Editorials & Actions

Two State Solution is the Only Solution–says Uri Avnery, Leader of the Israeli Peace Movement Gush Shalom

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Uri Avnery, chair of Israel’s peace movement Gush Shalom in Tel Aviv, challenges those lefties and righties who repeat the mantra that “the 2 state soluiton is dead.” If only the “One State” solution is on the agenda, he points out, then all those Israelis who have been demonstrating against new settlements have no case whatsoever, since in a one state solution both Israelis and Palesitnians should be able to build anyplace they want within that state and settlement construction should be viewed as a step in that direction! He seems to be saying to peace people: you can’t have it both ways–if you want one state then you have no good grounds to oppose Jews building wherever they want in that supposedly emerging one state.  I have one disagreement with Avnery’s piece below: I think if Palestinians and peaceniks around the world were to embrace one state and switch their demands to a simple one: “One person one vote throughout Israel/Palestine” this prospect might seem so overwhelmingly scary to Israelis that it would create the political pressure inside Israel to seriously negotiate a two state solution. It might be that asking for one state is the only way Palesitnians will get a two state solution. Just a possibility to consider.

Editorials & Actions

How the Market Economy Undermines Ethics

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The author of this article ignores the environmental threat to the survival of the human race that global capitalism has become, but his thinking about its destructive impact on the ethical climate is significant (and in part it is the decline of the ethical climate which has contributed to the sad passivity manifested even by that majority of Americans who understand the urgency facing us and yet who feel unable to act in concert with others to challenge the upcoming disasters). –Rabbi Michael Lerner
Capitalism is killing our morals, our future
Commentary: In a Market Society, everything is for sale

Paul B. Farrell
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/capitalism-is-killing-our-morals-our-future-2013-04-27
April 29, 2013

(reprinted from Market Watch)

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Yes, capitalism is working … for the Forbes 1,000 Global Billionaires whose ranks swelled from 322 in 2000 to 1,426 recently. Billionaires control the vast majority of the world’s wealth, while the income of American workers stagnated.

Editorials & Actions

Why the Russian Jews in Israel Vote Reactionary

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The Russians Came
Uri Avnery

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Russians-Came-by-Uri-Avnery-130428-758.html

April 27, 2013                                               

WHEN THE huge immigration wave from the Soviet Union arrived in 1990, we were glad. First of all, because we believe that all immigration is a good thing for the country. This, I believe, is generally the case. Second, because we were convinced that this specific group of immigrants would push our country in the right direction. These people, we told ourselves, have been educated for 70 years in an internationalist spirit.

Editorials & Actions

Drones Over there, total surveillance over here–by Saskia Sassen

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Drones Over there, total surveillance over here

by Saskia Sassen

19 Feb 2013 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013210114231346318.html

The massive surveillance system built up over the last 10 years is the domestic companion of overseas drone killings. There are at least 10,000 buildings across the US, with a massive concentration in Washington, DC, engaged in ongoing surveillance of all residing in the territory of the US [AP]

The big story buried in all the commentary about the US government’s drone policy is that the old algorithm of the liberal state no longer works. Focusing on drones is almost a distraction, if it weren’t for the number of men, women and children they have killed in only a few years. What we should focus on is the deeper condition that enables the drone policy, and so much more, and that is the sharp increase in unaccountable executive power, no matter what party is in power. The 1960s and the 1970s saw the making of laws that called for the executive branch of government to be more responsive to basic principles of a division of power and accountability to citizens.

Editorials & Actions

Israeli doctors who betray their training

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Gideon Levy’s article, Israeli Doctors Who Betray Their Training, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israeli-doctors-who-betray-their-training.premium-1.513345 in Ha’aretz, no longer shocks because of the way the US has gotten used to torture by American intelligence agencies and the collaboration of psychologists in the American Psychological Association. Israeli doctors who betray their training

by Gideon Levy|April 4, 2013|Ha’aretz

From the prison guards and from Shin Bet personnel nobody expects any measure of compassion or humanity. But where are the doctors? They studied medicine. Perhaps their parents pushed them to be doctors or perhaps they had a burning desire to enter this profession from the time they were children.

2013

Rabbis Get Boxed In: Criticism of Israel at a High Price

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The New York Times ran a major story when the rabbis of B’nai Jeshurun synagogue in New York City sent a note to thousands of congregants applauding the UN resolution of November 29, 2012, which admitted Palestine to the UN as an “observer state.” The story focused on the anger of some (no numbers were given) congregants who were outraged that their rabbis would take such a public stance in support of the right of Palestine to be considered a state. In contrast, the Union of Reform Judaism (the Reform Movement typically and rightly praised for its progressive stance on many other issues) denounced the vote and praised the Obama administration for voting against the UN resolution. {{{subscriber}}} [trackrt]
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2013

More Wars for the Middle East?

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I pray that voices of sanity will prevail and that, instead of trying to take out Iranian nukes, Israel will concentrate on outstretching its hands in generosity toward the Palestinian people, thereby neutralizing the one card Arab and Muslim extremists have continually used in the past decades to show that the real enemy is not poverty and ignorance, but Israel and the United States.

2013

Faulty Wisdom in Spielberg’s Lincoln

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I deeply appreciated how the movie brought to life a moment of American history that recalls the deep racism that permeated the Congress during the Civil War, and the courageous role Lincoln played in fighting for an end to slavery. Yet something very deep was missing, and that became clearer to me after reading the misguided response to the movie by David Brooks, a former editor at the right-wing Daily Standard who now makes inroads with some liberals by spouting pro–status quo wisdom from his perch at the New York Times.

2013

The Jewish Vote 2012

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Jewish Republicans predicted that Obama’s disagreements with Israeli policies would cost him heavily, but in fact most Jews did not cast their vote primarily on Israel-related issues: most Jews identified the economy and health care as their primary concerns in exit polls.

