Editorials & Actions

Hamas Must Stop Attempting to Bomb Israel

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Hamas is “objectively even if not subjectively” the best friend of the Israeli settlers, right-wing Israeli extremists, and the Netanyahu government. Hamas leaders know very well that their bombs are not getting through Israel’s missile shield. There is no possible military advantage to continuing these futile attempts to rectify the imbalance in casualties between the 200 Palestinians already killed by Israeli attacks and the one Israeli killed by Hamas shells. But the extremists in Hamas, like the rogue band of criminals who murdered three Israeli youth, have succeeded in their goal: to create fear among Israelis that leads them to rally to those racists who wish to punish the entire Palestinian people for the actions of a few.  Such reactionaries wish to thereby “prove” to the Palestinian people that there is no possibility of peace with Israel and to discredit the strategy of the Palestinian Authority that has renounced violence for the past 8 years. Still, the Palestinian Authority achieves little in the way of independence and dignity for all its efforts at negotiations with Netanyahu.

Editorials & Actions

Netanyahu Says NO to Independent Palestinian State; Israeli Dharma Group Confronts Israeli Settlers’ Arrogance and Violence

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Editor’s note: We got this article (printed below) from the Times of Israel, in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu fully reveals that he never intended and never will negotiate an independent Palestinian state. To some this is shocking news and all the more since the Western media totally ignored this most significant statement made by Netanyahu, a full revelation of what he really thinks when he is speaking only in Hebrew and not trying to do p.r. for the West. But for many of us who have followed his actions, increasing settlements and using the despicable murder of Israeli teens as a pretext for once again escalating into war the struggle against Hamas, we have not been mesmerized by his deceitful words and there is nothing surprising in all this. Netanyahu has never been a partner for peace and the foolishness of the Obama Administration’s strategy of “get the peace negotiations going” is revealed. As I’ve said in previous editorials in Tikkun, the only thing the US can do that would be a real contribution toward peace is to go over the heads of Israeli and Palestinian leaders and go directly to the people and present a vision and a concrete plan for the terms that could actually end the conflict.

Editorials & Actions

Refusing Sanctuary to Children in Need

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http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20140629-refusing-sanctuary-to-children-in-need.ece

Refusing sanctuary to children in need
Exactly 75 years and one month ago the St. Louis, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States, forced to return to Europe. U.S. law didn’t allow them sanctuary. Today we are preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe.

Editorials & Actions

Women Rising in the Middle East

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Women Rising for the Middle East, in solidarity with Zahira and the women of ME

Dearest Zahira, dearest Wise Women of our Circle,

First, Zahira, thank you for connecting with all of us as the unbearable situation unfolds in Palestine and Israel. Your message of last Saturday is exactly the ‘ALARM BELL’, the ‘wake up call’ that Scilla so powerfully evoked in Charney Manor, and that we all deeply felt.

This is our raison d’etre as a women’s initiative: When we hear the wake up call of such terrible suffering, we know that a deeper, wiser, more compassionate and far-sighted response that serves the highest interest of everyone is needed and is possible; and we know and that we as women are best placed to tap into it, to voice it, and to implement it together. In this holy month of Ramadan, Palestine, and the entire Middle East is burning – again. We women know these flames could envelop the world if we don’t ‘inner act’  – from our souls – NOW. As the Israel-Palestine crisis broke and ISIS captured Mosul, I was on a peace mission in Turkey to meet exiled Syrian peace activists and refugees from Syria, Iraq and Palestine.

Editorials & Actions

End the Violence in Israel/Palestine: Cease Fire NOW!

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Once again the violence of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and the violence of Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza have combined to create a spiraling violence that serves the extremists on both sides who can point to the intended violence on the other side to justify their own. We call upon both sides to agree to an immediate cease fire from both sides. In my book Embracing Israel/Palestine, I show how both sides have co-created this mess, and why it is futile, stupid, intellectually lacking in credibility, and ethically perverse to try to pin the blame on one side or the other, because both sides have been incredibly tone deaf to the suffering of the other side and the most negative possible interpretation of the other side’s intentions increasingly prevails in the public perceptions on each side of the intentions of the other. Of course at the moment there is no equivalence in power or violence. Israel has already killed over 150 Palestinians, and wounder hundreds; Gazans have not inflicted any deaths and few injuries on Israelis (which I’m glad about–I don’t want Israeli blood to flow any more than I want Palesitnian blood to flow!

