General News

Confessions Of A J Street Convert

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My self-discovery occurred on a drive to Austin two years ago. (It also occurred during my teenage years, but that’s a story for a different and possibly older audience.) After listening to a deeply unproductive discussion between several Palestinians and Israelis on a local radio station, one that was more the equivalent of a wrestling match than a debate, I had an epiphany. Well two epiphanies: My tire was definitely flat and I was going to need to summon my “inner mechanic” along the side of the freeway. Plus, several minutes after the tire epiphany, while contemplating what to do about AAA’s two hour wait time, my mind wandered — in an intellectual not an Alzheimer’s sense — to a recent conversation with a local Jewish organizational official. Not because he promised that he could change my tire whenever I needed him to, although offering to fix flats might be an ingenious way for Jewish organizations to get a few extra bucks, but because his wait time was similar to AAA’s, if only I added two more zeroes and substituted years for hours: Fixing my tire might be possible in two hours andIsrael-Palestine peace might be possible in 200 years.

General News

Help Kickstart a Gaza Video Documentary

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While I was reporting from Gaza for five months in 2010, I met a 67-year-old filmmaker who produced a riveting video tour of Gaza called Inshallah. Maurice is now working on a courageous new film called Mohammed’s Cry. Please read his reflections, spread the word, and (if you can), help him raise the funds he needs to draw attention to the ongoing suffering of Gazan civilians. From Producer/Director Maurice Jacobsen:
I often wonder what draws Westerners to travel to Gaza. Is it anger at the incredible injustices being inflicted on the Gazan population and the need to witness these flagrant offenses first hand?

Christianity

Online tools enriching the study of sacred text

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This article was co-authored by Matthew L. Skinner. Picture this: an Iraqi reporter becomes interested in the work of a Jewish student in Israel after reading an article about Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain that the student published online. The reporter contacts the student and interviews him about future prospects for Jewish-Muslim coexistence. As the student in this story and co-author of this article, Joshua Stanton knows first-hand how technology is reshaping the way people of different religions interact. To start with, he and the Iraqi reporter would never have connected without the Internet, which enabled them to bypass regional politics and borders.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Abbas admits Palestinian errors

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has just made a significant stride toward reaching out for peace with Israel. As reported by Carlo Strenger, Abbas has owned up to some important historical truths in an interview aired both on Israeli and Palestinian television.

Politics & Society

Photo Essay: Occupy Oakland's General Strike

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Many of the general strike images that have become iconic fail to convey a central embodied experience of the day: the intense sense of connection, warmth, and engagement experienced by the people who participated in the day’s mass nonviolent actions. This photo essay offers a vision of the general strike from the ground, from the perspective of participants.

Christianity

Recalling the French Revolution of 1789: Lessons for the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street Movements

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When I was reading into a book about Adolf Hitler, entitled The Psychopathic God, when I ran across a meaningful quote from a French Revolution-era author, diplomat and orator named Honore Mirabeau. In the book he wrote about his experience visiting the kingdom of Prussia (A Secret History of the Court of Berlin), Mirabeau wrote:
“Prussia is not a country that has an Army; it is an Army that has a country”. That quote piqued my interest so I did some research into the realities in which Mirabeau found himself. My initial thought was to write column about Prussian militarism and the alarming similarities to our own but instead decided to write about the French Revolution, particularly with the early phases of the current revolution going on around the world in the Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring Uprising movements. There are many lessons to be learned.

Politics & Society

Jews & Soviet Communism, Part 3

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The story of industrial spies, Joel Barr and Alfred Sarant, has a ‘Keystone Kops’ aspect….
Prof. Snyder uncovers the monstrous nature of the Stalinist regime that Communist spies tragically (and unwittingly) chose to serve.

Politics & Society

Jews & Soviet Communism, Part 2

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The Rosenberg case was a quintessentially “Jewish” story: the defendants, the judge, the chief prosecutor, the witnesses and all or most of the defense attorneys were Jews. (… the jurors were all non-Jews, however.)