DEBUNKING VARIOUS MYTHS ABOUT ISRAEL
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[Foreign Policy, June 2008]
“Israel Is a Successful Democracy”
Sort of. From what began as an impoverished and war-ravaged country flooded with Jewish refugees from Europe and the Arab world, Israel has grown into a regional military power with a per capita GDP that exceeds all its neighbors. Unusual among post-World War II states, it has also managed to maintain an uninterrupted parliamentary regime for 60 years. Israel’s status as the Middle East’s only credible democracy plays a major role in its close alliance with the United States and its generally warm relations with Europe.
But how well is that democracy working? Israel elects its leaders, and its vigorous free press sometimes publishes criticism that might be considered anti-Israel elsewhere. Much of that criticism is aimed at the undemocratic regime in the West Bank: Jewish settlers enjoy the full rights of Israeli citizens, while Palestinian self-rule is limited to enclaves.
Within Israel proper, democracy is functioning but fragile. The lack of a written constitution has left the creation of civil rights to an activist Supreme Court—from a landmark 1953 decision that kept the government from closing newspapers, to last year’s ruling that enshrines the right of same-sex couples to adopt children. But the court’s position is tenuous. Some in Israel want the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to restrict its powers to overturn laws, rule on security matters, or accept human rights cases.
Another critical weakness is the status of the Arab minority, one fifth of the population. Officially, Arabs have equal rights. But they’re scarce in the civil service. Arab towns and cities get less funding from the central government than Jewish municipalities. Roughly an eighth of the country’s land is owned by the Jewish National Fund, whose policy of leasing land only to Jews is at the center of a long legal battle. Arab parties, which hold only 10 out of the Knesset’s 120 seats, have been consistently left out of government coalitions. Not only does that exclude Arabs from power but it also makes forming a majority coalition much more difficult—a central, and rarely noticed, reason for the chronic instability of Israeli governments.
The crumbling of the major parties that once dominated Israeli politics has made coalition government a shaky proposition. Labor, Likud, and Kadima—a centrist breakaway from the Likud—now hold only 60 Knesset seats between them. Labor leader Ehud Barak and Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu are both ex-prime ministers who lost their jobs in landslides, reflecting their parties’ failure to attract new leadership and the public’s disgust with politics. Solving the diplomatic impasse with the Palestinians—the country’s key challenge—is made much more difficult as a result. Israeli democracy is alive, but it needs an infusion of new blood.
“Israel Is a Jewish State”
Not in the way you think. In Western countries, “Jewish” is usually considered a religious category, parallel to “Catholic” or “Muslim.” So “Jewish state” sounds akin to “Islamic republic.” But Zionism—the political movement that created Israel—was born of 19th-century nationalism, and it defined Jews as an ethnic group, a nationality like “Russian” or “French.” Inspired by other contemporary nationalist movements, early Zionists transformed the traditional Jewish aspiration to return to the Land of Israel (a.k.a. Palestine) into a modern nationalistic program. Jews needed to revive their historical language, but religion was a relic of the past, an obsolete vehicle for maintaining ethnic identity in exile.
Israel’s secular Jewish majority is heir to that conception. For Israel’s secular elite, being a Jew means speaking Hebrew, living in the Jewish homeland, and belonging to Israeli society. Jewish holidays are national holidays—to be spent hiking, at the beach, or overseas, not in a synagogue.
The theocratic side of the Israeli polity is largely a relic leftover from Ottoman law. Marriage and divorce are controlled by religious authorities, so Jews can only wed through the state-run rabbinate. Catholics must marry through the church, and they can’t divorce at all.
Otherwise, the clergy has little power. Completely secularizing the state would not end the real divide in society, which is an ethnic split between Jews and Arabs. As a key example, universal military service is central to civic identity—but Arabs are exempt. Arabs tend to regard themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel, but not as “Israelis.” Unless an overarching Israeli identity can be created and Arabs can be integrated into the mainstream, Arab demands for rights as a national minority will only grow.
“Israel Was Born of the Holocaust”
No. Israel was born despite the Holocaust. Every visiting foreign dignitary is taken to Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial. The route proceeds from exhibits on the horrors of the death camps to the establishment of the Jewish state. The stress on the Holocaust reflects the emotional trauma that the horror still inflicts on Jews. It also underpins the political message that Jews can only be safe in their own state.
But an additional message is that Israel was created as a response to the genocide perpetrated against Jews in Europe. That’s a historical mistake, and promoting it is politically costly for Israel. As an organized political movement, Zionism began in 1897, decades before the Nazis took power in Germany. Modern Jewish migration to Palestine began even earlier, not just from Europe but also from Yemen, Central Asia, and other parts of the Muslim world. Early Zionists did see anti-Semitism as proof that in an age of nation-states, Jews needed one of their own. But they built their plans on Europe’s Jews moving to Palestine. Those numbers would ensure that Jews would grow from a small minority to an overwhelming majority in the country.
In 1939, there were 8.3 million Jews in the territory that would come under Axis rule. Six million were murdered. The Holocaust orphaned the Jewish independence movement, whose largest source of support and immigrants was wiped out. The state that was established was much weaker than it would have been.
When Israel bases its public relations on the Holocaust, it unintentionally lends support to the Arab argument that Palestinians are paying for Europe’s sins, a talking point intended to undercut Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish home and shift Western support to the Palestinians.
There’s one sense, though, in which the Holocaust formed Israel: Psychologically, it created the feeling that Jews stand in constant threat of annihilation.
