Monday, December 31, 2018

Spread the Digital Wealth - Note for a Discussion, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United."


There are plenty of ways to deliver tech jobs to rural communities.

By Ro Khanna, The New York Times, Dec. 30, 2018

Image from article, with caption:  Mathew Watson worked at his home in Hueysville, Ky., in August on coding for an app from Florida. Mike Belleme for The New York Times
One key question for the United States in the 21st century is whether noncoastal towns and rural communities, including many communities of color, will be able to participate in the digital revolution. We know that almost all Americans are avid consumers of technology, but many lack the opportunity to do the creative work that fuels our digital economy.

At stake is the dignity of millions of people. Within the next 10 years, nearly 60 percent of jobs could have a third of their tasks automated by artificial intelligence. Many traditional industries are becoming digital. Recently, a senior hotel executive described his business to me as essentially a digital one, explaining that his profit margins were contingent on the effectiveness of his software architects. Today’s hospitality vendors, precision farmers and electricians spend significant time on digital work.

Economists keep telling those left out of our digital future to move to the tech hubs. Sometimes I wonder if they have ever been to places like Jefferson, Iowa, or Beckley, W.Va. If they visit, they will realize that many people there are not looking to move. They are proud of their small-town values and enjoy being close to family. They brag that their town doesn’t need many traffic lights. And they worry about a brain drain.

These places also are not looking to become the next Silicon Valley. They are self-aware enough to recognize that there are benefits for the world’s top engineers and computer scientists to flock to Palo Alto, Calif., or Austin, Tex. They understand why venture capitalists betting millions of dollars would want to be close to the start-ups they fund to have some control and accountability. But the choice facing small towns should not be binary — it should not be “adopt the Silicon moniker or miss out on the tech future.” 

Although the most advanced software innovation may take place in big cities with research universities, there is a lot of work concerning the application of software to business processes and the administration and maintenance of software systems that can be done remotely. Shame on us for shipping over 211,000 of these jobs offshore to countries like Malaysia and Brazil. Americans have an advantage in doing them because of a cultural understanding of what businesses need and a more convenient time zone.

Small towns can also sustain entrepreneurial activity that is tailored to their needs. Consider the fifth-generation internet service provider in Jefferson, Iowa, that was willing to make a bet on investing in fiber to serve a 4,200-person town. Jefferson is not chasing brand-name venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road but is seeking more modest investments in local businesses that will solve local problems.

So, what more can we do to make sure rural America has its share of middle-class jobs and businesses that will be the backbone of the digital economy? We need to provide additional funds to existing community colleges and land-grant universities to create tech institutes in places left behind. West Virginia University’s new tech institute in Beckley provides a model, equipping students with practical degrees or credentials that lead to jobs.

The federal government also should invest $80 billion to have affordable high-speed internet — preferably fiber — in every corner of this nation. We need to pay special attention to the racial gap in the affordability and adoption of broadband. Our infrastructure should not be a barrier to remote work.

Finally, the federal government can change incentives. When awarding federal software contracts, agencies should give favorable consideration if at least 10 percent of the work force is rural. We should, moreover, adopt stronger Equal Employment Opportunity reporting requirements for companies on the number of programmers they hire by country and location.

When I was in Beckley to visit the new tech campus, I was reminded of the story of John F. Kennedy’s visit to West Virginia during his 1960 campaign, when coal miners enthusiastically supported his vision for going to the moon. Our nation has always had a love affair with innovation. I saw that spark in the Beckley students, many from coal mining families, who were eager to show off their tech projects.

One of the most popular teachers was a Pakistani-American woman, with a thick accent, who was teaching software design. When some of the Beckley students asked me what more they should do to bring tech, I joked that they would be wise to open up a few more Pakistani or Indian restaurants. There was awkward silence and then laughter. If we can figure out how to give more Americans a shot in tech, a shot at the ordinary jobs that don’t necessarily afford rock star status or come with generous stock options but that can sustain middle-class life, then we might just take a step toward stitching our nation back together [JB emphasis].

Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) is a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from California’s 17th District, which includes Silicon Valley.

Is There Any Humane Way to Kill a Mouse?


