TEHERAN— In a joint communiqué from the Iranian capital Prime Minister Ahmadinejad and David Duke stated that in fact the South won the Civil War in the United States, and the illusion that the North won is one more piece of evidence of the effectiveness of the international Jewish conspiracy.

JERUSALEM— Following the revelation of Reverend Al Sharpton’s ancestral relationship to segregationist Strom Thurmond, which in turn followed the revelation that former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has Jewish roots, the Journal Report has learned that Iranian Prime Minister Ahmadinejad has tried to conceal that he is a descendant of the famous Zionist Vladimir Jabotinsky’s great grandfather, who spent several years in what was then Persia. Incensed, right wing Israeli politico Avigdor Lieberman insists that the DNA readings were doctored and that Ahmadinejad’s DNA indicates he is descended from Haman the Amalekite and Jack the Ripper.

RAMALLAH— For a record breaking 300th day, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned everyone but his own party as obstacles to peace and asked for money.

HAPPY PURIM!

As all of us remember only too well, this past November a Democrat in Florida lost a close House race when 18,000 votes disappeared from paperless voting machines. But after a vigorous hue and cry among election integrity groups across the country, Florida's governor is replacing the state's paperless machines with paper ballots. Florida now joins 26 other states that require paper voting.

Too many voters, however, are still stuck with paperless voting machines that are susceptible to malfunction and to tampering. A new bill in Congress, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007, would ban paperless voting. It would require paper trails, so that if a very close election took place or if there was any question about how the election results were arrived at, all votes could be verified by the voters themselves, using the permanent paper record. The bill is sponsored by long-time voting reform advocate Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and is co-sponsored by 192 other representatives from both parties. It is the strongest paper ballot legislation ever introduced in Congress.

Besides requiring a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote in the country, the bill contains several important reforms, including making the paper ballot the ballot of record in the event of any recount or audit, requiring every voting place to offer voters emergency paper ballots immediately if voting machines break down, and improving the accessibility of election sites for voters with disabilities. An earlier version of the Holt bill was defeated last year, but with the change of leadership in Washington, the new bill has enough support to be passed this year if voting reform is placed on the Congress agenda. The approaching 2008 election creates an even greater imperative for a bipartisan effort to move this bill expeditiously through Congress during this session.

Stay tuned for further developments!

To read the Bill in its entirety, go to click here.

During the early years of the twentieth century, nearly two million ethnic Armenians were forcibly deported, and of those as many as 1.5 million men, women and children were killed. Most historians blame the Ottoman Empire for this tragedy, which succeeded in eliminating the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland. The Genocide remains one of the darkest periods in the history of modern Europe and resonates especially for Jews around the world, who relate this time to their own painfully unique understanding of the term "genocide".

The bill was brought to the House in 2006, but was tabled by then-Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL). The current bill has received support from the small Jewish community in Armenia, which has praised the resolution and expressed solidarity with the Armenians killed "because the histories of our people are similar". However, the Turkish government, which has historically refused to acknowledge the Ottoman government's implication in the annihilations and mass deportations of the Armenian people, continues to deny any responsibility for the genocide. This situation is further complicated by the political importance, among the global Jewish community, of sustaining and enhancing strong relations between the State of Israel and the Turkish government.

After weighing the conflicting issues surrounding H. Res. 106, the JSPAN Executive Committee voted on February 28 to support the bill and to urge Congress to adopt it.

To read H. Res. 106 in its entirety, click here.

JSPAN is looking for a few good men and women!!!

The Jewish Social Policy Action Network Nominating Committee is seeking the names of candidates to fill positions on our Board of Directors. If you, or someone you know, is interested in being part of this leadership effort to strengthen the progressive Jewish voice in our region, please send these names to Burt Siegel, (siegelb2@comcast.net), chair of the Nominating Committee, by March 15.

Think expansively! We all know Jewish educators, social workers, health care professionals, staff members of governmental agencies, community activists, as well as lawyers, who have a deep commitment to a just society.