“Israel’s Existence Is in Danger”
Not anymore. When Israel declared independence on May 14, 1948, its Arab neighbors responded by invading. “It does not matter how many [Jews] there are,” said Arab League Secretary-General Abdul Rahman Azzam. “We will sweep them into the sea.” Instead, disorganized and inexperienced Arab armies quickly crumbled before them. By the war’s end, Israel held more land than the United Nations had allocated it. Before the June 1967 Six Day War, as Arab states massed their forces on Israel’s borders, Israelis feared a second Holocaust. Israel’s astonishing victory showed that it had become the regional superpower, a status confirmed when it repulsed Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack in October 1973. Five-and-a-half years later, the peace agreement with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat neutralized Israel’s most formidable foe.
Today, there is no conventional military threat that remotely compares with the alliance led by Egypt. Left isolated by the Israeli-Egyptian peace, Syria has carefully observed a cease-fire since 1974. Afraid to risk full confrontation, Damascus has supported substate forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. Along with other guerrilla groups, they employ terrorist tactics and rocket fire. Those methods have claimed many Israeli civilians’ lives. But on a national level, they’re equivalent to a chronic illness, not a fatal disease.
“A Nuclear Iran Would Destroy Israel”
No. If conventional armies don’t endanger Israel’s very existence, then what of an Iranian bomb? Benjamin Netanyahu, now leader of Israel’s right-wing opposition, said in a typical speech, “It’s 1938, and Iran is Germany.” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has made similar comments. The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate’s assertion that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program has done little to reassure Israeli leaders or citizens.
Although all nuclear proliferation is dangerous, the rhetoric ignores the regional power balance. Israel does not normally say it has nuclear arms. But Olmert slipped in 2006, classifying Israel as a nuclear power. Foreign reports sometimes refer to Israel’s presumed second-strike capability, the ability to destroy an enemy even if the enemy were to strike first. Such deterrence kept the Soviet Union and the United States from using nuclear weapons during the Cold War.
A common argument is that deterrence won’t work as it did with the Soviets. Iran’s fundamentalist leaders would supposedly be willing to commit national suicide to fulfill their irrational ideology. Experience shows, however, that Iranian leaders share the Soviets’ caution. Iran agreed to a cease-fire in the war with Iraq once Iraqi missiles began falling on Tehran. The ayatollahs were willing to sacrifice soldiers—but not to pay a higher price. The threat of mushroom clouds will concentrate their thinking about Israel wonderfully.
It’s true that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s extreme anti-Israel rhetoric and Holocaust denials are perfectly pitched to frighten Jews. But when Mohammad Khatami was president of Iran, we were told that his moderation made little difference because real power lay with the ayatollahs. For the same reason, one should avoid overestimating Ahmadinejad’s clout.
Iran’s underlying reason for wanting nukes is nationalist and fairly pragmatic: It seeks to assert its role as a regional power and to deter other nuclear powers. The real risk is that it will set off a regional race for the bomb. The more fingers there are on more buttons, the greater the chance of a mistake. Complacency would be a mistake—but so is panic.
“Hamas Seeks Israel’s Destruction”
In its dreams. Hamas’s founding charter, issued in 1988, defines Palestine as “an Islamic waqf”—sacred trust—“consecrated for future Muslim generations.” That includes pre-1967 Israel. All of Palestine, says the charter, must be liberated by jihad. Diplomacy is a “vain endeavor.” The document turns the goals of radical Palestinian nationalism into timeless religious truths.
Yet with time, Hamas has indeed changed. It hasn’t renounced its charter, but has stopped referring to it. The movement has gradually morphed into a hard-line but more pragmatic Islamist organization. A milestone was its decision to participate in Palestinian Authority elections, even though the Authority was born of the Oslo agreements with Israel. In its 2006 election platform, Hamas stressed liberating the land that Israel occupied in 1967, even while insisting that it would not renounce the claim to pre-1948 Israel or Palestinians’ right of return.
This balancing act looks much like the change that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) underwent a generation ago, when it adopted its 1974 “phased strategy”—willingness to establish a state in part of Palestine while maintaining a claim to the rest. For the PLO, that was a way to justify participating in diplomacy on the future of the occupied territories, and it was a step toward recognizing Israel. Today, there are disagreements within Hamas over whether to negotiate directly with Israel. However, the organization appears willing to accept a de facto two-state solution and long-term cease-fire, as long as it doesn’t have to recognize Israel outright.
Not that Hamas has turned moderate. It hasn’t renounced “armed struggle,” including attacks on civilians. It may be willing to put up with Israel’s existence, but it still hasn’t negotiated with itself the way to say so publicly. Nonetheless, an eventual agreement with Israel is within the realm of the possible.
“The Israel Lobby Controls U.S. Policy”
Never. In their book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt hold the lobby largely responsible for U.S. policy not only toward Israel but toward the rest of the Middle East. The book’s greatest flaw may be that it serves as an unintended advertisement for the central lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is eager to play up its own influence.
Although AIPAC does lobby the U.S. Congress effectively, its influence on policy has limits. Under former President Ronald Reagan, it lost its fight to prevent the sale of AWACS surveillance planes to Saudi Arabia. It could not prevent Bush Sr. from using loan guarantees as a means of pressuring Israel on West Bank settlement. Under Bill Clinton, AIPAC helped push through legislation aimed at moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, despite the potential for upsetting peace talks. But the victory was hollow: As passed, the law contained a presidential waiver that Clinton and George W. Bush have repeatedly invoked to avoid the move. In 2006, despite AIPAC’s efforts to pass a version of the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act that would have virtually cut off U.S.-Palestinian relations, the U.S. Congress opted for a more moderate bill.
Attributing U.S. policy solely to AIPAC has the advantage of great simplicity. That is also precisely what’s wrong with it. The constraints on U.S. policy in the Middle East were laid out after the Six Day War, in a memo to then President Lyndon Johnson written by McGeorge Bundy, his former national security advisor. The United States is committed to Israel’s survival, Bundy wrote, but also to good relations with pro-Western Arab states that want Washington to tilt against Israel. Keeping Israel strong saves the United States the headache of defending it directly. But in the long run, Bundy implied, getting Arabs and Israelis to make peace was the only way to resolve the contradictions in U.S. policy. American administrations have oscillated between these conflicting concerns ever since.
