RamPost Volume II, Issue 2

IN THIS ISSUE: • The Downfall of Chris Christie (2) • Uprising in Ukraine (4) • Joe Lhota Addresses RamPo (9) • In Support of Israeli Settlements (13)

RamPost A Publication of The Ramaz Politics Society

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Last spring, towards the end of the school year, RamPo hosted Peter Beinart, a left-of-center Zion-ist. Beinart spoke to RamPo about why he supports a two-state solution, and urged us all to begin to think more critically of Israeli policy. To him, being pro-Israel does not mean that one needs to agree with every single decision made by the Israeli gov-ernment. Rather, to be a Zionist means to support Israel’s right to exist based on the ideals on which Israel was founded. Beinart also challenged us to start listening to and learning about Palestinian thinkers and writers. The American Jewish commu-nity, he argued, has become insular on Israel and is blocking out Palestinian ideas to its detriment. Beinart challenged us to stay true to our Zionism, while opening up our ears to those with whom we disagree. We agreed. !On Beinart’s recommendation, we came across Co-lumbia professor Rashid Khalidi as a potential op-tion. A bit nervous, we ultimately decided to ap-proach Mr. Miller to make our case why it is worthwhile to bring in a speaker who fundamental-ly disagrees with the mission statement of the school. There is no doubt that Khalidi does not “love and support the State Israel.” We met with the high school administration in late November to make our case. The following are the five ideas we presented at the meeting.

OUR POSITION ON RASHID KHALIDI The Presidents of The Ramaz Politics Society

1. “Aizehu Chacham? Halomed miKol Adam.” As this mishna in Pirkei Avot suggests, we can learn something from Khalidi, especially because we don’t agree with him. Our own ideas can be sharpened by listening to those those with whom we disagree. 2. "A commitment to the pursuit of knowledge, to intellectual rigor, to scholarship, and a life-long love of learning." Ramaz is committed to a pursuit of knowledge beyond commonly-held Israel opinions within the school. Intellectual rigor de-mands that we challenge existing beliefs and use those with whom we disagree to sharpen and clari-fy our own points of view in pursuit of scholarship. As Leon Weiseltier said, “It’s always a sign of in-tellectual weakness or fear to insulate oneself from arguments that are relevant to one’s views. People should know how to respond to views that they think are erroneous.” (continued on page 10)

RamPost VOLUME II ISSUE 2 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014

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On a regular evening in mid-September, I was rid-ing the late bus home from Ramaz to the Engle-wood/Teaneck area. My normally 30 minute com-mute was extended to over 2 hours due to the mys-terious excess of traffic. It wasn’t a holiday and as far as I knew Obama wasn’t in town so nothing could explain the overwhelming amount of cars on the road. Months later, the dirty details of the now infamous “Bridgegate” scandal would come to the surface. Although there is no evidence of his direct involvement, Democrats are holding governor Chris Christie responsible for the closure of two out of the three access lanes from Fort Lee, New Jersey to the George Washington Bridge. Christie was al-legedly attempting to punish Fort Lee because their Mark Sokolich (D) refused to e n d o r s e Christie’s cam-paign for re-elec-tion (in which he ended up claim-ing 60% of the vote). This re-sulted in what some are saying was the worst traffic jam since September 11th, 2001 much to the chagrin of commuters. It was also reported by the Bergen Record that a 91-year-old woman died due to a delayed response as a result of the onslaught of traffic (although the family claims she died of nat-ural causes and the Christie scandal is not to blame).

There is no explicit evidence that shows that Gov-ernor Christie was directly in contact with the Port Authority officials who closed the lanes but it was revealed that Christie’s deputy chief-of staff Bridget Anne Kelley (whom was promptly fired following the firestorm of the scandal) sent an email to a Port Authority official that said it was “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Although firing Kel-

ley was a shrewd political move on Christie’s part, Bridgegate will put a dark stain on his otherwise successful and productive political career and put a damper on his potential presidential aspirations.

Chris Christie was ostensibly the saving grace of the Republican Party. Throughout his career, Christie proved to be a skilled politician with a rela-tively moderate approach in comparison to many of his Republican peers and demonstrated impressive bipartisanship during the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in his correspondence with President Obama. However, the Bridge scandal has damaged Christie’s credibility and will certainly affect his potential run in 2016. Whether or not Christie

knew, his closest advisors were heavily involved in this debacle and although he has a reputation for being a mi-cromanager, this “miscommunica-tion” proves oth-erwise and shows he doesn’t have as good of a han-dle on his staff as one would as-

sume.

It is particularly troubling that this month Christie claimed that he sent staff members to investigate the bridge situation, yet he previously claimed mul-tiple times that he never sent anyone. Television host Rachel Maddow heavily critiqued Christie’s December 2013 Press conference in which he re-sponded defensively to reporters and accused them of trying to undermine his credibility. “You guys all wanna keep chasing it around, chase it around,” Christie told reporters. “It’s your business. But, I’m not running around doing [an] independent (continued on following page)

“BRIDGEGATE”: A CAREER DISASTER? Shoshana Edelman `14


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SAY NO TO ACADEMIC BOYCOTT Daniel Gutkind `16

