Letters   

As Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives function as a movement for social healing and transformation, our "Letters to the Editor" reflect responses not only to what has been in Tikkun or on our website, but also to articles and activities that we have promoted. For example, many of the letters below represent responses to an op-ed written by editor Rabbi Michael Lerner that appeared in the Times of London in early January, while the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza was at its peak. Other letters are responses to the full-page ad, signed by 4,000 people, that we ran in the New York Times (a copy of which was appended to this issue of Tikkun), or to articles derived from these, which appeared on a variety of websites. While these articles were critical of Israel's massive slaughter of civilians, they also criticized Hamas. In our ad in the New York Times, we purposefully stayed away from criticism of either side, focusing instead on what the terms of a solution might be. For a full presentation of the Tikkun perspective, we urge you to read two books authored by Rabbi Michael Lerner and published by North Atlantic Books: Healing Israel/Palestine (2003) and The Geneva Accord and Other Strategies for Middle East Peace (2004).

On Israel and Gaza

 

MASS MURDER IN GAZA

Rabbi Lerner, your recent article has appeared in the Christchurch Press in New Zealand. I must say I find the opening sentence horrifying. "Israel's attempt to wipe out Hamas is understandable." What is "wipe out" supposed to mean? Mass murder? Because that's what is happening.

Then you went on to admit that Israel broke the cease-fire first with its assassinations. But it's not just assassinations. The stranglehold on the people of Gaza-no food, no medicines, no control of its aquifers, no fishing-that is deadly violence, too. Uri Avnery has described the blockade on the Gazans as genocidal.

I was born and grew up in the United States. I went to Africa with the Peace Corps where I met my English husband. We then settled in New Zealand. I couldn't bear to live in the United States now because the people with power and influence are so contemptuous of the rest of the world, especially the Muslim world.

A few years ago I met an Israeli writer, the late Tanja Reinhart. We bought her book Roadmap to Nowhere, which points out that every time there has been a sign of a possibility of peace-real peace based on justice-in Israel/Palestine, the Israelis have sabotaged it.

LOIS GRIFFITHS

New Zealand

 

BRILLIANT PROPOSAL

Rabbi Lerner, your full-page Mideast proposal in the Times of London should not only be publicized around the world for consideration-to every home, individual iPod, and cell phone. It should also be offered as an example of how to do the impossible, being creatively "unrealistic." It is a shining example of an "impossibly complex" issue being treated to a fittingly complex solution: lushly true, all-accommodating, and overwhelmingly reasonable. That's its key flaw, unfortunately, as a public message. Proposals of this sort are virtually unprecedented in the media. They are too unfamiliar to compute. Viewpoints can't affirm all conflicting sides in a singular and harmonious resolution, can they? That leaves no side to be against, no glaring oversight to point up, no exclusionary side to exclusively side with. It's an insult to prejudice.

BILL PUKA

Troy, NY

 

A DISGRACE

You are so stupid that it breaks my heart to see you breathe. You call yourself Jewish? Let Hamas's rockets reach your home (I bet you are sitting in London, safe and pampered). Then you will know if Hamas is hassling or means business. You are a disgrace.

SAMEER P. SARKAR

England

 

TRAUMA IN ISRAEL

When I read your analyses about Israel/Palestine, and about the concept of legitimate versus illegitimate responses, there is always something missing. You keep identifying the number dead in each country as the measure of harm, and you address Gazan/Hamas fears, but not the fear of Israelis living under daily bombardment.

I can tell you that even though I actually suffered little harm during the Loma Prieta earthquake, the fear of building collapse in the hospital where I was while digging out patients from rooms, the fear that my son had been injured or killed until I found him six hours later, the fear of more death and destruction, the fear of overpasses falling on me as I drove under them the next six months made it one of the most fearful times of my life. Yet objectively, my PTSD response was "all out of proportion" to the events based on actual harm experienced. All PTSD is.