At 60, Israel is neither a perfect democracy, nor a Jewish ghetto imperiled by Iranian Nazis, nor a puppet master indirectly controlling Washington. It is more democratic than its neighbors, more reliably pro-Western, and more successful economically and militarily. Nonetheless, it faces the classic dilemmas of a nation-state dealing with minorities, borders, and neighbors. In other
words, it is best understood as a real place, not a country of myth.
[Gershom Gorenberg is author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967–1977 (New York: Times Books, 2006) and a senior correspondent for The American Prospect. He blogs at southjerusalem.com.]
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DO CELEBRITIES ATTRACT MONEY TO AFRICA?
[Christian Science Monitor, August 22, 2007]
Neno, Malawi - Rock star-like, wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt, he reaches into the screaming crowds. Then, he's in khaki casual, clapping for the leaping Masai dancers. Now, he's posing with a row of Malawian nurses in pressed, blue uniforms. And there he is with South Africa's Nelson Mandela, holding the anti-apartheid icon's hand gently as the cameras blink.
"Beeeee-ll," whispers one Tanzanian tyke, his chubby hand outstretched, and immediately breaks into nervous tears. "Beeee-ll."
It's late July, and former President Bill Clinton is on a one-week whirlwind, four-country tour of Africa, grinning at the cameras and viewing aid projects. The world's poorest, sickest, most war-ravaged continent is now the charity of choice for many of the West's best-known political, pop, and Hollywood stars. Think Bono, Madonna, and Oprah, just for starters. Skeptics often belittle the rise in celebrity attention paid to Africa, calling it a fad. AIDS babies, hungry villagers, and uprooted refugees are today's must-have visual "accessories," they sneer, intended to burnish a star's profile in the eyes of a public that expects a moral dimension to its celebrities.
"This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back," writes respected Nigerian-American novelist Uzodinma Iweala, in a July Washington Post opinion piece. Mr. Clinton shakes his head. "Let's examine what's happening," he begins, in an interview over morning coffee in his hotel room in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. "A lot of artists, including movie stars, have a genuine feeling for people who are different from them," he says, warming to the topic. "It's easy ... to say, 'Oh, this is not serious, they are just trying to get press.' My experience has been this is not true. Not everything every actor does, works. Just like not everything I do works. Not everything [Microsoft chairman] Bill Gates does works. But it's not true that it's not genuine. By and large, it just is."
Bruce Sievers, a visiting scholar at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., who is writing a book about the development of philanthropy, explains the surge in celebrity attention this way: "The bang for the buck is high in Africa. You can leverage your money and time. So you are not only bringing in more mosquito nets, but potentially shaping the entire national policy." Of course, it's hard to gauge anyone's motivations. But one can ask whether these celebrities are really helping Africans. The short answer: Yes, attention brings cash. But the quality and commitment of celebrity engagement varies widely. Clinton's efforts, say a range of aid experts, offer an example of one of the more effective ways of using fame to do good.
The spotlight follows
Seventeen hours after leaving New York, with a pit stop in the Dominican Republic en route, Clinton arrives in Johannesburg, South Africa, to begin his journey. The first thing he does – before any visits to after-school programs, talks about climate change, or meetings about antiretroviral drug initiatives – is drop in on his friend Mr. Mandela. "Happy Birthday Madiba!" he sings, eyes twinkling, using the local nickname for the 89-year-old. "You are my inspiration in so much that I do." The elder man flashes a broad smile. "Do these celebrities understand our issues?" asks Mandela's wife, activist Graça Machel, the former first lady of Mozambique. "Well, some do, some don't, to be honest." But what is uniformly true about celebrities, she says, is that they get attention – for themselves, to some extent, but also for the issues they choose to highlight. And money usually follows attention.
“In some parts of this globe, there are persons that will listen to sports stars ... but they won’t listen to me,” explains Ms. Machel. “In some parts of the world, a musician will have a better audience than a priest.... People will listen to a filmmaker, but not a woman leader.” As long as these celebrities clearly define the issue they are dealing with and the audience they are addressing, she maintains, “Everyone has a space to participate.”
Lionello Boscardi, the chief “celebrity handler” for the UN’s World Food Program has worked with the likes of Angelina Jolie, designer Georgio Armani, marathon runner Paul Tergat, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, and, most recently, actress Drew Barrymore. “Usually celebrities are paid tens of thousands, even millions, to endorse products,” he says. “Of course, we don’t pay them, but we get much the same benefits from working with them, namely, they raise our profile.”
Covering Clinton’s annual Africa sojourn in previous years have been The New Yorker, New York Magazine, and Fortune magazine. This year, The Monitor, ABC-TV, and Elle and Ebony magazines sent reporters. GQ magazine sent a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” writer, a world-renowned photographer, and a senior editor – all following Clinton into the schoolyards of South Africa and antiretroviral drug warehouses of Tanzania. Rarely does Africa get such high-gloss attention. According to a June report by Julie Hollar of the national media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), wrapping Africa stories in celebrity news is par for the course. For example, she notes, in the week that “Blood Diamond,” a Hollywood film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, was released in theaters last December, ABC, CBS, and NBC news programs mentioned the role of diamonds fueling Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war 11 times. But during the entire length of that war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, it was mentioned an average of twice a year.
