Father of Intifada big lie - al-Durrah- wins lawsuit against Israeli doctor for exposing truth

YNET

A French court ruled Friday against Dr. David Yehuda, an Israeli doctor who was sued for slander by Jamal al-Durrah, the father of Second Intifada symbol Muhammad al-Durrah.

The Israeli doctor, an orthopedic surgeon who operated Jamal al-Durrah, exposed details from his medical file and claimed that his scares were the result of a surgery, and were not caused by IDF fire.

Following the verdict, Dr. Yehuda said that he intends to appeal the sentence.

"In the past two years I've been fighting the State of Israel's just war. This is a terrible scam. I feel hurt and a personal sense of insult," he said. "Again they are trampling and twisting the truth…I can already see the negative results and a new wave of hatred to come out of Europe."

Victim faces her molester stepfather

CNN

Tracy Ross talks to Donnie Lee, who admitted to sexually abusing her between 25 and 50 times.

In Shift, Egypt Warms to Iran and Hamas, Israel’s Foes

NYTimes

Egypt is charting a new course in its foreign policy that has already begun shaking up the established order in the Middle East, planning to open the blockaded border with Gaza and normalizing relations with two of Israel and the West's Islamist foes, Hamas and Iran.

Egyptian officials, emboldened by the revolution and with an eye on coming elections, say that they are moving toward policies that more accurately reflect public opinion. In the process they are seeking to reclaim the influence over the region that waned as their country became a predictable ally of Washington and the Israelis in the years since the 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

The first major display of this new tack was the deal Egypt brokered Wednesday to reconcile the secular Palestinian party Fatah with its rival Hamas. "We are opening a new page," said Ambassador Menha Bakhoum, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry. "Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated." [....]

OU alternative communities fair

Jewish Star

There is affordable housing and day school tuition breaks, but can South Bend, Indiana, really coax a young Jewish family to leave the comforts of New York? “I thought I’d be living in New York for the rest of my life,” said Moshe Gubin, 34, a former resident of Kew Gardens Hills. “I was visiting my in-laws in South Bend and my wife wanted to live near her parents,” Gubin said. Although the move meant a pay cut and a long commute to Chicago for work, Gubin is not looking back. He attended the Orthodox Union’s Emerging Jewish Communities Fair on March 27 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan. The event was facilitating New York Jews to move across the Hudson River and beyond.

“I have a big lawn, a four bedroom home with a two-car garage for only $89,000,” Gubin said. While South Bend does not come close to New York in terms of amenities, the basic Orthodox services such a day school, mikvah, and eruv are a requirement for participation in the fair. “There has to be an infrastructure for the community to grow, and the other requirement is incentives, such as job opportunities and discounts in tuition and housing,” said Frank Buchweitz, OU special projects director. The third annual fair drew 37 communities from Maine to California.

Alongside Arizona and Kansas, five Long Island communities attended the fair, with real estate as the focus of their pitch. “These communities said to us that they are also OU members and are trying to grow with the same efforts,” Buchweitz said. The five Nassau communities were Long Beach, Merrick, Oceanside, Plainview, and Roslyn.

NYC couple who split house with wall get divorce

CBS

A feuding couple who built a wall through their house because neither husband nor wife would give it up were granted a divorce after six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees.

But the legal battles may not be over for Simon and Chana Taub, whom the media likened to Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner's warring spouses in the 1989 film "The War of the Roses."

Chana Taub is unhappy with the judge's order to sell the divided Brooklyn house, plus two others, and split the proceeds with her soon-to-be ex-husband, said her lawyer, Neil Iovino. She plans to appeal.

"She's now in a position to be dispossessed," Iovino said. "She was most upset that the properties in her name and especially the property she lives in should be sold."

Cuomo: NY law sheds 24,000 sex offenders from Web

Wall Street Journal

A New York law is credited with removing 24,000 sex offenders from Internet social networking sites nationwide.

The law proposed by then-Attorney General Andrew Cuomo requires sex offenders registered with the state to provide all their screen names and e-mail addresses, with regular updates. The information is sent to two dozen social networking sites which then block the offenders.

Cuomo, now governor, says the law passed by the Legislature in 2008 is one of the most effective means to protect children from sex offenders in the nation.

White Institute Conference: Understanding & Treating Sexual Abuse in the Orthodox Jewish World

The presenters will include both expert psychologists and psychoanalysts from the Institute as well as rabbis who are experts on the halachic and theological considerations concerning sexual abuse in the Orthodox community.
 
