I periodically post about organizations which can’t handle one of these two simple requests: (1) don’t spam me; (2) don’t send me junk mail. If an organization is incapable of implementing effective policies and procedures to accommodate these two straightforward requests from donors, they are probably also incapable of implementing effective, efficient policies and procedures for doing the work for which donors are sending them money.
I’ve had run-ins of varying magnitude about this with numerous organizations over the years. The ones that I post about here are the worst of the worst. They have either overtly refused to accommodate my requests, or claimed repeatedly, but falsely, that they had done so.
Today, I am forced to add Yad Sarah to this disreputable bunch. I am sorry to do this, because the work Yad Sarah claims to do is important, and because they appear to be respected by other organizations which I respect and tend to trust. However, after my experience with them, I must wonder how efficiently and effectively they use the money entrusted to them by donors to perform their mission.
The Israelis do not use racial profiling for airport security (“European response mixed to new U.S. security demands,” Jan. 4). They use profiling, which includes patterns of behavior, coordination of intelligence and sophisticated modeling of which country of origin as but one factor. Interviews at the airport are by trained army personnel and they are watching and listening to everyone, even Florida snowbirds. They are just doing it right.
Of course the U.S. should be profiling instead of harassing passengers and crippling the industry, but our technique of rounding up suspicious black men won’t catch Nigerian bombers, and it certainly won’t catch British ones.
Around twenty years ago when I was at MIT, I spent far more hours than I care to contemplate combating anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel propaganda on Usenet.
This was back before the Web took off, and Usenet was the happening place for bigots, racists and nutjobs of all sort to spread their filth and lies. There were a lot of them, and they were extremely prolific. Some of them were working alone, but many belonged to, and were being supported and assisted by, organized hate groups.
My most potent weapons in the fight were Near East Report, a newsletter still published biweekly by AIPAC, and Myths & Facts, a collection of articles about the Arab-Israeli conflict which AIPAC updated and published annually. Unfortunately, neither NEAR nor M&F was then available in any sort of electronic format, so I spent a great deal of time typing in articles to post as rebuttals to the haters.
Although there were plenty of hate groups actively spreading lies on Usenet, there wasn’t a single pro-Jewish or pro-Israel group with any sort of online presence or footprint. AIPAC, the ADL, B’nai B’rith, etc. had all simply completely missed the boat — they were completely conceding the game to the haters on-line. I was completely on my own.
Some time around 1991 or 1992, I finally got enough of a life (i.e., a girlfriend and a full-time job that I had no interest in continuing to spend the many hours per week that I was spending fighting the hate. Given that I had been relying on information published by AIPAC, I decided to try to get in touch with someone at AIPAC who might be able to allocate resources to put their stuff on-line, hire some people to fight hate on Usenet, etc. Somehow, I actually succeeded at reaching the right person, and he and I had a long telephone conversation. I can still remember pacing back and forth with my cell phone in the lounge of the old Boston University Hillel building while trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him that on-line hate was a significant enough problem to warrant AIPAC expending some resources to combat it. AIPAC was completely unaware of the hate being spread on-line.
That has changed, obviously, but it was somewhat disillusioning to me to realize just how clueless AIPAC was about technology and its potential both for spreading hate and opposing it.
Now fast-forward 20 years, to November 2009. Somehow, my wife got her email address into AIPAC’s database (she insists that she never subscribed to any of their lists or gave them or anyone else permission to subscribe her), and they started spamming her. She clicked on the unsubscribe link in the first spam message she received from them. A little over a month later, they spammed her again. I sent them and their network service providers a strongly worded complaint, to which I received no response. Two weeks later, they spammed my wife a third time, so I picked up the phone, called their national headquarters (202-639-5198), and asked to speak to whoever was responsible for the fact that AIPAC continued to spam my wife despite repeated requests for them to stop.
The woman who answered the phone, who identified herself as Julia, asked for my wife’s name and email address and said that she would ensure that she was properly unsubscribed. I said that while I would appreciate if she did that, I was more concerned with what was going to be done about the larger problem that their unsubscribe link didn’t work and my email to them had gone unanswered.
Paraphrasing her response: “Problem? What problem? I don’t see a problem.”
We went back and forth several times with me trying, unsuccessfully, to get her to acknowledge that (a) when there’s an unsubscribe link in your bulk email, it should work; (b) when someone sends you email asking to be unsubscribed, you should unsubscribe them and send them a response; (c) making people call your national headquarters to unsubscribe is not OK; and (c) making the on-line unsubscribe process work properly is more important than unsubscribing one complaining person.
When I expressed my dissatisfaction with her handling of the matter and asked to speak to someone else, Julia insisted that she was solely responsible for AIPAC’s bulk e-mail processes and there was no one else with whom I could speak.
Twenty years ago, AIPAC was completely clueless of on-line hate speech, which had been getting worse and worse for years. Now, AIPAC is completely clueless about responsible bulk email practices and not being a source of spam, a problem which has been getting worse and worse for years. Go figure.
It is looking more and more likely that Sholom Rubashkin will do his best to flee to Israel rather than serving his prison sentence for the crimes of which he has been convicted and/or will be convicted at his next trial.
Rubashkin’s attorneys presented more than 1,300 letters and e-mails of support, 43 homes worth more than $7 million offered as collateral from supporters, and letters from six rabbis who offered their Torahs in exchange for Rubashkin’s release.
Defense attorney Guy Cook argued Rubashkin would bring shame to the entire Jewish community worldwide if he were to flee.
Some points to consider:
The judge is not going to take Torahs from rabbis. That’s just a silly publicity stunt.
