MarcGopin.com

I am trying to figure out what kind of United States has developed where the toughest Israelis in the world, the top Israeli military brass, want a U.S. ambassador in Syria, and other gestures, whereas the true impediment to that are right wing Republican Senators supported by a militant wing of the American public goaded on by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and of course Charles Krauthamer. Where do these Americans get the arrogance to be even more violent in their politics that the Israeli military? I think it is legitimate to take sides within the Israeli debate, but I do not understand being to the right of the right of the Israeli military. Of course, there is no logic to politics, there is only the logic of vote grabbing, and one gets votes in America today by demonizing any and all foreigners you can get your hands on, anything to avoid personal or collective responsibility.

I understand this logic of politics, but I hope no one confuses it with sane or rational foreign policy.

Defense officials back US bid to send envoy to SyriaBy YAAKOV KATZ 09/05/2010 01:46Top IDF officers say an American ambassador, US aid money may help convince Syria to sit down at the negotiating table, break ties with Iran and Hizbullah. In February, President Barack Obama announced the appointment of career diplomat Robert Ford as the new US ambassador to Damascus, as part of a new strategy of rapprochement with Syria.While six months has passed since then, Ford’s appointment has yet to be confirmed by the Senate. Some reports have indicated that Israel is behind the delays due to opposition to the US decision to restore full diplomatic ties with Syria.RELATED:Barak heads to Russia in bid to halt Iran, Syria arms dealArab World: Syria’s comeback gameSyria reportedly signs pact with HizbullahWhile this may have been the case in the past, based on conversations with top IDF officers and Defense Ministry officials this week, the defense establishment actually appears to support Obama’s decision to appoint a new ambassador to Syria.Defense Minister Ehud Barak, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.- Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, OC Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin and OC Planning Branch Maj.-Gen. Amir Eshel have all voiced support in meetings with the political echelon for Israel to negotiate peace with Syria.

via Defense officials back US bid to send envoy to Syria.

From Fox Five News today.  See the film clip.

via Clinton Opens New Round of Mideast Peace Talks

WASHINGTON – Marc Gopin from the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University joined us with more.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton formally opened the first direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in nearly two years on Thursday, imploring the parties to ignore the long history of failed negotiations and make needed compromises to forge an agreement.

At a ceremony in the State Department’s ornate Benjamin Franklin room, Clinton said the Obama administration was committed to forging a settlement in a year’s time. But, she stressed that the heavy lifting must be done by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

“We will be an active and sustained partner,” she said. “But we cannot and we will not impose a solution. Only you can make the decisions necessary to reach an agreement and secure a peaceful future for the Israeli and Palestinian people.”

Netanyahu and Abbas pledged their seriousness to securing an agreement and overcoming decades of mutual hostility and suspicion.

“This will not be easy,” Netanyahu said. “True peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides.”

“We do know how hard are the hurdles and obstacles we face during these negotiations — negotiations that within a year should result in an agreement that will bring peace,” Abbas said.

Abbas called on Israel to end Jewish settlements in the West Bank and other areas that the Palestinians want to be part off their own state. Netanyahu insisted that any agreement must assure Israel’s security.

Thursday’s negotiations are the first since the last effort broke down in December 2008 and are fraught with complications, including recent violence in the West Bank and Israeli settlement activity. Expectations are low and U.S. officials have said success may be only an agreement to hold a second round of negotiations.

Officials say they are hoping to arrange that meeting for Sept. 15 in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik and top aides to the leaders are expected to meet later Thursday to iron out final details of the next step.

Sitting at the top of a U-shaped table between Netanyahu and Abbas, Clinton congratulated the two for agreeing to resume negotiations but warned of difficult days to come in the effort to create an independent Palestinian state.

“I know the decision to sit at this table was not easy,” Clinton added. “We understand the suspicion and skepticism that so many feel borne out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes.”

She noted two recent attacks on Israelis in the West Bank claimed by the militant Hamas movement underscored the difficulties facing the two leaders.

“But, by being here today, you each have taken an important set toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change and moving toward a future of peace and dignity that only you can create.”

