Just opened my new website for business, and am working on a fascinating audio profile about someone who has an extensive background in counter-terrorism:
Siegelman: Atlanta Man Turns Somali Pirate Fighter (Photo: Dave Bender)
At first glance, 30-year-old former Atlanta resident Ariel Siegelman doesn't strike you as someone who's used to facing off against pirates and gunmen. But then, the soft-spoken, observant Jew starts describing hair-raising experiences as a professional Israeli security chief guarding passenger vessels and freighters plying the treacherous waters of the Gulf of Aden.
"One day, his ship was in the sea lanes alongside the Maersk Alabama, and the pirates' motorboat first headed for him...
With some coaxing, the nominally taciturn Siegelman allows us into a secretive world on a little-seen front line, and how the violent contours of such daily skirmishes affect him, and his family.
We talk about his recent visit to the United States, primarily to train urban SWAT teams, and his heartfelt recommendations for the Jewish community, in the wake of recent terror threats.
I'll be posting excerpts from the story on my website soon, so make sure to bookmark it, and stop back there.
Editors: Contact me to get the full story on your website, radio station, or print publication.
"What role does faith play in a delivery room? If you ask one doctor in Atlanta, the answer is a big role. Dr. Joseph Tate delivers babies the old-fashioned way, using methods some obstetricians call risky. But his patients say God guides his hands."
Money magazine has an interesting, three-part in-depth profile (Jewish, Muslim, Christian) of what it takes for a faith-based household to make ends meet in America - all while staying true to your traditions:
"Ask Abbi Perets about financial pain, and she starts talking about grape juice. Specifically, she's referring to the half-gallon bottles of grape juice that her local grocery sells for $9 each.
"Drinking the juice is an integral part of the prayer ritual that Abbi, her husband, Guy, and their four children follow every Friday and Saturday to commemorate the Jewish Sabbath. Like all the food in the Perets household, the juice must be kosher - that is, prepared according to Jewish dietary laws. And the $9 juice, more than three times the price of the regular kind, is the only kosher grape juice she can find."
The upcoming home front drill, Turning Point 3, is based a scenario in which "a combined missile and rocket attack on Israel from all sides combined with terror attacks from within," and is "not a fictional scenario," Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilan'i told members of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.
Vilna'i briefed the committee on the state-wide drill, scheduled to begin on May 31. The threat of missiles hitting mainland Israel "is not unrealistic," Vilna'i continued. "If a war breaks out, that is probably what would happen."
Yeah, well alright then.
Trying mightily to unstress as I type in all the tags below... even if I always did appreciate the Israeli penchant for "cutting to the chase," about what's at stake.
"Israeli music producer Idan Raichel collaborates with many musicians from around the world. So far, he has worked with more than 90 artists.
"'I see myself as the director of many, many scenes,' he says. "We are 90 musicians: The youngest is 16 years old, and the eldest are 64, 79, 83 and 89 years old. For those listeners who are not familiar with the Israeli society, we are all kinds of immigrants. So we have singers from the Ethiopian community in Israel, and musicians from the Moroccan community. And we are proud to have all these singers joining us by MySpace, or by just writing to our Web site.'"
"It's all part of his ongoing recording work with what he calls The Idan Raichel Project. Raichel (pronounced RYE-kell — "with phlegm," he says) writes, arranges and performs on many of the songs, but he works with a far-reaching cast of musicians to record his compositions" Read the rest.
And, despite NPR's perennial editorial animus towards Israel, and considering Raichel's stated hard-left politics, there nary a note against the Jewish State.
Prosecutors branded the gang as bloodthirsty anti-Semitic killers during a brief hearing in federal court, and a fourth suspect was expected to appear later in the afternoon.
"It's hard to envisage a more chilling plot to bring murder to a . . . community," said Eric Snyder, an assistant U.S. attorney.
"These are extremely violent men," he added. "These people who are eager to bring death to Jews." (Daily News)
An official said three of the men are converts to Islam. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss details of the investigation. Three of the defendants are U.S. citizens and one is of Haitian descent, officials said.More on this angle here.
Since I've attended services at that Jewish community center, and flew in and out of Stewart Airport last summer, I guess I join the moving Jewish target club. Ah - also Israeli. Trifecta!
NEW YORK (JTA) -- Lone attackers or small, independent groups with no formal ties to wider terrorist networks have planned several plots against Jewish targets.
March 1, 1994 -- Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opens fire on a van carrying 15 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical seminary students on the Brooklyn Bridge, killing Ari Halberstam, 16, and injuring three others. Raz claims he was upset by the killing of 29 Muslim worshipers in Hebron by an Israeli Jew, Baruch Goldstein, a few days earlier. Baz is convicted of second-degree murder and 14 counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 141 years in prison
March 20, 1994 -- Members of the neo-Nazi Volksfront group fire 10 shots into a synagogue in Eugene, Ore., damaging its interior. Police said the attack on Temple Beth Israel was motivated by a newspaper article about several prominent members.
June 18, 1999 -- White supremacists Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams set fire to three synagogues in the Sacramento area. The arson attacks cause more than $1 million in damage. The Williams brothers later go on to kill a gay couple in Redding, Calif. Benjamin Williams commits suicide in prison in November 2002.
