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Life is full of inconsistencies resulting in many strange truths. Above are just a few. We must carry on despite them! (See 2 below.)
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Israel and the permanent war? (See 1 below.)
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Putin's teacher comments! (See 3 below.)
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There has been an incipient move, over the past years, on college campuses to turn uniformed and naive students against Israel. The effort is partly funded by Muslim Organizations, domestic and overseas, and their agenda is the continued de-legitimization of The State of Israel.
Sadly enough it is also supported by twisted apologist minds of some who belong to J Street.
I am an avid supporter of Israel for four primary reasons:
1) I am Jewish.
2) I believe Israel, having been established by the U.N., has every right to exist.
3) Israel is a democracy and no crap talk from Jimmy Carter and his ilk will change the facts on the ground.
Is Israel a perfect Democracy? No. Show me one that is.
Certainly Obama does not think America qualifies either or why would he be so hell bent in wanting to transform us.
4) Israel is the best and most reliable and strongest friend America has.
That is proven time again in U.N votes, reciprocity of classified intelligence, Israel's position in the Middle East and Israel's support of Jordan and Egypt and even the Saudis and willingness to help all its neighbors prosper through water, energy and technology sharing.
Despite protestations to the contrary, the Obama Administration has done more to harm America's relationship with Israel than any in recent history. Obama has done this under the guise of claiming , until recently, he has been Israel's strongest supporter because he has willing to move forward on supplying critical military equipment with American funding. The equipment is made in the U.S.
More recently, Obama has tightened the screws in order to bring pressure on Israel to succumb to unwarranted demands to make peace with Palestinians who offer no comparable quid pro quo and, in fact, continue to advocate and teach the overthrow of Israel.
And then we have Obama's feckless actions vis a vis Syria, Iran and Russia which not only threatens Israel but also the entire Western World and America..
Young students are easily manipulated because they think with their hearts, not their heads and are abysmally uninformed not only about Israel but even our own country.
They are supported and abetted in their warped views by radical Liberal Professors who have taken over most of America's college campuses and these liberal professors are not only opposed to Israel but their actions against fellow Conservative professors stands as testimony to their questionable biases and guile (See 4 below.)
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Obama never padded up and played football but he is superb at moving goal posts.
The success of his "Affordable Health Care Act" took 28 "letting off the hook" episodes and we still are not sure of the accounting so victory claims remain an unknown fact. However, that will not deter Obamaites because facts are not Obama's strong suit. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1)The permanent war
By Richard Baehr
March 30, 2014
For 100 years, the Palestinian national movement has had as its primary objective first the prevention of a State of Israel being established, and later the elimination of the Jewish majority state in the region.
There is a point at which Israel needs to state openly that the emperor wears no clothes. The two-state solution is a fraud…
The war of words between the Palestinian Authority and Israel continues over a scheduled fourth prisoner release by Israel, the Palestinians' willingness to extend the current round of peace talks beyond April 29, and a Palestinian commitment not to seek enhanced status at the United Nations as a member state, while talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue.
If the discussions go the way of prior crises in the negotiations, the prisoners will be released, the PA will agree to continue the talks that are going nowhere for some as yet undermined period beyond April 29, and the Palestinians will delay what inevitably will occur at some point -- an attempt at the United Nations to seek enhanced member status.
Membership for a state in the United Nations requires a positive recommendation from the Security Council followed by a two-thirds vote supporting the motion in the General Assembly.
As the U.N.'s website explains:
"States are admitted to membership in the United Nations by decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. The procedure is briefly as follows:
"1. The State submits an application to the Secretary-General and a letter formally stating that it accepts the obligations under the Charter.
"2. The Security Council considers the application. Any recommendation for admission must receive the affirmative votes of 9 of the 15 members of the Council, provided that none of its five permanent members -- China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America -- have voted against the application.
"3. If the Council recommends admission, the recommendation is presented to the General Assembly for consideration. A two-thirds majority vote is necessary in the Assembly for admission of a new State."
