Healing Israel/Palestine

BDS and NWSA: A Re-Awakening for Jewish Feminists

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Many of us who are Jewish feminists returned from the National Women’s Studies Association Conference in Milwaukee (November 2015) with inboxes full of email from colleagues who were stunned by the association’s passage of a BDS resolution boycotting Israel. The NWSA-BDS resolution is an endorsement of “the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of economic, military and cultural entities and projects sponsored by the state of Israel,” that is a general BDS of all Israeli institutions, including “Israeli institutions of higher learning” that “have not challenged, but instead legitimized, Israel’s oppressive policies and violations” (www.nwsa.org/content.asp?contentid=105). The resolution was circulated at the 2015 conference along with a list of Frequently Asked Questions. The answers to questions about boycotting Israeli institutions of higher learning gave conditions for permissible and non-permissible communications between Israeli and U.S. academics that were contradictory and did not identify the “complicit” institutions of higher learning. For many, this resolution stung as hugely insensitive to the diversity of opinion within the Jewish membership of NWSA.

Culture

My Last Day of Sunday School

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My last day of Sunday school made me realize the long way that we have to travel toward peace in the Middle East, and even toward open dialogue in the American Jewish community. The existence of this chasm contradicts everything that I think is best in Judaism.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Palestine at the Crossroads

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The Palestinians’ struggle for a homeland is affected by the language used to describe their rights and to mount opposition against them. I simplify this language into two kinds: that which demonizes and is violent, and that which creates hope and is nonviolent. That’s the format for my observations in the parliament.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Reclaiming the Language of Jewish Identity

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I want to criticise Israel not to do down the tribe but to stay loyal to it. I want to uphold the values and teaching that I think of as mine by birth and by upbringing. I’m not boycotting Jews or Judaism when I make the case for a radical change in our attitude to the Palestinian people. Rather I am upholding all I see as worthwhile, eternal and universal from my Jewish heritage and history.

Culture

What Kids4Peace Can Teach Us About Peace

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Can the youth of today do things differently in the future? At Kids4Peace, an interfaith community of Israeli, Palestinian, and North American youth and educators, the next generation of peacemakers is learning how nonviolent communication facilitates listening and understanding rather than judgement.

Culture

Birthwrong: Meet the Pranksters Celebrating the Jewish Diaspora

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Birthwrong is simultaneously a criticism, a parody, and a genuine alternative to Birthright and the many other organizations running similarly uncritical Israel tours. We aimed to celebrate life and history in the Jewish diaspora, particularly in Spain. The key principle of the trip was non-Zionism, rather than anti-Zionism.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Zero-tolerance for BDS in Canada

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On May 11 of this year, CBC News published an article in which its senior Washington correspondent, Neil Macdonald, wrote that Canada’s Harper government “is signalling its intention to use hate crime laws against Canadian advocacy groups that encourage boycotts of Israel.” Macdonald drew this conclusion after an e-mail exchange with Josée Sirois, an aide to federal Public Security Minister Steven Blaney. Macdonald asked Sirois to clarify a comment that Minister Blaney made in a speech delivered at the United Nations General Assembly Session on Anti-Semitism on January 22 of this year. In this speech, Blaney stated that “Canada has taken a zero-tolerance approach to anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination including in rhetoric towards Israel, and attempts to delegitimize Israel such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.” Macdonald asked Sirois to clarify what “zero tolerance” meant in this context.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Flying Home from Home (Part 2)

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During the Combatants For Peace event, families from both sides speak their grief and tell their stories of loss, in all the wars, translated into Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The event was streaming live, co-hosted by a young Israeli woman and a Palestinian. Knowing that despite fierce and vicious criticism of this alternative ceremony there are more and more people who attend and watch with every passing year feeds my hope that there may yet be a collaborative future.

Healing Israel/Palestine

"Israel" Is the Name of a People Also

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What does it mean, deeply and fully, for the People of Israel, as well as the State of Israel, to be named “Yisrael,” or “Godwrestlers”? Why does the Torah repeat so many times the command, “Treat strangers with justice and love, for you were strangers in the Narrow Land”? What are the relationships among love, admiration, and idolatry directed toward the State?