Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

After reading Phil Weiss’ take on the AJC 2007 survey, whose findings about the I-P conflict disturbed me, I wanted to revisit the issue which I’ve already covered in this post.

Phil correctly notes no in depth questions about the Occupation like: do you view the settlements as an obstacle to peace? Should Israel relinquish most of the settlements if there was a chance for a genuine opportunity for peace?

But another absence from the survey glared at me as well. Phil correctly notes its obsession with anti-Semitism, which isn’t surprising since this currently mostly hackneyed phenomenon seems to be the single factor that props up the work of most mainstream Jewish organizations and gives them their raison d’etre. But if we’re going to talk about hatred of Jews shouldn’t we explore Jewish attitudes toward others? Why no questions about attitudes toward Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics or immigrants? All of these are very hot issues in political life in this country. The survey’s utter disinterest in them shows, I think, a fundamental unwillingness to look at ourselves and any role we might play in maintaining a destructive status quo either in the Middle East or in relation to our fellow citizens.

tags american-jewish-committee-2007-survey, anti-semitism, jewish-attitudes-toward-muslims, mondoweiss, philip-weiss

Abe Foxman put his foot in it during his interview with the Jewish Forward discussing the Armenian genocide. His tortured defense of his actions continue to ring false. First he claims he didn’t make a mistake when everybody and their bubbe knows he did. In this explanation, he makes it appear that the Armenian community, rather than historical truth or moral justice, forced him to concede to using the word “genocide:”

We’ve never denied that there was a massacre, we [just] didn’t engage in the g-word,” Foxman said. “Now, they’ve insisted on the g-word. Fine.

The problem for Abe Foxman is that everything is a political consideration and nothing is a moral consideration. For him, there are interests, but not values. How can the ADL continue to allow itself to be led by such a morally vacuous personality?

And furthermore, Foxman makes the astounding contention that the Armenian genocide is not an issue with which the ADL should deal:

I still don’t think it’s our issue, but so many people believe it is our issue… I said okay,” Foxman said.

Not “our issue?” If genocide is not an issue for the ADL then what is? What were they created for? If Leo Frank’s lynching was worth protesting in 1913 why isn’t Armenian genocide?

I can’t begin to explain how misplaced Abe Foxman’s priorities are. At least one senior ADL leader understands this:

“Are we an organization of principle? Are we an organization that will stand up for what’s right and wrong? Or are our principles put through some kind of filter that involves Israel’s self-interest?”, said a member of ADL’s national executive committee who requested anonymity. There is “that subtext here.”

tags abe-foxman-accepts-armenian-genocide, adl, anti-semitism, leo-frank

Could you make this up even if you tried REALLY hard?

A leader of the Texas House of Representatives apologized Friday for circulating an appeal to ban the teaching of evolution as derived from “Rabbinic writings” and other Jewish texts.

“I had no intention to offend anyone,” said the lawmaker, Warren Chisum, a Republican from the Panhandle who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Mr. Chisum said he had received the information from Ben Bridges, a Georgia legislator, and “I never took it very seriously.”

In fact, he took it so ‘unseriously’ that he wrote a personal memo about this drivel and circulated it to all the other Texas state representatives:

On Feb. 9, Mr. Chisum, 68, an 18-year veteran of the House and second in power only to the speaker, Tom Craddick, sent a memorandum to all 149 other state representatives in Texas.

The one-page memorandum, marked “From: Representative Ben Bridges,” declared that “tax-supported evolution science” was based on religion and therefore unlawful under the United States Constitution.

It continued, “Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called secular evolution science is the Big Bang 15-billion-year alternate ‘creation scenario’ of the Pharisee Religion.”

“This scenario,” the memorandum stated, “is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings on the mystic ‘holy book’ kabbala dating back at least two millennia.”