If the Palestinians decide to forgo the negotiations, and instead push their case at the United Nations, they will then be able to join all the other "peace loving states" who are already members:
"Membership in the Organization, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, 'is open to all peace-loving States that accept the obligations contained in the United Nations Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able to carry out these obligations.'"
In this fantasy world, the Palestinian Authority, a nonfunctioning, nonstate without borders, living off international welfare, and without any authority in areas where 40% of Palestinians live (Gaza), can apply for membership as a peace-loving state, and be approved by an overwhelming majority of member states, many of whom are also not peace-loving, particularly vis-a-vis relations with the State of Israel.
The only party that might block such an effort would be the United States vetoing the application in the Security Council. How certain is that at this point? We have more evidence this week of American State Department animus towards Israel, as increasing numbers of Israelis are denied entry, this year approximately 10% of those applying for visas to visit the United States, including many Israelis in the defense/intelligence sector. One leaked story suggested that those denied were a different bunch -- mainly younger Israelis in their "gap" year after military service, seeking to sell Dead Sea products. That seemed to be a stretch.
State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki, one of the more pathetically incompetent spokespersons in an administration full of them, explained what is likely the real reason -- that Israel's rejection of visas for visiting Americans of Arab descent was reason enough for keeping Israel out of its visa waiver program. Of course, Israelis may have legitimate national security reasons for rejecting some foreign visitors, reasons that do not apply to American rejection of Israelis seeking to visit the United States. In this case, major Arab lobbying groups called for the State Department to deny Israeli participation in the visa waiver program, and the State Department took its customary bow to their wishes.
The bigger pretense is that the Palestinians are in any way behaving as if they seek peace and a state through negotiations. The U.S. State Department, Secretary John Kerry, Secretary Hillary Clinton during her tenure, and President Barack Obama, have all decried activities by Israel that they have argued are obstacles in the delicate path to peace between the parties. These alleged obstacles always concern some Israeli bureaucrat approving one stage of a multistage approval process for Israeli housing, almost always within settlement blocs that American presidents since the start of Oslo have accepted would remain as part of Israel, were a peace deal reached between the parties. In other words, no new Palestinian land was being taken for the settlements, and no Palestinians were going to be displaced by the construction. Regardless, one would think that Israel had launched dozens of rockets at Palestinian territory or sent suicide bombers to blow up Palestinian buses, restaurants, and schools, given the bellicosity of the reaction to the settlement approval process.
Palestinians, on the other hand, are almost always given a free pass by the United States, the Europeans, the so-called international community and the United Nations for terrorism, anti-Semitic propaganda, and campaigns against Israel. Presumably, none of these are obstacles to peace. The United Nations stands out of course among the group, for its obsession with trashing Israel:
"Since then [1947], it has maintained a central role in this region, especially by providing support for Palestinian refugees via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and by providing a platform for Palestinian political claims via the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, the United Nations Division for Palestinian Rights, the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People, the United Nations Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL) and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
"In recent years, the Middle East was the subject of 76% of country-specific General Assembly resolutions, 100% of the Human Rights Council resolutions, 100% of the Commission on the Status of Women resolutions, 50% of reports from the World Food Programme, 6% of United Nations Security Council resolutions and 6 of the 10 Emergency sessions. These decisions, adopted with the support of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) countries, invariably criticize Israel for its treatment of Palestinians."
In fact, since the original partition of Palestine was approved by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947, and Israel was soon after admitted to the U.N., the Arab and Islamic nations, and their Third World and Communist allies, have used the U.N. as a source of a permanent campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel, and to smear its name among the nations of the world. It is of course no surprise that in Palestinian schools and media since the Oslo process brought Yassar Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization back to the territories, the vicious anti-Semitic, and-Zionist rhetoric, and celebrations of Jew-killers, have been a constant theme. The Palestinians have never prepared their own people for peace and reconciliation, and have never behaved in their diplomatic relations as if Israel deserved a place among the nations.
