'Jew of the Year' update

Well, we’ve received nominations from several readers – including one email nominating 9 candidates! To stimulate other people’s thoughts on this, I thought it would be useful to provide a list of people nominated so far, with a short explanation of who they are / what they were nominated for:

• Pini Gershon (coaching the Euroleague Basketball Champions, Maccabi Tel Aviv)
• Gal Friedman, Windsurfer (Winning Israel's first ever Olympic gold medal)
• Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu (“Set an incredibly lofty set of economic goals and accomplished almost all of them.... held fast to his conservative policies and fought back against constant strikes”)
• Benzi Lieberman, head of the Yesha Council (“worked to fend off all of the disengagement plans. His plans reversed the Likud referendum.... showed that the Right-Wing in Israel does in fact have a heart that beats in time with a large portion of the nation”)
• Canadian Justice Minister Irwin Cotler (MP with the highest margin of victory in Canadian Elections)
• ‘The first woman to burn her sheitel’ (“shows respect for halacha”)
• Rabbi Yehoshua Fass of Nefesh B'Nefesh (brought thousands of Olim to Israel)
• Simon Wiesanthal (retired this year; lifetime achievement)
• Nick Berg (Symbol of the rise of terror and anti-Semitism this year)
• Rabbi Philip Berg (brought 'Kabbalah' to the world)
• Luke Ford (dominating the Jewish blogosphere)
• John Kerry (nice try)
• The Jewish neo-cons as a group (helping shape America’s war on terror)
• The IDF (‘winning the Intifada’)
• Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt ('continuing to put their money where their mouth is through birthright')
• ‘No one seems to have done anything outstanding this year’

Please send your nominations to me by email; winners, runners-up etc. to be announced Erev Rosh Hashanah.