WORLD IN BRIEF (9/27/06)

War with Hezbollah has left Jewish, Arab Israelis more divided than ever Dion… War with Hezbollah has left Jewish, Arab Israelis more divided than ever Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy Newspapers

JERUSALEM – For two years, author Sayed Kashua, an Arab-Israeli, has been writing a popular weekly newspaper column for one of Israel’s largest Hebrew-language newspapers, Haaretz. The column often takes a lighthearted look at discrimination, racism and the challenges facing the Arab minority in this largely Jewish nation.

But a few weeks ago, as Israel’s summer war with Hezbollah in Lebanon wound down, Kashua made what was, for his Jewish readers, a startling confession. He confessed he’d been hoping Israel would lose.

“My hands tremble as I write, but in this war I was against Israel, make no mistake, my country,” he wrote. “You can say it’s treason, you can say what you want, but I am still unable to understand how I can be happy when I hear that another IDF (Israel Defense Forces) tank has been hit and, at the same time, be afraid that I have friends inside it.”

The piece generated scores of angry e-mails, letters and phone calls. It also exposed the simmering anger that Israel’s Arab citizens feel over how their country treats them and became one more provocation for an anti-Arab backlash that’s still unfolding.

Conservative Israeli lawmaker Effi Eitam denounced Arab-Israelis as “a band of traitors of the first degree” and a dangerous “fifth column” that should be barred from participating in Israeli politics.

The Israeli parliament’s ethics committee last week suspended two Arab-Israeli lawmakers, one for a day, the other for three days, after one called the defense minister a “child-murderer” and the other denounced opposition politician Benjamin Netanyahu as an “angel of death.”

“Jews and Arabs did not come out of this war more united,” said Elie Rekhess, director of the Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation at the Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University. “Instead, the mistrust between Jews and Arabs has deepened.”

‘Light cigarette’ case granted class-action status Russ Britt, MCT

LOS ANGELES – A federal judge paved the way for a jury trial against big tobacco on Monday, approving a class certification in a “lights” case that charges cigarette makers with racketeering.

Jury selection might begin in a Brooklyn courtroom as early as Jan. 22 on the case, which alleges that tobacco firms knew their “light” cigarettes were just as harmful to smokers as regular ones. The ruling means that thousands of smokers who bought “light” cigarettes dating back to 1971 could stand to gain claims from the companies named in the lawsuit.

The news sent shares of Dow Jones Industrial Average component Altria Group Inc. down by almost 7 percent after Bill Ohlemeyer, Philip Morris’ associate general counsel, said the ruling will cause an inevitable delay of the planned spin-off of its Kraft Foods unit.

“Today’s decision is a setback in the sense that it’s not the kind of clarity that one might have expected,” he said in a conference call.

Driving stoned, carefree John Keilman, Chicago Tribune

Over the last eight years, high school students who have gotten in trouble for drugs and alcohol have told counselor Cathy Cratty the same alarming story about driving under the influence.

“It just kept coming up, left and right: ‘We know we shouldn’t drive after drinking, but it’s OK to drive after smoking pot,'” said Cratty, who works for Highland Park, Ill.-based School District 113.

According to national surveys, high school students are as likely to drive high as they are to drive drunk. But experts say many of those teens never hear a warning about taking to the road while stoned and don’t think they’re doing anything dangerous.

“They perceive themselves as being less impaired when smoking marijuana,” said Jocelyn Boudreau, a social worker at the Rosecrance adolescent treatment center in Rockford, Ill. “The overarching and clear message (to teens) has been: ‘You drink, you drive, you die.’

“There really hasn’t been that same kind of consistent message for marijuana.”

That’s largely because pot’s role in fatal crashes is far from clear. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which keeps statistics on wrecks involving alcohol, does not have enough data to generate similar numbers for marijuana.

Heidi Coleman, chief of the safety administration’s impaired driving division, said many police officers likely never detect pot because they aren’t trained to read physical cues, such as pupil size, body temperature and heart rate, that suggest the drug’s presence.

“They may suspect that a driver is impaired, but if they don’t test positive for alcohol, (officers) may let them go,” she said.

Research into marijuana’s impact on driving is similarly limited, she said.