OT: The Elian Gonzalez Case
jody eisenman
the news?
Everyone I know is sick of hearing about this case anymore. Why is the
news making such a big deal about it?
Susan Cohen
jody eisenman wrote:
Politcs. Plain & simple.
Susan
David Goldman
>> Everyone I know is sick of hearing about this case anymore. Why is the
>> news making such a big deal about it?
>Politcs. Plain & simple.
>Susan
Because they think it's feel-good, touchy-feely issue that American
women will be obsessed about. It's the most ridiculous news media
obsession ever, either of the Left or the Right.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(jody eisenman) posted:
>Can someone here please tell me why this case has completed dominated
>the news?
>
>Everyone I know is sick of hearing about this case anymore. Why is the
>news making such a big deal about it?
Because everyone identifies with one side or the other or both.
I still don't have a position on NAFTA, GATT, WTO, or global warming.
mei...@QQQerols.com
e-mail by removing QQQ
Joseph G. Murray
It has dominated the news because it is a test of the rule of law.
Will our government carry out the law in this case, or won't it? Does
the law apply to some people, but not to others, depending on the politics
of the moment? Nixon was pushed from office because of the rule of law,
so its practical power should not be underestimated. In Elian's case,
the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
or at least it appears that way.
But will our government have the courage of its convictions, or is it
paralyzed by its mistakes at Waco... or is it paralyzed by the politics of
Florida in an election year? It appears that the story has something
for everybody, but I think it is a more telling story about our way of
governing than at first appears. The principles at issue are the ones on
which our country was founded, and our government was not founded on a
hatred of Castro. I think this story will teach us more about our
country than the impeachment trial.
In my humble opinion, Elian is being used by those who now have
custody of him, and these persons have no concern for the father-son
relationship, as seen by the production of a video in which Elian tells
his father that he will not return to Cuba with him. Nor do they have
any concern for the rule of law.
Elian has a father who loves him and wants him. If the rule of law
carries the day, Elian will be with his father.
Joseph Hertzlinger
>In Elian's case,
>the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
That would be a first.
Susan Cohen
Joseph Hertzlinger wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2000 03:47:37 GMT, Joseph G. Murray <jm1...@ptd.net> wrote:
>
> >In Elian's case,
> >the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
>
> That would be a first.
Oh, you have to remember - Ronald Reagan isn't president anymore. :-P
Susan
Simcha Streltsov
: > Can someone here please tell me why this case has completed dominated
: > the news?
: >
: > Everyone I know is sick of hearing about this case anymore. Why is the
: > news making such a big deal about it?
: Politcs. Plain & simple.
even the court admited that it is a very unusual case - and in case
like that inconsistencies of various positions come out (similarly
to some Talmudic debates, or to $100 Reform & incest question).
that includes inconsistency in laws (how do you reconcile family law,
immigration law and illegal Cuban laws [yes, Cuban laws are mentioned
by the court]), in our public positions (so
many people are uncomfortable to consider a simple premise that Cuba
is a totalitarian state), and, finally, in politics - reflecting all
of the above - as it should be.
fwiw, try reading www.netside.net/usdcfls /publications/elian.pdf
the court decision in March. It seems that the judge accepts
that Lazaro can act on behalf Elian in _federal_ court (contrary
to INS filings), but finds that it is within Reno's rights to
make the decision to not accept the application for asylum
[thus minimizing Elian's legal rights - he is on temp parole,
ie not admitted legally to US], although the law does not
_require_ her to make this decision - she can easily accept
the application and then consider it on merits - and still have an
opportunity to reject it. thus, I agree with you that her decision
is motivated by politics (ie she couild be more accomodating by law).
--
Simcha Streltsov disclaimer, as requested by Mo-he S-rr
simc...@juno.com all punctuation marks in this article
http://cad.bu.edu/go/simon are equivalent to (-:
Simcha Streltsov
: It has dominated the news because it is a test of the rule of law.
: Will our government carry out the law in this case, or won't it? Does
: the law apply to some people, but not to others, depending on the politics
...
: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
: or at least it appears that way.
I just referred to a court ruling that AFAIU shows that Reno did not
_have_ to rejct filing of the application for asylum, although it was
her right. Thus, she made a political decision that is impossible
(or hard) to argue legally for or against, thus, people who do not like
this _policy_ are free to express their political disagreement -
for this and future cases.
if you read the court ruling differently, please explain.
: governing than at first appears. The principles at issue are the ones on
: which our country was founded, and our government was not founded on a
: hatred of Castro. I think this story will teach us more about our
: country than the impeachment trial.
why not on "hatred of Castro"? I recall reading something about libery
and tyrants in founding documents of this country. alternatively, if
US law should consider Castro, and other similar, regimes legal,
USA should apologize for the revolution and invite the Queen.
: In my humble opinion, Elian is being used by those who now have
: custody of him, and these persons have no concern for the father-son
: relationship, as seen by the production of a video in which Elian tells
here I don't understand something - imagine your son will be held by
relatives in another city - I assume you will first go and try to
take your son back. If they don't let you - you'll call police or
file court papers. in this case, the father refuses to go to
see his son because he is afraid to go to Miami. Either he should
ask for police escort (although you would not get it IIUC, if your
son were held in Harlem), or be shown to a psychiatrist and
stripped of his paternal rights, as noone threatened him.
instead, US is going to send marshals because the father expects
that he will not be given his son back. this is the law?!
Joseph G. Murray
Since I wrote my message and you replied, things in Little Havana have
gotten worse, to say nothing of the video tape.
I don't know exactly how I would conduct myself if the were in his
father's shoes. I do know, however, that I would not hold someone else's son
hostage. I also know that the persons holding Elian would not release Elian to
his father even if he did show up. This is becoming more apparent each hour.
I truly think that none of this is about Elian; it is about a hatred of Castro.
Even if that is a good foreign policy, it isn't good for something that has
nothing to do with foreign policy: the father son relationship between Elian
and his father. And now the persons holding Elian are making allegations about
his having abused the mother. I don't think the father has a reason to go to
Miami until his son is released.
Lastly, I am not sure that Janet Reno's decision can be described as merely
political. Moreover, it was the right decision. Now that the decision has
been made, the question becomes: Who's in charge? Protesters who hate Castro
or those who enforce the nation's immigration laws? Meanwhile, I am
informed that some Communists make great fathers...and mothers...
Joe
Simcha Streltsov
: his father even if he did show up. This is becoming more apparent each hour.
again, why should US government send troops when a father is refusing to
go see his son projecting that he will not be allowed to take him. Is it
the US law?
: I truly think that none of this is about Elian; it is about a hatred of Castro.
and what is wrong with hatred of Castro from Jewish POV?
: his having abused the mother. I don't think the father has a reason to go to
: Miami until his son is released.
my question is: what US law allows parents to call marshals to get their
kids without e even bothering to go themselves?w
: Lastly, I am not sure that Janet Reno's decision can be described as merely
: political. Moreover, it was the right decision.
I gave you a ref. to the court decision - why is your reply based
on "I am not sure" - did you try reading the court?
: Now that the decision has
: been made, the question becomes: Who's in charge? Protesters who hate Castro
: or those who enforce the nation's immigration laws? Meanwhile, I am
: informed that some Communists make great fathers...and mothers...
informed by whom?
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
P&M
>Joseph G. Murray (jm1...@ptd.net) wrote:
>
>: It has dominated the news because it is a test of the rule of law.
>: Will our government carry out the law in this case, or won't it? Does
>: the law apply to some people, but not to others, depending on the politics
>...
>
>: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
>: or at least it appears that way.
>
>I just referred to a court ruling that AFAIU shows that Reno did not
>_have_ to rejct filing of the application for asylum, although it was
>her right. Thus, she made a political decision that is impossible
I think you are using 'political' very broadly and maybe even
misusing, unless you either think it impossible that she based her
decision on considerations what she believed the law says or of
justice and propriety. Are you maintaining that every discretionary
decision is political. If not, how do you know this one was?
>(or hard) to argue legally for or against, thus, people who do not like
>this _policy_ are free to express their political disagreement -
>for this and future cases.
Whether she made a political decision or not, congress occasionally
makes changes to immigration law. This time the conservatives were
hoised by their own petard.
>
>if you read the court ruling differently, please explain.
>
>: governing than at first appears. The principles at issue are the ones on
>: which our country was founded, and our government was not founded on a
>: hatred of Castro. I think this story will teach us more about our
>: country than the impeachment trial.
>
>why not on "hatred of Castro"? I recall reading something about libery
>and tyrants in founding documents of this country. alternatively, if
You're not using hatred of Castro the same way Joseph and I would be.
The miami relatives aren't really considering what is good for the
boy, only what is bad for castro. If they cared about the boy,
knowing that there is a good chance he'll be going back, they wouldn't
be sewing dissension between the boy and his father. They are really
blind sons of bitches.
Since the Miamians are on the right, I'll give an example from the
left: Imagine a woman who has had an abortion for something less than
rape, a dramatic thing which might pique her conscience. She probably
goes through at least small periods of doubt whether she did the right
thing, but eventually she comes to terms with it, and she concludes
without a doubt she did the right thing. At that point it is unlikely
she will ever change her mind. And none of the anti-abortion
arguments, even if she would have thought they were good before she
had the abortion, will be of any value.
Now I think emigrating from communist cuba to the US is a lot better
than having an abortion, but they too had doubts at times, once they
were in Florida, missed the world they were used to, the weather, the
food, the beach, their friends, the family that didn't come, the
music. Little Havana is not as pretty and probably not as heimish as
cuba was, it's farther from the beach, they have to deal with anglos
all the time, and were the bottom of the totem pole for a long time.
But they blamed all this on Castro, as is fair, and they have hated
him for 40 years, and that is the main thing they care about. The
reason Marislesas? is in the hospital all the time, who was I believe
healthy before this all started, is that she knows this isn't a simple
question, and she can't stand being involved. If her presence is so
important, and she cares about the boy, she could go back to Cuba with
him for a few weeks, but no one in Miami has suggested that.
>US law should consider Castro, and other similar, regimes legal,
>USA should apologize for the revolution and invite the Queen.
>
You're a smart guy Simcha but I wish you could get a broader
perspective on things like this. If I win you over by showing how
Jews could be hurt, ala Edgardo Mortara for example, I won't view that
as a broader perpective, sorry. Do you know about Edgardo Mortara?
Did I bring him up already? If they did it to Edgardo and they could
do it to Elian, they could do it to any one of us.
>
>: In my humble opinion, Elian is being used by those who now have
>: custody of him, and these persons have no concern for the father-son
>: relationship, as seen by the production of a video in which Elian tells
>
>here I don't understand something - imagine your son will be held by
>relatives in another city - I assume you will first go and try to
>take your son back. If they don't let you - you'll call police or
>file court papers.
You read that he did file papers on November 27th plus or minus a
day?. Before that, I assuemed and I bet he did too the kid would be
returned without legal to-do.
> in this case, the father refuses to go to
>see his son because he is afraid to go to Miami.
Either because he is afraid he'll beat the hell out of lazaro or get
imprisoned by some Cuban-American kangaroo court if he just taps him
(see the judge with the conflict of interest who didn't bother to
mention it.), or just be manipulated as is being done while in DC.
>Either he should
>ask for police escort (although you would not get it IIUC, if your
>son were held in Harlem), or be shown to a psychiatrist and
>stripped of his paternal rights, as noone threatened him.
>
>instead, US is going to send marshals because the father expects
>that he will not be given his son back. this is the law?!
I assure you this is what they are telling him. For one reason or
another, the Justice department is telling him they will handle it.
Having lived under communism for his entire life, can't you imagine
that he defers to authority at least some of the time. Not everyone
is as assertive as refuseniks.
I've thought if I were in his shoes about making a speech from the
stairs of the airplane before leaving for cuba, describing all the
people I despised here, but you know, I'd be afraid to do it until I
was actually in Cuba. I'd be afraid they'd stop me from taking off.