Hamas gunmen killed four Israeli residents of a West Bank settlement on Tuesday as Netanyahu, Abbas and the leaders of Egypt and Jordan convened in Washington. And on Wednesday, hours before the leaders ate dinner at the White House, Hamas gunmen wounded two Israelis as they drove in their car in another part of the West Bank.

The talks will face their first test within weeks, at the end of September, when the Israeli government’s declared slowdown in settlement construction is slated to end.

Palestinians have said that a renewal of settlement construction will torpedo the talks. The Israeli government is divided over the future of the slowdown, and a decision to extend it could split Netanyahu’s hawkish coalition. Netanyahu has given no indication so far that it will continue beyond the deadline.

Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations broke off nearly two years ago, in December 2008, and the Obama administration spent its first 20 months in office coaxing the two sides back to the bargaining table. Despite the success in launching the talks, gaps between the sides are wide, distrust remains after years of violence and deadlock, and expectations are low.

After listening to the Mideast leaders he convened Wednesday night, Obama pronounced himself carefully optimistic. “I am hopeful, cautiously hopeful, but hopeful,” he said.

Published first at the Jerusalem Post
By Aziz Abu Sarah

There many reasons to be pessimistic and at times to despair about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet even when things look hopeless, hope has a way of appearing, offering a vision of what can be rather than what is. Recently, I caught a glimpse of this hope in an unlikely place – the Israeli health care system.

In December, I went for a routine checkup with my family doctor in east Jerusalem and received the news everyone fears – I had cancer. What had seemed like a small lump in my neck was in fact thyroid cancer – devastating news for someone in his late 20s. I was quickly scheduled for surgery and given a date of May 17.

I immediately called my close friend Dr. Adel Misk, a Palestinian neurologist from east Jerusalem. Misk works in both Israeli and Palestinian hospitals, treating Palestinians and Israelis alike. He referred me to his colleague, Dr. Shila Nagar, a Jewish Israeli endocrinologist.

When Misk referred me to Nagar, he was not thinking in the terms of Palestinians and Israelis, but rather in terms of which specialist could best treat me. He was not concerned about her religious practices or political opinions. He was only concerned about her track record as a doctor.

In the waiting room outside Nagar’s office, I could not help but notice how many Palestinians were there. It did not bother them that she was Jewish, just like Misk’s Jewish patients do not mind that he is Palestinian. All the stereotypes and fences of nationalist fervor were replaced with basic survival instincts.

I SHARED my thoughts about Israeli-Palestinian medical cooperation with Nagar, who told me a story of a Jewish friend of hers who had prostate problems. One night he was suffering from a painful blockage and went to the emergency room. The doctor on duty was an Arab woman. He was not pleased: It is doubly bad, he thought, an Arab and a woman. At first he refused to let her treat him; however, as the pain increased he changed his mind and called her in. Years later, this Arab woman is his permanent doctor and a close friend. This personal experience was Nagar’s example of how humanity (and physical necessity!) can overcome nationalism.

Fast forward to the day of my surgery. In an ironic twist of fate, here I was, a Palestinian journalist, draped in a hospital gown covered in Stars of David. I was stressed and fearful. Yet none of these emotions had to do with the nationality of my doctors or the pattern on my hospital gown. I was afraid of the surgery, and the possibility of not waking up again. However, when I was brought to the operating room, I was again given another dose of hope.

I had two surgeons, a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli Jew. The anesthesiologist was an extremely experienced and competent Russian who joked with me until I fell asleep. My life was in the hands of an ideal team.

Meanwhile, my family waited outside. My wife and mother were both in tears, and later told me that a Jewish woman waiting for news of her relative’s surgery comforted them.

In the midst of the hatred, anger and bitterness of the conflict, you can still find glimpses of goodness. Unfortunately, this light often passes unnoticed. Yet it offers a practical example of the dream we all share, of a future where we can live safe and full lives without fear of injury.

My surgery went extremely well, and I recovered quickly. Moreover, through this painful experience I caught a glimmer of hope in what seems like a hopeless environment. I have many criticisms of Israeli policies and politics, but the functioning universal health care system in Israel and its ability to separate politics from medicine earns my praise.

