We are honoring six spiritual progressive leaders at our 25th Anniversary celebration on March 14:

25th-honorees

Of these six the most controversial is surely Justice Richard Goldstone.

Richard Goldstone first got involved in politics as a college student in South Africa where he was an outspoken opponent of Apartheid. He became a close associate of Nelson Mandela in the early 1990s and served on South Africa’s Supreme Court. He was then picked by the UN to head their inquiries into human rights violations in Bosnia, Rwanda, and then most recently in Gaza.

Justice Goldstone approached the Gaza assignment with some trepidation. He refused the assignment until the UN had changed its charge to be one that would include human rights violations by Hamas as well. He had been a noted Zionist in South Africa and had been the international chair of the Jewish ORT — organization for rehabilitation and training — and had been chosen to be a member of the Board of the Hebrew University. He had expected that Israel would fully cooperate in this investigation, and when it did not and he had no recourse but to collect the facts as presented to him by the Palestinian victims of the Israeli army’s assault on Gaza, he made clear that he felt that his report only provided a prima facie reason for a fuller investigation by the UN and the World Court.

Imagine his surprise, then, when the US repudiated the report without bothering to suggest what it considered wrong with it, and the US Congress condemned it in accord with the policy of the State of Israel. The Jewish establishment in many countries around the world denounced Goldstone personally, and suggested that anyone seeking to give it credibility was actually trying to delegitimize the State of Israel.

When Tikkun editor Michael Lerner announced that we would be giving this award, his house was twice attacked and partially defaced with graffiti denouncing Lerner as a self-hating Jew and “an anti-Semite just like Goldstone.”

On the contrary, we believe that Justice Goldstone’s report brings credit to the Jewish people by reminding the world that there are many Jews who, while supporting Israel’s security and hoping that it can become an abiding center of Jewish life and creativity, do not believe that their support of Israel requires that they support Israel’s oppressive policies toward Palestinians or its double standards in the way that it treats its own Arab citizens.

We are giving this award to Richard Goldstone in recognition of his courage, and his contribution to global human rights, and his contribution to the ethical solidity and credibility of Judaism and the Jewish people.

We hope you can join us at our celebration March 14, if you live in the area or would like to visit. You can register here.


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