By Tom Huth, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2018

Uncaptioned image from article

Glue traps, snap traps or poison? What do you do about a pest whose only crime is being a pest?

BOULDER, Colo. — Recently I moved into a furnished apartment in a 100-year-old house at the edge of downtown. Lively location. Jazzy artwork. Laid-back landlord.

After several days, I noticed a putrid smell in the kitchen. Reluctantly, I poked my head under the sink, and there on the concrete slab was a poignant tableau: a still-life with rodents. Lying side by side were two plastic trays slathered with a thick gummy substance, and marooned in that goop were the figures of two gray mice whose tiny feet, captured midstride, had been stilled forevermore.

We had come up with a ghastly way, it seemed, to assassinate immigrants from nature. The product was Ultra-Kill Large Glue Traps, and the labeling advised: “Not an Instant-Kill Trap. Animal may still be alive when trap is checked. Please humanely euthanize animal.”

With a hammer? A cleaver? An ice pick?

My victims had already met their maker. Their corpses lay spread-eagle across the trays, flattened into the glue from tail to belly to head, their once-perky noses pinned fast. Who knew what they expected to find when they scampered onto the trays?

The instructions suggested: “Do not place traps where birds and nontarget animals may come into contact.” This covered, presumably, kittens and toddlers. And they concluded with a refreshing frankness: “Consider other traps for a more humane option.”

But was there any humane way to get rid of pests? These two mice, their only crime was to be mice.

Rather than sitting around moping about their fate, I went to McGuckin Hardware to see what “a more humane option” might look like. I found the Traps/Bait aisle teeming with devices to murder or repel both mice and rats.

Here were the wooden snap traps of old, with their trip pedals and spring-loaded guillotines. A buck 99, and humane in their efficiency: the blow instantaneous, out of nowhere. Plus, the mice got to spend their last moments of mousehood with their nibblers full of cheese.

Poison was another old reliable — d-Con Pro bragged: “Guaranteed to kill.” But who knew how much they suffered first.

Some of the products here were intended not to kill, but to drive varmints crazy. An attic light bulb gave off “sonic waves”; these have the effect of “irritating rodents, causing them to leave the area.” An ultrasonic gadget showed a mouse hopping downstairs toward the nearest exit. Another device employed essential oils to “trigger escape/avoidance behavior.”

You tell me: Is it O.K. to annoy and harass mice?

Finally, I found a solution that exuded compassion: the live-capture trap. It was simple: a 1-by-1-by-6-inch black plastic box with a crook in the middle. The mouse was lured inside by a dab of peanut butter at the far end (“peanut butter not included”), and its advancing weight tipped the box forward to shut the door behind it

I heard a clerk tell a customer: “Don’t take them out and just let them go. They’ll come right back in. Take them like three miles away, at least. And still they might find their way back. Because your home is their home.”

Live capture, then, wasn’t so lovey-dovey, after all. You were kidnapping the critters in their own houses. You were locking them in solitary without a hint of whether they’d ever taste freedom again. Then you were taking them far away from all they had ever known and dumping them in some barren meadow, nowhere near the kitchen crumbs that had saved them from famine.

If I were a mouse, I’d choose the guillotine.

Tom Huth is the author of “Forty Years Stoned: A Journalist’s Romance.”

C.I.A.’s Afghan Forces Leave a Trail of Abuse and Anger


The fighters hold the line in the war’s toughest spots, but officials say their brutal tactics are terrorizing the public and undermining the U.S. mission.

Image from article, with caption: The outskirts of Khost city, in eastern Afghanistan. The United Nations said in a recent report that the C.I.A.-sponsored units in the province operated outside the official Afghan government structure. Credit Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

From the last paragraphs of the article:

Mohibullah, a relative of the dead, said that for him, there was no difference between the C.I.A.-sponsored force and the Islamic State if the result was to be attacked with no warning.

“What is the need for raiding me at night?” he said. “Send me a warrant. If I didn’t show up, then you can bring your tanks and fly your planes and destroy me.”

By Mujib Mashal, The New York Times, Dec. 31, 2018; original article contains additional photographs and links

NADER SHAH KOT, Afghanistan — Razo Khan woke up suddenly to the sight of assault rifles pointed at his face, and demands that he get out of bed and onto the floor.