I suggest you look to chronic PTSD with daily accretions as a way to help Israelis, and American supporters of Israel as the Remnant, not only to understand the Israeli reaction, but also to help us deal with our own levels of PTSD in America (both populace to 9/11 and fear of terrorism, as well as all combat returnees from the experience of the global war on terrorism).

Your contention that Israel is overarmed and powerful versus the underarmed Palestinians who have only "symbolic weapons" makes no sense to either the Israelis or those of us who see Israel as maintaining itself against surrounding hostile populations of over 60 million. Even though those populations are not monolithic, they are all united in their drive against Israel's existence. And, this reality serves as a source of the fear of destruction and a continuance of PTSD in Israelis, American supporters of Israel, and the Palestinian populace, which looks to other Arab nations for material and support.

Until PTSD responses are recognized and validated on both sides, and not simply mentioned and dismissed, your analyses and suggestions will not be taken seriously.

DR. HARRIET ZEINER

Palo Alto, CA

 

REALISTIC PROPOSALS

Rabbi Lerner, I would like to commend you for the balanced article published in today's Times of London. So often we read very one-sided "Poor Israel wants peace but the wicked Palestinians don't!" messages from members of the Jewish establishment. Only by recognizing the enormous injustice that the foundation of Modern Israel was, can there ever be hope for peace. Israel must face this: its very foundation was as a result of what it now calls terrorism, and it is going to have to make peace with its enemies.

Your proposals are the most realistic that I have read and in line with my own views. The problem will be persuading the Jewish lobby in the USA to back such a plan.

It gives me some hope that some Jews at least are prepared to speak out against the appalling tragedy that is Israel/Palestine.

HOWARD COGAN

via email

 

DISTURBING

Rabbi Lerner, I have just read your apologetic and disturbing article in today's Times of London. As a practicing Jew and supporter of Israel, I feel great embarrassment and alarm that a fellow Jew and respected Rabbi such as yourself should adopt so strong an anti-IDF stance and play into the hearts and minds of those howling mobsters that have of late taken to our streets in supposed indignation at Israel's attempt to rid itself of this Islamic fundamentalist murdering rabble we know as Hamas.

Perhaps, you might have been better served if some sixty odd years ago you had written in defense of Adolf Hitler in support of his "Jew-free" Europe.

Yours Sincerely

LAWRENCE BERG

London, England

 

CONDEMN THE ATTACKS

Every day I look for letters from the Maine Jewish community condemning Israel's genocidal bombing of trapped, starving Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children. The Israelis are even bombing schools and hospitals.

Such barbarism must surely be repulsive to many in Maine's Jewish communities, but I search in vain for a word from them.

I am so sickened by what the Israeli government has been doing since 1947 to the Palestinians-who have lived there for thousands of years-that I can scarcely bear to read or think about what's going on now. But we must speak out when we know something is wrong, or we lose our humanity.

No more free passes for Israel.

Israel has caged in the Palestinians, cut off their food and electricity, smashed down people's houses, killed United Nations and other aid workers, built a wall separating farmers from their land and built illegal Jewish settlements in Palestinian lands. Now it is attacking with white phosphorus (causing terrible burns), fully armored troops, and U.S.-built bombs dropped from U.S.-supplied fighter jets.

The American government gives Israel billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars every year. I say not one penny more, until Israel acts like a civilized nation and stop killing its neighbors-the Palestinians and other Arabs who are the Israelis' close relatives, after all.

Israel brags that it runs our country, especially now that Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship. Where do his loyalties lie?

If American Jews do not speak out against the slaughter of children in schools and in their beds, they are complicit in those acts. The Israeli government purports to act for world Jewry, so Jews have a special responsibility to condemn atrocities committed in their name.

And yet we wait for Maine's Jewish community to speak out.

NANCY ODEN

Jonesboro, ME

 

BLAMING THE VICTIM

Are you sure that Israel has every right to respond? That is Tikkun's claim-it only challenges how Israel responded to Hamas's shelling of Israeli civilian targets, but not its right to respond. This does seem to be the present propaganda that allows assassination and massacre of Hamas leaders and Palestinian civilians alike.

