Outrage as Jewish newspapers ban pictures of Israel's new PM because she's a woman

DAILY MAIL ONLINE : 22nd September 2008

By Matthew Kalman

Tzipi Livni is poised to become Israel's next prime minister - but ultra-orthodox newspapers in the Jewish state are refusing to publish her picture for reasons of religious modesty.

Israeli feminists have described the ban as 'laughably ludicrous.'

The 50-year-old foreign minister and mother of two has been hailed by some of the world's press as a 'Mossad beauty' but she has image problems closer to home.

Only about 600,000 of Israel's 7 million population are haredi, or ultra-orthodox, but they pack a strong political punch and include key officials including cabinet ministers and the mayor of Jerusalem.

Their lifestyle is governed by a strict code with regulations for food, clothes, reading material and education which many critics say goes beyond the rules of orthodox Judaism.

Signs hanging at the entrance to the ultra-orthodox neighbourhoods in Jerusalem warn women to dress modestly in the area.

'Mossad beauty': Tzipi Livni

'No haredi paper will publish Livni's picture,' said Avraham Kroizer, a public relations adviser to the incoming premier.

'Graphic artists will blur the faces of women that do make their way into pictures that the papers want to use.

'They will also blur pictures of television sets or other items deemed improper to be seen by the wider haredi public.'

Naomi Ragen, author of The Sacrifice of Tamar and other popular novels set in the ultra-orthodox world, said the ban on Livni's photograph was 'over the top.'

'But I'm not surprised,' said Ms Ragen, who campaigns for equal rights for religious women.

'The haredi newspapers never publish pictures of women. Women don't exist. These papers are the equivalent of a boys' club.

'Even when they are advertising for the female market, they won't print a picture of a woman holding a baby.'

One ultra-orthodox paper also said it would not be using Livni's name Tzipi - short for 'Tziporah' which means 'bird.'

'We might write "Mrs. T. Livni" or just "Mrs. Livni," but the name. Tzipi is too familiar. It is not acceptable to address a woman using her first name, especially when she goes by a nickname,' said a senior editor at Hamodia, the oldest ultra-orthodox daily.

'For us the newspaper is an educational device that not only informs but also teaches people how to behave,' he said.

Livni would be Israel's first woman prime minister since Golda Meir resigned in 1974. The Hamodia editor admitted their policy back then was different.

'Golda was an institution. She was a respected figure with decades of political experience before she became prime minister. But in recent years there has been depreciation in the level of politicians,' he explained.

Ms Ragen said it was 'laughably ludicrous' not to print Livni's full name.

'Why this would be a problem is beyond the grasp of an orthodox woman like myself,' she said.

'There is nothing in Jewish law that would remotely be able to excuse this behaviour.'

'God has no problem putting the names of many women in the Bible. Why the ultra-orthodox world feel they have to improve upon God escapes me. They are getting more and more fanatical every day,' she said.

Professor Galia Golan of the Inter-Disciplinary Centre University and a founder of the Israel Women's network, said the ban was 'like something from the middle ages.'

'It's ridiculous and it's terrible,' said Prof Golan.

'They are more conservative than Islamic fundamentalists who have no problems seeing women in public life.'

'To make a difference between Livni and Golda Meir is even more insulting. It suggests they had no problem with Golda because she was so manly, whereas Livni has honesty, intelligence, integrity – a different kind of politician who represents the feminine side of politics.'

The woman heading for a place in Israeli history

Daily Mail
18 September 2008

By MATTHEW KALMAN

A FORMER Mossad agent was last night poised to become Israel's first woman prime minister since Golda Meir.

Exit polls showed Tzipi Livni, 50, a lawyer and mother of two, had scored a clear victory in the election to replace Premier Ehud Olmert as head of the ruling Kadima party.

Olmert's career crashed after it was revealed he received envelopes stuffed full of cash from wealthy U.S. supporters.

Livni and Olmert founded Kadima with former Premier Ariel Sharon when they all quit the right-wing Likud Party in November 2005.

Livni is a comparative newcomer to politics who entered parliament in 1999. Her father Eitan Livni was operations chief of the Irgun, the preindependence Jewish terrorist movement headed by Menachem Begin. He was directly implicated in the murders of British troops.

Livni has broken with her father's nationalist past, however, and embraced the peace process with the Palestinians. For the past year she has headed the Israeli negotiating team and has declared that Israel should abandon its settlement project in the West Bank if it will lead to peace.

She is married to Naftali Shpitzer, a top advertising executive and her chief strategist in the leadership contest. They met when she was 26 and he was 32 and became engaged after just three weeks.

Livni had just started studying law and was a junior intelligence cadet based in Paris, where she had the responsibility of overseeing a safe house used by Israeli agents for missions in Europe. She wanted to continue with Mossad but Shpitzer persuaded her to stay in Israel and go into law full-time.

TIME magazine named her as the 24th most influential world leader in its last Top 100 and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called her 'a woman of conviction, intelligence and peace'.

If official results confirm she has won the Kadima election, Livni will have a month to confirm the existing coalition with the Labour Party or form a new government.

Strikes by Professors and Students Paralyze Palestinian Universities

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
NEWS BLOG : September 15, 2008

Jerusalem — Dual strikes by Palestinian faculty members and students have effectively paralyzed the Palestinian higher-education system in the West Bank and Gaza.

Faculty members at the nine Palestinian universities walked out two weeks ago, demanding a pay raise of 80 percent. The dispute has brought together often-warring factions in the rival Fatah and Hamas camps in a united front.

“The strike is a legal procedure, and it has nothing to do with political rivalries,” Mousa Ajwah, a spokesman for the General Union of University Workers, told the Ma’an News Agency. He appealed to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to intervene immediately and end the crisis.

The professors’ union rejected an offer of a 50-percent rise in pay.

Students, meanwhile, have been on strike to protest tuition increases, which vary from campus to campus. Students at Birzeit University, near Ramallah, walked out after the administration raised tuition for new students by 25 percent without advance warning. The students also protested the administration’s refusal to register returning students who could not afford to pay the full fee of 500 Jordanian dinars, or about $700.

Things turned ugly on the campuses this week as students started burning tires as part of protests against the university administration.

Rami Khalaf, a spokesman for the Birzeit Student Council, said the students would suspend the strike on Tuesday after Nabil Qassis, the university’s president, agreed to negotiations and to extend the deadline for registering cash-strapped students.

“We are pleased that the university has agreed to talks, and we have stopped our action for now, but we will not accept the increase in fees, and we will go on strike again if the university management do not change their minds on this issue,” Mr. Khalaf told The Chronicle.

He said the students supported the professors’ demand for higher salaries but called on the Palestinian government to provide the money. —Matthew Kalman

Macca brushes off Israel threat

Daily Mail 15 Sep 2008

SIR PAUL McCartney will be killed by suicide bombers if he performs in Israel, a Muslim cleric has warned.

He will play to 80,000 in Tel Aviv this month in his first show since the Beatles were banned there as a corrupting influence in 1965.

Omar Bakri criticised him for playing in the year of Israel’s 60th anniversary, adding: ‘ Paul McCartney is the enemy of every Muslim. We have sacrifice operatives who will not stand by while he joins a celebration of their oppression. If he values his life, Mr McCartney must not come to Israel.’

Sir Paul said his show would go ahead.

Mamaherb a new wiki alternative medicine site

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Do natural remedies really work?

A new Web site devised by Israeli high-tech executives hopes to answer that question by providing information on thousands of health problems and possible natural remedies.

Although there are several databases of natural remedies available online, the creators of Mamaherb say their Web site (www.mamaherb.com) is the only existing resource for information provided by and updated by users. The Web site, which was launched in January, already has 8,450 treatments listed for 512 existing conditions.

Mamaherb.com is the brainchild of Tamir Goren, 46, Elad Daniel, 33 and Orni Daniel, 31. None are health care professionals. Goren came up with the idea of tapping into the experience of millions of Internet users after his 74-year-old mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and experienced severe side effects from chemotherapy.

Easy access

"After excessive research (online and medical books) I learned about wheat grass - and it seemed to work," by easing my mother's nausea and fatigue said Goren. "She passed through chemotherapy with ease. But was it the wheat grass? And if it was, how come it was so hard to find out about it?"

Goren set out collecting information on natural remedies, and found that existing literature and online databases were not easily accessible for laypeople.

"We came up with the idea to have a resource or tool where ordinary people would be able to publish natural treatments that they knew or had heard about," said Daniel, an industrial management engineer for SQLink, a data security company owned by Goren. "By making it interactive, that would allow other people to say what had helped them also."

The site allows users to upload treatments and then rate them. They can also comment on cures suggested by others, and classify them as helpful or not helpful.

Last month, various berries were highlighted as a treatment for conditions ranging from arthritis and Alzheimer's to colic and high cholesterol. Other featured remedies have included tea - green, chamomile or parsley - honey and garlic for scores of ailments.

Guarding accuracy

"The accuracy of what works and doesn't comes from the people," said Daniel. "If someone sees a certain treatment that should be reported, or something that is not a treatment, we have tools that alert us that something is wrong with a post from another user."

