|
|
Published Works of Aaron
Howard
Aaron's Archives
|
Search Results - - Politics |
|
Click on the Name of the property to see pictures and more details. |
A Different Look at Quran and the Jews
| To Google on “Khaleel Mohammed” is to immediately land in controversy.
A Moslem scholar who studied Islamic law in Saudi Arabia and Canada, Dr. Mohammed is a practicing Moslem. He argues that the Quran not only respected the Jewish religion, |
|
|
Israel's Economy: A View From Outside
| Economic experts are bullish on Israel.
At its spring meeting, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) classified Israel as one of the 29 developed countries in its World Economic Outlook for the first time. Until now, Israel w |
|
 |
Jews As a Measure of Muslim Intolerance
| What is it about Israel that really angers Arabs? Bruce S. Thornton has a theory.
“Israel is the concentrated physical reminder in their neighborhood of everything that’s gone wrong and is dysfunctional in Islamic civilization |
|
|
On Torture #1 - Making The Religious Argument Against Torture
| Although the Bush administration insists it doesn’t condone torture, the White House continues to maintain that “enemy combatants” are beyond the jurisdiction of American courts and that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the battle against terro |
|
|
On Torture #2 - Torture's Rationales
| The use of torture is evil and illegal. So why now a book in which some discuss legitimizing torture? What times are these, what kind of world are we living in that we would allow the application of torture by our consent asks poet Ariel Dorfman. |
|
|
Religion and Tolerance Not an Oxymoron Says Scholar
| Thinking about religious tolerance in the Middle East during this time of savage warfare may appear counterintuitive. But if not now, when, asks Adam B. Seligman.
Professor of Religion at Boston University, Seligman is also a B |
|
|
This Is Serious Politics in the Middle East
| Democracy has come to the Middle East.
When Palestinian voters threw out one of the region’s more corrupt authoritarian regimes in a democratic election, they elected Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement), one of the most er |
|
|
Those Who Support Terror Should Pay Says Israeli Scholar
| Israel bombed the wrong target. Instead of Lebanon, Israel should have bombed Syrian tank defenses positioned near Lebanon's Baaka Valley as soon as the fighting started says a Jerusalem-based scholar.
Syria is instrumental in |
|
|
Scholar Sees Rosy Future for Jews in Germany
| “How could you live in Germany?”
That’s a question Jeffrey Peck frequently hears. As an American Jew currently teaching and living in Germany, Peck answers that post-1945 Germany is a very different country than its predecesso |
|
|
Darfur: The Genocide That Won't Go Away
| Houstonians marked Human Rights Day with a program on December 10 at the Holocaust Museum Houston calling for the safety and protection of the people of Darfur. The Houston rally, part of a national “Weekend of Prayer for Darfur”, asked attendees to |
|
|
Death Comes From the Sky
| How the German people suffered! From 1940 to 1945, planes of the British Bomber Command and, later, the U.S. Eighth Air Force, bombed Germany. Allied bombs killed an average of 8,100 German civilians each month from 1941 to autumn 1943. Then, with th |
|
|
9/11
| The 9/11 terrorist attack was an epoch defining event. Not only was there an attack on American soil but the events entered into the narratives of our lives because we shared them live and replayed on television.
A year later, we are t |
|
|
Israel's Economy: A View From Inside
| Among all of Israel’s positive economic growth indicators, one huge deficeit stands out. The country’s economic disparity keeps getting larger.
As measured by economic inequality, poverty rates and other indicators, the gap bet |
|
|
Understanding and Resisting the Lure of The Dark Side
| This was the experiment: in a mock prison constructed in the Stanford Psychology Building, 24 college undergrads were recruited to participate in a two-week “prison simulation”. By coin toss, the participants were divided in two teams, prisoners and |
|
|
A Casualty of Terrorism
| In many countries throughout the Middle East, Asia and Africa, people can be thrown in prison for years without a trial or without being charged with a crime. That’s not the case in this country because of the writ of habeas corpus. The sole functio |
|
|
On Hamas: Scholar Expects Short Fatah-Hamas Truce
| They continue declaring cease-fires. But fighting continues into the second week between Hamas and Fatah in the Gaza Strip.
Even if a cease-fire holds, it will be temporary, says Director of the Stein Program on Terrorism Matth |
|
|
The British Unions' Boycott of Israel
| The May 30 British University and College Union (UCU) vote for a boycott of Israel’s academic institutions is not winning many friends worldwide. The British union called for a freeze on all EU funding of Israeli academic institutions and for coopera |
|
|
Including Everybody In the Family Conversation
| Progressive Zionist. Simply a term for a Jewish traitor says the Right. An oxymoron says the Left, since Israel is an apartheid state engaged in ethnic cleansing and therefore indefensible from a progressive perspective.
