Shatokhin's Complaint---Russian Job Applicant "Insulted" By American Attorney Who Calls Him 'Dummy' and 'Typical Russkie'

It doesn’t appear that any laws were broken or that the behavior of Manhattan attorney Jonathan David Bachrach toward Vyacheslav Shatokhin was symptomatic of any broader pattern of job discrimination against Russian-speaking immigrants in New York City. Yet Shatokhin, a former prosecuting attorney who emigrated here from Uzbekistan in 1997, said he was deeply insulted and traumatized when an unsolicited resume he sent to Bachrach in March, 2005 while searching for a job as a legal aide, came back in the return mail covered with comments scrawled by Bachrach such as “Dummy!”, “Sir, your work stinks—look at all your mistakes!” and “typical Ruskie--knows everything”.

“Mr. Bachrach’s insults and racial slurs upset me deeply--to the point where I lost the confidence to go on applying for jobs in the legal profession,” said Shatokhin, a 45-year-old Brooklyn resident who presently works as an office manager. Noting that he has failed in efforts to win even an apology from Bachrach in the 18 months since, Shatokhin said, “I find it very frustrating that Mr. Bachrach should be allowed to insult me simply because I am an immigrant and do not have perfect English.”

Bachrach, a 60-year-old attorney Manhattan attorney specializing in commercial litigation, said that his seemingly sarcastic marking-up of Shatokhin’s resume was actually motivated by good will on his part. “I was trying to help him,” Bachrach explained to this reporter. “This guy was telling me he wanted a job. I was telling him that his resume was so poor in so many ways that he would do himself a service by not sending it out, because whoever received it would not hire him.”

Others interviewed about the incident took a dimmer view of Bachrach’s conduct. Responding to a query about the matter from the Jewish Week, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) issued a statement asserting that by ridiculing Shatokhin with “a written tirade of insults and ethnic stereotyping” Bachrach “demonstrated a level of bigotry and moral blindness not worthy of an officer of the court or any decent member of our society. He owes Mr. Shatokhin an apology.”
Sam Kliger, director of Russian Jewish Affairs at the American Jewish Committee, called Bachrach’s actions “disgusting and inappropriate,” adding, “We are trying to incorporate Russian Jews into American Jewish life and the social fabric and here we see someone relating to an immigrant in such an arrogant and uncivilized way.”

Among the many comments he placed on Shatokhin’s resume, Bachrach pointed out that Shatokhin should have capitalized a word, and had left out a comma, as well as noting that Shatokhin wrote he had an expertise in ‘Blue Banking Law’ when he clearly meant Blue Sky Banking Law, and in ‘Immigration and Nationality Law’, when he probably meant ‘Immigration and Naturalization Law’. Noting that Shatokhin claimed 28 areas of “core specialization” Bachrach wrote to the job applicant; “When I see you ‘specialize’ in everything, I know you specialize in nothing”….adding, in reference to Shatokhin’s claim of a wide range of legal expertise; “typical Ruskie, knows everything”. Bachrach also wrote, “Dummy! What kind of a position are you seeking? Office manager?” and after affirming “Your work stinks,” Bachrach asked rhetorically, “Who would hire you from a resume like this?”

Shatokhin, said he has sent hundreds of unsolicited resumes to attorneys around New York seeking work as a paralegal but never received a response like that of Bachrach. Acknowledging in his less-than-perfect English that his resume contained errors and omissions, Shatokhin said, “I can understand if an attorney decided that my qualifications were not good enough, and threw my resume in the garbage. But receiving this reply full of verbal abuse and racial comments was painful and humiliating to me.”

After receiving Bachrach’s mark up of his response in the mail, Shatokhin sent a complaint to the New York State Bar Association asking that body to consider revoking Bachrach’s license to practice law. The Bar Assocation responded it had no authority in the case, whereupon Shatokhin filed a complaint with the Departmental Disciplinary Committee of the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division--First Judicial Department, which opened an investigation and forwarded Shatokhin’s complaint to Bachrach. The attorney quickly dispatched a three-page-letter to the Committee, asserting that “I took fifteen minutes of my valuable time to try and help a complete unknown stranger—pro bono. I wrote helpful comments and mailed the resume to the person named thereon.” Claiming that he had included his business card with the resume “in case the writer wanted to talk to me about how to improve his resume”, a claim Shatokhin says is untrue, Bachrach wrote, “Now instead of thanking me for trying to help him improve his resume pro bono, the Complainant is seeking to have me disbarred! Can he spell ‘ingrate’?”

According to Bachrach; “I violated no section of the Disciplinary Rules—but ended up proving the old axiom—‘No good deed goes unpunished’…Complainant needs to understand that this is not Russia over here. Over here, we have freedom of speech. Unsolicited, he sent me—a total stranger—some of his work. I wrote back to him that his work stinks…”

On September 16, 2005, the Departmental Disciplinary Committee wrote to Shatokhin that while it “understands your dismay at Mr. Bachrach’s choice of words when he critiqued your resume…his conduct did not involve a violation of the Code of Professional Responsibility.” Since then Shatokhin has sought to interest the media in the case, stressing,”While I don’t want to hurt Mr. Bachrach or take away his livelihood, I can’t just let the matter rest. He doesn’t seem to understand how badly he hurt me.”

When contacted by this reporter, Bachrach dismissed Nadler’s call for him to apologize to Shatokhin as motivated by “an attempt to win votes”. Asked if his scrawling ‘typical Ruskie’ on Shatokhin’s resume was not as hurtful as would be someone writing ‘typical Jew’ on his own resume, or that of another Jewish person, Bachrach responded, “I think there are different ways people can take these things…Of course, he felt insulted….. I get insulted every day, but I try not to make it my raison d’etre.”

Bachrach added, “You may feel it is better copy to (ask); ‘Did I call him a stinking Ruskie?’ Yet it might be better to say that despite (Shatokhin’s) obvious inability to write English and his inappropriate concepts and being grandiose, this guy (Bachrach) was still willing to help him."
-end-

Continued...

Cheshbon Hanefesh

In advance of Yom Kippur, I am agonizing over the Lebanon War, what I saw and experienced in northern Israel during my brief but deeply effecting stay there, and what I have written on this forum.