Within minutes, the armed raiders had separated the men from the women and children. Then the shooting started.

As Mr. Khan was driven away for questioning, he watched his home go up in flames. Within were the bodies of two of his brothers and of his sister-in-law Khanzari, who was shot three times in the head. Villagers who rushed to the home found the burned body of her 3-year-old daughter, Marina, in a corner of a torched bedroom.

The men who raided the family’s home that March night, in the district of Nader Shah Kot, were members of an Afghan strike force trained and overseen by the Central Intelligence Agency in a parallel mission to the United States military’s, but with looser rules of engagement.

Ostensibly, the force was searching for militants. But Mr. Khan and his family had done nothing to put themselves in the cross hairs of the C.I.A.-sponsored strike force, according to investigators.

It was clear that the raiding force had “committed an atrocity,” said Jan-mir Zazai, a member of the Khost provincial council who was part of the government investigating team. “Everyone we spoke to said they would swear on the innocence of the victims.”

At a time when the conventional Afghan military and police forces are being killed in record numbers across the country, the regional forces overseen by the C.I.A. have managed to hold the line against the most brutal militant groups, including the Haqqani wing of the Taliban and also Islamic State loyalists.

But the units have also operated unconstrained by battlefield rules designed to protect civilians, conducting night raids, torture and killings with near impunity, in a covert campaign that some Afghan and American officials say is undermining the wider American effort to strengthen Afghan institutions.

Those abuses are actively pushing people toward the Taliban, the officials say. And with only a relatively small American troop contingent left — and that perhaps set to drop further on President Trump’s orders — the strike forces are increasingly the way that a large number of rural Afghans experience the American presence.

Many of the strike forces were officially put under the control of Afghan intelligence starting in 2012. But senior Afghan and international officials say that the two most effective and ruthless forces, in Khost and Nangarhar Provinces, are still sponsored mainly by the C.I.A.

Those fighting forces, also referred to as counterterrorism pursuit teams, are recruited, trained and equipped by C.I.A. agents or contractors who work closely with them on their bases, according to several current and former senior Afghan security officials, and the members are paid nearly three times as much as regular Afghan soldiers.

The Afghan ownership of those two units is only nominal, a liaison relationship in which intelligence headquarters in Kabul has representatives on the mission for coordination. But the required pre-approval for raids is often last-minute, or skipped until afterward, the officials say.

For months, The New York Times has investigated the human toll of the C.I.A.-sponsored forces on communities. Times journalists researched frequent complaints — at times almost weekly — that these units had raided and killed civilians, and The Times went to the sites of half a dozen of their raids, often less than 24 hours after the force had left.

The investigation found details of a C.I.A. mission with tactical successes that have come at the cost of alienating the Afghan population. One former senior Afghan security official bluntly accused the strike forces of war crimes.

Often, the raids that resulted in civilian deaths were carried out not far from police outposts or government offices, leaving those American-supported officials humiliated in the villages they had been trying to establish relationships with. And because the C.I.A.-sponsored units often use English during operations, their abuses are even more directly equated with the American presence, though claims that American agents have sometimes been on the missions have not been confirmed.

“The dilemma is this: The C.I.A. needs to fight its wars in the shadows,” said Karl Eikenberry, a former commander of American forces in Afghanistan who later served as the United States ambassador to Kabul. “But when the U.S. also takes on the mission of state-building, then the contradictions between the two approaches — stealth, black ops, and non-transparency vs. institution building, rule of law, and accountability — become extraordinarily difficult to resolve, and our standing as a nation suffers.”

United Nations reports have expressed concern about civilian deaths and “consistent, credible accounts of intentional destruction of civilian property, illegal detention, and other abuses” by the units. The United Nations said the forces in Khost, in particular, operated outside the Afghan government’s structure “with an absence of transparency and ongoing impunity.”

In the village of Nader Shah Kot, the provincial official who helped investigate the raid, Mr. Zazai, said the force’s impunity was alienating residents from the government and increasing support for the Taliban.

“If there had been arrests, if there had been justice, this wouldn’t continue like this,” Mr. Zazai said. “But there is absolutely no justice.”

