October 20, 2006

A number of prominent U.S. Jewish and Israeli leaders are attending a conference in Georgia organized by a woman who wants the Jewish temple rebuilt.

Mort Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America; Limor Livnat, a leading member of the Likud Party; Daniel Pipes, director of the Philadelphia-based Middle East Forum; and Ra'anan Gissin, a spokesman for former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon are among those slated to attend next week's The Convergence Summit 2006, Claims and Challenges Facing Israel.

The Savannah Jewish Federation, Hadassah of Savannah, and Israel¹s consul-general in Atlanta are among the conference's sponsors, but other local and national groups have decried it because of organizer Orly Benny Davis' association with extremists who want to replace the mosques on Jerusalem's Temple Mount with the Third Temple.

Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer, of the city's Congregation Mickve Israel, said he would avoid it because Davis "has espoused ideas which qualify as religious extremism." Diane Cantor, a former Savannah school board president and executive director of the liberal group Brit Tzedek v¹Shalom, wrote in an Op-Ed for the Savannah Morning News that the conference "greatly concerned" her.