I called my piece of two days ago 'More In Sorrow than in Anger', but the truth is that I evinced plenty of anger at Israel for its barrage of cluster bombs in the last days of the war and the devastating impact that will have on the people of south Lebanon for years to come. I wish my tone had not been so sharp but I stand by the main points I made there. Some people have already said to me, with considerable justice, 'How can you say there was moral equivalency, given that Hezbollah started the war and intentionally tried to kill Israeli civilians?' Very true, and I despise Hezbollah for its launching of the war, for its brutish hatred of Jews and fundamentalist fanaticism. I said during the war and still believe that Israel had no choice but to respond militarily. However, as I predicted then, Israel's decision to launch an all-out air war and later ground war, that intentionally or not, caused five times or more the number of fatalities as happened in Israel, ended up driving the vast majority of Lebanese into Hezbollah's camp and thereby strengthened Hezebollah, not weakened it. Israel's military response should have been more limited and of shorter duration, as many Israelis now acknowledge.


By killing so many civilians and especially through its use of cluster bombs, Israel threw away its claim of 'no moral equivalency'. As I wrote, randomly fired katushyas filled with deadly pellets shred human flesh of soliders and civilians alike, and so do cluster bombs sprayed over a wide area of south Lebanon. How can one claim with any credibility that causing the deaths of civilians with cluster bombs is more humane or morally justifiable than doing the same thing with pellet-filled katushyas? Both acts are abominations.

I love Israel deeply and would not want to go on living in a world without Israel. I plan to return to Israel to live in the not-so-distant-future. Yet I do not believe that loving Israel means blindly supporting everything its government does or shutting our eyes to acts we know to be wrong. Morality aside, by doing that, we may end up hurting Israel more than we help it.

Example: Back in 1977, when Menachem Begin came to power and promised that he would build "one, two, many Elon Morehs" in the West Bank and Gaza, American Jewish leaders swallowed their strong reservations about whether a massive settlement buildup was a wise or moral step, and instead resolved to run political interference for Israel in Washington. They did a spectacularly successful job at that; so much so that successive Likud governments, freed of any American pressure to stop, were able to place more than 200,000 Jews amidst two million Palestinians in a vain attempt to ensure permanent Israeli control of the "Greater Land of Israel.' Think of the tens of billions of dollars flushed down the drain, the many lives lost, the enormous suffering on both sides, the growth of political extremism on both sides that flowed from that decades-long effort. And at the bitter end of it all, in 2005, there was the spectacle of Arik Sharon, the bulldozer, the man who did more to build the settlements than anybody else, deciding in the sunset of his life that he had been wrong, that the whole operation had been futile; that he could not change demographic reality and would have to pull the settlers out of Gaza and much of the West Bank if Israel was to be preserved as a Jewish state.

What if the American Jewish leadership had the guts and integrity to say to Begin and Sharon back in 1977, "We think your policy of settling the territories is a disaster, and we won't support you on this. We wont press Carter or Reagan or Bush the first to give Israel a free hand in settling the West Bank."? In that case, the US government would have taken a much more assertive stand against settlement building--perhaps even threatened the cutoff of aid to Israel to stop it--and the Israeli public, seeing that the US was not giving their government a free ride, would have woken up and realized what a terrible mistake the whole settlement project was two decades earlier than actually happened. And history might well have turned in a better direction.

In short, love of Israel is not about blind support of a particular set of Israeli government policies. It is certainly not about saying in effect, 'We are angels and the Arabs are devils, so we can do anything we want to them.' Rather, it is about speaking truth to power, including our own leaders, when necessary. It is about trying to live according to the Jewish precepts of tikkun olam. And it is about acknowledging that both sides are human, that we, like they, are capable of cruel and inhuman acts that increase mutual hatred and make reaching peace and reconciliation that much harder. Both the katushyas and the cluster bombs had that effect, and therefore both were profoundly wrong.

Continued...

Did Pius XII get visas for 400 Jews to the Dominican Republic?

I wanted to share my just published piece in the Jewish Week which is the result of months of work about how Pius XII may have pressed Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic to grant visas to 400 Jews stranded in Lisbon in 1942. Its a fascinating story, which I am too tired to synthesize here right now, so please click the link and enjoy:

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13051

Continued...

more in sorrow than in anger--Israeli cluster bombs litter south Lebanese landscape

Amiram Finkel searches for pellets from katushya rocket
landed in the fields of Kibbutz Afek, between Haifa and Akko.
(photo credit: Walter Ruby)


I remember during my visit to northern Israel six weeks ago, standing in a field in my cousins' kibbutz and my cousin Raya's husband Amiram Finkel showing me a crater where a katushya rocket had landed in the kibbuz field. The crater was flooded with little metal pellets, carefully packed into the rocket to spray outward upon impact at bullet-like speed and kill as many Israelis as possible. In Haifa, I saw cars that were filled with holes caused by the flying pellets and could only imagine that if the pellets could slice through metal in that way, what kind of horrendous damage what they would do to human skin and organs. I remember wondering what kind of monsters could be so hateful as to fill the bombs with these pellets with premeditation and with a clear purpose to kill and maim the maximum possible number of Israelis.

Now read the link below in today's Washington Post, a long report about the deadly--and very similar effect unexploded Israeli cluster bombs--most of them supplied by the U.S.--are having on the people of southern Lebanon six weeks after the cease-fire was declared

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/25/AR2006092501500.html

The report points out that as many as one million of the bomblets are lying unexploded across southern Lebanon and have already killed 14 Lebanese and wounded 90 since the end of the fighting, one to three people a day. Fear of being torn apart by the bomblets is preventing south Lebanese, who live from agriculture, from returning to their orchards, and therefore will almost certainly prevent many of them from resuming their liveleihoods. Apparently 90 percent of the cluster bombs were fired in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire and may have been deliberately done to leave a "lasting legacy" in south Lebanon--i.e. to prevent the population from returning.

When asked for a response, all the IDF spokesman could come up with was a bland "All the weapons and munitions used by the IDF are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards." Well its reassuring to know these bomblets are legal and conforming with international standards--whatever that means--as they blow apart people's bodies long after the fighting is supposed to be over. I guess we can be comforted that only 14 Lebanese have been killed so far, though I bet a lot of those who were wounded lost arms or legs. I wonder how many of them were kids.

I can already hear my friends Sam Kliger, Alex Koifman and Dima Zabarko condemning me for making a false "moral equivalency" between Israeli modes of killing and Hezbollah ones. Well, I suspect I am not be the only person in the world--not even among Israel-loving Jews-- who would come to the conclusion that covering south Lebanon with one million cluster bombs that blow peoples' bodies apart IS EXACTLY MORALLY EQUIVALENT to packing katushyas with pellets that tear apart human flesh. The cluster bombs and the pellet filled katushyas do exactly the same thing, except the cluster bombs are more sophisticated and will go on killing for months or years to come. In this case, it is even impossible to make the argument so favored by Israel's defenders during the war that Hizbollah intentionally set out to kill civilians, whereas Israel did not try to kill civilians, except that they were killed accidentally because the Hezbollah fighters hid in civilian areas. Question: If Israel did not intent to kill and maim civilians long after the fighting was over, why the f--- did it barrage southern Lebanon with a million cluster bombs during the last 72 hours of the war?

