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Will Japan abide by whaling ban?

World Court ruled Japan's "scientific" whale-hunting was baloney and it must stop
Carl Safina: Japan ducks ban on whaling with "research' excuse: Court agrees it's for meat Safina: Using cannon and bombs, whaling empties oceans once teeming with whales He says arguing whaling is Japanese culture is no excuse: It's New England culture too

Editor's note: Carl Safina is an award-winning scientist and author, founding president of Blue Ocean Institute at Stony Brook University, and host of the PBS television series "Saving the Ocean with Carl Safina." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- On Monday the World Court in the Hague ruled that Japan's "scientific" whale-hunting was baloney. It ordered Japan to revoke its "scientific research" permits to all its ships, effectively tying Japan's fleet to the dock and silencing the cannons and exploding bombs that are the way whales die nowadays.

Japan says it will abide. I wish it would take this opportunity to bow gracefully out of something so dishonest and unfit for modernity. But I expect a fragile truce, and only a partial one.

That's because Japan has a history of creatively bending the rules beyond the breaking point of international intent. Authorities and whalers seem committed to killing whales first and finding a rationale second, and it would be no surprise if the program were tweaked in some meaningless way so they could excuse continued hunting. Or they might say the court's ruling applies only in Antarctic waters and not the Pacific, where they also hunt. Or they might simply ignore the ban like their suppliers Norway and Iceland.

Carl Safina

Come with me to three faraway places and you might see why I feel deeply and strongly about whales.

During the week it takes us to circle the ice-crowned sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia, we see exactly two large whales -- and two now-defunct whaling stations. In 1904, the Norwegian whaler C.F. Larsen arrived right here and wrote with astonishment, "I see them in hundreds and thousands."

During the next 60 years, whalers killed about 2 million whales in the Southern Hemisphere, including about 360,000 blue whales, 200,000 humpbacks, almost 400,000 sperm whales, and a staggering 750,000 fin whales. Many of those whales should still be alive. That's why we haven't seen more whales.

Down along the Antarctic Peninsula on a penguin-research expedition, we find that the beach at King George Island is strewn with bigger-than-dinosaur bones of great whales, cast off after the whales were stripped of flesh. A whale vertebrae the size of a hassock makes a good seat for jotting a few notes. Then, like children making up a game, we'll try to walk a couple hundred yards on the bones of whales killed by human beings, without stepping on the sand. It's quite do-able.

One skull -- a blue whale -- measures 12 feet across, eye to eye. Lengthwise, from tip-of-jaw to back-of-skull, we pace it out at 27 boot-lengths. The jawbone is so big around that it comes up past our knees. We look at each other, then glance seaward, knowing that the now-silent bay should be spouting whales.

Sea Shepherd films whaling vessel Three anti-whaling activists detained

Next to the far north. In the Arctic's Svalbard islands north of Norway, we have come to observe the accelerated melting of glaciers, and we find abandoned whalers' shacks and more whale bones on the beach. These bowheads, killed by the tens of thousands, barely cling to existence in the Atlantic.

In 1993, two stone harpoon points were found inside an Alaskan bowhead. It had been harpooned by 19th century hunters still living in the Stone Age. Industrial-age Eskimos finally got it. In chemical analyses of Alaskan bowheads, the oldest whale was deemed 211 years old at its death. It had been gliding through icy seas when Thomas Jefferson was president.

What Herman Melville in Moby-Dick called "so remorseless a havoc" still resonates in the wide silences of polar seas. Most large whale populations remain depressed.

There's no humane way to kill a whale. And at roughly 10 times the price of chicken, no people will starve if they don't eat whale meat. An elderly Inupiat woman once offered me a few pieces of bowhead blubber after inviting me into her home. It really warmed me, and was surprisingly bland-tasting. But the whale needed it more than I did.

Australia and New Zealand had argued that Japan was abusing a loophole allowing lethal scientific research within the worldwide commercial whaling ban. (Norway and Iceland ignore the ban). Japan has been killing protected species and hunting in an internationally declared Antarctic whale sanctuary.

The international agreement banning commercial whaling allows whale killing "for the purposes of scientific research." The court found that Japan was doing "research," but that the whole program was commercial whaling wrapped in a research shroud.

In 2012, Japan's Fisheries Agency director explained that minke (rhymes with "kinky") whale meat is, "prized because it is said to have a very good flavor and aroma when eaten as sashimi and the like." He added that, "the scientific whaling program ... was necessary to achieve a stable supply of minke whale meat." In other words, the program is not "for the purpose" of scientific research. The court busted Japan on that.

As for the quality of the research, the court noted with understatement, "Japan points to only two peer-reviewed papers... since 2005 and has involved the killing of about 3,600 minke whales, (thus) the scientific output to date appears limited."

At my university, a science professor who published two papers would be terminated by year six.

Basically, the court affirmed what was always obvious: Japan's research was bogus. (Part of the research is "to determine pregnancy rates" by seeing if they're pregnant at the time of death.) And although it's for commercial purposes, it loses money and is publicly subsidized.