Last December, members of the American Studies Association voted by a ratio that exceeded two to one to endorse an academic boycott of Israel. While the vote itself didn’t have a major impact, it was a symbolic strike against Israel in which the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (B.D.S) movement gained a toehold in the U.S. While only 16% of the members of the group actually voted in favor of the boycott, this move was denounced by many mem-ber universities, and a few even dropped out. Rep-utable institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Duke, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and several other uni-versities condemned the boycott and distanced themselves from the organization. These institutions see the truth in the boycott, namely, that it is a ploy for attention with no real substance, and a move in the wrong direction. !Many of those in favor of the boycott argue that it was a necessary measure to stop Israel’s “apartheid” regime. They believe that because universities around the world pressured the South African gov-ernments during the 1980s to create a more just civ-ilization, the academic world should behave in a similar fashion towards Israel. While the compari-

son is ostensibly fitting, it is in fact extremely flawed. As the Israeli ambassador to the U.S, Ron Dermer, said, “A.S.A. chooses as its first ever boy-cott to boycott Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, in which academics are free to say what they want, write what they want and research what they want.” Arab professors are allowed to teach at Jewish universities in Israel, and Israeli Arab students enroll in almost every major Israeli college, including the Technion. Clearly, at least in the education sphere, Israel cannot be considered an apartheid state. Academically, boycotting Israeli institutions is a counterproductive move. While Israel does have its fair share of problems with Palestinian freedoms, the right way to solve them is not through academic boycott, but rather by engaging both sides. Peace can only be achieved through resolution of con-flicts, not by instigating more fights. While univer-sities have campuses in countries such as Saudi Arabia, where women are not allowed to get behind the wheel of a car, how can the A.S.A. have the gall to boycott Israel? The way to fix the problem is not to isolate Israel, but to engage it. That is the only way peace will be achieved.

( C o n t i n u e d f r o m p a g e 2 — E d e l m a n ) i n v e s t i g a t i o n . ” Christie’s defensive demeanor outraged Maddow who said in her critique “If Gover-nor Christie is looking for the way this scan-dal ends, this one is not going to end until it makes sense,” Mad-dow said. “Until the governor’s explana-tions for what hap-pened and why and w h o d i d i t m a k e sense.”

This scandal, unlike the Clinton, Spitzer, and Weine r sex scandals, is not on a personal level but rather a huge one and indicates a level of corruption and misuse of office. Although Christie is we l l acqua in ted with the game of politics, it does not negate the serious implications that B r i d g e g a t e w i l l have on his career.


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Many of you may be wondering what exactly is go-ing on in Ukraine right now but before I can explain what is currently happening and why, it’s important to understand the history of the region. The histories of Ukraine and Russia have long been intertwined, dating back to the Stalin era. When Stalin came to power in the 1920’s, part of his agenda was to force the Ukrainian farmers off their own farms and onto communal state-run farms, a process called collectivization. Stalin also institut-ed high production quotas in these Ukrainian farm areas because the majority of the Soviet Union’s wheat was produced there. The Ukrainians hated these policies, and, as a result, resisted. So, in clas-sic Stalin fashion, Stalin created a man-made famine, the “Holodomor,” to force the Ukrainians into submis-sion, killing m i l l i o n s ( m o d e r n e s t i m a t e s p u t t h e death to l l between 2.4 and 7.5 mil-l i o n ) o f them in the p r o c e s s . His tor ians debate the true motiva-tions behind the policy but all that matters for our purposes are its effects. After the famine, Stalin repopulated these Ukrainian farmlands by shipping ethnic Rus-sians into the country. The Holodomor left a lasting effect on the Ukraine not only because of its devas-tation, but also because today, still, one sixth of Ukraine’s population is ethnic Russian. The Soviet subjugation of Ukraine continued until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today, the cultural divide between the ethnic Rus-sians and Ukrainians is extremely evident. One third of the Ukraine speaks Russian as its native language and even Ukraine’s president didn’t speak

Ukrainian until he was in his 50’s. Political scien-tist Leonid Peisakhin explains the situation very clearly: Ukraine “has never been and is not yet a coherent national unit with a common narrative or a set of more or less commonly shared political aspi-rations.” These Russian speakers live mostly in one half of the country while the Ukrainian half lives in the other. For years, the political stage has been split almost 50-50 between these two groups. Now onto the contemporary troubles: The current issue began on November 21st 2013, when Ukrain-ian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal which would have created closer ties with the Eu-ropean Union. The rejection was favored by Putin who rewarded the Ukraine with a stimulus package worth $15 billion and a 33% cut in prices on Russ-

ian natural gas. But, f o r t h e 4 3 % o f U k r a i n i-ans who supported the deal, t h i s c a u s e d o u t r a g e , leading to the begin-n i n g o f protests in t h e

Ukrainian capital, Kiev. The protests had actually started to die down until January 16th, when Viktor Yanukovych, the Ukrainian president signed an “anti-protest” law, which strongly restricted free speech for the people and the media. This new pol-icy, combined with the increased violence of the police and the abduction and beating of opposition activists, blew new life into the Ukrainian protests, which spread from Kiev to a number of regional capitals. An amnesty deal was proposed on Feb-ruary 14th, but it quickly fell apart, resulting in vio-lent clashes between the protesters and the police. (continued on page 7)

UPRISING IN UKRAINE Avi Goldman`15


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In his 2014 State of the Union address on January 28th, President Obama said in regard to proposals strengthening the economy and the middle class, “Some require Congressional action, and I'm eager to work with all of you. But America does not stand still – and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that's what I'm going to do.” Later the President announced, “I will issue an Executive Order re-quiring federal contractors to pay their federally-fund-ed employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour.” The President is tired of Congress doing nothing so he has decided to do every-thing in his power to help this country. The main way that Obama can do things without approval of Con-gress is by way of execu-tive order. In order to fully understand what President Obama can do with his ex-ecutive order we must ex-amine the history of the executive order. !Although there is no direct mention of the executive order in the Constitution, presidents have looked at certain phrases within Article II to show that they have executive power. Article II Section I says, “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” And in Section III it states, “He shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” These phrases are the basis for the executive order. On April 22, 1789, George Washington signed the first executive order in the form of a proclamation. This proclamation gave directive to federal agen-cies to prosecute any citizens interfering with the war between England and France. Every president since has used the executive order at least once,

with the exception of William Henry Harrison who was only president for 31 days. Theodore Roo-sevelt was the first president to eclipse 1,000 exec-utive orders and Franklin Delano Roosevelt has issued the most at 3,522. Most executive orders are unknown and have to do with directing federal agencies how to carry out their legislative mission. However, there have been many famous and very controversial executive orders that have done more than rename an agency. Abraham Lincoln’s Eman-

cipation Proclamation is the executive order that freed all the slaves of the seceded s ta tes . Franklin Delano Roo-sevelt’s New Deal was an executive order that is credited with getting t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s through the Great De-pression. It set up the Works Progress Admin-istration (WPA) that gave work to 8.5 million people by having them build bridges, roads, parks and many other projects having to do with infrastructure. Har-ry Truman ordered the Desegregation of the Armed Forces, which

said that there should be equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. Some of the most infamous executive orders include Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Japanese- American Internment, which authorized the detention of 110,000 Japanese- Americans. Lincoln also issued an executive order that suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. In 1952, Harry Truman issued an executive order that seized control of the steel mills in the United States. This was the first executive order that was challenged in the courts. The Supreme Court de-cided 6-3 in Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (continued on page 15)