The latest Palestinian initiative, an astroturfed initiative if there ever was one, is the international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions directed at cultural visits to Israel, Israeli businesses in the territories, and Israeli universities, among other targets. This campaign now rears its ugly face in new settings every week, particularly on college campuses, replete with anti-Semitic rhetoric, death threats against students and faculty, shouting down speakers who offer contrasting views, and attempts to interfere with any activities or programs that allow Israel or Israelis to be treated like other nations or people. In an article this week on this topic, Caroline Glick decried the detestable lack of response from campus administrations in dealing with the intimidation campaign. She presents one example of the process at work at Vassar College, as described by an anti-Zionist activist and supporter of the intimidation, Philip Weiss:
"The spirit of that young progressive space was that Israel is a blot on civilization, and boycott is right and necessary.
"If a student had gotten up and said, I love Israel, he or she would have been mocked and scorned into silence."
Glick notes that Weiss is pleased with the air of intimidation.
"As he sees it, this is the whole point of the so-called boycott, sanctions, and divestment movement that calls for institutions to boycott businesses that do business with Jews in Israel.
"As Weiss explained, the real purpose of the BDS movement in all its component parts is to make it impossible to voice any sentiment in relation to the Middle East on college campuses that isn't anti-Israel."
If the Palestinians had an iota of interest in a two-state solution, they would not celebrate Jew-killers, they would not broadcast anti-Semitic propaganda, they would not push for delegitimization of Israel and Zionism at the United Nations, they would not fund and support the BDS movement abroad, and they would actually show an interest in negotiating, which of course involves compromise.
As has been true for 100 years, the Palestinian national movement has had as its primary objective first the prevention of a State of Israel being established, and later the elimination of the Jewish majority state in the region. There are many nations in the world that sympathize with this campaign, while paying lip service to the need for a two-state solution.
There is a point at which Israel needs to state openly that the emperor wears no clothes. The two-state solution is a fraud since it is completely unacceptable to one of the parties. Israel needs to cease negotiating with itself.
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2) Fish Instead of People, Ideologies without Consequences
By Victor Davis Hanson
If only people had to live in the world that they dreamed of for others.
Endangered species everywhere are supposed to be at risk — except birds of prey shredded by wind turbine farms, or reptilian habitats harmed by massive solar farms. High-speed rail is great for utopian visionaries — except don’t dare start it in the Bay Area, when there are yokels aplenty down in Hanford to experiment on. Let’s raise power bills to the highest levels in the country with all sorts of green mandates — given that we live in 70-degree year-round temperatures, while “they” who are stupid enough to dwell in 105-degree Bakersfield deserve the resulting high power bills. We need cheap labor, open borders, multiculturalism, and identity politics, but not too near my kids’ Santa Monica or Atherton prep schools. I like my beamer in La Jolla and my Mercedes in Menlo Park, but not the fracking that might provide cheaper gas for Juan and Jose who drive a used 10-year-old Yukon 40 miles to work in Mendota.
Sometimes you just have to let the students do it.
There have been increasing reports of the poisonous anti-Israel atmosphere on U.S. campuses over the past half dozen or more years. And with those reports there has been a growing number of pro-Israel organizations which have, some more successfully than others, pivoted to address that battlefield.
There have also been a few organizations which students themselves have begun, some with faculty or organizational support, in order to address the difficulties many pro-Israel students have encountered on their increasingly hostile campuses.
One of the student-initiated groups started out with the name Florida Loves Israel. It held its first conference three years ago and the response was so tremendous, not only within Florida, but beyond, that the organization had to change its name to Future Leaders for Israel. They kept the initials and the acronym, FLI, but the horizon expanded exponentially.
This spring the new FLI is hosting not one but two conferences just one week and 1100 miles apart.
FLI self-describes as a "student-founded, student-led and student-focused organization." It acts as a bridge, bringing together pro-Israel students and the different organizations on different campuses, through conferences that appeals to different interests and attention spans.
