Allegations of sexual misconduct whipsaw Israeli religious nationalists

In Israel, a scandal has erupted over allegations of sexual abuse leveled at Orthodox Rabbi Mordechai Elon. Best known for his advocacy of the West Bank Settlement movement.

The issue is actually longstanding. Elon, 50, gave up his regular TV show and retired as head of a major yeshiva religious school in Jerusalem three years ago. Alastair Macdonald of Reuters writes:

At issue is the power of charismatic clerics over young people in their care, as well as questions about the extent to which religious communities should regulate their own affairs without involving the Jewish state's secular authorities.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said the attorney-general had asked police to consider whether there was sufficient evidence to mount a formal criminal investigation, after the organisation Takana alleged Elon had broken a promise made to fellow rabbis some years ago to limit his contacts with young men and youths.

. . . .

Columnist Nahum Barnea of Israel's top-selling newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said: "Every word in this story becomes an emotional atom bomb when it happens in a religious society -- sex, homosexuality, charisma, minors, a rabbi's power.

"This is not a storm in a teacup. This is a typhoon. No wonder many in the national-religious public felt this week that their world had collapsed," Barnea wrote on Friday.

Broad, related concerns had already attracted the public interest required to provoke legislative action. Yair Ettinger, Jonathan Lis and Tomer Zarchin of Haaretz write:

The Knesset is expected next week to discuss a bill attributing criminal liability to rabbis who sexually harass persons seeking their counsel. The debate was scheduled several weeks ago, long before the accusations against Elon were made.

Elon's case exploded into public view because his fellow rabbis called him to account.

[H/T: Episcopal Cafe]

Huckabee and the fate of the Palestinians

The Jerusalem Post called Mike Huckabee's rejection of a two-state Israel/Palestine solution as a challenge to "the policies of both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama."

Harvard's Stephen M. Walt wrote in Foreign Policy:

Given that current demographic trends suggest that Arabs will be a majority in the lands currently controlled by Israel in the not-too-distant future, Huckabee is either endorsing ethnic cleansing or calling for the permanent denial of democratic rights to the Arab residents of the Occupied Territories, which is a form of apartheid. Either way, he is no friend of Israel, and the policies he's endorsing will do great damage to US interests throughout the region.

Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution offered demographic detail:

At current estimates, there are 2.3 million Arabs living in the occupied West Bank and 1.4 million Arabs in the Gaza Strip, in addition to 1.5 million Arabs living within Israel’s internationally recognized boundaries. In fact, there are probably more Arabs living in the “Jewish homeland” than there are Jews. To achieve the single-state, Jewish-state solution proposed by Huckabee, one of two things must happen. The Palestinians would have to either go or stay.

Go, or stay?

Huckabee's hosts have a preference, it seems. Huckabee was was the guest of the Jewish Reclamation Project of Ateret Cohanim, a Zionist group.

Bob Allen of Ethics Daily wrote in an article published today:

Former presidential candidate and possible vice presidential nominee Mike Huckabee visited Israel as a guest of a right-wing Zionist group that is buying up property to move Jews into Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter in hopes of replacing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque with a reconstruction of Solomon's Temple and ushering in the Messianic Age.

Although Richard Silverstein goes deeper in his probing of Huckabee's hosts.

Huckabee's stance is no surprise. A Southern Baptist Minister is to be expected to base his foreign policy views on his faith.

Huckabee is quite conservative. His views brought him and his hosts together and lead him toward the kinds of solutions which concern Walt and others. Views about which simple humanity may have reasonable concerns.

With no reference to Huckabee, Tony Cartledge wrote Monday in a blog based on Alex Awad's book, Palestinian Memories: The Story of a Palestinian Mother and Her People:

I have a lot of sympathy for Israel and the Israelis -- don't get me wrong. But I also have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinians who continue to be displaced and dominated in ways that are wrong in the sight of God and man. The West has perpetrated unspeakable crimes against the Jews through the years -- but trying to balance the scales on the backs of the Palestinians just adds one great crime to another.

Death in Gaza: Palestinian doctor's daughters killed by IDF during interview

Israel announces ceasefire in Gaza

Has the ceasefire been announced?

Assaf Oron, an Israeli human-rights/anti-Occupation activist, writes:

Dr. Ezz-El-Din Abu El-Aish (I hope I am transliterating correctly) is a Palestinian gynecologist from Beit Lahiya, in the NE corner of the Gaza Strip. He works at Israel's largest hospital, Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.