This is not to say that the system is perfect. Like any future Israel and Palestine might share, there is the possibility of getting distracted by issues of insurance and bureaucracy. However, when it matters most, Israeli and Palestinian doctors share a commitment to human life regardless of ethnicity, religion or nationality. Moreover, when it comes time to choose doctors, we base our choice on who is mostly likely to promote human life. If only we voted on the same basis!

Unfortunately, I had to experience the health care system personally before being able to appreciate this example of what Israelis and Palestinians can achieve. Despite the pain and suffering, I am grateful to have discovered such a hidden treasure of humanity at its best.

I will consider this helpful someday when the article indicates that the Chief Rabbis coordinated their visit with the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian mayors of Jericho and Nablus. Then such a visit will be a helpful indicator of respect, mutual recognition, and cooperation. Otherwise it is just improved security for a better occupation, and is not contributing to a safe and just solution. Rabbi Froman, by contrast, always when he enters an Arab city, even with historic Jewish roots, always comes with respect for the occupants, especially the Muslim occupants. That is why his way is a way of courage.

Chief rabbis in rare visit to holy sites in Nablus, Jericho

By JONAH MANDEL

08/20/2010 03:00

First visits by high-ranking Israeli delegation in 10 years.

Talkbacks (4)

Israel’s Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar conducted an unprecedented visit to Jewish holy sites in Nablus and Jericho on Thursday, ahead of the High Holy Days.

For the first time in 10 years, a high-ranking Israeli delegation came in broad daylight to Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus and the ancient Shalom Al Israel synagogue in Jericho.

The visit, the first of its kind since the IDF pulled out of Nablus and Jericho, was said to be the result of an ongoing dialogue between Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites Shmuel Rabinovitch and the head of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria Brig.- Gen. Yoav Mordechai, who organized the tour. OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi and Judea and Samaria Division commander Brig.- Gen. Nitzan Alon also participated.

The rabbis prayed at the sites and were briefed by Mizrahi on the arrangements under which Jews can pray there. Both sites are in Area A and hence under Palestinian security responsibility.

The IDF cited the visit as another example of the improving security situation in Judea and Samaria, which can be credited, among other factors, to confidence-building measures led by the military, and the tightening of ties between the IDF and Palestinian security forces.

Metzger used the opportunity to speak out strongly against the phenomenon of clandestine nocturnal infiltrations into the Joseph’s Tomb complex.

Since the site was taken over by Palestinians in 2000, Jewish worshipers have been barred from entering during the day.

As of November 2007, monthly nighttime visits, coordinated with and secured by the IDF, enable busloads of Jewish worshipers to access the tomb.

via Chief rabbis in rare visit to holy sites in Nablus, Jericho.

Below is a translation from the Arabic article published by Alquds Newspaper on Tuesday 17th of August 2010 Click here for the Arabic

By:Aziz Abu Sarah

A year ago, the Palestinians encountered unprecedented change in the U.S. and international community toward the Palestinian issue, as the international community noticeably increased pressure on the Israeli government to freeze settlements and accept the principle of a two-state solution for final settlement. However, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was able to evade the pressure by throwing the ball into the Palestinian court, demanding that the Palestinians return to direct negotiations.

The Palestinian side rejected the demand for direct negotiations, citing a lack of progress in indirect negotiations and the absence of any trust building with the Israeli side. This decision led the international community to exercise pressure on the Palestinians, and interpret their decision as a lack of interest in negotiations. Netanyahu took this opportunity to present himself as a peace seeker and renew his allegations that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side.

The Palestinians’ fear of direct negotiations with Netanyahu comes from painful memories and experiences that Palestinian negotiators have repeatedly gone through. Such negotiations normally began with never ending talks, and ended with the Palestinians being blamed after every round of unsuccessful negotiations.

The Palestinians also have not forgotten the results of direct negotiations with Netanyahu in his first premiership in the nineties.

However, the international community has gone through many changes and is different today, and therefore we must be aware of how these changes may affect Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.

There are voices in the Palestinian community which insist that engaging in direct talks would weaken the Palestinian position, and therefore we should reject the demand for negotiations. However, the opposite is true. Nothing weakens the Palestinians more than appearing to oppose negotiations, leaving them open to be labeled obstructionists of the peace process.

On the other hand, entering into direct negotiations with the Israelis could strengthen the Palestinian position. Last year Palestinians succeeded in winning the confidence and trust of the international community by demonstrating their ability to build infrastructure and institutions for the future Palestinian state. The Palestinians have also been able to foster strong international support for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the near future by highlighting the deteriorating conditions on the ground that could lead to the death of the unborn Palestinian state.

Moreover, the current U.S. administration is more sympathetic to Palestinian suffering and more attentive to their hopes than any other U.S. administration in the past.  President Obama announced that he would like to see a Palestinian state before the end of his term, which expires in two and a half years. He demonstrated his commitment by choosing George Mitchell to serve as the U.S. envoy to the Middle East, a former U.S. senator known for fairness and directness in facilitating negotiations and for his experience in dealing with complicated negotiations, such as those in Northern Ireland.

Perhaps one of the most important changes in the current U.S. administration is their willingness to confront the Israeli government publicly. Several times over the past year, the administration has challenged Israel on the construction of settlements, which the former U.S. administration avoided.

For the first time ever, the Palestinians have a possible advantage over their Israeli counterparts in negotiations. While the current Israeli government has been unable to provide any serious offers for a final settlement, it seems that the Palestinians are ready to offer a comprehensive settlement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As result, the Palestinians must initiate by presenting their offer, rather than waiting for an Israeli offer. This will throw the ball back in the Israeli court and put Netanyahu in a position to reveal whether he is serious about reaching an agreement. Also, engaging in direct negotiations before the end of the partial settlement freeze may give Palestinians leverage to pressure Israel to continue the freeze. Rejecting the direct negations, however, would give Netanyahu an excuse to resume building settlements.

That said, the return to direct negotiations must avoid past mistakes. It is important that negotiations be tied to a clear framework and timetable. The passage of time without any progress in the peace process will only kill a two state solution. We can take Netanyahu’s recent statement about the possibility of achieving a peace agreement within one year as a timetable for the declaration of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinian decision to return to direct negotiations with Israeli should not happen as a result of international pressure. Instead, the Palestinian side should make a diplomatic and strategic decision to enter direct negotiations, with the knowledge that it is in the best interest of the Palestinian people.

Excellent article, speaks for itself

Growing up in the West Bank, Mujahid Sarsur knew next to nothing about the Holocaust and saw little ground to sympathize with a people he saw as his occupier. 2010. But thanks to an Israeli roommate overseas, the 21-year-old Palestinian student learned about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews during World War II and discovered a new understanding of his Israeli neighbors.Now he wants other Arabs to do the same. Sarsur heads one of a handful of Palestinian grass-roots groups seeking knowledge about the Holocaust.On Wednesday, he led a delegation of 22 students to Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem. The students, fasting for Ramadan, listened closely to their Arabic-speaking guide’s explanations, and were left wide-eyed by the gruesome images of the death camps.

via Palestinians learn about the Holocaust at Yad Vashem – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

U.S. support for Israel is decreasing, new poll shows – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

I am shocked, just shocked by these numbers! And think of it, these were pro-Israel pollsters. I know the response, more propaganda campaigns and greater efforts to intimidate opposition into silence both in the U.S. and in Israel. Essentially we are all being treated like we are at checkpoints, because it is the only thing Lieberman is trained to do.

Benjy, you want to save Israel’s last remaining supportive population, Americans? You want to go down in history as something less than a disaster?  Make a new government.

In Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani stands before a mausoleum where her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani was buried nearly 450 years ago.

By Omar Kasrawi

Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upward in prayer for her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani. He was buried in Mamilla, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly half a millennium ago.