The memorandum said that inquiries could be directed to the Fair Education Foundation, a group in Georgia, and gave its Web address, fixedearth.com. The site features items belittling the Holocaust and portraying Earth as stationary as depicted in the Bible, with Jewish thinkers like “Kabbalist physicist Albert Einstein” responsible for contrary scientific theories.

Representative Bridges, a five-term Republican from Cleveland, Ga., northeast of Atlanta, did not return calls to his legislative office on Friday.

I’ll bet he didn’t.

The president of the Fair Education Foundation, Marshall Hall, said he had sent the memorandum to Mr. Chisum at the request of Mr. Bridges, whom he called a longtime friend and supporter. Mr. Chisum, in a letter accompanying the memorandum, said he distributed the memorandum “on behalf of” Representative Bridges. He said he knew Mr. Bridges through the National Conference of State Legislatures “and greatly appreciate his information on this important topic.”

The memorandum was condemned by some Texas lawmakers and by the Anti-Defamation League.

In a letter to Mr. Chisum dated Feb. 14, Mark L. Briskman, director of the league’s North Texas-Oklahoma regional office, said, “We are shocked and appalled that you would share this outrageous anti-Semitic material with your colleagues in the Texas House.”

Questioned Friday about his apparent endorsement of the memorandum, Mr. Chisum appeared to back away from it. “I read it, but he didn’t ask me to edit his memo,” he said. “It does not reflect my opinion.”

Come to think of it, I’ve got a few questions about Darwin’s theory myself. It declares survival of the fittest, right? But wouldn’t you think someone who was dumb as a post wouldn’t be fit to survive? Yet apparently this guy’s genetic material has made it all the way from the beginning of time to this generation. It’s truly a wonder and gives me some doubt about ol’ Charles’ theory. I’m just glad he didn’t call it “survival of the dumbest.”

In a letter to Mr. Briskman, Mr. Chisum wrote, “I sincerely regret that I did not take the time to carefully review these materials and recognize that I may have hurt or offended some groups including some of my dear friends.”

Mr. Chisum said he had “engaged” a Jewish colleague, former Representative Steven D. Wolens, a Democrat, to intercede on his behalf.

Mr. Wolens, a lawyer who is married to the mayor of Dallas, Laura Miller, confirmed that he would [!!!!]. “I always found him respectful to me and people of the Jewish faith,” Mr. Wolens said.
–source: New York Times

To which I would say: “You MUST be kidding.” What self-respecting Jew would defend a piece of dreck like this??? And how, in heaven’s name can you call this “respectful to the Jewish faith???”

Josh Marshall notes that Ben Bridges is chair of the “retirement committee” in the Georgia legislature. Is that foreshadowing or what?

I do hope–though given the political landscape in Georgia and Texas it is unlikely–that by tomorrow or next week there will be an empty chair in each of the respective legislatures in which these two bozos sit. If their State Republican parties had brains in their heads they would rush these guys out of town by the back door and make sure they were never heard from again. I guess it’s more likely they’ll erect a statue in their honor.

I am Jewish and someone who has studied Kabbalah in a university setting. I’m offended on behalf of my religion and this wonderful sacred tract.

I know there are many good folk in each of these states, but since when does baiting Jews and those who support evolution amount to a political strategy for the Republican Party??

The Houston Chronicle offers the memo and cover letter for your delectation and in all their godly glory.

tags anti-semitism, ben-bridges, darwin, evolution, fair-education-foundation, kabbala, marshall-hall, survival-of-the-fittest, warren-chisum

James Traub has written a penetrating NY Times Magazine profile of Abe Foxman awkwardly called Does Abe Foxman Have an Anti-Anti-Semite Problem. Abe will NOT be happy. In fact, I’m sure Traub’s received calls from the Man Himself on High complaining about the ‘unfair, biased’ portrayal of him. For me, I think Traub is on the money and applaud this effort at placing into context the Jewish survivalist mentality of much of the conservative national Jewish leadership when it comes to issues like Israel or anti-Semitism.

