On Balfour’s 100th Anniversary, Time for a New Definition of Sovereignty, Independence and the Nation-State

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On Balfour’s 100th Anniversary, Time

for a New Definition of Sovereignty, Independence and

the Nation-State

 

by  Mark LeVine and Mathias Mossberg

 

November 2nd marks the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the letter from Britain’s Foreign Secretary, Lord Arthur James Balfour to British Jewish leader Walter Rothschild in which the British Government promised Jews a “national home” in Palestine should they win the war, while offering only to safeguard the “civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities.”

 

Most “non-Jews”–i.e., Palestinian Arabs–joined by key members of Palestine’s existing Arab Jewish population and some Diaspora Jewish figures, understood that Balfour’s promise would lead to permanent hostility between the two emerging nationalist communities. Some local Jewish leaders even put forward an alternative to the Balfour Declaration, declaring that peace in the Holy Land would only be possible if “both sides…

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The Significance of Martin Luther

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Editor’s Note: We at Tikkun wish to join our allies in the Lutheran Church and other Protestants who are celebrating the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant reformation which began with Martin Luther. At the same time, we are aware of the hateful teachings of Luther about Jews and about Muslims. These issues are discussed fully in the Summer 2017 issue of Tikkun in “Luther Against the Jews” by Craig L. Nessan (professor of Education and the Renewal of the Church at Warburg Theological Seminary), and in “Deconstructing Historical Prejudice: Luther’s Treatment of the Turks (Muslims)w by Charles Amjad-Ali professor of Justice and Christian Community at Luther Seminary). You can read these important articles by subscribing to Tikkun www.tikkun.org/subscribe (and then  emailing chris.tikkun@gmail.com and asking him to send you a copy of that issue after you’ve subscribed. Susannah Heschel in the pages of Tikkun has demonstrated that during, and then after, the Holocaust, some of these prejudices have never fully been understood by some contemporary Lutherans, even as we in Tikkun also know that there are many Lutherans in the U.S. who have a sincere commitment to overcome and repent for this legacy. And as you’ll see by reading the interview below, there are important spiritual insights that contemporary Lutherans can bring to the Christian world which deserve respect and appreciation.

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How America Spreads Global Chaos

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Editor’s Note: The day before Haloween it’s traditional to focus on witches and goblins and walking skeletons and other scary things. None of those things can compare with the scare we can get by looking at the role the U.S. has played and plays today in the world–and how much worse it may soon get if the Trump Administration follows through on its threats.  Yet there is also a more nuanced story to tell. As we often say, Tikkun sends out articles and prints articles that we think have important perspectives that are rarely available in the mainstream media–even if we do not necessarily agree with them. Nicholaw Davies (article below) has a lot important facts to bolster his case, and if we look at the US government and its actions, they come out looking rather shabby, brutal, hurtful and destructive.

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The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class

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The (still) Hidden Injuries of Class

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

IT’S NO SECRET that the past several decades have witnessed growing economic inequality and deepening economic insecurity for a very large section of working people both in the U.S. and other capitalist countries around the world. Yet the Democrats and their supporters in the liberal and progressive social change movements are living in fantasy land if they think that the way the Trumpites are exacerbating that inequality gap will be sufficient to win them control of the Congress and the presidency by 2021.  What  most progressive and liberal politicians and movements  miss are the hidden injuries of class that become dramatically intensified when the underlying psychological and spiritual dysfunction of global capitalism interact with economic insecurity. Right-wing, ultra-nationalist, fundamentalist, and/or racist movements gain support as more people begin to lose faith in the efficacy of democratic governments and liberal/left politics focused on providing economic entitlements and political rights to those who had been previously disenfranchised while seeming to ignore or even dismiss as “white privilege” or “male privilege” the ways that many people are in pain. For many, the fact that people of color are more likely to get killed by police than whites or that women face outrageous sexual harassment does not register as a “privilege” to those who have their own forms of suffering, both economic and psychological, which make them feel frustrated with their lives and misunderstood and angry at those who tell them that they are the beneficiaries of a racist and sexist system (which they did not create and which they often feel powerless to change). Sadly, many turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated, in part because the liberal and progressive world makes them feel “less than” and disrespected.

