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FULL TRANSCRIPT: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
EDITOR'S NOTE: Below is the transcript of Christiane Amanpour's full interview with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who for 22 years was Chief Rabbi for all Commonwealth nations.
AMANPOUR: Thank you for joining me here. Let me ask you first, you have now just stepped down within the last few months after nearly twenty-two years, if I’m not wrong, of being the chief rabbi here. What was the biggest challenge when you took the position back in 1991?
SACKS: Back in 1991 the biggest challenge was to get Jews committed to continuing their Jewish identity, to teaching their children about it. And historically we’ve been the people who predicated our being on education. We built the schools. And so my biggest priority was to get more Jews to go to Jewish day schools, learn and be just a little more knowledgeable than their parents.
Peace process is ‘millennial opportunity’ for Jews
EDITOR'S NOTE: The transcript of Christiane Amanpour's full interview with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is available here.
By Mick Krever, CNN
The Israeli/Palestinian peace process is a “millennial opportunity for Jews to create a good, fair, and just society,” Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who for 22 years was Chief Rabbi for all Commonwealth nations, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday.
“We’ve got just too many tears in our history to make us indifferent to the suffering of others,” Rabbi Sacks said.
Peace would also, he said, protect Israelis “against a constant risk of terror.”
Sacks is one of the leading exponents of interfaith dialogue, and is extremely optimistic about the new papacy of Pope Francis.
“I think he is in many respects somebody who has broken new ground in his openness to Jews,” Sacks said.
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No countries wanted to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons on land, so the U.N. is doing it at sea
By Mick Krever, CNN
In an “unprecedented” situation, Syria’s declared chemical weapons will be destroyed not inside a country, but at sea, Sigrid Kaag, who is overseeing the operation for the U.N. and its chemical weapons body, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
“In an effort to find member states willing to assist in this process and basically lend their territory for the destruction process, no member states stepped forward,” Kaag said.
As a result the U.N. is being forced to do it on board ships, on the high sea, in international territory.
“Yes it’s unique,” she said, “but we are reassured of course by the U.S. and other member states it’s technically very feasible, it’s viable, and otherwise it wouldn’t be happening.”
The Assad regime delivered the first batch of chemical weapons onto a Danish commercial ship on Tuesday, after missing a December 31 deadline.
Al-Qaeda a ‘bloodthirsty nuisance,’ not ‘existential threat’
By Mick Krever, CNN
Al-Qaeda and other jihadis are just a “bloodthirsty nuisance,” not an “existential threat” to the world, Jeremy Greenstock, former UK Ambassador to the United Nations and Special Envoy for Iraq, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Wednesday.
Jihadis may be attractive to Syrians wishing to get rid of Bashar al-Assad, he said, but few people like the extremist policies they would implement once in power.
In neighboring Iraq, al Qaeda-linked militants, tribal fighters, and government forces have been battling for control of Falluja, the site of heavy fighting in 2004.
“The people of Iraq don’t want [al Qaeda or jihadis] in the long term,” Greenstock said.
And despite the recent violence, he said that U.S. President Barack Obama was right to pull the American military out of the country.
“All intervention achieves – and sometimes it’s worth it – is to freeze the state of a country, maybe get rid of somebody…and then when we go it all starts going again.”
“We don’t have the power to change all the historical roots of what creates that country.”
Israel/Palestinian conflict needs a ‘Nelson Mandela,’ says author
By Mick Krever, CNN
Any “real peace” between Israeli and Palestinians will remain out of reach until both sides truly acknowledge each other’s tragedy, Israeli columnist and author Ari Shavit told CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour, on Wednesday.
“The heart of this conflict is really mutual blindness.”
The Israelis are blind to the fact that there are a Palestinian people, he said, and the Palestinians blind to the Israelis, and their right to a Jewish state “in the ancient homeland of the Jews.”
That despite, he said, the “amazing” work U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has done trying to bring reconciliation.
Shavit has just written a new book, “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel.”
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has launched the largest American effort in years to bring peace to the region, having just wrapped up his 10th visit in pursuit of that goal.
“One has to recognize the fact that Secretary Kerry with unique ingenuity and pressure and commitment has surprised us all,” Shavit said.
Is climate change responsible for record cold in U.S.?
By Mick Krever, CNN
Are the record-low temperatures in the United States and Canada – not to mention the extreme flooding in the UK and a record heat wave in Australia – the result of climate change?