PRES. OBAMA & THE EXECUTIVE ORDER Yona Kornsgold`15


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CLIMATE CHANGE: IT’S REAL Eddie Mattout`15

Earth's average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, and is predicted to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next hundred years. Rising glob-al temperatures have been accompanied by changes in weather and climate. Many places have seen changes in rainfall, resulting in more floods, droughts, or intense rain, as well as more frequent and severe heat waves. Oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, ice caps are melting, and sea levels are rising.

Humans are largely re-sponsible for the increase in climate change. Hu-man activities have re-leased large amounts of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, which are emitted from burning fossil fuels to produce energy, in to the a t-mosphere. Greenhouse gases trap energy in the atmosphere and cause the earth to warm. This phe-nomenon is called the “greenhouse effect” and is natural and necessary to support life on Earth. However, the buildup of greenhouse gases can change Earth's climate and result in dangerous effects to human health and welfare and to ecosys-tems.

The Obama Administration has taken a series of important steps to reduce the harmful emissions that contribute to climate change and pollute our water and air. In December 2009, President Obama and other world leaders came together to negotiate the Copenhagen Accord. At this conference, all ma-jor developed and developing economies agreed to implement measures to limit their greenhouse gas emissions and to do so in an internationally trans-parent manner. In 2010, the Cancun Agreement

confirmed and substantially extended the core ele-ments of the Copenhagen Accord in the areas of finance, technology and adaptation as well as miti-gation and transparency in an instrument that the Parties enthusiastically endorsed. In December 2011 at the Durban conference, the United States and the international community took important steps to make operational all of the key elements of the Cancun agreement, including a transparency regime to monitor and review mitigation efforts by

developed and develop-ing countries, as well as established a Green Cli-mate Fund.

On February 14, 2014, President Obama an-nounced that he will pitch 1 billion dollars to a climate change re-silience fund. The fund, which would require ap-proval from Congress, is intended to help commu-nities dealing with nega-tive weather resulting from climate change. Obama is touting the fund during a trip to Cal-ifornia, which has been devastated by a drought that is threatening the Central Valley's agricul-

ture production and has led Gov. Jerry Brown to call on Californians to conserve water.” "The ad-ministration's fund would invest in research to gather data on the impacts of climate change, help communities prepare for them and support innova-tive technologies and infrastructure," the paper re-ports, "to ready the country 'in the face of a chang-ing climate'" said Obama.

Obama will propose the fund in his 2015 budget, to be released next month. It is unlikely, however, that Congress will pass this budget.

(continued on page 14)


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!(continued from page 4-Goldman) February 20th was without a doubt the bloodiest day of the protests—some 2,000 protestors were injured while at least 77 were killed. On February 22nd, members of parliament deemed that Yanukovych was no longer able to fulfill his du-ties, ousted him from his presidency, and set a re-placement election for May 25th. Over the week-end, Yanukovych fled Kiev to Kharkiv, and ap-pears to no longer have control over the Ukraine. His whereabouts are currently unknown.

!!The situation in the Ukraine is rather precarious: If Yanukovych had returned the stimulus package to Russia in order to resolve the domestic unrest, he would have undoubtedly created a severe econom-ic downturn. Yet, his violent crackdown on the protestors was an unacceptable response. The coming days and weeks are crucial to Ukraine’s future, the leaders need to find a way to bring the two sides together to prevent further bloodshed and a possible civil war.

OBAMACARE: HURTING DOCTORS Max Teplitz `16

In lieu of recent events, The Affordable HealthCare Act (ACA), colloquially known as Obamacare, has received a lot of attention from the media and the internet. Most of the attention was focused on the poor website planning, consumers’ difficulty in contacting representatives of the insurance, and the failure of the website creators to have beta-tested the website(not to mention the heavy opposition it has received from politicians). In other words, most of the conversa-t i o n h a s b e e n about the techno-logical aspects of Obamacare, but not much discus-s ion has been s p e n t o n t h e A.C.A.’s effects on doctors, and how these effects will in turn affect their patients. For example, with the ACA enacted, insurance companies cannot change premiums and benefits.This causes the pool of healthcare providers available to patients for med-ical help to shrink dramatically. Doctors all over the country are recognizing the threat that the ACA poses and are expressing their disappointment with the A.C.A. Dr. Ramin Oskoui, President of the medical staff at Sibley Hospital in Washington D.C. said in an interview with Fox

News, “The actual reimbursement for the physician is below the actual cost of providing the service. So while it’s great for patients, it doesn't work for doc-tors.” Dr. Oskoui continued by making an analogy to hamburgers, “Let's say you told them they can only charge $10.95 for that burger. But the cost of the beef, the bun, the vegetables, keeps rising. That squeezes their profit margins. Eventually they have no profit and they're losing money on producing

that burger.” In other words, doc-t o r s w i l l n o longer be able to make a living. Doctors are some of the most edu-cated members of our society; they usually receive up to 12 years of medical educa-tion, including

medical school and a residency. If, as a nation, we want to continue to have the best talent in medicine, we want our doctors to be satisfied, and we want our doctors well compensated for their work, then we must repeal Obamacare. Already the ACA is forcing many doctors to refuse to treat their pa-tients. Many top hospitals have already ‘opted out’ of Obamacare. If we want the patients to benefit the most, we need to treat our doctors well, and under Obamacare, they are being hurt, badly.