And of course once in cuba, no one on the right would believe me.
I hope I haven't exaggerated what I did for Soviet Jews. It was very
little, and only because of the 100's of thousands of others who did
similar things was the whole noticed. But what I did do wasn't so
that Jewish children whose Jewish parents wanted them to remain in
Russia should have them stolen just because they were caught in the
west one time. If Jewish parents wanted their children returned they
are entitled to it. If they didn't run them returned they could say
the kid is sick and needs special medical care, he's not really my son
but someone who is in the US and I kept it secret because my late
ex-wife asked me too. His rebellious when he's around me, but he
behaves when his grand uncle tells him too. He hasn't said any of
these things.
In fact he's been very temperate in his words and if he were a poster
on scj he'd be one of the most admired.
Ask your friends who actually had a six-year old when they were in the
Soviet Union how they would have handled it when the kid was that age.
There is also much more expectation that communism in cuba will fall
or moderate after Castro dies than at any particular time in the
Soviet history.
Simcha Streltsov
: >I just referred to a court ruling that AFAIU shows that Reno did not
: >_have_ to rejct filing of the application for asylum, although it was
: >her right. Thus, she made a political decision that is impossible
: I think you are using 'political' very broadly and maybe even
: misusing, unless you either think it impossible that she based her
: decision on considerations what she believed the law says or of
: justice and propriety. Are you maintaining that every discretionary
: decision is political. If not, how do you know this one was?
thanks for the correction, to be precise I see from the case that
"it may have been political". OTOH, she does not _need_ to send
marshals in order to defend position that was not necessary.
She (or others) could accept application. She did not have to reject
it before consideration - just to minimize the rights for asylum.
it seem obvious that the policy is to achieve a certain result
(you can see from court's ruling that they threw out certain
claims by government without any consideration - ie they were using
any legal argument that came their way - not a sign of
someone being impartial). thus, from the moment they have a non-legal
"goal", ie a policy, it is political - whether it is to protect themselves
from criticism, or whatever.
: >why not on "hatred of Castro"? I recall reading something about libery
: >and tyrants in founding documents of this country. alternatively, if
: You're not using hatred of Castro the same way Joseph and I would be.
: The miami relatives aren't really considering what is good for the
: boy, only what is bad for castro. If they cared about the boy,
: knowing that there is a good chance he'll be going back, they wouldn't
: be sewing dissension between the boy and his father. They are really
: blind sons of bitches.
IMHO, they are correct in using any possible means to save a life
(assuming we agree that liberty is worth it - a good topic for any
seder instead of an orange). assuming the boy will have to go back,
there is not much of damage here beyond what already happened ...
: Now I think emigrating from communist cuba to the US is a lot better
: than having an abortion, but they too had doubts at times, once they
: were in Florida, missed the world they were used to, the weather, the
: food, the beach, their friends, the family that didn't come, the
: music. Little Havana is not as pretty and probably not as heimish as
this is hilarious - I heard this reasoning in USSR (and saw TV serials that
showed hard-working emigrants in the dirty streets of NY remembering
their happy life). "our" response was a joke about a Soviet official saying
to a prospective emigrant that Israel is at war (no reaction),
has high unemployment (no reaction), he will have to work hard (no reaction),
.. and the weather there changes every day - one day it is sunny, the other -
it is raining - and the emigrants starts to wrry.
- Nu? what are you thinking?
- I am thinking whether I should or should not pack an umbrella.
: Did I bring him up already? If they did it to Edgardo and they could
: do it to Elian, they could do it to any one of us.
I don't know who it is, sorry
: Either because he is afraid he'll beat the hell out of lazaro or get
: imprisoned by some Cuban-American kangaroo court if he just taps him
: (see the judge with the conflict of interest who didn't bother to
: mention it.), or just be manipulated as is being done while in DC.
he can take a policeman with him, or Ms Reno
: I assure you this is what they are telling him. For one reason or
: another, the Justice department is telling him they will handle it.
: Having lived under communism for his entire life, can't you imagine
: that he defers to authority at least some of the time. Not everyone
: is as assertive as refuseniks.
I understand that. I just do't understand why Justice dept is
behaving like that - from a POV of the "law":
a tourist came to pick up his son who is on a temp parole in US
(and now probably/almost illegally), he was cared by relatives
who had custody - now he has to go pick up his son and leave in
so many days - after standing in line for 3 hours @ INS to be able
to show his documents to a face in a window to prove this is his
son. if he can't get his son, he needs to call local police. why
is he treated like a VIP?
: I've thought if I were in his shoes about making a speech from the
: stairs of the airplane before leaving for cuba, describing all the
: people I despised here, but you know, I'd be afraid to do it until I
: was actually in Cuba. I'd be afraid they'd stop me from taking off.
: And of course once in cuba, no one on the right would believe me.
I very much understand where Juan is, or may be. I am making absolutely no
judgement on him _personally_. I am considering his party membership
et al only from the POV of what rights he can get here - ie none.
Whatever he is doing by himself, or is forced to do is between
him, castro and God. Btw, the more he is listened to, the more he will
be pressed to do or say ...
: west one time. If Jewish parents wanted their children returned they
: are entitled to it. If they didn't run them returned they could say
so, if a Jewish mother would die trying to escape, and her communist
ex-husband, whether Jewish or Russian, will want him back, you'll
send him?
: There is also much more expectation that communism in cuba will fall
: or moderate after Castro dies than at any particular time in the
: Soviet history.
you can't act on expectations, IMVHO
Yisroel Markov
mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
> In soc.culture.jewish on 14 Apr 2000 17:59:26 GMT sim...@bu.edu
> (Simcha Streltsov) posted:
[snip]
> >why not on "hatred of Castro"? I recall reading something about libery
> >and tyrants in founding documents of this country. alternatively, if
>
> You're not using hatred of Castro the same way Joseph and I would be.
> The miami relatives aren't really considering what is good for the
> boy, only what is bad for castro. If they cared about the boy,
> knowing that there is a good chance he'll be going back, they wouldn't
> be sewing dissension between the boy and his father. They are really
> blind sons of bitches.
There is one overarching consideration that we should never lose sight of: No
child's best interests are served by living in a communist dictatorship!!!
I can't state it more strongly; once again I am frustrated by the obvious
fact that so many Americans simply don't get it. Meir, even if these people
are motivated 100% by hatred of Castro, the hatred is 100% deserved and they
*are* serving the boy's best interests in the process!
> Since the Miamians are on the right, I'll give an example from the
> left: Imagine a woman who has had an abortion for something less than
> rape, a dramatic thing which might pique her conscience. She probably
> goes through at least small periods of doubt whether she did the right
> thing, but eventually she comes to terms with it, and she concludes
> without a doubt she did the right thing. At that point it is unlikely
> she will ever change her mind. And none of the anti-abortion
> arguments, even if she would have thought they were good before she
> had the abortion, will be of any value.
>
> Now I think emigrating from communist cuba to the US is a lot better
> than having an abortion, but they too had doubts at times, once they
> were in Florida, missed the world they were used to, the weather, the
> food, the beach, their friends, the family that didn't come, the
> music. Little Havana is not as pretty and probably not as heimish as
> cuba was, it's farther from the beach, they have to deal with anglos
> all the time, and were the bottom of the totem pole for a long time.
[splutter] This is so $%%#ing inane! Sorry, Meir, but you're so naive in this
matter, you almost make me sound like Albert when he's talking about black
hats!
[snip]
> I hope I haven't exaggerated what I did for Soviet Jews. It was very
> little, and only because of the 100's of thousands of others who did
> similar things was the whole noticed. But what I did do wasn't so
> that Jewish children whose Jewish parents wanted them to remain in
> Russia should have them stolen just because they were caught in the
> west one time. If Jewish parents wanted their children returned they
> are entitled to it. If they didn't run them returned they could say
> the kid is sick and needs special medical care, he's not really my son
> but someone who is in the US and I kept it secret because my late
> ex-wife asked me too. His rebellious when he's around me, but he
> behaves when his grand uncle tells him too. He hasn't said any of
> these things.
A leader of a Boston-based Cuban-American association wrote to Boston Herald
a few days ago: "The real question is not who has custody of Elian, but who
has custody of his father."
Here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say on April 6, 2000:
The Politics of Elian ===================== Earlier this week Bill Clinton
struck a rueful pose when he lamented that the Elian case had become "highly
politicized." To understand how that took place, it pays to review the
sequence of events:
We know that Juan Miguel Gonzalez called his relatives in Miami on November
22 to let them know that his son Elian was on his way to America; a Sprint
phone bill confirms the collect call. Three days later, on Thanksgiving
morning, Elian was rescued off the Fort Lauderdale coast by two fisherman.
Elian's Miami family arrives at the hospital, where his uncle Lazaro confirms
the boy's identity and calls Elian's father with the happy news; Juan Miguel
asks his uncle to take care of the boy.
The first call for the boy's return to Cuba did not come from Elian's father,
but from Fidel Castro's government. On November 27 it delivered a note to the
U.S. Mission in Havana seeking the boy's return. Not until that Monday did we
hear from the boy's father, who was quoted as having had second thoughts
about Elian and now concluded that he'd been kidnapped.
On December 5, demonstrators appeared in front of the U.S. Mission in Havana
chanting, "Long live Fidel, Long live the Revolution, down with the Yankees,
down with Clinton." The rest of the month featured more or less regular mass
rallies led by Fidel himself, who was canceling school so kids could march
and busing people in from 100 miles away. In sharp contrast, the
Cuban-Americans in Miami, accused of having "politicized" the case, didn't
hold its own protests until the first week in January.
So remind us again, who's politicizing this case? What we are seeing is pure
Fidel, who cares not a whit for family values but recognizes in Elian's sad
story a splendid set piece for the anti-American agenda he has pursued for
more than three decades.
Fidel's bad behavior was at least predictable.
Unfortunately for Elian, the INS hasn't done much better. In December the
Justice Department announced that the original decision granting the boy
parole was a "mistake," saying the INS would decide. INS agents interviewed
Mr. Gonzalez at his home -- we are not told whether it was under the poster
of Che that appeared in the first televised interviews -- and pronounced
themselves satisfied that Mr. Gonzalez wanted his son back and didn't want to
come to America. When the family appealed the INS ruling, Ms. Reno's deputies
tried to bully them by threatening to revoke the temporary custody they had,
which in turn provoked the reaction in Miami.
Yet in speaking of politicization, the President did not mean Castro. Nor did
he mean the Justice Department, which reversed its original decision that
would have left Elian's custody to the Florida family courts. Certainly he
did not mean Gregory Craig, one of his own impeachment lawyers who has now
been "hired" by Elian's father. The word "politicize" seems to apply only to
people who don't share Fidel's interpretation of human rights.
The truth is that Elian's fate was politicized the moment that Juan Miguel
Gonzalez stopped speaking for himself and Fidel Castro began holding rallies
accusing Uncle Sam of kidnapping.
Recall that when the grandmothers came to America on the last family mission
from Cuba, Elian was the last stop on their itinerary. Instead, they first
went to a rally at Riverside Church in New York, to NBC's Today Show, to a
meeting with Janet Reno. In constant touch with authorities back in Cuba, the
grandmothers snubbed the Miami branch of the family by not showing up for
dinner. Even Ms. Reno's friend, Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, who herself
originally agreed the boy should be repatriated, changed her mind when she
met the boy's grandmothers -- and their Cuban handlers -- on their carefully
orchestrated trip.
Having already granted six visas for Elian's closest relatives, the U.S. is
again told by Fidel that this is not enough. Right now Fidel seems to be
insisting on a 28-member delegation -- enough to keep the family under
control, as the grandmothers were -- and that Juan Miguel take immediate
custody. And in a demonstration of what "family reunification" has to do with
the matter, we have the spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in this
country quoted by the Washington Times Wednesday as characterizing Elian "a
possession of the Cuban government."