If one looks at a map of Israel 1948 and compares it to a map of Israel 2008, it is evident that it is the Palestinians who are in need of security and defense. If it is legitimate to attack on the basis of defense and security, then what Hamas is doing is legitimate too. Israel is expanding while the Palestinian territories are shrinking. The rockets Hamas is throwing are a futile expression of self-defense too. However, the use of extreme force on the part of Israel to assure its security is not a written law that grants this right. Quite the opposite is true as, even in times of war, everything must be done to protect civilians. Israeli bombardments of hospitals and universities and many other civilian structures do not constitute "everything being done to protect civilians."

A simple look at the shrinking map of Palestinian land since 1947 will clearly indicate that Palestinians are the ones who need defense and security, as they are being ethnically cleansed and colonized. Israel demands that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist. How can one expect the victims to recognize their aggressors? This would mean recognizing that the victims have no rights or have to share the blame. There is no equality of suffering here that "both" are responsible for. As it stands now, almost 1,300 Palestinians are dead in the latest round of attacks.

The Israeli press gloats, publicly, that a Hamas leader has been assassinated. Imagine if Hamas killed Livni and publicly gloated over that fact? Would that be fine, then? What are we teaching our young? Is it fine to murder anyone one does not agree with?

TAMZIN JANS

Brussels, Belgium

 

REPULSIVE

All I can say is this: you have got to be kidding. What planet have you been living on these past few decades? Do you not understand that "safety" is not Hamas's objective? Have you ever read their writings? And to what version of pseudo-history are you referring when you suggest that Israel apologize for 1948 expulsions? The Palestinians (of course they weren't actually called Palestinians at the time) chose to leave prior to the "Occupation" to better enable the Arab attack on the Israelis. But I think you're right: we'd all be better off if we just allowed the Palestinians to overrun Israel. Then we wouldn't have to deal with those horrible, repressive Jews in the Middle East any more. There is little more repulsive than a self-hating self-flagellating Jew.

DAVID M. HARRIS

Houston, TX

 

PEACE PROPOSALS

The five-point proposal that you gave for stopping the present tragedy in Gaza is very important. More fundamental changes are needed to end the on/off wars between the Israelis and the Palestinians. If these changes are not implemented, the on/off wars will eventually spread and will destroy a lot more than the Palestinians and Israelis. Please allow me to add my thoughts for longer-term changes that cannot be effected without significant help and change of policy from the United States.

Massive air strikes, and possible invasions from land and sea of the Gaza strip will not bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians; such strikes will not subdue the resistance to occupation. This war can result in strengthening Hamas and deepening the conflict between the Palestinian factions. It can also result in hardening the Israeli government's policy positions. If the war continues, it can result in the annihilation of all or most of the 1.5 million inhabitants of Gaza and spread well beyond Gaza.

We have seen in the past sixty years on-and-off wars; these wars will continue as long as there is mistrust and fear of annihilation by any side of the conflict. Wars will rise when there is massive lack of employment, when there is excessive hunger of the masses, when hate has no limit on both sides, and when there is hopelessness and continued injustice.

What will bring peace is a combined and comprehensive approach that is based on three elements that must be acted upon simultaneously. These elements are genuine political solutions, with justice according to the human rights as defined and recognized by the international community; a reconciliation of all religions so that the conflicting parties start to understand and empathize with each other; and the creation of real decent work opportunities. Acting on only one or two of these three elements will not be enough and will not succeed. The three parts must be acted upon.

To change the attitudes of hate takes massive education of the benefits of peace as compared to war. People must be convinced that peace with justice will bring prosperity to all. The Palestinians who have been under occupation for over forty years need a sustained development plan similar to Marshal Plan that saved Europe. More destruction and subjugation, and more corruption will destroy the occupied and the occupier. We need to find ways to keep our hope alive and look for a better future for our planet and all of humanity.

