Editorials & Actions

Note From An Israeli to Fellow Israelis

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TO MY FELLOW ISRAELIS – AN OPEN LETTER 

by  Jonathan Ofir

This is probably a culmination of nearly a decade’s reviewed study of our history. At some point, beyond the singular stories, cases and arguments, I feel something unequivocal and very generally encompassing needs to be said about our Israeli ‘miracle’, the manifestation of the Zionist ‘dream’. I will not write this in Hebrew, although that would probably have been the most direct idiomatic tool to reach your minds. I will not do so, because I have had enough of dirty laundry recycled amongst us ‘self-understanding’ Israelis. Whilst I write to you, my hopes of change coming from within us Israelis have regrettably declined in the years – and thus, I am also, if not more so, placing my bets upon the involvement of the international community – whose help we need so badly – not for more cash, weapons, or apologetic ‘understanding’, but rather for its intervention in what we are apparently unable, and mostly unwilling, to fix.

Economy/Poverty/Wealth

The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy

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ECONOMY & WORK
The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy
Economist Gerald Friedman did an analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s plan suggesting it would produce significant growth in the economy — and then a group of left-leaning economists flipped out. BY DAVE JOHNSON | FEBRUARY 23, 2016

The Sanders “Economic Plan” […]

A trader monitors offers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index options pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) on August 24, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

This post first appeared at Campaign for America’s Future. “When you dare to do big things, big results should be expected. The Sanders program is big, and when you run it through a standard model, you get a big result.”
– James K. Galbraith

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders says he wants the American people to join him and “fight for a progressive economic agenda that creates jobs, raises wages, protects the environment and provides health care for all.” His website outlines a number of proposals toward this end, including increasing taxation of corporations and the wealthy and using the money to repair the country’s infrastructure, extending public education four years to cover college, extending Medicare to everyone, expanding Social Security and addressing climate change.

Editorials & Actions

S.F. Police Murders (Murderous Police in the City of Love)

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 Murderous Police in the City of Love
Posted by Rebecca Gordon

In one of the widely circulated cellphone videos of the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in December, you can hear the young girl filming his death screaming. “Are you fucking serious?” she shrieks over and over at the crowd of cops encircling the young black man. According to police, Woods had refused to drop a kitchen knife they claim he was carrying. He was nonetheless attempting to walk away from the officers.

Other Voices

Saving the Earth by Reconnecting to the Life of the Spirit

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by Leonardo Boff
        Theologian-Philosopher

      Earthcharter Commission

If it is true that climatic disturbances are anthropogenic, that is, that they have their genesis in the irresponsible behavior of humans (less of the poor, but much more of the great industrial corporations), then it is clear that the issue is more an ethical than a scientific one. This is so because the quality of our relationships with nature and with our Common Home were not, and they still are not, adequate and positive. Pope Francis says in his inspiring encyclical letter, Laudato Sii: on the caring of the Common Home, (2015): «Never have we mistreated and hurt our Common Home so much as in the last two centuries…These situations provoke the howls of Sister Earth, joining the wails of the abandoned of the world, with a cry that demands that we take a different path» (n. 53). That different path urgently implies a regenerative ethic for the Earth.

Editorials & Actions

Major American Jewish Leader Changes His Mind About Israel

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An Amazing Turn for a Major Leader of the American Jewish mainstream: David Gordis Rethinking Israel
David Gordis  has served as vice-president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He also served as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee and was the founding director of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel. He founded and directed the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies which became the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies. David Gordis is President Emeritus of Hebrew College where he served as President and Professor of Rabbinics for fifteen years. He is currently Visiting Senior Scholar at the University at Albany of the State University of New York.  Here is the article he submitted to Tikkun.

Editorials & Actions

Henry Giroux on The Crazy Direction of American Capitalism

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Editor’s note: Henry Giroux, a frequent contributor to Tikkun, highlights some of the destructive tendencies in American and global capitalism, in this introduction he wrote to a new book on inequality. At times he may be going beyond what I could agree to. For example, his discussion of American democracy doesn’t give adequate credit to the way the system does in fact allow for an insurgency by a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders. If African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities do not massively vote for him, it is not only because they don’t have adequate information, it is also because their own leadership has overwhelmingly sided with Hillary Clinton. Sanders has been able to raise more money than Hillary–from ordinary citizens.

Editorials & Actions

Uri Avnery Laments the Latest Israeli Assault on Free Speech and Democracy

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Uri Avnery
February 20, 2016

When God Despairs
RIGHT AFTER the foundation of Israel, God appeared to David Ben-Gurion and told him: “You have done good by my people. Utter a wish and I shall grant it!” “I wish that Israel shall be Jewish, democratic and encompass all the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan,” Ben-Gurion replied. “That is too much even for me!” God exclaimed.

Editorials & Actions

The Campaign to Make Criticism of Israel’s Occupation Illegal (can you believe this?)

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Editor’s note:

Can you believe this?  Some Israeli and Jewish forces around the world and in the U.S. are succeeding in making it illegal to criticize the Occupation of the West Bank or to advocate for BDS (boycotts, sanctions and divestment from firms that help make the Occupation possible or firms that do business with settlers). While we at Tikkun do not support BDS against Israel as a whole (for example, the attempts to boycott Israeli academic or cultural institutions), we do support BDS against the settlers and their institutions and those corporations that are assisting Israel to displace Palestinians, bulldoze Palestinian homes, and implement a brutal Occupation. Saying what we said in the last sentence is becoming illegal in some states and in some countries around the world, and on some campuses saying this is being labeled as “antiSemitism” and therefore made a reason to punish or suspend students or faculty. This is the most insidious assault on free speech yet, and if it succeeds it is likely to have 3 horrific consequences:

1. Opening the door to criminalizing speech and completely destroying the accomplishments of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution–and weakening the ability of people around the world to claim the right to criticize policies with which they disagree.

