Why is this night different from all other nights? This night we celebrate liberty, not just for us but for all people. This night will be different because it must be different, for we are free but the world is not yet whole.

So we gather this night to offer hope for the future. In the nights to come, may those who are hungry and homeless join us at our table. And we say,

Why is this night different from all others? This night we pledge to fight hunger, for our tradition - and our freedom - demand it.

Baruch elokeinu sheb'tuvo he'vianu v'kizanu l'mitzvat matan mazon.
Blessed is our G-d through whose goodness we have been brought to the privilege of sharing our food.

MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, 1990 South Bundy Drive, Suite 260, Los Angeles, CA 90025-5232
tel: (310) 442-0020, e-mail: mazonmail@mazon.org, www.mazon.org

Passover enjoins us to both hope and responsibility.

Do you still believe in the possibility of a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Do you live inside that hope — act from within that hope — with drive, determination, and faith that your hope will be redeemed?

Each year we reenact the capacity to break the bonds of slavery and to pass into a new and holy destiny. In this imagined crossing from bondage to redemption, we recall 2000 years of persecution and survival. We recall Israel's rise from the ashes of the Holocaust — for many contemporary Jews, the consummate Exodus from Egypt.

Within a century, our people erected impressive institutions of state in the wake of near total decimation — transformed nightmare atrocity into the realization of an ancient dream — a marvel even for the most dubious and critical among us of the nation-building project. And yet how many of us, wherever we stand politically, have given up hope of transforming Israel's impasse with its neighbors?

It is Passover, and it is time to renew our hope. It is time to live inside our hope — and to act from within that hope, accepting agency and responsibility for our capacity to pass into a new destiny, to relinquish the self-defeating narratives and actions that keep us mired in stalemate bondage.

As we open the door for Elijah — to our potential, to the latent possibilities of our future — let us take a moment to tap into our passionate hope that there is a way forward, and it is up to us to step towards it.

Let us recall our hope when we were most hopeful, our trust when we were most trustful in the other and in ourselves. Let us imagine a better situation and us as the agents to actualize it. What will you do in the coming year to act from within that hope? What will you try that you have not yet tried? Who will you talk to that you have not yet talked to? Who will you seek anew to hear and understand? What will you hope for, and what will you undertake?

JSPAN supports the principles enunciated in the HIAS letter, but in addition, would condition amnesty for undocumented aliens on certification by the President or the Congress that our southern border has been made secure.

March 20, 2007

The Honorable Nancy Pelosi
House of Representatives
2371 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Madam Speaker:

With the House of Representatives preparing to consider legislation to address the complex problems of undocumented migration to the United States and legalization for the 12 million undocumented immigrants already here, we write to support your efforts to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill this year that is workable and fair.

As leaders of Jewish community organizations, we look both to the teachings of our Jewish religious and ethical tradition, and to core American values relating to immigrants, for guidance on immigration reform. With 36 references in the Torah mandating that we not only welcome, but love the stranger, we call on Congress to show leadership by providing an effective legal immigration system that is characterized by rule of law, national interest and compassion. Comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system is critical to this nation's security, economic and humanitarian interests. We urge Congress to pass legislation this year so that families can be reunited and we can restore the rule of law at the border and in the workplace once and for all.

We also call on Congress to ensure that any bill aiming to reform our immigration system preserves the United States' longstanding commitment to provide safe haven to those fleeing persecution. The United States has long been a leader in the protection of refugees at home and abroad. Yet in the past decade we have noticed a discouraging trend in legislation and regulations, making our laws more difficult to navigate by victims of persecution who are most often empty-handed, traumatized, and separated from their loved ones. While we support the government's right to ensure that the asylum system is not abused, this goal must be achieved without further traumatizing victims of religious and other persecution, and putting them at risk of wrongful return to those who mean them harm.

Click here to see the full text of the JSPAN letter.
Click here to view the JSPAN resolution on the War in Iraq of December 12th, 2005..

The following response was recently received from Sen. Joseph Biden (D - DE).

With critically important national elections less than two years away, a bipartisan effort by Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Arlen Specter (R-PA) has resulted in the introduction, on March 26, of a groundbreaking bill to address the inequitable funding of political campaigns in this country. The Fair Elections Now Act (S. 936) would bring spending limits and full public financing to Congressional elections, making it possible for candidates to concentrate more time on developing their political platforms, and less time fundraising among their varied constituencies. Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) will be introducing a similar measure in the House.

The proposed legislation is modeled on public financing systems already instituted in seven states and two cities. Candidates would qualify for public financing by raising small donations from a specific number of supporters, depending on state population. In return, they would agree to adhere to strict spending limits and to not engage in any private fundraising efforts. If their opponent chooses private fundraising, publicly financed candidates would receive additional public "fair fight" funds to match, dollar for dollar, the money raised privately.

It has been estimated that the average cost for the most competitive Senate races in 2006 was $34 million per campaign, double what it was four years ago. The multibillion dollars necessary to finance a fair elections system would come from new fees charged to the big media companies, who are profiting during every election season from the political ads placed on public airwaves by candidates.

The Fair Elections Now Act offers an effective alternative to the unlimited fundraising and spending abuses that currently characterize primaries and general elections in this country. The legislation should help to level the funding playing field for all candidates and restore voter confidence in the election process. However, unless our elected officials move quickly on this legislation, its benefits will not be experienced by the crop of candidates running in the 2008 election.

Again, stay tuned for further developments!

