Israel/Palestine
From the start Tikkun has taken the view that Jewish morality and prophetic tradition require a challenge to all governments, including that of Israel, to live by the highest ethical standards. The more Israel rejects Jewish morality and the Torah’s injunction to “love the stranger” in its treatment of the Palestinians, the more it loses the support of the most ethically sensitive people in the world and of many younger Jews in the diaspora. We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. Our view is that solutions to intractable conflicts begin as increasing numbers on each side can empathize with and tell the other side’s story. That is an exceptionally hard thing to do in this case, given the traumas both Jews and Palestinians have suffered, but we believe it is possible. Our special issue on the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel and of the Nakba is here. See also Michael Lerner's essay "A Jewish Renewal Understanding of the State of Israel," his book Embracing Israel/Palestine, and the Tikkun Israel/Palestine Peace Plan.
Israel/Palestine
Why Yair Lapid’s Electoral Success Is Not Really a Centrist Victory
by Richard Silverstein
Both Israeli and foreign media have repeated the same prevailing narrative about Israel’s election—a narrative in which the Israeli center has returned to full strength and the Israeli right has taken a whipping. But in fact the right is in a comfortable position to forge a ruling coalition. The two current hard-right parties together won forty-two seats, a formation far more stable than the center-left parties with their forty-eight seats. Further, those hard-right parties have purged themselves of any vestige of center-right leaders of the past.
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Israel/Palestine
Mapping a Jewish Activist Future: A Review of Nepon’s Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue
by Wendy Elisheva Somerson
How can we create space for friction and dissent from within Jewish institutions, such as the Jewish Federation or Hillel?
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Israel/Palestine
Crossing Borders, Planting Olive Trees
by Jacob Wheeler
Joshua Davis has played music in South American rainforests, on the promenade in Havana, in old mining towns in Michigan, and beyond. But Tuwani, a village in the Palestinian West Bank, tested his comfort level perhaps more than any previous gig.
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Israel/Palestine
Languages of Liturgy and Occupation
by Sam Kestenbaum
Living in Ramallah has meant that I must see my Judaism differently. It means I sometimes have to turn myself inside out. I see our religious symbols differently. I experience Hebrew differently. I hear Hebrew as the five million Palestinians who live here do: not as a spiritual language but a language of military occupation.
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Israel/Palestine
An American Jewish Identity Crisis
by Alan Snitow
“Jewish life had its renaissance because Israel was born,” Rabbi Marvin Hier recently told my partner Deborah Kaufman and I during an interview for our documentary film Between Two Worlds.
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US Politics
The Jewish Community’s Drift Toward the Right
by Deborah Kaufman
In the absence of a visionary or even steadfastly progressive leadership, the Jewish community has become stuck in a vicious cycle of recriminations, while slowly shifting to the political right.
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Israel/Palestine
Debating Pinkwashing
by Katherine Franke
An Inconvenient Truth: The Myths of Pinkwashing by Arthur Slepian Responses to Arthur Slepian: The Greater Context of the Pinkwashing Debate by Katherine Franke Revealing the Truth Behind the Rainbow: Seattle’s Anti-Pinkwashing Success by Wendy Elisheva Somerson Pinkwashing, Brainwashing, and …
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Israel/Palestine
A New Heroism in Israel and Palestine
by Greg Kaufmann
Mejdi is a tour company founded in 2010 by Dr. Marc Gopin, an orthodox rabbi. The idea behind Mejdi is that Arabs and Jews doing peace and coexistence work through NGOs are notoriously under-funded; hundreds of them are literally poor. They also spend a disproportionate amount of time writing grants and fundraising rather than doing their critical on-the-ground work. It’s an unsustainable model, and the Mejdi co-founders felt they could create a business for peace-building that was also self-sustaining.
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Israel/Palestine
Poisoning Arafat
by Uri Avnery
For me, there was no surprise. From the very first day, I was convinced that Yasser Arafat had been poisoned by Ariel Sharon. I even wrote about it several times.
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Israel/Palestine
Revealing the Truth Behind the Rainbow: Seattle’s Anti-Pinkwashing Success
by Wendy Elisheva Somerson
As a queer anti-Occupation Jew living in Seattle, I was part of the coalition that worked to get the Seattle LGBT commission to cancel the pinkwashing event, “Rainbow Generations: Building New LGBTQ Pride & Inclusion in Israel,” sponsored by Arthur Slepian’s organization, A Wider Bridge. In response to Slepian’s article, “An Inconvenient Truth: The Myths of Pinkwashing,” I want to clarify why we worked to cancel the event and counter his misinformation about pinkwashing.
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