American defense officials in Washington say the C.I.A. operations in Afghanistan are largely opaque to military generals operating in the war zone. The C.I.A.’s level of partnership has been declining as the Afghan intelligence agency and its forces grow more mature, the officials said. But as American military forces are set to draw down, the role of the Central Intelligence Agency is only likely to grow in importance.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A. would not comment, nor would Afghans directly involved with the forces. Afghan security officials in Kabul tried to play down the level of the forces’ autonomy and the nature of their abuses. When pressed with details of specific cases, they did not respond.

The number of casualties varied among the cases The Times investigated. In one, two brothers were killed as they watered their fields before dawn after receiving permission from the local security outpost. In another, a unit pursuit of a Taliban target went into the wrong house in Laghman Province and killed 12 civilians, officials there said.

One of the most gruesome episodes examined by The Times was in Khogyani District, in Nangarhar Province. The forces handcuffed and hooded two brothers and, after a brief interrogation as their wives and children watched, both men were dragged away and executed in a corner of a bedroom that was then detonated over their heads, according to relatives and villagers who pulled the bodies out of the rubble.

When Times journalists arrived at the house 16 hours after the raid, the area was a scene of carnage with burned vehicles and crumbled walls. The family’s patriarch, Hajji Hassan Jan, 60, said that a security outpost overlooked their house, and that the district’s intelligence chief, who was a regular guest for dinner, had no answer for why the house was raided and his sons killed.

Still, he tried to guess: It was probably for feeding the Taliban. In rural Afghanistan, traditions of hospitality demand that you feed whoever knocks at your door. When those men are armed, there is little choice.

“The forces once asked my son, ‘Why do you feed the Taliban — why cook chicken for them, or bring them yogurt?’” Mr. Jan said. “My son told them: ‘We made chicken for them. If you come, we will make an entire lamb for you.’”

Rooted in Counterterrorism

The origin of C.I.A.-sponsored strike forces in Afghanistan was in the early days of the American invasion in 2001, when the United States allied with militia forces to help topple the Taliban regime.

Once the Taliban and Al Qaeda started fleeing, often across the border into Pakistan, there was no organized Afghan force to create the needed lines of defense.

In the eastern province of Khost, largely under the influence of the Haqqani network, which had strong ties to Al Qaeda, the C.I.A. started organizing local militias into a force that could strike at insurgents as they tried to come in or out.

“These forces were created in border areas at first to stop Al Qaeda fighters,” said Ghaffar Khan, a Czechoslovakia-trained police officer from Soviet times whom the C.I.A. had recruited as one of the force’s first commanders.

It was meant to be a stopgap program. But the force proved so effective, even after the Taliban started coming hard at the government and the American presence, that it kept expanding to other parts of the country.

In Khost, the so-called protection force was consolidated and based out of Camp Chapman, the main C.I.A. outpost there. The unit in Khost still has the largest number of fighters, though the exact count is unclear: Officials put the number anywhere from 3,000 to over 10,000. It patrols border areas and also runs its own network of informants.

Commander Ghafar said he believed the forces remained necessary, otherwise the defense against Haqqani-run suicide bombers would buckle, making it easier for attackers to reach Kabul. On the other hand, he said, their abuses were taking a toll.

Former President Hamid Karzai spent years trying to rein in American forces from carrying out night raids that angered villages and set them against his government, only to realize that the C.I.A.’s Afghan forces were doing the same.

One episode in particular made Mr. Karzai furious. In 2009, the strike force in Kandahar tried to forcibly release one of its colleagues detained by the police on criminal charges. When the most senior law enforcement official in the province, Gen. Matiullah Qateh, resisted, he and several of his officers were shot dead, former and current Afghan officials say. The C.I.A. reluctantly surrendered the guards involved in the killing of the general, after the Afghan leadership threatened to use force.

Mr. Eikenberry, the former general and ambassador, said the C.I.A.-sponsored forces “which operated outside of the framework that governed those under sovereign control of the Afghan government” raised concerns from the beginning.

“But Bin Laden was not yet found, Al Qaeda was active in the border areas, and Afghanistan did not have forces capable of dealing with what was regarded as an existential threat to the U.S. So the concerns never led to action,” Mr. Eikenberry said. “The problem was one to be solved later in the campaign, so to speak. And the C.I.A. was the dominant voice in the chamber.”

