Healing Israel/Palestine

Answering Obama's UN Address

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by Stephen Zunes
During the Bush administration, I wrote more than a dozen annotated critiques of presidential speeches. I have refrained from doing so under President Barack Obama, however, because – despite a number of disappointments with his administration’s policies — I found his speeches to be relatively reasonable. Although his September 21 address before the UN General Assembly contained a number of positive elements, in many ways it also contained many of the same kind of duplicitous and misleading statements one would have expected from his predecessor. Below are some excerpts, followed by my comments. On Palestinian Statehood and Middle East Peace:

One year ago, I stood at this podium and I called for an independent Palestine.

Culture

Prof. Mearsheimer endorses anti-Jewish book

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When Profs. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt co-authored their book on the “Israel Lobby,” they drew back from their original formulation that it had manipulated the US to invade Iraq on behalf of Israel. Their more carefully worded thesis was that it was a “necessary but insufficient cause” for the Iraq war. Still, many (including myself) took this amiss because:
1. It discounts a fuller explanation for the US warring on Iraq, e.g.: W. Bush’s animus at Saddam Hussein for attempting to assassinate his family while visiting Kuwait after the first Iraq war, the importance of oil (Noam Chomsky’s view), frustration that Saddam Hussein continued to oppress his people and to bluster against the US — even though he could have been easily overthrown in 1991, and finally the influence of neocons and some liberals who saw Saddam’s rule as both a threat to peace in the region and the source of an ongoing human rights crisis.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Peace Day 2011 and Two Executions

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There are times in life when a soul needs to hear Barbra Streisand singing “Avinu Malkeinu.” It needs to hear Verdi’s Requiem. It needs to hear John Coltrane’s saxophone screaming A Love Supreme. Peace Day 2011 was such a day. Peace Day, the UN International Day of Peace and Global Ceasefire falls on September 21 every year.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Listen to the Next Generation of Jews

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by Jesse Bacon
Young, Jewish, and Proud, the group responsible for the protests disrupting the speech of Benjamin Netanyahu in New Orleans almost a year ago, launched a new video for the Jewish High Holidays as the issue of Palestinian statehood roiled the United Nations. The video was created by nearly 40 young Jews between the ages of 18 and 36 and features their manifesto about the need for the Jewish community to recognize the voice of youth on its most intractable issue: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Jesse Bacon, video participant:
We delivered the manifesto in person to Netanyahu through our protest, and now we are speaking directly to the camera, but the message is the same. Listen to the voice of young Jews arguing for a more open, diverse, and critical community or see your fears of losing the youth come true.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Abbas, Netanyahu, & Obama at the UN: Responses from a Palestinian and a Jew

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As we often do in the magazine, the website, and in our emails, here are responses you are unlikely to read or hear or see in the mass media to the President of Palestine Abbas and the Prime Minister of Israel Netanyahu in relationship to what they have been doing at the U.N. Our first respondent is a Palestinian activist in Ramallah, the second a Jewish columnist in NYC. Here is the first response from Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh, originally posted on his blog:
Kudos Mr. Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas gave a brilliant speech at the United Nations, getting rounds of applause from most of the representatives. I think it demonstrated clearly and unambiguously that the Palestinian leadership has been “unreasonably reasonable” and has instead seen the hopes of peace and of millions of Palestinians suffering for 63 years dashed on the rock of Israeli expansionist, colonial, and apartheid policies. He explained that Israel has been taking one unilateral action after another each resulting in more pain and suffering for our people. Going to the UN, he explained is putting things back where the problems started (he did not use the last two words but I do).

Politics & Society

Responses to the Potential UN Recognition of Palestine

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Here are some responses to the UN Recognition of Palestine discussion, including an article by The Israel Project strongly against the Tikkun position–part of our function to provide peace-oriented people with an understanding of some of the views we don’t normally encounter and that we need to understand. Our views are set forward in the petition to recognize Palestine and re-affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with ironclad guarantees for both Israel and Palestine to grant equal rights to all the minorities living within their boundaries without any imposition of religion and with full human rights to all of the residents living within those states. Click here to view and sign the petition. Obama’s Unique Opportunity
by Gideon Levy
What is the American president going to say to his citizens? What will he say to the citizens of the world?

Healing Israel/Palestine

Obama and UN: Recognize Palestine AND Re-affirm Israel's Right to Exist as a Jewish State

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American diplomats acknowledge that they do not have the votes to prevent the General Assembly of the United Nations from recognizing Palestine and granting it some of the rights of member states. The U.S. can block full membership only by exercising its veto in the Security Council, an act likely to intensify hatred of the U.S. in many countries around the world.

Christianity

Israel and the crisis of Jewish-Christian dialogue in the UK

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by Robert Cohen
Crossposted from Micah’s Paradigm Shift. As we move towards a United Nations Assembly vote on the recognition of a Palestinian State later this month, Robert Cohen looks at the effect Israel is having on interfaith relations between Jews and Christians in the United Kingdom. Could the UN vote push Jews and Christians further apart or could it be the spark that kindles a radical reassessment of the Judeo-Christian mission? Something precious
As a child growing up in a Jewish community in South East London in the 1970s and early 80s, there must have been something precious seeping through into my bones. Perhaps that ‘something’ came from our Rabbi’s passionate, intelligent and challenging sermons especially on his favourite of the Hebrew Prophets, Jeremiah.

art

The Art of Revolution: Spoken Word, Video, and Performance Art to Change the World – Jen Capraru and ISOKO (Rwanda)

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Speaking to Jennifer Herszman Capraru in Toronto, Canada, it is impossible not to be warmed by her passion for the work she does and the people it brings her close to. Born in Montréal, Québec, Capraru is the daughter of a mother who was a child survivor of the Holocaust, and a Romanian father, both of whom emphasized the importance of human rights and provided Capraru with the gift of creativity that she exercises with such love and intelligence today. As an adult, Capraru received an MA in Theatre Studies from York University and also trained as a director in Germany; it has been through the medium of theatre and directing that she has always seen the opportunity to create a whole world – a world where real change could transpire. In her role as Artistic Director of the award-winning Theatre Asylum in Toronto, Capraru premieres thought-provoking plays by and about women and humanist issues. In 2006, Capraru was asked to be 2nd Script Supervisor on the Canadian feature film Shake Hands with the Devil about the experiences of Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire during his tenure as UN Force Commander during the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.

Healing Israel/Palestine

9/11-Inspired Anti-Jewish Conspiratorial Thinking

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My post of a few days ago, “My experience of Sept. 11, 2001,” was a discussion of my emotional state at that time. This follow-up, while also emotional, is meant to be a more analytical reflection. A few years ago, someone misunderstood my point for the following statement, meant not to denigrate what happened on 9/11/2001, but rather to provide some historical perspective and a new measure for grasping the magnitude of the genocide against Jews during World War II:

I made a rough calculation of the number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. Using the approximate start date of June 22, 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, for its beginning — the Einsatzgruppen began their mass shootings at this time — I calculated that an average of over 29,000 Jews were murdered each week until the war ended on May 8, 1945.