Articles

Hamas’ bombing of an Israeli kindergarten is also outrageous!

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Those of us who are critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians must from time to time remind our communities that the dictators of Gaza, the Hamas group of Islamic extremists including the group Islamic Jihad, are as distorted and immoral in their way as Israel has been toward the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. There is no ethical excuse for Hamas bombing a school yard, thankfully a short while before the kindergarten children and staff arrived, as they did on Wednesday May 30. It is no excuse to say that Israel has done far worse toward Gaza. Yes, it has–but that doesn’t provide an argument for why Hamas should target civilians. Israel’s evil deeds in killing unarmed demonstrators last week at the Gaza fence does not make Hamas’ activity legitimate.

Other Voices

2 Tikkun perspectives on Gaza, Israel and Palestine

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Below are two perspectives both of which deserve to be taken seriously even though they differ in tone and direction. Tikkun has always supported open debate and disagreement among those committed to healing and transforming the world. Or as the Jewish tradition said, when rabbis Hillel and Shamai appealed to the heavenly God to resolve which position was most in accord with the divine will, the voice from heaven responded “this one AND this one are both the words of the living God.” Zionism has Become an Existential Threat—to Jews
by Mark LeVine

With each new death in Gaza the Israeli government is not only sealing the judgement of history as to the irredeemably racist and violent core of Zionist nationalism, it is also flashing a giant red light at Jews everywhere, warning us that the movement started ostensibly to protect and normalize Jewish existence has become an existential threat—to Jews. What else can one reasonably conclude when a new American embassy is opened to great fanfare in Jerusalem, its inauguration “blessed” by two pastors who openly call for the eternal damnation of the Jews as Israeli and Diaspora Jewish leaders beam with pride and sip champagne, while sixty miles away young Jews, in the name of their religion, massacre dozens of unarmed Palestinian women, men, children, elderly and young with utter inhumanity and impunity.

Editorials & Actions

1968: A Missed Chance for Socialism

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1968: A Missed Chance for Socialism
Dr. Dieter Duhm

Precisely 50 years ago, the international anti-imperialistic students’ movement culminated in the uprisings in France. At that time, Dieter Duhm, a psychoanalyst and sociologist, was a spokesman of the “new left” in the German students’ movement and coined the slogan, “Revolution without emancipation is counterrevolution.” He deepened the idea of merging the political revolution on the outer with a liberation from the structures of fear in the inner in his best-selling book Angst im Kapitalismus [Fear in Capitalism] in 1972. Ultimately, this exploration brought him to initiate a radical social experiment that evolved into the Tamera Peace Research & Education Center in Portugal in 1995. The radical critique of capitalism requires the concept of a comprehensive alternative. What are the structures of post-capitalist society?

33.1/2 Winter Spring

Introduction to Exploring Identity Politics

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I first got introduced to identity politics growing up during and after the Holocaust. For large numbers of Jews at that time the murder of one out of every three Jews on the planet Earth who were alive in 1940 was a trauma that not only shaped our lives  and consciousness, but was also then passed on to the next several generations. God had failed to show up and save the Jews. Much of the rest of the world failed to intervene to save Jews. The U.S. turned away refugee ships and most of the countries of the world were unwilling to open their doors to Jewish refugees who were often forced to return to countries dominated by the Nazis, from which they were soon sent to their deaths.

Articles

Israel Independence Day–3 different approaches plus our Tikkunish thoughts

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Below are three different takes, from 3 organizations each of which we at Tikkun support for their important work (Hazon in developing Jewish environmental consciousness, Torat Tzedeck for Rabbi Ascherman’s courageous work in defense of refugees, Palestinians, and Bedouin in Israel/Palestine, and T’ruah for its voice for progressive rabbis guided by Jill Jacobs). We present their statements on how to think about Israel on its 70th anniversary. I’m proud to be a member and supporter of each of these.  

In the statements below each  of them makes important points. Yet, none of them adequately capture the legitimate outrage of those Israelis who as Jews feel that Israel is desecrating that which is most sacred in the Jewish tradition, nor the pain of Arab Israelis who continue to experience the daily humiliations and pain of being a second-class citizen in a society that publicizes itself as an enlightened democracy, nor the pain of those millions of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.  

I particularly like Jill Jacobs, statement on behalf of T’ruah.  She makes a very persuasive case for a balanced approach that in tone is very different from some on the Left who can see nothing of value in Israel.

Editorials & Actions

Peace-oriented Israelis prepare to demonstrate near the Gaza border

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At a junction near the Gaza border, Israelis living in the vicinity will demonstrate tomorrow (Friday) and call out: “Stop the escalation – rebuild Gaza !!!”

 

 

Members of Kol Aher (Anohter Voice), an Israeli movement living in the town of Sderot and smaller communities in the Gaza border area, will hold the demonstration at the Yad Mordechai Junction, a short distance north of the border – where they have already held numerous demonstrations and protests on earlier  occasions.  