Recently, Daniel says, a contributor from rural India spent days talking to village elders before sending traditional remedies handed down through generations.

"They've known them for centuries. The wisdom has gone from person to person and never been written anywhere," said Daniel. "Now, for the first time, it's possible for people in San Francisco, to know what works in a small village in India for treating flu."

But Daniel readily concedes that much of this information can't be checked, no tests exist for many natural remedies and there is a lack of scientific research on all but a handful of treatments. "You can't issue a patent for a lemon, so there is no financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies to carry out in-depth research for every known natural health treatment," he said.

And some critics warn that like many Web sites there can be both useful and questionable information posted.

"I think the concept has merit and could potentially grow to become the largest resource on natural health, given its structure," said Mike Adams, editor of naturalnews.com, a nonprofit group of educational Web sites about health and environmental issues. "But you got to remember these two rules about user-generated content, which every such site learns the hard way: Users generate a lot of content and 99 percent of it is junk.

Knowledge base

"There is an enormous amount of knowledge about natural remedies out there in the world, and if mamaherb.com can do a good job on the quality review side, they could be a hugely important knowledge base for remedies that really work," said Adams.

Botanist Jim Duke, director of the Green Pharmacy Garden in Fulton MD., who is widely considered one of the world's leading authority on medicinal plants, agrees.

"I will consult it as a reference," said Duke. "There are lots of things I had not seen, and I would check all those out. For fibromyalgia (a chronic condition characterized by widespread pain in muscles, ligaments and tendons), for example, there are things I had never thought of."

Duke suggests the Web site use clearer explanations and include notes on methodology, although he likes the fact that most of the citations are based on folklore.

"I'm a great believer in folklore," he said. "It's very consistent in the dosages recommended. I didn't see anything alarming. I usually can spot a poisonous plant in a hurry. A lot of homeopathic medicines are deadly poisonous. They need to ensure they are not recommending anything that could be dangerous," he warned.

Indeed, U.S. health officials say traditional medicines used by some immigrants from Latin America, India and other parts of Asia are the second most common source of lead poisoning in the United States - surpassed only by lead paint - and may account for tens of thousands of such cases among children each year. Dozens of adults and children have become gravely ill or died after taking lead-laden medicine over the past eight years, according to federal and local health officials.

Publishing hopes

In the future, Daniel says he and his two partners hope to publish results, find natural treatments and learn from accumulated knowledge from people who have tried these treatments. For now, there are no plans to charge users or solicit ads.

"We want it to work well and for people to be comfortable using it," said Daniel. "We'll worry about making money later."

Meanwhile, Adams of naturalnews.com says that if the Israelis can install an effective in-house filter of editors vetting each contribution, their Web site could "revolutionize the sharing of information about what works in a way that's light years ahead of conventional medicine."

Online resource

Users can explore Mamaherb (www.mama herb.com) according to treatment, remedy and ingredients, or simply browse its subjects from A to Z.

Users are encouraged to indicate what treatments they find helpful, add information or provide critical comments about what didn't work.

Dancer hops to it in Tel Aviv to prove he's with troupe, not terrorists

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Tuesday, September 9th 2008

BY BILL HUTCHINSON
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Dancer Abdur-Rahim Jackson, of New York, was detained by Israeli airport security officers because of his Muslim first name, and was forced to dance to prove he was no terrorist.

He had to do a jig to prove he was not planning jihad.

A member of the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater was forced to display his fleet-footed skills to convince Israeli airport security he was no Islamic terrorist.

New Yorker Abdur-Rahim Jackson said he was detained Sunday at the Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv because security officials were suspicious of his Muslim first name.

Jackson, 31, who is African-American, said he was grilled about his name and asked twice to dance before he was allowed to enter the country.

"It was really an embarrassing and unpleasant position to be in," Jackson said Tuesday. "To be greeted like this because of my name, it took me back a little bit."

The Manhattan-based Alvin Ailey dance troupe is in Tel Aviv to kick off a six-nation tour to celebrate its 50th anniversary season.

Jackson, a graduate of Juilliard and an eight-year veteran of the elite 30-member multicultural dance ensemble, said airport security guards separated him from the group as soon as they touched down in Tel Aviv.

"We passed the security check, and then I was approached and asked to step aside," Jackson recalled.

He said he was escorted to a separate waiting area where security guards questioned him for an hour about his first name.

"I explained to them that my father converted to Islam and gave me this name," Jackson told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper. "They repeatedly asked me what my father's name is, what my mother's name is and why they gave me this name."

Attempting to prove he is a professional dancer, Jackson handed them an Alvin Ailey brochure featuring photos of him performing.

"They saw the pictures and then one of them asked me to dance for him," Jackson said. "I was embarrassed, but I was afraid to do something wrong that may cause me to look suspicious."

Minutes after dancing for one security guard, Jackson was requested to repeat the impromptu performance for a female security guard.

"I demonstrated a few dance moves and after another clarification of the details, they released me and allowed me to join the rest of the troupe," Jackson said.

Jackson - engaged to fellow Alvin Ailey dancer Olivia Bowman, who is part Jewish - said he was not raised a Muslim.

He said he did not file a complaint, explaining, "We're only here to bring positive light to our lives and the people here."

Jackson and the Alvin Ailey group performed last night at the Tel Aviv Performing Arts Center.

Israeli President Shimon Peres and Tel Aviv Mayor Ronald Huldai were to attend the show.

"The incident happened two days ago. Since that time we've received a warm welcome from the people of Israel," Alvin Ailey artistic director Judith Jamison said last night.

"Tonight we had an incredible opening night to launch Ailey's 50th Anniversary International Tour. As it's Israel's 60th Anniversary - we are happy to be celebrating these landmark events together."

Security officials at Ben-Gurion airport refused to issue an apology.

The Israel Airports Authority said, "The details of the incident are unknown to us, and no corroboration was found in the investigation we conducted."

With Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

Israel cops try common scents crowd control

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS : Sunday, September 7th 2008

BY Matthew Kalman
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

JERUSALEM - The activists protesting the Israeli security fence in the West Bank were prepared for rubber bullets and tear gas - but not The Skunk.

The mist, fired from a water cannon, was yellow as it washed over the group and left an unshakable stench of sewage in mouths, hair and clothes. It gave the protesters a literal taste of a new riot-control weapon developed by the Israeli police.

"A terrible stench - the smell of a rotting, dead animal," said Dr David Nir, an Israeli peace campaigner. "Like jumping headfirst into a sewer."

Palestinian protester Ahad Huja said the smell even got into the food his wife cooked; people avoided him for a week.

The foul-smelling fluid can be sprayed from truck mounted cannons or from backpacks carried by cops.

David Ben Harosh, head of technological development for the Israeli police - which plans to market The Skunk to other forces worldwide - says the recipe is based entirely on natural organic ingredients.

"It's the start of a change in tactics in dealing with crowd control and dispersing violent demonstrations," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

War criminal who handed Jews over to Nazis for extermination 'lives openly in Germany'

DAILY MAIL : 31st August 2008

By Matthew Kalman

A Lithuanian convicted of collaborating with the Nazis in the mass murder of Jews during World War II is living peacefully in a small town in Germany, it was revealed today.

Algimantas Dailide, 87, was stripped of his US citizenship and fled the country in 2004 after lying about his wartime activities.

He was an officer in the collaborationist Lithuanian Security Police and handed over innocent Jews from the Vilna Ghetto to the Nazis to be slaughtered.

Dailide, who is the ninth most wanted man on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of Nazi war criminals, settled in Kirchberg, Saxony, where he has been living with his wife ever since.

'The Lithuanians have managed to make a farce out of the entire judicial process.'

A court in Vilnius convicted him of war crimes in March 2006, but did not impose a custodial sentence.

In July, a high court in Lithuania ruled that he would not go to prison, partly because of his frail health, but he has never been given a health examination by the Lithuanian authorities and he was spotted last week by the Israeli reporter out shopping for groceries near his home.

He declared he was 'innocent' of the war crimes charges for which he was convicted.

Dailide and his wife live with his wife in a modest apartment on Torstrasse, opposite the local town hall. Even though he is a convicted war criminal, he has made no attempt to hide his identity. His name appears on the mailbox and the intercom at the entrance to the apartment block.

Dailide's German-born wife, whom he met in 1945 after escaping Lithuania, has relatives in Kirchberg, a town of 7,000 in what was formerly East Germany.

Haaretz said the couple live on his wife's German pension of £200 a month, and the remaining profits from the sale of their house in the US.

Efraim Zuroff, Israel director of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and its chief Nazi-hunter, said he had spent many years persuading the Lithuanian authorities to bring Dailide to trial.

'It is absolutely outrageous that he is free today,' said Zuroff. 'The Lithuanians have managed to make a farce out of the entire judicial process.'

'Dailide was actually convicted and sentenced but they didn't have the courage or fortitude to implement the sentence,' he said, adding that no Lithuanian collaborators had ever gone to jail.

'A lack of political willingness to contend with the crimes of the past, along with extenuating circumstances stemming from advanced age, are letting Nazi criminals off the hook,' he said.