July 4th weekend, 1999 -- White supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith carries out a three-day, two-state shooting spree in the Chicago area, wounding six Orthodox Jews and several blacks and Asians. One black man and one Korean man are killed. Smith later committs suicide. Smith belonged to a white supremacist group, the World Church of the Creator, which espouses hatred against non-whites.
Aug. 10, 1999 -- White supremacist Buford O. Furrow Jr. walks into the lobby of the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, Calif., and fires 70 shots into the building before fleeing; fire people are wounded. Furrow later kills a mail carrier. Furrow, a native of Washington state, considered targeting three Jewish institutions: the Skirball Cultural Center, the American Jewish University and the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance. When security measures prove prohibitive, he drives to the San Fernando Valley with the stated purpose of “killing Jews,” police said.
July 4, 2002 -- Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadeyet shoots and kills two at Los Angeles International Airport at the El Al airline counter. Police said the shooting was motivated by a mixture of the personal and the political; Hadeyet was suffering financial problems related to a struggling limousine business and worried about his aging parents, but he also opposed Israel’s occupation of West Bank territory.
Oct. 25, 2002 -- Five men, all Volksfront members, drive to Temple Beth Israel synagogue in Eugene, Ore., with the intention of intimidating congregants. During a service with 80 worshipers, the men throw rocks etched with swastikas through the building’s stained-glass windows. They are caught later.
2005-2007 -- Temple Beth Israel in Niagara Falls, N.Y., is targeted consistently by vandals who paint swastikas and urinate on the building. On Jan. 12, 2007, “Kill the Jews” is duct-taped to the building’s door. In August 2007, the perpetrator, Shawn Blount, is sentenced to one to three years in prison; his co-conspirator, a juvenile, is sentenced as a youthful offender to one year in Niagara County Jail.
Aug. 31, 2005 -- Four men are charged with plotting a series of attacks on military and Jewish targets in Los Angeles. Kevin Lamar James had founded a group in prison called Jamiyyat Ul Islam Is Saheeh and preached to members that it was their duty to attack the U.S. government and supporters of Israel. Once released from prison, one of James' followers, Levar Haley Washington, recruits Gregory Vernon Patterson and Hamad Riaz Samana to help him carry out the attacks. Washington and Patterson are arrested on suspicion of committing a series of gas station robberies, and investigators then discover evidence of a terrorist plot. The men had conducted research on a variety of Jewish targets, including El Al Airlines and the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles, and planned to carry out an attack on a synagogue on Yom Kippur in order to maximize casualties. Patterson, Washington and James have all pleaded guilty to terrorism conspiracy charges; the fourth defendant was declared mentally unfit to stand trial.
July 28, 2006 -- Naveed Afzal Haq shoots six women at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building, one fatally. Witnesses said Haq told them, "I'm a Muslim American, I'm angry at Israel." One of the victims reported that Haq said "this was his personal statement against Jews and the Bush administration for giving money to Jews," and for Jews "giving money to Israel"
May 20, 2009 -- Authorities arrest four men in connection with a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx, N.Y., and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. Law enforcement said the group had planned to use missiles to attack the planes and planted what they believed were car bombs outside the synagogues in the Riverdale section. During the course of the elaborate FBI sting operation, faulty explosives had been provided to the would-be terrorists. Police said the four, all of whom had a history of petty crime and are not believed to be tied to any major terrorist networks, frequently talked about their anti-Semitic leanings.
This is a radio feature I wrote and produced last year for Georgia Public Broadcasting. I'm posting it now, in it's relevance to today's meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Some 2,500 pro-Israel Christians, led by Texas mega-church minister, John Hagee, gathered at an Atlanta-area church in a stirring show of support for the Jewish State. While some American Jews fear a religious agenda behind the bear hug of love, Israelis appreciate someone in their corner in a hard and hostile world.
Judah is a "lion's whelp" (Gen 49:9), cautiously peering out of a balcony window of an apartment block in the northern coastal town of Nahariya. The structure sustained heavy damage during the 2006 war against Lebanon-based, Iranian-supported Hizbullah. I shot this during a subsequent katyusha rocket salvo fired into the vicinity. (Photo & copyright: Dave Bender)
Noted author and commentator Daniel Gordis, writing in The Jerusalem Post expands on the slogan: "If the Arabs put down their weapons, there would be peace; if the Israelis put down their weapons, they'd be dead:"
He was in his 20s, the young man with the question after my lecture. He couldn't have asked it more kindly or gently. Without a hint of cynicism or anger, he expressed what was clearly on the minds of many of the people his age in the crowd: "Can you justify a Jewish state," he wanted to know, "when having a Jewish state means giving up on so many of Judaism's values?"