We certainly agree that no one in America ought to be allowed to take the law
into his or her hands. But surely it is a stretch to argue that what we are
seeing here is simply the rule of law taking its course. Maybe if you run a
Justice Department that declines to pursue evidence of Chinese attempts to
shred U.S. campaign finance laws, your agents and lawyers and bureaucrats
have much more time to bear down on a family whose great offense it is to
have opened their home to a six-year-old nephew and loved him as one of their
own.
Consciously or unconciously, the INS, the Justice Department and Cuba's many
fellow travelers here in the U. S. have only abetted that by their bumbling,
reversals and apparent willingness to let Fidel set the agenda. America
didn't kidnap Elian; he was brought here, by a woman who gave her life trying
to give her son a better one. That makes his fate an American responsibility,
and the outcome ought to be secondary to ensuring a process that is honest
and aboveboard.
If Mr. Gonzalez does reach these shores, the duty of the American government
is to ensure that he and his loved ones are not in the effective custody of
Fidel while they make decisions about Elian.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Yisroel Markov
mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
[snip]
> I hope I haven't exaggerated what I did for Soviet Jews. It was very
> little, and only because of the 100's of thousands of others who did
> similar things was the whole noticed. But what I did do wasn't so
> that Jewish children whose Jewish parents wanted them to remain in
> Russia should have them stolen just because they were caught in the
> west one time. If Jewish parents wanted their children returned they
> are entitled to it. If they didn't run them returned they could say
> the kid is sick and needs special medical care, he's not really my son
> but someone who is in the US and I kept it secret because my late
> ex-wife asked me too. His rebellious when he's around me, but he
> behaves when his grand uncle tells him too. He hasn't said any of
> these things.
>
> In fact he's been very temperate in his words and if he were a poster
> on scj he'd be one of the most admired.
>
> Ask your friends who actually had a six-year old when they were in the
> Soviet Union how they would have handled it when the kid was that age.
Here's some relevant information:
I Was an East German Elian Gonzalez
===================================
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, a writer and Lutheran theologian living in New York City.
Elian Gonzalez's Miami family deserves a cheer, not a sneer. For four months
now I have been watching them with growing admiration. They remind me of a
family named Eckart, which played an important role in my childhood in
Germany over half a century ago, when I was an Elian of sorts.
On Aug. 17, 1947, my mother smuggled me from the Soviet to the American zone
of occupation. I was only 10 and terribly thin; I had just recovered from
tuberculosis and been kicked out of the Thomasschule, the last traditional
Gymnasium allowed to operate in Leipzig under communist rule. Two reasons
were given for my expulsion: I hailed from a "bourgeois" family, and I went
to church on Sundays.
No two escape stories are alike, of course. In my case, we had to cross not
an ocean but the Harz mountains; and my mother survived. She had found out at
what time the Red Army soldiers patrolling the border between what was soon
to become East and West Germany were changing guards. At that moment of
relative inattention, she hustled me into a disused railroad tunnel. On the
other side we skirted the British checkpoint, and soon found ourselves on the
back of a truck carrying plaster to Kassel, in the American zone. There my
mother put me on a train; she then returned to Leipzig to look after her own
mother and pursue her career as an oratorio singer.
I was on my own, separated from my mother by what Winston Churchill a year
earlier had termed the Iron Curtain. My father was already in the West, but
he was unable to take care of me. A blind veteran of World War I, he lived in
an American-run nursing home, where he was convalescing from a severe
illness.
But there were the Eckarts, old family friends in Ulm, a southern German city
badly damaged by Allied bombing. The Eckarts picked me up at the train
station, took me to their home, shared their rations with me and sent me to a
private boarding school. Much later I found out that Eckarts had paid my
tuition for years until my father was able to do so.
Was I homesick? You bet I was. Did I miss my mother's loving arms? Naturally.
Yet as I watch the spectacle around Elian Gonzalez, I keep wondering: What if
my mother had taken me back to Leipzig instead of following me to the West
eventually? What if some blue-stockinged attorney general in West Germany had
decided that I belonged in the East?
I would have been shoved into a socialist school and given an option: quit
going to church, become a young pioneer, blabber Marxist slogans in public --
in other words, live a constant lie -- or forget about having any kind of
career. I might have tried to flee to the West again as an adult and wound up
dead at the hermetically sealed border, just as Elian's courageous mother
died trying to get away from Cuba.
I might also have been captured while attempting to flee and then sent to one
of East Germay's ghastly jails. Or I might have stayed and adjusted, and
ended up like so many of my contemporaries who remained in East Germany:
zombie-like, imbued with an entitlement mentality that prevents them from
embracing the liberty they were given when communism imploded in 1989;
joyless, envious, nostalgic for the rules that had ordered their miserable
lives in the Marxist prison called the German Democratic Republic; incapable
of participating fully in a free society.
Is this the fate 60% of Americans believe appropriate for Elian Gonzalez? Do
they think it is preferable to being brought up by a loving family in Miami's
spunky Little Havana? Do they really believe the sentimental gobbledygook
spouted by the likes of the National Council of Churches about Elian's
father? Do they trust Elian's father, this comrade who strikes connoisseurs
of communist societies as a manifest pawn in the hands of Fidel Castro?
Why do prominent Americans, especially the Clinton administration, allow
themselves to have their noses tweaked by this inveterate enemy of America?
Don't they recognize his tricks? Were they not disgusted by the spectacle of
Elian's grandmothers flying around the U.S. accompanied by the goons of Mr.
Castro's intelligence service? Did it not strike them as strange that upon
the grannies' return to their impoverished island they were driven around
tumble-down Havana like conquering heroines in gleaming black Mercedes-Benz
convertibles?
Now Mr. Castro demands that he be allowed to dispatch a delegation of some 30
people to pick up Elian. Tyrants always send delegations, for they never
trust individuals to return to their realm. It baffles me that this certain
signal of what lies in store for this little boy does not seem to sway the
minds of politicians, prelates and pundits who purport to care about him.
These Americans are generous all right, but only to a dictator who hates
their country. Their generosity inexplicably excludes Elian and of course
those latter-day Eckarts, Elian's remarkable family in Little Havana.
Simcha Streltsov
: There is one overarching consideration that we should never lose sight of: No
: child's best interests are served by living in a communist dictatorship!!!
I think Judaism has an equivalent law, used, for example, for
conversion of a minor, - we can do what is in the best interest of
a person if he is not able to demonstrate his interest for whatever reason.
of course, we have to know what his best interest is.
ps FWIW, I do not see this stuff on TV, but just saw on soc.culture.cuba
that [one of the?] laywers for the family wears a kippah (Cubans were not
sure what is it and what does it mean (-:).
: [splutter] This is so $%%#ing inane! Sorry, Meir, but you're so naive in this
: matter, you almost make me sound like Albert when he's talking about black
: hats!
it seems that the Cubans feel the same as we do - when people start
throwing these "naive" stereotypes at us. Is it really that people
living in a free country become so gullible fro propaganda? then,
US will always need influx of fresh blood in order to sustain
some sanity. ducking for cover.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>Yisroel Markov (y...@my-deja.com) wrote:
>
>: There is one overarching consideration that we should never lose sight of: No
>: child's best interests are served by living in a communist dictatorship!!!
>
>I think Judaism has an equivalent law, used, for example, for
>conversion of a minor, - we can do what is in the best interest of
>a person if he is not able to demonstrate his interest for whatever reason.
>of course, we have to know what his best interest is.
>
That has a similarity, but it's not equivalent since we don't let
strangers convert minors while their father objects. Duh.
Nor do we approve of Christian strangers and distant relatives
baptizing our own children against the wishes of their parents.
That's just as equivalent as the example you give.
If this had been an issue unrelated to Communism, you never would have
described such an absurd comparison as 'equivalent'.
>ps FWIW, I do not see this stuff on TV, but just saw on soc.culture.cuba
>that [one of the?] laywers for the family wears a kippah (Cubans were not
>sure what is it and what does it mean (-:).
He's frum, he's from New Orleans I think, and there was an article
about him in the notorious Baltimore Jewish Times. And he agrees with
his side of the case, thank G-d.
>
>: [splutter] This is so $%%#ing inane! Sorry, Meir, but you're so naive in this
>: matter, you almost make me sound like Albert when he's talking about black
>: hats!
>
>it seems that the Cubans feel the same as we do - when people start
>throwing these "naive" stereotypes at us. Is it really that people
Please Simcha. Don't call me naive while you snipped what I said. I
said that moving to the US had many problems for the Miami Cubans (as
it did for my s-father and uncles and aunts btw, and probably my
s-sister, although it's too complicated to tell.), for which they
blamed Castro, fairly [and I said 'fair' in the part Yisroel snipped],
but that this has increased their anger to where they can see no other
issue. If either of you are going to criticize my views on this, you
ought to say what part of this multi-step sentence you think is
incorrect, and give reasons, instead of just throwing out the word
naive.
>living in a free country become so gullible fro propaganda? then,
>US will always need influx of fresh blood in order to sustain
>some sanity. ducking for cover.
Let me use your style. Please give me an example of propaganda that I
believe, and emphasize any that has relevance to my position that a
child belongs with his parent. I believe in the US in some women's
actual prisons, they even allow newborns to stay with their mothers
for several months.
Herman Rubin
>(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>P&M
>>Joseph G. Murray (jm1...@ptd.net) wrote:
>>: It has dominated the news because it is a test of the rule of law.
>>: Will our government carry out the law in this case, or won't it? Does
>>: the law apply to some people, but not to others, depending on the politics
>>...
>>: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
>>: or at least it appears that way.
The law is sufficiently unclear here. It seems that they are trying
to rush things to have a _fait accompli_ BEFORE the legal process
can decide whether they are operating within the law.
>>I just referred to a court ruling that AFAIU shows that Reno did not
>>_have_ to rejct filing of the application for asylum, although it was
>>her right. Thus, she made a political decision that is impossible
>I think you are using 'political' very broadly and maybe even
>misusing, unless you either think it impossible that she based her
>decision on considerations what she believed the law says or of
>justice and propriety. Are you maintaining that every discretionary
>decision is political. If not, how do you know this one was?
In the broad sense, every discretionary decision is political.
And the legal process has not concluded ruling that she had the
right to deny asylum.
There have been somewhat similar cases in the past, and it is
not even clear that BOTH parents automatically have the right
to have their child returned to them in their native country.
Janet Reno argued that nobody but Elian's father had the right
to decide where he should live. This is clearly not the law;
whether the law gives her the right to make that decision is
still in question.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Simcha Streltsov
: >I think Judaism has an equivalent law, used, for example, for
: >conversion of a minor, - we can do what is in the best interest of
: >a person if he is not able to demonstrate his interest for whatever reason.
...
: If this had been an issue unrelated to Communism, you never would have
: described such an absurd comparison as 'equivalent'.
sorry for being imprecise - I just meant that we have a notion. the issue
of whether we can do anything is still an issue: father vs communism
in this case. I am just pointing out that the problem is a halachikally
valid problem. maybe we can find a bet din to take on the issue -
can 2 Jewish lawyers from 2 sides select bet din for arbitrage ?!
: Please Simcha. Don't call me naive while you snipped what I said. I
: said that moving to the US had many problems for the Miami Cubans (as
...
: Let me use your style. Please give me an example of propaganda that I
: believe, and emphasize any that has relevance to my position that a
: child belongs with his parent.
I don't blame you personally for being naive, I am just noticing for
myself that the ideas live on their own - public opinion does not
differentiate between democracy and absence of it, and treats
statements/behaviors of slaves and free people as equivalent. thus,
all this confusion.
Yisroel Markov
mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
> In soc.culture.jewish on 17 Apr 2000 19:14:07 GMT sim...@bu.edu
> (Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>
> >Yisroel Markov (y...@my-deja.com) wrote:
[snip]
> >: [splutter] This is so $%%#ing inane! Sorry, Meir, but you're so naive in this
> >: matter, you almost make me sound like Albert when he's talking about black
> >: hats!
