President Barack Obama confers with U.S.Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton during the NATO summit in Strasbourg, France in April, 2009. Photo: wiki commons.

Washington Post/AP – A look at the main issues for the NATO alliance at the summit meeting for heads of government in Chicago on Sunday and Monday.

An alliance formed in 1949 to deter Soviet aggression. The central principle is that an attack in Europe or North America against any member is an attack against all. The alliance has grown to 28 member nations, ranging from the United States, Britain, France and Germany to former Soviet bloc countries such as the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Albania and Croatia are the newest members.

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The New York Times building in New York, NY. Photo: Haxorjoe.

Most media outlets claim not bear any bias at all. As the owner of a Public Relations Agency, I know from first-hand experience that this is  simply not the case. Does one love their own kids more than their neighbors’ ? Do we have preferences when it comes to food? Well that’s bias. My outlook is simple: I admit that I am not objective and believe that for most people this is the case as well.

In the world of Jewish media, there are often allegations of bias – left-wing publications like The Forward have been attacked for promoting the J Street agenda, and various right-wing sites have also been singled out. The same applies as well for mainstream media outlets. I recently read a front-page news item alleging some mischief which Mitt Romney may – or may not – have committed when in high school some 50-odd years ago. One wonders if this is not a product of an anti-conservative bias.

I know which stories have legs, and I would think that President Barack Obama’s admission (in his autobiography) to having used cocaine and marijuana makes a far more compelling story. Is Mitt Romney’s childhood really newsworthy? (And if it is, media professionals surely have to admit that his behavior was better than that of Obama?)

Even if one would insist on reporting on Mitt Romney’s life as an adolescent, surely there should be more as well about Joe Biden’s role as a parent? Biden’s son worked as a consultant to credit card company MBNA, a firm which had previously dealt with Senator Joe Biden in matters concerning regulation of consumer credit practices. After the company paid a hefty sum to Mr. Biden’s son, the Senator voted in favor of legislation that would help MBNA. That same son, Hunter, was also sued for allegedly defrauding a partner – and a confidential settlement was signed (which usually means that money was paid in exchange for a pledge of silence). I didn’t see this story on the front page of mainstream news outlets this week.

So much for responsible journalism – It seems that many media outlets don’t always abide by their claims.  They should at least come out and say: I admit that I am not objective.

Ronn Torossian is CEO of 5WPR, a leading N.Y. PR Agency

Google Street View Car in Southampton, Hampshire, England. Photo: wiki commons.

Israel National News – The IDF has been closely monitoring Google’s Street View Project, placing tracking devices on the Street View cars to ensure they do not go where they are not allowed to, the military’s Bamahane magazine reveals.

Israeli security authorities including the IDF Military Intelligence Formation agreed to allow Google to operate the Street View Project in Israel after Google recognized that Israel’s status as a country under terrorist threat justifies limiting the internet colossus’s freedom to take photos, the magazine reported.

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Greece's Golden Dawn leader Nikos Michaloliakos. Photo: www.diepresse.com/home.

Fox News – The head of a major European Jewish group says his organization is urging European governments to quickly adopt measures to tackle anti-Semitism and the threat of a growing far right.

Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, was meeting with Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas on Wednesday to seek his support for “emergency measures” to protect European Jewish communities from violent hate crimes.

Senator Richard Lugar with then Senator Barack Obama at a military base near Perm, Russia, in 2005. Photo: wiki commons.

It’s a departing statesman’s job to share what he has learned. George Washington famously cautioned Americans to take advantage of a “detached and distant situation” to “pursue a different course” from that of Europe and avoid unnecessary conflicts. Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers of military-industrial complex overreach.

Last week, following his defeat by state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in Indiana’s Republican primary, departing Senator Richard Lugar, a 36-year veteran of Capitol Hill, shared a warning that Americans of all political stripes would be well advised to heed. In conceding to Mourdock, Lugar warned, “Ideology cannot be a substitute for a determination to think for yourself, for a willingness to study an issue objectively and for the fortitude to sometimes disagree with your party and even your constituents.” He also said that if voters demand “near-total fealty from candidates to party-line ideologies  …Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.”

As a highly effective fighter in the Senate for security policy, Lugar co-authored the Nunn-Lugar program. This bi-partisan effort, initiated with Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, enabled the dismantling of more than 7,500 nuclear warheads, 1,400 nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, 155 bombers, and 32 nuclear submarines in the former Soviet Union during the years following its collapse. To the extent that the Russians have not already sold nuclear weapons and WMD to Islamist terrorists, it may be due to this important program; thus, Lugar has earned an important platform from which to speak credibly about bipartisanship.

