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I’ve been in Alaska only a week, but I’m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia. I can’t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it’s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks. The proximity of the country from which William Seward bartered to buy Alaska for $7 million — Seward’s icebox — is so illuminating that I suddenly realize that we would commit a grave error by overestimating Russia’s economic strength. After all, it represents only 2.8 percent of the world’s G.D.P., even though its...

CHAMPION, Pa. - On the seventh anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called on Americans to renew "that spirit of service and that sense of common purpose" that followed the terrorist assaults that killed nearly 3,000 people. [...] Obama issued a morning statement on the anniversary. "On 9/11, Americans across our great country came together to stand with the families of the victims, to donate blood, to give to charity, and to say a prayer for our country. Let us renew that spirit of service and that sense of common purpose," he said. But he...

British left-wing activist Lauren Booth remains stuck in Strip after journey to 'break' Israeli naval blockade, equates situation to Holocaust, Darfur Unlike her brother-in-law, Quartet envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair, who frequently travels from Israel to the Palestinian territories and back, Lauren Booth has found herself stuck in the Gaza Strip. The British left-wing activist arrived in the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave as part of the dozens of 'Free Gaza' activists who set out on two boats from Cyprus last month with the intent of "breaking" the Israeli naval blockade imposed on the Strip. Booth is one of the...

Israelis and Palestinians have never been closer to making strategic decisions than they are today, and at the end of the day, each side wants to win a little more than the other, Sheikh Abdallah Nimr Darwish, founder of the Islamic Movement, told President Shimon Peres on Tuesday. "But the Palestinians have nothing left to offer Israel," he added. Darwish spoke at the traditional Iftar meal for leaders of Israel's Arab communities hosted by President Shimon Peres during Ramadan. "The Palestinians can't give up any more," said Darwish, without elaborating on what they have already ceded. There was agreement on...

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right. So why do it? It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're...

A Jewish Democratic leader says he will decline invitations to future Chabad-Lubavitch events in the nation's capital because of its "partisan activities." National Jewish Democratic Council executive director Ira Forman will skip the events because “certain Chabad associated individuals and institutions” have been “taking part in partisan activties” in the last three election cycles. “I currently do not feel that it is proper for a NJDC representative to give a ‘bi-partisan hechsher’ to your events,” wrote Forman in an e-mailed letter to American Friends of Lubavitch Washington director Rabbi Levi Shemtov that was obtained by JTA. Forman was upset most...

DOTHAN, Ala. - Larry Blumberg is looking for a few good Jews to move to his corner of the Bible Belt. Blumberg is chairman of an organization offering Jewish families as much as $50,000 to relocate to Dothan, an overwhelmingly Christian town of 58,000 that calls itself the Peanut Capital of the World. Get involved at Temple Emanu-El and stay at least five years, the group's leaders say, and the money doesn't have to be repaid. More Jews are living in the South than ever — about 386,000 at last count in 2001, according to Stuart Rockoff, a historian at...

This just in: Even the Lord has abandoned the desperate, shameful Right This just in: Hurricane of delicious irony slams Republican National Convention, flooding the streets of Minneapolis/St. Paul with rivers of savage hypocrisy as levees of evangelical denial and sexual confusion overflow into the streets, leaving stunned party members scrambling in vain for shaky moral high ground. Meanwhile, clever looters smash windows of opportunity and steal valuable quips about underage sex and teen pregnancy, as everyone gets a very unsettling if not downright weird taste of warped pro-gun anti-choice elk-kabob conservative Alaskan family values. YouTube at 11. Yes, the...

Los Angeles-based director Elan Frank met Alaska's governor, Republican vice-presidential hopeful several months ago while filming documentary about extraordinary women, and was hooked "Sarah Palin is a very special woman. She has a tranquility about her, no matter what the situation is," this is how Elan Frank, a California-based Israeli filmmaker, chooses to describe the Republican Party's newly chosen vice-presidential hopeful. Frank shadowed Palin, who is the presiding governor of Alaska, for three days some three months ago, as part of a documentary he made about extraordinary women around the world. Frank, 52, has been living in Los Angeles for...

Upon returning from the Democratic Convention in Denver we find a political landscape that has drastically changed. In the course of just one week Sen. Barack Obama picked Sen. Joseph Biden as his vice presidential nominee while Sen. John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. These two picks say a great deal about the judgment of each presidential candidate and about their understanding of the American Jewish community. Biden, of course, was the more conventional pick - especially for the Jewish community. The senior senator from Delaware is one of the most well-known and respected...