Looking at one US network’s overall coverage of Africa over 2005-06, FAIR found that NBC Nightly News ran 70 Africa-related segments, of which 18, or one-quarter, featured celebrities. “Many of those [stories] focused on Bono, with whom NBC anchor Brian Williams traveled to Africa in May 2006,” points out FAIR, “... a trip that generated seven stories, six of which prominently featured the rock star.” Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) critique points at a similar trend in the July Vanity Fair special Africa issue. Guest edited by Bono himself, the issue features 20 different covers, each of a different person involved in the “conversation” about Africa. Oprah, Brad Pitt, Madonna, and Jordan’s Queen Rania – a UNICEF advocate – participated. But only three Africans (of which only one currently lives in Africa) are featured. “This is a conversation ... by a group of well-known celebrities,” says CJR writer Gal Beckerman. “They are the ones here with agency to tell the story of Africa.”
But Clinton warns against being judgmental of either the media or its audience. It’s not that Americans do not care about Africa. Rather, he argues, people are just busy. “Most people are living their own lives.... A lot of Americans have their own difficulties. Until someone sees someone they know and can identify with out here doing this [aid work], they may not – even if generally aware of a problem – they may not really believe that any time or money they give can make a difference,” he says.
The Clinton entourage
“Which one? Which one?” panics Wilbert Wilson Magombo, a farmer in the rural Malawian village of Neno, who, along with thousands of others, has spent the day waiting for Clinton to arrive at this, his second stop on the journey. Mr. Magombo has neither a TV nor access to newspapers, so he has no idea what the famous man looks like. “We were told by our elders to be here and welcome Mr. President. But how will we know him?” he wonders. “There are so very many white visitors today!” Indeed, the former president does not travel light.
On this trip, Clinton is joined by seven or eight of the top directors of his New York-based William J. Clinton Foundation, a couple of aides, more than a dozen Secret Service officers, a personal doctor, a personal photographer, 12 journalists, and a three-man press-handling team. In addition, there are a dozen wealthy donors who, last year, at an auction at Clinton’s 60th birthday bash, bid tens of thousands of dollars – all of which goes to the foundation – to go on this journey. This makes for some 40-odd Africa trippers traveling in grand style on two luxury private jets, one lent by a Canadian mining financier friend, the other by Google. Both aircraft are outfitted with leather couches, iPod docks, en suite bedrooms, free little tubes of Aveda hand cream, and friendly flight attendants sweetly asking if anyone would care for some cold cuts.
“You have rich people in America who are saying: ‘There are plenty of Africans who could make as much money as I did. I was simply born in the right time in the right place ....’ They know that,” says Clinton, giving a press conference on the jet, munching miniature pepperoni pizza slices. “There is no place you can go where you don’t come away with the feeling that poor people are just as smart as anyone else. They work just as hard, usually harder than anyone else, just to keep body and soul together and keep their children alive. What’s missing is opportunity and systems and access to education and money. That’s where we can help.”
Clinton sees part of his mission as showing wealthy individuals what they can accomplish here. Two years ago, he brought Tom Hunter on one of these trips. It worked out well – illustrating Clinton’s involvement in Africa at its best. The two had met at a dinner party in London earlier that year. Mr. Hunter, the wealthiest man in Scotland, was seated next to the former president. “I knew very little about Africa, so he said: ‘If you are genuinely interested in Africa, come travel with me,’” recalls the dapper billionaire businessman.
During that trip, Hunter says, his “eyes were opened,” but he felt clueless about how to proceed. “I said, ‘How on earth could I make a difference? I don’t know anyone, I’m not networked here at all.’ And then I thought if we are going to get involved, what better partner could there be than President Clinton?” Hunter subsequently pledged $100 million, launching the Clinton-Hunter development initiative under the Clinton Foundation umbrella. Today, he is on one of his frequent visits, checking in on his various projects to expand access to water, sanitation, healthcare, and agricultural markets in Malawi and Rwanda.
The respected organization Partners in Health (PIH), run by Harvard infectious disease specialist Paul Farmer, is implementing some of the Hunter projects here. The goal is to double per capita income within 10 years in the areas where they are working. “In the last five years, there has been an explosion of celebrity attention to development, but Clinton is in a different category,” says Mr. Farmer, who, like Hunter, is in Neno, Malawi, waiting for the former president to arrive. “He is serious about the details. He keeps all his promises and he is extremely effective. In 20 years working in [development] ... I have not seen stuff move as quickly.”
The only thing not moving quickly at the moment, Farmer would agree, is Clinton himself. He’s stuck at the Johannesburg airport, where one of the swanky private jets has come down with engine trouble. The heat rises and the day drags on. A group of women in sarongs emblazoned with pictures of the Malawian president have been chanting “Welcome to our Village” for seven hours now. And then, finally, just as one of the singers swoons and the ABC news crew finishes shooting more footage of rural Malawi than the network will need in a century, the 42nd president of the United States arrives. Sand flies everywhere as his helicopter touches down.
Clinton emerges as a whirling dervish of enthusiasm. He talks harvest details with the farmers, his mouth permanently puckered into an intrigued and encouraging “Ooo,” as the intricacies of transporting wheat to the capital are translated from Chichewa. He zooms along waving in his Land Rover motorcade, his eyes crinkling in delight. He hugs his friends Farmer and Hunter. He stops by a construction site and high-fives the workers, gives a quick press conference to the local press, and is off again, sand flying everywhere as the helicopter rises.
Magombo still does not know what Clinton looks like. “He was a bit far away, unfortunately,” explains the farmer as he prepares to walk six kilometers home. But, it has been a “very interesting day,” he confirms. “This visit is precious. We are so appreciative of Mr. President’s attention and for his financial assistance,” he says. “We are just poor farmers, and so we are so grateful.”
An A-list of Africa relief groups (and their stars)
The American Institute of Philanthrophy (AIP) grades charities based on such benchmarks as how much money is spent on programs versus administration and fundraising activities. The Christian Science Monitor researched which aid groups had celebrity supporters, listed by AIP ratings.