So, tragically, as much as we would like to reassure ourselves otherwise, there IS very much a moral equivalency here, a moral equivalency in which civilians on both sides are fair game to be blown to pieces. It is for Jews who love Israel to step forward and say forthrightly, 'The use of cluster bombs against civilians is morally wrong and un-Jewish and must never happen again". American Jews should also demand that the U.S. stop selling these horrible weapons to Israel and every other state.

Continued...

Brook-Krasny Victory Party Photos

(photo credits: Tatyana Rapaport)

So I think I finally figured how to put up photos on the blog, which will be a great step forward in terms of grabbing reader interest! I am experimenting by putting up several pictures from the Brook-Krasny victory celebration on the night of Sept 12 moments after the unofficial results came in from the Board of Elections showing B-K eking out a narrow victory over Ari Kagan.

Continued...

You Read It Here Last--My last week's election night story on Brook-Krasny--Kagan race

Somehow forgot to put this up on rubyjewsday when it happened, so here it is, a little better late than never. The problem with the Internet is that you cant wrap fish with it.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=12966

Continued...

Orthodox Union Opposes Jesus In Military Prayers--Hey, I Thought They Liked Religion in the Public Square

Several weeks ago, it was Chabad-Lubavitch, which insists on putting up giant menorahs during Chanukah from Manhattan to Moscow, suddenly getting indignant about legislation in several provinces in Russia instituting the teaching of Russian Orthodoxy in public schools. And now the Orthodox Union, the political arm of American Orthodoxy, which, like Chabad, habitually aligns itself with fundamentalist Christian groups in the U.S in supporting religion in the public square, is taking a stand against a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow military chaplains to mention Jesus Christ in prayers before military servicemen and women of varied backgrounds--including Jews.

http://jta.org

"When a prayer is called for in a setting where attendance may not be voluntary, chaplains should pray in a more inclusive manner," said the OU in a letter sent to armed services committees in both houses of Congress.

Well, no kidding, but hey, OU and Chabad, where did you think that your demonstrative lining up with the Ayatollahs of the Christian Right, Pat Robertson, James Dobsons, Jarry Falwell et al, (not to mention Vladimir Putin), was going to bring the Jews? You thought they would just support Israel and not do anything to put the squeeze on those in this country who don't accept Jesus as their personal savior? WRONG! Remember how furious the fundies and several GOP Congressmen got last year when a few Jews, including Rep Steve Israel (D-Long Island), had the guts to complain about Jewish cadets at the Air Force Academy being subjected to intense Christian proselytizing? Earth to the OU--if these forces continue to accumulate power in the U.S., it will not only be gays and secularists who are going to kicked around. The Jews, including Orthodox Jews, will also be made to feel like outcasts in a Christian America. Why are you surprised? After all, according to them we are already damned to eternal torment in the flames of hell for not accepting Jesus.


And by the way, if the OU doesn't believe non-Christian military personnel should be forced to endure prayers to Jesus, why should non-believing Christians or non-Jews have to endure the sight of a creche in front of a city hall or a giant menorah at the corner of 5th Avenue and 59th Street in Manhattan? Is that menorah supposed to represent all of America? Its time for all those out there, including Russian Jews avid to line up with the religious right, to wake up and remember that it is only the separation of Church and State that has allowed Jewish life to flourish in this country for 200 years. The Founding Fathers of this then almost entirely Christian nation were a lot wiser than our present Bible-thumping leadership when they wrote the First Amendment proscribing the establishment of an official religion and allowing all religions to express themselves freely in America.

Continued...

Shana Tovah to Readers

May ya'al have a sweet and healthy new year full of personal accomplishment and emotional satisfaction. I certainly plan to. I am gratified that we have managed to build up a loyal readership for rubyjewsday in a relatively short time and without much publicity. Please excuse me for my tardiness in getting the linking thing down. Fsyo budit charasho y interestnye. In the coming year, look for greater interactiveness and many more bells and whistles as rubyjewsday cover Russian-Jewish life in New York and the world, the Israeli and U.S. political scenes and whatever else happens to cross my occasionally fertile mind.

Walter

Continued...

Kagan: "I Will Not Endorse Republican Candidate"

Ari Kagan called a few minutes ago to say emphatically that he will not endorse Republican candidate Patricia Laudano in the 46th District Assembly race, whether or not he ultimately decides to sue in court to overturn his narrow loss to Alec Brook-Krasny in the Democratic primary.

Kagan also denied specifically that he or his campaign ever spread rumors that Brook-Krasny was arrested while living in Moscow--something Krasny had asserted to rubyjewsday.com-- and stressed that it was Brook-Krasny who had attacked him on his activities in the Soviet Union—specifically his Communist Party membership and attendance at the Lvov Military and Political School—and not the other way around.

According to Kagan; “I am a Democrat who is fighting for the Democratic nomination for the 46th District Assembly seat and will never endorse this or any other Republican. I am a loyal Democrat—vice chairman of the Highway Democratic Club—and I certainly don’t share (Laudano’s) views.” Kagan stated, “ If I decide to challenge the primary results in court based on the many irregularities that took place at the polls but the court declines to order a new primary election--or if I decide not to go to court at all--then I will call Brook-Krasny and congratulate him. Maybe I will endorse him as well. One thing is for sure, though—I will not endorse the Republican.” Kagan said his lawyers are still considering whether to sue and, now that the Board of Elections has officially certified Brook-Krasny’s victory, he has eight days to make a decision whether to challenge the result.

Kagan was adamant on another point. “I ran a decent and honorable campaign. Yes, the primary campaign was dirty, but all the dirt all came from Brook-Krasny’s side. It was he who attacked my past. I never discussed his past. He is bitter that he lost Brighton Beach, but that was not due to any smear campaign on my part, but because I have done more in the Russian community than he did.”

Kagan also took this reporter to task for writing that he had a weak electoral showing outside the Russian community, asserting that according to the breakdown of the vote totals, he believes he won predominantly black Coney Island and also ran well in several of the high rise co-op buildings with large populations of American-born Jews. But he acknowledged that he lost several of the biggest such projects—including Brightwater and Trump Village, as well as Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights with their large Italian-American population.

Claiming that he won as much as 70 percent of the Russian vote, Kagan said sardonically, “Krasny said I divided the Russian community, but in fact I united it-- behind myself. And I repeat, no matter what happens, I am not going to go away. I am planning to go on helping the community more than ever before.”

Continued...