Zuroff said the German authorities were unlikely to arrest him, because he was not convicted directly of murder or of being an accessory to murder with cruelty.

He called on the Lithuanian courts to implement their own judgment against Dailide.

Israel ready to attack if Iran goes nuclear

DAILY MAIL, Saturday August 30, 2008

By Matthew Kalman

ISRAEL will bomb Iran rather than let the ayatollahs get their hands on nuclear weapons, it was claimed yesterday.

The Israeli cabinet held a special session three weeks ago where it approved plans to stop Iran from going nuclear – at any price, according to newspaper reports.

'Preparations for an Israeli military option intended to stop Iran's nuclear program are under way,' reported Israel's daily Maariv newspaper.

'If the ayatollahs' regime does not fall in the next year, if the Americans do not strike militarily, and if the international sanctions do not break the Iranian nuclear plan, Israel will have to act forcefully.'

The United States has called for tougher international sanctions to try to persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

But Israeli leaders fear a nuclear Iran would seek to destroy the Jewish state and they believe time is running out for the diplomatic option.

At a recent military parade in Tehran, banners adorning six Shahab- 3 missiles proudly displayed Iran's hatred toward Israel and the U.S., reading: ' Israel must be wiped off the map' and 'We will crush America under our feet.'

Ben Caspit, the Maariv diplomatic editor, said the U. S. was opposed to the Israeli plan and could withhold the permits and special codes needed to overfly Iraq and attack Iran.

Yesterday, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, said his country was operating 4,000 centrifuges at its main uranium enrichment plant – enough to churn out weapons-grade plutonium for dozens of nuclear warheads.

Also yesterday, the London Arabic daily Al- Quds Al- Arabi reported that Iran had supplied its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon with advanced rocket systems capable of hitting anywhere in Israel.

The report said Hezbollah would respond to any Israeli attack on Iran with a massive rocket barrage against Israeli cities.

Bomb Explodes at University in Gaza Strip

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

NEWS BLOG : August 27, 2008

Jerusalem — A bomb exploded on Tuesday at Al-Azhar University, in the Gaza Strip, causing damage but no casualties.

The blast occurred in a classroom on the first floor of the humanities building. The room had just been vacated by students who were taking an examination, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, an independent organization known as PCHR.

Al-Azhar is a secular university politically affiliated with the Fatah movement headed by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. The human-rights organization described the attack as part of the continuing “security chaos” in Gaza that involves sporadic and sometimes deadly clashes between rival supporters of Fatah and Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last year.

“It is worth noting that acts of violence were reported on Sunday, 24 August 2008, between supporters of Hamas and Fatah blocs at the university, in which a number of students and administrative staff members were attacked,” the group said in a statement.

“PCHR is gravely concerned over this latest attack, which is part of the state of security chaos prevailing in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the group said. “PCHR calls for respecting university life and academic freedoms.” —Matthew Kalman

Cisco helps open world to Mideast students

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Nazareth, Israel -- In a community center in Upper Nazareth, Jewish and Arab schoolchildren are learning together. It's a rare scene in this tensely divided country, where ethnic divisions have been widened by fears of terrorism and underlying tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

What makes it unique is the bank of video screens on one wall connecting this room with similar groups of teenagers around the Mediterranean. And what makes it historic are the two dark-suited men sitting with the students and chatting over the uplink to the kids joining in from Portugal to Jordan via Morocco and Turkey.

One of them is Shimon Peres, the octogenarian president of Israel. The other is John Chambers, the CEO and president of San Jose-based Cisco Systems.

The chat crackling across the loudspeakers is part of the Mediterranean Youth Technology Club (MYTecC), a Cisco-sponsored two-year program that intends to create a virtual society of 400 teenagers across six countries who use the Internet to study English, computer science, leadership skills, communication and, most importantly, each other.

A related project, Digital Cities, is bringing computer technology to underprivileged towns in Israel, beginning with Nazareth and Ramla.

'It's really interesting'

"We learn technology and that will make us stronger in future," says Sha'ed Bishara, an Israeli Arab ninth-grader. "We learn about things we never knew about before, everything about the Internet. It's really interesting."

"Before this program I had no contact with my Jewish neighbors," she says. "Now I have Jewish friends. Cisco made us into friends. It will affect our future. We need to live together, without wars and all that. We all get on well together here."

Peres beams with pleasure as the youngsters guide him around their computer lab and show him Cisco-developed platforms developed that link the participants.

The two community projects in Nazareth - worth more than $2.5 million - are using Cisco's communications technology to advance dialogue between school students and give underprivileged teenagers a boost into the modern world.

"What is fascinating is that your generation will be about communities working together. The exciting thing about the Internet is that eliminates time and distance," Chambers tells the teenagers.

The MYTecC and Digital Cities programs were the brainchild of Zika Abzuk, a senior executive of Cisco in Israel. She says she was encouraged by the company to embark on the projects even though it meant largely abandoning her income-producing work for the company and diverting their resources into what is basically a philanthropic venture.

"Kids come twice a week to a technology center where they learn English, technology and how to be citizens of the world. They use the Internet and their natural curiosity to get to know each other and learn about each other's culture," says Abzuk.

At a community project in the back streets of East Jerusalem, Palestinian teenagers are combining leadership skills activities with surfing their favorite pages of the MYTecC Web platform.

Sara Salameh, 14, says she most enjoys chatting with her counterparts in Jordan and Morocco using her new screen name "Sarsoorah."

"I want to learn more English and communicate with friends from outside," she says. "I want to learn more about computers and tell my friends about our culture here in Palestine."

The sessions are supervised by 20 instructors from eight different countries, who have undergone intensive training for the past year at various locations around the region. A 20-day session for senior instructors was held in Istanbul in July. A new group of Palestinian and Jordanian instructors were trained in Amman during August. The technical operation of the project is itself an exercise in international diplomacy.

West Bank group forming

Rajwan Odeh, a 26-year-old computer scientist from Ramallah in the West Bank, is responsible for MYTecC technical development and communications platforms, as well as being the instructor for the first West Bank group that will begin meeting this fall. A Palestinian group in East Jerusalem started in February. Her content manager is another instructor in Portugal. Her troubleshooting consultant is in Tel Aviv.

The project brings together instructors and students from various countries that have tense relations with each other - Portugal and Morocco, Turkey and Cyprus, and of course Israelis and Palestinians. But they eschew attempts at amateur diplomacy. Instead the participants have chosen to respect each other's differences and get on with the work in hand.

'Open to other worlds'

"I was really motivated to do this because I like to be open-minded, open to other worlds, to other people and have cultural diversity" says Odeh, who wears a traditional Muslim hijab and tells hair-raising stories of her treatment at Israeli checkpoints as a student during the intifada.

"I'm looking for students who need what we have to offer and don't already have the opportunity to experience these things. Many Palestinians at private schools in Ramallah already have access to this kind of technology," she says.

"Teenagers can go on the Internet by themselves, but MYTecC is different. It's not just working on computers. It's the virtual activities, the social empowerment, the whole program that helps make them good people in their society. They would be in touch with other people through the Internet anyway, but this way they are in touch with ethical people. It helps to empower their values and develop them as leaders in their society," she says.

E-mail comments to foreign@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

University in West Bank to Open a Theater School, Based in Part in a Refugee Camp

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION NEWS BLOG : August 5, 2008

Jenin, West Bank — The Arab American University at Jenin will offer the first accredited theater-degree course in the Palestinian territories, starting this fall. The three-year undergraduate program will be based in part at the Freedom Theatre, which was founded in 2006 in the Palestinian refugee camp here.

The new theater school receives support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency and from the philanthropic organization ArtVenture. The program will be supervised by theater professionals from around the world, and led by Juliano Mer Khamis, a founder and director of the Freedom Theatre.

According to a Web site for the new school, the program will train students to work as professional actors, as well as leaders in the fields of culture and art. In classes at the university, they will study the history of theater and world arts, Palestinian history and culture, literary and theatrical criticism, Arabic and English. At the Freedom Theatre, they will develop practical skills.

The Freedom Theatre has been host to dozens of local and foreign productions since it was opened in the wreckage of the Jenin refugee camp, part of which was destroyed in fierce fighting between Palestinian and Israeli forces during the second intifada. The Freedom Theatre has recently opened a new facility that will serve as a center for the acting school course.

One of the founders of the Freedom Theatre is Zacharia Zubeideh, local commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades terrorist group. As a teenager, he had participated in the Stone Theatre, founded by Anna Mer Khamis, Juliano Mer Khamis's mother. "The Freedom Theatre was my idea," he told The Chronicle. "I want to show the world we are artists, that we have a culture." —Matthew Kalman

A conversation with Matthew Kalman, filmmaker

JERUSALEMITE.com
by simone August 03 2008

Israeli humor is hot these days, and Matthew Kalman, co-director (with David Blumenfeld) of Circumcise Me, a comic documentary starring Yisrael Campbell, is at the forefront of this trend. The film, which traces the life of Campbell, a Catholic boy turned Jewish comedian, is currently doing the film festival circuit, and in the near future, the directors hope to hold weekly showings at Jerusalem's Lev Smadar Cinema, which hosted the film's Israeli premier on July 3.