DR. KHALED M. DIAB

Orlando, FL

 

DESTROY HAMAS

Israel should destroy Hamas in its entirety-one notices that America had no more problems with Imperial Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Better a million dead Palestinians then a single dead Jew.

MIKE WALLIN

Santa Monica, CA

 

PRO-ISRAEL BIAS

I get it. I understand why many Israelis might love Israel, right or wrong-it's their country and, quite frankly, terrorism really is a threat for them. I understand why many American Jews-perhaps oblivious to Israel's human rights violations, ignorant to the fact that a large number of Israelis themselves do not agree with AIPAC-style political policies, and unaware of Israel and America's aid to Hamas during the 1990s to counter the Marxist PLO-might unequivocally support Israel's current action against Hamas. I understand why religious Christians might have a bias against Muslims and may hold strong feelings about the "Holy Land." I can empathize with all of these people and feel that their perspectives are valid, even though I do not necessarily agree with them.

But what if issues regarding Israel do not affect them personally? Why are so many liberals-non-Jewish, non-Israeli, non-religious liberals-so unwilling to criticize Israel? They routinely bash their own government, they are quick to vilify countries like China, and they claim to be about peace, yet when it comes to Israel, there is no one more white and blue. Why? Do you know? Does it have to do with our mythology about ourselves? Do we see some sort of mythic American underdog/pioneer/cowboy in Israel? Someone please help me.

JOSHUA L. MARSHACK

St. Louis, MO

 

Responses to Tikkun Articles

 

ARTSON ON THE BIG BANG

I read Rabbi Artson's essay this New Year's day while eating my traditional southern New Year's dinner of ham, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and ambrosia (a southern holiday dessert featuring oranges, bananas, and coconut-except I was out of bananas). I am a Christian and a scientist.

What Rabbi Artson wrote about the Creation and about our role as clay in the hands of the Master Potter touched my heart and my mind. I teach a lot of Bible classes at Auburn First Baptist Church, as well as science classes at Auburn University, to groups of differing levels of knowledge of both, and I have a feeling I'm going to be referring to and quoting from this essay a lot. In a country where so many religious people feel threatened by science, I seem to be continually struggling to help people see there is no contradiction unless you insist on making one-and that goes as much for atheistic scientists as fundamentalist Christians. I have never seen my case stated more beautifully than as Rabbi Artson did it. Thank you.

CHARLOTTE WARD

Auburn, Alabama

 

PROP. 8 AND HOMOPHOBIA

A colleague purchased a subscription to Tikkun for our office, and I've really begun to look forward to reading it when it arrives. Thanks for all of your good work. This morning, I read the article entitled "Historic Election: Obama and Prop. 8" by Lynice Pinkard on p. 18 of your January/February edition. I'm a gay man who was involved with the marriage issue in Massachusetts, and I've had volunteer experiences where I saw or felt the fault line between the gay community and the African American community in New England. I was glad to see Tikkun address the perception that the African American vote passed Prop. 8.

I read the same New Yorker article that Pinkard cites that stated that Prop. 8 would have passed even with no black votes at all. This fact alone bears repeating over and over. And where Pinkard steps away from facts, she writes with passion and heart. When she writes that we should transcend "self-interests to create authentic bonds of solidarity across lines of difference," I'm with her. I'm with her when she states facts, and I'm with her when she passionately states a vision for an alternative future.

I can't go with her, however, when she states as facts broad assertions with no supporting references or explanation, specifically: "Homophobia among white working-class people is similarly an effect of class oppression." Her argument gets a little traction when she explains that a group that feels oppressed often in turn oppresses another. With that said, I grew up in and came out in a white Southern working-class family, and I've hobnobbed a little with some well-to-do New Englanders. I know poor Southerners who weren't homophobic, even without any remedial efforts at transcendence, and I've known wealthy people who were implacably homophobic in the absence of oppression.