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WHY I OPPOSE THE NSA Daniel Cahn `17

Let’s be honest with ourselves: How much of a threat is terrorism to America? Let’s look at the time frame of 1999 to 2010. In this timeframe, roughly 3,000 US citizens died in terrorist attacks around the world. In that time, 150,000 were killed in drunk-driving accidents, and roughly 360,000 were killed by guns. That means that guns pose a threat 100 times greater to Americans than terror-ists and drunk driving threatened our safety 50 times more than terrorism. That’s not it. 3,000 Americans die of food poisoning every year! That means that around the same number of people that died in 9/11 die each year from food-borne illness-es. So before I start any arguments about why the NSA is not to be trusted, corrupt, and inefficient, I’d like to begin by making i t clear of how un-necessary the NSA is an a so-ciety with so very few terror-ist attacks taking p l a c e . G i v e n these numbers, do you know what scares me more than terror-ism? A policy that reacts to fear by ceding more autonomy and power to its secret police. According to the Wall Street Journal, even a very accurate (described as "terribly clever and has a very high sensitivity and specificity”) algorithm for identifying terrorist communications could produce about 10,000 false positives for every real “hit.” It’s like testing someone for a rare disease. If you test an entire population, maybe you’ll find a cou-ple. But what about all of the very many false posi-tive that will show up? Now what is a false posi-tive? It means patients are getting tests or treatment they don't need. For the NSA, false positives could mean innocent people are monitored, detained, find

themselves on no-fly lists or are otherwise incon-venienced, and that the agency spends resources inefficiently. !Recently, a study was performed by Corey Chivers of McGill University. It assumed that the NSA’s terrorst-detecting software was 99% accurate, which seems very charitable, and that 1 in every million guys on social networks like Facebook was in fact a terrorist, which again is very generous. He found that in such an algorithm, 1 in every 10,102 positive hits from the algorithm is actually a “bad guy.” Now what if the algorithm wasn’t even that strong and analysts are actually searching through

h u n d r e d s o f t h o u s a n d s o f guys just to find one that is a “bad guy”? Now I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theo-rist, but I’d like to tell you what the NSA is claim-ing to be doing constantly. The NSA claims to “touch” 1.6% of

the daily internet traffic. That’s HUGE, considering the net carries 1,826 petabytes of data per day, meaning 29 petabytes are “touched” by the NSA each day. By comparison, in 2010, Google indexed only 0.004% of the data on the net. Clearly: this is a hell of a lot of “touching.” Of course I’m not in the government so I can’t speak for sure on this matter, but one must have a certain amount of doubt and skepticism when they read of a computer system code named PRISM that the government claims is able to be significantly stronger than any supercomputer ever built by the private sector. A more likely scenario to consider is that there is just a database containing everyone’s information in (continued on page 16)


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JOE LHOTA ADDRESSES RAMPO Sally Klapper `15

DO NOT WITHDRAW AID TO EGYPT

At one of the most well-attended meetings in RamPo history, Joe Lhota, former republican may-oral candidate of New York City, spoke about why he lost the election and stop and frisk. He then an-swered questions about the effectiveness of stop and frisk, rent control, the fate of the republican party both nation and city wide, waste in the city’s government, and finally the problems with unions. Mr. Lhota graduated from Georgetown and continued to attain an MBA at Har-vard. He is the former chairman of the MTA and has served as deputy may-or.

Mr. Lhota began his hour-long address with several jokes and then proceeded to explain that he ran for mayor because he felt his management experience gave him the skills neces-sary to run New York City. He attributed his landslide loss to the tendency of the American people to vote for an idea, goal or ideal. He also noted that Democ-rats outnumber republicans 7:1 in New York. As antic-ipated,, Lhota began to talk about “Stop and Frisk.” In his brief overview of the debate, he shocked the audience by revealing that in 2011, (at its peak) there were more stops in Los Angeles than in New York. Lhota believes that the problem originated because former Police Commissioner Ray Kelly placed cops straight out of the police academy in high crime areas, which Lhota believes to be a huge misstep. These officers are often from rural or suburban areas and being placed in these situations are foreign to them. They use Stop and Frisk as a weapon, stopping African American and Hispanic men in order to feel more secure and in control.

Another problem stems from the general approach of the “higher ups” of the police force. Setting a quota or insisting on an increase of stops every month is the wrong approach. The notion of quan-tity over quality is a major aspect in the tarnished reputation for such an important program. Lhota stated that in 2012, Ray Kelly realized his mistake and reduced the number of stop and frisks. Lhota

believes that reform must take place and that the pub-lic needs to be educated on what exactly the police can do and what training they have received. Lhota be-lieves that the cancellation of stop and frisk would be incredibly dangerous for everyone living or working in New York.

Lhota on the issues based on questions posed by the audience:

Rising subway costs and where the MTA is headed: Mr. Lhota stressed the im-portance of investing in m a s s t r a n s i t a n d i n-frastructure. He thinks that New Yorkers are being short shifted by the 2009 decision to take $300 mil-lion from the MTA revenue

annually indefinitely. Lhota was exhilarated by the idea of building a 2nd avenue subway, even though it has been underway since 1939. He boasted that New York City has the lowest rate of CO2 emis-sions due to the subway system. Lhota also sees a need to increase the bus, ferry, and N and R line coverage. Lhota, a proud Brooklyn resident stated that the green cab concept as promoted by David Yassky was one of the worst ideas ever and