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Questioning Everything

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Editor’s Note: We at Tikkun are committed to building a world of love, kindness, generosity, environmental sanity, economic and political justice, and awe and wonder at the grandeur of the universe. Yet we know how easy it is for people to fall into narrow frames of thought when trying to develop strategies and tactics in our efforts to build such a world. So we present here some thoughts on why it is very important to keep open to questioning everything, even though we do not really question the value of seeking these goals: The Caring World: Caring for Each Other and Caring for the Earth. We are also aware of how the important injunction to “question everything” can become a way of excusing passivity at a time when action on behalf of tikkun (healing, repair and transformation of our world) is so badly needed. So we have to also question the validity of questioning everything–because that too can become a paralyzing ideology that leads to conformity, passivity, and ethical breakdown.

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Corporate Tax Cut Propaganda …. by Jeffrey Sachs

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Corporate tax cut propaganda

Jeffrey D. Sachs        October 20, 2017
The White House is selling a tax cut designed for the rich as a boost for the working class. Cut taxes on capital, the White House claims, and investors will raise investment, hire more workers, and bid up wages — a.k.a. trickle-down economics. If the real goal is to use tax cuts to boost low wages, then do it directly, for example by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Of course, there is a basic problem with tax cuts now. They will lead to larger budget deficits even before they lead to more growth.

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Discrimination Against Black Workers

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Los Angeles Black Worker Center
October 5, 2017
Discrimination has created a crisis in the Black community. Although the passage of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act forbids racial discrimination in the workplace, black workers continue to face higher rates of discrimination in the workforce than white workers do. ‘Whether working full-time or part-time, Black workers earn only three-quarters of what white workers earn,’ as stated in the introduction of the brief. , ,

Dear Friends and Allies:The Los Angeles Black Worker Center (LABWC) and National Employment Law Project (NELP) demonstrates the need for California to explore expanded anti-employment discrimination to better protect workers in the era of Trump. You can download the white paper HERE

You can view the white paper HERE

Los Angeles, California, October 5, 2017 – The National Employment Law Project and the Los Angeles Black Worker Center released a white paper today that offers analysis on why anti-discrimination laws must be strengthened to protect communities of color in the workforce as national civil rights enforcement agencies are threatened with cuts and elimination.  The report is published as a broad coalition of unemployed, underemployed and union workers call on Governor Brown to sign Senate Bill SB 491- The California Anti-Employment Discrimination Action of 2017- a bill that would begin the process of expanding anti-discrimination enforcement authority to local governments to fill the enforcement gap.

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Islam and anti-Semitism?

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Muslims must address ancient texts usurped for anti-Semitism
by Dr. Junaid Jahangir

I came across a swastika and a “Death to Israel” sign in my latest visit to Pakistan. This is not news to me, as I have heard Friday sermons depicting the yahud (Jews) as our enemies. I have also witnessed online comments by some Pakistanis that Hitler did not complete his job.  

I was reminded of these observations as I read the Toronto Star article on the Toronto Imam, Ayman Elkasrawy, who was accused of preaching hate against Jews. The article shows that Elkasrawy’s Arabic prayer was mistranslated and that he did not intend for the annihilation of the Jewish community.

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Night Running

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And so they ran, like lunatics, around the neighborhood, in t-shirts and boots, in the middle of the night, in the middle of winter.

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Homo Moralis

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HOMO MORALIS
A Review of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Barry L. Schwartz
     A child asked his mother, “Where do people come from?”

“Well,” the mother said, “Adam and Eve were the first parents on earth. They had babies who became grownups. Then those grownups had babies who eventually became grownups, and so on and so forth, until today.”

Later, the child decided to ask his father the same question. The father had a different explanation. “Long ago, there were no people on earth-just monkeys.