Maybe not, but that says nothing about the validity of climate change, Climatologist Richard Alley told CNN’s Hala Gorani, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour, on Tuesday.
“Maybe a little bit of climate change, but this is mostly weather – big, exciting weather,” he said. “We’ve only warmed it one degree, and this is a 20-degree cold snap. So mostly, this is weather.”
In other words, higher sea levels from greenhouse gases may have contributed to recent flooding in the UK, but the temperatures are mostly the result of a fluke event, the shifting south of frigid polar winds, known as the polar vortex.
But it’s not nearly as simple as just saying the cold snap is not a result of climate change.
“We know the globe is warm,” he said. “If you look today, the average temperature of the whole world is above its long-term average.”
Climate skeptics are using the record cold spell as an argument in support of their contention that the phenomenon is not real.
Seeing earth from space like a gift ‘unwrapping itself’ underneath you
By Mick Krever, CNN
Watching the earth from the International Space Station is “like a gift that is just unwrapping itself perpetually underneath you” Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
Hadfield propelled himself to fame when, earlier this year, he sang David Bowie’s iconic “Space Oddity” while on board the Space Station – guitar included.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaOC9danxNo&w=430&h=242]
The video has since been viewed over 20 million times, and has made Hadfield perhaps the most well-known astronaut since Neil Armstrong.
The music video was the pièce de résistance of a series of videos on life in space, describing everything from how you brush your teeth to the surprisingly mesmerizing view of a newly opened can of nuts.
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He had, he explained, a “rare human opportunity” to see the earth “as a discrete place in the universe, and not as some vast surface area.”
Iraq’s ‘increasingly authoritarian’ policies partly to blame for violence, says former U.S. official
By Mick Krever, CNN
The Iraqi government’s “increasingly authoritarian” policies that have “marginalized Sunnis” have contributed to the worst violence in that country in years, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser for Iraq Meghan O'Sullivan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday.
“There needs to be a lot of changes in the policies of the government of Iraq in order for this threat to be neutralized,” she said.
Violence in Iraq is the worst in years, and part of the city of Falluja may have already fallen into the control of an al-Qaeda affiliated group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The current situation is “really the culmination of two things,” O’Sullivan said: the “worsening situation in Syria” and the government’s policies.
There are conflicting reports about who is fighting whom in Falluja, with government forces, tribal groups, and the al-Qaeda affiliates all involved.
Standing up for simple freedoms
By Lucky Gold, CNN
Imagine a world where one remarkable leader, confined to a wheelchair, stood up for free speech and the end of armed conflict.
Seventy three years ago, Nazi bombs fell nightly on London, killing thousands of civilians.
But on this day in 1941, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt – just elected to an unprecedented third term – went before a joint session of Congress to make the case to help Britain, and prepare Americans for joining the war.
He didn't speak of what or how. Instead, he spoke of why.
He called them "The Four Freedoms,” not just for Americans, but as he stressed in his speech, for people everywhere in the world.
Iraq facing ‘biggest fight’ since Americans left
By Mick Krever, CNN
Iraq’s security forces are taking on their biggest fight since U.S. troops withdrew from the country at the end of 2011, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who was national security adviser in Iraq for the five years after the fall of Saddam Hussein, told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.
Violence in Iraq is the worst in years, and part of the city of Falluja may have already fallen into the control of an al-Qaeda affiliated group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
“It is a big challenge, but I am pretty sure – and there is no shadow of doubt in my mind – that Iraqi security forces will prevail,” al-Rubaie said.
There are conflicting reports about who is fighting whom in Falluja, with government forces, tribal groups, and the al-Qaeda affiliates all involved.
“Most of the Western media has got this wrong,” he said.
It is not about Sunni versus Shiite, or about the Shiite government “killing the Sunni communities.”
“This is a fight between Iraq and al-Qaeda terrorists,” he said. “This is a fight between a constitutionally elected government in Baghdad and the outlaws, the terrorists of al-Qaeda in the desert.”
He also however called on the U.S. to put pressure on the Gulf Arab countries “to reduce the sectarian polarization between Shiite and Sunnis, because that is what is translated into blood on the street of Baghdad.”
Al-Rubaie called on all Iraqis, no matter their affiliation, to stand behind the Maliki government.
“They should unite behind the Iraqi security forces to get them to win this fight and then we after that we will argue who was right, who was wrong in the economic policy, in the social policies, in security policy, and so on and so forth.”
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