Demonstrators will make upon the government of Israel the following calls:

 

– Cease the shooting of unarmed demonstrators!  

– Lift the siege on the Gaza Strip!  

– No violence! Yes to aid in rebuilding Gaza !!

Articles

Israeli Army Slaughters NonViolent Protesters on Eve of Passover

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We at Tikkun are in mourning for the seventeen Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded by the Israeli army on the eve of Passover. We are outraged by the use of violence and force by the Israeli soldiers who faced no threat to their safety or to the security of the State of Israel (though there were a handful of violent provocateurs among the thousands of nonviolent Gazans who came to the border with Israel to protest the ongoing blockade that has caused incredible suffering and many deaths among those living in this tiny area of mostly Palestinian refugees). We are also once again grieving for a Judaism that is being trampled on by those Jewish leaders who turn a blind eye to the brutality orchestrated by the Israeli army and justified by the Israeli government. I have included below a summary of three articles that I encourage you to read to gain a deeper understandings of the situation on the ground and responses both in Israel and the U.S. Please circulate this widely, and urge those who agree with these ideas to write letters of protest to your elected US officials in both political parties who give automatic support to every funding bill for Israel and every resolution backing Israel, and express your upset also to the various Israeli consulates and embassies around the world. We should not allow those who support the policies of Occupation to call themselves “pro-Israel” when in fact they are following a path that may lead to Israel’s destruction and already have led many people in parts of the world that never had any religious antagonism to Jews (such as, China, India, or much of Africa) to be open to hating Jews because they identify all Jews with the immoral policies of the current Israeli government.

Editorials & Actions

The Colors of our Future

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The Colors of Our Future
by Ellie Lyla Lerner

Where the pot of gold used to lie is now a vortex of gasoline,
a gloss, floating on the water we hold most dear. This rainbow is not the fairy tale book ambassador. This rainbow is not the refraction of colors, arching over a reborn world. No longer will crystal clear water droplets fill storybooks and poems with multicolored hope. For this rainbow is a story of muddy water, dirty streets and songs of smog.

Other Voices

What Is a Tikkunish article?

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        Here is what we mean by a Tikkunish article:

        *It approaches issues with intellectual sophistication yet is understandable to anyone who has graduated college and makes a contribution to those who are interested in tikkun olam–the healing and transformation of our world toward a more generous, loving, environmentally sensitive socially and economically just, or spiritually alive and compassionate world. AND/OR

*It in some way brings a compassionate frame to a complex issue, reflecting empathy, or psychological complexity, or a spiritual dimension, which raises new ways of thinking about issues that are currently being discussed or ought to be discussed. AND/OR

It helps us understand some aspect of reality in a way that makes less able to fit traditional leftie dichotomies, e.g. helping to see that Israel/Palestine can best be understood through a lens of two peoples who have been victims of PTSD through their existence rather than just faulting one side or sounding as if one side is entirely evil and the other side entirely good. AND/OR

It gives us a new perspective on some reality that our readers are unlikely to have heard before and uses that perspective to give us some guidelines for activists or creative social theorists

AND/OR

It is funny in a way that doesn’t require one to be in some “in” crowd to get and appreciate the joke AND DOES NOT depend on putting down some real world person like Trump or other detestable leaders or culture figures

AND/OR

*It is spiritually or psychologically innovative, opening our eyes to elements of existence about which our readers might want to learn (e.g. important new developments in physics or astronomy or biology, without falling into an implicit scientism in which anything not subject to empirical verification, falsification, or measurement is deemed irrational or meaningless)

AND/Or

*It beautifully and imaginatively re-presents to us some aspect of daily life or some unusual experiences in a way that opens our eyes to the beauty of the universe or of some aspect of human experience, either through new analyses, or poetry, or fiction or by reviewing books that help strengthen the author’s analysis. AND/OR

* It reinterprets an established religion or religious text in a way that helps people outside of that tradition or text-world to see what is beautiful  in it or in a compassionate way points out what needs to be transcended.

Editorials & Actions

A Pentagon Style Trip Down Memory Lane

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You can read this online at :https://www.tikkun.org/newsite/a-pentagon-style-trip-down-memory-lane

The Light at the End of the Corner 
A Trip Down Memory Lane, Pentagon-Style 
By Tom Engelhardt   We thank Engelhardt and his TomDispatch.com, our media ally, for sharing this article with Tikkun readers. If you’re in the mood, would you consider taking a walk with me and, while we’re at it, thinking a little about America’s wars? Nothing particularly ambitious, mind you, just — if you’re up for it — a stroll to the corner. Now, admittedly, there’s a small catch here. Where exactly is that corner?  I think the first time I heard about it might have been back in January 2004 and it was located somewhere in Iraq.