FLI's goal is to provide educational and engaging information, but also a social and positive experience. It creates conferences which include programming from lots of different pro-Israel organizations. In this way, organizations that may not otherwise work together do so, and the individual interested students get what amounts to a smorgasboard of pro-Israel programming. Not only that, but students from different campuses who share an interest in supporting Israel have a unique opportunity to join forces.
The funding comes from the different organizations which seek to participate in the FLI Conferences.
A rough sketch of how this works is the FLI leaders get together and figure out the general topics which should be included, then pro-Israel organizations are contacted and invited to lead some of those programs. The organizations which choose to participate become sponsors of the whole conference, and then the entire range of events and activities is opened up to interested students from different campuses who participate in the three day conference. The conference includes lots of exciting social and educational pro-Israel activities, along with peers from many different schools.
The Jewish Press spoke with Daniel Ackerman, one of the founders of FLI. He described how the concept began, how it developed, and what its leaders see as its future.
FLI's first conference this year takes place at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. This conference begins Friday, March 28, and continues through Sunday, March 30. The second conference is being held in Pittsburgh, and is a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. That one takes place from Friday, April 4 through Sunday, April 6.
Both conferences begin on Friday night. There will be Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Kabbalat Shabbat services. Kosher food will be an option at every meal, and during Shabbat there will be programming that does not violate Shabbat, for Shomer observant students.
FLI FLORIDA
The keynote speaker at FAU will be Yishai Fleisher, "Israel’s only English language broadcast-radio talk show host." Fleisher was a guest at FLI's first conference, and he was such a hit FLI brought him back for this year's Florida conference.
During the Boca Raton conference there will be sessions on "Unpacking the Jewish Narrative: Who are the Jewish People," and "How to Talk about Israel in a Way that Brings People Together," and "The Challenges and Rewards of Starting a Campus Organization." There will also be sessions on "Campus AntiSemitism, Know Your Legal Rights," and "What to Expect When You are Expecting (BDS)."
The leaders of these and other sessions include such authorities as Susan Tuchman, Esq., the head of the Law and Justice Center of the Zionist Organization of America, Asaf Romirowsky, PhD, the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and Gilad Skolnick and Samantha Rose Mendeles, Campus Coordinators for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). There will also be various Israeli schlichim, people in leadership at StandWithUs, the David Project, the Israel Campus Coalition, Hillels, and the Anti-Defamation League, just to name a few.
Ackerman stressed that there will also be plenty of non-cerebral activities at the FLI conferences, including krav maga and humus making sessions, Israeli dancing, and even a session on dealing with stress, using various Middle Eastern techniques.
On Saturday night, everyone will be invited to participate in an event at a local venue, for which FLI has engaged an Israeli disc jockey, and at which there will be Israeli food and music.
One of the highlights of the program is sure to be a Sunday lunchtime pro-Israel student leadership panel, "What I Wish I knew as a Freshman."
FLI PITTSBURGH
The following week, FLI touches down in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many of the participating organizations are the same, although quite a few of the topics are different, including a StandWithUs session called "Israel Through Maps," one on the Israeli government and another on the "Protection of Nature in Israel."
Pittsburgh's FLI, is being hosted by the Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh, representing the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It will run from April 4 through April 6.
At the Pittsburgh FLI conference there will be many new sessions, including "Ethiopians in Israel," and "Women of the Wall and the Future of the Kotel," as well as "Israel Inside," with Jerusalem U. One exciting new name is Dumisani Washington, of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. Washington will be just one of the conference's keynote speakers, along with Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.
Ackerman is one of the founders of FLI. He, along with Ron Krudo, are very recent college graduates who are following their passion: to create a new, truly engaged generation of Israel advocates. But in addition to helping these students learn how to be Israel advocates, FLI's leaders are training current students to plan conferences, create and work with budgets, work with different organizations, seek out and secure vendors and plan for and work with security. FLI leaders develop skills that will be useful in all facets of their lives.