At a time when American politics have seldom been more polarized, his words about the value of moderate and independent politics are of import. When voters become increasingly arch in their insistence that candidates’ voting and governing records stack up neatly along party lines and that their past behavior and voting records cleave to rigid ideologies, the country is destined to pick its leaders from one of two polarities: conservative Republican or liberal Democrat. Come to think of it, that’s what’s happened in the last three Presidential elections, and in most Congressional elections for many years.

How’s that been workin’ out for us?

One consequence is fewer problem-solvers, and fewer politicians who work well with the best and brightest on the other side, are coming to the fore in national politics (although such “moderate” stars, like New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Newark Mayor Cory Booker, have achieved great results at the local level). Say what you will about Bill Clinton, he did manage some of his best work as President—welfare reform– with pressure and help from a Republican Congress. He balanced the federal budget, incorporating conservative principles in his approach. And it was President Richard Nixon, known as a hawkish conservative on foreign policy, who opened relations with Communist China.

Out-of-the box strategies have worked for many politicians and for the country. But in an era in which, for most Americans, the litmus test for a candidate is a rigid adherence to a party line (and status as a “true liberal” or “true conservative,”) our country is less likely to elect outside-the-box thinkers or those who can incorporate the strongest ideas from across the political spectrum to problem-solve.

Oftentimes in politics, as in life, ideological purity goes hand-in-hand with stubbornness and extremism—traits that can enable those who possess them to spark revolutions or confront injustice. But in governance–as in day-to-day life–it tends to be the moderates who ensure that the center holds, that relationships are stable, and that work gets done.

Given that the country’s past two Presidents have come from extreme sides of the political spectrum and so have most members of Congress, perhaps it would be wise to heed the departing words of a Senator who spearheaded solid and far-sighted security policy by reaching across the aisle and working with the other party. Good ideas come from both sides; effective politicians grasp this simple truth and can exploit it.

At this troubled juncture, it may well be the wiser course to set aside the quest for some perfect ideological purity and choose instead as leaders realists with proven track records of working well with others—including those on the other side of the aisle.

President Barack Obama reflects. Photo: White House.

Chicago Tribune/Reuters – Crossroads GPS, a pro-Republican political group, is planning to spend $25 million in the next month on its largest ad assault  against President Barack Obama yet this campaign season.

The new advertising wave by the group, which supports presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is expected to begin on Thursday with an $8 million TV ad blitz in 10 states expected to be hotly contested in the Nov. 6 election.

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U.S. President Barack Obama is greeted by Speaker of the House John Boehner. Photo: Pete Souza.

NY Times – Speaker John A. Boehner on Tuesday set the stage for a bruising election-year showdown on fiscal policy, vowing to hold up another increase in the federal debt ceiling unless it was offset by larger spending cuts.

His combative comments came on the same day the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, hit President Obama hard on his fiscal stewardship in a speech in Des Moines, suggesting that Mr. Romney and Congressional Republicans see an opening to attack the president on the mounting federal debt and the size of the government.

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President Barack Obama in White House press room. Photo: wiki commons.

Washington Post/AP – President Barack Obama served notice Wednesday that he would punish those trying to disrupt the political transition in Yemen, a strategically important Middle Eastern nation, by freezing their U.S.-based assets.

An executive order gives the Treasury Department to power to act against those said by the White House to “threaten the peace, security and stability” of Yemen.

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In center, baseball legend Jackie Robinson at the Grossinger's hotel during the heyday of the "Borscht Belt." Photo: Jackie Horner.

Food, fun, dancing, celebrities, comedians. Grossinger’s and the Concord. Bring back any memories?

The mostly defunct summer resorts of New York’s Catskill Mountains were popular vacation spots for Jews from the 1920s up to the 1960s. Anyone longing for the good old days knows the historical importance of these lost times—summer romances, doing the mambo, menus with seven kinds of herring, and comedians who would go on to become world famous.

Dubbed the “Borscht Belt,” these Catskills resorts are mostly gone now, but the traditions and memories remain.

What drew Jews to the Catskills? According to Myrna Katz Frommer, author with her husband Harvey Frommer of the book “It Happened in the Catskills,” a Jewish ethos was complemented by a push “to become Americanized.”

“Thus, golf, tennis [and] other pursuits and styles seen as ‘American’ became, in the post-war period, the direction more people were following,” Myrna told JointMedia News Service.

The Borscht Belt—an area described in the Frommers’ book as “about 250 square miles, approximately an hour-and-a-half drive northwest of New York City”—attracted tourists since the post-Civil War years, drawing its appeal from its scenic vistas and accessibility from New York City via two railroad lines, the authors noted. Jewish immigrants came up to the Catskills for more than a visit—they looked to settle, to farm, to escape the unhealthy environment of tenement life.