Much of Foxman’s alarmist perspective on the subject derives from being a Holocaust survivor and child of survivors. It also didn’t help that his nanny saved his life while raising him Catholic and that, after the war, she refused to give him up without a fight with his parents. This has to have contributed to the making of the bellicose, hectoring, and anti-Semitism obsessed Jewish leader he has become.

The first glimpse Traub presents of Foxman begins with this quotation:

“…Never before has there been such a threat to Israel and to the Jewish people from a geopolitical conglomerate — the Arab world, with Iran, with Hamas, with Hezbollah, with its position that it will not recognize Israel. The vise is closing.”

So begins the grandiosity of thought and overeager melodrama of professional anti-Semitism macher, Abe Foxman. “Never before has there been such a threat to Israel and to the Jewish people from a geopolitical conglomerate.” Oh really. Does that include the Axis powers during WWII??

We should add here that Abe isn’t the only Jewish leader who resorts to grandstanding and scenery chewing when it comes to exhorting Jews to watch their back from ‘die anti-Semiten.’ Bibi Netanyahu is another one who does this extremely well. He had his audience at the recent GA meeting half-expecting Adolph Hitler to step onto the podium to reinforce his charges that as far as Israel-Iran relations, it is 1938 and we are in Munich with Neville Chamberlain. Will we succumb to the dictator’s wiles or will we hold fast?

Who believes this stuff? Well, precisely the aging, wealthy and right-wing Jewish monied classes who are the ADL’s, and Foxman’s bread and butter. I’m not exactly a spring chicken myself (though not yet of retirement age as many of ADL’s donors are), but the melodramatic style of Jewish leadership leaves me utterly cold. It reminds me of what Salo Baron, the dean of Jewish historians, used to call the “lachrymose theory” of Jewish history. In other words, the distorted notion that Jewish identity is all suffering, all pain, all anti-Semitism and cataclysmic disasters.

Lately, of course, the organizations comprising the Israel lobby have been on the defensive after sharp attacks via the Walt-Mearsheimer essay and Jimmy Carter’s new book, alongside Israel’s military defeat in Lebanon and its ineffectual Gaza campaign. AIPAC’s ignominious defeat in its campaign for the Palestinian Anti-Terror Bill, at the hands of three small dovish Jewish groups, has added to the dying sense of impregnability the lobby used to possess. It is in this context that Traub’s article continues and expands upon this stream of political discourse by focussing on Foxman as one of the lobby’s key leaders. I wish someone would do the same for Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of President’s of Major Jewish Organizations.

Traub asks Foxman whether he understands the feelings of suspicion and mistrust with which opponents of the lobby like Tony Judt or Walt-Mearsheimer greet his efforts at managing and controlling the political debate:

Abe Foxman isn’t doing the stifling — he’s the one being muzzled with the charge of stifling. But the stifling won’t work: Foxman says he will not be intimidated; people all across the Islamic world already believe every kind of pernicious fantasy about the Jews and about Israel. And now here come credentialed American — even Jewish! — scholars saying, as he put it, “The Jews control the media, control the government, control Congress.” The Jewish people, Foxman said gravely, “have paid a very, very significant price for that canard.” And yes, he’s willing to shray gevalt until he’s blue in the face.

So what’s the problem, the thing Abe Foxman is fighting or Foxman himself?

That’s rich. Foxman doesn’t want to control anyone, not Judt, not Walt, not Mearsheimer. Rather, it is they who want to stifle Foxman. Is this guy real? How do you stifle the flamboyant head of a $50-million organization? Do the anti-Lobby intellectuals have access to that kind of cash to either advance their own views or “stifle” Foxman’s. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course, they don’t. This to me is akin to Goliath complaining that David was bullying HIM.

