Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/25/)
ECONOMY & WORK
The Sanders “Economic Plan” Controversy
Economist Gerald Friedman did an analysis of Senator Bernie Sanders’s plan suggesting it would produce significant growth in the economy — and then a group of left-leaning economists flipped out. BY DAVE JOHNSON | FEBRUARY 23, 2016
The Sanders “Economic Plan” […]
A trader monitors offers in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index options pit at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) on August 24, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois.
Murderous Police in the City of Love
Posted by Rebecca Gordon
In one of the widely circulated cellphone videos of the killing of Mario Woods by San Francisco police in December, you can hear the young girl filming his death screaming. “Are you fucking serious?” she shrieks over and over at the crowd of cops encircling the young black man. According to police, Woods had refused to drop a kitchen knife they claim he was carrying. He was nonetheless attempting to walk away from the officers.
An Amazing Turn for a Major Leader of the American Jewish mainstream: David Gordis Rethinking Israel
David Gordis has served as vice-president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now American Jewish University). He also served as Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Committee and was the founding director of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel. He founded and directed the Wilstein Institute for Jewish Policy Studies which became the National Center for Jewish Policy Studies. David Gordis is President Emeritus of Hebrew College where he served as President and Professor of Rabbinics for fifteen years. He is currently Visiting Senior Scholar at the University at Albany of the State University of New York. Here is the article he submitted to Tikkun.
Editor’s note: Henry Giroux, a frequent contributor to Tikkun, highlights some of the destructive tendencies in American and global capitalism, in this introduction he wrote to a new book on inequality. At times he may be going beyond what I could agree to. For example, his discussion of American democracy doesn’t give adequate credit to the way the system does in fact allow for an insurgency by a democratic socialist like Bernie Sanders. If African Americans, Latinos, and other minorities do not massively vote for him, it is not only because they don’t have adequate information, it is also because their own leadership has overwhelmingly sided with Hillary Clinton. Sanders has been able to raise more money than Hillary–from ordinary citizens.
Uri Avnery
February 20, 2016
When God Despairs
RIGHT AFTER the foundation of Israel, God appeared to David Ben-Gurion and told him: “You have done good by my people. Utter a wish and I shall grant it!” “I wish that Israel shall be Jewish, democratic and encompass all the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan,” Ben-Gurion replied. “That is too much even for me!” God exclaimed.
Editor’s note:
Can you believe this? Some Israeli and Jewish forces around the world and in the U.S. are succeeding in making it illegal to criticize the Occupation of the West Bank or to advocate for BDS (boycotts, sanctions and divestment from firms that help make the Occupation possible or firms that do business with settlers). While we at Tikkun do not support BDS against Israel as a whole (for example, the attempts to boycott Israeli academic or cultural institutions), we do support BDS against the settlers and their institutions and those corporations that are assisting Israel to displace Palestinians, bulldoze Palestinian homes, and implement a brutal Occupation. Saying what we said in the last sentence is becoming illegal in some states and in some countries around the world, and on some campuses saying this is being labeled as “antiSemitism” and therefore made a reason to punish or suspend students or faculty. This is the most insidious assault on free speech yet, and if it succeeds it is likely to have 3 horrific consequences:
1. Opening the door to criminalizing speech and completely destroying the accomplishments of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution–and weakening the ability of people around the world to claim the right to criticize policies with which they disagree.
Editor’s Note: Just as we are prohibited from endorsing candidates, so we are also prohibited from critiquing them. But as a 1st amendment protected 501-c-3, we can priint the wide variety of views held by our readers (hey, that’s YOU). So far, most of what we’ve gotten from our readers has been pro-Bernie. Now finally we get something that is a critique of Bernie. We are still looking for readers to submit pro-Hillary articles, or pro-some Republican party candidates for the presidency, or pro Jill Stein of the Greens, or pro any other 3rd party candidates.
February 13, 2015
A Lady With A Smile
by Uri Avnery
IT IS not easy to be an Arab in Israel. It is not easy to be a woman in Arab society. It is not easy to be an Arab in Israeli politics. And even less easy to be an Arab woman in the Knesset. Haneen Zuabi is all these together.
