Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/2014/07/page/3/)
Long before Josh Fattal was released from Evin Prison in Iran, it had become abundantly clear to him and the rest of the world that his imprisonment had little do to with himself. His recent visit to Washington, D.C. comes at a crucial moment for the ongoing efforts to peacefully resolve the Iranian nuclear standoff.
On the ground in Gaza, Israel’s war against Hamas has been devastating. Online and in the public sphere, a different sort of war has been taking place – a broad initiative to delegitimize those who raise questions about and critique Israel’s actions.
“This will be the beginning of our country sliding toward, it’s a strong word, but anarchy. How can marriage be marriage for thousands of years and now all the sudden because a minority, an influential minority, has a push or agenda … and totally reshapes something that was not founded in our country.”
– David Tyree, to the National Organization for Marriage, 2011
David Tyree, former NFL wide receiver for the New York Giants, is probably most renowned for his amazing “helmet catch” in 2007 to continue the ultimately decisive game-winning surge against the undefeated New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLI by the close score of 17 – 14. In 2011, though, he announced that he would gladly trade his phenomenal catch in exchange for a law outlawing marriage for same-sex couples. Tyree, who is married, a father of four children, and a devout Christian asserted that homosexuality and marriage for same-sex couples defies God: “I don’t agree with it [gay marriage] because God doesn’t agree with it.
We are holding a Conference Call on the Israel/Gaza war that you are invited to join! It is taking place this Friday with Uri Avnery, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and Cat Zavis. Sign up now!
If the polls are correct and the Senate goes Republican this November, the House of Representatives will make impeaching the president its first order of business. And it will pass the Republican House overwhelmingly. On what grounds, one might ask. The reason the President will be impeached is because he is African-American.
For an author whose sympathies tend to lie with Israel, events of recent years (and recent days) have made it impossible for him to ignore the plight of the Palestinians. And it is in situations like these, where something must be done but it seems there is nothing to do, that the best of people make the worst mistakes. Lobbing rockets into occupied sections of Israel is counter-productive, but non-violent tactics are ignored by the international media and punished by the Israelis.
During the summer, I have had some time to catch up on some pleasurable reading and, I must admit, binge watching of three TV series. What I found so unsettling and utterly disturbing connecting the three series was the absolute lack of value placed on human life. People killed each other with as much deliberation as they would in squashing a fly on their bedroom wall. The scenes depicted in these series could never occur today in real life, could they?
On Sunday evening, a four-story house in Gaza was decimated by an Israeli missile. At the moment of impact, 25 people belonging to four families, including 19 children, were gathered together to break the day’s Ramadan fast. All of them were killed.
Israel must end the invasion, stop its bombing of Gaza, free the Palestinians it has arrested in the past years, and abandon its insane policy of seeking security through domination. Our focus on the psycho-spiritual dimension of the struggle and the need for a strategy of generosity is precisely what Tikkun brings to the table through our Network of Spiritual Progressives and something that you’ll find sorely missing in most analyses.
We cannot use the acknowledgement of injustice to excuse ourselves from doing anything to end it. We have to take the next step – to think about solutions; to work to hold Israel accountable to basic principles of human rights and self-determination; to recognize the rights of those who have been expelled from their homes. Sometimes the problem is understood as beginning with “the occupation” of 1967, but the root cause goes back to the Nakba and the refusal to allow the return of the refugees in contradiction of UN general assembly resolution 194.