The Star Online: World Updates
The Star Online: World Updates |
- Top Jewish Americans ponder support for Obama
- Majority of Americans support gay marriage in poll
- Eleven killed as Syrian funeral becomes protest
| Top Jewish Americans ponder support for Obama Posted: 21 May 2011 09:03 PM PDT CHICAGO (Reuters) - Some prominent Jewish Americans are rethinking their support for President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election bid after he effectively called on Israel to give back territory it has occupied since 1967 to Palestinians.
The backlash after Obama's keynote speech on the Middle East has Democratic Party operatives scrambling to mollify the Jewish community as the president prepares to seek a second term in the White House. Obama on Thursday called for any new Palestinian state to respect the borders as they were in 1967, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell him bluntly that his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic. "He has in effect sought to reduce Israel's negotiation power and I condemn him for that," former New York Mayor Ed Koch told Reuters. Koch said he might not campaign or vote for Obama if Republicans nominate a pro-Israel candidate who offers an alternative to recent austere budgetary measures backed by Republicans in Congress. Koch donated $2,300 to Obama's campaign in 2008, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission. "I believed that then-Senator Obama would be as good as John McCain based on his statements at the time and based on his support of Israel. It turns out I was wrong," he said. Despite the stormy reaction to Obama's remarks, some commentators noted talk of the 1967 borders was nothing new. "This has been the basic idea for at least 12 years. This is what Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat were talking about at Camp David, and later, at Taba," Jeffrey Goldberg wrote on The Atlantic website. "This is what George W. Bush was talking about with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. So what's the huge deal here?" Exit polls from the 2008 election showed 78 percent of Jewish voters chose Obama over his Republican rival Senator McCain. "I have spoken to a lot of people in the last couple of days -- former supporters -- who are very upset and feel alienated," billionaire real estate developer and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said. "He'll get less political support, fewer activists for his campaign, and I am sure that will extend to financial support as well." Zuckerman backed Obama during his 2008 presidential run and the newspaper he owns, the New York Daily News, endorsed the president. Obama's Chicago-based re-election campaign sought to play down reaction to the shift in the U.S. stance toward Israel. "There's no question that we've reached out to the Jewish donor community, as we have to many other communities that strongly supported the president in 2008," a campaign spokeswoman said on Friday. "The continued grassroots organizing and fundraising efforts of many prominent leaders in the Jewish community makes it clear this will remain a strong base of support in 2012." Texas-based real estate developer Kirk Rudy, who is a deputy finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee, said he exchanged phone calls and e-mails with a large network of supporters since the president's speech "trying to take people's pulse" and has not seen a strong backlash. "I have seen very emphatic and robust support -- and financial support -- from the Jewish community," Rudy said, adding Obama received "significant financial participation from the Jewish community" at two fund-raisers in Austin, before the Middle East speech, that brought in roughly $2 million. Since the speech, Rudy has received e-mails from angry voters but the overwhelming majority of his network will continue to donate and not cross party lines, he said. But Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote an open letter to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, calling on it to cancel a scheduled address by Obama to the lobby group on Sunday. (Editing by John O'Callaghan) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Majority of Americans support gay marriage in poll Posted: 21 May 2011 09:03 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Fifty-three percent of Americans support making gay marriage legal, according to a Gallup poll released on Friday, a marked reversal from just a year ago when an equal majority opposed same-sex matrimony. The findings are in line with two national polls earlier this spring that found support for legally recognized gay marriage has gained a newfound majority among Americans in recent months. Gallup said Democrats and political independents accounted for the entire shift in its survey compared to last year, when only 44 percent of all respondents favored gay marriage, while 53 percent were opposed. The percentage of Republicans favoring gay marriage held steady at 28 percent. Same-sex marriage remains a highly contested issue in U.S. politics, but homosexual couples have won the right to legally wed in five states -- Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Iowa -- and Washington, D.C. The growing support for gay marriage comes after President Barack Obama signed into law legislation in December to repeal the ban on openly gay people serving in the military under a 17-year-old law known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Gallup noted the policy change, but said it was unclear if that influenced Americans' attitudes about same-sex unions. "The trend toward marriage equality is undeniable -- and irreversible," Joe Solmonese, president of the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, said the poll shows her fellow opponents of gay matrimony have been "shamed" into silence. "Polls are becoming very sensitive to wording, and the wording being used in the media are not predicting accurately what happens at the actual polls when people vote," she said. In a sign of a generation gap, Gallup found 70 percent of respondents between the ages of 18 and 34 support gay marriage, compared to only 39 percent among those 55 and older. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in March showed 53 percent of Americans said same-sex marriage should be legal, and 51 percent said the same thing in a CNN Poll released in April. By comparison, a 1996 Gallup found that 68 percent of Americans were opposed to same-sex marriage, a figure that has trended downward ever since. The Gallup poll was based on phone interviews conducted from May 5 to May 8, with a random sample of 1,018 adults 18 or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. It can be found at http://www.gallup.com/poll/147662/First-Time-Majority-Americans-Favor-Legal-Gay-Marriage.aspx, (Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Steve Gorman, Greg McCune, and Eric Walsh) Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. | ||
