Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/12/)
Whose Children? A World that Cares Little for Civilian Victims of War
www.counterpunch.org
A little over a month ago a suicide car bomb blast hit a convoy of civilians outside of the towns of Fua and Kefraya west of Aleppo in Syria. It is unclear who is responsible for the deaths from th…
Whose Children?
Editor’s Note: Shia and Sunni forces have engaged in sectarian violence long before there was a president Trump. But as the authors suggest, his attempt to put together a Sunni alliance against Iran will likely contribute to an escalation of the struggle between Sunni and Shia, with unpredictable consequences.
MAY 31ST, 2017 6:18 AM
How Trump Instigates Sectarian Warfare
By Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal and Craig Considine
In recent years, President Donald Trump has questioned the legitimacy of Islam as a world religion. His body of work in this regard is impressive. He posed the deliberately ambiguous question, “Why does Islam hate us?”, proposed the creation of a registry for Muslims in the U.S., issued a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries for those returning home, and framed the malignancy of “radical Islamic terrorism” as a hallmark of 1.5 billion Muslims worldwide.
Editor’s Note: Glad to share with you another article from our media ally TomDisptacht.com with an introduction from Tom. I can’t really say “enjoy” because the message is so disturbing!– Rabbi Michael Lerner
In the first paragraphs of George Orwell’s famed novel 1984, Winston Smith slips through the doors of his apartment building, “Victory Mansions,” to escape a “vile wind.” Hate week — a concept that should seem eerily familiar in Donald Trump’s America — was soon to arrive. “The hallway,” writes Orwell, “smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats.” Smith then plods up to his seventh-floor flat, since the building’s elevator rarely works even when there’s electricity, which is seldom the case. And, of course, he immediately sees the most famous poster in the history of the novel, the one in which BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU. (“It was one of those pictures… so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.”)
Now, imagine us inside our own “Victory Mansions,” an increasingly ramshackle place called the United States of America in which, like Smith, we simply can’t escape our leader. Call him perhaps “Big Muddler.” He may not be looking directly at YOU, but he is, thanks to a never-ending media frenzy, remarkably omnipresent. Go ahead and try, but you know that whatever you do, however you live your life, these days you just can’t escape him. And if Donald Trump’s America isn’t already starting to feel a little like that ill-named, run-down building in a future, poverty-stricken London, then tell me what it’s like. Can’t you feel how rickety the last superpower on planet Earth is becoming as our very own Big-Muddler-in-Chief praises himself eternally for his “achievements”? Here’s just a small sample from a recent graduation address President Trump gave at the Coast Guard Academy.
Zeid urges Israel to respect the human rights of detainees
GENEVA (24 May 2017) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Wednesday expressed serious concern as the mass hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons entered its 38th day without resolution, and the health of hundreds of participating prisoners began to deteriorate significantly.
More than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners began a hunger strike on 17 April, demanding, amongst other things, an end to administrative detention and solitary confinement. The hunger strikers are also demanding an increase in the number and length of family visits and improved access to healthcare. Both Israeli and Palestinian human rights organisations have corroborated many of the complaints of the prisoners and have called on the Israeli authorities to improve the conditions of Palestinian prisoners. According to reports, the Israel Prison Service has evacuated at least 60 hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners to hospitals because their medical condition had worsened, while another 592 hunger strikers have recently been moved for observation to infirmaries set up in the prisons.
“I am especially alarmed by reports of punitive measures by the Israeli authorities against the hunger strikers, including restricted access to lawyers and the denial of family visits,” Zeid said. “The right of detainees to access a lawyer is a fundamental protection in international human rights law that should never be curtailed.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a statement issued on 3 May 2017, also noted that the right to family visits is enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and should never be restricted for punitive reasons.
The Israeli practice of administrative detention is in breach of the key safeguards of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
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 what most analysts miss are the hidden injuries of class that become dramatically intensified when the underlying psychological and spiritual dysfunction of global capitalism interacts 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 turn to authoritarian leaders in the hope that their own fears and pain can be alleviated. This has been happening around the world, not just in the U.S. As a nonprofit we are prohibited from endorsing any political candidate or party, so the reflections here are not meant to influence your voting in 2016, but to shape an agenda for how to build a healthier and more just society in the coming decades. In his presidential campaign, Senator Bernie Sanders addressed some of these economic inequalities by advocating for New Deal-type reforms, but he shied away from any systematic critique of the capitalist order itself.