AMERICAN RED CROSS A+
A 50-member Celebrity Cabinet includes Jamie Lee Curtis, Jackie Chan, Zach Braff, and Peyton Manning.
AMERICAN REFUGEE COMMITTEE A+
Actor John Cusack.
CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES A+
Actress Christine Baranski.
ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - USA A
Doesn't currently have celebrity promoters.
AFRICARE A
Doesn't currently have celebrity promoters.
CARE A
Ambassadors include model Christy Turlington Burns and actors Sarah Michelle Gellar and Meg Ryan.
INTERNATIONAL RESCUE COMMITTEE A
Took George Clooney and his father to refugee camps in Chad and Sudan. The cast of the movie "Oceans 13" has done fundraising efforts.
LUTHERAN WORLD RELIEF A
Doesn't currently have celebrity promoters.
MERCY CORPS A
Musicians Michael Stipe, Coldplay, Justin Timberlake, will.i.am and Joseph Arthur teamed up to create a CD benefiting Mercy Corps. Money helped hurricane Katrina victims. Currently seeking celebrities for Africa programs.
SAVE THE CHILDREN A
Works with more than a dozen celebrities, including Jamie Lee Curtis, singer David Bowie, model Iman Majid, Melanie Griffith, and Antonio Banderas.
CHURCH WORLD SERVICE A–
Tim Janis (wrote "Children of the World"), performs concerts to benefit CWS School Safe Zone project.
OXFAM-AMERICA B+
It has 13 "ambassadors," including Desmond Tutu, the rock band Coldplay, and actors Kristin Davis, Colin Firth, and Scarlett Johannsson.
AMERICARES B
Doesn't currently have celebrity promoters.
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CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR FOUND GUILTY OF DESERTION
[Christian Science Monitor, August 14, 2007]
WÜRZBURG, GERMANY - No one looked comfortable at the sentencing hearing. Not family and friends who packed the US military courtroom's straight-backed benches. Not the rookie Army prosecutor in stiff dress greens who flushed with every "Your Honor." Not Judge R. Peter Masterton, whose usually animated face was now grave. And not the convicted deserter – Army medic Agustín Aguayo – on the stand in a US military court in central Germany last March, pleading for understanding. "I'm sorry for the trouble my conscience has caused my unit," Private 1st Class Aguayo said, his voice thick with emotion. "I tried to obey the rules, but in the end [the problem] was at the very core of my being."
Colonel Masterton, a veteran military judge, stared down at his bench. The defense wanted him to free this man of conscience. The prosecution asked that he put the coward away for two years to show other soldiers that "they are not fools for fulfilling their obligation." Aguayo craned to face the judge. "When I hear my sergeants talking about slashing people's throats," he said, crying openly, "if I'm not a conscientious objector, what am I when I'm feeling all this pain when people talk about violence?" Next door in the press room, where reporters crowded to watch the proceedings on bleached, closed-circuit TVs, a soldier guarding the door wiped tears from his face.
Every war has its deserters, troops who abandon their posts. And every war has its converts to pacifism. The Defense Department reports that 5,361 active-duty service members deserted the US Armed Forces last year; nearly 37,000 since October 2001. In today's all-volunteer force, that means a desertion rate of less than half a percent – much lower than the Vietnam War draft era, when it reached a 1971 high of 7.4 percent. In the past six years, 325 Army soldiers have applied to be recognized as conscientious objectors (COs), soldiers who no longer believe in war; 58 percent were accepted.
Still, Aguayo's story is revealing of the mental battles of these thousands who change their minds during a bloody war – and, arguably, of many who don't. Struggling to support a young family in the patriotic months after 9/11, Aguayo chose to serve a nation heading into a long fight. War made a man of the naive private – but not in the way his officers intended. While his struggle to believe in his mission probably resembled that of many young recruits, no one imagined how it would end.
Aguayo is a small, soft-spoken man, tentative but quick to smile. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, he immigrated legally to Los Angeles with his parents when he was 4. At 19, he became a citizen and married a girl he'd met at church, the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. He worked a dead-end bank job; for his twin daughters' sake, he wanted more. So he got second and third jobs and enrolled in community college. At Home Depot, where he worked in the fall of 2002, the radio blared through his shift with Army Reserve ads promising he could stay with his family and get a four-year degree. On the way to renew his driver's license, Aguayo saw a recruiting station and stopped in. "No, you don't want the Army Reserve," he recalls the recruiter saying, "have a seat." Two weeks later, Aguayo joined the active-duty Army. His wife didn't want him to – the Afghan war had subsided and the Iraq invasion was imminent. "But he was so excited and so sure that the future would hold great things," Helga Aguayo says, that she supported his decision. She recalls asking him what he'd do if he had to go to war. "He kind of laughed and said, 'They train you for that. I'll be a different person.' "
But in basic training at Fort Benning, Ga., Aguayo couldn't adjust like other recruits did. It pained him to march to "Left, right, kill!" and to chant "We are not men. We are beasts." He stumbled out of gas-mask training crying, and wrote to Helga that the sting of the gas made him think of Nazi gas chambers. "The point is for you to learn how to use the mask," he says, "but [the gas] hurts, and I'd never want to hurt anyone like that." He hoped his qualms were normal, that he'd master them.
In August 2003, five months after the US invaded Iraq, Aguayo's unit was sent to a base in Schweinfurt, Germany. There they received orders to deploy to Iraq in the new year. His roommate assured Aguayo that the war was over and they would be peacekeepers. Aguayo, who rarely followed the news, felt better. Then their training changed. "It wasn't targets anymore. It wasn't about me getting a badge. It wasn't about me getting a pat on the back," he says, "It was about me getting ready to take someone down." In February 2004, on the eve of his Iraq deployment, Aguayo confided to Helga, who had joined him in Germany with their 8-year-old daughters, that he wasn't willing to kill, even in self-defense. She was alarmed. She searched for help online, and found a story about a marine who had refused to serve in Iraq. They read it together; some of the words were new to them.
