Friday Five: Sarah Silverman, Jill Stein, Moshe Silman, Abigail Disney, Brian Flynn and Ryan Parry
Published July 20, 2012
Sarah Silverman is at it again. On Monday, she released a video offering to perform a sex act on billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson if he redirects his millions toward President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign and away from Mitt Romney. The producers of the video say they’ve been taking heat from Jewish groups for targeting Adelson, who was in the news again this week for making a new $13 million donation to Birthright and for being the subject of a federal investigation. But, the producers say, their pro-Obama campaign — called the Great Schlep for the eponymous pro-Obama video Silverman did in 2008 — will continue. “The goal is to have Romney decide whether he wants to pervert democracy by taking funding from one individual who will have outsized influence on a majority of issues that are way outside of the mainstream of what most American Jews think,” said Great Schlep co-founder Ari Wallach.
Move over Roseanne Barr; it’s Jill Stein’s time. On Saturday, Stein, a Massachusetts physician, handily beat Roseanne to win the presidential nomination of the Green Party of the United States, a federation of state green parties. It marks the first time a Jew has been the nominee for a national party’s bid for president. Of course, this is the Green Party, so don’t get your hopes up for November. “The current two-party system is broken,” Stein said in her nomination speech. “That’s why I say I’m practicing political medicine because it’s the mother of illnesses.”
Israel’s social protest movement received a shock last Saturday night when Moshe Silman immolated himself in the middle of a Tel Aviv rally. Silman died this morning in a hospital near Tel Aviv. The 57-year-old had owned a small shipping company before the government repossessed his property as penalty for not paying a $4,000 loan. In a letter he circulated before setting himself on fire, Silman wrote, “The State of Israel stole from me and robbed me. It left me helpless.” Protests in solidarity with Silman (and a couple of copycat attempts) have followed, but it’s not clear whether Silman’s action will ignite what has been a lackluster summer for the mass Israeli social protest movement born a year ago.
It’s not exactly divestment, but it’s close. Abigail Disney, the daughter of Walt Disney Co. co-founder Roy Disney, caused a stir this week when she announced that she would donate her share of profits from an investment in the Ahava skin care company — which has its factory in the West Bank settlement of Mitzpe Shalem — to organizations “working to end this illegal exploitation.” Shamrock Holdings, a Disney family company, owns about 18.5 percent of Ahava. Disney, a documentary filmmaker and founder of an international peace group, said she couldn’t divest due to “complicated legal and financial constraints.”
Ladislaus Csizsik-Csatary may have been the most wanted 97-year-old on the planet. Now, thanks to some sleuthing by Brian Flynn and Ryan Parry — two reporters for the British tabloid The Sun — Csizsik-Csatary is under arrest in Hungary on suspicion of helping send 15,700 Jews to their deaths. Csizsik-Csatary, a commander in the Royal Hungarian Police during World War II, allegedly headed an internment camp in the Slovakian town of Kassa (now Kosice) from which Jews were sent to Nazi death camps, according to The Sun. The fugitive had topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s most wanted list, and the two reporters tracked him down after learning that he was living alone in a Budapest apartment.