About 200 meters away, a fenced-off construction zone marks the future site of the Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance, a project overseen by the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

In Israel, starting a new project inevitably means bumping into history. In this case, the construction that started in 2004 has stirred Muslim anger as it displaces hundreds of Muslim graves dating as far back as the 7th century, including the remains of soldiers and officials of the Muslim ruler Saladin.

IN PICTURES: Israeli settlements

Wiesenthal officials say they have followed every recommendation of the Israel Antiquities Authority, which is in charge of “salvage excavations,” and point out that Muslim authorities in the 1920s had approved building on the plot.

The Mamilla controversy is not unique in Israel, where it’s common for different religions’ sacred spaces to overlap. Two of the holiest sites in Islam – Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock – sit atop the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism, where the Torah proclaims the Holy Temple will be rebuilt.

But these controversies are more than debates over landownership; they are debates over the ownership of memories, a place in human history.

In Israel especially, place is connected to identity, making it a priority to protect the places that offer a sense of belonging. Any effort to remove evidence of historical ties is seen as an attack on identity. Just last week, Israeli authorities destroyed at least 15 tombstones in the Mamilla cemetery which it said were illegally built.

“There is a tendency in both communities to deny the spirituality or the sanctity or the history of the other on a certain spot,” says Marc Gopin, a rabbi and the director of George Mason University’s Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution.

Why place plays such a key role in identity

Such tactics are common. This past March, a right-wing Israeli group sponsored ads on 200 buses that displayed fictitious posters of the Temple Mount, in which a Third Temple replaced the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In 2000 Israeli leader Ariel Sharon set off the second intifada by visiting the Temple Mount and asserting permanent Israeli sovereignty over the compound. The violence lasted four years and claimed the lives of more than 5,000 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis.

But even lesser-known holy sites become part of the conflict if a community feels its presence being threatened.

Recently, the Israeli government named as heritage sites Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, which both Judaism and Islam claim as Abraham’s birthplace. By claiming sites in the Palestinian-controlled West Bank, Israel further blurred the lines of the ownership of land – and history.

How Muslims are protesting Mamilla project

In the case of the Wiesenthal project, protesters claim the museum’s construction is an effort to conquer what Muslims consider religious territory. It has provoked petitions from Palestinian descendants of the buried, including Ms. Dajani.

“I feel like I have lots of energy to do something” about the construction, says Dajani, whose family’s name is prominent among Palestinians. “But at the end I understand that this is very difficult. The Israelis will not let us do anything easily.”

With construction set to continue, activists are focused on a still untouched part of the cemetery. According to Diyala Husseini Dajani, a protester with family ties to Mamilla – but no relation to Rawan – nearly $18,000 was raised to support a memorial wall that will display the names of everyone buried in the cemetery.

Mr. Gopin says such gestures are effective peacekeeping tactics.

“The only thing that is left to be done at this point is to make gestures of apology, offer to build up what’s left of the cemetery with security and with the refurbishing of all the stones,” says Gopin. “But you can’t just make nice gestures. It has to come with a real proof that you believe in a peaceful coexistence.”

Israel archaeologist: It’s totally politics

Gideon Sulimani, chief archaeologist appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority to excavate the museum site, doubts there is a genuine desire for coexistence in this case. Mr. Sulimani discovered more than 200 bodies during the dig in 2005.

Despite his recommendation that the site not be released for construction, the antiquities authorities informed the Supreme Court to clear the area for construction.

“It’s part of the conflict about who owns the land,” Sulimani said. “It’s not archaeology. It’s not science. They want to move away the Muslim memory of the area to make it Jewish. So it’s totally politics.”

Some Palestinians involved are hopeful that even if the new museum rises, their protest efforts will bring some acknowledgment to the Muslim burial ground that once stood on the site.

“It’s not that I’m concerned about the graves as much as I’m concerned about the fact that we don’t exist to the Israelis,” Ms. Husseini Dajani said.