Several current and former Afghan officials said that the C.I.A. still largely commanded the strike forces in Khost and Nangarhar, effectively putting the units above the law. American agents and contractors work closely with them on their bases, develop the targets for them, and help guide the operations from headquarters. And the Americans have a presence at bases where detainees have accused the units of torture and abuse, officials say.

In a period of a little over a year, human rights officials registered at least 15 complaints of torture by the strike force based in Nangarhar Province, which has roughly 1,000 fighters and is known as “02.”

At a September news conference in the city of Jalalabad, elders from three districts of Nangarhar said that over 100 civilians were killed by the 02 unit the month before. (That number could not be verified independently.)

“Before the people start protests, before the people pick up weapons against the government, the government needs to rein in these kind of reckless operations,” said one tribal elder, Malik Zaman.

Mohammed Taher, from Khogyani District, said he and two of his brothers were detained in a night raid last spring. He was held for three months and five days, about a week of it at the air base in Nangarhar where the strike force is based.

“They said, ‘We will drive a tank over you if you don’t say your brothers are Taliban.’ I said, ‘If you have evidence that they are, show me,’” Mr. Taher said. “They wanted me to say all that so they could take a video of me saying it.”

Mr. Taher said Americans were present during the raid when he was detained, but he did not see Americans during the questioning and the torture at the base. His mistreatment stopped when he was handed over to the regular Afghan intelligence force, he said.

“My hands were cuffed. They punctured these veins with needles and blood was running,” he said.

Sabrina Hamidi, who leads the Afghan Human Rights Commission in the east, said that during her 13 years of work at the commission she could not recall a single example of access to the regional forces to examine accusation of abuses.

“In their operations, most of the times the harm to civilians is direct,” Ms. Hamidi said about the 02 unit. “When they make arrests, there is usually torture involved, also.”

In nearly every case examined by The Times, the victims’ families said they were at a loss for where to seek justice, or an explanation of why they had been raided. And nearly every government official in those areas expressed helplessness about the strike forces’ operations.

‘I Thought It Was the Caliphate’

In the Bati Kot district of Nangarhar Province, the strike forces conducted a raid in May, leaving their headquarters at the air base in Jalalabad and arriving in a convoy of several dozen vehicles at a village surrounded by corn fields and orange orchards.

One resident, Khoshal Khan, who works at a medical university, thought at first that the raid was an attack by the Islamic State.

“I ran and got my weapon — I thought it was the caliphate people. I didn’t know it was the government,” Mr. Khan said. “Then they started firing, and I heard the gate blown up. They were speaking English, also.”

Khoshal Khan pays his respects after the funeral of four people killed by a strike force raid. He was a witness to the raid, which at first he thought was by the Islamic State rather than any government-approved force.

Families often sleep outside because of the heat. One family patriarch, Mohamed Taher, in his late 50s, was shot near his bed on the roof.

When Times journalists arrived the day after the raid, the bed was broken, the mud roof under the bed patched with blood, just steps from dried tomatoes sunning on a tarp.

One of Mr. Taher’s grandsons, Sekandar, 16, was visiting from Jalalabad during a school break. He was sleeping in the yard and was awakened by gunshots, he said, spotting the light from the raiders’ laser sights racing around. Sekandar said the forces spoke both Pashto and English.

The strike force had climbed ladders and was on the walls of the house, ordering Mr. Taher’s family to come out. But Sekandar said that when they followed the order to come out with their hands up, one of Mr. Taher’s sons, Naeem Shah, was shot in his left hand. Then a grandson, Shaker Khan, was shot in the head.

“The women started crying. They called to be quiet, then they blew up the gates and came in,” Sekandar said. His account matched those of other family members and neighbors.

Another of Mr. Taher’s sons, Mohammed Raheem, had also been gunned down. The remaining men were handcuffed, and the women and children were put in one room.

Before the forces started leaving about two hours later, with Naeem Shah still wounded, the fighters warned the family not to come out for an hour after they had left, said Mr. Shah’s young son, Adel, 10.

