Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund Annual Report

Annual Report
January 2010 – Shevat 5770

Dear Friends,

We are pleased to send you this, our Annual Report for the 2009-2010 school year. This was another year of success for the Alisa Flatow Memorial Fund as we awarded 9 Scholarships for a year’s study in Israel. Please see the list of awardees.

The Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund continues to be the leader of scholarship opportunities for post-high school study in Israel. Open to men and women, without regard to whether the applicant is Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist or unsure, we continue to receive more than 250 applications a year for students attending a variety of institutions in Israel. Interest is keen because our young adults understand the promise that a year of study in Israel holds for them and for the Jewish people.

More than $300,000 has been awarded since the Fund was established in 1995 via your tax deductible contributions to the Fund. Your continuing support helps these young adults embark on a life changing year of study and accomplishment.

We wish you health and good things in this new calendar year.

With gratitude,

Rosalyn & Stephen Flatow and family

You may contribute securely on-line here.

Or, you may mail your contribution to:
Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund
Jewish Community Foundation of MetroWest
901 Route 10
Whippany, NJ 07981

www.alisafund.org

The Wide Circle of Terror Victims - Why is Frank Pallone not doing anything?

The circle of terror victims is ever widening.Consider the case of the 9/11 responders. Fire and police personnel, construction trade workers, and clergy responded in the hundreds to the pile of rubble that was the Twin Towers and World Trade Center. Many worked for days on end clearing debris, all the while being told by the US Environmental Protection Agency that the air they were breathing was fine. Unfortunately, the opposite was the case.

Laden with particulates, rescue and recovery workers labored to clear the debris. The clouds of dust they encountered were poisonous. Now, they are sick and dying and seeking government help.

In particular, angry at the delay, 9/11 responder groups are pointing the finger at Congressman Frank Pallone for not releasing from a committee he controls the so-called Zadroga bill that would provide medical assistance to first responders linked to 9/11.

The editors of the Bergen Record in Hackensack, New Jersey saw fit to comment on the problem.

"The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act would provide lifetime entitlements to monitoring and treatment for anyone who is ill, or becomes ill, as a result of the attacks. It would cover an estimated 74,000 people and cost $10 billion over the lifetime of the program."

America has a responsibility to the responders who went into the pit of the World Trade Center to do their jobs.Congressman Pallone has a responsibility to those same individuals to get the Federal government to step up to the plate as it has with other terror victims because these folks are victims of terror, too.

Read the full editorial here.

Well, that's what I think.
Stephen M. Flatow

Jeff Jacoby - The wake-up call from Flight 253

Jeff Jacoby writes,

"AFTER THE SEPT. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it was widely asserted at the time, nothing would be the same. What Pearl Harbor had been for our parents and grandparents, 9/11 would be for us: a shattering national wake-up call revealing both the gaping holes in America's homeland security and the reality that we were at war with an implacable enemy whose defeat would require years of sacrifice and resolve."

What lessons from 9/11 have been dismissed by our government leaders?

• Terrorism isn't caused by poverty and ignorance.
• The global jihad is real.
• Terrorists can always adapt to new restrictions.
• The Patriot Act was not a reckless overreaction.

It's time that the Obama administration took steps to make us safer. Step 1, Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, has to go. And in her place, should be a man or woman who understands that we were very lucky, again, in averting a catastrophe. Just how long will our luck hold out?

Read the Jacoby column.

WSJ.Com, The Terror This Time. A lucky break & Napolitano about face

The Wall Street Journal has a different take than the one set forth over the weekend by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who says "the system worked."

A U.S. government that has barred the phrase "war on terror" has nonetheless acknowledged that a failed Christmas day bomb attack on an airliner was a terrorist attempt. Can we all now drop the pretense that we stopped fighting a war once Dick Cheney and George W. Bush left the White House?

The attempt by 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab follows the alleged murders in Ft. Hood, Texas by Islamist-inspired Major Nidal Hasan in November. Brian Jenkins, who studies terrorism for the Rand Corporation, says there were more terror incidents (12), including thwarted plots, on U.S. soil in 2009 than in any year since 2001. The jihadists don't seem to like Americans any better because we're closing down Guantanamo.

As the Journal points out,

Yet the terrorist screening system seems to have failed in at least two crucial ways: first, in failing to revoke a visa to the U.S. that Mr. Abdulmutallab had obtained last June despite a later warning to U.S. consular officials from his own father that he was becoming radicalized and might have terror network ties; and second, in not adding him to a no-fly list from a lower-level watch list.

Much to the Obama Administration's embarrassment, there still seems to be a "war on terror." The just cannot admit it.

Earlier today, Monday, December 28, 2009, the Obama Administration began singing a different song.

The secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, said Monday that the thwarted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner represented a failure of the nation’s aviation security system, not the success she and other administration officials had portrayed in comments over the weekend.

Read the full Wall Street Journal editorial and The New York Times report.

Phyllis Chesler weighs in on the price to be paid for failed bomb plot

What Next? Body Cavity Searches at Airports?

"Look: I’m no military strategist or historian. I have spent no time in any standing army or paramilitary organization. But, as a citizen civilian I have some questions.

"First, what next"

Ms. Chesler asks several questions regarding the fallout from Abdumutallab's failed attempt to detonate a bomb last week on that Northwest flight.

"Why are we still allowing Muslims from non-western foreign countries to fly into Western countries? Please note: I am not talking about “race” but about a highly politicized “faith.” And, what shall we do about the West’s own homegrown Islamist terrorists? Ground them all? Why not?"

Read more.