It’s also important to note how Foxman willfully distorts the true views of Judt, et al in his fake recapitulation of their alleged agenda (”Jews control the media, control the government, control Congress”). This is of course NOT at all what they are charging. Rather, they are charging something more subtle, more nuanced, but no less pernicious. Of course, Jews don’t CONTROL the media, government or Congress. But a certain subset of Jews, our national leaders, wield amazing powers to manage, manipulate and shape the national discourse related to Israel.

Here is how my friend, M.J. Rosenberg, a 20 year plus former veteran of Congress and AIPAC, describes the way the lobby’s power operates in Congress:

“The way it works is that most members of Congress feel that saying things on the Middle East that are not strictly the Aipac line will get them in more trouble than it’s worth.” Rosenberg notes that legislation on the Middle East generally consists of symbolic statements, like the recent Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which are “written by Aipac.” No one, Rosenberg says, “advocates anti-Israel policies,” and even the modest American Task Force on Palestine is “closer to what the American Jewish community supports” — a two-state solution, the rollback of settlements in the occupied territories — “than any of these right-wing Jewish groups are.” Rosenberg describes the attitude of most legislators as a shortsighted “path of least resistance,” which, he says he fears, will do real harm to Israel in the long run.

There you have it: fear, intimidation. The anticipation that every editor, publisher, media executive, Congressmember, and even President must face when they contemplate airing views or stories that might be considered ‘anti-Israel’ by the Abe Foxmans of this world. For a perfect example of how this works that encompasses both Congress and the media, see my stories on the pressure brought to bear on NPR to “stifle” its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Traub believes that Foxman only began to make his mark once he abandoned the ADL’s traditional engagement with issues like Black-Jewish dialogue and reverted to a more restricted “Jewish defense” mode:

The A.D.L.’s world became increasingly binary — “good for the Jews,” “bad for the Jews.” This change had the effect of moving the organization, as it had other mainstream Jewish bodies, to the right. Foxman upset many of his colleagues by extending a welcome to Christian conservatives, whose leaders tended to be strongly pro-Israel even as they spoke in disturbing terms of America’s “Christian” identity. Foxman was willing to cut them some slack on issues of social justice, and even of church-state relations, in the name of solidarity toward Israel.

I call this the Mephistophelean moral compromise. How is it possible that a powerful religious force that is so inimical to Jewish values and issues Jews hold dear, can become Foxman’s great ally in his war on Israel’s alleged Arab-extremist enemies? Doesn’t he have his priorities completely askew??

I was tickled by Foxman’s rhetorical blunders which Traub manges to point out without appearing too partisan:

[Foxman] did believe that it was wrong to give really evil figures, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…at present the world’s most famously anti-Semitic head of state, the legitimacy of a meeting, as U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and the Council on Foreign Relations recently had. I asked if Annan also shouldn’t have met with Saddam Hussein. “There is a difference between Ahmadinejad and even a Saddam Hussein,” Foxman rejoined. “Here is a man who says time and again, ‘I will wipe this nation’ ” — Israel — “ ‘off the face of the earth,’ and says afterward that the Holocaust never happened. This is not ‘Israel as victim’; this is the destruction of Jewish identity.”

What is interesting about this interaction is that Traub is trying to discover whether Foxman is willing to attack Annan. Foxman refuses to take the bait. But, he does something far worse by making the fatuous statement that Ahmadinehad is worse for the Jews than Hussein. Does he seriously believe that Hussein did not want to “wipe Israel off the face of the earth?” Just how, precisely, are they ideologically different in terms of their danger to Israel or Jews??

What follows is one of the dramatic high-points of Traub’s profile. In it, Foxman continues the discourse from the previous quoted passage, rising into an incantatory state of righteous indignation. Note Traub’s penetrating portrait of an over-the-top personality type and his delicious parting shot at the end:

Foxman made a beseeching gesture, his fingertips cupped before his mouth. “Plus, it has happened before,” he went on. “It’s not an abstraction. By a man, by a government, who aids, abets, fuels suicide bombers, makes them martyrs, celebrates them, who asks for volunteers from his country, and I don’t know what they have, 40,000 now, who have volunteered in future to go kill Jews!” Foxman was now shouting at me across the table. “And you arm yourself to take out as many Jews as possible!” Foxman’s hands were wheeling in circles before him; this possible Holocaust, so remote to many of us, seemed to rise up before him with a terrible clarity. “Oh, my God!” he cried, as if reeling in horror before the vision he had himself conjured.

Foxman really does dwell imaginatively in the Holocaust.

These last few lines are the “money” passage in the article: “…This possible Holocaust, so remote to many of us, seemed to rise up before him with a terrible clarity.” There you have the problem in a nutshell. The majority, perhaps even vast majority of American Jews, do not share Foxman’s vision of the coming calamity for Jews. But nevertheless, Foxman sees it as his duty to make Jews and the world see what he sees. It doesn’t matter to him that very few except his chosen acolytes and ADL members share his view. It only matters that he continue to gin up his troops on fear, hysteria and doomsaying. For that is what stokes the fundraising coffers.

Cool, calm analysis. Rational discourse. Finding ways to compromise with one’s enemies. All of this sounds nice, but doesn’t ‘pay the bills.’ It doesn’t have the fearful, apocalyptic tone of a real stem-winding sermon on anti-Semitism, and the beasts who are coming to get us if we don’t watch out.

It’s really a stylistic and generational divide in addition to a political one. Foxman of the Holocaust generation, not to make too grand a comparison in his favor, is something like Moses and the generation who wandered in the wilderness. None of them were allowed over the mountain to see the Land of Israel which their descendants would inherit. Just so, Foxman will never be the one to lead an organization that sees Israel at peace with its neighbors. The very idea is anathema to every fiber of his being. He thrives on ethnic discord and tribal conflict. Talk of peace or Arab-Jewish coexistence if something alien and even frightening for Foxman’s generation. One hopes of course, that a new generation will arise which “knew not” Foxman and his phobic obsessions. Then we might regain some sense of equilibrium in American Jewish relations with Israel, Muslims and Arabs. It can’t come a moment too soon.

I thought Traub’s “Foxman really does dwell imaginatively in the Holocaust” was the coup de grace for poor Abe. How could he live it down?

Returning to the theme of Foxman’s rhetorical-analytical blunders, Traub notes another one here (italics are mine):

In his most recent book — “Never Again?” — he makes the stupefyingly counterintuitive claim that high rates of Jewish assimilation are a reaction to discriminatory treatment, rather than a proof of the opposite. “One out of three people in these United States believes that the Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the U.S.,” he growled. “That’s a classic anti-Semitic canard.” And yet a Pew Global Attitudes Poll in 2004 found that anti-Semitism had declined in much of the West and was lowest in the United States. A Pew poll last year found American support for Israel as strong now as at any time in the last 13 years.

That’s right, you heard the Man right: anti-Semitism is so bad and it’s so damn hard for the Jews here that we’re all leaving the faith in droves. Is the man in his right mind? If all he needs to do is throw red meat to his insular, fearful true-blue believers in order to maintain his sway, then I suppose there is a twisted method to this madness. But the point of it all escapes me. Or I should say it leaves me cold.

When the NY Times reporter asks the ADL leader about his role in denying Tony Judt the right to speak at the New York Polish consulate, Foxman goes apoplectic. He detests the charge that the ADL is trying to ’suppress’ debate:

That, Abe Foxman would say, is “abject nonsense.” The A.D.L., he says, doesn’t operate that way; it seeks balance, not suppression. Foxman told me that he believes he’s challenging his adversaries to a debate, not shouting them down. But, I asked, isn’t slinging the dread charge of anti-Semitism at people like Jimmy Carter and Tony Judt and Mearsheimer and Walt really a way of choking off debate? No, it isn’t, Foxman said. This was at our lunch; Foxman got so exercised that he began to choke on his gratin. I asked if it was really right to call Carter, the president who negotiated the Camp David accords, an anti-Semite.