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian archaeologists said Wednesday they had found the long-lost capital of the Khazar kingdom in southern Russia, a breakthrough for research on the ancient Jewish state. "This is a hugely important discovery," expedition organiser Dmitry Vasilyev told AFP by telephone from Astrakhan State University after returning from excavations near the village of Samosdelka, just north of the Caspian Sea. "We can now shed light on one of the most intriguing mysteries of that period -- how the Khazars actually lived. We know very little about the Khazars -- about their traditions, their funerary rites, their culture," he...

Former state representative and Broward county commissioner Ben Graber is blasting U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, as an "embarrassment to Jews.'' Graber , son of Holocaust survivors, is challenging Wexler in congressional District 19, and is running as an independent candidate. He took issue with Wexler for dissing Sen. John McCain's vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. According to Graber: "Wexler immediately condemned her as a supporter of a Nazi sympathizer because she wore a Pat Buchanan button ... when he visited her town.'' Graber said Wexler's "behavior'' is "not only embarrassing to the Jews, but...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The blogs are alive with the sound of Sarah. Republican candidate John McCain's staffers may deplore the online rumor mill that forced them to announce the pregnancy of newly minted running mate Sarah Palin's 17-year-old daughter. But experts have some perhaps unwelcome advice: Get used to it. "It used to be that a rumor would float across your desk and you'd say, 'That's just so outrageous we're not even going to respond to it,'" said Republican strategist Todd Harris, a former McCain spokesman. "But nowadays you really have to push back forcefully against almost every single bit...

An online prediction market weighs in on whether VP candidate Sarah Palin will be dropped from the Republican ticket. NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Now the Democrats aren't the only ones who can try to capitalize on the negative buzz growing around Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the prospective Republican VP candidate. Intrade, an online prediction market based in Dublin, created a contract Tuesday morning on the likelihood that John McCain will drop Palin as his running mate. After opening at a probability of just 3%, the odds on Palin being cut from the ticket climbed to 18% around 9 a.m. and...

While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi — a fact that has gone largely unnoticed. Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side, are first cousins once removed. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister. Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) is chief rabbi at the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago....

VP candidate’s inexperience calls attention to the fact that Obama is no better Published: 09.02.08, 12:02 / Israel Opinion A distinguished group of Israeli lecturers and their colleagues at US universities sent me an email against “McCain’s dangerous choice.” They were referring to Sarah Palin, Alaska’s governor, who McCain chose as his running mate. The email is being distributed online by followers of the MoveOn movement, a leftist American intellectual organization whose attitude to Israel is rather hostile. Palin’s candidacy has irritated many among the American leftist camp, and they have been responding like a child who has seen an...

(IsraelNN.com) Republican vice presidential candidate Governor Sarah Palin sports an Israeli flag in her lapel and displays an Israel flag in her office window despite the tiny Jewish population in her state. Republicans say "that says it all" concerning what they charge is Democratic propaganda that she once backed Pat Buchanan, whose name is anathema to most Jews. Florida Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida came out swinging at Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain immediately after he named Gov. Palin as her running mate. He accused her of backing 'Nazi sympathizer" Pat Buchanan in a previous election and said...

Sarah Palin used to wrestle kodiak bears in Alaskan bare knuckles fight clubs. Sarah Palin once bagged a caribou by staring it down until it died. Sarah Palin turned down a job as skipper of a Deadliest Catch boat because it wasn't challenging enough Sarah Palin fishes salmon by convincing them it's in their interest to jump into the boat. Sarah Palin once guided Santa's sleigh through an Alaskan blizzard with the light from her smile. Chuck Norris wishes he was Sarah Palin trapped in a man's body. Sarah Palin paid her way through school by hunting for yeti pelts...

WINNIPEG — A Jewish human rights organization says it is being unfairly targeted in a discrimination complaint that it can’t possibly defend. Legal counsel for B’nai Brith Canada said the organization has been dogged by a four-year-old complaint to the Manitoba Human Rights Commission where specifics of the alleged wrongdoing have not been spelled out and the complainant never witnessed the alleged incident. ‘‘We’re involved in shadow-boxing,’’ lawyer David Matas said Thursday of B’nai Brith’s attempts to defend a complaint of discrimination. ‘‘It’s been 4 1/2 years and we don’t understand why this (complaint) hasn’t been dismissed as frivolous,’’ he...

Alaska- In light of recent media reports attempting to connect Republican VP nominee Gov. Sarah Palin with controversial historian and Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan, VIN News has learned that the Alaska governor has demonstrated strong support for Alaska’s Jewish community. In particular, Gov. Palin signed a resolution in June of 2008 recognizing Israel’s 60th anniversary and the unique relationship between Alaska and the Jewish State, especially the fact that Alaska Airlines played a critical role in the rescue of 40,000 Yemenite Jews in 1948 and 1949. Chabad of Anchorage’s Rabbi Yosef Greenberg had this to tell VIN News: “Gov. Palin...