Laudano's campaign manager: "We are Americans here"

Don’t give Alec Brook-Krasny the keys to Albany just yet.

In an interview with rubyjewsday.com, Clarinda Annarummo, campaign manager for Patricia Laudano, the Republican candidate for State Assembly in the 46th District, signaled that Laudano intends to make a race of it against Brook-Krasny in the November general election. Annarummo, Republican district leader in the 46th, also made an underlying theme of Laudano’s campaign unmistakably clear; namely that Laudano will be the ‘American’ candidate against the Russian-born Brook- Krasny.

“Both candidates in the Democratic primary wanted to be the first Russian to be elected (to higher office),” Annarummo said in a phone interview. “I think you need a better reason than that to run here in the 46th, which is a very diverse district. I mean, we are Americans here.”

While no Republican has been elected in this district since the 1920’s, Oleg Gutnik showed that a Republican could come close by winning 42 percent of the vote when he ran as the GOP candidate against Democrat Adele Cohen in 2001. In that race, Gutnick had the support of nearly the entire Russian community against Cohen, whom many Russians detested for knocking Brook-Krasny, the first-ever Russian candidate off the ballot the previous year by challenging his nominating petitions. Might we now see a reverse of that electoral calculus, with the more than half of the district that is non-Russian-speaking (American-born Jews, Blacks, Italian-Americans, Hispanics, Pakistanis) lining up behind Laudano, a middle-aged Italian-American realtor in Dyker Heights, who has never before run for political office? At first glance, it looks unlikely, as Laudano’s full-throated support for right-wing GOP positions (support for the death penalty and expediting its use in NY, lower taxes, tuition tax credits, charter schools) is unlikely to appeal to left-leaning American-born Jews or Blacks, among whom Brook-Krasny appears to have already made some impressive inroads, or among immigrant groups like Hispanics and Pakistanis, who will be turned off by anti-immigrant appeals. Certainly, Laudano will appeal to a certain strata of the old line Italian-American population in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, though the energetic support for Krasny by Councilman Domenic Recchia will hold at least some portion of the Italian vote for the Democrats.

Giving that forbidding electoral calculus, Laudano may decide to hold back on explicit appeals to anti-immigrant and anti-Russian feeling, in order to appeal to the Russian community itself; especially that part of the community that avidly supported Kagan and believes the election was stolen from him. ”Don’t forget a lot of Russians are registered Republicans, so we expect a significant vote in that community,” said Annarummo, who noted, “Kagan certainly received impressive numbers (in the Democratic primary) considering that the Democratic machine and all the elected officials were behind Brook-Krasny.” In an apparent allusion to Brook-Krasny’s making an issue of Kagan’s past; that he joined the Communist Party and attended a military school with ties to the KGB, Annarummo said, “Voters don’t like mid-slinging and personal attacks. I also think that (candidates’) ethnicity should not impact the campaign.”

So Laudano will probably try to implicitly appeal to the resentment of many non-Russian voters at what they see as the Russian ‘takeover’ of the 46th District while at the same time reaching out to Russians who supported Kagan. It won’t be easy to pull off. If Kagan stays embittered and refuses to endorse Krasny, or if he covertly or overtly backs Laudano, a considerable portion of his following might indeed back the Republican. But those voters are unlikely to do so if she too overtly stresses that she is the American candidate against the Russian one. Still, the bottom line is that Laudano intends to run hard, and after Krasny’s razor-thin victory over Kagan, he will have to take her seriously.

Continued...

Board of Election Recount for Brook-Krasny--But Krasny-Kagan Sniping Continues

The New York City Board of Elections stands poised to anoint Alec Brook-Krasny as the Democratic nominee for the 46th District State Assembly seat after a recount of votes—both from voting machines and paper and absentee ballots--showed Brook-Krasny increasing his razor-thin thin lead over Kagan from 94 votes to 138. However, Kagan is still considering taking Krasny and the Board of Elections itself to court over alleged irregularities at the polling stations on Election Day. And even if Kagan decides over the next several days to concede what appears to be the inevitable, the atmosphere between the two candidates is so poisonous at the moment that an early reconciliation does not appear in the offing.

In a brief conversation with this reporter, Kagan stressed that he is not yet conceding the race despite the definitive BOE recount and “is looking into possible legal action” based on many irregularities” allegedly committed by poll watchers appointed by the two Democratic district leaders, Mark Davidovich and Dilia Schack. While declining to go into details as to the nature of the alleged infractions “because this may become a legal matter,” Kagan said that one representative case involved a person who was not allowed to vote because his name was not found on the list of registered voters at the polling station where he was told to vote and that he was specifically denied a paper ballot, as allowed by law, after requesting it.

Yet given the extreme unlikelihood he would prevail in such a challenge, why even further infuriate the Krasny camp and the Democratic establishment and thereby hurt his own chances of running as a consensus candidate in a future race? “I believe the other side is already infuriated with me—with my very existence in the world” Kagan replied, in expressing the opinion that a legal challenge of the vote count is unlikely to make things much worse. “Many of my supporters have been urging me to make a challenge and not one of them has asked me to concede the race,” Kagan said. “So I’ll decide what to do based on whether my lawyers tell me we have a chance to successfully challenge what happened.”

Even if he ultimately concedes, Kagan vowed, “I do not plan to disappear. My strong showing in the race—49.2 percent of the vote while running against the Democratic machine and the whole political establishment made clear that I am not ‘just a journalist’ as Krasny kept saying, but a force everyone will have to deal with going forward.”

For his part, Brook-Krasny sounded decidedly non-conciliatory himself, telling rubyjewsday, “I have to decide what to do about the damage Kagan did to my reputation in Brighton Beach. His supporters were successful there in spreading outrageous rumors against me, including the false charge that I was in jail for stealing money (before emigrating to the U.S.). Some people told me they wouldn’t vote for me because I was in jail. I was a nice guy during the campaign and he smeared me all over the place.”

But what about his own publicly uttered charge that Kagan was a Communist Party member and attended a a military school with KGB ties? “Kagan never denied those charges which happen to be true. I decided to speak out after he accused me of being close to the Putin government, and here he had that kind of past.”

Given that he won the election wouldn’t it be appropriate for him to reach out and try to end the bitterness? “I suppose I’ll try to do that,” Brook-Krasny said with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. “But I am very upset about the vicious campaign run against me. I’ve done a lot for the Russian Jewish community and what was done to my reputation is simply not fair to me.”

