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Senators Joe Lieberman (Independent, Connecticut) and Norman Coleman (Republican, Minnesota) were part of a group of senators who were able to restore $50 million for aid to dissident and democratic groups inside Iran. The administration had cut a $75 million budget to $25 million for this purpose.

"At a time when the Iranian regime is doing everything in its power to roll back dissidents and democrats, Congress has sent a powerful signal that we stand with the Iranian people in their struggle for freedom," Lieberman said. "There is an inextricable link between the domestic repression of the Iranian regime and its aggression abroad. Supporting Iranian dissidents is not only a moral imperative; it is a strategic necessity."

All 13 Jewish senators—nine Democrats, two Republicans and two Independents—voted in favor of the bill, which now goes to a Senate-House conference committee.

The measure had won 241-178 passage in the House in June after the Republican caucus decided to vote against it, partially in protest of a provision within the omnibus bill that would have permitted the United States to disseminate contraceptives to non-governmental organizations overseas.

Recalling that vote, the National Jewish Democratic Council issued a news release to "reverse course, drop their opposition to the bill, and stand with their Senate counterparts."

"Senate Democrats and Republicans alike should be applauded for their support of the Foreign Aid Appropriations Bill, and friends of Israel should be encouraged that Foreign Aid continues to enjoy bipartisan support in the U.S. Senate," said NJDC Executive Director Ira N. Forman. "Here's hoping that the House Republican leaders are swayed by public pressure and reconsider their opposition to Foreign Aid."

However, the Senate version includes what amendment co- authors Senators Barbara Boxer (Democrat, California) and Olympia Snowe (Republican, Maine) describe as the repeal of the "Global Gag Rule," precluding official U.S. involvement in the dissemination of birth control information.

“The repeal of the Global Gag Rule policy is long overdue,” Boxer said. “Thousands of women have died because of this dangerous policy, and I will work as hard as I can to see that it is finally overturned.”

The Boxer-Snowe Amendment repeals the Global Gag Rule, which President Bush established by executive order on his first working day in office in 2001. Also known as the Mexico City Policy, the Global Gag Rule denies U.S. international family planning assistance to foreign non-governmental organizations that use their own funds to counsel women on the availability of abortion, advocate for changes to abortion laws, or provide legal abortion services.

The preceding story incorporates information provided by AIPAC, NJDC, and the offices of Senators Boxer, Lautenberg and Lieberman

Bryen is director of special projects for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

Dov Burt Levy
The unheeded words of peace

SALEM, Massachusetts (Press Release)—The media have been filled with remembrances of the death of Princess Diana ten years ago. But not remembered, except for their families andfriends, are the five people, four high school girls among them, killed in Jerusalem by a suicide bomber on September 4, 1997, just four days after Diana's death.

Beside my own apprehension about having been on the spot of the downtown Jerusalem bombing just 90 minutes before it occurred andhaving great sorrow for those killed and injured, my thoughts moved tomy grandchildren, Michael and Jenny, then 10 and 8 years old, who soon
enough would be the same age as the dead children.

When the editor of an American grandparent publication, for whom I had written, phoned a few days after the bombing to check on how my family was doing, I agreed to her suggestion to write something about the situation from a grandparent's perspective.

Here is how I linked grandparenting and the death of Princess Diana.

When my grandchildren were born in Jerusalem, I was the happiest grandfather in the world.

I always was a peacenik, but with each hug of these kids, I prayed that at least, by the time they were 18 years old, their military service would be a peacetime assignment.

I wrote that too many grandparents all over the world worry about terror and bombings, about wars declared and undeclared, about the kind of world they and their children have made for their
grandchildren.

I said that without major changes in the psyche and behavior of people and nations, innocents and soldiers would continue to die, victims of leaders who order their murder in the name of religion, nationalism or revenge.

I asked how much longer we would accept wars and killings as part of the natural order of things.

I told of my dream of what Princes Harry and William might have said at their mother's funeral.

"Our mother did her best to advance the cause of peace. She embraced the sick and dying. She called for the abolition of tools of war.

"What our Mom did not know was how much the people of the world loved her, how powerful would be your grief at her death. We are sad that she couldn't know how far you might have supported her efforts during her life.

"Today, in our collective grief we ask what can be done in her memory?

"Imagine if you all, the millions of you, refused to let your children go to war. Imagine if a million people surrounded the capitol building of every nation, stood with signs demanding peace, just as you walkedwith flowers for our mother's soul this week? "

Of course, the young princes never spoke my words. Today, 10 years later, my words read, even to me, as anachronisms, a throwback toancient history or utopian novels. They sound like a fairy tale, anidea with never enough takers, a notion that never encompassed much of the world.

Is the situation even worse today than it was 10 years ago? I think so.

And, while it pains me to say it, you and I and the citizens of most western countries are more passive than we were 10 years ago. Still, I believe a majority exists in almost every country for ending the killings, stopping the wars.

If, in most countries, millions of people could be gotten off their tushes and into the streets, peace could break out, and politicians would have to respond.

Don't we owe that to our progeny, if not ourselves?

To come full circle, grandson Michael is now a 20-year-old Israeli army sergeant, with one year of service remaining. Jenny, 18, begins her two-year service this month. No peacetime army service for them. My prayers of 20 years ago remain unfulfilled.

Dov Burt Levy is a regular Jewish Journal Boston North columnist. He may be contacted at dblevy@columnist.com

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Very few people know about the long history of Albanian religious tolerance and resistance to oppression. Neither do they know that during World War II, all Jews who lived in Albania or sought asylum in that country were saved from the ravages of the Holocaust. This information was suppressed by the Stalinist Communist regime of Enver Hoxha who controlled Albania for fifty years.

When European Jewry began fleeing to Albania to escape the unfolding events in Western Europe in the early 1930s, there were approximately 200 Jews living in Albania. (Archaeological evidence documents the presence of Jews in Albanian lands since the epoch of Roman rule.) At the end of World War II, there were close to 2,000 Jews living in Albania—the only nation that can claim that every Jew within its borders was rescued from the Holocaust.

One witness to the lack of anti-Semitism in Albania was Herman Bernstein, himself a Jew, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Albania from 1930 to 1933. Bernstein wrote in his letters that:

"There is no trace of any discrimination against Jews in Albania because Albania happens to be one of the rare lands in Europe today where religious prejudice and hate do not exist, even though Albanians themselves are divided into three faiths….”[1]

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Saperstein welcomes court decision narrowing impact of Patriot Act

WASHINGTON, DC (Press Release) - In response to U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero’s ruling striking down the Patriot Act’s provision allowing the FBI to issue national security letters to internet and telephone companies, Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement: