Opinion Mentor A Student, Change A Life F or the past couple of years, I have served on the advisory board of the Mentor Connection. I felt guilty at every meeting because I was not mentoring a young person. After all, if Gov. Granholm and her husband, Dan Mulhern, can find time to mentor, so should I. When the opportunity for a three-month men- toring relationship came up, I jumped at the chance ... and I am so glad that I did. For three months, I have been mentor- ing Justin, an 18-year-old young man who loves politics. I brought Justin to Lansing many times; he had an opportunity to work as an intern writing tributes, dealing with constituents and sitting in on com- mittee and interest group meetings. I also used him as an extra pair of hands at a town hall meeting in the district. I tried to give him a breadth of experiences, includ- ing lunch with a lobbyist! This is not an easy time to be a young person deciding on college and a career. Students face a radically changing job market and economic uncertainty at the local, state, and federal level, which affects the services and programs they use. What they face in their lives today may or may not be more difficult than what we faced as young people. Who had it harder isn't the issue. The issue is will we offer them our help and advice and will we sup- port programs like the Mentor Connection at Jewish Family Service Detroit that matched me with Justin? For me, mentoring wasn't just giving unsolicited advice, but also providing some other non- career focused activities. We went to a Detroit Tigers game where a foul ball actually landed in his seat and he showed a side of him that touched me deeply. He offered me the ball. Although I rejected his kind offer, that act will always show me that he and I really connected. We also trekked to Ann Arbor to explore the campus and visit the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy, a school that he has a great deal of interest in. And I think Justin also learned some lessons in net- working. As a result of our mentoring relationship, I served as a job reference for a job Justin recently landed. I arranged for him to meet an admission's officer from the University of Michigan to talk about how to best position himself for transferring to a four-year college. There are many programs that can match you with a young person. You can contact the Mentor Connection at Jewish Family Service by calling (248) 592-2651 or by visiting the Web site at www.mentorconnect.org . The State of Michigan's Mentor Michigan program can also help. That Web site, www.mentorm- ichigan.gov, includes tips on mentoring and a Mentor Michigan Directory that lists mentoring programs by county and city. My mentors helped put me on the path that has led me to where I am today. My work with Justin will, I hope, help him with the choices that he makes about what he'll do in life. He has opened my eyes to what it means to be young and searching for a place in life. I hope that I have opened his eyes to the many possibilities for his future. So for others who have been reluctant to take on a mentoring role, I strongly encour- age them to take the leap. LI State Senator Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington Woods, represents the 14th State Senate District. She can be reached toll-free in Lansing at (888) 937-4453. Visit her Web site at www.senate.mi.govaacobs. Are We Paying for Hamas? I n this time of rising unemployment, escalating health care costs and record deficits, it would be nice to know where our dwindling taxpayer dol- lars are going. Did you know that you, the U.S. taxpayer, helped contribute to $148 million last year and over $3.4 billion over the last 59 years to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)? What is UNRWA and why should we care? Founded in 1949 as a temporary relief agency for Palestinian refugees, it has become the only agency dedicated to one group of refugees and is dedicated to serve all descendants, including grand- children and great- grandchildren, of the original 900,000 refugees in 1950. UNRWA serves Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza with its 24,000 estimated employees, four times as many as the UNHCR (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees,) the agency dedicated to caring for 11.4 mil- lion refugees around the world. How, you might wonder, do we know if UNRWA serves Hamas, the terrorist organization that intentionally kills Israeli citizens to achieve its announced goal of destroying the state of Israel? Peter Hansen, commission-general of UNRWA in 2004, told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., "I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don't see that as a crime." According to U.S. Rep. Steven Rothman 46 September 24 2009 J1111 of New Jersey, UNRWA has employed, among others, Said Sayyam, Hamas Minister of Interior and Civil Affairs, Awad al-Qiq,"who led Islamic Jihad's engineering unit that built bombs and Qassam rock- ets," and Nidal Abd al-Fattah Abdallah Nazzai,"who con- fessed in 2002 to transporting weapons and explosives to terrorists in an UNRWA ambu- lance Likewise, schools admin- istered by UNRWA have pro- duced several graduates affili- ated with terrorism, including Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and former Hamas chief, Abd al-Azis Rantisi. Lanny Davis, special counsel to President Bill Clinton from 1996-1998, writes, "There is indisputable evidence that anti-Semitic and anti-Israel textbooks are being used in UNRWA-sponsored schools — including texts that contain negative references to Jews and omit entirely the State of Israel from maps:' ("Time for transparence and account- ability for UNRWA," Lanny Davis, The Hill, Sept. 9) It would be nice to know what our tax dollars to this Palestinian organization are funding, but financial accountability by UNRWA is negligible. According to the UNRWA Report of the Board of Auditors for the biennium ended Dec. 31, 2005, "UNRWA does not track recording, delet- ing, renaming or manipulation of financial information by staff members or volun- teers, and therefore has no means of detecting the altera- tion of financial data or other types of redirection of UNRWA funding." If you would like to make a difference, tell your con- gressman to support House Concurrent Resolution 29, sponsored by Rothman and 31 other Democratic and Republican cospon- sors. Resolution 29, which in January was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, expresses "the sense of Congress that the United Nations should take immediate steps to improve the transparency and accountability of the UNRWA in the Near East to ensure that it is not providing funding, employment or other support to terrorists:' Resolution 29, which has been stalled since January, "strongly urges the Secretary of State to take all necessary measures to certify that United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) operated in full com- pliance with section 301(c) of the Foreign Assistance Ace and therefore, no American taxpayer dollars are being directed to ter- rorists or to further terrorist propaganda." It's easy to get angry about us taxpay- ers bailing out MG and Fannie Mae and Chrysler and Citibank. It's worrisome to many of us frustrated by economic stimulus packages and proposed health insurance legislation that will further put us in the hole. We are already borrowing from China and other countries to pay for our mounting debts. You may not like paying for banks and their million-dollar executives and mortgage companies and car companies and more health insurance. But how do you feel about us United States taxpayers paying for anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli textbooks and giving our dol- lars to members of Hamas so they can buy bombs and rockets to destroy our brothers and sisters in Israel? Can you define the word, "absurd"? I think we could all agree with the basic premise of House Resolution 29, which states that "United States taxpayer dol- lars should never be used for purposes of supporting terrorist cells or activities that support terror or promote a culture of hatred at any of its locations." Tell your representative to take a few minutes away from health insurance debates and turn his or her attention to terrorism again. We must refuse any lon- ger to pay for the destruction of Israel. In this time of the New Year and the high holidays, it's the least we can do. II Arnie Goldman is a Farmington Hills resident.