"I had never heard the term 'conscientious objector,' which is embarrassing," she says. They Googled it, and called the hot-line number that came up. Volunteers explained the application process, and Aguayo, deploying in two days, hurried one together. In Iraq a week later, he woke to the sound of shouting. Near his Tikrit aid station, a US military truck with five passengers had hit a roadside bomb. Aguayo zipped two officers up in body bags. His horrified expression caught the attention of a physician's assistant who took him aside. "You have to understand, there is a bigger picture," Aguayo remembers him saying, "God has a bigger plan."
"I couldn't reason like that," Aguayo says. "I thought, 'How can God have anything to do with this?' To me it was ignorance: on our side and on the guys that put the bomb out there." Aguayo never got used to the routine cruelties of war: The men in US uniform he heard speak lewdly to veiled women, the American squads that cut clotheslines on Fridays while families were at prayer. "When someone sees me on a corner, then sees this guy next to me," he says of these soldiers, "he thinks we're the same." Despite his misgivings, Aguayo developed a reputation in his unit as a mature presence and a diligent worker. He was promoted to the rank of specialist and recommended for another promotion to noncommissioned officer status, which he refused. Friends who served with him say that although they didn't share his beliefs, they respected his growing pacifism.
For his 12-month tour, Aguayo refused to carry a loaded weapon. His medical duties didn't require one, but dangerous patrols in Saddam Hussein's hometown did. Out of consideration for his beliefs, superiors looked the other way as he hoisted an empty rifle. When he told Helga, she was appalled at the danger he was putting himself – and others – in. "I said: You can't do this. You have a family. You have to come back," she says.
In August 2004, Aguayo's CO application was denied. The decision was divided: Aguayo's company commander and investigating officer called him "absolutely sincere" and said he had a "legitimate concern with being a soldier." The next four levels of command recommended rejection; one called Aguayo's application "an attempt to remedy [the] anxiety all soldiers face during an extended deployment in a combat theater."
Aguayo knew there were other ways out: A friend used illegal drugs to get discharged; others went AWOL. But he hated the idea of breaking the law. So the Aguayos threw themselves into challenging the decision when he returned to Germany in February 2005. Superiors decided that whatever the result, he didn't belong in the Army. A sergeant took him aside and promised to "paper" him out: charge him with enough small defiances to disqualify him from service.
But with only one infraction on record – failing to raise his M-16 in a training exercise – and another pending, his unit got word. They were going back to Iraq.
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A desperate escape, a prison cell, and a political awakening.
The US Army sergeants waited on the couch, studying the floor. Family dogs skirted the sofa, growling. From time to time, one of the soldiers extended a conciliatory hand to them.
On the floor, sixth-grader Rebecca Aguayo played a video game; her twin rollerbladed outside. Just one voice fed the tension in the living room: Their mother, Helga, sat in an armchair, bawling. "It was the ugly crying, with the snot and everything," Mrs. Aguayo recalls, "I wanted them to see how much they were hurting us."
Her husband, Army Spc. Agustín Aguayo, hurried around their military base apartment in central Germany that afternoon, under orders to assemble his battle gear. Two-and-a-half years earlier, in February 2004, the medic had applied to leave the Army as a conscientious objector (CO), someone whose beliefs forbid him to participate in war. While his claim was being evaluated, Aguayo served a year in Iraq with an unloaded weapon; when the claim was rejected, he sued for another review.
That legal process was under way on Sept. 1, 2006, the afternoon Aguayo's unit assembled to begin its second Iraq tour. Unwilling to deploy, Aguayo took an officer's advice and stayed home so as not to "make people very upset on a very stressful day." That evening, his commander, Capt. R.J. Torres, called Helga, saying Aguayo would be punished unless he appeared.
Aguayo did not show up before his comrades left that night. The next morning he turned himself in to the military police, prepared to serve prison time for "missing movement." Instead, Captain Torres ordered him taken to Iraq by force. The two sergeants drove him home to get his gear. "I needed to show that I was ready to do anything except hurt people" rather than return to war, Aguayo says. So, as the men sat in his living room, he stuffed jeans and a T-shirt into a plastic shopping bag, opened a first-floor bedroom window, took out the screen, and jumped.
Aguayo, a military court would later decide, deserted. It's something nearly 37,000 active duty US troops did between October 2001 and October 2006. But the medic's situation was more complex than that. In his mind – and in the minds of superiors who attested that he was "absolutely sincere" – he was a conscientious objector, a hardworking soldier who'd grown opposed to all wars and should have been honorably discharged.
Since boot camp in 2003, Aguayo had felt at odds with his military mission. Now his mission was just to keep moving. A civilian friend gave him a ride to the train station. Aguayo traveled to Munich, where he stayed with an antiwar activist. German and American peace activists passed the hat and bought plane tickets. The Mexican Consulate issued the naturalized US citizen a passport in less than an hour. Aguayo flew to Mexico, met his father-in-law at the US border, and rode home with him to Palmdale, Calif. On Sept. 26, 2006, he turned himself in at Fort Irwin, Calif. That night, sitting in a cell, he wondered if this was how God punished the faithless. Raised as Jehovah's Witnesses, he and Helga had met as children, married as teens, and baptized their daughters in Kingdom Hall. When they started community college, though, Aguayo had a philosophy professor whose "way of questioning was so intriguing," he says, that it "would get you doing it even after class."
With time, the Aguayos made a painful break from their church. One of its central tenets is political neutrality: Members don't usually salute flags or perform military service. At first, Aguayo saw his religious estrangement as spiritual license to serve his country. By the time he realized that, church or no church, he couldn't take a human life, he was already a US infantryman.