In the 1980’s, few Americans knew much about life in the territories Israel had occupied in 1967. Fewer still understood the PLO’s historic offer to settle for a state in less than half what had been Palestine. Yet in 1989, the San Francisco Mime Troupe produced Seeing Double, a mistaken-identity farce that argued for a two-state solution. The seeming unfitness of the genre for the topic proved the secret of the show’s success: laughter allows room for hope.
The Women’s Balcony, a movie which captures a beautiful
slice of Israeli life, is a huge upper at a time when many
people are feeling depressed and saddened by the state of our world. The movie captures the way that Jewish women have been
marginalized in parts of the Israeli Orthodox religious world,
and how they mobilize themselves to achieve power in the face
of rabbinic authority that is dismissive of their concerns. Yet this is
not another of those “religion is evil” or “men are jerks” kind of
dismissals, but rather a sensitive portrayal of how men and
women find a way, even within the boundaries of orthodoxy, to
recapture each other’s humanity, to stand up against irrational
rules, and find a path that is at once affirming of women and
affirming of parts of the Jewish tradition that these Israeli women
wish to retain in their lives. It is, in its own caring and complex way,
a celebration of the actual and potential power of Jewish women, and
it’s highly enjoyable to watch.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor, Tikkun Magazine
WE ARE DEEPLY CONCERNED about the path our country is going to take under Donald Trump’s leadership. The racist, sexist, and xenophobic signals given during the 2016 campaign led to an escalation of acts of public hate against Latinos, Muslims, and Jews. Much of what liberal and progressive social change movements have worked for these past decades is about to be substantially reversed and dismantled. We cannot expect that militant demonstrations or protests by themselves are going to help much until we understand more deeply why a larger majority of Americans have not been willing to give liberals and progressives the kind of electoral victories necessary to actually implement the Left’s policies and programs.
Editor’s Note: The Spring 2017 issue of Tikkun Magazine is entirely devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Six Days War and the beginning of the Occupation of the West Bank by Israel. It includes a wide range of Israeli and Palestinian voices as well as those from the Jewish and Palestinian Diaspora. If you don’t yet subscribe, do so now at www.tikkun.org/subscribe. If you do subscribe,or are a member of the Network of Spiritual Progressives at the $50 or more level (www.spiritualprogressives.org/join) or you havdonated $50 or more this year,and have not yet gotten the new issue in the mail, Duke U. Press promises that it is in the mail already sodon’t worry, it’s coming and it’s powerful. If you “read it at the bookstore” and it is not at your local bookstore, please urge them to carry it–speak to the person in charge of ordering magazines and urge them to carry the magazine (they can contact Ingram book distributors which is now taken over by The News Group TNG.com which can be reached at 866-466-7231).
Introducing: 60 MINUTES ALL ACCESS LEARN MORE +
Unlimited, ad-free viewing of 60 Minutes archives, Overtime and extrasToggle
The Nuremberg Prosecutor
60 MINUTES OVERTIME
When Ben Ferencz met Marlene Dietrich
60 MINUTES OVERTIME
Learning history from a man who made it
60 MINUTES OVERTIME
Ferencz: Rejecting refugees is a “crime against humanity”
What the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive wants the world to know
At 97, Ben Ferencz is the last Nuremberg prosecutor alive and he has a far-reaching message for today’s world
2017May 07
CORRESPONDENTLesley Stahl
COMMENTS 94
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
STUMBLE
Twenty-two SS officers responsible for the deaths of 1M+ people would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz. The officers were part of units called Einsatzgruppen, or action groups. Their job was to follow the German army as it invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and kill Communists, Gypsies and Jews. Ferencz believes “war makes murderers out of otherwise decent people” and has spent his life working to deter war and war crimes.
Ben Ferencz
CBS NEWS
It is not often you get the chance to meet a man who holds a place in history like Ben Ferencz. He’s 97 years old, barely 5 feet tall, and he served as prosecutor of what’s been called the biggest murder trial ever.