This impressive and peaceful man has been stranded at home during the war. Israel's Channel 10 TV has regularly interviewed him by phone about the situation. On one occasion, a tank gun aimed at his home - and Israeli media intervention saved him.

. . . What we see in the clip is Israeli anchor Shlomi Eldar holding a cellphone with Dr. Abu El-Aish on the other side, howling with misery. A tank shell has just hit his home and immediately killed three of his children (apparently they cut off the first seconds when the shell actually hit).

(Use the player menu to turn on the subtext ... . Thanks to England's England for bringing this video to our attention.)

Democracy Now has a Palestinian Astrophysicist in US recounting how His 11-year-old son died when Israeli warplanes bombed his family’s house.

Israel announces ceasefire in Gaza

Has the ceasefire been announced?

Journalism & some journalists are Gaza war casualties

Foreign journalists have been kept out by the Israeli military. The Guardian reports:

Throughout the two-week bombardment of the Gaza Strip most journalists have been kept out by the Israeli government on the pretext of security. And the Israelis are pleased with the results.

Foreign journalists have been forced to report without getting to the detail of what is going on. That meant, at least in the early days of the bombardment, that reporters who would have been in Gaza were instead reporting from Israeli towns and cities under fire from Hamas, and Israeli officials found it easier to get themselves in front of a television camera

Five journalists who were there when the attack began have been killed.

Israel bombed a Gaza City media building. The Committee to Protect Journalists wrote:

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacked the rooftop of Al-Johara Tower, an eight-story building located in Al-Rimal neighborhood in Gaza City, which houses more than 20 international news organizations, according to multiple news outlets.

Al-Jazeera reported that at least one journalist was injured while filing a report from the roof of the building. The journalist was not immediately identified. Staff at Al-Shifa Hospital, where the journalist was taken, said the injuries were minor, according to a statement on Web site of the Iranian Arabic-language Al-Alam TV. Satellite transmission equipment on the roof of the building was also damaged in the attack, the Iranian English-language Press TV said on its Web site.

Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, defended the strike in an interview with Al-Jazeera, saying that communications equipment in the building could have been used by Hamas.

Reporters Without Borders has issued an appeal to Israel to stop preventing journalists from entering Gaza. It says in part:

In view of the scale of the military operations and the repercussion they are having throughout the world, we believe the Israeli government’s decision to exclude the press from the Gaza Strip is untenable and dangerous.

addendum: alternate sources

Gaza Blogroll: First-person accounts of the conflict in the Gaza Strip recommended by the Columbia Journalism Review.

Twitter search the #Gaza hash tag to follow tagged debate on twitter.

Twitter search the #israel hash tag.

Twitter search the #hammas hash tag.

Reporters Without Borders latest on media exclusion from the Gaza Strip.

Israeli human rights groups blog the impact on civilians in Gaza and in Israel.

Making sense of the Gaza Strip

Adam Hamilton, pastor of United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., helps us make sense of the Gaza Strip:

After all, these missiles have no guidance systems and virtually never hit a real target. They stand no chance of winning a military battle against Israel. These missiles have killed as many Palestinians (as they occasionally fall back into Gaza) as they have Israelis. And the launching of them was almost guaranteed to bring an Israeli attack that would kill large numbers of Palestinians—making their launching of these missiles suicidal.

So, I continued to ask, "Why?"

He explores historic, religious and philosophical issues at Ethics Daily, and the piece is well worth reading.

This morning

• Christa Brown explains what the recently replicated Milgram experiment tells us about how clerical sex abusers abuse their authority and the trust of their victims.
• Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe writes that "The Christian Science Church faces declining membership and a series of unsuccessful ventures ... .
• Dan Gilgoff at God & Country defends Rick Warren from unflattering comparisons with Billy Graham.
• Mark Silk at Spiritual Politics notes Billy Graham's struggles with the "formidable" Christian right of the 1950s.
• Kyle reports on yesterdays call to arms against the administration of President-elect Barack Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress by Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Gary Bauer, president of American Values.
• Jonathan D. Sarna at On Faith says the only solution to the Hamas/Israel conflict is to temper inflexible religion with flexible politics.
• Holy Weblog is creeped out by the numbers of flag-waving angels on the heads of pins.