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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41620)	4/30/2004 5:53:30 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 793958

I had no idea that there were Israeli hoops. I have a mental image of Yeshiva students with earlocks, dark hats, and dark-rimmed glasses kept from flying off by elastic bands around the head. I like this image so much I am not going to google around to find the truth. But, way to go, Maccabees and Israel.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41620)	4/30/2004 6:10:26 PM
From: gamesmistress	Respond to of 793958

Cool! Maccabees, huh? There was a kids movie on Disney Channel last fall called Full Court Miracle. It was a modern retelling of the miracle of Hanukkah, using a basketball theme. Not a classic, but pretty entertaining. p.s. speaking of sports, those Red Sox are hot, wot I mean. :-)

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41620)	4/30/2004 9:57:16 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793958

Mario Cuomo Scapegoats the Jews By Jason Maoz JewishPress.com "You can't ever make serious progress against terrorism unless you deal with Israel. We are not dealing with Israel. We've backed away. We're afraid of the political consequences." Pat Buchanan talking? No, in fact it was former New York governor Mario Cuomo. Furthermore, said Cuomo in an interview with the New Haven Register, the U.S. should tell Israel: "Up until now it was just you and the Palestinians killing one another - now you are killing us. Now there are people out there who are taking Israel as the provocation to terrorize us all over the globe - in the United States and elsewhere." And Cuomo suggested that Israeli leaders be told that "you have a responsibility to all of us (and) we are going to be more assertive in dealing with you.... So let's sit down and talk." Forty-eight hours after his words appeared in print, a backpedaling Cuomo called the Register to "clarify" his comments. "We have to be more assertive as to both sides, to force them together, not just the Israelis," he said, although he did not retract any of his earlier statements. More surprising than the harsh tone of Cuomo's remarks was that no New York newspaper, or any media outlet, for that matter, reported them. Then again, given Cuomo's status as a Democratic Party hero -- and in light of the relatively positive press coverage he received during a 12-year tenure as governor that was long on rhetorical flourishes and short on tangible accomplishment -- the silence of New York's media lambs was to be expected. Imagine, though, the din that would ensue were a former Republican elected official, particularly one perceived throughout his years in office as being unflinchingly pro-Israel -- Al D'Amato, say -- to characterize Israel as somehow bearing responsibility for terrorist attacks on Americans. Just visualize the breathless teasers for the local evening newscasts: "Former senator slams Israel -- details at 11." Or how about "Influential Republican says it's time to get tough with Israel -- Marcia Kramer is here with the story." The local newspapers would weigh in with stories and editorials; the Times would praise the politician for his bracing forthrightness in speaking unpleasant truths and his deep sagacity in embracing, if somewhat belatedly, what the Times in its infinite wisdom had long been expressing. In the situation at hand, the only mention appeared in a scathing New York Sun editorial, some ten days after the New Haven Register first reported Cuomo's remarks. The Sun, tweaking Cuomo's intellectual pretensions, noted that the former governor "has a history of missteps on the Middle East" and reminded readers of Cuomo's ridiculous suggestion in 1990 that the first President Bush defuse the Gulf crisis of that day by offering Saddam Hussein a little bit" of Kuwait. Predictably, Cuomo fired off a rather defensive letter to the Sun in which he reviewed his long record of support for Israel and reiterated what he told the New Haven Register in his follow-up chat -- that both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict need to agree to a negotiated settlement. But again, as was the case with his attempt at clarification in the Register, Cuomo did not disown any of the statements attributed to him in that first Register article, nor did he claim to have been misquoted or quoted out of context. Actually, Cuomo's remarks to the Register are nothing new. On October 5 of last year, he told WNBC-TV's Gabe Pressman that "the biggest aggravation in the Arab world, the biggest reason for their anger toward us and the creation of those suicide terrorists, is Israel and the difficulty with the Palestinian issue." And in a speech to the National Press club in January 2003, Cuomo said that Democrats needed to "point out that the president was wrong (in June 2002) to effectively withdraw from active participation in the attempt to end the incessant killing going on in Israel." In other words, President Bush "was wrong" in renouncing Yasser Arafat as a viable peace partner and throwing down the gauntlet to the Palestinians by telling them that if they wanted a state of their own, they needed new leadership and a new sense of accountability. Makes about as much sense as offering Saddam "a little bit" of Kuwait.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (41620)	4/30/2004 11:09:04 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793958

Okrent got them to admit it, almost, on this one. dokrent - 5:37 PM ET April 30, 2004 (#27 of 27) The Times's Language Describing Sheik Ahmed Yassin Andrew Irving of Manhattan, who identified himself as “a daily reader of the paper who cares that it conveys facts with the words it uses and the stories it runs,” wrote in a while ago to question the language The Times has used to identify Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas who was killed by the Israeli military in March. Mr. Irving particularly challenged the description of Yassin as Hamas’s “spiritual leader.” Coupled with the information that Yassin was leaving a mosque when he was killed, Irving argued, this suggested that Yassin “was a kind of spiritual cheerleader/bystander, rather than an active driver, strategist and decision-maker in Hamas.” Nowhere in The Times’s coverage is the choice of words more flammable than in the paper’s reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I’ve been noting objections from both sides (although, I’ll acknowledge, many more from pro-Israel readers) for months, trying to discern whether there’s a pattern, as some charge, revealing one-sidedness. I’m nowhere near a conclusion on this larger question, but on this one – on Sheik Yassin – Mr. Irving is right. “Spiritual leader” may be correct, but only in the way that it’s accurate to say that Texas is bigger than Rhode Island; there’s much more to the story, and the two words can leave a mistaken impression. No one on either side seems to disagree with the assertion that Sheik Yassin was an ideological and political figure as well, and that in his sermons he endorsed killing as part of the Hamas strategy. The problem isn’t that “spiritual leader” does not convey this – it’s that it conveys something very, very different.