Editorials & Actions

Remembering Reb Zalman–Members of our Tikkun Community Share Their Memories

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A variety of Memories of Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi (z’l). We invited people in the Tikkun community to share some memories of their personal connections to Zalman. We cannot publish them all—so many hundreds of people pouring out their wonderful experiences and wishing to honor this great Tzaddik!  So we’ve selected a representative sample. I have so many memories myself I didn’t mention in the earlier piece I sent out. One that comes to mind as I read the Israeli press describing mobs of Israelis roaming the streets of Israeli towns and beating up Israeli Palestinians that they come upon, while the Israeli army blows up homes of “suspected terrorists” though they have no plausible connection with the horrible murder committed against 3 Israeli youth last week, and reading about the Palestinian youth murdered by Israeli settlers (according to the latest information from the Israeli investigators of that crime).

Editorials & Actions

Israeli Lies to Justify Attacks on Hamas Exposed (sadly) Plus more on the War Israel is Waging Against Palestinians

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Editor’s Note: The following article from The Forward by JJ Goldberg tells us how the Israeli government lied about what it knew and when it knew it, and about how it manipulated reports of the circumstances of the kidnapping and murders to create a full scale attack on Hamas, despite Hamas having done what it could to avoid confrontation with Israel. Please read it carefully and then understand how little you can believe in the media when it comes to Israel/Palestine. Personally, I’m shocked and angered at what this story reveals about Israeli behavior, how the Netanyahu government conspired to rile up public opinion to blame the kidnapping of the Israeli teens on Hamas though it knew that Hamas had nothing to do with it, and to justify a war with Hamas (presumably to force the Palestinian Authority to break its newly shaped reconciliation with Hamas). I commend JJ Goldberg for writing this account and the Forward for publishing it.  –Rabbi Michael Lerner    RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com

It is then followed by other articles about the war Israel is waging against Palesitnians

Bloody Gaza Onslaught Built on Foundation of Politics and Lies
Israeli Military Dragged Into New Quagmire by Politicians

By J.J. Goldberg   (a weekly columnist of long and distinguished pedigree)

The Forward, Published July 10, 2014, issue of July 18, 2014

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/201764/bloody-gaza-onslaught-built-on-foundation-of-polit/?p=all#ixzz374CXcrLV <http://forward.com/articles/201764/bloody-gaza-onslaught-built-on-foundation-of-polit/?p=all#ixzz374CXcrLV>

In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”

That’s unusual language for a military mouthpiece. Typically they spout lines like “We will take all necessary actions” or “The state of Israel will defend its citizens.” You don’t expect to hear: “This is the politicians’ idea.

Editorials & Actions

What the Newspapers Don’t Reveal About the Lynch Mentality Spreading Through Israel

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Jerusalem Light Rail Train
Amjad Shbita, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, an activist in the Israeli Hadash-Maki party (Jewish and Palestinian socialists), who has also worked at the Knesset as a parliamentary assistant, introduces this harrowing account on Facebook by asking a theoretical question: “Fascists in a colonial regime? Is that a historical precedent?”

The account was written by Nijmeh Ali, a woman. It follows, in translation:
“The light train in Jerusalem. I am sitting quietly. Some yelling is heard and the train gets stuck.

Editorials & Actions

Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: The Holy Cobbler with a Secret

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Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi: The Holy Cobbler with a Secret   ….an essay by Shaul Magid

The day Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi left this world I happened to be mostly in transit. I took two books with me for the day; David Macey’s biography of Frantz Fanon, and R. Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezritch’s Hasidic work Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov. When I heard the sad news on the train, feeling quite alone, I did what any hasid would do when he heard of the death of his rebbe. I took out a Hasidic work and began learning. I found myself somewhere in the middle of Maggid Devarav le-Ya’akov.