From the Christian-Science Monitor, original post http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0811/Why-Israeli-Palestinian-conflicts-over-land-turn-epic

Chaim Pearlman in court Wednesday.

via ‘Not enough evidence to convict suspected Jewish terrorist Pearlman’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Helping Jews move beyond the Holocaust to the Rule of Law

You see this face? This is the face of an angel. I see the face of an angel. This is what I spent most of my life thinking of and dreaming of as the face of an angel. His name means ‘life’ and I grew up feeling that he was preserving the ‘life’ the soul of our people. That is what we were doing in Kollel, the learning halls of perpetual study. I grew up worshiping the Ben Toah, the student of Torah, a young person of study, humility, gentleness, that has  been a prototype of ideal Jewish life going back thousands of years. He has early ancestors in generations of youth going  back to the great cities of Babylon, let alone all the major cities of Europe, West and East. He is embedded in my ideal self. I see him and I see calm, insight, thoughtfulness, intelligence, I see the character of Danny in the Potok’s The Chosen, and Motel the Tailor, of Fiddler on the Roof, all wrapped into one, gentle, learned, thoughtful, sensitive.

So how does this face of an angel become a racist and a murderer? Easy, bad teachers, bad philosophies. You can’t tell me he has had a harder life than 2000 years of pious young men in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. But for me losing him, turning against him, insisting that there actually be the rule of law in Israel so a man like this can stay behind bars the rest of his life, be deprived of life, the way that he deprived so many others, this is hard for me emotionally–and for millions of Jews who refuse to enforce the rule of law in Israel and Palestine. So I ask my readers to understand that the death of Potok’s Danny and Sholom Aleichem’s Motel is a hard death for us. The Nazis killed their bodies but this man has killed the soul of that Jewish archetype. We need to evolve a new set of archetypes of piety and decency, and it is not easy to face this.

I was reading this headline in Ha’aretz and by sheer accident, it was in the same column as another headline, “A superb day for the Jewish people’: Kagan sworn in as Supreme Court judge”

And I was just struck by the paradox of pride and shame of being an identified Jew in 2010. On the one hand, another Jewish woman reaches the most honored position of legal wisdom in the United States, an achievement that in my youth I would have called a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of the Divine Name, a testimony to the hard work of centuries of her forebears who kept alive Talmud study and the search for knowledge and wisdom and now, thankfully, yielding the proper results with the honor of women as equals in achievement.

And then, and then….The same page, also an enormously distinguished good woman, my cousin as a Jew, someone of Lebanese descent, detained by the robots at Israel’s international airport for the crime of being of Arab descent, and just to make a point, just so that Arabs the world over know that they are to be humiliated and unwelcome, she must be included even though she is a former Cabinet member of the United States Government. This is the Ayalon/Lieberman era of shaming to win, shaming to achieve meaning and purpose and identity. This is what I would have called in my youth  a Hillul Hashem, a desecration of the Divine Name, because the Divine Name is on all human beings and he who honors human beings brings honor to the Divine and vice versa.

So, in essence, kudos and honor and respect to the American Jewish community for their 200 years of  hard work, their nurturing of a battered people to such a degree that their descendants, their daughters, enter the Supreme Court. And shame on the community for aiding and abetting the travesty and dark pall of racism that has descended on the Holy Land at the hands of this same people.

My personal apologies to every single Arab who has ever been humiliated at Ben Gurion Airport. Perhaps it is fitting because it symbolizes the unfinished business of liberation and independence and statehood in that land. For there is no liberation there is no independence there is no statehood as far as I am concerned until everyone is equal.

A former secretary of the U.S. Health and Human Services Department says she was detained and interrogated at the Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel last month.George Bush and University of Miami President Donna Shalala Former U.S. President George Bush giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to University of Miami President Donna Shalala in 2008Photo by: APDonna Shalala, who is of Lebanese descent, is now the president of the University of Miami. She was visiting Israel in July as part of a delegation of university leaders invited by the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange.Shalala stayed after the convention to meet with a group setting up a new medical school in Israel.University spokeswoman Margot Winick said in an email that Shalala was detained as she was leaving Israel to undergo a set of security questions and a luggage search that took nearly 3 hours. But she didn’t miss her flight.Israeli airport authority officials said there was no record of the search.

via University of Miami president detained for questioning at Israeli airport – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.