Brook-Krasny predicted Kagan may now support his expected token Republican opponent, Patricia Laudano, a Dyker Heights realtor, who at this point has virtually no support or name recognition in the Russian community and is given almost no chance of winning. Still, it’s a safe bet if that Kagan now gets behind Laudano and forces Krasny to campaign hard against her, both sides in the nasty inter-Russian community battle can kiss any chance of reconciliation goodbye for a long time to come.

Continued...

Over At Last?

So it’s over at last—or is it?

Yesterday, amidst high drama, Alec Brook-Krasny appeared to narrowly defeat Ari Kagan for the Democratic nomination for the 46th Assembly district by less than 100 votes out of 5500 cast. The unofficial total announced by the Board of Elections was 2863 for Brook-Krasny and 2769 for Kagan with 100 percent of the vote reporting.

But Kagan’s lawyer immediately challenged the total, asserting that there had been violations at certain polling stations, and demanding a recount. A spokeswoman for the Board of Elections confirmed that the body will recount the totals from voting machines on September 19 and then count paper and absentee ballots the following day before certifying an official winner. Paper ballots can be requested by people who come to their polling station and find their names are not on the voter list. Spokespeople for Kagan claimed that a considerable number of registered voters backing their candidate were not on the rolls and suggested that there may have been foul play involved on the part of the Democratic machine, which avidly backed Krasny and which, most Russians believe, had played election day dirty tricks in the past to thwart Russian candidates against the likes of the Russian community’s longtime bete noire, retiring Assemblywoman Adele Cohen.

Certainly there was something less than appetizing about Dilia Schack, Cohen’s longtime hatchetwoman, who came aboard Krasny’s campaign after Cohen dropped out and was elected State Committeewoman alongside him, exulting before the television cameras at Krasny’s victory party; “They wanted to mess with the organization, but you don’t mess with the organization!...Anyone who comes near our organization is going to feel the sting.”

Brook-Krasny was introduced to an exultant crowd of supporters, an impressive mix of Russian and American-born Jews, African-Americans and members of other ethnic constituencies, by the man he called “my best friend”, City Councilman Domenic Recchia, who defeated him in a bitter primary battle back in 2001, but who came aboard to support the Russian candidate early this year together with practically every major Democratic figure in Brooklyn, including Cong Jerry Nadler, State Senators Carl Krueger and Diane Savino, City Councilmen Michael Nelson and Steve Cymbrowitz and Brooklyn Boro President Marty Markowitz. Taking a far more conciliatory and inclusive line than Schack, Brook-Krasny said, “I am going to show New York State that a person born on the other side of the globe will be an effective representative for all Americans.” Asked if he can heal the bitter wounds of the no-holds-barred campaign, during which he accused his opponent of having been a member of the Soviet Communist Party and having attended a military school with ties to the KGB, Brook-Krasny responded, “I want to congratulate Ari Kagan for putting up a very effective campaign.” Pledging to “work with the people who were on the side of the opposition,” Brook-Krasny said, “I am kind of used to doing that already in my role as director of COJECO.”

In remarks to his own supporters after a tense wait of about two and a half hours after the polls closed before hearing the unofficial results from the Board of Elections, Kagan stressed that he would not concede the election until the official results were in and expressed pride that he had essentially tied Brook-Krasny “even though we were working against a huge machine. We had the people behind us, but they had a lot more resources. We proved tonight that in American democracy, you can’t ignore the will of the people.”

But which people? After conducting scores of interviews on the street during the long election day near polling stations at the Shorefront Y in Brighton Beach, Trump Village, a sprawling co-op on West Five and Neptune that has a mix of elderly Russians and American Jews, and on West 24th Street in Coney Island, with a mix of blacks and retired Russians; I was left with the distinct impression that Kagan may have won the Russian-speaking vote by a fairly substantial margin—perhaps 55-45, but almost certainly lost the non-Russian vote by a considerably higher percentage than that. The elderly Russian vote—which may have constituted a majority of Russian voters--seemed rock-solid for Kagan, whom many extolled as 'our candidate against the establishment’ but younger Russians were far more inclined to vote for Krasny, who they characterized as more experienced and better at reaching out to the American community.

Several American-born Jewish voters leaving the polls said they had voted for candidates like Elliot Spitzer for governor and Hillary Clinton for senator, but had not bothered to vote at all for Assembly because they resented the fact that there were only Russian-speaking candidates on the ballot. Yet others said they were ready to back a Russian candidate and expressed good will toward both candidates. According to Bill Essig, a retired schoolteacher; “It is about time the Russians will be represented by one of their own. After all, they are the largest voting bloc in the district.” Essig said he planned to vote for Kagan, but added, “I believe both candidates are qualified and whichever one wins will do his best to uphold the interests of all the people in the district.”

Nevertheless, Essig seemed to be in a minority in his support for Kagan; most other American born Jews I spoke to who voted in the Assembly race said they supported Brook-Krasny who they said seemed more seasoned in American political culture than Kagan and gave them a greater sense of confidence that he would represent the entire community rather than only the Russians. I found similar results among the black population of Coney Island, whom both candidates courted, but with whom Brook-Krasny has stronger ties going back to coalition-building efforts he undertook as a member of the Community Board going back to the late 1990’s.

Whoever won the primary election is virtually assured of election in November against token Republican opposition and it would be startling in the extreme if the Board of Elections eventually overturns its unofficial returns in favor of Brook-Krasny. But even many of his political strategists acknowledged to me in background comments last night that Kagan had run a superb race and made the race much closer than they had imagined it could get; coming within a hair-breath of executing a political revolution.

The question is whether the two sides can now make peace and reach a political modus vivendi that both may need. It certainly aint gonna be easy. Brook-Krasny and his command are furious at Kagan for staying in the race despite hints to him from influential Krasny backers that he would be the next Russian candidate to be endorsed by the establishment if he stood aside and allowed Brook-Krasny to assume what his supporters in the Russian community felt to be his rightful place in 2006. They are angry that Kagan forced them to spend large amounts of money and political capital on a race they initially expected to win easily.

The Krasnyites are also livid at charges from Kagan’s camp that Krasny was part of a “fifth column” of wealthy and influential members of the community in support of the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin. Given all of the above, the Krasny team is not likely to quickly forgive the Russian community's prodigal son. Kagan’s decision to challenge the results will also not help in this regard.

Still, when all the strum and drang eventually dies down, it seems likely that efforts at reconciliation will take place. A deeply divided Russian community—of which Kagan probably captured the majority in the election--will not make a steady power base for Brook-Krasny or allow him and his supporters to effectively project ‘Russian power’ on the larger city, state and national scenes. It also seems likely that if Kagan wants to capitalize on his strong showing and grab the next elective position that opens in the area—he will have to find a way to bring at least a portion of Krasny’s ‘establishment supporters to his side. It should be said that one of Brook-Krasny’s more appealing qualities is his disinclination to hold grudges, but instead to woo former opponents to his side. Who would have imagined a few years ago that he could win over the likes of Recchia, then a bitter political adversary. In that respect he reminds me of a triangulating Bill Cinton forming tactical partnerships even with the likes of George H.W. Bush. But if Krasny could make shalom bayit with Recchia and the Establishment, including the likes of Schack, it would seem reasonable for him to make a similar outreach effort to Kagan and his supporters.