“I didn’t call him an anti-Semite.”

“But you said he was bigoted. Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No. ‘Bigoted’ is you have preconceived notions about things.”

The argument that the Israel lobby constricted debate was itself bigoted, he said.

“But several Jewish officials I’ve talked to say just that.”

“They’re wrong.”

“Are they bigoted?”

Foxman didn’t want to go there. He said that he had never heard any serious person make that claim.

Thankfully, in the dim recesses of his mind he realized that calling dovish Jewish leaders “bigoted” would not look good in the pages of the New York Times. But how ’bout that artificial differentiation between “bigoted” and “anti-Semitic?” Foxman doesn’t say Carter is anti-Semitic. No, of course he doesn’t.

What Ol’ Abe doesn’t realize is that “bigots” who “have preconceived notions about things” can also be Jewish leaders who believe that virtually all Arabs and Muslims are evil and enemies of Israel and all Jews. We owe a debt of gratitude to James Traub for providing the raw material in this profile by which we might judge the man and his prejudices.

There is another rather remarkable statement from the “wise-one” that clarifies his lack of faith in our American democracy:

John Stuart Mill’s dictum [was] that in a democratic society the free market of ideas ultimately sifts through falsehood to produce truth. Abe Foxman says this is naïve…Experience — primal experience — has taught him that the truth does not win on its own merits; the market for falsehood is just too powerful.

Abe Foxman just doesn’t trust democracy. What would he call his vision? Democracy plus? Democracy with a menacing face (if you get out of line, that is)? This is one of the key differences between these conservative Jewish leaders and younger (than Foxman) doves like me. We trust to the marketplace of ideas to eventually consign aberrant political ideas to the dustbin of history. We trust that in the long haul those political ideas which have the greatest merit (like the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace) will rise to the top and subsume all other hateful nationalist ideologies. Abe doesn’t trust that view. He’d rather manage, massage and shape the debate with the club he tends to use. Does anyone still believe his statement that he doesn’t believe in “suppressing” views he holds abhorrent??

Traub makes a telling analogy between the Foxman and Bush-Cheney world-view that envisions enemies from within supposedly chipping away at religious or national identity:

What is the difference between this claim [that our enemies take comfort from the division sown by critics of Israel or U.S. foreign policy] and the accusation, a favorite of Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, that critics of the war in Iraq, or of the war on terror, or of homeland-security preparations, are emboldening the enemy? And isn’t that claim, too, designed to suppress debate, or at the very least to make the critic think long and hard before opening his mouth? Is that a price worth paying? Put otherwise: Should we make the existential choice to err on the side of fear, or of hope — a prudent, watchful hope, that is?

I know which side I’m on. Which side are you?

Traub closes with a stinging rebuke which questions his subject’s relevance to current and future Jewish discourse:

Foxman is an anachronism. The demographic of which he is a member — Holocaust survivor — is rapidly disappearing. Younger people don’t know quite what to make of him. In a recent column in The Jewish Journal, David A. Lehrer, formerly the head of the A.D.L.’s Los Angeles office, observed that Jews are now the most widely admired religious group in America, as well as the most successful, and lamented that Jewish leaders — Foxman specifically — continue to harp on Jewish “insecurity” and the threat of anti-Semitism. Lehrer says that when he raised his view that the A.D.L. had to learn to speak to this new, confident but less affiliated generation of Jews, Foxman dismissed it out of hand. The generational question does not interest him. “It’s not my job to judge whether they should feel beleaguered or not,” Foxman snapped when I raised the subject. “I do feel. And I’ve got news for you: Every one of them, in their maturing process, will experience this.”

