Yeshiva Head Dies

NEW YORK — Thousands attended the Jan. 7 funeral of the longtime head of the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Rabbi Shmuel Berenbaum, who was rosh yeshiva for more than 50 years, died Jan. 6 at 87 of cancer. The native of Poland, studied at the yeshiva in Mir before World War II. He fled the Nazis and later moved to the United States.

Don’t Court ‘Israel Lobby,’ Candidates Told

LOS ANGELES— U.S. presidential candidates aren’t helping Israel by offering unconditional support, the authors of a controversial book on the Israel lobby say.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who wrote The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the candidates’ devotion to Israel, including support for more than $3 billion in annual foreign aid, and their seeming inability to criticize the Jewish state is out of fear of losing the support of the “Israel lobby.”

“Such pandering is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters – the Israel lobby, as we have termed it – expect it,” they wrote in the Times. “Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or ‘Christian Zionists,’ two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process.”

Mearsheimer and Walt criticized all the candidates in the 2008 race of bidding to be Israel’s best friend.

“These candidates, however, are no friends of Israel,” they said. “They are facilitating its pursuit of self-destructive policies that no true friend would favour.”