Moran

WASHINGTON (JTA)—AIPAC members met with a Democratic congressman who blamed the lobbying group for the Iraq war. Six members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee met for two hours with U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) on Sept. 20, The Washington Post reported on Sept. 27. Five members of the delegation were also constituents of Moran in his northern Virginia district, the Post reported. Moran had told Tikkun magazine that AIPAC “has pushed this war from the beginning” and that “they are so well organized, and their members are extraordinarily powerful—most of them are quite wealthy—they have been able to exert power.” The delegation told Moran his comments were “false and offensive,” but the meeting ended without Moran promising a retraction. Top Democrats in Congress have repudiated Moran for the remarks, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In a statement, Pelosi said, “I disagree and reject Congressman Moran’s characterization of AIPAC. AIPAC did not lead us into this disastrous war in Iraq. President Bush and Vice President Cheney did.”

 
McCain calls U.S. ‘Christian nation’

WASHINGTON (JTA)—Presidential candidate U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was blasted for characterizing the United States as a “Christian nation.” On Sept. 29, in an interview with the non-denominational Web site beliefnet.com, McCain made the statement when he was asked if he would support a Muslim running for president. The Republican hopeful said he agreed with the majority of Americans who believe the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, adding that he would prefer to vote for someone who had “a solid grounding” in his faith. On Oct. 1, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman had harsh words for McCain. “We would have thought that a senator as experienced and respected as John McCain would place himself above such divisive appeals to religious intolerance,” Foxman said. “His remarks were inaccurate and ill-advised for any candidate seeking to lead a nation as religiously diverse as ours.” Foxman in a letter appealed to the senator to withdraw his statements, as did Jeffrey Sinensky, the general counsel to the American Jewish Committee. “Our individual rights cannot be secured if the government promotes one religion over others,” Sinensky said.
 
Bronfmans seek next big Jewish idea

NEW YORK (JTA)—The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Foundation is holding a contest to find the next great Jewish innovation. The foundation will award a two-year visiting professorship at Brandeis University, called the Charles R. Bronfman Visiting Chair in Jewish Communal Innovation, to the person who comes up with an idea that can transform how the Jewish community thinks about itself. The winner of the open competition will receive a six-figure salary. The winner, to be determined in late winter, will have two years at Brandeis to publish a significant English-language work based on his or her idea. 
 
Rabbi Waskow shuns Ahmadinejad

WASHINGTON (JTA)—A rabbi blasted church groups for saying he was pressured into not joining a meeting with Iran’s president. “I did not decline out of lack of support from any Jewish organization or from unwillingness to dialogue,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow, who heads the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, said in a message to his followers after the Sept. 26 meeting at a U.N. chapel between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and about 100 North American clerics. A New York Times article quoted organizers as saying that Jews invited to the event “declined because they could not win support from Jewish organizations.” Waskow said he declined because he had a prior commitment at an anti-Iraq war event, but also “because the experience of the last year, after all the same concerns were raised by religious leaders to President Ahmedinejad on his last visit to the U.N., suggests to me that he is impervious to dialogue and merely wants to use these meetings to bolster his own weak political position in Iran.”

Ex-officials have peace plan for Middle East

WASHINTON (JTA)—Five former senior U.S. government officials released a blueprint for a successful Mideast peace parley. The group produced a six-page, nine-point plan for the Bush administration’s planned Middle East peace conference likely to be held next month in Washington. Among the plan’s many recommendations are clear goals for dealing with the role of Hamas in the talks, a plan for future talks, not allowing the meeting’s success to be determined by which Arab nations participate and a call for former British Prime Minister and now Quartet envoy Tony Blair to work full-time to draft a Declaration of Principles for the talks, which would be endorsed by the U.N. Security Council. The document was drafted by Thomas Pickering, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the first President Bush; Samuel Lewis, the U.S. ambassador to Israel under Presidents Carter and Reagan; Edward Walker, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates under President Clinton and in the current administration; Robert Pelletreau, the Clinton-appointed U.S. ambassador to Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain; and Frederic Hof, a director for Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Palestinian affairs in the Secretary of Defense’s office. 

Trial opens for alleged Nazi guard

WASHINGTON (JTA)—The Justice Department is seeking to deport a Georgia resident accused of lying about his Nazi past to immigrate to the United States. Paul Henss, 85, a German citizen living in Lawrenceville, Ga., volunteered to serve the Nazi SS during World War II and served as an attack-dog handler at both the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations. The OSI charges that Henss concealed his concentration camp service when he entered the United States in 1955.