One day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fiancé to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove - before a rabbinic court, no less - that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she. Sharon is a small woman in her late 30s with shoulder-length brown hair. For privacy’s sake, she prefers to be identified by only her first name. She grew up on a kibbutz when kids were still raised in communal children’s houses. She has two brothers who served in Israeli combat units. She loved the green and quiet of the kibbutz but was bored, and after her own military service she moved to the big city, which is the standard kibbutz story. Now she is a Tel Aviv professional […]
A major offensive could include reoccupying parts of northern Gaza and occupying or imposing a closure on the area around the city of Rafah in the south of the enclave. This reoccupation would be expected to last about a month, after which the army would round up fugitives and seize weapons and materiel over six or seven months. IDF sources say such an operation would gradually reduce the rocket fire and could delay the increase in Hamas’ military power, which is based on smuggling from Egypt via Rafah. The deployment of a multinational force in Gaza is part of the defense establishment’s ‘exit plan’ after a big operation. The idea was raised in unofficial talks with leaders of Arab and Muslim countries, some of whom viewed the issue favorably. Israeli officials believe that the participation of Arab states in a multinational force would help to legitimize it in the eyes of the Palestinian public. But members of the General Staff said it was better to try less-drastic moves than a major ground operation before deciding to occupy parts of the Strip. One of the proposals discussed was integrating Egyptian troops in a small multinational force that would […]
WASHINGTON The shadow of the Sept. 11 terror attacks is eclipsing press freedom and other constitutional safeguards in the United States, Associated Press President and CEO Tom Curley said Thursday. ‘What has become clear in the aftermath of 9/11 is how much expediency trumps safeguards,’ Curley said in remarks prepared for the annual dinner of the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation. ‘Congress steps back from its constitutional role of executive oversight. Civilian oversight of the military wanes. A Justice Department interprets laws in ways that extend police powers. More drastically, prisons are established in places where government or military operatives circumvent due process or control trials,’ Curley said in accepting the foundation’s First Amendment Leadership Award. ‘It’s at moments like these when a free press matters most,’ he said. Curley was selected for his role in pushing for more openness in government and for emphasizing reporting on First Amendment issues. That includes efforts by the AP to establish the Sunshine in Government Initiative, a news media coalition that presses for strengthening Freedom of Information laws and for greater government openness.
BAGHDAD — Two coordinated bomb blasts blamed on al Qaeda killed 55 people in a crowded Baghdad shopping area on Thursday, on the day the U.S. military said it was withdrawing 2,000 troops from the Iraqi capital. Police said a roadside bomb exploded on a street in the central Karrada district where vendors gather to sell their wares and which many people visit on a Thursday at the start of the Muslim weekend. Minutes later, after Iraqi security forces and other people had gathered following the initial blast, a suicide bomber detonated a second larger device, police said. It was one of the bloodiest days in the capital in recent months, since extra U.S. troops were sent to Iraq to quell raging sectarian violence and U.S. commanders embraced new counter-insurgency tactics. ‘Terrorists of the al Qaeda network targeted innocent people again,’ Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for Iraqi security operations in Baghdad, told state TV. He said the victims were from all Iraq’s sects and ethnic groups. He earlier told Reuters women and children were among the casualties. A witness at the site of the bombings in a predominantly Shi’ite area of the capital said […]
WASHINGTON — Home foreclosures hit new highs and the amount of equity in homes reached new lows as the housing crisis escalated across the country in 2007, new figures showed Thursday. Nationwide, nearly 6% of all mortgages were delinquent at the end of the fourth quarter and just over 2% were in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reported. The number of foreclosures was at the highest level since the association began keeping records in the 1970s. ‘The escalation of foreclosures and the delinquency problems are hurting housing prices and hurting consumer wealth,’ said Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington. ‘This tells me there are more housing problems in the pipeline.’ The foreclosure rate was somewhat worse in California, with 2.23% of mortgages in foreclosure compared with 2.04% nationally. The delinquency rate was marginally better, with 5.39% of mortgages past due compared with 5.82% nationally. Doug Duncan, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Assn., said the number of foreclosures and delinquencies in four hard-hit states — California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona — was high enough to skew the national data, and that the crisis was likely to last […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
