c. 1998 Religion News Service

Holocaust museum reinvites Arafat after wrangling

(RNS) The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, after much wrangling by officials, has formally invited Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to take a tour of the institution and Arafat is expected for a Friday (Jan. 23) visit.

Within a week’s time, the Palestinian official had been invited, uninvited and then welcomed again, The Washington Post reported.”I made a fallacious decision,”said Miles Lerman, chairman of the governing council of the 4-year-old museum.”There was no malice in it, but I was wrong. Now I am ready to receive him with joy in my heart. It’s good for Arafat and it’s good for the peace negotiations.” Some museum officials, including director Walter Reich, had worried the invitation would be too divisive.

But after a four-hour, closed-door meeting of the council, founders and administrators of the museum appeared unified, saying the situation was poorly managed.

Lerman, a Holocaust survivor who was actively involved in getting the museum established, told the Post he first learned of a potential visit by Arafat after speaking with State Department deputy Mideast envoy Aaron Miller. Miller, a member of the museum’s council, and his supervisor, envoy Dennis Ross, thought Arafat’s presence could mark the first time a major Arab leader visited the museum and, thus, acknowledged the Holocaust and its role in the identity of today’s Jews.

But Reich, director of the federally funded institution, and other officials of the museum argued the gesture would offend Jews who think Arafat is a sponsor of terrorism.

Pressure from the Clinton administration and the public prompted the reissuing of the invitation.

Missouri senator to propose human cloning ban

(RNS) Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., plans to propose an emergency prohibition on human cloning when Congress reconvenes next week.

The senator said Chicago scientist Richard Seed’s recent announcement of plans to try cloning a human being will cause Congress to act quickly, the Associated Press reported.”While we may be prepared from a technological standpoint to proceed with this research, we are not prepared from an ethical standpoint,”Bond said Wednesday (Jan. 21).

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, promised last week to deal with the issue on his side of the Capitol.”We are going to move that ban,”he said, calling it”a nasty business.” Seed said earlier this month he wants to clone a human within 18 months. If Congress bans cloning of humans in this country, Seed said he would move his work to Tijuana, Mexico.

President Clinton also has encouraged Congress to pass a bill banning human cloning, but Bond said the White House proposal is not sufficient.

Bond’s bill would impose a civil fine on violators in the private or public sector. The senator is considering adding criminal penalties to the proposal. The civil fine would be $500,000 for a company and $250,000 for an individual.

Meanwhile, Judie Brown, president of the American Life League in Stafford, Va., reiterated calls for Congress to approve what her organization considers a full ban on all human cloning activities.”Unfortunately, the Clinton administration’s proposal will not stop unethical experimentation,”she said.

Brown’s group believes proposed administration language would leave open the possibility for laboratory experiments on living, cloned human embryos, which could be destroyed at the end of an experiment or implanted later in a woman’s uterus.”We urge members of Congress to examine the language very carefully or else they may approve a bill that would make the `ban’ meaningless,”she said.

NOW fund tries to freeze Terry’s frequent flier miles

(RNS) The NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund has asked 13 major airlines to freeze frequent-flier miles of Randall Terry, an anti-abortion activist, in hopes of transferring them to the National Organization for Women.

The fund has a claim on more than $500,000 in court-ordered fines from three lawsuits involving Terry. The suits relate to blockades at Maryland and New York abortion clinics organized by Terry and Operation Rescue, a militant group he began in 1987, The New York Times reported.

Terry, now a radio talk-show host, encouraged anti-abortion protesters in the late 1980s by telling them”if you believe abortion is murder, you have to act as if it’s murder.” Demonstrators were arrested after participating in blockades he had organized.

Terry was in Washington, D.C., Wednesday (Jan. 21) to observe the 25th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision, in which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized most abortions.”These NOW people are child-killers who have the ability to turn the abhorrent into the ridiculous,”he said.”Let them use my frequent flier miles on their train ride into Hades. … We’re going to continue to appeal these Draconian seizures until we prevail.” NOW fund lawyers said the group had recouped only a miniscule portion of the money it was due.”In 1993, we froze his bank account and obtained $6,000,”said Yolanda Wu, a staff lawyer for the fund.”He still owes us nearly $600,000.” Terry and other anti-abortion leaders have been ordered by courts to pay close to $20 million for violating the law during blockades of clinics. But, in many cases, the groups have rendered the funds uncollectable by having no bank accounts, office equipment, real property or other assets that could be seized for the judgments.

Wu said of Terry:”Last summer, we tried to freeze another one of his bank accounts, but he was tipped off and withdrew the money.”

Transcendental Meditation leader in preservation battle

(RNS) Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his international Transcendental Meditation movement are in the midst of a historic preservation battle in the Netherlands.

The 79-year-old Maharishi wants to raze the old St. Ludwig monastery, which has been his home since 1990, in part because it doesn’t face due east.

The dispute has disrupted the good relations between the guru’s devotees and residents of Vlodrop, Netherlands, which is about 125 miles southeast of Amsterdam on the border with Germany, the Associated Press reported.”These people can be very polite and friendly,”said Harry Cox, a member of the committee that wants to save the monastery.”But if they do not get their way, their friendly faces disappear. It is a very uncompromising organization.” The Maharishi Foundation wants to demolish the monastery it bought for $900,000 in 1984 to build a posh $50 million complex of buildings, lakes and gardens.

A group in the village has had the monastery designated as a national monument. With that action, plans for the monastery _ built between 1904 and 1909 for German monks _ have been put on hold. The monument status has been appealed by devotees of the guru.

While Cox said he would like to see the dispute settled, Wim van den Berg, a spokesman for the Maharishi Foundation, dismissed Cox’s group as”a few people in the village.””They do not have anything against us, but out of concern for this old building they have raised objections,”he said.

Cox admits that some villagers support the plans to demolish the monastery because the Maharishi would have to pay substantially higher taxes if his expansion plans are approved.

The Maharishi believes entrances to the building should face east to gather energy from the rising sun. Right now, they are off by 29 degrees. One of the group’s pamphlets explains that bad architecture causes depression, bad luck, anxiety and criminal tendencies.

Quote of the Day: Author and consultant Bill Easum

(RNS)”Control is the sacred cow of established churches, and it needs to be ground into gourmet burgers.” _ Bill Easum, executive director of 21st Century Strategies, a church consulting firm in Port Arkansas, Texas, speaking at a recent Texas Baptist Evangelism Conference about how churches should allow lay people to minister, as quoted by Associated Baptist Press.

MJP END RNS