The 43 homes worth more than $7 million are irrelevant, because if Rubashkin skips bail, Chabad will raise the money to pay the forfeited bail from gullible frummies who still think Rubashkin is innocent, by embarking on one of its shady, tax-sheltered pidyon shvuyim fundraising blitzes. None of those 43 homes will end up being forfeited to the court if Rubashkin flees.
The reality, which Cook knows full well, is that Rubashkin doesn’t care about the people who think it would be “shameful” for him to flee to Israel.
If Rubashkin cared even one iota about bringing shame on the entire Jewish community, he would not have just been convicted of 86 counts of fraud and be about to go on trial on 72 separate immigration charges.
The plain truth is that once Rubashkin has decided that prison time is inevitable, he’ll be on the next boat to Israel, where he will claim persecution, demand asylum, and claim Israeli citizenship under the Right of Return. The Israeli government, in turn, will drag its feet and bog down the extradition process, as demanded by the religious parties which hold disproportionate power in every ruling government coalition, and it will be many years, if ever, before Rubashkin is extradited back to the U.S.
And that, my friends, will bring shame upon the entire Jewish community. We can only hope that the presiding judge has enough common sense to realize the insanity of letting Rubashkin out on bail.
Several years ago, I wrote to Congressman Michael Capuano asking why he didn’t sign an ad published by the CJP which many other politicians signed, attesting to Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorist attacks. A friend has pointed out that I was remiss in not posting Capuano’s response, which seems somewhat more significant now than it was then, since Capuano is now running for the Senate.
A member of Capuano’s staff responded in an email message which read as follows:
Congressman Capuano has referred your email message to me. You ask why he did not sign the CJP ad in the Globe and Herald. As I recall, we had a rather short time to review the text and no opportunity to contribute to its drafting.
I hope you know that he did vote, that same week, in favor of H. Res. 921, in defense of Israel’s right, as a sovereign democratic state, to take appropriate action to defend itself. He also wrote a letter of support, which I attach and which was posted on JCRC website.
Please feel free to call if you have further questions.
I am sorry to say that the “boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)” movement against the state of Israel is once again picking up steam in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League has published a good overview of recent events as well as a response to the BDS campaign which explains far better than I could why the movement is misguided.
What I will say is that if you look closely enough at the leadership of most of the organizations participating in this movement, you will find anti-Semites and people whose ultimate goal is not to end the Israeli “occupation” of “Palestine,” but rather to end the existence of the state of Israel. The participants who are truly supporting this movement out of a desire to uphold human rights are, by and large, being misled and manipulated by those who wish to destroy the Jewish state.
The BDS movement has chosen June 2009 as the time to aggressively organize boycotts against stores that sell products imported from Israel. Trader Joe’s, in particular, has been targeted. If you oppose the BDS movement as I do, and if you live in an area with Trader Joe’s supermarkets, then now would be a great time to shop at Trader Joe’s. While you’re there, ask to speak to the store manager, and thank him or her for carrying Israeli products and not giving in to pressure from anti-Semites. You can also contact them on-line.
Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East and the only one in which ethnic and religious minorities are given full civil rights. These attacks against Israel are simply unconscionable, and we must stand up to them.
This moving pro-Obama video testimonial is by Janette Hillis-Jaffe, an Orthodox Jew living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Hillis-Jaffe was so offended by the anti-Obama smears being circulated in the Jewish community, that she felt compelled to respond by making this video. Some excerpts:
I’m a Jewish Mother… so I worry! There was a time when I had a lot to worry about. You see, we lived in Jerusalem for four years during the peak of the Second Intifada…
I don’t want any Israeli to have to live like that anymore…
So because I love America, and because I pray for Israel’s security and peace every day, I’m going to vote for Barack Obama in November. I hope you will too!
Watch the video, then forward it to all your friends, especially those who still have doubts about Obama!
I grew up the son of a Conservative rabbi in the Twin Cities.
The local Orthodox rabbi was not only a member (with my father) of the non-denominational Minnesota Rabbinical Council, he also served as its president.
He cooperated with the city’s Conservative rabbis in supervision of a local bakery to ensure that there would be Kosher bread for the community.
He attended simchas at the area’s Conservative synagogues (not the service, mind you, but certainly the reception) and ate the food that was served there.
In his weekly opinion column on August 22, M.J. Rosenberg argues that Israel would endanger Jews living outside of Israel by attacking Iran. Furthermore, he rattles off a frightening laundry list of negative outcomes which he claims would result from such an attack:
“An Israeli attack on Iran—absent an imminent threat of attack from Iran—is a terrible idea for many reasons. It would not succeed in eliminating Iran’s nuclear program but would almost surely prompt Iran to both opt out of the international inspection regime and redouble its efforts to produce a bomb. It would unite Arabs and Muslims against the United States (they know that Israel could not attack Iran without implicit or explicit U.S. approval). It would have a disastrous effect on the American effort next door in Iraq, eliminating recently made gains and endangering 130,000 American troops (this is why Secretary of Defense Gates so vehemently opposes an Israeli attack). And it would end the Arab-Israeli peace process, even putting the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan at risk. And, no small thing, an attack would lead to a deadly Hezbollah missile onslaught against Israel, joined no doubt by Hamas in the south.”
The problem with this ominous litany of negativity is that there is little evidence that any of it is true.
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that I had no interest in continuing to spend the many hours per week that I was spending fighting the hate. Given that I had been relying on information published by AIPAC, I decided to try to get in touch with someone at AIPAC who might be able to allocate resources to put their stuff on-line, hire some people to fight hate on Usenet, etc. Somehow, I actually succeeded at reaching the right person, and he and I had a long telephone conversation. I can still remember pacing back and forth with my cell phone in the lounge of the old Boston University Hillel building while trying, unsuccessfully, to convince him that on-line hate was a significant enough problem to warrant AIPAC expending some resources to combat it. AIPAC was completely unaware of the hate being spread on-line.
