wasn't it the republicans that held out for more stuff? nm

MSNBC.com

JERUSALEM - Israel won't do business with Pat Robertson after the evangelical leader suggested Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's massive stroke was divine punishment, a tourism official said Wednesday, putting into doubt plans to develop a large Christian tourism center in northern Israel.

Avi Hartuv, spokesman for Israel's tourism minister, said officials are furious with Robertson's suggestion that the stroke was retribution for Sharon's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last summer. We can't accept this kind of statement, Hartuv said.

Robertson is leading a group of evangelicals who have pledged to raise $50 million to build the Christian Heritage Center in Israel's northern Galilee region, where tradition says Jesus lived and taught.

Under a tentative agreement, Robertson's group was to put up the funding, while Israel would provide land and infrastructure. Israeli officials believe the project will generate tens of millions of tourism dollars.

But the project now is in question in light of Robertson's comments, said Hartuv.

We will not do business with him, only with other evangelicals who don't back these comments, Hartuv said. We will do business with other evangelical leaders, friends of Israel, but not with him.

A day after Sharon's stroke on Jan. 4, Robertson suggested the prime minister was being punished for dividing God's land, a reference to the August pullout from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements.

God considers this land to be his, Robertson said on his TV program The 700 Club. You read the Bible and he says 'This is my land,' and for any prime minister of Israel who decides he is going to carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No, this is mine.'

Robertson's comments also drew condemnation from other Christian leaders and even U.S. President George W. Bush.

The ministry's decision was first reported in Wednesday's edition of The Jerusalem Post.

Christian center planned near Galilee
Robertson's Christian Heritage Center was to be tucked away in 35 acres of rolling Galilee hills, near key Christian sites such as Capernaum, the Mount of the Beatitudes, where tradition says Jesus delivered the Sermon of the Mount, and Tabgha -- on the shores of the Sea of Galilee -- where Christians believe Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fish.

The project underlines how ties have strengthened in recent years between Israel and evangelical Christian groups that support the Jewish state.

Israel was considering leasing the land to the Christians for free. Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson predicted it would annually draw up to 1 million pilgrims who would spend $1.5 billion in Israel and support about 40,000 jobs.

Hirschson, however, is one of Sharon's biggest supporters, and a member of the centrist Kadima party recently founded by the prime minister.

Hartuv left the door open to continuing the project, but only with people who don't back Robertson's statements.

We want to see who in the group supports his (Robertson's) statements. Those who support the statements cannot do business with us. Those that publicly support Ariel Sharon's recovery ... are welcome to do business with us, Hartuv said. We have to check this very, very carefully.

Michael Klonsky (born 1943) is an American educator and political activist. He is perhaps most famous for being National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society in 1968... ...On May 12, 1969, Klonsky and four other SDSers were arrested at the organization's Chicago national headquarters for assaulting a police officer, interfering with a firefighter, and inciting mob action[/b]. A prank call to a local police station said there had been a shooting at SDS' offices. When the police arrived, Klonsky and the others were convinced it was a ruse to gain access to SDS' offices.[1] Klonsky convinced the police everything was fine, when a second prank call brought local firefighters to the scene. When the police attempted to force entry to the offices, Klonsky and the others resisted. Convinced state repression of SDS was coming, Klonsky told a national television audience on CBS' "Face the Nation" that police repression of the New Left was being planned by the U.S. Department of Justice... ...At SDS' June 1969 national convention in Chicago, Klonsky played a major role in the dissolution of the organization. A group of 11 SDS national leaders—including Bernardine Dohrn, Jeff Jones, John Jacobs, Mark Rudd, Bill Ayers, Terry Robbins, and Howie Machtinger—had met in April and May of 1969 to craft a response to PL supporters within SDS. Their article, "You Don't Need A Weatherman to Know Which Way the Wind Blows," was published in New Left Notes on June 18, 1969, the day the convention opened. The "Weatherman" statement denounced imperialism and racism, and repudiated PL's claim that youth culture was bourgeois. The Weatherman statement called for revolutionary violence at home to stop imperialism, and the formation of collectives in major cities to support violence and stop factionalism.

In late 1969, Klonsky founded the October League, a communist party which in 1977 became the Communist Party, Marxist-Leninist. He was elected the party's chairman. The group opposed Gay Liberation and supported the regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran. Klonsky made several trips to China beginning in July 1977, where he was warmly received by government and Communist Party of China officials and treated to state dinners.

In 1991, Klonsky co-founded the Small Schools Workshop in Chicago

William Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and founder of both the Small Schools Workshop and the Center for Youth and Society, teaches courses in interpretive and qualitative research, urban school change, and teaching and the modern predicament.

GRANT SUPPORT Grants obtained for the support of the Small Schools Workshop and/or the Chicago Forum for School Change at the University of Illinois at Chicago, co-director, principal investigator. Annenberg Challenge -1997 - 260,000

Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995–1999

At the debate, Obama said of Ayers: “This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis. And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn't make much sense.”