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(continued from page 1) 3. “A sense of responsibility to all humankind" Responsibility for humankind compels us to em-pathize with the plight of every human. Even while disagreeing on ideology, we must seek to under-stand all of humankind. 4. We lack information and empathy concerning Palestinians because we've never met them, we’ve never heard them speak. Our impression is that many Ramaz students don't know about Palestin-ian life or Palestinian ideas, because they haven’t been given any opportunities for such an en-counter. 5. This quote captures much of our thought. "Free-dom of speech is a central value in our society. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorse-ment of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas. It is a critical premise of free-dom of speech that we do not honor the dishonor-able when we open the public forum to their voic-es. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible." ~ Lee Bollinger, President of Co-lumbia. This last point is especially relevant. By hosting Professor Khalidi we do not endorse his ideas, rather we endorse the value of open discussion and debate. Professor Khalidi’s views are not accept-able ones for a Zionist institution to believe, but we must understand these ideas. Rabbi Lookstein expressed these ideas excellently in another con-text when he said, “The Ramaz that I’ve associated myself with prides itself on being open to all is-sues, to all views, while maintaining its Modern Orthodox stance.” It is especially absurd to claim that Ramaz would be legitimizing Khalidi’s posi-tions by allowing him to speak. The event was by invitation only and all attendees would be required to attend two additional meetings: one before the event and one afterwards with Ramaz faculty. These discussions would have prepared attendees to grapple with Khalidi’s ideas. The administration agreed with the idea that Ra-maz should be a place open to the voices of even those with whom we vehemently disagree. How-ever, we were charged with the task to go back and research Professor Khalidi thoroughly, to make sure that Khalidi was not beyond the pale, that he did not label Israel an apartheid state nor did he endorse violence. !

!We did our research. As a matter of fact, Khalidi has rejected the idea that Israel is a racist or apartheid state on live television. He does however see some Israeli policies, especially in Judea and Samaria, as apartheid style policies. Khalidi also has repeatedly written that violence is both ineffec-tive and immoral and that suicide bombings are war crimes. What’s more, Khalidi was a board member of the National Advisory Committee of the U.S. Interreligious Committee for Peace in the Middle East. Professor Khalidi’s credentials are remarkable. Af-ter receiving his B.A. from Yale University, Khali-di went on to earn a D. Phil at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. After some time with the American University in Beirut, Khalidi joined the University of Chicago as professor and director of both the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Center for International Studies. He currently is a chaired professor at Columbia University and Pres-ident of the Middle East Studies Association. Kha-lidi also edits the Journal of Palestine Studies and has written more than ten books on the Middle East. He is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. After thoroughly researching Khalidi’s positions on everything from the Iraq war to the Soviet Union, we returned on Dec. 19 to meet with the Upper School administration. After discussing our research point-by-point, they approved of Khalidi for a speaking engagement. It was then that we invited Khalidi. A few weeks later, after starting to publicize the event, we received news, third-hand, that Mr. Sha-viv had canceled the event. In our February 12 meeting, Mr. Shaviv explained his reasoning that Khalidi is not “the right partner for ‘dialogue’ with high school students” and that we need to be “mindful of multiple sensitivities within our varied school constituencies.” Mr. Shaviv also explained that “[Ramaz] students are encouraged to have candid discussions and hear diverse views on all subjects, including the Middle East conflict and the Palestinian perspective.” Mr. Shaviv has since fol-lowed up on this statement and is currently helping RamPo put together a new program hosting a Palestinian thinker. (continued on following page)


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(continued from previous page) Over President's weekend, we deliberated how to respond. After much consideration, we decided to start a petition to show Mr. Shaviv that the student body disagrees with his decision. Our mistake was in posting the petition in the grade Facebook pages. In our desire to share the petition with Ra-maz students, we created a situation in which it is not surprising that the internal dispute was leaked to the press. We designed the open letter to be a purely internal petition, to represent just the views of those students who sign it. As RamPost goes to print, 122 students have publicly supported allow-ing RamPo bringing Professor Khalidi to Ramaz. Another 125 or so parents, alumni, and outside supporters have signed the petition. Much has been made in Haaretz and frontpagemag.com of the joke names that have signed the petition. Those names, including “Adolph Hitler” and “David Duke,” are removed from the petition immediately after sign-ing. We miscalculated in attempting to bring in Khalidi. We underestimated the prevalence of the rumors and mischaracterizations of Khalidi. In making our decision, the RamPo leadership assessed his credi-bility. Having determined that he is credible, we believed Khalidi when he publicly and repeatedly denied being a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). We thought that for Ramaz to provide a platform for Khalidi, he must only have a “clean” record. Mr. Shaviv explained to us, how-ever, that Khalidi is too “red-hot,” too much of a political “football,” to be allowed to speak at Ra-maz. The school chose to distance itself from a man unfairly accused of being an anti-Semite. We underestimated the potential for a publicity firestorm that bringing Khalidi to Ramaz would entail. However, even after we experienced a taste of political fire, we still disagree with Mr. Shaviv’s decision to prohibit Professor Khalidi from speak-ing to RamPo. Ramaz must be a beacon of acade-mic openness and intellectual freedom. We com-mend Mr. Shaviv and Rabbi Lookstein for making a different decision—one they also felt was right—allowing women to wear tefillin in the face of backlash from the Ramaz community and Rab-binate, our peer Yeshiva high schools, and Rav Herschel Schachter, a Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University. We ought to take another look at the mission statement and remember that Ramaz is committed to the “pursuit of knowledge, to intel-lectual rigor, to scholarship.” Stand up for academ-ic openness even

!when outside influences stifles such openness. Mr. Shaviv: we agree with you fundamentally that Palestinians should be allowed to speak at Ramaz. We agree with you that Ramaz should be commit-ted to listening even to opinions that go against the very fiber of our identity. Those ideals should ap-ply to Professor Khaldi. We must place the values of academic integrity and openness above the de-sire to avoid backlash. We must emulate the model put forward by you and R’ Lookstein, the model of standing up for what we believe is right—in this instance, academic openness—even when commu-nal politics make it difficult to do so. Ramaz is, in many ways, not just a Yeshiva, but also an elite college-preparatory school. That means the classes we take and the environment we create are all designed to prepare us for college. But at Ramaz, being a Jewish prep-school also means preparing the student body Jewishly for the college campus: seniors are required to take Cam-pus Life and Jewish Identity, Kedushat Hamish-pacha, and four credits of practical Halacha. Ra-maz must also prepare the student body to support Israel on campus. How can we be prepared to do so when we are not exposed to important Palestin-ian intellectuals beforehand? Many Ramaz alumni attend Columbia, where Professor Khalidi works; but this is not only an issue for Ramaz students who attend Columbia. His ideas are quite com-monplace at the colleges and universities that Ra-maz students typically attend. We are compromis-ing our graduates ability to support Israel on-cam-pus by refraining from exposing them to those ideas while still in a safe, nurturing environment. Beyond the mere embarrassment that we face, withdrawing our invitation to Professor Khalidi, these events call into question the very values of our school. Is Ramaz an educational institution? Is the mission statement, complete with “a commit-ment to the pursuit of knowledge, to intellectual rigor, [and] to scholarship,” the true guiding light for our policies? How can we claim to imbue our students with a commitment to academic freedom and inspired debate when we shut down that de-bate within our school on the one issue—Israel—that matters to us so much? Modern Orthodoxy demands that we love and stay true to Torah while engaging in the modern world. So too should that principle apply to our Zionism. We must remain committed Zionists, we must “love and support the State of Israel,” even while engaging with ideas that we deplore.