> >
> >it seems that the Cubans feel the same as we do - when people start
> >throwing these "naive" stereotypes at us. Is it really that people
>
> Please Simcha. Don't call me naive while you snipped what I said. I
> said that moving to the US had many problems for the Miami Cubans (as
> it did for my s-father and uncles and aunts btw, and probably my
> s-sister, although it's too complicated to tell.), for which they
> blamed Castro, fairly [and I said 'fair' in the part Yisroel snipped],
> but that this has increased their anger to where they can see no other
> issue. If either of you are going to criticize my views on this, you
> ought to say what part of this multi-step sentence you think is
> incorrect, and give reasons, instead of just throwing out the word
> naive.
I'll do that. The paragraph that prompted this response was:
> Now I think emigrating from communist cuba to the US is a lot better
> than having an abortion, but they too had doubts at times, once they
> were in Florida, missed the world they were used to, the weather, the
> food, the beach, their friends, the family that didn't come, the
> music. Little Havana is not as pretty and probably not as heimish as
> cuba was, it's farther from the beach, they have to deal with anglos
> all the time, and were the bottom of the totem pole for a long time.
...and the reason I responded as I did is that you seem to suggest that these
negatives are enough to make an escapee from communist Cuba doubt his
decision. Simcha thought this was hilarious; I think it's naive.
You were actually making a different point - that they hate Castro for having
to subject themselves to these negatives. This is a valid point, but not very
relevant. By the same token, they should love Castro for their newfound
prosperity and freedom in the USA. And there are *plenty* of other much more
valid reasons to hate Castro than having to deal with Anglos all the time.
> >living in a free country become so gullible fro propaganda? then,
> >US will always need influx of fresh blood in order to sustain
> >some sanity. ducking for cover.
>
> Let me use your style. Please give me an example of propaganda that I
> believe, and emphasize any that has relevance to my position that a
> child belongs with his parent.
Let Simcha make his answer. Mine is that your problem is not being
susceptible to propaganda (I don't think there's much pro-Cuba propaganda
here), but being unable to appreciate what kind of hell a communist country
is. It is a hell of such magnitude as to override, in our opinion, any "a
child belongs with his parent" consideration, especially when said parent has
not been much of a presence in the child's life.
Have you seen my post of "I Was An East German Elian Gonzales"? It sums this
sentiment quite neatly.
> I believe in the US in some women's
> actual prisons, they even allow newborns to stay with their mothers
> for several months.
But not for their formative phase, right?
[Read my sig:]
Yisroel Markov Member DNRC
Boston, Clinton Protectorate of Massachusetts
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"To abstain from condemning a torturer is to become an accessory
to the torture and murder of his victims." -- Ayn Rand
Simcha Streltsov
: >>: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
: >>: or at least it appears that way.
: The law is sufficiently unclear here. It seems that they are trying
: to rush things to have a _fait accompli_ BEFORE the legal process
: can decide whether they are operating within the law.
in yeshivish, Elian staying here is not asur b'halaha, so
her decision is not halachik but hashkafik? and she wants to
act before the actual psak halakha, if any. FWIW, the government
is currently appealing the court decision for the kid to stay here -
I am not a legal expert, but I am not sure how government can
appeal court decision whether it theoretically has no interest
except enforcing the actual law, ie court decisions.
mei...@qqqerols.com
complete yet.
I think that was his name. His story is from 1850 although a caller
to a local public radio show yesterday said that this was common and
that 2 cases from the 19th century were the last of them, and I think
this was the last altogether.
From a middle class home in Northern? Italy, born to loving Jewish
parents. Whose maid decided one day to take him to the church and
have him baptized and she did that.
Something happened eventually and the boy's 'status' became known to
the local Catholic church. Either the local church or the Vatican
decided that the overarching consideration that the church should
never lose sight of is that no Christian's best interests are served
by living in a Jewish home, or being raised by Jewish parents, and
they removed him from his parents house. Soon or immediately, I
forget, he was taken to Rome. Eventually his parents went to Rome to
get him (I honestly don't think it was right away) and they thought
they knew where he was, but he was smuggled out of Rome before they
had a chance to see him. They spent more than 10 years trying
everything they could think of, including publicity in the US, I
believe, and IIRC they never saw him again or only after he was grown
and a confirmed Xian. The Catholics involved seem proud that he had
been raised since soon after his removal from his home almost as if he
were the Pope's son, and that the Pope was very closed to him, the
Pope who knew from the beginning that he had been stolen from Jews.
Do you think that was acceptable?
How old was he when he was taken by the Catholic Church? Six years
old, the same age as Elian.
In soc.culture.jewish on 18 Apr 2000 15:35:25 GMT sim...@bu.edu
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>
>: Please Simcha. Don't call me naive while you snipped what I said. I
>: said that moving to the US had many problems for the Miami Cubans (as
>...
>: Let me use your style. Please give me an example of propaganda that I
>: believe, and emphasize any that has relevance to my position that a
>: child belongs with his parent.
>
>I don't blame you personally for being naive,
I appreciate that. So my multi-step sentence stands about the
problems Miami-Cubans had in settling here and how the problems
helped to harden their feelings?
> I am just noticing for
>myself that the ideas live on their own - public opinion does not
>differentiate between democracy and absence of it, and treats
>statements/behaviors of slaves and free people as equivalent. thus,
>all this confusion.
Oh, !That's! the reason for the confusion. I thought it was because
some people thought kids belong with their parents, whether they are
slaves or not, or Jews or not, and only the parents have the right to
waive that.
mei...@qqqerols.com
hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) posted:
>In article <mbfkfsouv6s9rcbgd...@4ax.com>,
> <mei...@QQQerols.com> wrote:
>>In soc.culture.jewish on 14 Apr 2000 17:59:26 GMT sim...@bu.edu
>>(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>
>>P&M
>
>>>Joseph G. Murray (jm1...@ptd.net) wrote:
>
>>>: It has dominated the news because it is a test of the rule of law.
>>>: Will our government carry out the law in this case, or won't it? Does
>>>: the law apply to some people, but not to others, depending on the politics
>>>...
>
>>>: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
>>>: or at least it appears that way.
>
>The law is sufficiently unclear here. It seems that they are trying
>to rush things to have a _fait accompli_ BEFORE the legal process
>can decide whether they are operating within the law.
When the doj wanted a joint request. the only kind that is possible,
for expedited hearings, the Miamians wouldn't do it. They also could
have requested the stay before last Thursday, as soon as the first
ruling was made, and delayed doing so to delay the process.
>
>>>I just referred to a court ruling that AFAIU shows that Reno did not
>>>_have_ to rejct filing of the application for asylum, although it was
>>>her right. Thus, she made a political decision that is impossible
>
>>I think you are using 'political' very broadly and maybe even
>>misusing, unless you either think it impossible that she based her
>>decision on considerations what she believed the law says or of
>>justice and propriety. Are you maintaining that every discretionary
>>decision is political. If not, how do you know this one was?
>
>In the broad sense, every discretionary decision is political.
So when I buy broccoli instead of carrots that is political. By
political I assume was meant that considerations of us national
positics, or Miami or Florida politics, or international relations or
anti-communism or pro-communism or anti-US-chauvinism, even the future
possiblie plans of the Miami mayor to run for state or national
office, was a major consideration. If what the major consideration is
that a boy should be with his father, it's not a political decision
and Simcha himself changed it to "it may have been political". He's
right, I can't read her mind either.
>And the legal process has not concluded ruling that she had the
>right to deny asylum.
And the normal procedure, I think is to request a stay pending appeal.
Without doing so, the winning side is able to enforce the decision in
its favor at any time. Stays are not automatic, and it doesn't matter
that the legal process was not concluded. The lawyers know all this.
>
>There have been somewhat similar cases in the past, and it is
>not even clear that BOTH parents automatically have the right
>to have their child returned to them in their native country.
I know of two cases where the ruling was the other way. In one case
the boy was 14 or 13. In the other she had had years to object and
didn't, and seem disinterested in the child when she did show up, my
source tells me.
>
>Janet Reno argued that nobody but Elian's father had the right
>to decide where he should live. This is clearly not the law;
I believe the law is that the INS has the right to decide these things
until a person has been admitted legally to the US. Elian has never
been admitted. People in his situation are often held in INS prisons
until there cases are decided, but because he is a child they stored
him with lazaro, but they didn't admit him. The only appeal is
whether the INS abused its discretion, not that the INS doesn't have
discretion. As I said in a post I may not have posted yet, this is
much like IMO the argument in another thread that even though (I'm not
trying to summarize this accurately, just to make clear what I am
pointing too) Reform don't have written rules on what halacha is
binding, that which is still is. The Reform who accept this notion
for Reform Judaism should understand it as to the INS. ONce the INS
or Janet Reno have reached a decision as to how the law applies in
this case, I think they have a duty to implement their decision, and
not bump it up to some court. It is the INS whose employees have the
most experience in interviewing people for sincerity and knows the
skill of the person they sent to Cuba to interview Juan. That's why
courts can only find Abuse of discretion if there has some behaviour
that's clearly out of bounds. I don't think there is any chance they
have been clearly out of bounds here.
>whether the law gives her the right to make that decision is
>still in question.
I'm not positive I was right above, but your description didn't even
address the points I just made. I fear neither of us is a lawyer.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>Herman Rubin (hru...@odds.stat.purdue.edu) wrote:
>
>: >>: the Attorney General and the President are on the side of the rule of law,
>: >>: or at least it appears that way.
>
>: The law is sufficiently unclear here. It seems that they are trying
>: to rush things to have a _fait accompli_ BEFORE the legal process
>: can decide whether they are operating within the law.
>
>in yeshivish, Elian staying here is not asur b'halaha, so
>her decision is not halachik but hashkafik? and she wants to
>act before the actual psak halakha, if any.
But I think the difference from Judaism are greater than the
parralels. The INS renders binding decisions, which can in a few
cases be overturned by a court. That doesn't correspond to hashkafik
vs. halachik does it?
To bring in a little Judaism :) is a the oral decision by ones local
rabbi a psak halacha? I somehow didn't think so, but that doesn't
make his decision hashkafik?
>FWIW, the government
>is currently appealing the court decision for the kid to stay here -
It was not a decision he should stay here. It was an injunction
pending a hearing on a request that he be banned from leaving. I
think this request was the stay I referred to in an earlier post in
this thread.
>I am not a legal expert, but I am not sure how government can
>appeal court decision whether it theoretically has no interest
>except enforcing the actual law, ie court decisions.
The US or a state is routinely a party to court cases. That's another
diferrence from halacha. We don't see some local rabbi who already
ruled as an appellant in an appeal to some more respected rabbi. (I
guess he just says in the first place he doesn't know the answer.
Once he rules, isn't it rabbi shopping to appeal?. I really don't
know)
The case keeps the same name from the time of it's initial filing
(maybe the parties reverse depending on who lost last.) Brown vs. the
Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas; Miranda was I think Miranda vs.
the state of Arizona. The INS makes thousands and thousand of
decisions a year, but there are a few which start as an INS folder;
Case #9999 John Doe and become John Doe vs. INS.
The INS or the DOJ has its own lawyers to argue its cases in court.
mei...@qqqerols.com
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
by David I. Kertzer
Our Price: $26.00
Paperback: $15.00
Availability: Usually
ships within 24 hours.