So, if we just get old enough and wise enough, we’ll “get” where Foxman is coming from. I don’t know whether to feel sad for him in his intellectually delusional thinking; or to rail against his willful ignorance of what most American Jews actually believe.

tags american-jewish-support-for-israel, anti-semitism, israel-lobby, james-traub-profile-of-abe-foxman, new-york-times-magazine, tony-judt, walt-mearsheimer

It is important when hatred strikes, as it did yesterday here in Seattle, to invoke the dead, to celebrate them as human beings, to appreciate what they brought to life so that he may feel all the more what has been lost. And we also must note the killer because he is a human being too, though a destructive and malevolent one. Just as there is tragedy on both sides of the Israeli-Arab conflict, so there is a double tragedy in Seattle.

The Seattle Times profiles both the dead and the killer today.

Pam Waechter, 58, was born in Minnesota and raised Lutheran. Then she met Bill Waechter and when they married she converted to Judaism. It is terribly ironic that a woman who elects to convert to Judaism in order to share the joy and fate of the Jewish people should pay the ultimate price for that commitment. They came to Seattle in 1979 where they raised two children and then divorced.

She was director of the Federation’s annual campaign. [Note: I too have been a fundraiser for two Jewish federations though I never worked at the Seattle Federation] Before that she’d worked at Jewish Family Service.

The Times provides this touching personal background about Waechter:

In both her paid and volunteer work, she was known as a mediator, always bringing a calm, balanced approach to problems.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if Pam stepped in to protect other people,” said Marshall Brumer, a past president of Temple B’nai Torah. “That’s the kind of person she was.”

At the Bellevue synagogue this morning, Rabbi James Mirel called Waechter “the most positive, optimistic person you ever met.” From the pulpit, he told the congregation, “Pam would have said, ‘You have to go on.’”

Chuck Hall, 56, of Minneapolis, explained that “no” was the one word his sister wouldn’t say. He described her as a friend to people of all ages, from 20 to 80.

She also was one of his closest friends. They talked about dating after divorce. They talked about what would happen to their children, when they died. Just last week, Hall brought up the conflict in the Middle East, asking the question: When is it ever going to end?

His sister had no answer. She only sighed.

Waechter believed in the basic goodness of people. So if the scene on Friday had unfolded elsewhere, her brother said, she would have called him right away to say: Can you imagine somebody would do that?

She would not have mentioned first the fact that the shooter was Muslim, Hall said. She was not that kind of woman.

Given family history, he said, Waechter was relieved to make it this far in life. Their mother died at age 56, of breast cancer. Waechter always saw that age as a milestone she needed to make it past.

Waechter’s funeral will be 1 p.m. Monday at Temple B’nai Torah, 15727 NE Fourth St., Bellevue, according to the synagogue. The service will be open to the public.

Naveed Haq, 30, was raised in Pasco, WA in a second-generation Pakistani-American family. The Times provides some information about his family background:

Haq’s parents were shaken by the news that their son was in custody for the shootings, said Haq’s Kennewick defense attorney, Larry Stephenson.

“I talked to his father, and his mother is crying, and they don’t know what is going on,” Stephenson said. “They are very, very shook up. They haven’t been able to reach their son.”

Haq had been charged with misdemeanor lewd conduct in Benton County for allegedly exposing himself in a public place in Kennewick, Stephenson said. He declined to elaborate. The charge is punishable by up to a year in jail.

The case had been scheduled to go to trial in Benton County District Court on Thursday, but was postponed.

Stephenson said he does not believe Haq is married or has children. Stephenson said he did not believe Haq had a job.

Haq went to college, Stephenson said, but he declined to say where.

Asked if Haq had any mental-health issues, Stephenson said he couldn’t comment. “I’m really not OK to discuss that,” he said.

Haq’s father, Mian A. Haq, was a founding member of the Islamic Centre of Tri-Cities in Richland, said center member Youseff Shehadeh. He described the younger Haq as a loner who attended holidays at the center but was barely involved in recent years.

