WP: Bush's Jewish Allies Demur on Stem Cells

By Dana Milbank

The fight to fund embryonic stem cell research has opened a fissure of biblical proportions.

When President Bush last week branded as unethical the stem-cell legislation making its way through Congress, he found himself in a dogma dispute with Orthodox Jews, one of his most valuable constituencies.

The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the umbrella group for the most conservative branch of Judaism, sided with Christian conservatives on the Terri Schiavo case, public displays of the Ten Commandments, opposition to assisted suicide and same-sex marriage, and more federal support for religious charities.

But after the House passed a bill Tuesday endorsing federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, the Orthodox group applauded. The "potential to save and heal human lives is an integral part of valuing human life," it said. "Moreover, the traditional Jewish perspective does not accord an embryo outside of the womb the full status of humanhood and its attendant protections."

(snip)

The Jewish group did the Christian thing and turned the other cheek. "We have great respect for the president's view because he bases it on moral principle," Diament said.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/28/AR2005052800741.html

will he stop bombing them ?

we could have probably cured cancer, and rebuilt our schools and hospitals.

According to last year stats we are shipping millions of taxpayer dollars each and every day to Israel. The siphoning of our paid taxes to foreign countries continues. Now we are paying 50 mil to Palestine? Might I suggest Bush get a real job and see his taxes shipped elsewhere as he sees his own nation in decline?

U.S. CANCER RESEARCHERS LAUNCH FIRST AMERICAN-ISRAELI CANCER CONFERENCE

“We feel that over the past few years, Israel --- pound-for-pound a relative research powerhouse --- has been shortchanged by the lack of convention visitors,” said Joseph D. Rosenblatt, M.D., associate director of clinical and translational research at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Worries about security and violence in the Middle East are among the factors that have limited scientific symposia held in Israel.

“With this conference, we want to foster ties and recognize the contributions that Israelis make to the international cancer effort and create real opportunities for the development of new therapeutic, prognostic and diagnostic approaches, based on interactions between scientists in this country and in Israel.”

Added Robert Korngold, Ph.D., of New Jersey’s Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center; “We want to demonstrate our support for the Israeli scientists. They’ve been somewhat isolated and have not had the opportunity to interact with the scientific community worldwide. There’s been no conference of this size there in the last four years.”

“There has been a long history of productive collaborations between American and Israeli scientists, resulting in significant increases in our understanding and treatment of cancer,” said Hyam I. Levitsky, M.D., professor of oncology, medicine and urology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. “This conference hopefully will provide new fuel to this fire, sparking ideas, collaborations, and interest among research fellows in visiting institutions abroad.”

http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/03_01a_05.html

The old testament has a passage describing the penalty for:
- killing a man's wife inadvertently during a fight with that man.
- making a man's wife have a miscarriage inadvertently during a fight with that man.

The former is to be equated with murder, the latter with a lesser offense more akin to a property crime.

This is as close to a clear statement about abortion as the Bible ever gets, as far as I know.

I guess Jews can read the Bible better than Christians can.

and attempt to do away with them was a crime of property, not morality.

However, the Orthodox are wrong when they say that Bush based his decision on "moral principle." Bush has no shred of moral principle in him, unless one considers genocide and war crimes to be godly virtues.