The Jewmanist

Teach the controversy! Oh, well, wait..

The chief scientist in Israel’s ministry of education, Gavriel Avital, “sparked a furor” by questioning the reliability of evolution and global warming, leading to calls for his dismissal, according to Haaretz (February 21, 2010). “If textbooks state explicitly that human beings’ origins are to be found with monkeys, I would want students to pursue and grapple with other opinions. There are many people who don’t believe the evolutionary account is correct,” he was quoted as saying. “There are those for whom evolution is a religion and are unwilling to hear about anything else. Part of my responsibility, in light of my position with the Education Ministry, is to examine textbooks and curricula.”

…

Hava Yablonka of Tel Aviv University told Haaretz that Avital’s statements were tantamount “to saying that space should be given in textbooks to the view that the earth is flat and the sun revolves around it. It’s astonishing that the chief scientist of a government ministry can say such bizarre things.”

Hebah Ismail, an Egyptian-American Harvard Law student flew to Israel to do research on human rights. From the Harvard Law Record:

A warm smile and easy laugh reveal Hebah Ismail’s unthreatening, gentle personality. An American citizen, this 3L of Egyptian descent works with the International Human Rights Clinic on projects related to Bedouin land rights. Hebah wears a hijab. She still does not know which of one, or combination, of these characteristics prompted the immigration personnel at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport to deem her dangerous and deny her entry to Israel.

Profiling at it’s best…

After going through her computer, including the external hard drive, the line of questions continued. While most of those originally holding Ismail appeared rather young, a man in his 30s and clearly in a position of authority took over the interrogation.

Ismail recounts how this man introduced himself.

Via Haaretz:

A study of the world’s most peaceful countries released yesterday ranks Israel as fourth to last among the 144 countries ranked.

According to the Global Peace Index, an annual ranking of the world’s nations on the basis of how peaceful they are, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq are the only countries more dangerous than Israel.

This year the index was expanded to 144 countries. It now includes almost 99% of the world’s population. The index is constructed from 23 qualitative and quantitative indicators of external and internal measures of peace including levels of democracy and transparency, education and material wellbeing. Directly more peaceful than Israel on the list are Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad and Pakistan. Lebanon ranks 132nd, Iran ranks 99th and Syria ranks 92nd. The most peaceful country, according to the index, is New Zealand. It is followed by Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Austria. Iceland was rated most peaceful on last year’s index, but was displaced to fourth in 2009.

[Ultra-Orthodox Jews in the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem, Israel, burn a garbage dumpster on the 6th of June in 2009 during a protest against a Jerusalem municipality decision to open a parking lot on Shabbat.]

These images are beautifully striking. Though, there are surely many orthodox Jews in Israel, its also strangely has a higher percentage of those who consider themselves nonbelievers, than one might naturally assume.