In the meantime, despite the bitterness of the moment, the Russian community got an important lesson in the workings of the Democratic system and can bask in the realization that it has finally elected one of its own—a long seven years after a then younger and more naïve Brook-Krasny first took on Adele Cohen and was knocked off the ballot on the flimsy pretext of mistakes on his nominating petitions, but three or four years before many political experts expected a Russian candidate to finally break through. The Russian community is now solidly on the New York political map. That is a common victory and joint accomplishment of the badly split Russian political class—of Brook-Krasny and Kagan both. Whatever happens from here on, the Russians of New York will never go back to political powerlessness.

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Krasny and Kagan and the smear campaign

A prominent member of the Russian Jewish community shared with me on background his anguish about the Alec Brook-Krasny--Ari Kagan race. His words were harsh toward both candidates, but, it seems to me, reflective of an ambivalence that is growing in the community as the election draws near.

My source said, "A lot of people are celebrating that we will finally elect nash (one of us) to higher office, but I dont feel like either of these guys represents me. It turns out that during their former lives one of them (Kagan) was a Communist and may well have been a KGB informer--because how else could a Jew get into a high political/military school to which very few Jews were accepted--and the other one (Krasny) was apparently a speculant or fartsovchik (underground trader in western goods). Normally, I would prefer a speculant to a Communist, but often speculants also had to inform on others in order for the authorities to allow him to go on operating. So I believe that neither of these two guys comes to this election with clean hands and I really dont know whom to vote for. I wish the first Russian Jew to be elected was someone from the next generation--someone who came to New York at the age of 10 or so and therefore had no chance to be soiled by life in the Soviet Union."


In publishing the above comments here, I hasten to add that I have no idea if either Kagan or Krasny did anything disreputable in their former lives in the Soviet Union. Part of me doesn't really want to know, as I like both of them personally very much. In fact, for a long time I felt that these questions were smear tactics and had no place in the campaign at all, so avoided writing about them. The point, though, is that the charges have been raised by both candidates against each other--and the charges are being avidly discussed in the community--so to pretend they are not a factor in the campaign's final days would be putting one's head in the ground. Also, how people respond to these charges is serving as a Rohrsbach test as to their attitudes toward their own pasts and the country they thought they had left behind, but which in many ways has followed them here.

Kagan opened the barrage by criticizing Krasny's involvement last year in efforts to build stronger ties between the Russian-speaking community here and the Russian government of Vladimir Putin, which struck me as a legitimate issue to raise, given that some of his Krasny's backers in the community have extensive business ties with Russia, are engaged in promoting cultural events here with the musical, dance and theater stars from Russia. This is all very relevant given the Putin government's sustained efforts to strengthen its ties with "Russian compatriots" abroad as part of a PR effort to clean its image in the West at a time that it has cut back radically on democratic freedoms at home. I have written, though, that the charge from the Kagan camp that Krasny is a "fifth column" for Putin is a repellent one and obviously false to boot. Promoting stronger ties with Russia in the declared hope that country will stop giving nuclear material to Iran and will draw closer to Israel and the US is a far cry from serving as an agent of Putin.

Now Krasny has hit back hard with these personal charges about Kagan's past, which from my soundings in the community have caused a lot of people to redouble their support for Kagan, pointing out that almost all Soviet citizens, including Jews, had to pay obeisance to the system if they wanted to get ahead. The only pure ones were the Prisoners of Zion and refuseniks, people who took great risks and sometimes were brutally punished for having the guts to break fully with the system. Yet as Mark Handelman, the former head of NYANA once said in another context, American Jews had a false expectation of Russian Jews that they were all either Bubbe (a Yiddische grandmother) or Natan Sharansky. Very very few people, very very few Jews were Natan Sharansky. Most did what they needed to do to have a decent life against great odds in an anti-Semitic country. I suspect that if I had grown up as a Soviet Jew, I would have done similar things, so dont feel comfortable criticizing people for acts taken under duress.

Yet if many people are dismissing the charges against Kagan as unfair and Mc Carthyistic, others--including people I respect in the community--have told me they are deeply disturbed by these revelations about Kagan's career in the Lvov Higher Military and Political School, and by letters in Metro Magazine from former classmates about his time there. Sure Kagan needed to become a party member to be able to serve as a journalist in the Soviet military, but given that it was already the late 1980's, it does seem to have been rather late in the day for someone of integrity to have been avidly pursuing a career in the Soviet military and Communist Party. There were other options by that time.

To be sure, Ari was a very young man at that time and the temptation is to say that his distant past should not be held against him. He has done many good things since arriving in New York, including serving as a journalistic fighter for justice on behalf of poor and elderly members of the community living in wretched housing and mistreated by insensitve bureaucrats. Isnt all of that more relevant to next Tuesday's election than what he did back in the 1980's? I believe so, but the problem is that even if Kagan is elected, as appears increasingly possible, the suspicions will not go away. I suspect that if Kagan wins and wishes to advance further in politics, he will need at some point to give a fuller accounting of that period of his life, as may also be the case with Krasny if he wins, vis a vis the nature of his business activities during his last years in Moscow.

It IS interesting that the candidate who chose to join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the late 1980's is now the one who is most ardent about resisting efforts by the Putin regime to build ties with the Russian-speaking community here. There is a certain uncompromising, single-minded quality in evidence here which seems to have served Ari Kagan very well in his career both in the Soviet Union and since arriving here. By compoarison, Krasny is more of a compromiser and a networker, but leaves many people wondering whether he retains core principles he will not sell to the highest bidder.

In the end, the policy differences between the two candidates appear less than substantial; both promise to make priorities of issues like housing, fighting crime, protecting social welfare benefits and building ties between the Russian community and other 46th District constituencies like blacks and Pakistanis. Both are avid supporters of Israel. So for many people in the community, the 'Russia issue' in all of its complexity, may be what determines whether they vote for Ari Kagan or Alec Brook-Krasny.

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comments from readers on the Krasny-Kagan race

These anonymous responses have come in concerning my coverage of the Brook-Krasny-Kagan race. Glad to see people are reading this and charged up about the election. I am posting the comments below.
Walter

1. (Saying that) "Our own kids were prevented from attending medical institute because of their Jewishness" is just another way to say "our kids were so stupid that they couldn't even pass the entrance exams" - about half of all Soviet doctors had Jewish roots; one can easily check this by looking at all those Ocean Pkwy medical offices that belong to recent Russian immigrants.