I’m proud to be part of this group of faith leaders challenging the anti LGBTQ moves that are being taken in many states in the wake of the Trump presidency. Please read our statement and the full list of faith leaders backing the statement below. As you might imagine, the statement is a little tamer and less addressing the psychological and spiritual dysfunctions that have led us to this moment when such a statement is needed than it would have been if it had just come from me and Tikkun’s editorial board, but there’s always a lot to be gained by being part of larger and more varied groups of people who fundamentally agree with each other on the substance of this letter. –Rabbi Michael Lerner rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com
National Faith Leader Statement on Anti-LGBTQ Bills
May 01, 2017
As religious leaders and people of faith, we are committed to creating a society that embraces the diversity of God’s creation and affirms the inherent dignity, agency, and worth of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations. We believe all people must be free to express their gender and sexuality, unburdened by discrimination, unequal treatment, or systemic injustice.
[Editor’s note: Some of the weekly Torah readings–called the weekly parasha– are hard to relate to, and this past week’s reading, Parshat Tazria/Metzorah, is among them. More difficult. Rabbinic student in the Aleph program Lisa Rappaport gave one of the most interesting approaches to it I haveve encountered, so I am sharing it with our readers.–Rabbi Michael Lerner]
Parashat Tazria-Metzora
Lisa Rappaport
4/29/17
This week’s parasha, Tazria-Metzora, is challenging, with parts that seem completely unrelatable to our lives. It is in this parasha that we learn about tzaarat, a spiritual affliction causing a white discoloration of the skin. It is often translated (or rather mistranslated) as leprosy. But leprosy is a physical condition with a physical cause, while tzaarat is a spiritual affliction that renders the sufferer tameh, or ritually impure.
Atzma’ut and Atzamot: The Bones of Israel
by Rabbi Emma Kippley-Ogman
Reading haftarah on the seventh day of Pesach, we saw through the prophet Ezekiel’s eyes a valley full of dry bones (bikah meleah atzamot) declaring that their hope is gone (avdah tikvateinu). For a living human being, bearing witness to human mortality at vast scale is profoundly unsettling. These bones in earth show us where we come from and what will be our end, our fundamental essence as earth creatures alive in this world for but a breath of a moment. Standing over that valley, Ezekiel hears God’s voice: “Prophesy over these bones and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord!” God promises: “I will put My breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil.” The bones rise, flesh and life returning with breath from the Divine. Ezekiel’s prophesy is one of the liberation stories that make up our Pesach canon, one expression of the journey from oppression to uplift that awakens the Jewish people to pursue liberation for ourselves and for others throughout the world, through thousands of years of our history.
By Raymond Barglow
Last week I handed myself over to a medical team at Kaiser-Oakland that did a cataract surgery on my eyes. My symptom? I couldn’t see clearly, and no eye-glass prescription was sufficient any longer to fix the problem. Then a doctor at Kaiser told me: there’s clouding in the lenses of your eyes that’s been building up for many years; cataract surgery will replace those lenses with new artificial ones, thereby repairing your vision. Immediately following the operation, I discovered that I could now see blue as never before in all my years (within memory) of viewing the world around me! Turns out that an eye cataract sometimes adds yellow to the visual field, and the surgery corrects that. Before the surgery, with both eyes affected by cataracts, it had been as if I were unknowingly wearing a pair of sunglasses that painted everything with a veneer of yellow. Now, when I view the world through born-again eyes, I see an astonishing gamut of shades and textures of blue. There’s a bower of blue-violet flowers above the gate just outside my house, and it’s breathtaking to let my eyes fall upon it. And when I see a shadow now, I often notice that it carries just the slightest sheen of blue. I’m reminded of what the 19th-century French impressionists did with shadows, although I used to believe that they were inserting color where none at all exists in reality. I was wrong! And two centuries earlier, Vermeer also had imported blue masterfully to the canvas.
Renoir, The Swing
Vermeer, Young Woman with a Water Pitcher
Monet, Gare St. Lazare. The painter found abundant blue in the smoke-filled station.
Love Letter to Syria by Laura Lauth
The bats cross and recross the dusk. What they hear is theirs to eat. Wind chimes admit the many worlds
through. Our key lime comes to bloom. We’re living here in spring—a blaze
of early East Coast heat.