Editorials & Actions

Obama’s Speech to Israelis–the text and my commentary

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An editorial preface from Rabbi Michael Lerner:

If only Obama could go beyond the brilliant principles he articulated today to Israelis in Jerusalem—to follow through with action based on those principles!!! Obama had an amazing opportunity to paint a detailed picture of what a peace agreement could look like between Israelis and Palestinians. Very few Palestinians or Israelis have ever heard one of their leaders present such a vision in a way that seemed detailed enough to be plausible. Instead, President Obama stayed at a very general level—urging people to not fear, reminding them that they are not alone. And those reminders were brilliantly done, and very important.

Articles

For your Passover Seders or Easter Gatherings

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Both Passover and Easter have a message of liberation and hope for the downtrodden of the earth. Yet too often we fail to see the continuities between the original liberatory messages of these holidays and the contemporary need for liberation and resurrection of the dead parts of our consciousness. This is our first attempt to craft a Seder addressing the needs of the 99 percent.

Editorials & Actions

Support Women of the Wall in Jerusalem

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Tikkun and our interfaith  (and atheist-welcoming) Network of Spiritual Progressives unequivocally support the right of women in Israel to pray in any way they choose at the Wall (site of what is believed to be the ancient Temple), despite the attacks on them by Ultra-Orthodox men who in turn are backed by the Israeli government in their “right” to determine who gets to pray at the Wall and how. The claim of the ultra-orthodox to such a “right” is completely illegitimate. The Wall has historically belonged to the entire Jewish people, and not simply to its men. Yet in the past months women praying at the Wall who have donned prayer shawls (Tallit) and Tefillin or who have attempted to read the Torah aloud have been physically assaulted by ultra-orthodox men and arrested by the Israeli civil authorities for violating the ultra-orthodox restrictions on women’s prayer. Judaism is not the only religion to have corners of reactionary treatment of women, even though in the past it has also had some practices which advanced women’s rights far beyond what was available to women in other religions (for example around divorce).

Editorials & Actions

Israel’s Occupation is not Zionism

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This oped from Ha’aretz newspaper in Israel shows how much people with a moral conscience in Israel are trying to reconcile Israel’s actual reality with the ideals that once animated the Zionist movement. It’s actually quite sad to witness that disconnect.–Rabbi Michael Lerner

Erdogan, this isn’t Zionism

Those who care deeply about Zionist ideals shouldn’t criticize Turkey’s prime minister but rather the Israeli leaders who are destroying the very foundations of Zionism. By Dmitry Shumsky | Mar.12, 2013 | 1:08 AM |  4

What did Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan mean when he recently compared Zionism to fascism and termed it a crime against humanity? He probably wanted to say that the Israeli occupation in the West Bank and the inhumane blockade of the Gaza Strip, the one that citizens of his country sought to break when they boarded the Mavi Marmara ship are similar to the cruel, abusive acts of fascist states toward their own citizen-subjects. One has to admit that there is more than a speck of truth in Erdogan’s charges.

Editorials & Actions

Purim Wisdom: Explaining the Deeper Meaning of this Jewish Holiday which begins Saturday night, Feb. 23

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Purim Wisdom: Explaining the Deeper Meaning of this Jewish Holiday which begins Saturday night, Feb. 23

February 22, 2013

Purim Wisdom Explaining the deeper meaning of this holiday! «Blame, Responsibility, and Care

Weekly Sermon – Breaking Ground: Endless Desire»

Torah Commentary- Purim: Esther- Dawn of a New Age

by: Mark Kirschbaum on February 21st, 2013 |  Mark Kirschbaum’s commentary on Torah and Jewish religious holidays can be read weekly on our blog Tikkun Daily. It’s free to subscribe at https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/join-tikkun-daily/

I will admit that I’ve always had a certain hesitation when it came to Purim. It wasn’t that I was so influenced by Bible criticism or historical scholarship, it was my own sense that the Book of Esther, the focus of the holiday of Purim, read more like a novel than a book of prophecy.

Editorials & Actions

Obama’s Visit to Israel–Why Is He Going (an analysis by Carl Boice)

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Bloice’s analysis raises very important questions. The worst possible outcome: Netanyahu agrees to some cosmetic step toward negotiations or even suspends all construction of settlements on the West Bank, though he intends in the actual negotiations that ensue to offer nothing that Palestinians could agree to, and meanwhile to achieve that end Obama agrees to green light and back up militarily an Israeli assault on Iran.—Rabbi Michael Lerner

Exactly Why Is President Obama Going to Israel? 

Carl Bloice

February 15, 2013

Foreign Policy in Focus

As soon was announced that the President would be visiting the Middle East, supporters of the policies of the Netanyahu government went into overdrive in an effort to throw cold water on any idea that the diplomatic mission could achieve any breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”

 

Both Israel and the United States seek to quash expectations that the visit will jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he and U.S. President Barak Obama have agreed that when the U.S. President visits Israel they would discuss “three main issues … Iran’s attempt to arm itself with nuclear weapons, the unstable situation in Syria … and the efforts to advance the diplomatic process of peace between the Palestinians and us,” that’s not exactly what others are saying in either Washington or Tel Aviv.As soon was announced that the President would be visiting the Middle East, supporters of the policies of the Netanyahu government went into overdrive in an effort to throw cold water on any idea that the diplomatic mission could achieve any breakthrough in the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.”

“While the US ambassador to Israel said today that Mr. Obama would visit the country with an ‘urgent’ mission to revive peace negotiations, Israeli diplomats said talks with Benjamin Netanyahu would focus on Iran,” reported the British daily Telegraph.