Can I get a brief genesis on the history of this movie ands how you got involved? I'm a reporter, and David [Blumenfeld] is a photographer, and we've been working together here in Israel for the last 10 years. A few years ago, we started doing a lot of documentary work. It was all about suicide bombers, the intifada, guys with masks, and it got grueling after a while. One day, we'd just finished interviewing a 16-year-old who wanted to blow himself up but was caught at a checkpoint before he made it to his destination. We went to interview him in jail, and on the way back, David said to me, "We've got to do something fun, something for ourselves." That night, I went to the opening of the Off the Wall Comedy Empire. I heard Yisrael Campbell perform his act, and I said to myself, "We've got our subject."

How did your past experiences in journalism influence this project? How did you find the transition from print journalist to documentary filmmaker? The thing about print journalism is that you have very little control over what actually appears in print. You don't choose the headline; you don't make the final editing decisions. There are many times where I'll focus on one thing and something else entirely will appear in the published version. Here, with this documentary, we have complete control over what actually appears on the screen. So it's much more creative. But it's also a much greater responsibility. When I write for a paper, I get up, do my work and then come home and turn on Seinfeld and it's no longer my responsibility. Here, David and I are completely responsible for how Yisrael is perceived by the world.

Yisrael Campbell's comedy is a major selling point, but his back story is also key to what you did with the movie. What kind of balance between profile and concert document were you trying to strike? This was a really easy film to make, because Yisrael is really funny, he's really talented, he already has a show, so all we really had to do was film him. What we wanted to do with this project is take his show, which has been performed to numerous audiences here in Israel, and make it accessible to people elsewhere, and not just to Jewish audiences but to a wide range of people. We had to explain the contexts in Campbell's show and take out the parts that had too much Hebrew (which meant removing some of the funniest parts of the show). We also wanted to tell as much as possible of Campbell's back-story using very elementary documentary techniques. For example, Yisrael's father only has a few lines but they are all about very transitional points in Yisrael's life and they help move the story along.

Finally, we want to show people who don't live here what this place is like, so we filmed Yisrael driving along the security wall and visiting the Hebrew University, so that people can visualize the places he refers to. At one point, you see him at the café where his friends were blown up. For me, that's the emotional highlight of the film. It's a very powerful image that you can't do in print. You can describe, but to actually see it, to see Yisrael sitting on the memorial, is very powerful.

How would you describe the role and presence of the city of Jerusalem in the movie? Jerusalem is definitely one of the characters in the movie. In that way, I think we were very influenced by shows like NYPD Blue. We consciously modeled some shots from NYPD Blue and Seinfeld - the scenes of Yisrael in the comedy club and in various Jerusalem locales. We stole nakedly from all of our favorite programs. There's a very fine comedy called Just Shoot Me, and we used that as inspiration too. In that show they zoom in on all these different magazine covers shots, and we did the same thing with tourist t-shirts. It was brazen thievery.

What sort of audience have you found is attracted to this film? Who needs it the most and how do you plan on getting them to see it? This is a feel-good film about Israel and therefore Jewish audiences love it, English-speaking Israeli audiences love it and we think Jewish audiences abroad will have the same response. They're fed up of seeing Israel only through images of violence. This provides an alternative. It's about the intifada but it's also about how life is lived here. As journalists here, we always have to cover death, but there's also a gallows humor and we wanted to capture that absurdist, Life of Brian-type humor with this film.

For example, the day after the cease fire began in Gaza about a month ago, I was doing an interview with some Hamas guys there – it was this heavy interview about Israel and the intifada and they were all dressed up with masks and machine guns. As soon as we shut the camera off, they took of their masks and one of them says to my cameraman, "Are you Indian?" He said "Yes," and all of a sudden this Hamas fighter, who's holding an M-16 and packed with grenades, starts singing this song to him, an Indian song that he wanted translated. The cameraman said he wasn't able to translate, so he called his mother in England and here is this Hamas guy in full fighting gear singing on the phone to my cameraman's mother. It's this sort of humor that we wanted to show with the movie.

We're billing it as the first – and possibly last – real intifada comedy.

What was it like doing production in Jerusalem? Is it a case of dealing with logistical nightmares in order to capture peoples and places that you could never capture elsewhere, or was it a more nuanced experience? Can you share an anecdote that sums it up for you in your memories? Jerusalem is a great place to be a reporter, it's a great place to film because people here are so used to having cameras and television crews around them at all times. It was almost like having a professional cast of extras to work with. We saw the guitarist who plays the theme song playing on Ben Yehuda St., and we asked him if he wanted to be in the movie. He said yes right away and it took him all of about five minutes to learn the theme song.

Meah Shearim was the only place where filming was a little dicey. They're more wary of cameras there. In fact, we had an alternate beginning to the film which showed Yisrael emerging from a group of charedim, but the other charedim in the crowd were none too happy about it, so we decided to cut that part.

Photo of Matthew Kalman courtesy of David Blumenfeld; photo of the Circumcise Me cast and crew courtesy of Melissa Blumenfeld.

Israeli Professor Is Accused of Sexually Abusing Students and Creating a 'Reign of Terror'

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION NEWS BLOG

August 1, 2008

Jerusalem — A professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem was arrested this week by the Israeli police on suspicion of sexually abusing and harassing female students in return for higher grades and advancement, The Jerusalem Post reported.

The professor, Eyal Ben-Ari, was arraigned in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court on Wednesday and released on bail. The police believe he may have preyed on his female students for up to 15 years.

Mr. Ben-Ari, a sociology and anthropology professor who from 2003 to 2007 was director of the Harry S. Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the university, denied all the accusations against him.

One of his students described him to the Post as a "dynamic, charismatic, and funny lecturer."

But other students at the university told the Haaretz newspaper that Mr. Ben-Ari had threatened his victims and prevented them from speaking out.

Haaretz reported that the new chairman of the sociology department, Gad Yair, admitted, in a letter published online, that a "reign of terror" existed in the department. "Neither academic freedom nor academics can exist in this environment," he wrote.

The problem came to light a year ago, after female students at the university wrote an anonymous letter alleging they had been raped and coerced into having sex with Mr. Ben-Ari. They accused him of threatening to suspend their student grant payments if they refused. The students said that women who had refused Mr. Ben-Ari's advances had lost their jobs as teaching assistants. They also said he had misused university funds to pay for trips abroad for himself with female students.

But the police did not get involved until three months ago, when the Israel Women's Network brought legal charges against the department on behalf of a woman who alleged sexual harassment by one of Mr. Ben-Ari's colleagues.

A report in the Hebrew-language local newspaper Yediot Yerushalayim quoted two of his students who said he had sexually attacked them as a matter of routine.

A university spokeswoman, Orit Sulitzeanu, said the university had begun investigating the allegations internally and also alerted the police.

"When an anonymous letter was received by the administration regarding actions taken by this lecturer, the letter was immediately forwarded to the Israel Police," she said in a written statement. "The police asked the university to stop the investigation it [had] initiated so that they could conduct an investigation."

"The university takes very seriously any sexual harassment," she said, "and will take all necessary steps to deal with complaints of this sort." —Matthew Kalman

Bulldozer terror as digger driver goes on the rampage near Barack Obama's hotel

DAILY MAIL 22nd July 2008

By Matthew Kalman

Crowds scattered in terror as a Palestinian driving a bulldozer rampaged along a street in Jerusalem.

The drama happened on Tuesday close to a hotel where U.S. presidential contender Barack Obama was due to arrive a few hours later.

More than 20 people were hurt, including a baby, after the man roared out of a building site and smashed into a bus and five cars.

Police officers stand guard at the scene of the attack in Jerusalem

One man's leg was severed when the attack overturned his car. A bus driver and a pedestrian narrowly escaped death as the bulldozer rolled towards them, its shovel aimed at their heads.

The driver, who came from a village in the occupied West Bank, was shot and wounded by an Israeli settler, father-of-eight Yaki Asael, 56, then killed by a hail of bullets from a police patrol.

The attack was a copy of another rampage in the city three weeks ago, which killed three people and injured 60.

Obama, who was due to fly to Israel last night, said his 'thoughts and prayers go out to all who were injured, and to their families'.

Visit: Barack Obama at the Citadel in Amman, Jordan, prior to his Israel visit

Speaking in Amman, Jordan, he said: 'Today's attack is a reminder of what Israelis have courageously lived with on a daily basis for far too long. I strongly condemn this attack and will always support Israel in confronting terrorism and pursuing lasting peace and security.'

The Democrat Senator, who will hold talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders today, was due to stay at the King David Hotel, 200 yards from the scene of the attack. Police said they had no evidence to suggest a link.

The attack happened less than half a mile from the official residence of Israeli President Shimon Peres as he played host to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. It was the first such visit by a Palestinian president.

Police identified the attacker as 22-year-old Ghassan Abu Teir, who was related to a militantly anti-Israel politician from the Islamic Hamas party.

