Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/generalnews/page/36/)
Would prefer not to use this at all. It’s a default and can’t be removed.
Indeed, when it comes to the issue of Israel/Palestine, the unwritten rule of the Jewish establishment has always been, “toe our line or feel our wrath.” By voting for divestment, the PC(USA) declared itself ready to stand down this ultimatum. There is now every reason to believe other denominations will now follow suit.
The fate of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped last week by an unconfirmed entity in the West Bank, remains unknown, a deeply concerning truth that has refocused attention on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, while their fate remains unknown, what is known is the fate of those Palestinians who have been killed, detained and shuttered with the Israeli military’s search for the missing teens transitioning into a collective punishment of an entire people.
A briefing on the recent Presbyterian Divestment vote and the impacts of such a vote, which will hopefully amplify a conversation about the true realities of the suffering experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis in an asymmetrical conflict.
In light of the recent vote in the Presbyterian Church, which will allow Presbyterian ministers to officiate same-gender marriage, Craig Wiesner writes a reflection on the last decade and the evolution of the Church’s stance on the matter, citing as an example, his own marriage and the many trials, as well as triumphs, he and his spouse experienced as advocates of reform.
Monday on CNN’s “Crossfire,” cohost S.E. Cupp prepared the viewing audience to brace themselves for a “doosy” of a statement embedded deep in Hillary Clinton’s new book, Hard Choices.
Curious to know what this controversial statement might be? It’s a sentence from her recollections of a trip taken with Bill Clinton to the Palestinian city of Jericho in 1981. Of that trip, Clinton writes:
“In the West Bank, I got my first glimpse of life under occupation for Palestinians, who were denied the dignity and self-determination that Americans take for granted.”
Last week, the famed 9/11 memorial museum opened with a host of items salvaged from that fateful day in American history. About the same time, Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative burst onto our collective consciousness by once again using the image of the burning twin towers on Washington, D.C. buses to malign an entire religion. It seems that almost thirteen years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, we still have an antagonistic, feral response to this defining moment in modern history. Both events have spurred protests, but thankfully not just by Muslims. Although the 9/11 memorial museum itself has remained out of controversy’s way, the accompanying seven-minute film called “The Rise of Al-Qaeda” is fast becoming a cause for concern for many New Yorkers regardless of religion. Rather than Muslims screaming themselves hoarse about Islamophobia to no avail, the film is being protested by an interfaith group as one that used specifically Islamic terminology in a way that many viewers may associate Islam with terrorism. While no-one is disputing the religion of the terrorists involved in 9/11, many feel that more should be done to differentiate between Islam as an ideology and the extremist interpretations of some Muslim groups.
Growing up, I rarely heard the ‘P’ word uttered in my suburban Atlanta community, and not once did I hear it spoken in my Hebrew school at our family’s conservative synagogue, where teachers spoke of “them” in quick, hushed tones. And whenever the ‘P’ word was mentioned, whether on CNN or ABC News, it was always accompanied by images of bloodied streets, of people who looked like me grieving, of extremists pointing guns toward the heavens. The message growing up in America, and in the American Jewish community, was clear: Palestinians were a people so evil as to not be named, unless appropriately malevolent images befitting such a people could be simultaneously conjured. Palestinians were not human, their existence inhumane. This is what I was taught.
Of course, anti-Semitism exists in America and remains a dangerous, global prejudice which reverberates strongly in the Holocaust’s wake. I’ve experienced it on several occasions in multiple countries, as have family and friends. Which is why it’s troubling to witness individuals and organizations in America make false ‘anti-Semitism’ claims not to point out this real prejudice, but in the service of propaganda intended to demonize Middle-Eastern Muslims in general, and Palestinians in particular.
The good news is that even as many young Jews reject Judaism, they nevertheless have inherited a memory of the values that Judaism sought to inspire, and so many have joined in a wide variety of prophetic enterprises to reclaim Jewish spirituality and/or rebuild a Jewish social justice consciousness.
Human life is more important than rocks, but our antiquated U.S. Constitution is smothering our ability to respond to the wider world with that belief in mind and heart.