Approximately 150 students are advancing on the FLI Florida conference site as this article is being published; a comparable number will be congregating in Pittsburgh next weekend.
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2) Fish Instead of People, Ideologies without Consequences
By Victor Davis Hanson
If only people had to live in the world that they dreamed of for others.
Endangered species everywhere are supposed to be at risk — except birds of prey shredded by wind turbine farms, or reptilian habitats harmed by massive solar farms. High-speed rail is great for utopian visionaries — except don’t dare start it in the Bay Area, when there are yokels aplenty down in Hanford to experiment on. Let’s raise power bills to the highest levels in the country with all sorts of green mandates — given that we live in 70-degree year-round temperatures, while “they” who are stupid enough to dwell in 105-degree Bakersfield deserve the resulting high power bills. We need cheap labor, open borders, multiculturalism, and identity politics, but not too near my kids’ Santa Monica or Atherton prep schools. I like my beamer in La Jolla and my Mercedes in Menlo Park, but not the fracking that might provide cheaper gas for Juan and Jose who drive a used 10-year-old Yukon 40 miles to work in Mendota.
Appreciate these contradictions of the liberal elite mind and the current California drought is logical rather than aberrant.
In this third year of California drought, perhaps 500,000 acres of farmland will lie idle for lack of water. Hundreds of millions of dollars will be sunk into lowering wells, as the aquifer dives, when too many straws compete for too little water at the bottom of the glass. There are reasons why a drought threatens existential ruin in the billions of dollars rather than mere hardship. Our forefathers 50 years ago knew well the ancient California equation: a) California’s population always grows; b) 80% of the state wishes to live where 20% of the rain falls; c) therefore, to ensure that the normal cycles of drought do not prove fatal to commerce and agriculture, man must transfer water from the north to the south of the state.
Unlike 1976-77, there are no longer just 23 million Californians, but 40 million. But unlike the past, Californians in the 1970s gave up on completing the state California Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project that had supplemented the earlier Colorado River, Big Creek, and Hetch Hetchy water storage and transference efforts.
At some fateful moment in the 1970s, the other California on the coast, drunk with the globalized wealth that poured into Napa Valley, the Silicon Valley, the great coastal university nexuses at Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA and Caltech, the entertainment industry, the defense industry, and the financial industry decided that they had transcended the old warnings of more Californians needing far more water to survive more droughts. When you are rich, you can afford for the first time in your life to favor a newt with spots on his toes over someone else that lacks your money, clout, and sensitivities.
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3)'I was Vladimir Putin's teacher'
Meet Mina Yuditskaya, Vladimir Putin's former high-school teacher, who now lives in Tel Aviv in an apartment her former student, the Russian president, bought for her
In the late 1960s Mina Yuditskaya Berliner was a German teacher in High School #281 in Saint Petersburg, then Leningrad. Between 1967 and 1968, among her numerous students, there was a quiet and serious teen, who cut classes but always aced tests. After graduation he went his own way and Yuditskaya made aliyah, not imagining that their paths will cross again – until she saw him on television.
It was in the late 1990s. Her former student was standing next to then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin, and was described as the head of Russia's security service. Her former student's name is Vladimir Putin, and in the 15 years that have passed since Yuditskaya saw him, the once bashful youngster became one of the world's most powerful and controversial figures.
President Putin's teacher, Mina Yuditskaya (Photo: Ido Erez)
Yuditskaya probably couldn't foresee her student's fate when he first came back into her life on the screen of her television set. She also almost certainty didn't anticipate that she will eventually get to meet him in person, and the two would even go on to form an unusual bond.
Inscripted gift book given by President Putin (Photo: Ido Erez)
The Russian president, currently being chastized over Russia's annexation of Crimea, met his former teacher during his visit to Israel in 2005. According to her, he even bought her the apartment she currently lives in at the heart of Tel Aviv.During the interview conducted in her apartment, Yuditskaya, now 93, had trouble recalling the grades she gave 15-year-old Vladimir, but she has not forgotten the peculiar chain of events that led to her receiving a new apartment from the Russian leader.
