Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 21, 2005 Page: 4 of 24
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TJP V59-29 07-21-05 p01-04 7/19/05 4:34 PM Page 4
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Texas Jewish Post
In Our 59th Year
July 21,2005
Washington Watch
Rice to the rescue
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice's emergency Mideast visit this
week reflects the importance the Bush
administration has attached to a plan
it once scorned — Israel's impending
disengagement from Gaza.
But critics on both sides of the
political spectrum say Rice's visit is
unlikely to produce lasting results in
the region as pressure builds in the
final days before Israel's
August pullout.
Over the weekend the
State Department
announced Rice would cut
short a swing through
Africa to address recent
attacks by Hamas and
Islamic lihad against Israel,
the continuing conflict
between the terror groups
and the Palestinian Authority and
Israel's threat of a major operation
against terrorist forces in Gaza.
It will be her third trip to the
region this year, and caps a week of
intensive telephone diplomacy
aimed at convincing Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas to do
more to rein in terror groups and
Prime Minster Ariel Sharon to hold
off an all-out Israeli response.
A longtime pro-Israel lobbyist
said "it's a symbolic trip, intended to
have a calming impact before things
spin out of control."
Washington sources say the real
goal of the trip is to use Rice's pres-
ence to punctuate that twin message
before events spin out of control.
But Martin Raffel, acting director
of the lewish Council for Public
Affairs (JCPA) and head of the group's
Israel task force, said Rice may also
hope to serve as a "closer" for agree-
ments advancing Israeli-Palestinian
cooperation in the Gaza pullout.
"There needs to be much more U.S.
involvement in the details of the han-
dover, since the Israelis and Palestinians,
when left to their own devices, have not
been able to work it out," he said. "The
United States is the only outside party
able to bring them together in the very
few weeks that are left."
Rice, he said, is "ready to put her-
self on the line to help make the
coordination as effective as possible."
And Rice's mission, he said, sig-
nals intensifying administration
interest in what comes next after
Gaza — starting with its moribund
road map for Palestinian statehood.
"She isn't just going over to put
out fires; they want to make disen-
gagement work for the purpose of
advancing the road map," he said.
"She can make a difference; she
speaks for the President. She has the
gravitas to cut through red tape."
But other analysts say the trip is
By James D. Besser
little more than a diplomatic band aid.
Stephen P. Cohen, national scholar
for the Israel Policy Forum, said
Rice's mission will be unsuccessful
"unless she makes it clear that the
U.S. will support (Abbas) politically,
so he can go to the people in the elec-
tion and say he has a firm American
commitment to move beyond Gaza,
to begin to deal with the future of the
West Bank and Gaza."
Simply going to the region and
demanding tougher action
against terrorism "will be
worse than not going at all,"
he said. "It will just rein-
force the impression that
America is not really
engaged."
Daniel Pipes, president of
the Mddle East Forum and
a strong peace process critic,
agreed that the diplomatic
mission is ill-conceived, but for dif-
ferent reasons.
The Bush administration, Pipes
said, is "investing more and more"
in a Gaza plan he argues will just
lead to new strife in the region.
That gives the terrorists who
recently stepped up attacks against
Israeli targets a way of weakening
Abbas' growing ability to control
events, he said, and could lead to a
foreign policy debacle if the Gaza
withdrawal just spawns new terror.
Pipes argued that Rice will not be able
to do much to bolster Abbas in what is
becoming a "fight over the future con-
trol" of the Palestini an territori es.
"It's an ill-conceived mission, but
it fits into a long legacy of ill-con-
ceived Mideast missions," he said.
Air Force religious
guidelines ready to roll
The Air Force Academy, battered
by charges of religious coercion, is
putting the finishing touches on
new guidelines for religious expres-
sion at the Colorado Springs school.
The guidelines are expected to be
completed by Aug. 1, and will address
some of the issues that have embroiled
the service academy and the entire air
force in controversy, including prosely-
tiztion by superior officers.
Rabbi Arnold E. Resnicoff, a Con-
servative rabbi from Washington,
D.C. who was appointed last month
as special assistant to the Air Force
Secretary to deal with the burgeoning
controversy, said that the "interim
guidelines" are in the final draft stage.
