| News Briefs |
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| Written by New Voices | |||||
| Wednesday, 17 April 2002 | |||||
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Baking a Greater Israel, No Cocoons for Kohens, Crazy Jews  Baking a Greater Israel Kids' cooking causes controversy Israel's supporters often complain about Palestinian maps that label as "Palestine" the entire land west of the Jordan River, an area that encompasses Israel as well as the Occupied Territories. Of course, Israeli maps are often similar, simply labeling the entire land "Israel" instead. When the Kids Page of Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent newspaper featured instructions on how to bake a map of Israel from dough accompanied by an outline of Israel that extended from the Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea this past November, one reader smelled hypocrisy. Steven David Masters, a member of the Progressive Zionist Alliance, complained in a letter to the paper that its map "erroneously makes it appear that the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including those areas which have been turned over to the Palestinian Authority, fall inside the borders of Israel." Masters noted that Israel has never annexed the Occupied Territories and has committed itself to withdrawing from occupied lands in exchange for peace. "You do a grave disservice to our Jewish youth when you present educational materials that distort these realities," he wrote. "...One would think that, with all of the attention these pages have devoted to critiques of maps of Palestine that fail to acknowledge the State of Israel, the Jewish Exponent would apply similar vigilance toward maps that equate the borders of Israel with the borders of [British] mandatory Palestine." No Cocoons for Kohens Israeli airline nixes plan to plastic-wrap ultra-Orthodox passengers Many ultra-Orthodox Jews have long tried to isolate themselves from the impurities of the larger world by leading insular, cocoon-like lifestyles. This past fall, however, some ultra-Orthodox Jews proposed to seal themselves in actual cocoons. Ultra-Orthodox kohanim, Jews believed to be of priestly descent, requested that El Al, Israel's national airline, allow them to seal themselves in plastic bags when their planes pass over a cemetery, as flights leaving Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport frequently do. Under Jewish law, kohanim are prohibited for reasons of ritual purity from entering cemeteries, and a recent ruling by an influential ultra-Orthodox rabbi stated that simply flying over cemeteries posed problems as well. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, El Al was initally receptive to the idea of letting ultra-Orthodox passengers don plastic bags, but later reversed itself. El Al explained that "flight safety considerations do not allow for passengers to board while covered in plastic bags." Crazy Jews Feds finger Jewish extremists in plot against mosque and congressman A federal grand jury indicted two members of the militant Jewish Defense League this month for allegedly plotting to bomb a Los Angeles-area mosque and the offices of an Arab-American congressman. Federal officials had first announced their discovery of the alleged plot in December. The FBI was tipped off by a JDL member, who was then recruited as an informant and taped conversations with alleged plotters, JDL chairman Irv Rubin and member Earl Leslie Krugel. This wasn't the first time the JDL , which was founded by the late anti-Arab extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, drew the scrutiny of law enforcement. According to The New York Times, the JDL has also long been suspected of involvement in a 1985 bombing that killed an Arab-American activist, but its participation was never proven. The Times reported that according to federal officials Rubin was taped saying he wanted to show that the JDL was "still alive in a militant way." Federal officials said the alleged plotters planned to carry out the bombing at night to minimize the chance of casualties. Fortunately, the JDL is fairly marginal. Kenneth Jacobson, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish civil rights group, told the Times that he doubted the JDL had more than 100 members.
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