Here's what he didn't say: Israel is the root of evil in the Middle East. It's the cause of checkpoints, of roadblocks, of a big ugly wall that runs along a border no one has agreed to. The Palestinians are desperate, and in the massive imbalance of power, they have no chance and no hope. Israel is the nuclear bully in a region that, were it not for Israel's existence, would no longer be on the front page. To achieve peace in the Middle East, Israel just needs to be subdued. Break Israel's intransigence, and we'll finally see progress. "American Change" Dave Bender Any connection to the presidential elections is strictly coincidental: I shot this - one of my favorites - several years ago. The elderly man is waiting for a city bus on a freezing, drizzly Friday morning in downtown Jerusalem. The red neon sign behind him is blinking on and off. He's holding fresh flowers and even fresher baked challah bread, to honor the oncoming Sabbath. Looking back on the photo several years after shooting it, for me, he's come to symbolize patience, serenity and calm hope in the face of inclement weather, the vicissitudes of time, and the roaring pace of modern life epitomized by the garish, blinking "CHANGE AMERICAN CHANGE" sign. (Photo & copyright: Dave Bender)
That was his unspoken claim, and now it's also the position of the Obama administration. At AIPAC's recent Policy Conference, Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. John Kerry made it clear that for the US to support Israel on Iran, Israel must settle the Palestinian problem once and for all. It has been widely reported that Rahm Emanuel, in an off-the-record session, said precisely the same thing.
After decades of tacit agreement that the US would remain silent about Israel's nuclear capability, a State Department official publicly suggested that Israel sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, as if, on the eve of Iran's going nuclear and with Pakistani weapons in danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban, Israel's nuclear arsenal is the world's most serious concern.
A new message is afloat - Israel is the problem, and the US has had enough.
Even the pope couldn't help himself. His comments about the victims of the Holocaust were so tepid as to be outrageous, but he had no problem calling urgently for an immediate Palestinian state, as if Israelis haven't tried to create one for decades.
The young American Jews in my audience, clearly struggling with the morality of a Jewish state, now have the Obama administration and the pope echoing all their misgivings.I have no illusions that all this can be changed overnight, but with the upcoming Binyamin Netanyahu-Barack Obama meetings putting Israel into the spotlight once again, I'd like to propose the following thought experiment - at least to these young American Jews, and possibly to Obama himself.
IMAGINE THAT ISRAELIS decide that by Jerusalem Day, this coming week, they want a deal. So we take down the security fence. We remove the checkpoints. We open all the roads, and Gaza's sea and air routes. We agree publicly to return to something closely approximating the pre-1967 borders, and we accede to the demands that parts of Jerusalem be internationally governed, or even put under Palestinian control.
Does this end the conflict? Of course it doesn't.
The Hamas Charter calls not only for the destruction of Israel, but for Islamic war on Jews everywhere. (Why do we consistently refuse to believe that Hamas means what it says?) What would change? The noose would tighten. The rockets would be fired from a shorter distance and the demand for the return of refugees (thus ending the Jewishness of the state) would persist. As was the case when Israel left Lebanon in May 2000 or Gaza in the summer of 2005, Israel's enemies would smell a weakened, bloodied state and would prepare for the next stage of their war. But peace would not have come. Much as we all want this conflict to end, does anyone really doubt that? There is, as honest brokers must admit, nothing that Israel can do to end this conflict.
NOW, HOWEVER, TRY the opposite side of the thought experiment. Imagine that the Palestinians decide that they have tired of the conflict, or their electorate begins its long-overdue rebellion and insists on a settlement.
So the Palestinians, Hamas and Fatah, demand everything Israel's agreed to above - an end to roadblocks and the wall, an opening of Gaza, a bridge or a tunnel between Gaza and the West Bank and a return to the 1967 borders. Let's say that they even insist on Palestinian control of east Jerusalem. But they also recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. They agree to an immediate and permanent cessation of hostilities and violence (this is a thought experiment, after all) and insist that any other outstanding issues be negotiated and resolved with the US and the Quartet as intermediaries. And they require Israelis to vote within a month, no longer, on whether to accept the deal.
Will there be Israelis who object? Will there be residents of the West Bank who will resist leaving their homes? Yes, there will be. But would an Israeli plebiscite overwhelmingly approve the offer? Without question.
In a matter of weeks, three quarters of a century of bloodshed and suffering would come to an end. This, of course, is not going to happen, because all the new rhetoric notwithstanding, and all the confusion of today's young American Jews aside, there's always been one party that's sought peace, and another that's rejected it. It was true in 1948, and it was true in Khartoum. It's no less true today. It's never been up to us, and it's always been up to them. But this simplistic thought experiment is worth considering not because it can be implemented, but because it brings one unfortunate truth into stark focus.
Young American Jews ought to take note: Israel cannot end this conflict. It can weaken itself, but the only way it can bring peace to the region is to go out of business.If that is what the peacemakers really seek, we'll see that soon enough, with frightening clarity.
Colleague Judy Lash Balint offers a great wrap-up on the Papal visit to Israel, and Palestinian Authority areas with veteran Seattle radio host Dave Ross on KIRO Radio, the CBS affiliate in the Pacific NW.
At first glance, 30-year-old former Atlanta resident Ariel Siegelman doesn't strike you as someone who's used to facing off against pirates and gunmen. But then, the soft-spoken, observant Jew starts describing hair-raising experiences as a professional Israeli security chief guarding passenger vessels and freighters plying the treacherous waters of the Gulf of Aden.
