The human suffering is monumental. The political consequence was a major rightward turn in Israel that shaped the 2015 Israeli elections.
Israel/Palestine
For Hazhir
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Jon Swan’s poem about drones is a haunting vision. “The drone hovers under the iron-gray dome of heaven . . .”
Politics & Society
Spaces and Places: Israel’s Homeland Narrative
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The conception of Yahweh as placeless reflects the Jewish sense of identity as essentially homeless. But the homelessness of the Jewish deity is in no way a defect — the Jewish concept of the divine represents a radical intellectual advance.
US_Politics
Coexistence, Equality, and Universal Principles in Israel/Palestine: Regrouping in the Absence of a Two-State Solution
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The most urgent focus must be on the worsening conditions faced by Palestinians, not on theoretical arguments about one state vs. two.
Articles
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Fantasy World
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Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was brilliantly deceitful because it played to the fantasies that Israeli propaganda and right wing militarists in the US have been popularizing for the past thirty years. The biggest fantasy: that we can coerce others through power over them to do what we consider in the best interests of the U.S. or Israel.
Articles
Bringing the Values of Open Hillel Into Postgraduate Life: An Open Letter
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Where will all the Open Hillelnikim go once they’ve left campus? What will become of this movement? How will you engage the Jewish community beyond campus? In short, how will you engage with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an American Jew?
Articles
The View from Palestine: American Jewish Journeys into the West Bank
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Extend programs are based on a simple belief that without understanding Palestinian perspectives, we are condemned to see the conflict as a matter of unequivocal good against unequivocal evil, instead of as a tragic cycle from which the overwhelmingly majority of Israelis and Palestinians want to break.
Articles
Before Mondoweiss: Jewish Anti-Nationalism in the Wake of the Holocaust
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Once upon a time, Hillel chapters across the country distributed an adamantly anti-Zionist newsletter that could well be described as the Mondoweiss of its day. Yet during the years in which the newsletter ran, Israel was gradually finding its place center-stage for Jews worldwide—a nightmare come true for the anti-Zionist camp.
Articles
Without Justice, Tolerance Perpetuates the Status Quo
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Within Open Hillel, we often talk about the value of embracing the discomfort we experience when hearing opinions that we disagree with. After all, ideas that make us uncomfortable may challenge our intellectual or emotional security, but rarely challenge our actual physical safety.
Articles
Assimilation Indeed: Hillel’s Co-optation of Progressive Jewish Students, 1967-2015
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For many Jewish students, the Six-Day War constituted the first time they experienced a connection to a Jewish cause recognized by the establishment. Unfortunately, the Hillel International of today has prioritized parroting the hasbara of expansionist Israeli governments over capacious intellectual debate.
Articles
A Wholehearted Jewish Future
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My generation has left the peace movement in Israel hanging. Now we are relying on the next generation to articulate what we have been thinking but haven’t said. What we do say, we whisper. Then we congratulate ourselves for getting that far. Why are we frightened? Why are we silent?
Articles
Letter to a Jewish Girl
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I write this letter for the Jewish girl who was afraid to put her name to this letter for fear of being deemed too controversial to be hired within the American Jewish community. I write this letter for the Jewish girl who debates the news schizophrenically with herself inside her head. I write this letter for the Jewish girl who was told that her politics went wrong when she let a few experiences with “good Arabs” distract her from the bigger picture.
Articles
What it Really Means to be Jew-ish
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I am both Arab and Jewish, and I enjoy resisting those binaries through the performance of my own unique identity. But identifying with both my Arab and Jewish heritage garners mixed results. So long as Hillel is in the business of defining people’s Jewishness for them, they will continue to marginalize Jewish voices.
Articles
Dispatches from the Open Hillel Movement: An Introduction
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This collection of pieces was born out of a gathering of ideas and debate modeled by the Open Hillel conference — a needed intervention in the contemporary echo chamber of Jewish American discourse about Israel.
Articles
Dispatches from the Open Hillel Movement
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This collection of pieces was born out of the debates modeled by the Open Hillel conference. Some essays represent voices or ideas that are currently excluded by the Standards of Partnership, some discuss the challenges presented by the Open Hillel movement, some tell personal stories of political transformation, and some discuss the historical diversity of Jewish opinions about Zionism. The collection represents a taste of the vibrancy of Jewish opinion, ideas, and debate that the Open Hillel movement is working to revive. These essays represent the beginning, not the end, of a new kind of conversation.