“They said, ‘Don’t come out — if the airstrikes hit you, then don’t complain,’” said Adel, whose face had shrapnel wounds from the raid. While the family waited in the house, Adel’s father bled to death in the yard.

The district governor’s office is just 100 yards from the house, and there are two police outposts nearby.

Mohibullah, a relative of the dead, said that for him, there was no difference between the C.I.A.-sponsored force and the Islamic State if the result was to be attacked with no warning.

“What is the need for raiding me at night?” he said. “Send me a warrant. If I didn’t show up, then you can bring your tanks and fly your planes and destroy me.”


New Year’s Fete From Russia Irks Some in Israel: ‘It’s Not a Jewish Holiday’


Isabel Kershner, The New York Times, December 30




Natascha Manko, who emigrated from Ukraine two years ago, decorating a Novy God tree in the southern Israeli city of Ashdod.CreditCreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times


ASHDOD, Israel — As dusk fell in a port city in southern Israel, Roman Kaminker’s neighborhood pop-up shop twinkled with a bountiful display of Santa dolls and synthetic spruce trees adorned with tinsel and baubles.
Mr. Kaminker’s store in Ashdod was catering to those shopping for Novy God, the Russian end-of-year celebration when families traditionally gather before midnight on Dec. 31 to feast on delicacies from the old country like herring, caviar and jellied calf’s foot, and toast in the New Year with vodka and bubbly.
“This has no connection to religion,” declared Mr. Kaminker, 39, who emigrated from Moldova in the mid-1990s, and was eager to avoid any misunderstandings that his shop was somehow linked to Christmas. “You won’t find any Marias or crosses here,” he added. “That wasn’t allowed in the Soviet Union.”
Nearly 30 years after the start of the great wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union, which began in 1989 and brought nearly a million Russian speakers to Israel by the end of the 1990s, the Novy God holiday has become something of a barometer to gauge the place of these immigrants in Israeli society. 

Back in Soviet days, Novy God was a particularly joyous night for many, being a purely secular holiday with no connection to the Communist Party.
Novy God decorations in a store in Ashdod.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times

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Novy God decorations in a store in Ashdod.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times
Yet some of those who brought Novy God traditions with them to Israel, like the evergreen yulka tree or Ded Moroz — Grandfather Frost, an often blue-coated Santa Claus — found themselves celebrating with curtains drawn, concerned that disapproving neighbors might think they were marking Christmas.
The holiday and its symbols can still tap into underlying prejudices in the broader Israeli population about “the Russians,” as immigrants from all former Soviet nations are referred to here.
The immigration at the end of the last century included hundreds of thousands of newcomers who qualified for Israeli citizenship through family connections but are not considered legally Jewish under the strictly Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law.
The pronounced secularity of many of the newcomers has led many immigrants to say they feel they are viewed suspiciously by other Israelis and constantly have to prove their Jewishness. 
So while the main point of Mr. Kaminker’s pop-up store is to sell Novy God goods, he also wants to use it to help persuade his non-Russian and Orthodox Jewish neighbors to accept the holiday’s traditions.
“We need more awareness in Israel,” he said. “A lot of people say a million Christians came here and that we tricked the state.”
Stores selling Novy God goods have bountiful displays of decorations.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times

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Stores selling Novy God goods have bountiful displays of decorations.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times
An annual obstacle to a wider embrace of the holiday are the Santas for hire who bring gifts to children.
And this year has posed an extra hurdle for acceptance: There is a tradition of including the relevant animal from the Chinese zodiac in Novy God decorations, and 2019 happens to be the year of the pig — a reviled animal in Judaism whose meat is forbidden — meaning that this year’s wares have included an abundance of ceramic pigs, cuddly pig toys and piggy banks.
According to the Hebrew calendar, the Jewish New Year arrives in the fall, and the Jan. 1 date carries with it painful historical memories for some in Israel.
The New Year’s Eve that many secular Israelis celebrate at clubs and restaurants on Dec. 31 has long been referred to as “Sylvester,” because it coincides with a traditional European feast day for a saint with that name who served as a pope in the 4th century and was considered anti-Semitic.
For some Jews of Eastern European origin, the date connotes a time when local non-Jews would get drunk and carry out pogroms. 
“There were years when our people were slaughtered on such dates,” said Nachman Zilber, 40, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, as he rushed past Mr. Kaminker’s store.