Eventually, they did more than escape; they defined the word vacation. Simply put, they knew how to have fun. Jackie Horner, a dance instructor and a consultant on the movie “Dirty Dancing” that starred the late Patrick Swayze, came to Grossinger’s in its heyday to teach dances like the mambo. That’s where she met her husband, the late Lou Goldstein.

Goldstein was a “tummler” at Grossinger’s Hotel, and ran most of the resort’s daytime activities from 1948 until the facility’s closure in 1986. “Tummler” is Yiddish for someone who stirs up tumult or excitement. He passed away on April 2, 2012, at the age of 90.

“He’d hold absurd exercise classes,” Joseph Berger wrote in Goldstein’s New York Times obituary. “He’d have a circle of grown men don silly hats and maneuver them onto one another’s heads with one hand and without letting the hats tumble to the ground. He’d tell jokes during pauses in a diving exhibition, or tell stories on tours of the Grossinger’s grounds and kitchens (one for meat and one for dairy).”

A group of comedians (including Jackie Mason) at the Grossinger's hotel during the heyday of the "Borscht Belt." Photo: Jackie Horner.

Well known for leading groups in Simon Says, Goldstein got to know many celebrities including Jackie Robinson, Yogi Berra, and Rocky Marciano. One of the reasons Grossinger’s became so well known was this—Milton Blackstone, Grossinger’s public relations man, brought in these celebrities, the who’s who of any given era, to mingle with guests.

Many unknowns who later became famous worked at the resorts, including Mel Brooks, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar and Red Buttons (who put in summers as tummlers). Wilt Chamberlain, of NBA basketball fame, was a bellhop at Kutsher’s in the 1950s.

A few hotels remain open, such as Kutsher’s, but the Catskills heyday is long gone.

“The 40s flourished [in the Borscht Belt], the money was there, and a lot came with their families,” Horner told JointMedia News Service. “That went on until the late 70s. In the 80s there were more conventions to fill the hotels during the week but a lot of the family business started falling off in the 90s because the children didn’t want to come up anymore. The children always said there was too much food.”

Horner said the kids now take cruises, and go to Europe or Cancun. “Grandma and grandpa passed away, so it didn’t have the same family feeling anymore,” she said.

Phil Brown knows the Catskills and fondly remembers Horner’s visit to speak at the Catskills Institute. He worked in the resorts as a young man and now is a professor at Brown University as well as director of the Catskills Institute, an organization that promotes research and education on the significance of the Catskills for American Jewish life. His books include Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat’s Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area and In the Catskills: A Century of the Jewish Experience in The Mountains.

Even though the push was to become Americanized, the phenomenon that was the Catskills helped Americans learn about Judaism.

“It was a way to keep traditions while still adapting, not assimilating, but adapting,” Brown told JointMedia News Service. “People did want to keep their Jewish culture alive and this was a way to do it. Certainly for the earlier times there were many people who went to the hotels who spoke primarily Yiddish, they only ate kosher, they confronted a world with a lot of anti-Semitism and they couldn’t even go to resorts. It was like having an American vacation but with all the Jewish trimmings.”

Brown said the people running the Catskills resorts came up with the idea of the all-inclusive vacation that cruise ships later copied.

“For a lot of people, especially in the early years at the smaller hotels, it was just a place to get a way to, to be in the country,” Brown said.

Brown explained that in the 1960s, a Jewish migration to Miami and Los Angeles helped bring about the end of the Borscht Belt’s heyday.

“Jews were moving around and becoming much more geographically mobile,” he said. “Family structures changed and people were not so tied to their extended families anymore. At the same time the divorce rate changed. By the 1980s and 1990s you also had a lot of intermarriages, so it didn’t make so much sense to go to this intensely Jewish community. “

At the end of the day, what did the Borscht Belt give to the world?

“The essence of the Jewish ethos in all its myriad forms,” Myrna Katz Frommer said. “Faith, humor in all its irony and pathos, ambition, romance. Lenny Bruce used to say ‘If you live in New York, you’re Jewish, even if you aren’t.’ That applied to the Borscht Belt. In a way, it says it all.”

Itamar Marchus, head of Palestinian Media Watch. Photo: wiki commons.

“If your enemy says he will destroy you, believe him.”

Those were the words of Itamar Marcus, founding director of Palestinian Media Watch, when he recently joined The Jewish Week Associate Editor Jonathan Mark on stage at the 92nd Street Y in New York City to discuss the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership’s use of culture, education, and media to influence its population.

Marcus has presented evidence of Palestinian incitement to the U.S. Congress’s Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Appropriations Committee, and has lectured to Canadian and European parliamentarians and international security officials.