Nominees do not necessarily have to have a history of involvement in Jewish organizational life.

We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you.

I spent Tuesday, February 26 in Washington lobbying for re-authorization of the Farm Bill. You ask why? Why JSPAN and MAZON–A Jewish Response to Hunger are interested in the Farm Bill? Because the Farm Bill contains the Food Stamp Program, America’s first defense against hunger, and The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP). The 2008 Budget for the Farm Bill will be determined by April 2007 and the determination of how much of that budget will be allocated to hunger will come up for a vote by September 2007.

Several other Board members of Mazon, Fran (Mrs. Stuart) Eizenstadt and Barbara (Mrs. Carl) Levin, and three staff members of Mazon were part of the lobbying team. So was Ellen Teller, Director of Government Relations for FRAC (Food Research Action Center) and over a hundred other Americans. Barbara and Ellen are two of JSPAN’s Hunger Policy Center panel of experts. All were there to urge the 110th Congress to re-authorize and adequately fund the Farm Bill.

The average food stamp benefit level of $1 per person per meal has not been updated for decades, notwithstanding inflation. Legal immigrants (who must now wait 5 years to qualify), indigent jobless people seeking employment, and working poor families with savings slightly above very outdated resource limits, do not have access to the Food Stamp Program. And only 33% of the people in food bank lines are enrolled for food stamps. So lobbying for adequate funding of the Farm Bill was essential before the Budget is enacted in April, and more lobbying will be necessary before September to make sure that adequate resources and program policy changes regarding entitlement to food stamps will be incorporated into the legislation.

I joined 18 others who run anti-hunger organizations all over Pennsylvania in meetings with Senator Casey’s staff and Senator Spector and his staff, after Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the Agriculture Committee spoke to the entire group. I asked Senator Casey’s staff to remind him that Jeff Pasek and I met with him during his campaign – he wanted advice about what issues are the most critical to Jewish voters – and we put feeding the hungry very close to the top of the list. The other Mazon people focused on the California senators, and most of the other states had at least several persons lobbying their Senators. None of the “lobbyists” were paid lobbyists. This was democracy in action. ......Ted Mann

Home schooling is one of three alternatives that state law provides to parents who do not want to send their children to public school. The plaintiffs in Combs, et al v. Homer Center School District, et al, urge that their devout Christian beliefs require that they alone have jurisdiction over their children’s K through 12 educations. But a condition of home schooling under state law is that the parent or guardian must file an advance plan showing coverage of the secular studies required by law, and a log of the actual home schooling given on those subjects. The federal district court found for the defendant school boards, and the plaintiffs appealed.

JSPAN is preparing arguments supporting the decision in favor of the school boards. The state has an important interest in monitoring home schooling in the required secular subjects, for the protection of the children and to assure that by adulthood, the students will be fully prepared to live and work in modern society and to exercise the rights and duties of citizenship. JSPAN will urge that the total exemption sought by the parents therefore must not be granted.

A few weeks ago I participated in a panel on the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The panel consisted of a Palestinian-American spokesman and me. The two of us have been teamed up before although we tend not to disagree on very much. In other words, no fireworks.

Both of us support the two-state solution and, although there are differences between us on some of the issues that divide the two sides, they are minor compared to our agreement on the central issue.

My "job" was fairly easy. Almost all the people in the audience were supporters of the two-state idea and, in fact, view it as the only possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My Palestinian friend, on the other hand, was given a rough going over by some of his fellow Palestinians who oppose the two-state solution and favor Israel's replacement by a state "for all the people who live there."

At one point a Palestinian student -- angered by my colleague's insistence that the only alternative to two-states was a war that the Palestinians would lose -- insisted that those advocating the one-state idea were not advocating violence. "We don't support violence against Israelis. The state we envision can be established without violence."

My friend laughed that off. "So you think the Knesset will decide one day to simply declare the State of Israel out of existence? And that will be that?"