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Supporters of the bill describe it as a “diplomatic insurance policy” that will help President Obama cut a better nuclear deal with Iran. The President denounces it as a deal-killer that could put the United States on a path to war. The Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, a 52 page Senate bill, suggests to pass new sanctions against Iran while searching for peace.

In response to Iran’s continued illicit nuclear activ-ities, the United States and other countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions to censure Iran and prevent its further progress in prohibited nu-clear activities, as well as to persuade Tehran to address the international community’s con-cerns about its nu-c l e a r p r o g r a m . What are their pur-pose? According to state.gov “These measures are de-signed: (1) to block t h e t r a n s f e r o f weapons, compo-nents, technology, and dual-use items to Iran’s prohibited nuclear and missile programs; (2) to target select sectors of the Iranian economy rele-vant to its proliferation activities; and (3) to induce Iran to engage constructively, through discussions with the United States, China, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia.” The question of whether sanctions would cause Iran to leave the bargaining table cannot be answered in Washing-ton. That decision is up to the Iranians, who have talked tough about sanctions but have plenty of reasons not to walk away.

The proposed bill lays down the outline for an ac-ceptable nuclear deal, which had the White House very worried. Since the administration feels many

of the conditions laid out are unrealistic, it basical-ly sets Mr. Obama up for failure. Bipartisan legis-lation lead by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) accumulated the support of 59 senators, including all but two Senate Republicans: Rand Paul of Kentucky and Jeff Flake of Arizona. Sources even said that the support even ran among the democrats but they remained on the sideline because of the Obama administration’s opposition to new Iran sanctions.

In his State of the Union, Obama made it utterly clear that he would veto the bill if passed saying,

“for the sake of our national security, we must give diplomacy a chance to succeed. The negotiations won't be easy, and any long-term deal we agree to must be based on veri-fiable action," not trust, Obama said. But "if John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries t o d a y. " A f t e r t h e

speech, at least four Democratic cosponsors — Sens. Chris Coons (Del.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Ben Cardin (Md.) — said they didn't want to vote on the bill while negotiations are ongoing. Sen. Richard Blu-menthal (D-Conn.) had already adopted that posi-tion earlier in the month. With the willingness of democratic cosponsors decreasing by five a veto proof majority seems unlikely. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said that there isn’t enough support to over-ride the veto.


IRAN NUCLEAR SANCTIONS: UPDATED Eddie Mattout `15


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This past summer, uneasy peace talks began be-tween Israel and the Palestinians. Perhaps seeking to undermine the process, the Israeli housing committee has recently decided to begin the devel-opment of a long-term housing plan in which 20,000 apartments will be constructed in the West Bank. The plan has inhibited peace talks, height-ened tensions, and has called into question the overall legitimacy of Jewish “settlements.” Never-theless, the “settle-ments” located in the eas tern region of Jerusalem are justifi-able. Their rights to exist provide a basis for the continuation of their construction.

The controversy over the Jewish “settle-ments” of Jerusalem is very different from the larger conflict over Israeli “settle-ments” of the West Bank and other occu-pied territories. In 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem, for-merly under Jordanian control. The entire city of Jerusalem, ex-t e n d i n g p a s t t h e armistice line of 1949, is one municipality and one capital city. The Palestinians maintain that East Jerusalem should constitute the capital of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. Yet even referring to these east-ern Jerusalem neighborhoods as “settlements” is illicit. The Israeli government considers the con-tested areas as mere neighborhoods of Jerusalem, which follows the Israeli position that Jerusalem is one unified city. The buildup of Jewish housing in the region is therefore, according to the Israelis, a

legitimate construction project. Palestinians and supporters of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, refer to these neighborhoods as settlements. This should not be done. A settlement is the term used to refer to Jewish towns and cities in the territories occupied by the Israelis during the Six-Day War. Yet, East Jerusalem is no longer a territory, rather it is an archaic title for what used to be the Jordanian segment of the Jerusalem area.

Nowadays , “Eas t Jerusalem” does not exist, only “eastern Jerusalem,” all of which legally is part of the State of Israel. By rejecting Israel’s annexation of eastern Jerusalem and the lack of recognition of a unified Jerusalem, Palestinians damage their own argument for having “East Jerusalem” as a capi-tal city for the pro-posed Palestinian state in the West Bank.

Consequently, and in a c c o r d a n c e w i t h widely accepted Is-raeli opinion, Israel is merely building in their capital city. The French can build

freely in eastern Paris and the British in eastern London, so why do the rules suddenly change for eastern Jerusalem? The United States government has, in recent years, changed their adamant rejec-tion of all Israeli settlements, taking major steps to legitimize Israeli construction in eastern Jerusalem. In 2013, a bill was proposed in Congress, the Recognition of Jerusalem as the Capital of the (continued on page 15)

IN SUPPORT OF ISRAELI SETTLEMENTS Gabriel Klapholz `17


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(continued from page 6-Mattout) The fund is predicated on understanding that cli-mate change is real and is affecting the country through droughts and storms and wildfires. Con-gressional Republicans have consistently refused to enact policies that would ameliorate the effects of climate change, as well as consistently opposing any new spending.