Naveed Haq’s parents moved into a new suburb in Pasco less than three years ago after living in nearby Richland for more than a decade, said Maureen Hales, a neighbor.

Mian Haq was involved in an Islamic center in Richland, but he did not discuss his religion with his neighbors, said Hales.

She said she had not seen Naveed Haq, but found his parents and his younger brother, Hasan, to be “quite enjoyable.” The two families exchanged food, and Maureen Hales said she watches the Haqs’ house when they’re away.

Until two weeks ago, he’d lived in Everett, WA., a small city about 30 miles north of Seattle:

Naveed Haq lived in an apartment building at 2924 Nassau St. in Everett until about two weeks ago, when he abruptly left, said tenant Chris Richey. The landlady told Richey that Haq was heading to Pakistan. Richie often talked with Haq about guns and politics, though little stuck out. Richey said Haq didn’t like President Bush.

Haq told Richey he owned a .45-caliber handgun, which he kept locked up in safety deposit box.

The law-enforcement source said Haq had a license to carry a concealed weapon.

“There was something strange about him,” Richey said. “There was something about him I didn’t like.”

A law enforcement source told the Times that he had a history of mental illness. One wonders how a man with a history of mental illness can get a license to carry a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. Yet another example of rampant gun violence and the price society pays for being hijacked by the NRA. He also has a charge of lewd conduct pending against him:

Haq had been charged with misdemeanor lewd conduct in Benton County for allegedly exposing himself in a public place in Kennewick, Stephenson said.

You’ll note that the Lebanon invasion began two weeks ago just as Haq abandoned his Everett home. One wonders whether the two events might be connected. Yesterday, he made his way to the Jewish Federation headquarters with a gun. He forced his way into the building and, after telling employees he was a Muslim who was angry with Israel he began shooting. Pam Waechter, a 58 year old fundraiser for the Federation was killed and five other women were injured, three critically.

Here is what is known of his motivation for the crime:

“He said he hates Israel,” said the source, who is part of the Seattle Joint Terrorism Task Force, which was called in to help investigate the shootings.

…He told the police that it was a hostage situation and he wanted us to get our weapons out of Israel,” said one woman who heard the account from the wounded co-worker.

The Times lists this information about the wounded survivors:

One of the victims was identified by family members as 23-year-old Layla Bush. “We just heard she’s alive a minute or two ago,” said her mother, Kathryn Bush, from her home in Panama City, Fla. The other wounded victims have been identified as Carol Goldman, Dayna Klein, Christina Rexroad and Cheryl Stumbo.

Thankfully, Muslim leaders in Seattle and nationally have condemned the violence.

UPDATE

Another Seattle Times article adds this important information confirming his mental illness and his history of hatred of Jews:

Haq often talked about guns, politics and his dislike of President Bush, Richey said. Haq told Richey he owned a .45-caliber handgun, which he kept locked in a safe-deposit box.

A friend of Haq’s in Everett, who spoke on condition he not be named, said Friday night that Haq was on medication for bipolar disorder and was frustrated by his inability to find a job or a girlfriend. Haq displayed a streak of anti-Semitism, sometimes making offhand comments about Jews.

“He was a loner,” the friend said. “I was probably one of his only friends.”

Although Haq made a point of announcing his Muslim faith before opening fire Friday, he had told the friend he was not a practicing Muslim because he was turned off by the religion’s strict gender divisions.

The article also notes that the feds have apparently decided to invoke a federal hate crime which would remove it from Seattle or state jurisdiction:

A man who answered the door at the Haq family’s house Friday night said the house was a federal crime scene.

This would also feed into the Bush war on terror agenda allowing the Republicans to show how tough they are on domestic terrorism in an election year. Yes, it’s playing politics with the dead time back in D.C.

tags anti-semitism, hatred-of-israel, lebanon-invasion, naveed-haq, pamela-waechter-murdered, seattle-jewish-federation-shooting

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