Hardcover - 352 pages (May 1997)
Knopf; ISBN: 0679450319 ; Dimensions (in inches):
1.25 x 9.60 x 6.76
Amazon.com Sales Rank: 79,935
Avg. Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 9
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Out of seemingly small events are sometimes born great historical
moments. The case of young Edgardo Mortara is one. In 1858 the
6-year-old Jewish boy was taken from his parents' home in Bologna,
Italy, by agents of the Papal inquisition. The year before, seriously
ill, Edgardo had been secretly baptized, by the Mortaras' Catholic
servant (or so she claimed); it was against the law for baptized
Christians to be raised by Jews, and so, in the eyes of the Church,
the kidnapping was only just. Secular Italians did not agree, and thus
was set in motion a series of reforms that ended the Church's temporal
power in Italy and forged the creation of a liberal, near-democratic
state. For his part, young Edgardo became a priest and lived in a
Belgian abbey until 1940--just before the invading Germans began to
deport and execute all those tainted with Jewish blood. David Kertzer
has shaped a remarkable narrative from almost forgotten events.
READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
from Elian Gonzales. [I almost deleted the customer reviews, but the
first one which I've moved to just below compares the two and makes a
new point that I hadn't thought of. Meir]
Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles January 26, 2000
If you want to understand the attitudes behind the Elian Gonzalez
case, you can do no better than to read this book. Today as I'm
reading the newspaper, I feel like I'm reading this book all over
again. It is uncanny how similar are the attitudes of many American
authorities toward Cuba (especially the Republicans in Congress) to
the attitudes of the Catholic Church and the public toward the Jews.
One reason the Church was able to get away with kidnapping of
Edgardo Mortara was that many people could not understand why a
family would want to remain Jewish--just as people today cannot
understand or accept as legitimate that Elian's family wants to remain
in Cuba.
From Booklist
In June 1858, police in Bologna, Italy,
"kidnapped" a six-year-old Jewish boy, tearing him away from his
distraught parents. Edgardo Mortara had been secretly baptized by a
Gentile servant girl years before, according to the police. In
accordance with the law forbidding "Christian" children from being
raised by Jews, Edgardo was removed and began his strange odyssey that
led from the struggles for Italian unification to the eve of the
Holocaust. Although this is a work of nonfiction, Kertzer's chronicle
has the sheer power, lyrical prose, and delicious sense of irony one
expects in a great epic novel. As Edgardo's fate unfolds, we witness
the long struggle between liberalism and conservatism and between
secular and religious authority. Edgardo, his family, his patron and
surrogate father Pius IX, and such notables as Napoleon III and Moses
Montefiore move in and out of the narrative like gifted actors in a
grand saga. Of course, the story is real, and it is a compelling one
that merges the bizarre and tragic fate of one family with the
evolution of modern European society. Jay Freeman -
From Kirkus Reviews , April 1, 1997
A dramatic and heart-wrenching tale that reveals a great deal about
the battle between conservative and progressive forces in
mid-19th-century Europe. Kertzer (History/Brown Univ.), the author of
the ground-breaking work Sacrificed for Honor: Infant Abandonment
and the Politics of Reproductive Control (not reviewed), turns his
attention to a smaller but no less poignant story. In 1858,
authorities of the Papal States in Bologna abducted the Jewish child
Edgardo Mortara from his family. Reports had reached the Inquisition
in Rome that when Edgardo was an infant he had been secretly baptized
by the Mortaras' Catholic servant girl. The law of the Papal States
was very A Christian child was forbidden to be brought up in a Jewish
household. Liberal circles in Europe were outraged and mobilized.
Kertzer skillfully weaves the larger historical, social, religious,
and cultural forces at work into the story, without allowing these
elements to overwhelm his protagonists. Although cases of children
being abducted by the Church and forced to convert were not unusual,
the timing of the Mortara case could not have been worse for the pope.
Pius IX was- -upon his election to the Chair of St. Peter--considered
a liberal who might lend his temporal and spiritual power to the
movement for Italian national unification. He was soon caught between
the implacable forces of modernism and the Church's obstinate refusal
to enter the modern world. Kertzer's challenging thesis is that the
Mortara case became the catalyst for the end of papal power in Italy.
Anticlerics in Italy, Protestants and Jews in Britain and America,
even Napoleon III (staunch defender of papal power) joined in
criticizing the abduction. Arrayed against these groups was the dark
power of the Inquisition and the pope's obsessive desire to maintain
his temporal power at the expense of a united Italy. A moving,
dramatic study of the clash between the sacred and the secular. --
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Book Description
National Book Award Finalist
Bologna, 1858: A police posse, acting on the orders of a Catholic
inquisitor, invades the home of a Jewish merchant, Momolo Mortara,
wrenches his crying six-year-old son from his arms, and rushes him off
in a carriage bound for Rome. His mother is so distraught that she
collapses and has to be taken to a neighbor's house, but her weeping
can be heard across the city. With this terrifying scene--one that
would haunt this family forever--David I. Kertzer begins his
fascinating investigation of the dramatic kidnapping, and shows how
the deep-rooted antisemitism of the Catholic Church would eventually
contribute to the collapse of its temporal power in Italy. As
Edgardo's parents desperately search for a way to get their son back,
they learn why he--out of all their eight children--was taken. Years
earlier, the family's Catholic serving girl, fearful that the infant
might die of an illness, had secretly baptized him (or so she
claimed). Edgardo recovered, but when the story reached the Bologna
Inquisitor, the result was his order for Edgardo to be seized and sent
to a special monastery where Jews were converted into good Catholics.
His justification in Church teachings: ***No Christian child could be
raised by Jewish parents.*** Emphasis mine *** The case of Edgardo
Mortara became an international cause célèbre. Although such
kidnappings were not uncommon in Jewish communities across Europe,
this time the political climate had changed. As news of the family's
plight spread to Britain, where the Rothschilds got involved, to
France, where it mobilized Napoleon III, and even to America, public
opinion turned against the Vatican. The fate of this one boy came to
symbolize the entire revolutionary campaign of Mazzini and Garibaldi
to end the dominance of the Catholic Church and establish a modern,
secular Italian state. A riveting story which has been remarkably
ignored by modern historians--The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara will
prompt intense interest and discussion as it lays bare attitudes of
the Catholic Church that would have such enormous consequences in the
twentieth century.
The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara from readers
About the Author
David I. Kertzer was born in 1948 in New York City. The recipient of
a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1986, he has twice been awarded, in 1985
and 1990, the Marraro Prize from the Society for Italian Historical
Studies for the best work on Italian history. He is currently Paul
Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science and a professor of
anthropology and history at Brown University. He and his family live
in Providence.
Customer Reviews
Avg. Customer Review: Number of Reviews: 9, most omitted
The Elian Gonzalez case of the 19th Century
The painful truth of the church's "policy" of anti-Semitism
Reviewer: from Maplewood, MN January 16, 1999
A wonderful example of Christianity's shameful past. You can not
help but feel the pain of the Mortara family as they struggle through
the years to reclaim their son. This is a must read for anyone who
wishes to understand the history of Christian/Jewish relations...
Simcha Streltsov
: From a middle class home in Northern? Italy, born to loving Jewish
: parents. Whose maid decided one day to take him to the church and
: have him baptized and she did that.
...
: How old was he when he was taken by the Catholic Church? Six years
: old, the same age as Elian.
you are talking now from a sophisticated intellectual position that
we should not judge anyone, and all violence is wrong, etc. the fact
that someone somewhere made a mistake for whatever reason in their
judgement does not make us less responsible for making or not
makig our own judgements. And, IMVHO, we have enough info to make
a judgement on the commie Cuba, so your example is irrelevant.
(fwiw, NY Times magazine has a long article about the family -
and if those facts are correct, Juan Gonzales was an active
communist from early years, got a good job due to his party
membership - working with foreigners, etc. I don't see how a
family court can award custody to such an immoral person.
but then, again, this is a very unsophisticated way to look at
things, I admit.
Simcha Streltsov
: office, was a major consideration. If what the major consideration is
: that a boy should be with his father, it's not a political decision
: and Simcha himself changed it to "it may have been political". He's
: right, I can't read her mind either.
now, after events this weekend, I have to switch back to "it
is political" - whatever her exact reasons are.
: I believe the law is that the INS has the right to decide these things
: until a person has been admitted legally to the US. Elian has never
: been admitted. People in his situation are often held in INS prisons
IIUC, he was not admitted only because INS send asylum application
back, ie they did not deny the application (as it could have been
challenged with more grounds), they refused to look at the papers -
something they _chose_ to do by creative reading the law, not being
forced to do so by the law.
James Kahn
> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
> by David I. Kertzer
...
>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
>from Elian Gonzales.
If you start with the axiom of complete moral relativism, then there are
some similarities. But if you conclude based on this that Elian should go
back, you would then be forced to conclude that we should
1) Return an escaped 6-year-old slave to his master
2) Return a 12-year-old girl to her home where they practice ritual
clitoridectomies.
And so on.
[Note: *I* am not making any analogies between Cuba and the above two
cases. I am simply saying that if you start with complete relativisim,
that's where you end up.]
If, on the other hand, you are willing to concede that it
is possible to make some moral distinctions, than the Mortara
case is only relevant to the extent you accepat the analogy
Judaism:Catholicism::Dictatorship:Democracy.
--
Jim
New York, NY
(Please remove "nospam." to get my e-mail address)
http://www.panix.com/~kahn
Simcha Streltsov
: Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles January 26, 2000
...
: again. It is uncanny how similar are the attitudes of many American
: authorities toward Cuba (especially the Republicans in Congress) to
: the attitudes of the Catholic Church and the public toward the Jews.
nu, should we now protest Amazon's defamation of Jews - being compared
with communists?! should we ask them to put a disclaimer that it is
not their policy to compare Jews with communists, or shold we ask
them to delete the reader's review? just some food for thought ...
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>: office, was a major consideration. If what the major consideration is
>: that a boy should be with his father, it's not a political decision
>: and Simcha himself changed it to "it may have been political". He's
>: right, I can't read her mind either.
>
>now, after events this weekend, I have to switch back to "it
>is political" - whatever her exact reasons are.
Simcha, your reasons are political. You admit that for you communism
is the issue, and you think communism is so bad that you're entitled
to steal children from their fathers. That is totally a political
position, whereas it still seems to me that Ms Reno's position is
based on believing a child should be with his parents.
>
>: I believe the law is that the INS has the right to decide these things
>: until a person has been admitted legally to the US. Elian has never
>: been admitted. People in his situation are often held in INS prisons
>
>IIUC, he was not admitted only because INS send asylum application
>back,
You have it backwards. He wasn't admitted, and then they sent
applications back.
>ie they did not deny the application (as it could have been
>challenged with more grounds), they refused to look at the papers -
>something they _chose_ to do by creative reading the law, not being
>forced to do so by the law.
There is nothing creative about this. Motions by people without
standing and friends of court briefs and statements are filed all the
time which judges or administrators ignore. There are cases pending
in state and federal courts in Boston and in all kinds of
administrative agencies in Boston, and you can go down tomorrow and
file applications or affidavits of one sort or another and they will
all be ignored.
You clearly don't understand the law. Discretion means that it is in
their discretion. They don't have to look at applications. If I had
decided that my kids should go to bed at nine, and their uncle wrote
me a letter that they should go to bed at 2am and wanted to present a
more detailed argument also, I wouldn't listen to him either. That is
what discretion means.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>: From a middle class home in Northern? Italy, born to loving Jewish
>: parents. Whose maid decided one day to take him to the church and
>: have him baptized and she did that.
>...
>: How old was he when he was taken by the Catholic Church? Six years
>: old, the same age as Elian.
>
>you are talking now from a sophisticated intellectual position that
>we should not judge anyone, and all violence is wrong, etc. the fact
Don't put silly words in my mouth. I never said either of these
things. I said we shouldn't steal children from their parents, and
that the simlarities between the two cases are far greater than the
diffferences and that the differences aren't substantial.
>that someone somewhere made a mistake for whatever reason in their
>judgement does not make us less responsible for making or not
>makig our own judgements. And, IMVHO, we have enough info to make
>a judgement on the commie Cuba, so your example is irrelevant.