2. WALTER WALTER....HAS BEEN WATCING YOUR MATERIAL FOR SO LONG NOW...AND THIS BLOG HERE IS A BIT TROUBLING...WHILE YOU HAVE GOOD CLAIMS...YOU ARE GIVING WAY TOO MUCH CREDIT TO KAGAN...HE HASNT ROSE TO THE RANKS OF BEEN GIVEN AS MUCH AS YOU ARE GIVING HIM...AND LOK WHO HE HAS SURROUNDED HIM WITH...YOU THINK ALL THE POLITICOS WHO HAVE ENDORSED KRASNY HAPPENED BY ACCIDENT YOU KNOW BETTER THEN THAT...SO DO ME A FAVOR READ UP THE DAILY NEWS BOLOG SEE WHAT ARIS SUPPORTERS ARE POSTING AND READ MOST IMPORTANTLY POSTINGS BY NYCPOL LOVE THAT ONE...KNOWS WHAT HE IS TALKING ABOUThttp://blogs.nydailynews.com/dailypolitics/archives/2006/06/the_russians_ar.php


3. “Give me a “nice Bull”Thank you for opening such an interesting discussion. Yesterday September 7, I was listening to the Russian “Davidzon radio” and it was conversation between Gregory Davidson and Alec Brook Krasny. Of course they were talking about election and people were calling with different questions. One of the questions was why Alec Brook Krasny did not showed up in radio station ‘VSIO’ for the radio debate with Ari Kagan scheduled for September 7, 2006. The answer was very interesting: “I do not want go there – they do not respect me and my family. They do not treat me with respect. I do not feel good going there”. I try to call station with my question and nobody pick up a phone. My question to Alec Brook Krasny is: How he can represent interests of entire 46 district if he “does not feel good” to talk to people that are not respecting him. Leadership is not about “feeling good” leadership is about ability have enough self-confidence to be powerful with people who respect you and do not respect you. Another question is why “they” do not respect you Alec Brook Krasny? You are the only one person who can answer this question. People are making opinion out of information you are giving publicly and out of experience being with you. It does not look good your public appearance on Russian TV or what people saying about Alec Brook Krasny. Ask people to treat you with respect is same as asking for “nice” bull to fight with in bullfight. By the way – “insane” people make this world. It is insane what Mother Theresa did, what Martin Luther King did. That is why we have now what we have.

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Does This Sound Familiar?

The New York Times reports today that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that wonderful guy who denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel's destruction is now advocating the purging of liberal and secular professors from Iranian universities:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/world/middleeast/06iran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

"Our educational system has been affected by 150 years of secular thought and has raised thousands of people who hold Ph.D's" the President said.

Hmm, where have we heard this kind of talk in recent months? Why, I believe we have heard something very similar from David Horowitz, the Marxist turned hard line conservative who has been sounding the alarm in his book "The Professors" about 101 liberal/left professors on American campuses whom he claims are indoctrinating unsuspecting students with liberal, secular ideas. Horowitz, who has been has been ardently supported by right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, urge taxpayers to find out what professors' political views are and demand that more conservatives get hired on campuses.

Sounds to me like Horowitz and Ahmadinejad have a common enemy; liberal, democratic and secular Western civilization with its emphasis on free-thinking and open scientific inquiry. For its part, the Bush Administration claims to be defending America from the threat of fundamentalist Islamo-fascism; but their own obiesance to fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity with its denial of evolution and global warming and intense hostility to abortion and women's freedom to control their own bodies, itself has a quasi-fascist feel that is very reminiscent of the mentality of the guys in the turbans. Both Bush and Ahmadinejad want a clash of civilizations--from Bush's side a crusade of militant Christianity against militant Islam. Hmm, as far as I can recall, the last time militant Christians threw a crusade against Muslims, an awful lot of Jews ended up getting it in the neck.
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Oh and another cheery item. In Russia, a number of provinces are now making the teaching of Russian Orthodox "culture" a required part of the public school curiculum. Rabbi Berel Lazar, the Chabadnik who was made chief rabbi by President Putin, and who has constantly praised Putin as a great friend of the Jews and refused to denounce Putin's successful efforts to destroy democracy in Russia, is now expressing concern in an Aug. 29 interview with a Moscow radio station that the course on Orthodox culture will “divide children into different classes” and ostracize minorities.
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=17023&intcategoryid=2

Well, when they throw democracy out the window, religious coercion by the majority against religious minorities tends to pop up. By the way, a few months back I took part in a debate at the American Jewish Committee on the subject of church and state during which I and my partner, Elie Rubenstein, were informed by our opponents Alex Goldin and Lenny Gussel that Russian Jews in the U.S. don't see the need for groups like the AJCommittee to be such ardents fighters in support of the principle of separation of church and state; that more religion in the public square is a good and beneficial idea. Well, guys, here you have Exhibition A straight from Moscow to show you why the mainstream American Jewish community has always fought efforts to blur the separation of church and state.

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He's A Commie!

I spent yesterday in Brighton Beach covering the endorsement of Alex Brook-Krasny by Cole Ettman, a former rival for the Democratic nomination for the 46th State Assembly seat which Krasny is now contesting with Ari Kagan in a one on one contest between the two Russian-American candidates that will take place next Tuesday, September 12. Then I ambled around Brighton Beach talking to residents to get a better sense of the mood in the community.

During the month I was away, the big news in the campaign were two debates between the candidates held respectively on RTVI and RTN. Viewers of the RTVI affair voted 60-40 that Kagan ‘won’ the debate. In the second debate, Krasny, who had been strongly criticized by Kagan and surrogates for months for past efforts to strengthen ties between the Russian community here and the Russian government, made an issue of the fact that as a young man Kagan attended an elite military and political institute in Lvov and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Ari calls the attacks a below the belt smear campaign, contending that he had no alternative if he was going to make a career as a journalist, and that by 1990 he was writing articles exposing abusive practices in the army and that he resigned from the party in 1991 to protest Soviet army actions in the Baltics.

