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Friday January 19, 2007

Shorts: U.S.

Nobel winner says anti-Semitism OK

Nobel Prize-winning scientist James Watson said anti-Semitism is sometimes justified.

In an interview published in the January issue of Esquire, Watson, a self-described libertarian, defended his right to make anti-Semitic remarks and wondered why everyone isn’t as intelligent as Ashkenazi Jews. “Should you be allowed to make an anti-Semitic remark?” Watson asked. “Yes, because some anti-Semitism is justified. Just like some anti-Irish feeling is justified. If you can’t be criticized, that’s very dangerous.”

Watson, who won the Nobel in 1962 for his work in uncovering the structure of DNA, has been the subject of numerous controversies relating to his views on genetic screening, including a call to use genetic engineering to eliminate stupidity and ugly girls. The Anti-Defamation League condemned the remarks. — jta

Bush names Jewish liaison

The White House named a new liaison to the Jewish community.

Jeremy Katz, a policy adviser to President Bush, also will serve as head of Jewish outreach. He formerly was a policy adviser to Commerce Secretary Don Evans. He is the sixth Jewish liaison since Bush was elected in 2000.

Katz replaces Jay Zeidman, the son of Fred Zeidman, chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. — jta

Bush OKs pact to let Israel join Red Cross

President Bush signed the ratification of a protocol that allows Israel’s Magen David Adom to join international Red Cross societies.

The protocol protects the copyright of the “Red Crystal,” a symbol created last year to afford protections to first responder groups that reject the Red Cross and Red Crescent because they are neither Christian nor Muslim. Congress rushed the necessary legislation through and Bush signed it last Friday, Jan. 12.

The Red Crystal “paved the way for Israel’s Magen David Adom to join the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, now more than 50 years after it became Israel’s national society,” the president said in his signing statement. — jta

House seeks charges against Ahmadinejad

A bipartisan slate of lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives proposed a resolution calling on the Iranian president to face genocide incitement charges.

The nonbinding resolution brought last week to the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee and initiated by Reps. Steve Rothman (D-N.J.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) said statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel amount to crimes according to the 1948 Convention on Genocide. The convention not only provides for punishment for genocide, Rothman and Kirk wrote in a letter to their colleagues, but “also prohibits ‘direct and public incitement to commit genocide.’

“It further provides that individuals committing genocidal crimes shall be punished ‘whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.’ Ahmadinejad’s hateful rhetoric calling for the elimination of Israel, a Member State of the United Nations, qualifies as inciting genocide.”

The resolution has garnered 22 sponsors. — jta

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