>(fwiw, NY Times magazine has a long article about the family -
>and if those facts are correct, Juan Gonzales was an active
>communist from early years, got a good job due to his party
>membership - working with foreigners, etc. I don't see how a
>family court can award custody to such an immoral person.
It's none of your gawddamn business. Many people think Bill Gates and
certainly John Rockefeller and Henry Ford the first and David Duke are
immoral. We don't steal their children either. (I agree the last two
are immoral by the way.) Your opinion of what is immoral is of no
importance in determining custody, and immorality is of no importance
unless they are abusing the child. In Boston, you will find that
custody remains with immoral people all the time, including
prostitutes, thieves who are pending trial, on probation or parole, or
home detention, as well as bank embezzlers, wife beaters (as long as
they don't do it in front of the child), polluters, sellers of
carcinogenic pajamas, cigarette makers, blackmailers, drunk drivers
who have killed people, any one who isn't in jail who hasn't abused
his kid can usually keep or regain custody as against anyone but the
other parent.
I think putting silly words in mouth in the first 2 lines at the top
was immoral by the way. What if you had kids?
>
>but then, again, this is a very unsophisticated way to look at
>things, I admit.
In so many ways.
mei...@qqqerols.com
ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>In <nrk4gsklnsls8ppvn...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
>
>> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
>> by David I. Kertzer
>...
>>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
>>from Elian Gonzales.
>
>If you start with the axiom of complete moral relativism, then there are
And I didn't start with that.
>some similarities. But if you conclude based on this that Elian should go
>back, you would then be forced to conclude that we should
I don't like long fancy terms like 'complete moral relativism'. It
disguises the issues more than it clarifies them. In this case the
word complete broadens the issue so much that no single answer is
possible. It is a lot better to talk about who is entitled to raise a
child, a parent, or some court appointed guardian (and given the facts
it wouldn't be lazaro or marislezas either, I'm sorry to realize they
don't even come in second.)
>
>1) Return an escaped 6-year-old slave to his master
>2) Return a 12-year-old girl to her home where they practice ritual
> clitoridectomies.
>
>And so on.
>[Note: *I* am not making any analogies between Cuba and the above two
>cases. I am simply saying that if you start with complete relativisim,
>that's where you end up.]
But I didn't start with complete relativism or whatever term applies.
I started with two cases and asked you to show a substantial
difference. Clitorectomies are a red herring and inflammatory to boot.
>
>If, on the other hand, you are willing to concede that it
>is possible to make some moral distinctions, than the Mortara
>case is only relevant to the extent you accepat the analogy
>Judaism:Catholicism::Dictatorship:Democracy.
It's a shame you didn't learn anything from the story of Edgardo. If
compassion for a boy and his father aren't enough, I thought you would
at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
self-interest, but apparently neither has worked.
Well of course none of us want to compare Judaism with dictatorship or
the other one either, but your statement is nonsense so it is not
necessary. All you have to do is admit that in both cases they have
demonized the other side, pretended that no one would ever want to
live as a Jew or in Cuba. But Simcha has already asserted that Juan
is a communist, so if anything that would indicate he does want to
live in Cuba.
At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
call your opinions into question so that you have your children stolen
from you, or your grandchildren stolen from your children.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>
>: Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles January 26, 2000
>...
>: again. It is uncanny how similar are the attitudes of many American
>: authorities toward Cuba (especially the Republicans in Congress) to
>: the attitudes of the Catholic Church and the public toward the Jews.
>
>nu, should we now protest Amazon's defamation of Jews - being compared
>with communists?! should we ask them to put a disclaimer that it is
>not their policy to compare Jews with communists, or shold we ask
>them to delete the reader's review? just some food for thought ...
I guess that is an admission you couldn't come up with an answer to my
question.
James Kahn
>In soc.culture.jewish on 24 Apr 2000 14:11:10 -0400
>ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>>In <nrk4gsklnsls8ppvn...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
>>
>>> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
>>> by David I. Kertzer
>>...
>>>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
>>>from Elian Gonzales.
>>
>>If you start with the axiom of complete moral relativism, then there are
>And I didn't start with that.
I assumed you did, because it's the only conceivable
basis for your argument. Otherwise the differences are utterly
obvious. Judaism vs. Catholicism is not analogous to Dicatatorship
vs. Freedom. For a Catholic to kidnap a Jew from his
family because he *thinks* Catholicism is preferable is outrageous.
The argument that Elian is better off with his relatives
in the U.S. than with his father in Cuba is debatable, but not
morally reprehensible. Trying to draw any analogy
between the Martara case and the ELian situation is, to use your
term, a red herring.
>It's a shame you didn't learn anything from the story of Edgardo. If
>compassion for a boy and his father aren't enough, I thought you would
>at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
>come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
>self-interest, but apparently neither has worked.
Another difference: No one "came for" Elian. He and his mother left.
They escaped. What's left is a custody battle, not a kidnapping.
>All you have to do is admit that in both cases they have
>demonized the other side...
In one case they were wrong to do so, in the other they were correct.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
>At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
>to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
>father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
>call your opinions into question so that you have your children stolen
>from you, or your grandchildren stolen from your children.
First, try to keep this civil, and not to resort to this sort of
ad hominem nonsense. Second, once again, ELian was not "stolen."
Talk about red herrings...
mei...@qqqerols.com
ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>In <ojo9gs85b1mlqd9rk...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
>
>>In soc.culture.jewish on 24 Apr 2000 14:11:10 -0400
>>ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>
>>>In <nrk4gsklnsls8ppvn...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
>>>
>>>> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
>>>> by David I. Kertzer
>>>...
>>>>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
>>>>from Elian Gonzales.
>>>
>>>If you start with the axiom of complete moral relativism, then there are
>
>>And I didn't start with that.
>
>I assumed you did, because it's the only conceivable
>basis for your argument.
No it's not. IF you think so, you haven't thought this through
enough.
> Otherwise the differences are utterly
>obvious.
There are surely differences. I asked for significant ones. You seem
to think this is an all or nothing at all situation. Either one
believes in complete moral relativism and ignores all of the details,
or any detail is sufficient to justify treating the two boys
differently. Since there are more than two choices, you shouldn't
have assumed what you did.
>Judaism vs. Catholicism is not analogous to Dicatatorship
>vs. Freedom.
I said in the previous post that these two comparisons are not the
essence of the issue. But I'll work with it them a little.
> For a Catholic to kidnap a Jew from his
>family because he *thinks* Catholicism is preferable is outrageous.
And for a Capitalist to kidnap or refuse to return the son of a
Communist because he *thinks* Capitialism is preferable is outrageous.
>The argument that Elian is better off with his relatives
>in the U.S. than with his father in Cuba is debatable, but not
>morally reprehensible.
The argument that Edgardo is better off with the pope in Rome than
with his parents living as Jeeeews is morally reprehensible and so is
the argument about Elian.
> Trying to draw any analogy
>between the Martara case and the ELian situation is, to use your
>term, a red herring.
If you can't find any analogy, the problem is yours.
>
>>It's a shame you didn't learn anything from the story of Edgardo. If
>>compassion for a boy and his father aren't enough, I thought you would
>>at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
>>come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
>>self-interest, but apparently neither has worked.
>
>Another difference: No one "came for" Elian. He and his mother left.
>They escaped. What's left is a custody battle, not a kidnapping.
Except for quoting the title of the book about Edgardo, I didn't use
the word kidnapping and I didn't apply it to Elian.
Yes that is a difference but it's certainly not a significant one.
Are you aware that the crime of burglary includes illegally entering
or *remaining* in? Are you aware the crime of "possession of stolen
goods" doesn't depend on how they arrived in ones possession? However
they came into possession of Elian, their responsibility to return him
is the same.
>
>>All you have to do is admit that in both cases they have
>>demonized the other side...
>
>In one case they were wrong to do so, in the other they were correct.
>Why is that so difficult to understand?
What I find difficult to understand is how you can care about Jews but
be heartless when it comes to Cuban fathers, and insensitive when it
comes to Cuban boys.
Did you grow up in the Soviet Union also? I would rather believe that
Communism hardens ones feelings than it is the fact that there are
Cubans involved. I asked about a situation in which a Jewish boy from
the Soviet Union went to Switzerland for medical treatment and then
the Swiss wouldn't return him to his parents in the S.U. but no one
had nerve enough to answer.
>>At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
>>to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
>>father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
>>call your opinions into question so that you have your children stolen
>>from you, or your grandchildren stolen from your children.
>
>First, try to keep this civil, and not to resort to this sort of
I want to make clear that this position has consequences, and that it
works in both directions.
I know there are about 20 percent of the population who based on polls
seems to have this same feeling, but I had higher expectations of
identifying Jews.
>ad hominem nonsense. Second, once again, ELian was not "stolen."
Once he asked for him back, when it was refused, morally it is the
same as stealing. See the other statutes above.
Jonathan J. Baker
>>
>>> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
>>> by David I. Kertzer
>>>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
>>>from Elian Gonzales.
>>
>And I didn't start with that.
If you want a modern equivalence to the Mortara case, look to the
Dulberg case: their father's custody is upheld by the Italian courts,
when
a) the courts did not follow fair procedure in subpoenaing the mother;
b) the father has become catholic, and wants the daughters to do likewise;
c) the children want to go to their mother in Israel;
d) the children want to practice Judaism.
The courts in Italy, along with the Catholic father, are holding the
girls hostage in hopes that they will convert to Catholicism. That's
a direct parallel to Edgardo Mortara.
<http://www.ou.org/public/statements/2000/dulberg/caseinbrief0400.htm>
--
Jonathan Baker | What is the 7th verse of the piut Shir haChodoshim?
jjb...@panix.com | The Nissan Stanza. [1st verse in the orig. ms.]
Web page update: Teachings of the Rav http://www.panix.com/~jjbaker/
Jackie Cappiello
James Kahn wrote:
>
> In <ojo9gs85b1mlqd9rk...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
>
> >In soc.culture.jewish on 24 Apr 2000 14:11:10 -0400
> >ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>
> >>In <nrk4gsklnsls8ppvn...@4ax.com> mei...@QQQerols.com writes:
> >>
> >>> The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara
> >>> by David I. Kertzer
> >>...
> >>>READ MORE below and tell me how Edgardo Mortara significantly differs
> >>>from Elian Gonzales.
> >>
> >>If you start with the axiom of complete moral relativism, then there are
>
> >And I didn't start with that.
>
> I assumed you did, because it's the only conceivable
> basis for your argument. Otherwise the differences are utterly
> obvious. Judaism vs. Catholicism is not analogous to Dicatatorship
> vs. Freedom. For a Catholic to kidnap a Jew from his
> family because he *thinks* Catholicism is preferable is outrageous.
> The argument that Elian is better off with his relatives
> in the U.S. than with his father in Cuba is debatable, but not
> morally reprehensible. Trying to draw any analogy
> between the Martara case and the ELian situation is, to use your
> term, a red herring.
>
> >It's a shame you didn't learn anything from the story of Edgardo. If
> >compassion for a boy and his father aren't enough, I thought you would
> >at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
> >come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
> >self-interest, but apparently neither has worked.
>
> Another difference: No one "came for" Elian. He and his mother left.
> They escaped. What's left is a custody battle, not a kidnapping.
He did not ";leave"; his mother took him in violation of the shared
custody with her husband and she left Cuba to live with her boyfriend in
the U.S. It was kidnapping on her part.
>
> >All you have to do is admit that in both cases they have
> >demonized the other side...
>
> In one case they were wrong to do so, in the other they were correct.
> Why is that so difficult to understand?
>
> >At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
> >to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
> >father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
> >call your opinions into question so that you have your children stolen
> >from you, or your grandchildren stolen from your children.
Yes, this is a point I can empathize with, since my grandchildren were,
in effect, abducted by their Fundamentalist Christian father and his new
wife, abetted by his parents who -- all too often in my presence -- have
openly expressed their anti-Semitism.