During the second debate, moderator Mark Golub chastised Krasny, comparing his attacks on Kagan to Mc Carthyism and in the process educating his listeners as to what had taken place in that regard in America in the 1950’s. But when I spoke to Krasny in Coney Island yesterday, he was unrepentant for having launched the attack. When I asked him whether Kagan was not simply one of millions who had found it politic to join the party and whether, when attacking Kagan, he was not therefore attacking many others in the 46th District, Krasny replied, “There is a difference between joining the Party in the 1960’s or 1970’s and joining the Party in 1989 like Kagan did. Clearly, he joined in order to build a career in the Soviet Army. It shows he is an opportunist.…Besides, not everyone joined the Party.” As for Golub’s rebuke, he said, “I would have expected Mark Golub would know the difference between membership in the (tiny and ineffectual) American Communist Party and the Soviet Communist Party, which killed 30 million Soviet citizens and sent an additional 20 million to concentration camps.” (check out Kagan’s campaign web site here to see that he neglects to mention either the military school or his CPSU membership in his brief bio) http://www.arikagan.com/biography.htm

Brook-Krasny’s attack on Kagan’s past has obviously been a great way to neutralize the issue of his own much more recent support for efforts to strengthen ties with the dictatorial Putin regime—efforts that have been more explicitly supported by many of his closest supporters—but it clearly has offended many voters in the Russian-Jewish community. As I walked around Brighton yesterday, it was the issue everyone was talking about, and most people I spoke to were Kagan supporters who said the charge had only strengthened their support for the man they called “The People’s Choice”. “We were all in Komsmol or in the Party. That was the system, the way to survive,” said one woman in her early 70’s originally from Kiev. “Krasny is insulting all of us when he goes after Kagan in that way.” The woman was one of many people I spoke to as I strolled the neighborhood who extolled Kagan, saying he is much closer to the people; that he is constantly seen on Brighton Beach Ave or on the Boardwalk campaigning whereas Krasny is a more distant presence; that as a journalist and grass roots activist, Kagan showed a great interest in solving the problems of the narod (simple people), including the high cost of housing and citizenship problems.

But one retired couple from St. Petersburg said the revelations concerning Kagan’s past had convinced them to vote for Krasny. “Look, everyone knows a Jew normally could not have gained admittance to such an institute,” the woman said. “Our own kids were prevented from attending medical institute because of their Jewishness. If Kagan was able to attend that school and thrive there, it must have been because he had KGB ties. I don’t want someone with such a past representing us.”

My tour of the neighborhood confirmed for me a supposition that Kagan, buoyed by strong support from the all important elderly bloc which dislikes the idea of being dictated to by Krasny’s “establishment” support; the Democratic machine, politicians like Nadler and Recchia and by the so-called “Russian leadership” (read multi-millionaries like Frenkel, Sapir and Shiglich), may be within striking distance of securing a majority of the Russian vote. That would be a considerable coup for Kagan, running against the whole establishment, and that sense of momentum for Kagan may have been what impelled Krasny to launch his ‘Communist attack.’ Still, my anecdotal sense is that if Kagan captures the Russian vote it will be by a relatively thin margin—60-40 would be the outside limit—whereas Krasny is likely to capture the non-Russian vote (American Jews, blacks, Pakistanis, Italian-Americans and others) by a much wider margin. Since the Russian vote is potentially no more than half the district and probably considerably less, Krasny still has to be the favorite going into the final days of the campaign.

The Democratic machine’s support will be critical in tying up the non-Russian vote for Krasny, though the question remains whether the machine can ensure a reasonable turnout of non-Russian voters, given a probable tendency by some voters—especially elderly American-Jews who resent the Russians for having taken over their community--to be turned off by an election between two Russians and therefore not to vote.

So my guesstimate of the final vote will be something like 55-45 for Brook-Krasny, but if so that would be quite an impressive showing for Kagan, who nearly everyone assumed was out of his mind for staying in the race after Nadler, Markowitz, Recchia etc endorsed Krasny, and might well leave him as a viable candidate for the next political opening in the area. Could Krasny and Kagan make peace and work together after this massive bloodletting? Sure they could. Krasny eventually made peace with the likes of Adele Cohen and Domenic Recchia who vanquished him electorally, in Cohen’s case by less than kosher means, so certainly such an outcome is possible. In my next, posting I’ll ruminate a bit on the charges and counter-charges concerning Krasny’s alleged ties to the Putin regime and Kagan’s complicated Soviet past, and elucidate some of my own thoughts on what it all means.

Continued...

stupid reaction from Jewish organizations re Khatami

Hi folks, back in NY and back in the saddle...Since returning have been working on a piece trying to explain my decision to return to live in Israel; which feels like an idee fixee even after a week on what must be one of the loveliest coastlines on earth--the Crimea. While there I considered putting some money into buying a house there, as it seems to me that the likeliest way for me to make some money right now is to buy some property in a place where real estate prices are soaring. But the consensus here is that Crimea, like the rest of Ukraine is still politically dicey--not to mention issues of corruption and mafia--in terms of considering buying land or a home there. So perhaps I will invest instead in Israel as a step to reestablishing a foothold there.

Anyway, I was stunned now to read an item in JTA concerning opposition by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington to the Washington Cathedral inviting the former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to speak there. I read somewhere else today that national Jewish organizations, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, opposed the decision by the State Department to grant Khatami a vsa to visit the U.S. at all.The Washington JCRC says that Khatami, who was Iranian President from 1997-2005, was a fraudulent reformer, asserting, "His reign, like that of his sucessor, has been repressive, intolerant and autocratic," and added that Khatami's supposedly moderate reign gave cover for the Iranians to continue their efforts to encourage terrorism against Israel.

Well, I met Khatami several months ago in Qatar, where he was taking part in the deliberations of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations and where he held discussions with among others, Rabbi Arthur Schneier, who is hardly in the business of cottoning to people with an agenda to destroy Israel. I heard Khatami's speech, which was a thoughtful appeal to keep open lines of communciation between the world's great faiths and between Islam and the West. Frankly, I haven't heard such ecumenical language from many American Jewish leaders lately. Instead, it appears that some of the principle ones seem to be plumping for thought control; trying to prevent Americans from hearing the words of Khatami, for fear that if he is allowed to speak at prestigious American settings like the National Cathedral, he might cause Americans to rethink the premise that Iran is an extremist monolith that should only be dealt with by embargoes, or preferably, with a military strike. Its a damn shame to see a body like the JCRC trying to get the Washington Cathedral to temper its tradition of offering a forum to prominent religious figures from various religions.

Khatami may be out of power for the moment, but to spurn his outstretched hand--to take the line that there is no difference between him and the Israel denying and Holocaust denying Ahmedinijad---represents a policy of absolute blindness. The JCRC and Presidents Conference are leaving the distinct impression that it is the Jews who are trying to close off any communication between the U.S. and even moderate Iranians like Khatami. Where did we get "leaders" like this? And who decided that the likes of Malcolm Hoenlein ought to be in a position to speak for the rest of us?

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