Investigation begins into Israeli soldier who shot blindfolded Palestinian with rubber bullet

DAILY MAIL ONLINE : 21st July 2008

By Matthew Kalman

The Israeli army is investigating an incident in which a Palestinian
detainee was shot with a rubber bullet at point-blank range while he
was bound and blindfolded by Israeli soldiers.

The incident occurred in the West Bank village of Nil'in on July 7,
where Palestinians were protesting against the Israeli securit
barrier.

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem yesterday released shocking
footage of a soldier firing a rubber-coated bullet at Ashraf Abu
Rahma, 27.

The film was released as Gordnon Brown began a two-day visit to Israel
and the Palestinian Authority.

Abu Rahma told B'Tselem that the bullet hit his left toe. He said he
received treatment from an army medic, and released by the soldiers.

The shooting took place in the presence of an Israeli army lieutenant
colonel, who is seen holding Abu Rahma's arm when the shot is fired.

The Israeli army admitted the incident was 'grave' and in 'direct
contradiction with Israeli Defence Forces' values and principles.'

'Military laws forbid inflicting harm on detainees and obligate
soldiers to show them respect and ensure their safety. Incidents when
detainees are harmed are, in accordance with IDF policy, forwarded to
the Military Police for investigation.

'As in this case, after reviewing the videotape, the JAG Brig.-Gen.
Avichai Mandelblit ordered the opening of a probe into the incident.

'It should be mentioned that the Palestinian was inspected at the
scene by an IDF doctor and was found to have sustained a injury to his
right toe although in the footage he is seen collapsing to the ground
in obvious pain before sitting up.

'The Palestinian was released to his home without requiring medical
treatment,' said the army in a statement.

Israel swops child killer for dead soldiers

DAILY MAIL : 17 July 2008

From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem and Paul Harris in London

In an emotionally charged day, Lebanon's Hezbollah guerillas handed
over the bodies of two Israeli soldiers.

Just a few hours later, Israel set free its most reviled prisoner,
Samir Qantar, who was jailed for the murder of three Israelis,
including a four-yearold child, nearly 30 years ago.

Four other prisoners and the remains of 199 Lebanese and Palestinian
fighters killed in clashes over the years were also released.

The families of the two dead soldiers, whose capture sparked a
month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, wept as TV images
revealed the two black coffins being handed over at a UN peacekeeping
base on the IsraelLebanon border.

Although they had long suspected Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were
dead, it was the first concrete proof of their fate since they were
seized two years ago. Israeli generals personally informed their
families of their deaths, following their identification by forensic
experts. The two soldiers will be buried today.

Regev's father Zvi wept as he watched Hezbollah place the coffins on
the ground. 'It was horrible to see,' he said. 'We were always hoping
Udi and Eldad were alive and they would come home and we would hug
them.'

The fraught and tense scenes in Israel were in marked contrast to the
hero's welcome that awaited Qantar, who left Lebanon when he was 17 to
carry out his deadly mission.

Dressed in combat fatigues, he and four other prisoners were greeted
by a red carpet and brass band as they crossed the border into the
coastal town of Naqoura in southern Lebanon.

One sign held by a supporter read: 'Israel is shedding tears of pain,
Lebanon is shedding tears of joy.'

As he was met by Hezbollah officials and clerics, Qantar – Lebanon's
longestheld prisoner in Israel – wiped away tears before the cheering
crowd.

The five were later flown to the Lebanese capital Beirut where they
were met by president Michel Suleiman and prime minister Fouad
Siniora.

Although polls reveal many Israelis endorse the exchange, Qantar's
release is controversial because of the sheer brutality of his crimes.

In 1979, he and other gunmen struck in the Israeli coastal town of
Nahariya, killing a policeman before attacking Danny Haran in his
flat.

After shooting Mr Haran in front of his four-year-old daughter, he
then beat the child to death with his rifle. Mr Haran's wife, Smadar,
who fled into a crawl space with her two-year-old daughter,
accidentally smothered the girl trying to stifle her cries.

Qantar has never expressed remorse for the attack. Yesterday Smadar –
now 56 and with two grown-up daughters from a second marriage – told
the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview: 'People should know the
truth about who this man is.

'He is the one who brutally murdered my family. The one who laughed as
he crushed my little girl's skull against a rock. The man who is now
the hero of Hezbollah, who describe him as "a very, very brave
soldier''.

Blair scraps Gaza trip after claim of death threat

DAILY MAIL : 16 Jul 2008

By MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem

TONY BLAIR scrapped a visit to the Gaza Strip at the last minute
yesterday after Israel claimed Palestinian groups were planning to
assassinate him.

Mr Blair, the envoy for the Middle East peace 'quartet' of the UN, EU,
U.S. and Russia, was in his official convoy speeding towards a
Gaza-Israel border crossing when he was phoned by Israeli defence
minister Ehud Barak.

Mr Barak told him the secret service had received an intelligence
warning of 'a very serious' threat to assassinate him.

Mr Blair's advance security detail had already passed through the Erez
checkpoint, but Mr Blair ordered the convoy to turn back to his office
in Jerusalem.

He said the threat had been 'specific' and 'credible', but that he had
postponed the visit rather than cancelled it.

My Story: The screen test

JERUSALEM POST : July 10, 2008

By MATTHEW KALMAN

They were turning people away at the door of the Lev Smadar cinema in Jerusalem's German Colony last Thursday night, and no one was more surprised than me.

It was the charity premiere of my first movie, Circumcise Me, an hour-long documentary about stand-up comedian Yisrael Campbell and the story of his three (count 'em) conversions to Judaism after a Catholic childhood in Philadelphia.

It was my first premiere. As the lights went down, I was terrified.

The movie theater is a short walk from my home. I knew half the audience. They had paid good money for an evening's entertainment and if it were a flop, I would be bumping into disappointed punters every time I went out to the shops.

The film is less than an hour long, but it had taken three years to reach this point. The project began as a kind of therapy from the daily blood and hatred of the intifada.

I was a foreign news correspondent in Jerusalem for USA Today, Canada's Globe & Mail and other newspapers. My codirector, photographer David Blumenfeld, was snapping for Time, Newsweek and other major publications. We teamed up to report news stories for papers around the world. Then the intifada erupted and we found ourselves dashing from one heartbreaking story to the next. I started reporting for CTV television in Canada, and David learned video news reporting in California. Before long, we were helping to produce documentaries.

It was after one particularly grueling session with a teenage would-be suicide bomber in an Israeli jail that David suggested it was time for us to make our own film. "Let's choose something fun," he suggested. "We need a break from all this."

The following evening, I went to the opening of the Off the Wall Comedy Club at the Little House Hotel in Baka. The headline comedian looked like a resident of Mea She'arim who had wandered into the wrong part of town. His name was Yisrael Campbell.

"Is it hot in here," he asks at the start of his show, "or am I the only one dressed for Poland in the 17th century?" His story, captured in an hour-long show called "It's Not in Heaven," was one of the funniest I had ever heard. It was riveting, hilarious, moving and brilliantly told.

"I think I've found the subject of our film," I told David as soon as I got home.

He agreed. We invited Yisrael to coffee and he loved the idea. More important, we loved him. We were about to spend three years in each other's company, so we needed to get along. And he was trusting us with a project that could make or kill his career.

We decided to let Yisrael's story speak for itself. The show traces his evolution from a drug- and drink-soaked teenager growing up in a Catholic family in Philadelphia to his first encounter with Reform Judaism, his journey through Conservative Judaism to Orthodoxy, his decision to move to Israel and the impact of the intifada on his wedding in Jerusalem, followed by the deaths of two friends in the Hebrew University bomb attack in July 2002.

We filmed six different shows and then took Yisrael to various locations: his yeshiva in Gush Etzion, the Old City, downtown Jerusalem and the scene of the Hebrew University bombing.

None of us was getting paid, so we squeezed it all in between our day jobs. The filming took nearly a year, and the editing took another six months. By the autumn of 2006 we were ready to show our first cut to close friends under the title "It's Not in Heaven." Many of our friends queried the title, and urged us to cut down a long section in the middle. We listened and re-edited the film, trimming the sections that sagged and adding more jokes from Yisrael's show. We restored a hilarious sequence about the baby clothes designed for his new-born twins that was originally left out. ("A pocket? A zero-pound baby has neither arms nor legs, it doesn't need a pocket.")

We paid particular attention to those sections of Yisrael's story that we thought could not be understood by a non-Jewish audience. We assumed our potential audiences in Europe and North America would not know anything about Israel, Judaism or the Middle East conflict.

We gave the film some structure by introducing Woody Allen-style titles using T-shirts on sale on Rehov Ben-Yehuda. On the day we went to film, we noticed a talented street guitarist. It took him less than five minutes to learn a theme tune we had written, and he played variations on it as we filmed the T-shirt captions.

Still searching for a final title, we submitted the film to one of Israel's top distributors. They hated it.