>
> First, try to keep this civil, and not to resort to this sort of
> ad hominem nonsense. Second, once again, ELian was not "stolen."
> Talk about red herrings...
Yes, he was and the issue of politics in the case -- with the
anti-Castro feeling imbedded in U.S. psychology by the Cuban community
in Miami -- cannot be overlooked. (Did I mention that my father was
beaten up, causing his death by one of those Cuban criminals in Miami?)
Simcha Streltsov
: unless they are abusing the child. In Boston, you will find that
: custody remains with immoral people all the time, including
I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code. what is your view?
Simcha Streltsov
: at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
: come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
I know the source of this phrase, but I am still scratching my head
to understand the universality of it. Is it a call for Jews to defend
communism all over the world, or a call to come after communists
ourselves to prevent misunderstandings?!
: At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
: to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
: father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
so, the question is whether being a communist is bad enough - maybe
you can ask a Rabbi about that (maybe from someone who knew
Rav Ruderman ZT'L, I heard that he had views on the issue)
Simcha Streltsov
: Yes, he was and the issue of politics in the case -- with the
: anti-Castro feeling imbedded in U.S. psychology by the Cuban community
do you agree or disagree with "anti-Castro" feelings?
Simcha Streltsov
: mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
: : at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
: : come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
: I know the source of this phrase, but I am still scratching my head
: to understand the universality of it. Is it a call for Jews to defend
: communism all over the world, or a call to come after communists
: ourselves to prevent misunderstandings?!
ps how about another slogan: come after communists before they
come after you?
Herman Rubin
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>: office, was a major consideration. If what the major consideration is
>: that a boy should be with his father, it's not a political decision
>: and Simcha himself changed it to "it may have been political". He's
>: right, I can't read her mind either.
>now, after events this weekend, I have to switch back to "it
>is political" - whatever her exact reasons are.
>: I believe the law is that the INS has the right to decide these things
>: until a person has been admitted legally to the US. Elian has never
>: been admitted. People in his situation are often held in INS prisons
>IIUC, he was not admitted only because INS send asylum application
>back, ie they did not deny the application (as it could have been
>challenged with more grounds), they refused to look at the papers -
>something they _chose_ to do by creative reading the law, not being
>forced to do so by the law.
Simcha is right on this; the INS makes a large number of
decisions, and the law is extremely unclear. It often
takes a major round of court hearings to even decide who
has any rights.
In effect, this makes INS agents into dictators in most
cases, with little redress. Inside the US, there is at
least the possibility of appeal to the courts; this is
what should have been done in this case, rather than a
unilateral decision about who has the legal right to
look after Elian's interests.
mei...@qqqerols.com
mei...@QQQerols.com posted:
>In soc.culture.jewish on 24 Apr 2000 21:34:08 -0400
>ka...@nospam.panix.com (James Kahn) posted:
>
P&M
>
>>>At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
>>>to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
>>>father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
>>>call your opinions into question so that you have your children stolen
>>>from you, or your grandchildren stolen from your children.
>>
>>First, try to keep this civil, and not to resort to this sort of
>
>I want to make clear that this position has consequences, and that it
>works in both directions.
>
Maybe this says it better. I'm sorry I had a negative result with
this, instead of a positive one. I wanted you to read my paragraph
and say to me or to yourself, "I would never try to take away your
children because you didn't live the way I wanted you to." And I think
that is the case. Then I thought you would think about it and realize
that that is what the Miami Cubans want to do, and if you wouldn't do
it yourself, you can't grant approval to them.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>: at least realize that after they come for the communists, next they
>: come for the Jews. I would rather argue on the basis of morality than
>
>I know the source of this phrase, but I am still scratching my head
>to understand the universality of it. Is it a call for Jews to defend
>communism all over the world, or a call to come after communists
>ourselves to prevent misunderstandings?!
You often answer like this in various threads, and I just assume
you're being intentionally dense, which isn't so bad, but explaining
the obvious is getting tedious.
No. It is not a call to do either of those things. It is a call to
oppose injustice even when it is applied to commnunists. The German
dungballs had no right to arrest the vast majority of the communists
they arrested, and the Miamians have no right to keep a son from his
father. Your hatred for communism, no matter how validly earned,
doesn't give any right to interfere between a father and his son.
There is something insidious about standing by while injustice is done
to ones enemies, when one wouldn't be silent when the same thing is
done to a friend or ally. On many issues it is not very important,
but I can't of anything more important than child custody.
If they can do it to Edgardo, and they can do it to Elian, they can do
to anyone weaker than they are, and that includes everyone of us.
Unless you want a repeat of Europe where some people with enough money
were often able to buy there way out, while most weren't. I'm not
criticizing the ones who bought their way out. You can't actually
believe America is a permanent guarantee of freedom. There are
constant assaults and taking people's children away from them is just
one arena. Thank goodness that Janet Reno and others are saying, You
can't do this to Elian.
>: At any rate, until you change your mind I will never bring my children
>: to your house for fear you may decide that I'm not a good enough
>: father and you get to keep them. And I pray you don't do anything to
>
>so, the question is whether being a communist is bad enough - maybe
>you can ask a Rabbi about that (maybe from someone who knew
>Rav Ruderman ZT'L, I heard that he had views on the issue)
I can ask loads of people who have views. Did his views address child
custody? There are loads of people who knew Rabbi Ruderman, but I
don't think I can count on them to know what he would have said in
this case. Unless you have a name.
You've never answered what you would say if a Jewish boy, just turned
6, left the Soviet Union with another couple to have a little vacation
or to get medical treatment, and then the other couple was killed in
an accident or defected to the West. His Jewish parents want the boy
back. Would you stop it?
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>: unless they are abusing the child. In Boston, you will find that
>: custody remains with immoral people all the time, including
>
>I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
>it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code.
As usual on this topic you don't get it. I only used examples from
criminal law because there is public evidence of their immorality, and
I also don't want to waste time debating whether they are immoral or
not. There are loads of immoral people with custody and you make no
effort to stop that, nor do you even complain about it. It is only
communism that gets your dander up, and once you are started, when
communism is involved you lose your ability to make a balanced
judgment.
> what is your view?
That you missed the point.
Hey I checked what I wrote, that you snipped, and I gave lots of
people who didn't violate any criminal or civil code.
Of the examples I gave, look at these:
Bill Gates, only his corporation is sued.
John Rockefeller, not sure any court found him personally in violation
of anything even when standard oil was broken up.
Henry Ford the first, don't think his Jew-hating violated any law.
David Duke, I don't think he was ever sued or prosecuted successfully,
if at all.
Polluters, most early polluters violated no rules.
Cigarette makers, most early ones violated no rules, no later ones
have been charged or sued personally
I never made "a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code" part
of my critieria. Stop playing games with me.
Jackie Cappiello
I am a Canadian and our views on Castro tend to see him as less demonic
than people in the U.S. Just as a point of interest, he was preceded by
a dictator, Batista, who permitted gangsters from the U.S. to run
hotels, gambling, prostitution in Cuba. Castro's revolution was a
reaction against this corruption and, when his appeal for aid from the
U.S. was turned down, he turned to the Soviet Union.
Herman Rubin
Jackie Cappiello <jack...@home.com> wrote:
>Simcha Streltsov wrote:
>> Jackie Cappiello (jack...@home.com) wrote:
A matter of history is in order. He did not appeal for
aid; he expropriated the property of American companies,
and most of these were recognized American companies, none
accused of any crimes or corruption. It is only when he
refuse to make compensation that the US cut off relations,
and Cuba became a Soviet client state. Now that there
is no support coming from there, Cuba is in bad shape.
Simcha Streltsov
: >I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
: >it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code.
: effort to stop that, nor do you even complain about it. It is only
: communism that gets your dander up, and once you are started, when
: communism is involved you lose your ability to make a balanced
: judgment.
there is something wrong with the society where you
can say such things (I don't mean personally you - I heard
lots of stories already about "hard-line" Miami Cubans).
IMVHO, it is very immoral to talk like this - much more immoral
than, say, Dr Irving's position on WW2 - after all, he is "denying",
to use a stupid word, somrthing that happened 50+ years ago,
here you are "denying" events happening under your nose, you
are even - pardon more PC - "blaming the victims". you did not even
try to explain why a hard-core communist can be considered a
possible parent and not a criminal, or why Juan is not such
a man, despite all the evidence - you simply referred to my
lack of balanced judgement - although I went ahead and brought
evidence for my position (that satisfied my judgement).
Simcha Streltsov
maybe we can _exchange_ Elian for several children of
Cuban refugees who are still in Cuba - so that they
will not have to wait until Castro changes his mind
or dies, or risk their lives on the future rafts?
this will bring at least some justice in the case,
and I don't see who can disagree with that.
can we get a national concensus this way?
or, simply, give Elian away the moment Cuba signs
papers obligating itself to freedom of movement?
Simcha
Simcha Streltsov
Jackie Cappiello (jack...@home.com) wrote:
: hotels, gambling, prostitution in Cuba. Castro's revolution was a
: reaction against this corruption and, when his appeal for aid from the
: U.S. was turned down, he turned to the Soviet Union.
I still did not understand your attitude towards his regime.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
Posted and mailed.
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>: >I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
>: >it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code.
>
>
>: effort to stop that, nor do you even complain about it. It is only
>: communism that gets your dander up, and once you are started, when
>: communism is involved you lose your ability to make a balanced
>: judgment.
>
>there is something wrong with the society where you
>can say such things (I don't mean personally you - I heard
>lots of stories already about "hard-line" Miami Cubans).
>
>IMVHO, it is very immoral to talk like this - much more immoral
>than, say, Dr Irving's position on WW2 -
Please, before comparing me even indirectly to a pile of dung, why not
pay attention to what I have written. I'm not positive who you mean
by Dr. Irving. Since when does the nzi pig irving who sued Deborah
Lipstadt get a title of respect. I expect you to tell me who else
you are referring to, or to make a strong clear apology.
>after all, he is "denying",
>to use a stupid word, somrthing that happened 50+ years ago,
>here you are "denying" events happening under your nose, you
I haven't denied a thing about communism, nor have you given an
example of anything I have denied, and this is just another example of
how blind you become when this topic is raised.
>are even - pardon more PC - "blaming the victims". you did not even
>try to explain why a hard-core communist can be considered a
>possible parent and not a criminal, or why Juan is not such
>a man, despite all the evidence - you simply referred to my
>lack of balanced judgement - although I went ahead and brought
>evidence for my position (that satisfied my judgement).
In the post I was responding to you brought no evidence, but merely
misstated my argument. You said: "I get it. so the issue is whether
communism is simply immoral or is it a violation of criminal - or at
least civil - code. what is your view?" My examples in response
clearly showed that I hadn't said this.
In your post prior to that, you also misstated my position: "you are
talking now from a sophisticated intellectual position that we should
not judge anyone, and all violence is wrong, etc." Twice in a row
with no apology or retraction in between was a little too much for me
and I finally voiced what I had concluded long ago, that you can't
make a balanced judgment in cases involving communism. If you *can*
make a balanced judgment but chose twice in a row to misrepresent my
position, I would consider that worse.
Did you present evidence in the prior post, 4/24 at x:36? Here is
what you say:
"(fwiw, NY Times magazine has a long article about the family -
and if those facts are correct, Juan Gonzales was an active
communist from early years, got a good job due to his party
membership - working with foreigners, etc. I don't see how a
family court can award custody to such an immoral person."
So even you are not insisting the facts are correct, and after you
recite the 'facts', you assert without proving that that makes him an
immoral person. Yet my answer denied none of this, as you so rudely
imply above.
I'm telling you that immoral people are entitled to their children
too, because if we put ourselves in the position of judging whose
morality is sufficient to keep custody, we will have to be the very
totalitarians you say you despise; because you only complain about
immoral communists and not other immoral people, because you assume
every communist is immoral no matter how he actually spends his day,
because we will have an impossible chore merely deciding who gets to
decide; and because we provide the rationale for every Christian who
ever stole a Jewish baby or child. After all, in their own stupid
eyes they have just as much reason to think Jews are immoral, as you
do to think every commmunist is immoral. You haven't addressed this
argument directly, except to hide from it with fancy language. (I can
elaborate if you want.)