Last October, Aguayo was returned in handcuffs to the US Army stockade at Coleman Barracks in Mannheim, Germany. The prison had a library, and, for half a year, Aguayo read everything from "The World is Flat" to "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families." He studied Genesis and Exodus, Deepak Chopra, and financial planning. Buddhist philosophy intrigued him. Reading fed Aguayo's growing political awareness. He now viewed Operation Iraqi Freedom as a betrayal of the founding principles of his adopted nation.
While in prison, his conscientious objection suit was rejected. An applicant must demonstrate profound and irreversible moral transformation, but Aguayo chose not to discuss the upheaval in his religious beliefs. Instead, he wrote of his "deep admiration" for Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., and his desire to "follow their lead." Reviewing judges found this vague. "Clearly this was not an open-and-shut case," they wrote, but the supportive testimony of Aguayo's immediate higher-ups didn't persuade them he'd changed.
On March 6, with family and supporters behind him, Aguayo stood before a US court martial in Würzburg, Germany, charged with missing movement and desertion. He pled guilty to the former; the prosecution set out to prove the latter. At issue was whether Aguayo had shirked "hazardous duty and important service" by not going to Iraq a second time, and how much his presence might have mattered there. For six hours, Aguayo and superiors relived his year in Tikrit. Under squad leader Sgt. David Garcia, Aguayo had dressed wounds, cleaned Bradley Fighting Vehicles, and patrolled the streets of the former Iraqi dictator's hometown. Sergeant Garcia testified respectfully of Aguayo as a soldier, saying he'd been working on getting him legally discharged. "I told him what he needed to do was stick by his guns, if that was how he felt."
Lt. Aaron Roberts considered Aguayo "fully capable" in his medical duties, but found his refusal to carry a weapon "a major concern .... We would have exhausted all other resources ... before sending Aguayo out on patrol" again, he said. Still, as Lieutenant Roberts headed to Iraq with 800 men, only a third of whom had combat experience, a levelheaded, experienced soldier like Aguayo could have been "an invaluable asset to me," he added.
The twins leaned into Helga as Judge R. Peter Masterton read his verdict: "Of all charges and specifications, guilty." Sentencing followed, and Aguayo's superiors described the effect of his flight on fellow soldiers. "There's a lot of talk, a bit of embarrassment to the unit, to the regiment," Garcia said. Though sympathetic to Aguayo's beliefs, the sergeant said, "If I've got 20 other guys who do the same thing Pfc. Aguayo did, I've got a problem."
Aguayo apologized for the trouble he'd caused: "But in the end, I had to obey a higher calling."
Prosecutors wanted him locked up for two years. "When soldiers are severely wounded, combat medics are the ones who hold their hands and tell them it's going to be OK," argued assistant prosecutor Capt. Jennifer Neuhauser. "This is a sacred trust." In wartime, she said, the military can't afford to send its service members the message: "You're a chump. You should have just taken your benefits and run."
Aguayo's civilian attorney countered that punishment wouldn't change the mind of such a soldier – and indeed, that the Army shouldn't try. A military is strongest, David Court argued, "if soldiers are told, 'You do have a conscience.' Otherwise we have automatons." Judge Masterton gave Aguayo an eight-month sentence (with six already served, he had only a few weeks of confinement); awarded him a bad conduct discharge; and ordered that he forfeit all his rank, pay, and benefits. By April, Aguayo was released and sent to his old base here in Schweinfurt. The sergeants from whom he'd escaped avoided him. Other soldiers sought him out to offer sympathy and solidarity.
In May, Aguayo returned to Palmdale, Calif., to his wife and girls and an uncertain future. Antiwar groups and Helga are encouraging him to travel the country discussing his experience. But he remains uncertain about how the military should handle soldiers like him – men and women who volunteer for duty looking to put their lives on track, only to realize that they can't live with that choice.
In basic training, Aguayo explains, when soldiers jog in formation, "if there's a guy that is running and can't keep up ... somebody falls out and helps him – or somebody screams at him ... to encourage him, to push him." But when a soldier falls out of moral step with the military's mission and can't be threatened or cajoled back into line, Aguayo muses, what should an institution built on unity and common purpose do with him? "How," he asks, "do you correct a person's mind?"
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WEALTHIEST AUSSIE COULD SEND CASINOS BROKE
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[The Sunday Telegraph, July 29, 2007]
Uncut excerpts from Paul Barry's biography The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer revealed a portrait of a man whose gambling seemed only to be a problem for those he played against. When Kerry Packer was not chasing deals, playing polo or racing around in go-karts, he often dashed off to the races or the casino to gamble.
In London, he made regular forays from his Savoy suite to play the tables, winning or losing in one session more than most people earn in a lifetime. As one of his executives put it, he gambled when he was bored, and he gambled often because he was often bored.
In March, 1987, two months after selling Nine, he reportedly lost £8 million ($19 million) in one night playing blackjack at the Ritz. Packer's exploits in casinos in London and Las Vegas in the 1980s and 1990s became the stuff of legend, earning him the nickname Prince of Whales. And most of the tales were true. From the 1980s until his death, he was one of the biggest casino gamblers in the world.
Huge stakes
He bet bigger than arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, bigger than the Sultan of Brunei, and bigger than any of the oil sheiks or Asian high-rollers. What's more, he remained on the scene for a great deal longer. In his $19 million tangle with the Ritz in 1987, Packer lost the money playing blackjack in a private room on the casino's ground floor. According to an eyewitness, he played two tables at a time and moved from one to the other to place his bets, playing all seven hands at each table and staking £10,000 ($24,000) per hand.