For more information about this legislation, click on the following sources:

• "Specter joins Democrats in call for public campaign financing," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 21, 2007
  http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07080/771121-84.stm
• "Durbin and Specter Take on D.C. Money Culture," Huffington Post, March 20,2007
  http://www.moveon.org/r?r=2435&id=10059-2866526-_WrbWi&t=6
• Senate Fair Elections Now Act, Public Campaign
  http://www.publicampaign.org/node/38166

Ruth Schultz and Deanne Comer, co-hostesses, spoke about how JSPAN fulfills their commitment to effecting social change for present and future generations. Kenneth Fox, Vice President and Chair of the Capital Punishment Policy Center, the evening's key speaker, skillfully used an informal, around the coffee table setting to draw the attendees into an open, question and answer exchange, asking guests to address their particular issues of concern. Questions such as how we represent diverse Jewish voices in the community and how we coalesce with other organizations were asked.

Subsequently, Ken showed, with his passionate and well-articulated presentation, how their concerns can become JSPAN policy, describing the structure of the Policy Centers, its activist components and, moreover, how JSPAN's organizational voice can represent their concerns in effecting progressive social change. Issues that sparked genuine interest and vibrant discussions were JSPAN's Policies and public education forums on Capital Punishment, Israel, Immigration, Church/State and Gerrymandering.

As a few guests remarked at the end of the evening, "Most impressive!" And it was, indeed, demonstrating that there are many people "out there" who need to hear about JSPAN! Please continue to "reach out and touch someone." Send names and contact information to:

dconsult@verizon.net

Deanne S. Comer
Membership Chair

In 2005, the JCPA adopted a resolution urging the United States and the international community to give a high priority to efforts aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. Indeed, the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons -- and developing missiles to launch those weapons against countries throughout the region, Europe and possibly beyond -- should alarm every American and be unacceptable to the community of nations.

In the last two years, the Iranian regime, under the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has manifested increasingly threatening behavior and rhetoric toward the United States, other Western powers, Israel and the Jewish people. President Ahmadinejad repeatedly has called for Israel to be wiped off the map. In addition, the Iranian government, demonstrating its extremist character, recently convened a Holocaust denial conference in Teheran.

Iran continues to support Hezbollah and Hamas, two groups classified by the State Department as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations.” With Iran’s support, Hezbollah launched the raid across Israel’s UN-certified northern border last summer, which led to a major war that devastated both northern Israel and southern Lebanon.

Iran-sponsored terrorist networks, particularly Hezbollah, have a long history of targeting Americans and U.S. interests. Until September 11, Hezbollah had killed and injured more U.S. citizens than any other terrorist group. According to the State Department’s website, “Hezbollah is known or suspected to have been involved in numerous anti-U.S. terrorist attacks, including the suicide truck bombing of the US Embassy and U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983 and the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut in September 1984. Elements of the group were responsible for the kidnapping and detention of U.S. and other Western hostages in Lebanon in 1991.”

Concern about Iran’s nuclear ambitions has not been confined to Israel, the U.S. and the West. A number of Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan, have also warned that Iran’s development of nuclear weapons poses a threat to Middle East stability and could provoke nuclear arms proliferation throughout the region. Leaders in the region and beyond also have expressed concern that a nuclear armed Iran will destabilize world oil markets, have a deleterious effect on the global economy, and will make it increasingly difficult to achieve progress toward peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors.

Meanwhile, the Teheran regime has defied the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations in their attempts to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, and, as a result, the UN Security Council to date has imposed on Iran escalating sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

The JCPA believes that: The threat of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is a matter of the gravest concern and utmost urgency to the world. Therefore, the Jewish community relations field is urged immediately to:

• Independently and together with political, civic and religious partners in the general community, advocate that the United States, the leadership of the United Nations, particularly the permanent members of the UN Security Council, as well as other relevant governmental and non-governmental institutions, utilize all diplomatic and economic measures necessary to deter Iran from continuing its quest for nuclear weapons, while respecting the humanitarian needs of the Iranian people. Economic measures after appropriate consideration should include, for example, sanctions, targeted divestment (particularly direct divestment), and bank transfer restrictions aimed at the Teheran regime.

 

The Arab peace plan of March 2002 offers the best opportunity in recent years for Arabs and Israelis to get back on the peace track. But only if the coming Arab summit in Riyadh goes beyond merely reaffirming the plan, and if Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah once again displays dynamic leadership.

To be sure, the plan is flawed, as was the process that launched it in 2002. Its compromise formula for solving the Palestinian refugee issue still implies support for the right of return (which was reconfirmed explicitly in the Arab League's next four resolutions, lest Israel err in interpreting it). Its demand for the 1967 borders ignores UNSC Resolution 242 as well as compromises long agreed between Palestinian and Israeli leaders. And it addresses all relevant states save Israel, thereby seemingly constituting an Arab diktat rather than a platform for negotiation. This last feature was a particularly striking demand in Israeli eyes back in late March 2002, insofar as Arab League approval of the Arab peace plan coincided with the particularly traumatic Pesach suicide bombing in Netanya, which the League proceeded to ignore.

On the other hand, the Arab peace plan offers Israel normalization and even security arrangements with all 22 Arab countries in return for making peace with Palestine, Syria and Lebanon along lines that respect Israel's sovereignty and integrity. This is a serious offer that Israel has ignored too long. Both the Arab states and Israel must not miss the opportunity to do better by the plan.