Look back at the top where you have the nerve to say my talk is MORE
immoral that the nzi pig irving's talk. This requires a clear and
convincing apology, and the sooner the better.
mei...@qqqerols.com
(Simcha Streltsov) posted:
>ps to this topic -
>maybe we
You know for a moment I thought you might have followed a hasty post
with an apology already. Silly me.
>Simcha
Jackie Cappiello
treatment of Cuba by the U.S. foreshadows the treatment of Iraq in more
recent years. You are condemning an entire nation for Castro. And
Elian's mother violated the joint custody she shared with her ex-husband
when she left Cuba to live with her paramour in the U.S.
For five months, the child has been kept out of school, deified by an
exiled community who regard him as a miracle child, and pampered with
goodies enough to turn the head of an adult, let alone a youngster. If
he had led a normal life in Miami; if the Cuban community -- including
his family -- treated him as an ordinary kid, sending him to school,
etc., I would have greater sympathy with their protestations.
They defied the courts, refusing to allow his father to visit him; their
home was blockaded by crowds of shouting anti-Castroites. Do you regard
this as proper method to raise a child?
Reuven Singer
are entitled to have children.
"Simcha Streltsov" <sim...@bu.edu> wrote in message
news:8e20mk$bbd$4...@news3.bu.edu...
> mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
> : From a middle class home in Northern? Italy, born to loving Jewish
> : parents. Whose maid decided one day to take him to the church and
> : have him baptized and she did that.
> ...
> : How old was he when he was taken by the Catholic Church? Six years
> : old, the same age as Elian.
>
> you are talking now from a sophisticated intellectual position that
> we should not judge anyone, and all violence is wrong, etc. the fact
> that someone somewhere made a mistake for whatever reason in their
> judgement does not make us less responsible for making or not
> makig our own judgements. And, IMVHO, we have enough info to make
> a judgement on the commie Cuba, so your example is irrelevant.
> (fwiw, NY Times magazine has a long article about the family -
> and if those facts are correct, Juan Gonzales was an active
> communist from early years, got a good job due to his party
> membership - working with foreigners, etc. I don't see how a
> family court can award custody to such an immoral person.
>
Polar
<reuv...@netmedia.co.il> wrote:
[...]
>And, IMVHO, we have enough info to make
>> a judgement on the commie Cuba, so your example is irrelevant.
>> (fwiw, NY Times magazine has a long article about the family -
>> and if those facts are correct, Juan Gonzales was an active
>> communist from early years, got a good job due to his party
>> membership - working with foreigners, etc. I don't see how a
>> family court can award custody to such an immoral person.
>>
>> but then, again, this is a very unsophisticated way to look at
>> things, I admit.
That's a fairminded statement on your part.
If the U.S. had not snubbed Ho Chi Minh in the late 40's early 50's
when he was begging the U.S. to stand with him against Vietnam's
eternal enemy, China, we and our allies might have been spared the
horrors of the Vietnam War. To me, that war marked the end of U.S.
moral authority in the world -- what we had left, that is.
Ho Chi Minh may have been a "communist", but he was also a fervent
admirer of the U.S. Had our John Foster Dulles State Department
mentality not simply disregarded his letters to us, Vietnam might have
ended up as an ally -- a mildly Socialist country, at most. Instead,
our contempt and disregard drove what was basically a Vietnam
nationalist to the Left. The result is plain to see in our Vietnam
cemeteries, and in our parks where ruined U.S. Vietnam vets drink and
drug their lives away. Not to mention the Vietnamese children killed
by land mines, and the uncounted numbers killed or sickened by the
poison we strewed over their country. And the millions directly
killed in the war.
Instead, our Foggy Bottom "statesmen" threw him in the same trash can
as anybody tarred with the "communist" label. That misunderstanding
-- that there are as many varieties of "communists" as of Campbell's
Soups -- has cost, and will continue to cost, the U.S. dearly.
To equate communism with immorality is, I'll agree with you,
unsophisticated.
How about equating unbridled capitalism, which kills and maims
uncounted people in the Third World where we have exported industry to
exploit cheap labor?
How about equating stupid and venal bureaucrats who build schools on
polluted ground?
Need I go on?
--
Polar
G EddieA95
>unsophisticated.
>
>How about equating unbridled capitalism, which kills and maims
>uncounted people in the Third World where we have exported industry to
>exploit cheap labor?
>
>How about equating stupid and venal bureaucrats who build schools on
>polluted ground?
One could say that government, like death, is a punishment for the sins of
humankind. Therefore, it is our sentence to obey it and finance it; but we
should never say that one kind is better than another.
Simcha Streltsov
: I am not arguing in favour of Castro, but pointing out that the
: treatment of Cuba by the U.S. foreshadows the treatment of Iraq in more
: recent years. You are condemning an entire nation for Castro.
whatever your undisclosed political views are, I did not condemn the
whole nation. If you mean my attitude towards Juan - notice that he is
not just a Cuban, he is a member of communist party, probably as his
parents (his father was is or was a police investigator acording to NYT).
I am not sure whethre you did not notice the difference or ignore it.
: And
: Elian's mother violated the joint custody she shared with her ex-husband
: when she left Cuba to live with her paramour in the U.S.
I am surpised by your choices of words:
"left Cuba" - risked her life to escape the regime (that her former
husband fully supports by the virtue of his party membership)
"paramour" - who died after risking his life 3 times (to sail to US,
to sail back to pick her, and back to the last trip, spending time
in Cuban prison in between)
: They defied the courts, refusing to allow his father to visit him; their
?! when did the father visit the child and they did not allow him
: home was blockaded by crowds of shouting anti-Castroites. Do you regard
the home was, of course, blockaded by TV crews, if you saw the scene.
and what is a problem with "anti-Castroites"?
Jackie Cappiello
respect your views on other subjects too much to permit this argument to
continue further. Our points of view are too diverse. I see a boy kept
from seeing his father by an unruly mob, still fighting the battle that
caused them to leave Cuba. You see a continuing battle between the
forces of democracy (the good) against those of (the evil) communist
Cuba.
Can we just leave it there?
Simcha Streltsov
: Let us end this debate, since we will never come to an agreement. I
: respect your views on other subjects too much to permit this argument to
: continue further. Our points of view are too diverse. I see a boy kept
: from seeing his father by an unruly mob, still fighting the battle that
: caused them to leave Cuba. You see a continuing battle between the
: forces of democracy (the good) against those of (the evil) communist
: Cuba.
: Can we just leave it there?
sure, I am usually not debating seriously with people who view
communists or nazis as not evil, thus I was simply asking for
your views in order not to waste our common time.
Jackie Cappiello
I think that communism is an unworkable system of government, and some
of its adherents are evil. (I regard Nazis and their followers as evil
in themselves.) I do not regard a person's political views as a basis
for denying him custody or association with his child.
Simcha Streltsov
: I think that communism is an unworkable system of government, and some
: of its adherents are evil. (I regard Nazis and their followers as evil
: in themselves.)
thank you for finally answering my question. If you forgive me
another curiosity, would you discuss things seriously to a person
who considers National Socialism as simply
an "unworkable system of government"?
: I do not regard a person's political views as a basis
: for denying him custody or association with his child.
I don't think I bear responsibility for the words I did not
say. It is a dispute between your thinking and your memory.
Jackie Cappiello
government called National Socialism. The very thought of it sends
shivers down my spine. A totally evil system, whose adherents were also
totally evil.
Did I ever mention my trip to Germany in 1953 and my bus ride through
Munich? I have never been back to that country since, nor do I have any
desire to go there, even though Germany of today is, or so some people
tell me, completely different.
Simcha Streltsov
: > another curiosity, would you discuss things seriously to a person
: > who considers National Socialism as simply
: > an "unworkable system of government"?
Jackie Cappiello (jack...@home.com) wrote:
: I am a Jew and I have had family members killed by the form of
: government called National Socialism. The very thought of it sends
: shivers down my spine. A totally evil system, whose adherents were also
: totally evil.
so, what if I reply: these are only your own emotions, but I have
much more rational views.
You don't have to answer this question, of course - but please explain
why my Jewishness and my family members do not matter as much as yours,
and you can talk about Communism as an "unworkable system"?
Sorry for getting so personal..
mei...@qqqerols.com
Cappiello <jack...@home.com> posted:
>I am a Jew and I have had family members killed by the form of
>government called National Socialism. The very thought of it sends
>shivers down my spine. A totally evil system, whose adherents were also
>totally evil.
>
>Did I ever mention my trip to Germany in 1953 and my bus ride through
>Munich? I have never been back to that country since, nor do I have any
>desire to go there, even though Germany of today is, or so some people
>tell me, completely different.
I drove with a Flemish friend from Brussells to Czechoslovakia. I
didn't want to spend time or money there like she didn't, but
amazingly my platonic friend wanted to even less. I think we only
spent under 2 dollars on fruit, and that was it. This was 1973 and
she was angry in general and because during wwii her father had been
arrested by Walloons, placed in charge by the nzis. How long had her
father been in jail? 2 days. But even though she wasn't born then,
she hadn't gotten over it. They have their work cut out for them on
this unity thing.
I had to go back the other way hitchhiking, and I got stuck overnight
in a city only 10 miles from France and had to spend some money.
Simcha Streltsov
me:
: >: >I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
: >: >it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code.
Meir:
: >: effort to stop that, nor do you even complain about it. It is only
: >: communism that gets your dander up, and once you are started, when
: >: communism is involved you lose your ability to make a balanced
: >: judgment.
: >there is something wrong with the society where you
: >can say such things (I don't mean personally you - I heard
: >lots of stories already about "hard-line" Miami Cubans).
: >
: >IMVHO, it is very immoral to talk like this - much more immoral
: >than, say, Dr Irving's position on WW2 -
: by Dr. Irving. Since when does the nzi pig irving who sued Deborah
: Lipstadt get a title of respect. I expect you to tell me who else
: you are referring to, or to make a strong clear apology.
I did not mean anything personal. I apologize for using such
rude comparisons.
: I haven't denied a thing about communism, nor have you given an
: example of anything I have denied, and this is just another example of
: how blind you become when this topic is raised.
I wrongly assumed that your POV can be based only on an assumption
that guilt of communism can not be objectively verified; I realized
that your position is different from the rest of this discussion.
mei...@qqqerols.com
Streltsov) posted:
>mei...@QQQerols.com wrote:
>
>me:
>: >: >I get it. so the issue is whether communism is simply immoral or is
>: >: >it a violation of criminal - or at least civil - code.
>
>Meir:
>: >: effort to stop that, nor do you even complain about it. It is only
>: >: communism that gets your dander up, and once you are started, when
>: >: communism is involved you lose your ability to make a balanced
>: >: judgment.
>
>: >there is something wrong with the society where you
>: >can say such things (I don't mean personally you - I heard
>: >lots of stories already about "hard-line" Miami Cubans).
>: >
>: >IMVHO, it is very immoral to talk like this - much more immoral
>: >than, say, Dr Irving's position on WW2 -
>
>: by Dr. Irving. Since when does the nzi pig irving who sued Deborah
>: Lipstadt get a title of respect. I expect you to tell me who else
>: you are referring to, or to make a strong clear apology.
>
>I did not mean anything personal. I apologize for using such
>rude comparisons.
Thank you much.
>
>: I haven't denied a thing about communism, nor have you given an
>: example of anything I have denied, and this is just another example of
>: how blind you become when this topic is raised.
>
>I wrongly assumed that your POV can be based only on an assumption
>that guilt of communism can not be objectively verified; I realized
>that your position is different from the rest of this discussion.
From your position at least.
Thank you again.