Mina Yuditskaya as a young woman (Photo: Ido Erez)
“I don’t really remember what grades he had in high-school, but they weren’t F’s – that’s for sure,” she said. “He was disciplined but was never chatty. In that school most of the students were interested in chemistry, but he eventually went to law school”.
How did you get back in touch?
“When I heard he was coming to Israel in April 2005, I went to the Russian consulate and said that I just want the chance to look at him. I left my contact information with them, and when he came they sent a cab for me. Then I got on a bus with World War II veterans, who were going to meet with him, and we were taken to Jerusalem. When we arrived to his hotel, I was last out of the cab. I was walking into the lobby and suddenly all the lights were on me. All of the reporters turned towards me and all the veterans began to clap.”
The engraved watch given to Yuditskaya from Presiden Putin (Photo: Ido Erez)
The meeting between Putin and the veterans took place around a long rectangular table, and Yuditskaya happened to find herself sitting directly across from the Russian president. “It was very exciting because I grew old and he had grown up,” she reminisced.
“Afterwards he invited me to have tea with him, and I thought that was a bit strange since we were already sitting around a dinner table.”
Yuditskaya was then approached by two people who took her to a side corridor. There she met Putin, who escorted her to another room. “While walking he said to me: ‘I went bold already’, and I answered: ‘I can see that”.
From the private conversation they shared over tea, Mina remembers one anecdote: Putin, according to her, had trouble understanding how Israelis deal with such hot weather. “He mentioned it’s very hot here, and I said ‘yes, but I’m saved by the mazgan (Hebrew for air conditioning)’. I didn’t realize I had said a Hebrew word, and I could see on his face that he wanted to ask me 'who Mazgan is; who is this person who rescues me?', so I quickly explained.
"During our conversation, I behaved like a teacher talking to her student – I talked and talked and didn’t give him the chance to get a word in”.
Their conversation was eventually interrupted by Putin’s assistant, who announced that then-Israeli president Moshe Katsav had arrived. However, Putin wasn’t quick to part ways with his former teacher: When he left for his meeting, his assistants took Yuditskaya to a different room where the presidential dinner party was being held.“Putin introduced me to Katsav as his teacher, and he immediately asked: ‘How was Putin as a student?’. I just smiled and gave him the thumbs up”.A bag from the Kremlin
Ukraine, which is now at the epicenter of an international power struggle between Russia and the West, is also Yuditskaya's homeland. She was born in the city of Mena in 1921 and moved with her family to St. Petersburg when she was seven-years-old.
She began teaching in 1945 after graduating from a local linguistic institute. In 1973, she came to Israel by herself, to escape the tyranny of the Soviet regime, as she described it. Once in Israel, she began working for the Israel Air Force, but was reluctant to elaborate about her position. “It’s not important”, she announced.
In Israel, Yuditskaya also became a widow, and until Putin’s visit in Israel, she was living in a run-down apartment in southern Tel Aviv's Florentine neighborhood. But after the meeting in the Jerusalem hotel, that was about to change, and Yuditskaya began receiving all kinds of gifts, big and small.
“Even before I left the hotel, a man came up to me and gave me a bag that said ‘The Kremlin,’” she recollected. “I opened it the next day and inside was a watch and on its back was engraved ‘From the president’”.
A few days later Mina received a call from a man who introduced himself as an employee of the Kremlin, and notified her that soon a delivery man would come for her. As soon as she hung up the phone, she heard a knock on the door and the mysterious delivery turned out to be Putin’s autobiography - "In First Person." On the inner cover, a dedication was inscribed: “To Mina, with love”, accompanied by the president’s signature. But all of this was just small change compared to Putin's real surprise for his former teacher.Putin is a grateful man
Yuditskaya recalled that during her meeting with the president, he casually asked her for her address, which she wrote down for him in an elegant notebook. Later, a man rang her at home claiming Putin had sent him, and had asked him to come to her apartment.“I did not believe him until he showed me the page from that notebook with my address in my own handwriting,” she continued. “He told me the president wants to buy an apartment for me. He said, ‘come, I have a few apartments to show you. You can choose'”.