At th |
|
|
A New Pluralist Poland Attracts Immigration
| When the Solidarity movement defeated the Communists in Poland’s first pluralistic elections in August 1989, institutions of civil society replaced the structure of the Communist state. Since then, major changes occurred in Poland’s economics and the |
|
|
Hatred and the Human Condition
| The first week of September, 2004, was a week when the cultures of hatred seemed to explode in violence.
On Tuesday, Palestinian suicide bombers affiliated with Hamas blew up two busses in Beersheba killing 16 people and injuring more than 100 |
|
|
Can The Rifts In Pakistan Be Healed?
|
Since the late 1970s, prolonged ethnic and religious inter-communal violence has dominated Pakistan. For example, there’s increasing Shia-Sunni strife, rising confrontations in Baluchistan and the Northwest frontier, the presence of as many a |
|
|
Writer Talks About "Bleeding Kansas" and The Red Heifer
| Crime fans know Sara Paretsky as author of the V.I. Warshawski detective series. When a writer is linked to a successful franchise, especially mysteries, there’s always risk when she delivers a completely different book.
|
|
|
Politics On Top of the Holy Mount
| The meeting place of heaven and earth is 37.5 acres or about 33 football fields in area. Located atop Mount Moriah-- not really a single mountain but is a series of ridges--is the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
“The Temple Mount is the gr |
|
|
An Eye For An Eye?
| Some 135 nations worldwide have outlawed the death penalty. The United States holds sixth place in the number of annual state executions, behind China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan.
The death penalty is just plain wro |
|
|
Considering Israel's Second War in Lebanon
| Ha'Artez journalists Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff's book “34 Days” (Palgrave Macmillan) isn't the first word on Israel's Second Lebanese War. Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Max Boot arrived at many of the same conclusions in a 09/04/06 |
|
|
The Relationship Between Religion and Violence
| Why must you blot me out in order to tell your religious story? As a Jew, I think it’s fair to ask this question to certain Christians and Muslims. Actually, it’s the central question. Why must Jews convert or die so you can tell your Jesu |
|
|
Wild Horses Are Still Being Dragged Away
| The first cowboy in the New World was a Jew. If we look at historical evidence instead of Hollywood mythology, we learn that a century before the Pilgrims landed, Sebastian de Mendoza was the first man to appear in Conquista records as a vaquero or c |
|
|
Making the Case for Obama In the Jewish Community
| Disaster for the US in the Middle East. The last eight years have left the US and Israel in far more danger they were in 2008. So why would Jews consider voting for someone who represents a continuation of those policies?
That’ |
|
|
Making the Case for McCain In the Jewish Community
| Israel’s security. It’s not the only reason why the Jews should vote for John McCain. But there’s a widespread sense that Israel faces an existential threat to its existence. So support of Israeli trumps whatever comes in second place.
|
|
|
Loving Death More Than Life
| Martin Amis
The Second Plane
(Knopf)
“Racist” and “Tory hater” are two of the milder invectives tossed at British novelist Martin Amis for his articles on Islam. Critics, particularly those on the left, fa |
|
|
Clarifying Torture As a Moral issue
| No torture is the official U.S. policy. Yet we know Americans practiced torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. We also know that on December 2, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld first gave blanket approval for numerous interrogatio |
|
|
When the News Media Obstructs the Path to Peace
| War correspondents win prizes. Peace correspondents don’t.
Understand this simple reality and you understand the inherent contradiction between the needs of news and the need of peace process says Gadi Wolfsfeld. News depends on confli |
|
|
Galveston's Beth Jacob Weighs Future After Hurricane
| Along with tens of thousands of Galveston evacuees, members of Congregation Beth Jacob are preparing to return to the island city this week. A definitive assessment of the amount of damage to the synagogue will be made.
The good news |
|
|
Fiction Allows Us To Identify Ourselves Says Scholar
| Though separated by 16 centuries, both the Talmud and Jewish American literature share a similar aim and scope: that of moral design and purpose. Both attempt to improve humanity by allowing the reader to temporarily see the world through |
|
|
How Obama Won 78% Of the Jewish Vote
| Neither Republican appeals to reason or to fear appears to have swayed Jewish voters in the November 4 election. President-elect Barack Obama received 78% of the Jewish vote according to two polls, bettering the 74% of the Jewish vote that John Kerry |
|
|
Jews Fighting Back As Partisans
| In Eastern Europe, Jews organized armed resistance to the Nazis began as early as the summer of 1942. Historians such as Leni Yahill, Yehuda Bauer and Isaiah Trunk have documented armed Jewish resistance both within Jewish frameworks and as members o |
|
|
In Every Generation
| Passover is the time of year when we recite from the Haggadah “in every generation they rise up against us to destroy us”. This year, it really seems nearby, so close you can feel its hot breath. Anti-Israel vitriol has been boiling since Gaza. This |
|
|
The New Geo-Political Realists
| Devin R. Springer, James L. Regens and David N. Edger
Islamic Radicalism and Global Jihad
(Georgetown University Press)
Suppose Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu decided it was now in Israel’s best interests to destro |
|
|
When the Water Stops, Let 'Em Drink Big Red
| Forget oil and gas. Water has a greater impact on the future of Texas. Oil is economics. Water is life.