I would not deny that income level is one of several factors that predict or contribute to homophobic behavior. It's never been proved to be the main contributing factor and there's no evidence of a direct cause-and-effect relationship, however. Sorry to be nitpicking about one point in a single article, but when you state as fact something that is not widely understood to be a fact or can't be proved to be factual, you lessen the credibility of the article and magazine.

J.D. WILSON

Lexington, MA

 

CARING FOR ANIMALS

I agree with Josephine Donovan that caring about others is crucial, but I dispute her dichotomy between female humans who care and male humans who make abstract rules (January/February 2009). As historian Lynn Hunt shows in Inventing Human Rights, empathy is the basis of rights. Wealthy white males initially established them, but they protect all who've obtained them better than exhortations to caring possibly can.

Caring plays out differently in different circumstances, sometimes with negative results, as in spoiling a child or maintaining human-generated "breeds" of animals for human purposes, including love. Rather than continue forcing ourselves on nonhuman animals-that, not cruelty or lack of empathy, is the main source of human-caused suffering-let's work for their right to live free from human domination, though it will take a long time and won't show signs of success in the short term.

DAVID CANTOR

Executive Director of Responsible Policies for Animals, Inc.

Glenside, PA

Josephine Donovan replies:

I don't believe I implied that only women care and certainly didn't intend that. Indeed, in an article in The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics (2007), I credit the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers (men) with developing the concept of sympathy, seen as a basis for ethical care.

I too oppose breeding for human-pleasing traits, and other dominative practices, but I believe that non-dominative-dialogical-relationships can exist between humans and nonhumans, obviating the need for blanket liberation, which does not seem practical, given the diversity of animals, and would surely lead to unintended negative consequences.

 

ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

David Korten knows better than most that Obama isn't going to change the fundamentals of the American economy.

The point isn't Obama, it's the very plutocracy that rules. The parameters are set and it's apparent through Obama's staff selection that he is on board with that plutotocratic mandate that has guided this nation since its inception, offering only moments of ever so slight pauses in war and global expansionism. It will take something other than the empire to de-empire the USA polity and culture.

ART COSTA

via email

 

Obama

 

EDUCATION UNDER OBAMA

Now that the euphoria of the Obama election has waned, it is time to put pressure on the next administration to address the higher education issues raised by Henry Giroux (November/December 2008). Obama's choice of Arne Duncan-whose pro-business, penal-based view of education has been devastating for the Chicago system-for secretary of education reveals that Obama's administration is unlikely (and probably unwilling) to champion the changes that we need. It is also hard to imagine how the Obama presidency will shake off the last seven years of a culture of fear during which we have suffered severe restrictions on civil and political rights. The post-9/11 environment has been fundamentally hostile to conceiving of the university as a space within which to promote democratic values. It is too easy to see these changes as inevitable or intractable, as moved by market forces and global realities. But, in fact, these policies and the ideologies they depend on are vulnerable because they rest on an impoverished idea of learning and thinking; they relegate the student to nothing more than a market driven drone, faculty to technicians, and research to pro-U.S. propaganda. Now more than ever is the time for a forceful and clear articulation of a progressive agenda for higher education. And, thankfully, Giroux has inspired us to fight for one.

DR. SOPHIA A. MCCLENNEN

University Park, PA

 

NO TIME FOR REALISM  

In your Memos to Obama section (January/February 2009), thank you for pointing out the necessity for moral vision even as President Obama pursues legislative goals in a political way. President Reagan was savvy enough to see that if he reiterated his main themes he was able to sway the entire country and get his basic vision implemented. Thus restoring patriotism and defeating communism, huge abstract goals, became a reality. Had Reagan tried to be more realistic, he probably would have failed. President Obama has a huge opportunity to use his victory to push forward all kinds of themes. Fairness, generosity, and humanity could become his presidential themes. Let's encourage him to state his progressive vision boldly!