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Noam Chomsky on The Trump Presidency

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(Editor’s note: Noam Chomsky at 89 is one of the great gifts to all of us

who seek a world of peace and justice. Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for sharing this with Tikkun magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives and our community of readers. –Rabbi Michael Lerner  rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com)

The Trump Presidency 
Or How to Further Enrich “The Masters of the Universe” 

By Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

[This interview has been excerpted from Global Discontents: Conversations on the Rising Threats to Democracy, the new book by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian to be published this December.] 

David Barsamian: You have spoken about the difference between Trump’s buffoonery, which gets endlessly covered by the media, and the actual policies he is striving to enact, which receive less attention. Do you think he has any coherent economic, political, or international policy goals? What has Trump actually managed to accomplish in his first months in office? 

Noam Chomsky: There is a diversionary process under way, perhaps just a natural result of the propensities of the figure at center stage and those doing the work behind the curtains. At one level, Trump’s antics ensure that attention is focused on him, and it makes little difference how.

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Fighting Racism and Hate

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A lesson from Germany on eradicating a legacy of hate

 

by Martha Minow
 

EDU BAYER/THE NEW YORK TIMESA white nationalist carries a Nazi flag during a protest in Charlottesville, Va., Aug. 12. By Martha Minow   SEPTEMBER 29, 201

What does it take to remove evil and stop hatred? This question has plagued humans throughout centuries, and although there is no simple answer, Germany changed from a pariah state to exemplar of constitutional democracy through the combination of post-World War II criminal trials, reforms of law and media, and investment by new generations who asked their parents persistently, “Where were you during the war?” A crucial element came with the criminal trials, initially through the international military tribunal and then subsequent state-based prosecutions. Seventy years ago, on Sept.

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The World Needs Repentance

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Notes from the Jewish tradition that may be helpful to people in every tradition and to people who need to connect to ancient spiritual wisdom

WHAT MAKES THE Jewish approach to repentance and atonement relevant to North American and global politics is that it does not focus only on the ways we as individuals “sinned,” (actually, the real meaning of the word sin is to miss the mark; not some sense of being drenched in evil, but just getting off course) but rather recognizes us as part of a community for which we must take collective responsibility. North Americans are so used to the extreme individualism promoted by capitalist values that we rarely think of ourselves as having responsibility for each other. But that is precisely what is needed. So we at Tikkun, the interfaith and secular-humanist-and-atheist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives, and Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls, have developed a set of confessions in the form of “we have sinned when . .

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Trump on the Warpath by Jeffrey Sachs

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Trump on the Warpath

Jeffrey Sachs     ||     Sep 27, 2017     ||     Project Syndicate 

The US suffers from an arrogance of military power disconnected from today’s geopolitical realities. The US is on this path again, heading for a collision with a nuclear-armed adversary, and it will remain on it unless other countries, other American leaders, and public opinion block the way. NEW YORK – Fifteen years after George W. Bush declared that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea formed “an axis of evil,” Donald Trump, in his maiden address to the United Nations, denounced Iran and North Korea in similarly vitriolic terms. Words have consequences, and Trump’s constitute a dire and immediate threat to global peace, just as Bush’s words did in 2002. Back then, Bush was widely praised for his response to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. It’s easy to rally the public to war, and that was especially true after 9/11.

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Merkel Clobbered While Rightists Threat Grows

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[Editor’s note: the rise of the racist Right in Germany in the Sept. 2017 election once again demonstrates the weakness of a centrist politics whose only holy principle is compromise in order to get or hold power. Just as in Brexit in England and in the Trump victory in the U.S., the centrists continue to believe that “more of the same” will satisfy people whose lives are filled with pain and frustration. Sadly, the European left, like the American left, has little to offer beyond rational economic programs–unable to understand the psycho-spiritual pain generated by the competitive market place and hence unable to speak to the depth of frustration many experience in their daily lives. We at Tikkun have analyzed these dynamics in The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country from the Religious Right (HarperSanFrancisco) and in our analyses of the 2016 election https://www.tikkun.org/newsite/we-cant-transform-american-politics-till-we-understand-the-psychodynamics-at-play .