Rabbi Yosef Blau who is on the Rabbinic Committee of the Jewish Board of Advocates for Children, and Rabbi Daniel Eidensohn, who has edited a groundbreaking book on Domestic Violence and Child Abuse that includes chapters written by several of JBAC's officers and executive committee members will join Drs. Alison Feit, Richard Gartner and Julie Marcuse in discussion and presentation of the complex cultural, religious and psychological dynamics involved in working with survivors in our community.
 
This historic event is recommended both for experienced clinicians who treat survivors of abuse, as well as for rabbis, teachers, school and camp administrators, victims advocates, community leaders and anyone else who finds themselves in a position to be of assistance to survivors of abuse.  
 
The Jewish Board of Advocates for Children is offering a limited number of scholarships based on need, for those who wish to attend but cannot afford to.  Please email me to apply.  Survivors for Justice is also providing some scholarships ---

Dr. Asher Lipner
email -  lipnera@gmail.com

Three Cups of Tea: Desire to believe in great men - the subsequent betrayal & shattered faith

Newsweek

I remember my first Mortenson Moment. It was a few years ago, in an old auditorium in Santa Fe, N.M., and I sat waiting with my wife and son in a large murmuring crowd. Greg Mortenson, arriving late, flashed a shy smile and a namaste sign as he took the stage. He had a bashful cluelessness that somehow made him all the more endearing. Soon he launched into The Story: How in 1993, he stumbled into the tiny Pakistani village of Korphe after a failed attempt on K2. How the kind villagers nursed him back to health with many cups of tea. How as payment for their generosity, he returned to build a school. How that one school became hundreds of schools across Pakistan and Afghanistan. And how, tonight, we could help him build more.

If Mortenson’s story—distilled from his mega-bestseller Three Cups of Tea—seemed smarmy in places, its pull was irresistible. Anybody with a heart had to be inspired by the beautiful idea that one man could make such a profound difference in such a hard and desperate part of the world. I remember thinking that this was not only a book talk and charity fundraiser, it was something akin to a religious experience—a modern-day tent revival. People had not merely come to listen, they’d come to believe. Mortenson, a son of missionaries and a nurse by training who by then had been thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (and whose books were required reading by the Pentagon), was a secular saint who’d seized upon a revolutionary notion that soared across conflicts and continents—the power of educating children, especially girls, in tribal societies racked by poverty and war. In our cynical age, he was one dreamer who seemed to give off an authentic halo glow. That night, I could see genuine reverence in people’s eyes and in the earnest faces of children clutching their jars of pennies. [...]

Addiction - does giving in sometimes cure it and is more economical?

Time

It sounds like an alcoholic's vision of heaven: a free place to live, paid expenses (mostly), and an ample supply of booze. But the reality of "wet houses" for homeless alcoholics looks more like hell, even as these programs — which take their residents off the streets — reduce costs to taxpayers and health-care providers.

A New York Times Magazine story slated to appear in print on Sunday reports on one such program in St. Paul, Minn. St. Anthony's Residence houses several dozen men including Dave, a formerly homeless 60-year-old man named who lives in a single-bedded "sterile 12-by-12 concrete room."

Hamas has taken over the Palestinian nationalist movement

Haaretz

The Palestinian reconciliation deal, if realized, heralds the takeover of the Palestinian national movement by Hamas, providing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with an escape from the rut he has fallen into because of the deadlock in the peace process. This is just what Netanyahu needed to unite the Israeli public behind him and thwart international pressure to withdraw from the West Bank.

A "unity government" or "technocracy" - as the Palestinians called it yesterday - is a nice but empty headline. In real life, there is no a-political rule and there are no egalitarian governments. There is always a ruling side with partners being dragged behind it. The stronger, more organized, better armed side, i.e. Hamas, will rule the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, not "technocrats." This is how the communists took over East Europe after WWII. [...]

Folic Acid Follies - dangers of too little & too much

Slate

No woman who's expecting, or expecting to expect, can avoid the advice, from any doctor or health site worth its salt: Take folic acid. The vitamin deserves its exalted status. When women take it before and during pregnancy, it reduces the risk of devastating neural-tube defects in the fetus. It's one of the only things we can do to improve fetal health that is supported by rigorous evidence.