AMY STORBAKKEN

via email

 

HEALTHY LEADERSHIP

John Welwood's call for new U.S. leadership grounded in the notion that a "sane society is based on healthy relatedness" (January/February 2009) could not be more eloquently insightful. He insists that "we need a new politics based on love and wisdom, one which cares for the web of life and works toward repairing the sacred, broken bonds of interrelatedness that keeps us all healthy and sane."

Dr. Welwood's recognition of leadership in transpersonal psychological terms is not only on target, it offers the president and all of us a holistic strategy to move our country forward again as global leaders and citizens. We are all related to each other and to the environment we share. We have suffered much from our own divisive national and international policies, and we have often given our foreign counterparts valid reasons to reject us. I was pleased to read about the need for "toning down the rhetoric of war and promoting friendship." I am confident that this is the direction that we will be traveling; and many of those who opposed it, will so benefit by it that they will be forced to reconsider many of their political assumptions.

I found the concluding advice one that not only President Obama needs to heed, but we all should also take to heart: "embody well-being yourself." I am grateful for this extraordinary issue of Tikkun, and I hope that you will publish more issues that are filled with as much wisdom, love, and sage advice.        

JOSEPH L. SUBBIONDO       

President of the California Institute of Integral Studies

San Francisco, CA

 

OBAMA AND AFGHANISTAN

Rabbi Lerner, you wrote, "I wish [Obama] had not committed himself to ‘forging a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.'" I agree this sounds ominous, but it is a great improvement over what his website said during the campaign, which was "finish the job in Afghanistan." The only possible solution in Afghanistan is multilateral negotiation with all Afghanistan's neighbors; and hopefully "forging peace" can be interpreted to mean that. Even if those of us outside the administration have to encourage that interpretation.

PETER DALE SCOTT

posted on Tikkun's website

 

RICK WARREN

Our religious leader boycotted Obama's inauguration due to the choice of Rick Warren. I thought about it and came to peace with Obama's choice.

These last years have brought to the fore feelings and pronouncements by members of my family, even, that have made me realize that there really are a lot of rigid, fundamentalist thinkers (if they can be called that) in the community of our country. How to communicate to them that you accept them, and always will, as fellow human beings, but yet also communicate the desire for them to also understand people who are not like them, is a very tricky business.

I think Obama was just extending the olive branch. How those on the receiving end act upon it is up to them. But we should have no quarrel with Obama on that score. I think, all in all, he made a good decision for the occasion.

LAUREN

posted on Tikkun's website

 

ON DISAPPOINTMENT WITH OBAMA'S INAUGURATION

We [spiritual progressives] must not let our egos get us into an uproar. We must let go of any sense of offense that we have taken by not having our cause mentioned in one speech. We must remain outside the White House, on the blogs and on the radio and TV (when we can get on) as that voice crying in the wilderness ... we need to work in our communities, organizing and protesting and testifying in council chambers for laws that take burdens off the poor, advocating health care, end to war, end to executions, more just and open government on all levels, and a restoration to civil decency and compassion in our society. The fight is not over; we may not stop now. But in this and all things when it comes time for praise, we must say "Non Nobis Domine, non nobis. Sed Nomini tuo da gloriam" (Not to us, O Lord, not to us. But to your Name give glory). For we are spirit-driven people and should not be concerned about material things and ego things like praise.

We belong outside the halls of power and it would be a mistake (the one the Fundamentalists make) to believe that we should be "in power." Did Jesus take temporal power? He was offered it and clearly could have done so. But that was not his message. As a recent "convert" to Catholicism, I have been an avid reader of the Church's history. I feel it was clearly a mistake to make Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. It was also a mistake for the Church to interfere in European and Middle Eastern political structures. These mistakes have laid the groundwork for the problems of today. Let us follow the example of the saints and the Buddha. We shall work in the slums, streets, allies, and swamps of the world. We shall have disreputable people as companions and we shall show them the way to hope, love, and peace. No matter what your faith.

JOHN DAVIS

Bristol, VA