Editor’s Note: I once again want to encourage those who support Hillary, or Jill Stein, or other candidates, to write articles for us about why they do so. We don’t endorse any candidate or political party–can’t because we are a non-profit–but we will publish smart articles from many different perspectives on the election. If we keep on getting mainly pro-Bernie, we may have to stop publishing anything because this tilt may give the appearance of us endorsing a candidate, which we don’t do. –Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun, RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
Hillary Clinton’s Record on Foreign Policy
by Stephen Zunes
Despite being an icon for many liberals and an anathema to the Republican right, former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s positions on the Middle East have more closely resembled those of the latter than the former. Her hawkish views go well beyond her strident support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent occupation and counter-insurgency war.
Editor’s Note: I once again want to encourage those who support Hillary, or Jill Stein, or other candidates, to write articles for us about why they do so. We don’t endorse any candidate or political party–can’t because we are a non-profit–but we will publish smart articles from many different perspectives on the election. If we keep on getting mainly pro-Bernie, we may have to stop publishing anything because this tilt may give the appearance of us endorsing a candidate, which we don’t do.–Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
52 Righteous Reasons to Support Progressive Bernie Sanders Over Establishment Hillary Clinton and the Regressive Republicans
Dan Brook
There are many vast and critical differences when you compare progressive Bernie to moderate Hillary and the regressive GOP. Here are 52 righteous reasons to support Bernie Sanders for President. There are undoubtedly others.
Editor’s note:
Tikkun magazine does not endorse any candidate or political party. But as I’ve said in several previous emails, we will send out articles that have a serious or substantial intellectual content challenging the ideas of any of the candidates, or supporting those ideas. I had expected to get lots of serious submissions, but so far I’ve only gotten critiques of Hillary Clinton. We will share those, but again want to make clear that we’d also share serious critiques of the policy positions of Senator Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Senator Marco Rubio, the Green party presidential candidates, etc. You can also send rebuttals to this or anything else we send out! At this point, we really want to encourage those who support Hillary or Jill Stein of the Greens or any of the Republican candidates to send us their arguments, because otherwise we are going to be perceived as supporting a candidate, and we don’t intend to be doing that.
Israel shoots the messenger: An open letter to Ban Ki-Moon
Richard Falk
Saturday 6 February 2016
While I was special rapporteur for Palestine, you chose to attack me in public on several occasions. Now Israel has turned its fire on you. Dear UN Secretary-General,
Having read of the vicious attacks on you for venturing some moderate, incontestable criticisms of Israel’s behaviour, I understand well the discomfort you clearly feel. Not since Richard Goldstone chaired the group that released the report detailing apparent Israeli war crimes during its massive attack on Gaza at the end of 2008 have Israel’s big political guns responded with such unwarranted fury, magnified as usual by ultra-Zionist media commentary. Netanyahu has the audacity to claim that your acknowledgement that it is not unnatural for the Palestinians oppressed for half a century to resist and resort to extremism is tantamount to the encouragement of terrorism, what he described as giving a “tailwind to terrorism.”
The fact that your intention was quite the opposite hardly matters.
Editor’s Note: Tikkun and our interfaith and secular-humanist-welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives supports the work of Tamera and the Institute for Global Peace Work. –Rabbi Michael Lerner
Refugee Aid: A Vision of International Solidarity
Statement following reports from our co-workers in Lesbos
by Dieter Duhm
The people were driven from their home countries by unspeakable suffering and it was unspeakable suffering which they encountered on their way into an allegedly better world. Even winter did not stop the wave of refugees. Carrying their children with nothing to eat, no blankets, no place to stay, no medical assistance, suddenly they faced barbed wire. Thousands arrived on the island of Lesbos almost frozen to death, having nearly drowned; some had lost their families on the way.
Editor’s Note: As we’ve noted each time we post something about the election, we are NOT endorsing any candidate or party, but allowing members of our community to explain why they have chosen who they’ve chosen to support. JANUARY 29 ,2016
BY DAVID SWANSON
Jill Stein’s platform more viable than Bernie’s
David Swanson conducted this exclusive interview with Jill Stein for American Herald Tribune. 5.1K SHARES
I asked Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein about her platform this week and came away believing it had a better chance of winning than Bernie Sanders’. I know that platforms don’t run, people do, and they do so within a two-party dominated system. But this already crazy presidential election could turn into a crazier five-way race.
Uri Avnery
January 30, 2016
The Pied Piper of Zion
HAMELIN, A small town in Germany (not so far from where I was born), was infested with rats. In their despair, the burghers called upon a rat-catcher and promised him a thousand guilders for liberating them from this plague. The rat-catcher took his pipe and played such a sweet melody that all the rats came out of their holes and joined him. He marched them to the Weser river, where they all drowned. Once freed from this plague, the burghers saw no reason to pay.