"Our films are serious," they told us. "This one has too many jokes." We were convinced they were wrong, that Israel isn't just about war and suicide attacks. Even when they are happening, normal life goes on. There are even people laughing in the midst of all that mayhem and sadness. We wanted to create an antidote to the news story that we ourselves were reporting every day. We wanted to show life in Israel in all its complexity, not just the violence and the politics. And our test screenings showed that most people who saw it, loved it.

Nearly a year after that first screening, we signed with 7th Art Releasing in Los Angeles, a boutique distributor that specializes in Jewish, Israeli, human rights and gay films. Our search for a title ended when David came up with the brilliant suggestion of Circumcise Me and then created a title sequence to fit that had us all in stitches.

7th Art began to roll the film out to festivals all across North America, with screenings in California, Minneapolis, Toronto, Dallas, Alabama, Louisiana, Palm Beach and others yet to be confirmed. It sold the film to the Jewish Television cable channel in New York and is currently in talks with Israeli TV.

Three days before the screening at the Smadar last week, we had less than 50 bookings for a theater that held more than 250 people. We had agonized over the date, the only open slot at the cinema. After it was booked, we discovered it clashed with the US ambassador's Fourth of July party, the Hartman High School graduation, concerts by Blondie, the Stranglers and Neshama Carlebach, two local weddings, a bachelor party and a big bar mitzva.

We started to panic. We posted flyers on lampposts up and down Rehov Emek Refaim and were slapped with a NIS 2,400 fine for illegal bill-posting by the municipality. We put the show up on Facebook and 38 people said they would come; 58 said they might. All we could do was sit and wait.

The last-minute rush for tickets so overwhelmed the box office that we were 20 minutes late starting. As the packed cinema was plunged into darkness, a wave of nausea washed over me. The screen went black, and the first credit appeared: "A Baka Films production." The audience laughed. It wasn't meant as a joke, but I didn't care. They kept on laughing, right to the end.

www.yisraelcampbell.com

Four dead in bulldozer rampage of terror

DAILY MAIL : July 3, 2008

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

A PALESTINIAN who drove a bulldozer into traffic on one of Jerusalem's busiest streets was yesterday shot dead after killing three Israelis and wounding more than 40.

The attack – the first in Jewish West Jerusalem for nearly four months – caused havoc to the city centre, leaving a trail of mangled vehicles in its wake.

Witnesses say the driver used the 20-ton vehicle to ram repeatedly a bus packed with passengers before striking another and crushing several cars on Jaffa Street.

A police officer managed to shoot the man after a brief struggle.

Last night, police named the attacker as 30-year-old Hosam Dwayyat, a construction worker from Arab East Jerusalem. Israeli police chief Dudi Cohen said there had been no immediate claim of responsibility from militant groups and that Dwayyat appeared to have acted alone.

The Israeli government immediately denounced the attack as 'an act of senseless, murderous violence', while an aide to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas claimed it was an attempt to wreck peace negotiations.

However, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad called the attack a 'natural' response by Palestinians to Israeli aggression. Neither Islamist group claimed responsibility.

Police confirmed last night that two Israeli women and a man died in the attack.

There were also claims on Israeli TV that one unnamed woman had saved her baby daughter's life by throwing her out of a car window seconds before the bulldozer hit. The baby escaped unharmed although the mother was injured.

Another five-month-old girl was pulled alive from the wreckage of one of the buses after rescuers heard her cries. It later become clear her mother was one of the two women who died.

It is the first major attack on Jerusalem since March, when a 25year-old gunman killed eight students at a Jewish religious school distance from Jaffa Road.

Since then, fatal attacks on Israelis have become relatively rare, despite frequent rocket and mortar fire from Gaza. Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians this year, mostly in Gaza.

More than 100 of dead were civilians.

As truce barely holds, Israeli parents hope for return of kidnapped son

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
June 25th 2008

By Matthew Kalman
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

French president Nicolas Sarkozy met with Noam and Aviva Schalit, the parents of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, in Jerusalem on June 23.

JERUSALEM - A five-day-old truce between Hamas militants in Gaza and the Jewish state was hanging by a thread Tuesday after terrorists lobbed three rockets into Israel.

"This is a blatant violation of the calm, and we will weigh options," an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said of the hit on Sderot, a frequent target where two were injured.

The parents of a kidnapped soldier held by terrorists for two years are hoping the cease-fire holds long enough that Israel can win back their son.

The attack on the border town of Sderot by Islamic Jihad came hours after Israeli troops killed two Palestinian militants in the West Bank city of Nablus.

"We cannot keep our hands tied when this is happening to our brothers in the West Bank," an Islamic Jihad spokesman said.

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, while condemning Israel's West Bank raid, said his group "is keen to maintain the calm."

The first big test of the truce struck last Thursday comes as Israel works for the release of a 21-year-old soldier held by militants for two years.

Egypt, which brokered the cease-fire, is trying to win the freedom of Cpl. Gilad Schalit, kidnapped when he was 19 during a cross-border raid that in 2006.

His dad, Noam Schalit, has accused the Israeli government of "abandoning" his son by not including his release as part of the original cease-fire agreement.

"Until now, I have not spoken bluntly because I feared I might, heaven forbid, damage negotiations," a frustrated Schalit told the Daily News.

"We are trying to make sure there will be a link between this cease-fire and negotiations regarding the release of Gilad or (any prisoner swap)," Schalit said. "The agreement has disconnected between the two issues."

Schalit and his wife Aviva on Monday lost an appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court to tie any easing of the economic blockade of Gaza to the fate of their son.

Gilad's parents have received only three letters and a video message to prove that their son is still alive. The most recent was a hand-written letter delivered earlier this month by representatives of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

"I still think and dream of the day I am freed and see you again, and still I keep the hope that that day is near, but I know it is not in your hands or in mine," the soldier wrote.

Tentative peace in the Middle East brings doubts

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE : Friday, June 20, 2008

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Gaza City -- A fragile Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic group that controls Gaza, appeared to be holding Thursday, raising hopes of an end to continuing violence, a crippling economic blockade of the Palestinian coastal enclave and the release of an abducted Israeli soldier.

Nevertheless, political leaders on both sides expressed doubts that the other would keep their part of the bargain. Israeli army tanks continued to patrol the border fence and Palestinian fighters kept their weapons close at hand. But as evening fell, neither side had fired since the truce went into effect at 6 a.m. Thursday.

In Sderot, the Israeli town of 20,000 inhabitants near the Gaza border hit by more than 4,000 rockets since Hamas seized the Gaza Strip a year ago - including 20 on Wednesday alone - most residents greeted the truce with wary hope. "Calm for how long?" factory worker Meir Kroytoro told the New York Times.

In the Jabalya Palestinian refugee camp, scene of numerous Israeli invasions and rocket attacks, shoppers in an open-air market expressed the same sentiment.

But there was a rare agreement that the cease-fire has been a diplomatic success for Hamas and another political blow for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is mired in a corruption scandal that threatens to topple him from power.

Noam Schalit, father of the abducted Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Schalit, delivered a withering criticism of the cease-fire, accusing Olmert of abandoning his son, who has been held for two years.

Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the weakness of the government for failing to include Schalit's release in the first stage of the deal. If the cease-fire holds, Israel will ease its blockade on Gaza before resuming negotiations on Schalit's plight.

On Tuesday, Olmert will try to restore his flagging popularity when he visits Egypt for talks with President Hosni Mubarak, which are expected to produce a deal in which Schalit is released in exchange for several hundred Palestinian prisoners.

"This is still very complicated and controversial. It might take some time, but the ball is in the Israeli court," Hamas policy adviser Ahmed Yousuf said. "There is a list of names, and actually there is a timetable for everything."

At his office at the Hamas Foreign Ministry building in Gaza City, Yousuf said the cease-fire is good for both sides.

"I think it's a win-win situation for both the Israelis and the Palestinians," he said. "I think this will lay the foundation for future steps for a real commitment from both sides that they will respect the other.

"The Palestinians are looking to stop all the Israeli aggression and incursions, and the Israelis also hope that the Palestinians will stop firing the rockets on them. I do believe that from our side we will keep our commitment. I hope the Israelis also will keep to the things they promised."

Even Izzedine Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas responsible for numerous attacks on Israel, issued a statement backing the cease-fire.

"We believe that calm is a need to ease the suffering of our people, to promote the option of resistance and the steadfastness," said a statement published on the group's Web site.

But in the dusty alleyways of Beit Hanoun, a favorite launching-pad for Palestinian rocket attacks across the border, and target of repeated Israeli military reprisals, a masked Izzedine Qassam Brigades commander brandished an M16 assault rifle, hand grenades and pistol.

"We're used to holding our weapons in the enemy's faces," said the militant, who identified himself as Abu Khaled and boasted of personally firing 30 rockets into Israel in the past year. "We were forced into this, but we hope that good comes out of it. We will always have our weapons with us, ready to fight the enemy. We will respond to any violation of the cease-fire agreement by the Israelis. We are still committed to the destruction of Israel."

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said that if the cease-fire holds, the blockade on Gaza would be gradually lifted and supplies of cement, fuel and other goods restored to previous levels. About 80 percent of its 1.4 million residents depend on food aid, according to U.N. figures.