Palestinian Media Watch (palwatch.org) is an NGO (non-governmental organization) dedicated to disclosure of the factual content of Palestinian media, founded by Marcus 14 years ago. Marcus said his purpose is simple: “To get a real sense of what is happening in the Palestinian world.”

Marcus made aliyah from New York and lives in Efrat. In an interview with JointMedia News Service, he recalled the first tapes he received of Yasser Arafat’s speeches while working for the Israeli government during the 1990s. In the midst of a highly visible “peace process,” the Palestinian leader, speaking on Arabic and Palestinian TV, called for jihad, saying any agreements with Israel were “temporary.”

When Marcus left the government, he initiated Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), and began to “tape all of official Palestinian TV, read the Palestinian newspapers every day.” What he found was an ongoing demonization of Israel and an ongoing denial of Israel’s right to exist.

Marcus’s tapes were brought to the 1998 Wye Summit and given to President Bill Clinton. Soon afterwards, an Israeli, Palestinian and American negotiating committee to deal with the problem of incitement was established. Marcus was appointed to the Israeli team, a position he held until Ehud Barak’s election as prime minister. “There was no significant progress” with the Palestinians, said Marcus. “The Palestinians are teaching their children hatred against Jews, and ultimately violence against Jews and Israelis,” he said.

The Palestinians, he said, “like to depict the conflict as territorial while hiding this horrific underlying ideology.”

Marcus remains a proponent of direct contact between Israelis and Palestinians, which he believes engenders respect and admiration for Israel as a democracy and a supporter of human rights. “The tragedy is that the Palestinians were much closer to peace with Israel before the Oslo Accords,” he said. “An ocean has developed because of hate promotion by the Palestinian Authority.” Marcus said chances for peace may have been better in 1996, when after decades of contact with Israelis, a poll of Palestinians showed that 78 percent considered Israel to be a democracy and a positive force for human rights.

Now, Marcus is concerned about the effect that the teaching of hatred and demonization will have on the ability to produce a peaceful outcome with the PA. Given the level of hate indoctrination, success—not only in negotiation, but actualization—remains challenging, he said. Stating that territory which was Israel proper before the 1967 war is not up for negotiations, Marcus explained that “settlements” located on disputed territory are. While Israel “has the right to anything that is part of the negotiations,” said Marcus, it must accept the possibility that disputed territories will be ceded to a Palestinian state.

“The only way to reverse the down trend in acceptance of Israel,” Marcus said, if for Palestinians to “drop the lies—the planned delegitimization conducted by the PA, and replace it with truth.” Marcus said Israel has helped the PA  in many ways, including construction of its infrastructure, assisting its   economic base, and developing its universities.

Asked by JointMedia News Service if a more honest Palestinian media could be created, Marcus said there are some people within the PA who are moderate, but none of them are currently in power. He recalled that 17 committees had met regularly for peace negotiations following the Oslo Accords and prior to the Intifada. When one member of a Palestinian negotiating team revealed that he had instructed his own children to answer test questions truthfully—not calling Jews “evil,” as instructed by their teacher—he was replaced.

“The population is so poisoned by hate material and terror,” Marcus said. “There is suffering on both sides—the Palestinians don’t realize they have their own leadership to blame. They destroy truth and replace it with hate.”

Marcus said the way to heal this untenable situation is for the West to suspend funding to the PA, to not give a “penny of financial support or diplomatic support as long as structures of hate remain.” He acknowledged that the PA “will have to go through a period of crisis. If the western world keeps funding corrupt government, there is no future… They pretend that [Mahmoud] Abbas is a moderate while he honors terrorists.”

“You can’t have a political peace structure unless it’s proceeded by an educational peace process,” Marcus said. Both content and nomenclature, he said, are important.  Marcus called attention to the Palestinian media designation of Israel’s Minister of Defense as the “Minister of War,” its labeling of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as the “Israel Occupations Forces,” and its use of the title “resistance fighter” for Palestinian terrorists.

“It’s almost too painful, too hurtful, for many Israelis and American Jews to fully comprehend,” said Marcus. Those yearning for peace “want to believe, so badly, that there is someone there on the Palestinian side. When you look at the Palestinians, adults and children, singing about Tel Aviv and Haifa being Palestinian, or when you see their demonization of Jews and the de-legitimization of Israel and Jewish history, if you accept that’s the official PA culture, then there’s no hope.”

PMW’s staff of 12 looks at all Palestinian media. Its purpose is not just to explore media, but also to study society, culture and education, and to “keep a finger on the pulse of the leadership and what they are teaching their kids,” said Marcus. “After more than a generation of hate indoctrination, only 7 percent of Palestinian teenagers accept that Israel has the right to exist,” he said. “For Israel to pretend otherwise is a disaster.”

“Bringing up Palestinian children to hate is stealing their future,” he added.