| Eleven killed as Syrian funeral becomes protest Posted: 21 May 2011 09:03 PM PDT AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian security forces shot dead 11 mourners in the central city of Homs on Saturday at a mass funeral for people killed in the latest crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, a rights campaigner said. Human rights lawyer Razan Zaitouna said she had the names of at least 11 people killed when the funeral at Nasr cemetery for 10 pro-democracy demonstrators killed by security forces in Homs on Friday came under fire. A witness who was at the funeral and spoke to Reuters by telephone said the mourners shouted "overthrow the regime" and that they came under fire as they were leaving the cemetery eight kilometres (five miles) north of the centre of Homs. "The shooting was in cold blood. People were streaming peacefully out of the cemetery," he said. Tens of mourners were wounded in the attack that occurred at around 1200 GMT, he said, adding that he saw five people with gunshot wounds in their legs and arms being taken to hospital. Syria has barred most international media since the protests broke out two months ago, making it impossible to verify independently accounts from activists and officials. Another resident of Homs said heavy machinegun fire was heard at night from the Bab Amro area, where tanks deployed earlier this month to crush growing demonstrations against Assad's autocratic rule. Security forces killed another protester, named Ziad al-Qadi, when they fired live rounds at a demonstration in the Damascus suburb of Saqba, a witness said by telephone from the suburb of 40,000. "A large demonstration calling for the overthrow of the regime had been going on since the afternoon. It felt like the whole of Saqba took to the streets. Security forces entered in the evening and started firing," said the witness. The latest violence came as the Syrian National Organisation for Human Rights said security forces had killed at least 44 civilians on Friday in attacks on pro-democracy demonstrations across Syria. Prominent rights campaigner Ammar Qurabi, who heads of the organisation, said more than half were killed in the northwest province of Idlib, where tanks deployed on Friday to crush large demonstrations against Assad's rule. The protests broke out in defiance of a military crackdown that another rights group says has killed more than 800 civilians in the past nine weeks. Assad has largely dismissed the protests as serving a foreign-backed conspiracy to sow sectarian strife. Syrian authorities blame most of the violence on armed groups, backed by Islamists and outside powers, who they say have killed more than 120 soldiers and police. They have recently suggested they believe the protests have peaked. Syria said on Saturday armed groups killed 17 people on Friday in the provinces of Idlib and Homs to the south. The state news agency said the civilians, police and security forces were killed after armed groups exploited the commitment of police forces to instructions by the Interior Ministry "not to shoot, to preserve the lives of civilians". It said saboteurs burnt public buildings and police stations in Idlib, injuring eight policemen. U.S. CRITICISM The unrest has posed the gravest challenge to Assad's rule. In response, he has lifted a 48-year state of emergency and granted citizenship to stateless Kurds, but also sent tanks to several cities to suppress the protests. Friday's violence came a day after the United States, which had at first muted its criticism Assad's handling of the unrest, told him to lead reform or step aside. "The president can still try to redeem himself by doing what a few leaders in Eastern Europe did, which is leading immediate transformation to a democracy and running himself in a fair elections if he wants," opposition figure Walid al-Bunni said. "With all the blood the regime is spilling the protests have been growing and expanding in geographical scope ... The Syrians have been humiliated and they will no longer shut up," he added. The main weekly Muslim prayers on Fridays are a rallying point for protesters because they offer the only opportunity for large gatherings, and have seen the worst death tolls. Activists said protests broke out on Friday in the Damascus suburbs, Banias and Latakia on the Mediterranean, the oil producing region of Deir al-Zor, Qamishli in the east and the southern Hauran Plain. Rights lawyer Zaitouna said on Friday at least 12 civilians were killed in Maaret al-Numan, in Idlib province, after tanks entered the town to disperse protesters. She said 11 were killed in the central city of Homs, while seven died in Deraa, Latakia, the Damascus suburbs and Hama. Rights campaigners said Idlib, a relatively prosperous agricultural province, took the brunt of the crackdown on Friday, during which hundreds of Syrians were arrested. They said those killed included at least five protesters shot by security forces while they were marching from the town of Ariha to join other protests in Idlib. "They took their dead and went back to Ariha and burnt security and Baath Party headquarters and a Syriatel office," said one rights campaigner in the area. Syriatel, Syria's largest mobile phone operator, belongs to Assad's cousin Rami Makhlouf, who has expanded his control on various sectors of the economy since Assad succeeded his late father 11 years ago. Copyright © 2011 Reuters Full Feed Generated by Get Full RSS, sponsored by USA Best Price. |
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