Lastly, one billion dollars to spend on research and response is more than nothing, but it's already dwarfed by how expensive these disasters have proven to be. In 2013, there were seven disasters that cost at least that much. It would take a lot more money and political will than currently exist to substantially curtail the number of future events that will be just as expensive.

(continued from page 9-Klapper) is failing miserably. Speaking with much personal experience Lhota said that as the hailing system modernizes and is able to utilize technology it is only improving in the outer boroughs. !The legitimacy of stop and frisk: Many scholars have concluded that the drop in crime was only in accord with the trend in other cities in the United States and had nothing to do with stop and frisk: Lhota replied vaguely saying that the numbers do not support his hypothesis and while various econ-omists and criminologists agree with the author of Freakonomics, the graph depicting the data of the drop in crime proves that the decrease in NYC is drastically lower than anywhere else and he is con-fident that stop and frisk has had an impact on those numbers.

The legitimacy of Stop and Frisk if shooting sta-tistics are nearly the same as they were before stop and frisk was implemented: Mr. Lhota ex-plained that stop and frisk is about more than just preventing gun violence.

Rent control, a problem that makes housing more expensive for everyone: Lhota suggested creating a larger market for low cost housing via building permits awarded only to companies promising to make low to mid income housing, which although just another form of rent control, would create jobs which is essential.

The Rightwards shift of the Republican Party and the long-term effect it will have: Mr. Lhota stated the previously held stigma about Republi-cans. They were the tough guys on foreign policy and were fiscally responsible. A major turning point for the party was when the religious white became very important in the Reagan Administra-

tion. By catering to this large but irregular group, the Republican Party turned its back on modern society. He continued, stating that as of late New York City has moved farther to the left and al-though they outnumber republicans 7:1 the democ-rats have been out of power for 12 years. The De-mocratic Party isn’t as liberal as New York City or DeBlasio who was the second most progressive and liberal candidate in the Mayoral race.

Whether or not New York City should continue to build into its surrounding rivers in light of the massive destruction caused by hurricane Sandy: Yes! We as New Yorkers need to be resilient.

His previous claim that there is a lot of waste in the government: The hesitation to utilize technol-ogy creates a huge amount of waste, upwards of 4%, which could easily be eliminated by the disuse of paper.

Unions and the impending crisis they are sure to create: The problem is that employees are liv-ing much longer than they have ever before. As you drive through a toll you are paying for four retired employees pensions for every current em-ployee. A possible solution is giving employees the options to enter into a 401k instead of collecting a pension for the rest of their lives.

The event was incredibly informative and students from over four schools attended. Daniel Dellal ’14 said “as someone who doesn’t closely follow city politics, I found it really informative as to the problems that New York faces that need to be fixed.” Daniel Gutkind ’16 described Lhota as “very interesting; without the rhetoric of the cam-paign trail, a lot of what he presented was very centrist and logical, rather than being very conser-vative or liberal.”


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(continued from page 11-Klapholz) State of Israel Act, which would move the Ameri-can embassy to Jerusalem, from Tel Aviv. The bill supports Israel’s claims over the city. Although the United States has a long way to go before they ful-ly back Israel on this issue, the U.S. has made ma-jor progress compared to past presidential declara-tions, which have c o m p l e t e l y d e-nounced Israel’s ac-tions.

The Israeli govern-ment has also offered Palestinians living in eastern Jerusalem a path to Israeli citi-zenship. Although many Palestinians have rejected this citizenship, they still have the right to vote municipally, receive health funds, partake in social security services and become members of Israel’s Labor Federation. Essentially, the Pales-tinians of eastern Jerusalem either have or have been offered a path to full equal rights. As a result, the Palestinians cannot argue that, as in the larger West Bank, they do not receive equal rights as the Israelis. They have no claim to an “oppressive”

!Israeli government that inhibits them from exhibit-ing their legal rights as inhabitants of the region. Lastly, the neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem could, in fact, be useful as a defense mechanism for the Israelis, providing them with a buffer zone between them and many angered Palestinians and

justifying why they should hold onto the area. The “sett le-ments” ul t imately safeguard Israel’s in-terests in keeping Jerusalem unified and as Israel’s permanent capital. The “settle-ments” protect Israel’s claim to the Old City and many of its holy cites. Although it is extremely difficult to legitimize the Israeli settlements of the West Bank, the Israeli

neighborhoods of eastern Jerusalem are, indeed, legitimate. Jerusalem has and will continue to be the religious and political capital of Israel, having a deep historical and even biblical connection to the Jewish people and the State of Israel.

(continued from page 5-Kornsgold) that Truman’s executive order was unconstitution-al. This ruling significantly limited the power of the executive order and from then on presidents now have to state the laws on which they base their executive orders. It is clear when looking at the history of the execu-tive order that President Obama can do a lot with the executive order. I believe that if the president wants to use the executive order he can be quite successful. President Obama should be aware that if he chooses to do what he proposed in the State of the Union and use the executive order to bypass Congress, the Republicans are likely to use the courts to challenge him. Currently the Republicans

!are challenging the President’s recess appointment in NLRB v. Noel Canning in which it seems the Supreme Court will rule that he overstepped his authority in his recess appointments. I hope that Congress can work together and come up with so-lutions for this country but if they can’t I believe Obama can use his executive power quite effec-tively. Obviously legislation that Congress passes will have more of an impact than the executive or-der but as seen through history the executive order can do a lot. Obama should just be aware that if he goes that route there will be a lot of contention of these orders in the court of public opinion and the court of law.


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(continued from page 8-Cahn) case of any investigation into anyone, but not nec-essarily being constantly processed the way the government claims to.

A January 2013 report from the Office of the Di-rector of National Intelligence says more than 4.9 million people have some sort of government secu-rity clearance. Out of those, about 1.4 million of those lay claim to "top secret" clearance. Can we really trust that huge amount of people with our data? Take Snowden for example: the NSA policy prevents a typical worker from doing things like copying files to USB thumb drives or other exter-nal storage. But Snowden had an easy way around those restrictions, simply by virtue of being classi-fied as a “systems administrator”. Basically, he was nothing more than an IT guy. Snowden was noth-ing more than an IT guy. Yet the system is so flawed that he was able to release information to the public. While Snowden may have been altruis-tically motivated, the same cannot be said of oth-ers. It is possible for NSA personnel to use loop-holes in the system for personal gain.

I believe that the main confusion people have re-garding this issue is created by the illusion that an entity of some sort called “the government” who you can trust is watching over your data rather than the realization that this entity is really just a collec-tive group of people, not all of whom are so trust worthy. This idea was not alien to our American forefathers even though they lived much before the digital age. The Fourth Amendment obliges the

government to demonstrate probable cause before conducting invasive surveillance. There is simply no precedent under the Constitution for the gov-ernment’s seizing such vast amounts of revealing data on innocent Americans’ communications. The act usually made to justify this breach of pri-vacy is the provisions in the USA PATRIOT ACT in Section 215 which allows the FBI, in this case on behalf of the NSA, to apply to the Foreign Intel-ligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for an order compelling a person to produce “any tangible thing,” given that the FBI provide a statement of facts showing that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the tangible things sought are “rele-vant to an authorized investigation.” Instead of re-sponding to this claim myself, by recognizing the problems that I think any reader can notice, I’d like to quote Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of the PATRIOT Act. He said that “the administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Pa-triot Act says that it can. I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this [NSA surveillance] is an abuse of that law.” Unless we actually see some kind of evidence showing any benefits the NSA really provided us to justify it’s highly unconstitutional actions, It is our duty as statesmen to convince the federal govern-ment to end these illegal procedures so that we can chat on Facebook without having to fear that a friend yours that’s in the government is going to read it, just like the case after case of abuses of power all over the NSA.

(continued from page 12-Mattout)

Opponents of the bill such as J-Street made the ar-gument that, “One: The bill is bad policy. Two: There was no political reason that these senators should feel they need to support the bill. There is deep political support in communities for members of Congress and senators who want to reserve this peaceably,” as stated by Slate’s David Weigel. AIPAC’s position was as follows. “We applaud Senator Menendez’s determined leadership on this issue and his authorship with Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act. We agree with the Chairman that stopping the Iranian

nuclear program should rest on bipartisan support and that there should not be a vote at this time on the measure. We remain committed to working with the Administration and the bipartisan leader-ship in Congress to ensure that the Iran nuclear program is dismantled.”

After the State of the Union the issue quieted down a bit but only time can tell what will happen with Iran. if Iranian breaks the terms of the existing deal or scuttles diplomatic efforts in the coming months, Congress can always return to the issue. Now we can wait and see what the probable diplomatic ef-forts will produce.


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POLITICAL FUN A COLLECTION OF SOME OF THE MONTH’S FUNNIEST POLITICAL CARTOONS


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TEST YOUR POLITICAL SMARTS !

RamPost is a nonpartisan editorial and is the publication of The Ramaz Politics Society (RamPo). All views expressed are the views of their writer and do not reflect the opinions of the newsprint itself. RamPost is available in digital form at www.issuu.com/RamazPolitics.

Co-Founders and Presidents: Dan Korff-Korn, Cyril Putzer, Alex Weinberg

Junior President: Yona Kornsgold

Faculty Advisor: Mr. Hillel Rapp

1. Who is GOP Senator Rand Paul suing? a) President Obama because of NSA surveillance b) Edward Snowden for leaking national secrets c) Chris Christie for closing a bridge d) Louisiana Gov-ernor Bobby Jindal for waging a silent war on reli-gion 2. According to newly released personal notes from a friend, whom did Hillary Clinton describe as a "narcissistic looney toon"? a) Newt Gingrich b) Bill Clinton c) Francois Mit-terand d) Monica Lewinsky 3. The federal government has issued new guide-lines to banks to provide services to whom? a) Middle Eastern companies b) The one percent c) Olympic medal winners d) Marijuana-related busi-nesses 4. Turkish special forces put an end to a hijack-ing. Where did the hijacker want the plane to go? a) Athens, Greece b) Tel Aviv, Israel c) The Olympics in Sochi, Russia d) New York City 5. With strong bipartisan votes, on what did the U.S. Congress vote to spend $1 trillion? a) An immigration overhaul b) Three new quantum computer-controlled aircraft carriers c) A farm bill d.) Tax breaks for high-income earners 6. In his State of the Union speech in January, President Obama said he would do what to get around an obstructive Congress?

a) Expand the U.S. Supreme Court to get more amenable rulings for his priorities b) Institute a mili-tary dictatorship backed by a Maoist insurgency c) Call early midterm elections d) Executive orders 7. What happened to the U.S. economy in the fourth quarter of 2013? a) It shrank by a 2.1 percent annual rate b) Unem-ployment rose to 8.1 percent c) It produced zero growth d) It grew at a 3.2 percent annual rate 8. Why is former Virginia Governor Bob McDon-nell headed to court? a) He is suing Politico.com, claiming its reporting cost him his job b) He is being sued by Planned Par-enthood over anti-abortion legislation he signed c) He and his wife have been indicted on federal cor-ruption charges d) He is seeking to have his duel-cit-izenship from Canada revoked 9. What company said the personal information of up to 70 million people was stolen from its sys-tems? a) Apple b) Target c) CNN d) American Express 10. Thousands of photos of emaciated and tor-tured corpses are said to be proof of "industrial scale killing" committed by whom? a) Syria's government b) Syrian rebels c) Russian forces in Chechnya d) al Qaeda in Iraq !Courtesy of The Huffington Post

1) a. 2) d. 3) d. 4) c. 5) c. 6) d. 7) d. 8) c. 9)b. 10) a.

RamPost Editors Copy Editor: Shoshana Edelman

Co-Editor-in-Chief & Layout: Dan Korff-Korn Co-Editor-in-Chief: Alex Weinberg

facebook.com/RamazPoliticsSociety! [email protected]! tinyurl.com/RamazPolitics


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Documents

RamPost Volume II, Issue 2