As he lost, he repeatedly signed the casino's house cheques for more chips, at £200,000 ($473,000) a time, but the chips didn't come fast enough. Eventually, he tired of signing his name and handed over a £1 million cheque instead.
In London, only three or four casinos could handle him, such were the amounts that he demanded to bet in. And even for them it could be a terrifying or thrilling experience. If Packer had a bad night at the tables, he could transform a dull year for the casino into a brilliant one. If he had a good night, he could win enough to hijack the year's profit and maybe even to break the bank.
When London's most exclusive casino, Aspinalls Club, ran out of money in May, 1990 and was forced to shut down, there were reports that Packer was responsible. One London gossip column claimed he had gambled there the previous week and won £300,000 ($709,000), which had forced them to close their doors. This may well have been urban myth, for neither the casino management nor Packer would confirm the story, yet the principle of him being richer than the casino was absolutely accurate.
'You're winning too much, sir'
On another occasion, he was barred from the London casino Crockfords for winning too much. According to his right-hand man and partner in fun, Trevor Kennedy, he had won "about 10 million quid" in the previous few weeks and the casino had tired of it. The manager took Packer aside, offered him a free dinner, and then politely requested he gamble elsewhere. According to Kennedy, Packer came back "with a big grin from ear to ear", saying it was the thing he had always wanted: to be banned from a casino for winning too much.
Clearly, Packer had the firepower to bankrupt even the richest London casino if he got lucky. If he was planning a foray to the tables they liked to have at least half an hour's notice that he was on his way. Packer's aides would call in advance to say he was coming and to make sure that he received good service. Once he was through the front door, the key staff would be alerted through personal bleepers and told: "He's in, he's in." Often he came mob-handed, in a party of seven or eight, but almost always he gambled alone. He was as likely to arrive in mid afternoon and stay till 10pm as he was to come in late in the evening and stay till the small hours.
He was rarely ecstatic when he won, but he was always extremely cranky when he lost, because he hated losing. This was a particular problem if he was back in Australia (and had lost, say, a couple of million dollars at the racetrack). According to Kennedy, he would arrive at the office in a foul temper and set about trying to sack people, on the pretext that he had seen too many standing around doing nothing.
Red carpet service
The fact that the top casinos rolled out the red carpet for him proved they were more than happy to see him. Those who gambled with him said he chased his losses and hated to give in. In Las Vegas, Packer was as much a figure on the gambling scene as he was in London. When he won, he tipped the croupiers handsomely, which he was not allowed to do in Australia or Britain, and when he lost the casinos cleaned up.
In November, 1991, he gave the Las Vegas Hilton a hammering while he and his polo team were on their way to Argentina. Stopping off for a few days of fun at the hotel, he won $7 million one night playing blackjack in the public area of the casino at a table roped off from regular punters. Next year, the Hilton won it all back again, taking $US 10 million off Packer in a two-day session in a special room built for him to gamble in.
In May, 1995, he was back on the right side again, winning $US20 million at the MGM Grand. Witnesses said he then went from table to table, playing eight hands at once at $US 250,000 apiece. Within 40 minutes he was $US 25 million ahead, having apparently won 20 hands on the trot. After this, he left a $US1 million tip to be split among the dealers.
But even when losing, he could be remarkably free with his chips. Sometimes he would pay cocktail waitresses $US 50,000 to sit with him while he gambled. Other times, he would pay girls similar amounts of money to dance with him all night. In one of the most frequently told stories, he bought a Mercedes-Benz during a visit to Las Vegas and gave it to a valet parker.
Another time, as legend has it, he paid off the $US 150,000 home mortgage of a female croupier who was deeply in debt.
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ITA BUTTROSE -- PACKER'S ONE TRUE LOVE
[Sun-Herald, July 30, 2007]
Legendary Australian publisher Ita Buttrose has received unwanted attention after being named as Kerry Packer's former mistress in not one but two newly released books, Gerald Stone's Who Killed Channel 9? and Paul Barry's updated The Rise And Rise Of Kerry Packer, out this week. Buttrose did not dismiss rumours of a relationship with Packer when approached by this column last week. "I've never subscribed to the belief of raking up dead people's pasts as they are not here to give their version of events that may or may not have happened or defend their reputation. I have no comment to make about either Mr Stone or Mr Barry's books," she said.
Sources who knew the couple during their passionate affair in the 1970s claim that Buttrose was the love of Packer's life and he, the love of hers. Contrary to Stone's assertions that the affair was torrid and brief, we are informed the relationship lasted for much of that decade -- initially as an office flirtation and later as much more. Packer talked of leaving his wife, Ros, for the dynamic and ambitious young Cleo editor. By 1975, it was game on for Packer, 38, and the 33-year-old Buttrose.
"In Ita he found a kindred spirit, a firebrand with as much passion for the [media] industry he loved as he had," one source recalled last week. "By the time Ita was on television fronting commercials for The Australian Women's Weekly, the affair was very serious." The couple's relationship was well known to Packer's most trusted friends, particularly those with whom he socialised in London during that decade.
"He soon proposed marriage and, despite rumours to the contrary, she accepted him. But she was less committed to the idea of marriage than he was. She already had one failed marriage behind her," we were told. That marriage to Alasdair Macdonald produced Buttrose's two children, Ben and Kate. "After Ita accepted Kerry's proposal, Kerry told his wife Ros, who knew about the affair anyway. She threatened to take half his wealth and deny him custody of his children, Gretel and James. Kerry found himself weighing up the loss of half of his riches and the loss of his children and finally had a change of heart. He didn't want to lose either."
Buttrose moved on quickly after their relationship ended, marrying publicist Peter Sawyer in 1979. That marriage lasted only 12 months. Sources said last week that Buttrose's decision to marry Sawyer devastated Packer. His jealousy was so fierce, he and Buttrose remained estranged virtually until his death.
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