When this country’s civil rights movement was born, black and Jewish leaders recognized a natural alliance based on shared struggle.
Both groups have suffered slavery. Both have faced discrimination.
Somewhere along the line, though, something changed, and so profoundly that we now need black leaders to admonish their youth to not assault Jewish kids.
This past Martin Luther King Day, for instance, the Rev. Al Sharpton condemned the recent beating of a 16-year-old yeshiva student by five black teens.
Samuel Balkany said he left a friend’s house in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, only to be attacked by five kids who kicked and punched him while yelling anti-Semitic slurs.
The dangers facing Jewish kids in America, however, pale in comparison to what kids are dealing with in the Israeli town of Sderot.
Since no one seems able to stop the hundreds of missiles raining down almost daily on that town, an American Jewish charities will reportedly spend $400,000 on a respite program for kids there. The money will fund a one-month initiative to take nearly 2,000 kids out of rocket-fire range once a week.
Sderot’s men, women, children and old folks have lived for years with constant rocket fire from Gaza � which only increased after Israel evacuated in 2005 with promises of peace. This has not been deemed especially newsworthy by most mainstream media, though any counter measures Israel takes are greeted with blanket, nearly always negative coverage worldwide.
Most recently, for instance, Israel stopped gasoline shipments to the strip. A non-life-threatening inconvenience to which the U.N. responded by immediately passing a resolution condemning Israel � without mention of the rocket fire, which prompted the action.
But because Jews generally still concentrate mostly on positive, practical pursuits, Israel might yet beat the monsters at their own game by embracing the electric car, another recent article notes.
The Israeli government is supporting a broad effort to promote the use of electric cars, through a joint venture between an American-Israeli entrepreneur, Renault and Nissan Motor Company.
Israel will test the environmentally clean electric car�s practicality, the report notes. The state will offer tax incentives to buyers, and the firm behind the concept, Palo Alto�s Project Better Place, will build facilities to recharge and replace empty batteries. Renault and Nissan will provide the cars.
The idea is to sell electric car transportation on the cell phone model � with buyers getting subsidized hardware � the car � and paying a monthly fee for expected mileage, like cell phone plan minutes.
The tax breaks will reportedly make the electric cars cheaper by about half to buy and use than the gasoline-engine variety.
Shimon Peres, who backs the plan, says that what Israel may lose in tax revenue it will save in oil. He also supports a larger investment in solar power, saying that �the Saudis don�t control the sun.�
Peres reportedly calls oil �the greatest problem of our time,� that not only pollutes, but �also supports terror and violence from Venezuela to Iran.�
Eliminate the need for oil, and the terrorist funding dries up. Let them spend the next century coming up with a new revenue source, while the rest of us relax about Islamic terror. Sounds good to me.
E-mail Rachel Raskin-Zrihen at RachelZ@thnewsnet.com.
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