LEBANON
50 MILES
SYRIA
GOLAN
HEIGHTS
Mediterranean
Sea
Haifa
WEST
BANK
Tel Aviv
Jerusalem
Ashdod
GAZA
STRIP
ISRAEL
EGYPT
JORDAN
By The New York Times
Ashdod, whose population of more than 200,000 is almost a quarter Russian-speaking, became the focus of disgruntlement with Novy God this year after the ultra-Orthodox deputy mayor, Avi Amsalem, objected to a spruce tree displayed beside a Hanukkah lamp at a city mall.
In a Facebook post, Mr. Amsalem said that the tree was “meant to hurt whoever defines themselves as Jewish,” and that the lamp had gone up a day after Hanukkah ended. Similar tensions erupted this year over Novy God decorations in a Tel Aviv suburb.
Mr. Kaminker is not alone in his efforts to ease these tensions over the holiday and some of the fallacies associated with it.
Three years ago, a group of Russian-Israeli activists introduced an “Israeli Novy God” campaign on social media, producing humorous videos showing ordinary Israelis that the holiday was not what they thought it was — a clandestine religious ritual or an excuse to drink heavily — and offering to host them at Novy God gatherings.
“We wanted to create a new Israeli tradition of Novy God where Russians open their homes,” said Pola Barkan, 28, the director of the Cultural Brigade, who came as an infant with her family from Kiev. 
The Cultural Brigade, whose mission is to familiarize Israelis with the richness of Russian culture, was set up by young adults who had a common experience: They arrived with their families as children in a foreign country and found themselves living a cultural double life, speaking Russian at home while struggling to be accepted as Israelis.
Klil, center, loves “The Christmas Chronicles” movie, says her mother, left, Alice Duke. Klil’s grandmother, right, does not approve of Novy God.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times

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Klil, center, loves “The Christmas Chronicles” movie, says her mother, left, Alice Duke. Klil’s grandmother, right, does not approve of Novy God.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times
“First,” Ms. Barkan said, “it was all about our integration into the country and forgetting where we came from.”
But now Ms. Barkin says she wants Russian immigrants and their descendants to feel free to embrace their heritage and invite other Israelis to appreciate it.
“Let everyone decide what they want and have a choice, without feeling embarrassed,” she said.
Year by year, Novy God does appear to have become more widely accepted.
A recent survey by the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based research group, found that 38 percent of the general Jewish population in Israel did not know what Novy God was — meaning that more than 60 percent did.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broadcast New Year’s greetings in Russian last year. And the Jewish National Fund, known for planting forests, said it was distributing trees this year for Novy God.
Newspapers have devoted food columns to traditional Novy God recipes, and a supermarket advertisement on Israeli public radio opens with a woman exclaiming, “Novy God!” over the steep discounts.
Eli Nanika, left, taking a photo of his wife, Nina Nanika, in front of a controversial Novy God tree at a mall in Ashdod.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times

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Eli Nanika, left, taking a photo of his wife, Nina Nanika, in front of a controversial Novy God tree at a mall in Ashdod.CreditCorinna Kern for The New York Times
At the Big Fashion Mall in Ashdod, the Novy God tree has turned into an attraction, with Russian speakers and Israelis whose families have been here for generations both snapping selfies by it. 
Many passers-by said there was more tolerance than there used to be, although not everyone was wholly comfortable with the festivities.
“It’s a free, democratic country,” said Yehuda Crispin, 33, an observant Jew who was out shopping. “In history, there were pogroms against the Jews on that date, but in our days that’s less relevant.”
At another pop-up stall nearby, Alice Duke, 39, was buying a tiny tree for her daughter, Klil, 7, who was smitten by “The Christmas Chronicles” movie and hoped that Santa would bring her presents.
Ms. Duke noted that Klil was more likely to get presents from the prophet Elijah who, according to tradition, visits Jewish homes at Passover.
Etty Ben-Dayan, 50, who was walking by, said that she was married to a Russian and that her husband and her older daughter went to his parents for the Novy God feast. “My daughter is not always so happy about it,” she said. “She says it’s not a Jewish holiday.”