Japan compares killing whales with Westerners killing cows. Nice try, but Japan's own laws on killing cows require swift and humane killing. It would be illegal in Japan to kill cows the way they kill whales.

Sure, whaling is part of Japanese culture: It's part of New England culture too. Yesterday's culture. There are plenty of old-style harpoons on the walls of Yankee restaurants. That's a good place for them. It's time for Japan to update its strange commitment to cruel and useless whale killing. Much of the world is more interested in whales than ever. We've just gotten beyond killing, into real research, and gained better appreciation and understanding.

So I am happy with the ruling that will at least hit the pause button on Japan's incomprehensibly outmoded whale hunts. Japan embraces Western influences ranging from baseball to jazz, business suits, trains, and tobacco. Suzuki makes Samurai cars that harken to an older culture, not samurai swords that cling to it. It's time for Japan to come into the 21st century and hang up the whaling. For good.

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Pray for peace, not settlements

Prayer space at Western Wall may become politicized, Rabbi Jill Jacobs writes She says a portion open to both men and women is being ceded to a settler group Jacobs says people who want to pray together don't want to be endorsing settlers She says Israeli authorities, North American Jews should oppose the move

Editor's note: Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the executive director of T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, an organization of rabbis that advocates for human rights, and the author, most recently, of "Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-on Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community." The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

(CNN) -- In January, I brought my 4-year-old daughter to Robinson's Arch, the section of Jerusalem's Western Wall reserved for egalitarian prayer without gender segregation. My husband and I, both Conservative rabbis, explained to her that this sacred space once formed part of the ancient Temple compound, and we helped her to place a folded-up prayer note in the cracks between the stones.

It was a sweet moment and one made possible by lengthy negotiations between the Israeli government and the Reform and Conservative denominations of Judaism, as well as the women's prayer group known as Women of the Wall.

While the Orthodox authorities who govern the main plaza of the Wall mandate gender segregation, the agreement to create an enhanced prayer space at Robinson's Arch allows Jews of all denominations to pray at the Western Wall without compromising our egalitarian beliefs.

Jill Jacobs

But at the end of February, the Jerusalem District Court approved an agreement between two government subsidiaries to transfer management of Robinson's Arch to an organization of religious right-wing settlers, Elad, posing a new threat to the ability of liberal Jews to pray at this site without checking our values at the door.

Today, the Jerusalem district court will hear a complaint by the Israeli Attorney General's Office that the Housing Ministry organized the transfer without authorization. North American Jews must join in this opposition.

Elad exists in order to move Jewish settlers into Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, so as to establish facts on the ground that will obstruct any peace agreement.

For this, Elad raises $6 million a year from American Jews. This money funds legal maneuvers to evict Palestinian families from their homes and the establishment of Jewish settlement compound in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Elad also manages the City of David archaeological site in East Jerusalem. Leading Israeli archaeologists have complained about the use of this site for ideological propaganda tourism. There is little question that if Elad takes over the archaeological park connected to Robinson's Arch, per the current agreement, our prayer space will similarly be used as a settler propaganda mill.

I recently visited Silwan, the neighborhood that has suffered the most from Elad's activities. New fortresses, with Israeli flags flapping over barbed wire barriers, now tower over the humble homes of longtime Arab residents. Armed guards accompany the settlers wherever they go.

Those who argue that Jews must be permitted to move into any area of Jerusalem must understand: This is not a question of diversifying the neighborhood. It's a hostile takeover. It is aimed at ensuring that East Jerusalem will never become part of a Palestinian state and, in fact, that no such state will ever come to be.

The Reform and Conservative movements, as well as Women of the Wall, responded swiftly and furiously to the announcement that Elad may take control of Robinson's Arch. In a strongly worded joint statement, they argued that an Orthodox organization cannot be trusted to maintain the area as a place for egalitarian prayer.

This anger is justified. The very suggestion that an Orthodox group would manage the prayer space reserved for non-Orthodox prayer reveals how tone-deaf some sectors of the Israeli government have become to the voices of North American Jews, the vast majority of whom believe that men and women should be equal in prayer as in other parts of life.

But the danger of transferring power to Elad goes far beyond the question of who may pray where. This organization seems to have little stake in the debate over egalitarian prayer and in fact has announced its intent to respect existing agreements.

More concerning is the possibility that those of us committed to egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall will end up supporting the expansion of settlements and the erosion of the peace process through our donations and entrance fees.

The endless negotiations over religious pluralism in Israel have exposed the fissure between North American Jews, who are Israel's greatest financial and political supporters, and the Israeli religious establishment. On issues such as the right of women to lead services at the Wall, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and even Orthodox American Jews have been willing to issue strong statements and even protest at the Israeli Embassy.

The current crisis over ceding control of an egalitarian prayer space to an organization of right-wing settlers has blown apart the delusion that North American Jewish leaders can criticize Israel on issues of religious pluralism while staying away from criticisms of settlement policy. The two are too deeply intertwined. Rejecting the Orthodox hegemony that has placed the main plaza of the Wall off-limits to egalitarian prayer services also means loosening the grip of settlers on Israeli politics.

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