Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/07/)
Watch the television coverage. For three weeks the killing of children and other innocents in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli military has dominated the news. But it makes no difference to the United States government which can stop the slaughter with a few words. (Five of those words are “your $3.5 billion aid package.)
Rather than characterizing immigration and migration issues as humanitarian concerns, the anti-immigration activists connect the narratives representing immigrants and migrants to our borders to the language of disease, crime, drugs, alien and lower forms of culture and life, of invading hoards, of barbarians at the gates who if allowed to enter will destroy the glorious civilization we have established among the lesser nations of the Earth.
Twelve years ago, Hamas took the lives of two of David Harris-Gershon’s friends and nearly took his own wife’s life in an attack. But despite this terrifying and potentially anger-inducing incident, Mr. Harris-Gershon continues to oppose the assault on Gaza and emphasize the importance of speaking out and showing empathy for victims on both sides.
It is time, way past time, to lay down the weapons of war and to be about the business of sustenance and joy for the entire human family, for all the peoples of the earth.
UPCOMING CONFERENCE CALL
Monday, August 4th — 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT
Sami Awad will be speaking to us from Palestine on the Israel/Gaza War. Sami Awad is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust (HLT), a Palestinian non-profit organization which he founded in 1998 in Bethlehem. HLT works with the Palestinian community at both the grassroots and leadership levels in developing nonviolent approaches that aim to end the Israeli occupation and build a future founded on the principles of nonviolence, equality, justice, and peaceful coexistence. Sami Awad will call in from Bethlehem, Palestine and will be joined by Rabbi Michael Lerner and Cat Zavis (executive director of the Network of Spiritual Progressives). Conference Call Number: 1-267-507-0240
Conference Code: 241099
Please Note: This Call is for or NSP–Network of Spiritual Progressives currently paid-up members, Tikkun subscribers and Beyt Tikkun members.
Disparaging comments about another group are unfortunately common in many communities. When these kinds of off-hand remarks emerge in our own homes or in the homes of our friends, how are we supposed to respond? Abe’s Babes, a group of six Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women in Sydney, Australia, may have found an answer.
Gaza, Syria, and Iraq are pained by that same disease of extremism and conflict. Civilians, more specifically children and women, are bearing the brunt of the injustices. In today’s Middle East, we have sacrificed a generation to the flames of rage.
We present to our readers “Israel Provoked This War: It’s Time for Obama to Stop It” with an introduction by Rabbi Michael Lerner and a recommendation of other thoughtful articles.
Reflections on Rabbi Zalman, who, with depth, with love, with humor, and with songs, imparted a spiritual conscience of an old age that spoke to the generation of a new age.
Almost 2.5 million Americans are presently housed in prisons and jails and this marks an increase of almost five times as many as there were in 1980. The present criminal justice system and its hardline paradigm is a broken structure, a machine that has created and continues to create unimaginable human pain and misery and dehumanization for its victims and their jailers. But what would a revolutionary transformative America and its justice system look like?