Editorials & Actions

Israeli Vengeance Runs Wild–Violating Torah law and International Law

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“Thou Shall NOT Take Vengeance” is a key law of Torah, but it is being ignored in Israel today both by the government and by significant parts of the people of the State of Israel (read Chemi Shalev’s article and Gideon Levi’s article). We at Tikkun condemned the kidnapping of three Israeli teens several weeks ago, and we rejected the suggestion by some on the Left and some in the Palestinian world that this act had to be contextualized to the Occupation. Instead we insisted that acts of kidnapping and then subsequently of murder are ethically wrong and should not be minimized or morally excused on the grounds that just before those kidnappings Israeli occupying forces had killed several Palestinians in nearby Hebron. Now we watch in horror as Israelis march through the streets of Jerusalem and many other cities calling for vengeance, as some Israelis kidnap and murder a Palestinian teen in East Jerusalem, as the Israeli Army blows up dozens of homes of “suspected terrorists” without the slightest attempt to give them an opportunity to defend themselves against this charge, and as the IDF bombs Gaza though there is no evidence that the Israeli teens were killed by order of anyone in Hamas. This, of course, is not fundamentally different from what the United States did after 9/11, or what China did after the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square or what many other countries do.

Editorials & Actions

On the Death of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, z’l: A Great Jewish Teacher and the Founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement

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Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, and one of the most creative and impactful Jewish theologians of the last forty years, died today. I write with tears in my eyes and love in my heart for this incredible teacher, a source of inspiration for literally hundreds of thousands. I loved this man very very deeply for the past fifty one years that I knew him. This is not a eulogy, but a personal statement of loss and an invitation to those who did know him to share stories about him with us at Tikkun which we can send out to the tens of thousands of people who read our communications. This is my form of grieving after I stopped crying at hearing this news today.

Editorials & Actions

Noam Chomsky on America’s Real Foreign Policy

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America’s Real Foreign Policy: Global Corporatization by Force

Whose security is the U.S. military and foreign service protecting? by Noam Chomsky

US soldiers participating in live fire drills during NATO training in Germany. (Photo: flickr / cc / MATEUS_27:24&25)The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs.  In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons.  First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact.  Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it.  Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices.  The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond. There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse.  It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.

Israel/Palestine

Mourning the Murder of 3 Israeli Teens

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We at Tikkun are in mourning for the three teens murdered in the West Bank. We find this act painful and outrageous. There can be no excuse for this kind of act. And we know that the revenge/retaliation acts of Israel will only bring about more acts of violence. The cycle will continue until Israel ends the Occupation and accepts a peace arrangement generous enough both in its particulars and in the spirit in which it is offered as to undermine the support for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza and to empower the voices of Palestinian peacemakers.

Editorials & Actions

Mourning for the Three Murdered Israeli Teens

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We at Tikkun are in mourning for the three teens murdered in the West Bank. We find this act painful and outrageous. There can be no excuse for this kind of act. And we know that the revenge/retaliation acts of Israel will only bring about more acts of violence. The cycle will continue until Israel ends the Occupation and accepts a peace arrangement generous enough both in its particulars and in the spirit in which it is offered as to undermine the support for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza and to empower the voices of Palestinian peacemakers.

Editorials & Actions

Free the Kidnapped Israeli Teens

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Free the Kidnapped Israeli Teens

By Rabbi Michael Lerner

Kidnapping anyone, anytime is always a violation of a basic human right. But is even more outrageous when done to children or teens who are particularly vulnerable. So it is with shock and outrage that we at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives respond to the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teens who were returning from their study at a yeshiva in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank. We demand the immediate release and safe return of those teens to their families! We were shocked and outraged at the kidnapping of hundreds of Christian girls by Muslim fundamentalists in Africa, with the implied story that these girls would be raped (the functional equivalent of “forced marriages” along with forced conversions to Islam).