Just ask T. Boone Pickens, founder of Mesa Petroleum. He bought the rights to groundwater under 150,000 acres in the Texas Panhandl |
|
|
Assassinating The Terrorist Leadership
| Hamas leader Khalid Mishal shouldn’t be alive today. He came within inches of death when, in September 1997, Mossad operatives got to him on the streets of Amman and injected him with levofentanyl.
But then, the operation went awry. A |
|
|
Torture Defiles Everything It Touches Says Author
| Dick Chaney calls it “advanced interrogation”. J. Jeremy Wisnewski calls it torture. No matter what term you use, torture should never be permissible.
That’s what Wisnewski argues in “The Ethics of Torture”, a new book he co-authored w |
|
|
Two Questions For: Garland Debner Pohl
| Past President of the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers (CADEIO) and member of the Bishops’ Advisory Committee on Catholic-Jewish Relations of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Garland Debner Pohl is a Hou |
|
|
After 65, What Comes Next?
| Here’s a scenario I’ve witnessed played out many times in the men’s locker room at the gym. Guys approaching retirement. Prior to leaving: all excitement and anticipation. Can’t wait to travel, visit the grandkids, golf. Six months into retirement: b |
|
|
Israel As a Model of Entrepreneurship
| Israel is an idea factory. The nation has the highest density of start-ups in the world. Per capita venture capital investments are 2.5 times greater than in the innovative United States and 80 times greater than in China. Israel is the world leader |
|
|
A Prisoner In Iran
| I read Haleh Esfandiari’s “My Prison, My Home” (Ecco) during Chanukah. The holiday, which celebrates the emergence light from darkness, was an appropriate time to read this account that celebrates human courage and one woman’s ability to bend history |
|
|
Religion In the White House
| In 2006, then presidential candidate Barack Obama addressed a gathering of evangelicals convened by Rev. Jim Wallis in an attempt to reach out to the religious right constituency. “What I am suggesting is this,” said Obama in his speech, “secularists |
|
|
When Is It Right To Murder the Murderer?
| Attorney David Dow’s in the death penalty business. And business is booming in Harris County.
Texas leads the nation in the number of executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. And Harris County, accounting for more th |
|
|
Israeli Forces Taking the Moral High Road
| From the time he sights a possible target, an Israeli tank commander has an eight second window to decide whether to shoot or not to shoot. Eight seconds in which to decide who is a terrorist and who is an innocent. Eight seconds to make a moral deci |
|
|
How To Win Friends and Influence Elected Officials
| Democracy is ultimately about the human touch, the contact between the electorate and our elected representatives who are supposed to act in our interests. That’s what 17 Houston women learned first-hand March 21-23 when they went to the 2010 Washing |
|
|
Houston Forges Cancer Research Links With Israel
| Israel is the location of world-class cancer research. Historically, Professors Isaac Birnbaum and Leo Sachs in Israel made one of the first groundbreaking cancer research discoveries. They laid the foundation for differentiating between cancer cells |
|
|
Gypsy Rock In the Czech Republic
| So I’m in Prague, standing in the 10-koruna beer line at a political rally for Karel Schwartzenberg, when I hear the fiddle, electric guitars and drums blast off from the stage.
Whether your party affiliation in the May 28-29 Czech Rep |
|
|
Fall Out From the Conversion Bill Reaches Houston
| A bill before the Israeli Knesset that would give full authority for conversions to the Chief Rabbinate is causing a huge controversy in Israel and in the United States.
The Knesset’s Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved 5- |
|
|
The Morning After Yom Kippur: Put In A Good Ten Minutes
| Ideally, if you really want to do teshuvah (repentance) for Yom Kippur, you should be considering a strategy to affect your change in the 40 days leading up to the holiday.
However, the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe) are already upon us. |
|
|
Jewish Houston
People
Politics
Books
The Arts District
Traditions
Family
Refugee Issues
Music Reviews
Introduction of Database | Search | Show All
|
|
