We urge our members to call their senators immediately to vote against the nomination. Click here

For a full text of the JSPAN resolution, click here.

We hope you will come to a community briefing and call to action on the Darfur Crisis on Monday, January 23rd. The program is at 7:00pm and will be held at Congregation Rodef Shalom (615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia).

The speakers are Ruth Messinger, President and Executive Director of the World Jewish Service, and Fatima Haroun, a representative of the Darfurian community. The program is sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council.

Since 9/11, the Bush administration has engaged in unprecedented violations of liberties, including approving torture and suspending the Constitution through indefinite detentions without judicial review. Each time the violations of rights have come to light, the administration has defended its actions by saying they were essential for national security, they were technically legal, and those who revealed the misconduct and criticize it endanger the country.

Predictably, this is exactly what the President has said since the New York Times revealed that he authorized the National Security Agency to monitor, without judicial warrants, some Americans’ conversations with those in foreign countries.

Not only do these arguments have no merit. They miss the crucial point: The Constitution is a reminder that the ends don’t justify some means, and warrantless spying on Americans’ conversations just isn’t acceptable.

Steven Spielberg's "Munich" -- a film that should be on everyone's must-see list -- addresses two questions about war. The first is whether a particular tactic (in the case of "Munich," targeted assassination) is an effective deterrent to terrorism. The second is whether, effective or not, the use of the tactic is morally defensible.

The same two questions framed the debate here in the United States over the use of torture. The Bush administration argued that it needs the authority to use physical torture in specific life and death situations. Senator John McCain (along with all but eight of his Senate colleagues) disagreed. McCain, who was himself a victim of torture during his years as a POW in Vietnam, believes torture is wrong and that it doesn't work anyway.

The torture question, not surprisingly, is one that Israel has confronted over the years. Terrorist attacks are a fairly new phenomenon here but in Israel they have been a fact of life since the state was founded, and even before. Israel has had to confront both Arab and Jewish terrorists and remains on guard against both.

Israelis have faced the key question raised by defenders of torture: is it not legitimate to use any means available to extract information about an imminent attack if you have someone in custody who might have information that would enable an attack to be foiled?