Behind the Israel Protest Turmoil: A Middle East Without a Peace Process

Time

Welcome to the post-peace process: The drama that unfolded on Israel's boundaries on Sunday as 12 Palestinians were killed in a wave of unarmed civil disobedience was but a taste of things to come. That was the warning from Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Sunday night, and he's certainly got reason to worry: Rather than pin their hopes on a moribund peace process, Palestinians have begun instead to align themselves with the Arab Spring  by pressing for their own rights through acts of people power. Even if there's no immediate followup to Sunday's protests, they represent a political crisis of epic proportions, not only for Israel and the United States, but also potentially even for the Palestinian leadership of President Mahmoud Abbas (and even, possibly, for his new Hamas partners in government).

An Eye for an Eye: Iran's Blinding Justice System

Time

Iran's judiciary has postponed the blinding of a man as punishment for throwing acid in the face of a young woman in 2004, after she rejected his offer of marriage. The delay came in the face of mounting outcry both inside Iran and in the West over the sentencing, which is permissible under qesas, a principle of Islamic law allowing victims analogous retribution for violent crimes.

The case has stirred passionate interest in Iran since 2004, when Majid Movahedi, a university student, accosted Ameneh Bahrami on a Tehran street and tossed a red bucket of sulfuric acid in her face. Bahrami, an attractive young engineer, had repeatedly spurned Movahedi's proposals and reported his harassment to the police. She was blinded and severely disfigured in the attack, and has spent the intervening years between Iran and Spain undergoing numerous unsuccessful operations to reconstruct her face and repair her sight. [...]

It is hate speech in Denmark to comment on child abuse and violence against women in Muslim culture

Spectator

Another bad blow against freedom in the west. Lars Hedegaard, President of the Danish Free Press Society and The International Free Press Society, was yesterday found guilty of hate speech under the Danish penal code. His crime – as I wrote previously here,  here and here – was to draw attention to child abuse  and violence against women in Muslim culture. The day after the interview, he stressed that his opinions were about Islam and not intended to refer to all Muslims. [....]

Fairfax teacher still suffering from false molestation allegations

Washington Post

Sean Lanigan’s nightmare began in January 2010, when the principal at Centre Ridge Elementary School pulled him out of the physical education class he was teaching and quietly walked him into an interrogation with two Fairfax County police detectives.

He had no warning that a 12-year-old girl at the Centreville school had accused him of groping and molesting her in the gym.

The girl, angry at Lanigan about something else entirely, had made the whole thing up. But her accusations launched a soul-sapping rollercoaster ride that still hasn’t ended.

“Emotionally, a part of me has died inside,” Lanigan said in a recent interview. “I’m physically and mentally exhausted all the time, how the whole process has been dragged out to this date. It certainly has affected the quality of life for me and my family at home.”

Lanigan remains in limbo, nearly a year after a jury’s acquittal. The Fairfax School District transferred him from Centre Ridge in a move that ultimately forced his wife to quit her job. School officials are now transferring him again. And the district has refused to pay his $125,000 in legal fees, even though Virginia law allows reimbursement for employees who are cleared of wrongdoing on the job. [...]

Reb Amos Bunim Zatzal - A Tribute

5tjt by Rabbi Yair Hoffmann

Unfortunately, this past Shabbos, Reb Amos Bunim a”h passed away in Mount Sinai hospital.

There is a TaZ in Hilchos Aveilus that states that one can lie a little bit when one is eulogizing a deceased individual.  The TaZ explains that it is permitted to do so, because it could be true.  There is no need to do so here.  If anything, we are dealing with a man – who not enough could be said about.

To say that Rabbi Amos Bunim zt”l was an Askan for Klal Yisroel would be an understatement.  He lived and breathed doing for Klal Yisroel.  His exuberance and energy infused and enlivened each and every project that he touched. The world would have been a different place without him.  And the world will now be a vastly different place without him.

Reb Amos had a remarkable sense of right and wrong, combined with a Temimus – a gentleness combined with compassion and concern.  He possessed a moral clarity - rare among people. Yidden loved him.  Goyim loved him.  Politicians and businessmen knew that here was a man who was sincere and passionate in his beliefs.  A man whose unimpeachable honesty was genuine and indisputably authentic.  Reb Amos’ moral convictions and determination to face and confront evil and apathy was legendary.

It was also inspiring.

Which is probably how he got others to do things with him.  Somehow, one never felt alone when Reb Amos was standing with you on a project.  He also made everyone else feel good about what they did. [...]

Mystics & psychics are good at taking your money

NYTimes

"The scam is tremendous," said Lt. Manny Hernandez, of the detective
squad at the Sixth Precinct, in Manhattan. Adam Brown, a lawyer suing
Ms. Mitchell, called the business "organized psychic crime."

Grand larceny is historically a clear-cut crime, like stealing a purse
in a bar. Some psychic cases would seem harder to prosecute: The squad
is also looking for a psychic named Angela from a West 18th Street
parlor who they say persuaded a client to give her $9,000 for some magic
coins that the two, in a cleansing ritual, later threw into an upstate
lake.