"Now we will be able to make sure that many of these raw materials will be allowed to cross to Gaza, and that means you give a chance to thousands of Palestinians to go back to their work," said Yousuf, the Hamas policy adviser.

But in Jabalya refugee camp, ordinary Gazans were skeptical.

"Even if the gates are open between us and the Israelis, this will not solve the economic situation here in Gaza because most people will not be able to cross into Israel to earn a living," said Hosein Wadi, a 50-year-old father of eight who used to work as a driver in Israel. "For 10 years, I have been sitting doing nothing. No one looks after the ordinary workers. We need money."

E-mail Matthew Kalman at foreign@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 12 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Israel backs Palo Alto man's electric car plan

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE : Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tel Aviv -- Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, pledges that he can beat the spiraling cost of gasoline with the world's first mass-produced electric car.

In January, Israel's government endorsed the Palo Alto businessman's ambitious joint venture between his startup company - Project Better Place - and Renault-Nissan.

Agassi says he raised $200 million to get the $500 million dollar project, which will include a network of charging and battery-exchange stations by 2010, off the ground.

Project Better Place also has signed an agreement with Denmark to begin a similar operation by 2011. In Denmark, a pioneer in developing wind power, batteries are expected to be recharged using wind-powered turbines.

Agassi, a 39-year-old Israeli, co-founded Project Better Place after he quit his post in 2007 as president of the products and technology group for the German software giant SAP AG. Although some insiders say he left after losing out in a power struggle to become SAP's chief executive, Agassi says he left to focus on "issues that are important to me," including alternative energy and the future of Israel.

140 miles on a charge

Agassi is banking on his electric-powered sedan revolutionizing life on the roads, cleaning up the environment and reducing dependence on oil. The cars are expected to have a range of up to 140 miles per charge and a top speed of 68 mph - the speed limit in Israel.

Last month, he invited reporters to test-drive a prototype that looks a lot like the Renault Megane, a four-door sedan. The car is noticeably quiet and has no exhaust pipe, an electric socket in place of a gas cap and a dashboard gauge that measures the charge of the vehicle's 450-pound lithium-ion battery.

In the United States, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle has said she is interested in her state becoming the first to embrace the electric-car network. Mayor Gavin Newsom also has reportedly expressed interest in making San Francisco the first U.S. metropolis to place electric cars on city roads.

Agassi said that because most rides are less than 100 miles, drivers can recharge batteries at home, at work or at thousands of charging points throughout Israel. On longer trips, they can exchange batteries in a five-minute operation at about 200 "swap stations."

"We have a second battery for every driver in the swap stations. It's waiting for you in case you need it. You don't need to carry it with you in the trunk," Agassi said.

Moreover, Nissan's global product planning chief, Tom Lane, has said his firm will soon announce a battery breakthrough, one that could increase driving range to around 200 miles per charge while recharging in as little as 20 minutes.

The cars are also expected to be more economical than a typical gas-driven sedan due in part to tax breaks from the Israeli and Danish governments. Agassi also says the development of the lithium-ion battery has significantly lowered the cost of electricity at a time when oil prices are soaring. Gas currently costs $10 a gallon in Israel and more than $8 a gallon in Denmark.

"Within a decade, the cost of energy for a single year of fuel supply for a combustion car should cost more than the cost of energy for an electric car's entire life, even when taking the cost of battery into consideration," Agassi said.

As with cellular phones, where the service providers install an infrastructure that allows users to make calls and send text, Project Better Place plans to charge $550 a month and provide 18,000 miles a year for the use of the batteries and charging and swap stations. The customer doesn't own the battery - the cars are designed to have easily removable battery packs that can be exchanged.

'Another nutty idea'

But not everyone is convinced that electric cars are the answer.

Jerry Flint, automotive analyst at Forbes magazine, wrote that the project looks like "another nutty idea. Electric cars have limited range and take a good while to recharge. I am still skeptical about how quickly manufacturers will solve the lithium-ion batteries' problems, such as overheating, and be able to put the batteries into mass production."

Nevertheless, the project has won the endorsement of Israeli President Shimon Peres and Idan Ofer, chairman of Israel Corp., one of the nation's major industrial conglomerates, who has invested $130 million in the program.

"I consider this to be a revolutionary project, and I believe that most of the public will drive an electric car within a decade," Ofer said.

Meanwhile, Agassi said he will continue driving his customized electric Toyota RAV4 EV - one of only 1,000 - on Northern California roads.

"I wish I had a battery swap station where I can drive to. We don't, so I manage my energy," he said. "It's one of the most fun cars I've ever driven, because every time I go by a gas station, I feel like I cheated."

The man behind battery-swap plan

Shai Agassi, 39, is an Israeli software entrepreneur who founded TopTier Software in Israel in 1992. He later moved the company's headquarters to Northern California.

In 2007, he co-founded the startup Project Better Place after he quit his job as top executive at the German software giant SAP AG.

Project Better Place wants to produce electric cars as an alternative to current fossil fuel technology.

The automobile that could revolutionize Israel - Denmark could be next

For the most part, foreign automakers - including Nissan-Renault, BMW, Audi, Mitsubishi and Subaru - are developing electric cars to meet California's zero-emission vehicle mandate, which requires at least 7,500 electric or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on state roads by 2014.

In the United States, electric vehicles are not a large part of U.S. automakers' plans - for the time being. And mileage per charge is not high. But in Israel, the joint-venture Nissan-Renault/Project Better Place electric car is expected to have a range of 140 miles per charge. For longer drives, motorists will be able to replace the battery at about 200 swap stations to be built throughout Israel by 2010.

Project Better Place also has signed an agreement with Denmark to begin a similar operation by 2011. Both the Israeli and Danish governments have agreed to provide tax incentives to stimulate the program.

U.S. explorations into the electric car arena include:

Chevrolet Volt: The Volt's plug-in batteries will handle around 40 miles, enough for a daily commute; the car can switch to gas power for longer drives. The Volt, which is expected to be available by the end of 2010, is the centerpiece of General Motors' push to develop alternative-fuel vehicles.

Tesla Motors: The San Carlos company makes an electric sports car that can do 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. The nearly $100,000 car can be plugged into a standard wall socket for six to seven hours. Or drivers can use a recharging station designed by Tesla installed in their garage.

E-mail Matthew Kalman at foreign@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

'Israel Lobby' Professors Get Hospitable Greeting in Israel

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION : NEWS BLOG
June 12, 2008

Jerusalem — The first appearance in Israel by Stephen M. Walt and John J. Mearsheimer since the publication of their controversial book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, impressed a largely student audience at the Hebrew University, but left some faculty members wondering about their honesty.

A threatened boycott failed to have any effect, and the talk passed off with nothing more dramatic than some lively debate and repeated declarations from the pair that they are neither anti-Semitic nor Israel-haters.

Their presentation, "Is the 'Israel lobby' good for Israel?," attracted 200 people. Mr. Walt told The Chronicle that they were visiting Israel at the invitation of the veteran left-wing campaigner Uri Avnery and decided to add a university appearance to their schedule.

Mr. Walt is a professor of international relations at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Mr. Mearsheimer is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

Their work has been criticized as anti-Jewish and intellectually dishonest, charges that led some to call for the lecture to be canceled.

"Any discussion of the Israel lobby takes place in the shadow of centuries of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories," said Mr. Walt. "John and I reject any one of those anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The Israel lobby is a normal U.S. interest group. There's no conspiracy, no cabal, no secret plot here."

Robert Wistrich, a professor of modern European history and director of the university's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, said he was willing to assume that they are not anti-Semitic.

"I don't think that's the point, though," he said. "Those who object to their kind of discourse about the lobby are right to point out that in a very attenuated and benign form, with all the academic qualifications they make, it is uncomfortably reminiscent of very familiar arguments that clearly were anti-Semitic in the past. Some of it is disingenuous. It's a kind of cover." —Matthew Kalman

American Professors Who Wrote 'The Israel Lobby' Face Cool Reception in Israel

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION : Daily News Blog
Monday, June 9, 2008

Jerusalem — Some Israeli academics are not too happy that Stephen M.
Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, authors of The Israel Lobby and U.S.
Foreign Policy, are scheduled to speak on Thursday at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. The title of their talk: "Is the 'Israel
lobby' good for Israel?"

Both men have also courted controversy in the United States with their
argument that Israel wields disproportionate influence on the United
States' foreign policy.

Mr. Walt is a professor of international relations at Harvard
University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Mr. Mearsheimer
is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

"Their decision to come here means they are looking for a good fight,"
said Akiva Eldar, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, told
The Guardian, a British newspaper.

Gerald Steinberg, a professor of political science at Bar-Ilan
University, won support from some colleagues when he suggested in an
e-mail message that the American authors should address "an empty
room."

"Their articles and books are not academic," Mr Steinberg told The
Chronicle. "It's not research, it's a polemic. It doesn't belong in a
university."

But Menachem Klein, a colleague of Mr. Steinberg's at Bar-Ilan, said
it was inappropriate for Israelis to call for shunning visitors when
Israeli academics are themselves the targets of attempted boycotts by
British lecturers and others.

"I am against boycotting anyone," Mr. Klein said in an interview.
"Academia is about arguing, free debate, and free speech. If you have
good arguments, go there and debate." —Matthew Kalman

Israel's Supreme Court Chides Government for Ban on Study Abroad

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem

Israel's Supreme Court joined a chorus of dismay over an Israeli army
policy that bans Palestinian students from leaving Gaza to study
abroad and asked the government on Monday to "reconsider the policy."
Israel imposed the ban after the Islamist group Hamas took control of
the Gaza Strip in a violent uprising last year.

Supreme Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein told Israel's state attorney
at a hearing that the ban seems "no less harmful to the Israeli
interest because we have to live with the Palestinians in the future,
too." Mr. Rubinstein said that denying Palestinians access to
education "harms chances for some kind of coexistence."

Mr. Rubinstein demanded a response from the government lawyers within
two weeks and strongly hinted that he expected them to modify the ban.

Israel's Supreme Court has often taken a tough line on human-rights
abuses by Israel's security branches, pushing them to modify their
behavior and overruling them when they fail to act on their own
accord.

After the hearing, an Israeli government spokesman told The Chronicle
that the entire policy on student mobility was now under review.

Unable to Leave Gaza

The judge was considering a petition brought by Gisha, an Israeli
human-rights group that campaigns for academic freedom of movement, on
behalf of two Palestinian students from Gaza who have been prevented
from taking their places at colleges in Britain and Germany.

Coincidentally, the hearing was held the day after the Israeli
government apparently reversed an earlier decision not to allow seven
Fulbright scholars to leave Gaza. Israel's earlier stance had prompted
the U.S. State Department last week to suspend the scholarships (The
Chronicle, June 2).

After the intervention of senior State Department officials and a
public dressing-down by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Israeli
authorities agreed to process the Fulbright scholars' applications,
the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem informed the students on
Sunday.

But, according to Gisha, several hundred more Palestinian students
have been refused permission to leave for foreign study under a
blanket ban imposed by Israel on any Palestinian's leaving the Gaza
Strip except for urgent humanitarian cases.

Monday's petition was filed on behalf of two of those students, Wissam
Abuajwa, 31, who has a full scholarship for a master's program in
environmental science at Nottingham University, in Britain, and Nibal
Nayef, 27, who has a full scholarship for a doctoral program in
computer engineering at the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, in
Germany. Neither course of study is available in Gaza.

"Universities in Gaza don't have a track for environmental studies,
and my dream is to return from my studies abroad and to establish an
environmental-research and study institute here," Mr. Abuajwa said in
a written statement. "In Gaza there is an urgent need for
environmental experts, especially because of the recent deterioration
in the infrastructure and quality of life of the residents."

Ms. Nayef said that even if Israel allowed her to leave in two weeks'
time, she would arrive in Germany already behind in her studies.

"My classes have already begun while I'm still stuck here in Gaza,
unable to attend them. It's so important to me to reach my studies as
soon as possible," she said in a written statement.

Growing Criticism

Last Wednesday the Knesset Education Committee heard testimony from an
18-year-old Palestinian student who was banned from leaving Gaza to
study engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Rabbi Michael Melchior, chairperson of the legislative committee,
described the travel ban as "immoral and unwise."

The mounting criticism appears finally to be having some effect.

"Clearly it would be a problem if we only grant permission to the
Fulbright students," Peter Lerner, spokesman for the coordinator of
Israeli activities in the occupied territories, said on Monday. "A
review is currently under way regarding the entire issue at the
moment. We will be informing the court of any decision in two weeks,
as requested today."

Sari Bashi, director of Gisha, said she hoped the increasing pressure
on the Israeli authorities would finally move them to change their
policy.

"The ban on students leaving Gaza for study abroad is part of a policy
of closure and collective punishment that is trapping 1.5-million
civilians," she said. "I hope that the Defense Ministry will listen to
the reasoned voices of the U.S. secretary of state, the Knesset
Education Committee, and the Supreme Court—and allow Palestinians in
Gaza to exercise their right to freedom of movement and to access
education."

A funny thing happened on the way to the Yeshiva

Teen comedian Alex Edelman just spent a year in Jerusalem and came away with more faith than ever in his stand-up abilities

While in Israel, Alex Edelman performed often at the Off the Wall Comedy Basement, Jerusalem's first comedy club. (Photos by amnon gutman/wpn for the boston globe)

BOSTON GLOBE : June 1, 2008
By Matthew Kalman Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM - The plaintive message from a fellow comedian on Alex Edelman's MySpace profile says it all: "Come back to America. Boston comedy needs you!"
The 19-year-old, yarmulke-sporting Edelman is already a stand-up veteran. He began performing in comedy clubs at age 15, coming home from Maimonides School in Brookline, telling his parents he was off to study at the library, and sneaking away to perform at Roggie's near Boston College.
"I felt like I had written something that I wanted to say in front of people," Edelman recalled after a recent show here in Israel, where he has spent a year immersed in yeshiva studies before majoring in English at NYU. "I don't even remember the jokes. People laughed politely. It was awful."
By last summer, he was performing a dozen times a week at Boston's Comedy Studio and other venues - but never on the Sabbath, which ruled out Friday nights and most of Saturday evening.
Edelman's parents - he's a cardiologist and Harvard professor, she's a real estate attorney - only found out last year, when one of his signature jokes was quoted in a newspaper story on open mike nights in Boston: "I go to a Jewish school where we do all the usual stuff - math, science, media control, world domination."
"My parents initially were not so thrilled about it," he admitted. "It was a drain on other things I could have been doing - like studying."
They were somewhat won over when they attended a show at which Edelman performed with local comedy mainstay Tony V., whom they had seen 20 years before.
"Tony V. came up to my parents after the show and said to them: 'If you want me to tell you that your son should drop doing comedy, then you're coming to the wrong guy. He has a talent for it. I think if Alex sticks with it, he'll be something good.'
"My parents were really supportive after that," Edelman added. "But there was a bit of a sense when they sent me here to Jerusalem that maybe I'd really connect to my Judaism and become more religious."
But with the same natural comic timing that informs Edelman's stand-up routine, no sooner had he landed than the Holy City opened its first comedy club. He quickly became a headliner at the Off the Wall Comedy Basement in downtown Jerusalem, which is run by David Kilimnick, an American campus rabbi turned stand-up comic and comedy entrepreneur.
"He's a great comedian and a smart young man," said Kilimnick. "He has a future in this. He started when he was young but he has not let comedy control his life."
"In Boston, I'm just another comedian; there are a ton of very good ones," admitted Edelman, who has been learning Hebrew but performs only in English. "[In Jerusalem] it was nice to kind of be a bigshot for a few months, to be a headliner and do 45 minutes and see if I'm ready to do that in the United States."

For an Orthodox Jew from a Hebrew day school who has just spent a year in Jerusalem and returned last month, Edelman uses very little Jewish material, though his choice of subjects is heavily influenced by his age. Topics include teenage work experience, candy bars, underage drinking, and being stopped at the Canadian border with his mother in the car and asked if he had any drugs: "Dude, not in front of my Mum."
"During my set last week I saw him sitting on a bar stool studying me and absorbing," said Charley Warady, a veteran club headliner from Chicago who moved to Israel a decade ago and is now part of the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour. "That's a wonderful thing to see in a young comedian. It's what I did when I started out. He takes all that in and makes it his own."
Since he was 15, Edelman has been writing jokes almost every day. He now has 18 notebooks full of ideas which have been drafted and re-drafted until they were just right. "I always carry a notebook with me, always," he said. "When I was younger I was obsessive about them. I log the process of every joke."
On one page, there is a quip about whether the Jews built the pyramids. ("Clearly not, because there's no rental space.") Edelman used it for a TV audition. Marginal annotations show it was first written in book 3, revised in book 6, and re-revised in book 14.
Some pages have been torn away. "I have a philosophical problem with doing a joke that any other comedian has done," Edelman said. "That's why these books are filled with rip-outs. These are all jokes that I feel are too much like somebody else's."
Edelman says he feels fortunate to have served his comedy apprenticeship in Boston. "I've seen a lot of jealousy in other places, but in Boston everyone's happy for the other people when they do well," he explained.
It was Gary Gulman, another hometown comedian, who persuaded Edelman to accept his parents' recommendation to spend the year in Jerusalem. "He knew I didn't want to go to Israel but he said I should," Edelman said. "He said comedy grows out of life experience, and that's why it's impossible to become a good comedian when you're young because you don't have that life experience yet."
Apart from his regular performances at the Comedy Basement, Edelman spent his year in Jerusalem studying Talmud and other ancient Jewish texts, traveling the country, and attending Shimon Peres's conference to mark Israel's 60th anniversary. He also visited the Nazi death camps in Poland.
With its audiences from dozens of countries and religious sensibilities that made sex jokes largely taboo, Jerusalem has extended his range, Edelman said.
If anything, a year meant to turn his head away from joke-telling hasn't done the trick.
"I've grown addicted to comedy," Edelman said. "The chances are I won't be the next Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin, but I can try."