Yuditskaya was shown two apartments: The first, a large and lavish flat on the trendy Shenkin St. and the other, a small and modest one-bedroom apartment not far from there. “I told him that all I need is to be close to the bus stop, the doctor, and the market,” she said, explaining why she opted for the modest apartment where she resides with a caregiver from Moldova.
“From this point on, everything happened very fast. In a few months the movers came, packed up everything, and moved my things into my new apartment. There wasn’t much, so Putin even bought me new appliances."
Can you speculate why he did these things for you?
“I don’t know, I don’t want to guess, but I thank him very much for this. When I moved to this apartment I cried. Putin is a very grateful and decent man”.
Do you still keep in touch with him?
“Nowadays he’s too busy”.
And do you have a position regarding the crisis in Crimea?
“I don’t follow politics, but I would like to ask him one question: When I used to walk into class all the students used to stand up. That is what was accepted, and that was always was exciting for me. I would like to ask him how it feels when a whole country stands for you”.
At the request of Ynet, Russia's Presidential Press and Information Office confirmed that “the lady you're asking about was indeed Vladimir Putin’s German teacher. As for the rest of your questions, for privacy reasons, we are not able to comment.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4) ‘Future Leaders for Israel’ Hold Conferences on Campuses
The Russian embassy in Israel also confirmed the meeting between Putin and Yuditskaya, but none of the current staff worked there at the time and could not recollect additional details.
Sometimes you just have to let the students do it.
There have been increasing reports of the poisonous anti-Israel atmosphere on U.S. campuses over the past half dozen or more years. And with those reports there has been a growing number of pro-Israel organizations which have, some more successfully than others, pivoted to address that battlefield.
There have also been a few organizations which students themselves have begun, some with faculty or organizational support, in order to address the difficulties many pro-Israel students have encountered on their increasingly hostile campuses.
One of the student-initiated groups started out with the name Florida Loves Israel. It held its first conference three years ago and the response was so tremendous, not only within Florida, but beyond, that the organization had to change its name to Future Leaders for Israel. They kept the initials and the acronym, FLI, but the horizon expanded exponentially.
This spring the new FLI is hosting not one but two conferences just one week and 1100 miles apart.
FLI self-describes as a "student-founded, student-led and student-focused organization." It acts as a bridge, bringing together pro-Israel students and the different organizations on different campuses, through conferences that appeals to different interests and attention spans.
FLI's goal is to provide educational and engaging information, but also a social and positive experience. It creates conferences which include programming from lots of different pro-Israel organizations. In this way, organizations that may not otherwise work together do so, and the individual interested students get what amounts to a smorgasboard of pro-Israel programming. Not only that, but students from different campuses who share an interest in supporting Israel have a unique opportunity to join forces.
The funding comes from the different organizations which seek to participate in the FLI Conferences.
A rough sketch of how this works is the FLI leaders get together and figure out the general topics which should be included, then pro-Israel organizations are contacted and invited to lead some of those programs. The organizations which choose to participate become sponsors of the whole conference, and then the entire range of events and activities is opened up to interested students from different campuses who participate in the three day conference. The conference includes lots of exciting social and educational pro-Israel activities, along with peers from many different schools.
The Jewish Press spoke with Daniel Ackerman, one of the founders of FLI. He described how the concept began, how it developed, and what its leaders see as its future.
FLI's first conference this year takes place at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. This conference begins Friday, March 28, and continues through Sunday, March 30. The second conference is being held in Pittsburgh, and is a collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. That one takes place from Friday, April 4 through Sunday, April 6.
Both conferences begin on Friday night. There will be Reform, Conservative and Orthodox Kabbalat Shabbat services. Kosher food will be an option at every meal, and during Shabbat there will be programming that does not violate Shabbat, for Shomer observant students.