"They will remind personnel, espe-
cially commanders in leadership
positions, of policies already in place in
Department of Defense and Air Force
directives and instructions," he said in
an e-mail interview. "They will clarify
leadership responsibilities to ensure
that we not only accommodate reli-
gious practices in accordance with past
guidelines, but foster a climate where
individuals of all faiths understand that
requests that will help us understand
how to accommodate religious free
exercise are welcome and wanted."
And he said the new guidelines
will "help personnel understand the
difference between voluntary reli-
gious expression on a peer level —
when it is carried on with respect and
both parties to the conversation are
willing participants — and expres-
sion when someone is speaking from
a position of power."
The guidelines are being written
by a committee led by Lt. Gen Roger
Brady, Deputy Chief of Staff for Per-
sonnel. Resnicoff said he "offered
some basic ideas and guidelines to
the committee."
Lawmaker slams Israel
insurance bias
A freshman House member
recently learned that insurance
companies discriminate against
Americans who travel to Israel. And
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-
Fla.) learned about it the hard way:
through personal experience.
In a speech to the national conven-
tion of Hadassah on Sunday,
Wasserman Schultz — a member of
the Zionist women's group for more
than a decade — said that she learned
about the issue when she applied for
an increase in her life insurance.
"I was turned down because in
my application, without being spe-
cific, I indicated that international
travel was a possibility," she told the
group. "When the life insurance
company followed up to inquire
where my travel might take me,
when Israel was indicated as a possi-
bility, my application was rejected."
Israel, she said, was "considered
too high a risk," and she was advised
to re-contact her insurance com-
pany when "my travel plans no
longer included Israel."
That prompted some research by
her staff suggesting the problem was
not an uncommon one — and some
new legislation.
"Before Congress'August recess, I
intend to file the Life Insurance Fair-
ness for Travelers Act (LIFT Act),
which will prohibit discrimination
in life insurance based on potential
future travel," she said.
Wasserman Schultz also told the
group she is sponsoring legislation
creating American Jewish History
Month in January, to "honor and
acknowledge the contributions and
history of the Jewish people."
The bill currently has some 200
sponsors, she said.
Capitol Hill notes
The Senate last week passed a
Homeland Security Appropriations
Bill that includes a renewal of last
year's $25 million to help high-risk
nonprofit organizations bolster secu-
rity against possible terrorist attacks.
Lobbying for the measure were
the United Jewish Communities
and the Orthodox Union, among
others, and the appropriation was
championed in the Senate by Sen.
Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Sen. Bar-
bara Mikulski (D-Md.)
Jewish leaders conceded that with
thousands of nonprofits vying for the
relatively small appropriation, no
single synagogue or Jewish school will
get enough to meet its security needs.
But Nathan Diament, the OU
Washington representative, praised
the Senate action as an important
signal that Congress is taking the
security needs of religious institu-
tions and other nonprofits seriously
"The Orthodox Jewish community
greatly appreciates the Senate's con-
tinuing support for the security of our
community's at-risk institutions
among many non-profit entities
which require aid for security" he said.
The bill now goes to a House-Senate
conference committee to work out dif-
ferences between the two versions.
Jewish religious groups were active on
Capitol Hill on another issue this week
a bill to extend daylight savings time.
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The proposal would extend day-
light savings time by a month in the
spring and a month in the fall; that,
backers say, would save substantial
amounts of energy.
But that could also wreak havoc
in the observant Jewish community.
Such a change "would have a pro-
found impact on the Jewish practice
on morning prayers, and on the
ability of Jewish employees to arrive
at work on time," said Abba Cohen,
Washington director for Agudath
Israel of America.
Jewish groups, he said, are also con-
cerned about the safety of school
children who would be forced to go to
school in the dark—a speci al problem
for parochial school students who often
do not have access to school buses.
This week, officials of the United
Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
weighed in with similar concerns
about the proposed change.
In a letter to lawmakers, the group's
leaders said that the proposed change
"would result in a later sunrise that
will produce an undue hardship on
religious Jews" because it would force
them to delay morning prayers.
A modified amendment was
expected to come out of Senate
committee this week, but Orthodox
and Conservative activists warned
that the battle is far from over.
Texas Jewish Post
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Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 59, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 21, 2005, newspaper, July 21, 2005; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188089/m1/4/: accessed May 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .