Israel's Right and the US

By Robert Fisk, The Independent, October 1, 2013

These are hard times for the Israeli right. Used to bullying the US—and especially its present, shallow leader—the Likudists suddenly find that the whole world wants peace in the Middle East rather than war. Brits and Americans didn’t want to go to war in Syria. Now, with the pleasant smile of President Rouhani gracing their television screens, fully accepting the facts of the Jewish Holocaust—unlike his deranged and infantile predecessor—the Americans (75 per cent, if we are to believe the polls) don’t want to go to war with Iran either.

Having, live on television, forced President Obama to grovel to him on his last trip to the White House—Benjamin Netanyahu brusquely told him to forget UN Security Resolution 242, which calls for a withdrawal of Israeli forces from lands occupied after the 1967 war—the Israeli Prime Minister did a little grovelling himself on Monday. He no longer called for a total end to all Iranian nuclear activities. Now it was only Iran’s “military nuclear programme” which must be shut down.

And, of course, like Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction programme” which President George W Bush had to invent when the weapons themselves turned out to be an invention, we still don’t know if Mr Netanyahu’s version of Iran’s “military nuclear programme” actually exists.

What we do know is that when Mr Rouhani started saying all the things we had been demanding that Iran should say for years, Israel went bananas. Mr Netanyahu condemned him before he had even said a word. “A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” “An anti-Semite.” Even when Mr Rouhani spoke of peace and an end to nuclear suspicions, Israel’s “Strategic Affairs” Minister—whatever that means—said time had run out for future negotiations. Yuval Steinitz claimed that “if the Iranians continue to run [their nuclear programme], in another half a year they will have bomb capability”.

Mr Netanyahu’s own office joined in the smear campaign.

"One must not be fooled by the Iranian President’s fraudulent words," one of Mr Netanyahu’s men sneered. "The Iranians are spinning in the media so that the centrifuges can keep on spinning."

The Rouhani speech was “a honey trap”. Mr Netanyahu himself said Mr Rouhani’s address to the UN, a speech of immense importance after 34 years of total divorce between Iran and the US, was “cynical” and “totally hypocritical”.

Israel Hayom, the Likudist freesheet, dredged up—yet again—the old pre-Second World War appeasement argument that the Israeli right have been reheating for well over 30 years. “A Munich wind blows in the west,” the paper said.

Perhaps it had its effect. If he was not so frightened of Israel—as most US administrations are—President Obama might actually have shaken hands with Mr Rouhani last week. Instead, President Obama settled for a phone call.

In the past, Arab delegates would storm out of the UN General Assembly when Israelis took the stand. When the crazed President Ahmadinejad spoke, Western nations and the Israelis stormed out. But when Mr Rouhani came to speak, Western nations crowded into the chamber to hear him. But Israel stormed out.

"A stupid gesture," according to that wise old Israeli sage, writer and philosopher Uri Avnery. "As rational and effective as a little boy’s tantrum when his favourite toy is taken away. Stupid because it painted Israel as a spoiler, at a time when the entire world is seized by an attack of optimism after the recent events in Damascus and Tehran. Stupid, because it proclaims the fact that Israel is at present totally isolated."

Mr Avnery’s contention is Israel wanted two wars, the first against Syria, the second against Iran.

As he wrote last week, when Congress hesitated to strike Damascus, “the hounds of hell were let loose. Aipac (the largest Likudist pro-Israeli lobby group in the US) sent its parliamentary rottweillers to Capitol Hill to tear to pieces any senator or congressman who objected”.

Yet at the White House on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister had calmed down. I doubt if it will last. Israel, I suspect, will do everything it can to cut down Mr Rouhani’s overtures, whatever American public opinion might say

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We Destroyed Afghanistan: Americans Can't Remember, Afghans Will Never Forget

By Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com, October 1, 2013

The Afghan War is officially winding down. American casualties, generally from towns and suburbs you’ve never heard of unless you were born there, are still coming in. Though far fewer American troops are in the field with Afghan forces, devastating “insider attacks” in which a soldier or policeman turns his gun on his American allies, trainers, or mentors still periodically occur. Civilian casualties continue to rise. “Surgically precise” U.S. air and drone strikes still mysteriously kill Afghan civilians. And as U.S. combat troops withdraw, Afghan-on-Afghan fighting is actually increasing, with the U.S.-trained army taking almost Vietnam-level, possibly unsustainable casualties (100 or more dead a week), while the police are similarly hit hard.

Meanwhile, as TomDispatch regular Ann Jones points out, our second longest war has already played Houdini, doing a remarkable disappearing job in “the homeland.” Almost 12 years after it began, no one here, it seems, is considering how to assess American “success” on that distant battlefield. But were we to do so, what possible gauge might we use? Here’s a suggestion: how about opium production? In 1979, the year America’s first Afghan war (against the Soviets) began, that country was producing just 250 tons of opium; by the early years of the post-9/11 American occupation of the country, that figure had hit 3,400 tons. Between 2006 and the present, it’s ranged from a 2007 high of 8,200 tons to a low of just under 5,000 tons. Officials of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service now claim that 40,000 tons of illicit opiates have been stockpiled in Afghanistan, mostly to be marketed abroad. As of 2012, it was the world’s leading supplier of opium, with 74% of the global market, a figure that was expected to hit 90% as U.S. combat troops leave (and foreign aid flees). In other words, success in an endless war in that country has meant creating the world’s first true narco-state. It’s a record to consider. Not for nothing, it seems, were all those billions of dollars expended, not without accomplishments do we leave (if we are actually leaving).

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Exercise As Effective As Drugs For Treating Heart Disease, Diabetes

By Alexandra Sifferlin, TIME, Oct. 01, 2013

Forget the pills—there’s new evidence that exercise may be as effective as medications in treating heart disease and diabetes.

Doctors now advise everyone, from young children to older adults, to become more physically active. It’s the best way to maintain a healthy weight, keep the heart muscle strong, and improve your mental outlook. But can exercise be as good as drugs in actually preventing disease and treating serious chronic illnesses?

That’s what researchers from the London School of Economics, Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine wanted to find out. They compared the effect of exercise to that of drug therapy on four different health outcomes: heart disease, recovery from stroke, heart failure treatment and preventing diabetes.

The scientists pooled the results of 305 trials involving 339,274 people who were randomly assigned to either an exercise program or a drug-based therapy and found that there were no detectable differences between the two groups when it came to preventing diabetes and keeping additional events at bay for heart patients. And the physical activity was most powerful for participants who experienced a stroke. The only group that didn’t benefit from the exercise over drugs were patients with heart failure, likely because the strain of the physical activity wasn’t recommended for their condition.

The findings involving diabetes patients confirmed previous trials that documented how effective physical activity can be in bringing blood sugar levels down.

Currently, to maintain optimum health, federal experts recommend that people exercise at a moderate intensity for about 2.5 hours a week. But fewer than half of Americans meet that recommendation, and a third of Americans don’t get any exercise at all. The latest findings should encourage even those who aren’t active, however, since research shows even just talking a brisk walk can help lower the risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes, and be as powerful as medications in keeping the body healthy.

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Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S. Jews

By Laurie Goodstein, NY Times, October 1, 2013

The first major survey of American Jews in more than 10 years finds a significant rise in those who are not religious, marry outside the faith and are not raising their children Jewish—resulting in rapid assimilation that is sweeping through every branch of Judaism except the Orthodox.

The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews—a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.

"It’s a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish population in terms of their Jewish identification," said Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.

The survey, by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, found that despite the declines in religious identity and participation, American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish and have a “strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”

While 69 percent say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel, and 40 percent believe that the land that is now Israel was “given to the Jewish people by God,” only 17 percent think that the continued building of settlements in the West Bank is helpful to Israel’s security.

Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, a percentage that has held steady for the past two decades. The survey estimates there are 5.3 million Jewish adults as well as 1.3 million children being raised at least partly Jewish.

The survey uses a wide definition of who is a Jew, a much-debated topic. The researchers included the 22 percent of Jews who describe themselves as having “no religion,” but who identify as Jewish because they have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish, and feel Jewish by culture or ethnicity.

However, the percentage of “Jews of no religion” has grown with each successive generation, peaking with the millennials (those born after 1980), of whom 32 percent say they have no religion.

"It’s very stark," Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew religion project, said in an interview. "Older Jews are Jews by religion. Younger Jews are Jews of no religion."

The trend toward secularism is also happening in the American population in general, with increasing proportions of each generation claiming no religious affiliation.

But Jews without religion tend not to raise their children Jewish, so this secular trend has serious consequences for what Jewish leaders call “Jewish continuity.” Of the “Jews of no religion” who have children at home, two-thirds are not raising their children Jewish in any way. This is in contrast to the “Jews with religion,” of whom 93 percent said they are raising their children to have a Jewish identity.

Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35 percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent combined. Thirty percent of Jews do not identify with any denomination.

In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

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Pope, in New Interview, Vows to Change Vatican Mentality

By Philip Pullella, Reuters, October 1, 2013

VATICAN CITY—Pope Francis has promised to do everything in his power to change the Vatican’s mentality, saying in an interview published on Tuesday that it was too focused on its own interests.

In the long interview with the atheist editor of the left-leaning La Repubblica newspaper, he said too many previous popes in the Church’s long history had been “narcissists” who let themselves be flattered by their “courtier” aides.

"The (papal) court is the leprosy of the papacy," said Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, consultation and simplicity to the papacy.

The interview, conducted last week in the pope’s spartan residence in a Vatican guest house, appeared as he began a three-day, closed-door meeting with eight cardinals from around the world to help him reform the Vatican’s troubled administration, known as the Curia.

There are some “courtiers” among the Curia’s administrators, he said, but its main defect is that it is too inward-looking.

"It looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, in large part temporal interests. This Vatican-centric vision neglects the world around it and I will do everything to change it," he said.

Speaking of his personal faith, Francis said: “A Catholic God does not exist…

"I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my master and my pastor, but God, the father … is the light and the creator. This is my being."

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Cardinals to Begin Reform Summit With Pope

Reuters, September 30, 2013

VATICAN CITY—Eight cardinals will begin closed-door meetings with Pope Francis on Tuesday to help him reform the Vatican’s troubled administration and map out possible changes in the worldwide Church.

Francis, who has brought a new style of openness, simplicity and a conciliatory tone to the papacy, wants to consult more with Church officials around the world before making decisions affecting the life of the 1.2-billion-member Church.

Some of the topics expected to be discussed are how to give women a greater role in the Church short of the priesthood, financial reform, the position of divorced Catholics, and the continued fallout from the worldwide sexual abuse crisis.

Francis announced the papal advisory board of cardinals, revolutionary for a Church steeped in hierarchical tradition, a month after his election as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years and the first from Latin America.

His decision to take advice from the cardinals from Italy, Chile, India, Germany, Democratic Republic of Congo, the United States, Australia and Honduras, is a clear sign that he intends to take seriously calls from within the Church for de-centralization in a traditionally top-heavy institution.

Each cardinal polled their faithful and bishops about what should be discussed at the meetings, which will be closed to even top officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which is itself a target of reform.

The group’s chairman, Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, told a Canadian Catholic television network he had 80 pages of suggestions from Latin America alone.

The group’s main task is to suggest changes to a constitution by the late Pope John Paul II called “Pastor Bonus,” which gave the various departments that run the Church their current structure in 1988.

The Curia, as it is known, has been riven by scandals over the years and bishops around the world have deemed it heavy-handed, autocratic, condescending and overly bureaucratic.

Maradiaga said the constitution governing the structure of the Curia would have to be re-written rather than modified.

Former Pope Benedict, who resigned in February, left a secret report for Francis on the problems of the Curia, which were exposed when sensitive documents were stolen from Benedict’s desk by his butler and leaked to the media.

There have been suggestions that some Vatican departments be merged and others closed in order to make the Curia more efficient and to prevent corruption.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told reporters on Monday about 80 documents had been prepared for discussion.

"No-one should expect the Curia or the governance of the Church to be reformed in three days," he said, adding Francis had decided to make the council a permanent fixture with an open-ended mandate.

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From grief to grace: Wife of Amish schoolhouse shooter breaks her silence

By Daniel Burke, CNN. Sept. 28, 2013

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (CNN)—Among the flowers and plants in Marie Monville’s sunny yard sits a rosebush, a gift from her first husband, Charlie.

A few years ago, Monville painstakingly unearthed the roots and transplanted the bush from her old house 10 miles away—a house that Charlie had thrown into tumult and grief.

The bush’s prickles recall the pain she and her family have endured, Monville said, and its peach-colored blossoms offer a yearly reminder that God creates new life from old.

After years of silence, Monville is now telling a story herself.

It’s the story of how a milkman’s daughter became a murderer’s wife, and how she found a divine calling after a devastating tragedy.

"If this wasn’t my life," Monville said during a recent interview in her kitchen, family pictures smiling from the fridge, "I never would have expected it to look this beautiful."

On October 2, 2006, Charlie Roberts—then Monville’s husband—burst into a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, with a handgun, a 12-gauge shotgun, a rifle, cans of black powder, a stun gun, two knives, a toolbox and restraint devices.

Roberts ordered a teacher, a teacher’s aide and the boys to leave, then bound 10 young schoolgirls and lined them up against the blackboard.

He boarded the windows, apparently preparing for a long siege, but as police surrounded the schoolhouse, Roberts shot all 10 girls before killing himself. Five girls died; the others were severely wounded.

The gentle, quiet man who had shared Monville’s bed, children and life was now a mass murderer, guilty of unfathomable evil.

In mere hours, Monville lost her husband, and her children lost their father. Her close-knit community was terrorized and her family’s name disgraced. Her innocence was despoiled, and her evangelical faith tested.

"I felt deserted, left behind to bear the weight of the world’s judgment and questions alone," Monville writes in "One Light Still Shines," her new book about the shooting and its aftermath, "and I felt that weight pressing me down."

After the shooting, Monville tried to keep her family, especially her three young children, out of the public eye.

But with the release of “One Light,” which goes on sale Monday, Monville is stepping out of the shadows, sharing her story in deeply personal detail.

Zondervan, one of the country’s largest Christian publishing houses, won’t say how many copies it plans to print. But it has launched a “robust” marketing and publicity campaign, with a billboard in New York’s Times Square and interviews with TV networks, including CNN’s Piers Morgan on Monday night at 9.

"It will sell millions of copies," said Donald Kraybill, co-author of "The Amish" and a professor at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. "Millions."

Not only is Monville’s story powerful and largely untold, but it also hits a burgeoning market for book publishers, Kraybill said: the cross-section of evangelical spirituality and interest in all things Amish.

Christian fiction best-seller lists brim with Amish romance novels, largely because of their large evangelical readership, which scholars trace to the 2006 shooting and its stunning postlude of Amish forgiveness.

Monville said she kept silent for so long because that story, the grace and compassion the Amish offered her family, was already making headlines around the world.

"There wasn’t much more for me to say," she said.

Even if there had been more to say, the intensely private Monville was reluctant to speak publicly. Shy and quiet, she sometimes joked that the label under her high-school yearbook picture should have read, “Most Likely to be Forgotten.”

But as the shooting’s psychological wounds began to heal, Monville said she heard God calling her to a new mission: to share her message of hope. To tell others that, even after Charlie’s crushing actions, her family not only survived, they thrived.

"I now saw a grand purpose in telling my story," Monville writes, "I wasn’t afraid anymore."

The morning of October 2, 2006, was sunny and warm, Monville recalls, the trees in her rural neighborhood radiant with red and golden leaves.

Monville, then Marie Roberts, was living her deepest childhood dreams. At 28, she had a vibrant church community and spiritual life, a dutiful husband who doted on their three young children and a home next-door to her grandparents in idyllic Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where she was born and raised.

Charlie Roberts, her husband of nearly a decade, drove a truck that delivered milk to nearby dairies, just as Marie’s family had done for generations. He sometimes brooded over the death of their first daughter, who was born three months premature and died after just 20 minutes, but he usually pulled out from these bouts of depression.

On the morning of the shooting, Marie led a prayer group at a local church, where they asked God to keep schoolchildren safe. Then, as usual, she and Charlie walked their two oldest children, then 7 and 5, to the bus stop, kissing them goodbye before Charlie left for work.

At 11 a.m., as Marie was pouring herself a cup of coffee, Charlie called.

"I had never heard Charlie’s voice sound like that before," Monville writes, "not in almost 10 years of marriage. Something was horribly wrong."

Charlie told Marie he was not coming home. He left a note explaining everything, he said. Marie pleaded with him to come home, but he hung up.

"Charlie said a lot of things on the phone or the letter that didn’t make a lot of sense," Monville said in an interview. "His mind was filled with all of the things he was planning to do, so he wasn’t in a place of being OK."

The three-page letter Charlie left for Marie said she was the perfect wife, but the death of their firstborn child made him enraged at God.

"I am sorry to put you and the kids in this position but I feel that this is the best and only way," Charlie wrote. "I love all of you and this is why am I doing this."

Marie called 911. Sirens wailed in the distance. Hanging up the phone, she stood in the living room, staring at her ceiling fan, and prayed.

Monville calls this her “walk on water” moment, recalling when Jesus challenged the disciples to show their faith by following his footsteps across the Sea of Galilee.

"I was faced with two choices, and only two," she said.

"I could choose to believe that everything written about God in the pages of the Word were true, and that he was going to rescue me and my family. Or I could choose to believe that we were going down like the fastest sinking ship."

Monville said she always enjoyed a close relationship with God, hearing his voice call to her, feeling his embrace during prayer and worship.

Even after the death of her firstborn, whom they named Elise, and a later failed pregnancy, Monville said she kept hoping that God held better days in store. But Charlie’s faith faltered, and he shrugged off her pleas to talk to a pastor, counselor or friend about his deepening depression.

"He was angry at God, which I didn’t realize in those days," Monville said. "I just thought he wasn’t connected to the Lord in the ways I was. The harder I pushed, the more he withdrew."

"I did not know the man who went into the schoolhouse and did the things he did there," she said. "I did not know that Charlie."

"There were a lot of things I asked myself," Monville said. "How did I not see this? What are the signs I missed?"

Those questions didn’t yield easy answers, just more difficult questions, she said: How could God allow this to happen? What should she tell her children? Would people hold her responsible for Charlie’s actions? Could she rebuild her life in Lancaster?

The community—including the Amish—showered her family with gifts, meals and love after the shooting, Monville recalls. They said hello on the way to the bus stop, dropped by to see if she needed groceries, encouraged her to stay in Lancaster.

Monville had always been a middle child, shyly hoping she could somehow escape the world’s gaze. Now she was the center of attention, with news vans parked in her neighborhood and reporters prowling around her yard.

With her newfound notoriety came questions from strangers that made her skin crawl. Did Charlie have life insurance? How do you sleep at night knowing what your husband did?

In fact, Monville didn’t sleep at night. She tossed and turned, grieving over her husband and the deaths he caused, and worrying about her children’s future.

But with Scripture and prayer, in reaching out to God and hearing his reply in shouts and whispers, feeling his fatherly care in signs and wonders that people of lesser faith might take for coincidences, Monville said she found healing.

On the day of the shooting, after Charlie’s frightening call, she saw a vision of God’s hand catching a falling flower petal just before it hit the ground, Monville said.

And that’s just what God did for her, she said, every time she faltered.

She saw God’s hand when the Amish attended Charlie’s funeral, when neighbors sent baskets of food, and strangers filled her mailbox with supportive notes.

Most importantly, Monville said, she felt God’s strength when she had to tell her children that their father had made some very bad choices, and some people had died, and he had died, too.

"Over and over again," Monville writes, "(God) broke through my pain, revealed his presence, and restored my hope."

Along with hope restored came another miracle, Monville said: She no longer cared what other people thought.

Marie needed that fearlessness when, just four months after the shooting, she told her family she was engaged to a family friend, Dan Monville.

She and Dan, a divorcé, had bonded after the shooting as they supervised play dates with their young children. She felt a connection with Dan as their families bonded, she said, which ripened into love.

Maybe Dan was the right man, her family said, but it was definitely the wrong time.

Marie had doubts, too. It was so soon after the shooting. But she felt God whispering to her, telling her that Dan was the man she should marry.

Marie said she wrestled with that revelation, fasting and praying for days. Again, one of those signs and wonders—the kind that others might take for happenstance—broke into her life.

Early one morning in December 2006, Marie awoke to hear her Christmas tree tumble with a crackling crash.

Each year, she and Charlie had exchanged Christmas ornaments, their own family tradition. Only two broke when the tree fell, Monville said, the first and last Charlie had given her.

"At the precise moment I noticed this," she writes, "I heard the words ‘It is finished’ echo through my heart and mind."

Dan and Marie were married in May 2007, seven months after the schoolhouse shooting. They now live in the house with Charlie’s rosebush, their five children are healthy and happy, Monville said, the youngest potty-training and the eldest applying for driver’s permits.

Sipping a cup of coffee in her tidy kitchen last week, Monville said she relishes her return to routine, dropping the kids off at school, grocery shopping. “Normal mom” stuff.

She keeps the letter Charlie left and reads it from time to time, even though some parts leave her feeling shaky. Monville also keeps cartons full of letters sent from strangers around the world. She tries not to dread the arrival of October 2, but still finds her eyes fixed to the clock each year, remembering when Charlie left her work, when he called, the day’s devastation.

Monville said she has spent years trying to remove the “the shooter’s wife” label—but in a way, she embraces it now, as long as she gets to tell the rest of the story.

It’s the story of how the milkman’s timid daughter, the murderer’s grieving wife, became of all things a joyful messenger, telling everyone who’d listen about the grace of God’s love.

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