But these days millions of women (and men) are getting high doses of the vitamin—and not because we're piling our plates with natural sources like spinach and collard greens. Since the late 1990s, the United States has fortified many breads, cereals, and pastas with folic acid. And then there are the supplements: both in regular multivitamins and freestanding folic acid pills. For pregnant women, the government recommends a daily dose of 400 micrograms in addition to any folate, the naturally occurring form of the vitamin. But millions of expectant mothers, as well women who are not yet pregnant, go hog-wild, taking more than 1,000 micrograms in pill form a day, an amount the government deems the "tolerable upper intake level." Somewhere along the line, it seems, folic acid crossed the line from vitamin to talisman.

Repeated sex offender suspected of assaulting 5-year-old girl

Haaretz

A repeated sexual offender was arrested Monday for allegedly sexually abusing a five-year-old girl in Holon while serving under house arrest. 

According to the complaint filed by the child's parents, the suspect approached the child while she was playing with friends in one of the city's public playgrounds.

A court battle over a husband’s rage & a wife who’d had enough

NYTimes

The morning after her nose was broken, as Mr. Sheehan, 49, was shaving, Ms. Sheehan, 46, shot him five times with his .38-caliber revolver, which he had left in the bedroom. When it was empty, she picked up his Glock and shot him six more times. 

The police arrived to find him dead on the floor of the bathroom, and her waiting on the porch with her sister and a UPS deliveryman. She was charged with second-degree murder. 

The case, now more than two years old and still at least months away from trial, returned briefly to State Supreme Court in Queens on Tuesday as a remarkable war was being waged between prosecutors from the office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, and the defense lawyer for Ms. Sheehan. 

At the moment, she has been barred from presenting testimony from psychiatric experts about long-term abuse, but Richard L. Buchter, a judge who recently took over the case, has agreed to reconsider that decision.

Calling police - reviewed & approved by Rav Sternbuch p 109-111 in "Child & Domestic Abuse"

Consulting rabbi before calling social services or police
Despite the fact that the halacha is clear that a child molester should be reported to the police and in fact it is often required by secular law - the poskim generally state that a rabbi should be consulted first. It is obvious of course that if waiting to consult a rabbi results in danger or harm to the child - that the police should be informed without consulting a rabbi. In the normal case where there is time, however, why should it be necessary to consult a rabbi? Rav Sternbuch commented that where there are serious consequences of making a mistake - it is required that a rabbi be consulted for the sake of objectivity. Even if there is little chance of making a mistake, he said that a rabbi needs to be consulted “so the world should not be hefker (without structure and authority).”

In addition in this area besides the danger of misunderstanding information, there is also the possibility of false accusations. Students who want to settle a score with teachers or divorcing couples whose lawyers advise them to make false accusations to gain custody are a danger which a rabbi can help prevent. In most cases there is no danger to a child by consulting a rav first and if there is concern that there will be then the police should be contacted. It is always best to consult a rabbi who has a lot of experience in these matters and especially once who has close relations with mental health professions and government social agencies and the police. Even after consulting a psychologist or lawyer, a rabbi should still be consulted before going to the police. Not just because of the reasons already discussed, but also as protection against those who mistakenly consider all informing the police as being prohibited. These elements can not only harass those who go to the police but they can cause severe damage to them by their slander and criticism of the entire family.

Rejecting a rabbi’s psak when he says not to go to the police
One frequently encountered problem is when there is clear evidence of child abuse and yet the rabbi consulted says not to go to the police. He might say that the molester promised never to do it again or that the molester’s family or community or yeshiva might suffer significant financial losses or embarrassment. In other words if the rabbi is saying to sacrifice children for the sake of money or embarrassment or the disgrace to the community, it is clear however that this view has no basis in Jewish law. We don’t sacrifice innocent people for the sake of negative consequences to others. Rav Moshe Sternbuch commented that any rav who would say such a thing is not practicing as a rav. A rabbi has an obligation to provide protection to the victim. By definition it seems it is an unjust ruling. Any rabbi who makes such a ruling may be ignorant of either the halacha or he doesn’t understand what the molesting or wife abuse causes. Therefore if there is time - another rabbi should be consulted.
However an alternative reason that a rabbi might say not to report the molester is that he feels he can guarantee protection for children against the molester. For example he might threaten the molester with a severe beating or provides supervision or he claims the molester has repented and won’t abuse again. He might also claim he can provide therapy equal or better to a psychologist. While these seem to be logically equivalent to the police, the likelihood that they will be effective is not very high. Therefore one should find a competent rabbi who agrees that the police should be informed in the case of actual abuse. Rav Sternbuch commented that only a known talmid chachom posek can posken these problems.