FLI FLORIDA
The keynote speaker at FAU will be Yishai Fleisher, "Israel’s only English language broadcast-radio talk show host." Fleisher was a guest at FLI's first conference, and he was such a hit FLI brought him back for this year's Florida conference.
During the Boca Raton conference there will be sessions on "Unpacking the Jewish Narrative: Who are the Jewish People," and "How to Talk about Israel in a Way that Brings People Together," and "The Challenges and Rewards of Starting a Campus Organization." There will also be sessions on "Campus AntiSemitism, Know Your Legal Rights," and "What to Expect When You are Expecting (BDS)."
The leaders of these and other sessions include such authorities as Susan Tuchman, Esq., the head of the Law and Justice Center of the Zionist Organization of America, Asaf Romirowsky, PhD, the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and Gilad Skolnick and Samantha Rose Mendeles, Campus Coordinators for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA). There will also be various Israeli schlichim, people in leadership at StandWithUs, the David Project, the Israel Campus Coalition, Hillels, and the Anti-Defamation League, just to name a few.
Ackerman stressed that there will also be plenty of non-cerebral activities at the FLI conferences, including krav maga and humus making sessions, Israeli dancing, and even a session on dealing with stress, using various Middle Eastern techniques.
On Saturday night, everyone will be invited to participate in an event at a local venue, for which FLI has engaged an Israeli disc jockey, and at which there will be Israeli food and music.
One of the highlights of the program is sure to be a Sunday lunchtime pro-Israel student leadership panel, "What I Wish I knew as a Freshman."
FLI PITTSBURGH
The following week, FLI touches down in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many of the participating organizations are the same, although quite a few of the topics are different, including a StandWithUs session called "Israel Through Maps," one on the Israeli government and another on the "Protection of Nature in Israel."
Pittsburgh's FLI, is being hosted by the Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh, representing the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. It will run from April 4 through April 6.
At the Pittsburgh FLI conference there will be many new sessions, including "Ethiopians in Israel," and "Women of the Wall and the Future of the Kotel," as well as "Israel Inside," with Jerusalem U. One exciting new name is Dumisani Washington, of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. Washington will be just one of the conference's keynote speakers, along with Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.
Ackerman is one of the founders of FLI. He, along with Ron Krudo, are very recent college graduates who are following their passion: to create a new, truly engaged generation of Israel advocates. But in addition to helping these students learn how to be Israel advocates, FLI's leaders are training current students to plan conferences, create and work with budgets, work with different organizations, seek out and secure vendors and plan for and work with security. FLI leaders develop skills that will be useful in all facets of their lives.
Approximately 150 students are advancing on the FLI Florida conference site as this article is being published; a comparable number will be congregating in Pittsburgh next weekend.
About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the US correspondent for The Jewish Press. She is a recovered lawyer who previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area graduate and law schools.
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5) Judgement Day: Time to Get Enrolled in Obamacare Ends Today...Sort Of
By Katie Pavlich
The deadline to signup for Obamacare technically ends today as the open enrollment period comes to an end. The White House is likely to fall short of its signup goal of seven million people. Last week, the White House announced that people who are "standing in line" for an Obamacare plan will be given an extension past the March 31 deadline to sign up. Open enrollment starts again on November 15.
Naturally on the last day for signups, Healthcare.gov was down earlier this morning. There is currently an alert on Healthcare.gov that says, "During times of especially high demand, you may be queued to begin your online Marketplace application to ensure the best possible shopping experience."
The White House claims six million people have signed up for Obamacare so far, but will not provide data verifying the numbers and officials have said the Department of Health and Human Services isn't keeping track of how many people have actually paid for plans. Back in October when the exchanges first launched, the definition of "enrolled" in an Obamacare health plan simply meant putting a plan in the online shopping cart at Healthcare.gov. Since October, there has been no announcement saying that definition has changed.
With the Obamacare deadline less than 24 hours away, White House officials are still touting the healthcare overhaul as a major success while just 26 percent of the Americans support the law.
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