A rabbi who claims his understanding supercedes the texts

Is Israel Using Gay Rights to Excuse Its Policy on Palestine?

Time

Next month is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride month, an international season of parades, cultural festivals and street parties celebrating gay rights. But amid all the good cheer, tensions are rising over a controversial issue that is splintering LGBT communities. Around the world, major Pride events are being used as battle grounds to combat what some pro-Palestinian, progay activists are calling pink washing: Israel's promotion of its progressive gay-rights record as a way to cover up ongoing human-rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza.

The accusations stem from efforts over the past half-decade by the Israeli government to weave the country's gay-friendly policies — including national hate-crime laws, employment protection for LGBT workers and openly gay military service — into its larger national-rebranding strategy, in the hopes of redirecting its global image away from politics, terrorism and the occupied territories. "The Israeli government and its propaganda organs ... insist on advertising and exaggerating its recent record on LGBT rights ... to fend off international condemnation of its violations of the rights of the Palestinian people," says Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York City.

Prestigious school sued: A school psychologist is accused of affair with client's mother

NYTimes

The father of a kindergartner at Sidwell Friends, one of the most prestigious private schools in Washington, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the school and its former psychologist, claiming that the psychologist had an affair with his wife while treating his daughter.

The psychologist, James F. Huntington, was fired from Sidwell in February, the complaint says, nearly a year after the kindergartner’s father, Arthur G. Newmyer, raised his concern about the matter with the school’s chairman, who then notified the school’s lawyer.

At the time of the firing, the principal of the middle school e-mailed parents saying that Dr. Huntington had “served the school community with distinction and warmth for 10 years, and we are grateful for his many contributions,” according to the lawsuit. [....]

Religious belief is human nature: Oxford University massive study claims

CNN

Religion comes naturally, even instinctively, to human beings, a massive new study of cultures all around the world suggests.

"We tend to see purpose in the world," Oxford University professor Roger Trigg said Thursday. "We see agency. We think that something is there even if you can't see it. ... All this tends to build up to a religious way of thinking." [....]

Beware: Anonymous comments are being deleted

I have been lax in enforcing my policy of not publishing anonymous comments. However today I am working on deleting them.

If your anonymous comment did not get publish - simply send it again - with any name other than "anonymous" 

It is simply impossible to keep track of different viewpoints if they
are all called anonymous!

Is encouraging others to commit suicide a crime?

Time

On Nov. 27, 2005, a man in Faribault, Minn., received an e-mail with a subject line that read, "Melissa goodbye to Li Dao." It was a suicide note, scribbled digitally, sent by a woman to her online pen pal who had actively encouraged her to embrace death. The only catch: Li Dao was not a real person, and, according to authorities, the virtual advice was not an act of empathy but an attempt to manipulate Melissa into taking her own life — all for what the man told the police was the "the thrill of the chase."

Li Dao was one of the several aliases used by 48-year-old William Melchert-Dinkel, who would impersonate a female nurse and advise people on suicide methods in online chat rooms. Melissa was one of the dozens of victims he encouraged to commit suicide by feigning compassion. "Having your support is going to help me muster up the strength to go through with this," Melissa wrote to him. Melchert-Dinkel (who was a registered nurse at the time) then replied, advising Melissa to stay calm while she took her own life: "Just let yourself down on the rope and let go."[....]

Peace Corps' history of silencing the victim in sexual assault cases

NYTimes

Jess Smochek arrived in Bangladesh in 2004 as a 23-year-old Peace Corps volunteer with dreams of teaching English and “helping the world.” She left six weeks later a rape victim after being brutalized in an alley by a knife-wielding gang.

When she returned to the United States, the reception she received from Peace Corps officials was as devastating, she said, as the rape itself. In Bangladesh, she had been given scant medical care; in Washington, a counselor implied that she was to blame for the attack. For years she kept quiet, feeling “ashamed and embarrassed and guilty.” [...]

Just published: "Child & Domestic Abuse - Compact Practical Guide Edition"

In preparation for the presentation I am giving Lag B'Omer at the White Institute conference on abuse in the Orthodox community and in response to those who  just want to know the basic halachic parameters of abuse in an inexpensive volume - I have just published a compact practical guide to abuse. This contains the text of Volume I including the Synopsis of Rav Sternbuch's views and the Practical Guide and my essays. However it does not contain the  important essays contributed by  rabbis, psychologists, and lawyers which fully describe the nuances of the psychological and legal issues. I also included the teshuvos of contemporary gedolim from Volume II dealing with abuse and calling the police or social agencies - both the translation and Hebrew source. However it doesn't include the many texts describing important associated issues. Thus I have selected 150 pages of the basic core material from the 800 pages published in Volumes I & II. This compact guide can serve as a stand alone source book or as an introduction/review of Volume I and II. Currently it is only available from the Amazon Createspace store (click link to order) - but should be available on Amazon  in another week. Volumes I & II are currently available from Amazon