Israel/Palestine

The Campaign to Make Criticism of Israel’s Occupation Illegal (can you believe this?)

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 Editor’s note: can you believe this?  Some Israeli and Jewish forces around the world and in the U.S. are succeeding in making it illegal to criticize the Occupation of the West Bank or to advocate for BDS (boycotts, sanctions and divestment from firms that help make the Occupation possible or firms that do business with settlers. While we at Tikkun do not support BDS against Israel as a whole (for example, the attempts to boycott Israeli academic or cultural institutions) we do support BDS against the settlers and their institutions and those corporations that are assisting Israel to displace Palestinians, bulldoze Palestinian homes, and implement a brutal Occupation. Saying what we said in the last sentence is becoming illegal in some states and in some countries around the world, and on some campuses saying this is being labeled as “antiSemitism” and therefore made a reason to punish or suspend students or faculty. This is the most insidious assault on free speech yet, and if it succeeds it is likely to have 3 horrific consequences: 1.

Editorials & Actions

Chris Hedges Challenges The Sanders Movement

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Editor’s Note: Just as we are prohibited from endorsing candidates, so we are also prohibited from critiquing them. But as a 1st amendment protected 501-c-3, we can priint the wide variety of views held by our readers (hey, that’s YOU). So far, most of what we’ve gotten from our readers has been pro-Bernie. Now finally we get something that is a critique of Bernie. We are still looking for readers to submit pro-Hillary articles, or pro-some Republican party candidates for the presidency, or pro Jill Stein of the Greens, or pro any other 3rd party candidates.

Editorials & Actions

Stephen Zunes on Hillary Clinton’s Record on Foreign Policy

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Editor’s Note: I once again want to encourage those who support Hillary, or Jill Stein, or other candidates, to write articles for us about why they do so. We don’t endorse any candidate or political party–can’t because we are a non-profit–but we will publish smart articles from many different perspectives on the election. If we keep on getting mainly pro-Bernie, we may have to stop publishing anything because this tilt may give the appearance of us endorsing a candidate, which we don’t do. –Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun, RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
Hillary Clinton’s Record on Foreign Policy
by Stephen Zunes
 

Despite being an icon for many liberals and an anathema to the Republican right, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s positions on the Middle East have more closely resembled those of the latter than the former. Her hawkish views go well beyond her strident support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency war.

Editorials & Actions

Dan Brook states his 52 Reasons to Support Bernie Sanders for President

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Editor’s Note: I once again want to encourage those who support Hillary, or Jill Stein, or other candidates, to write articles for us about why they do so. We don’t endorse any candidate or political party–can’t because we are a non-profit–but we will publish smart articles from many different perspectives on the election. If we keep on getting mainly pro-Bernie, we may have to stop publishing anything because this tilt may give the appearance of us endorsing a candidate, which we don’t do.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com

 

52 Righteous Reasons to Support Progressive Bernie Sanders Over Establishment Hillary Clinton and the Regressive Republicans
Dan Brook

There are many vast and critical differences when you compare progressive Bernie to moderate Hillary and the regressive GOP. Here are 52 righteous reasons to support Bernie Sanders for President. There are undoubtedly others.

Editorials & Actions

Jeffrey Sachs, economist, says: Hillary is the Candidate of the War Machine

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Editor’s note:

Tikkun magazine does not endorse any candidate or political party. But as I’ve said in several previous emails, we will send out articles that have a serious or substantial intellectual content challenging the ideas of any of the candidates, or supporting those ideas. I had expected to get lots of serious submissions, but so far I’ve only gotten critiques of Hillary Clinton. We will share those, but again want to make clear that we’d also share serious critiques of the policy positions of Senator Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, the Green party presidential candidates, etc.  You can also send rebuttals to this or anything else we send out!  At this point, we really want to encourage those who support Hillary or Jill Stein of the Greens or any of the Republican candidates to send us their arguments, because otherwise we are going to be perceived as supporting a candidate, and we don’t intend to be doing that.

Editorials & Actions

Richard Falk Challenges UN Chief Ban Ki-Moon

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Israel shoots the messenger: An open letter to Ban Ki-Moon

Richard Falk

Saturday 6 February 2016

While I was special rapporteur for Palestine, you chose to attack me in public on several occasions. Now Israel has turned its fire on you. Dear UN Secretary-General,

Having read of the vicious attacks on you for venturing some moderate, incontestable criticisms of Israel’s behaviour, I understand well the discomfort you clearly feel. Not since Richard Goldstone chaired the group that released the report detailing apparent Israeli war crimes during its massive attack on Gaza at the end of 2008 have Israel’s big political guns responded with such unwarranted fury, magnified as usual by ultra-Zionist media commentary. Netanyahu has the audacity to claim that your acknowledgement that it is not unnatural for the Palestinians oppressed for half a century to resist and resort to extremism is tantamount to the encouragement of terrorism, what he described as giving a “tailwind to terrorism.”

The fact that your intention was quite the opposite hardly matters.