Articles

Israel Independence Day–3 different approaches plus our Tikkunish thoughts

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Below are three different takes, from 3 organizations each of which we at Tikkun support for their important work (Hazon in developing Jewish environmental consciousness, Torat Tzedeck for Rabbi Ascherman’s courageous work in defense of refugees, Palestinians, and Bedouin in Israel/Palestine, and T’ruah for its voice for progressive rabbis guided by Jill Jacobs). We present their statements on how to think about Israel on its 70th anniversary. I’m proud to be a member and supporter of each of these.  

In the statements below each  of them makes important points. Yet, none of them adequately capture the legitimate outrage of those Israelis who as Jews feel that Israel is desecrating that which is most sacred in the Jewish tradition, nor the pain of Arab Israelis who continue to experience the daily humiliations and pain of being a second-class citizen in a society that publicizes itself as an enlightened democracy, nor the pain of those millions of Palestinians living under Israeli Occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.  

I particularly like Jill Jacobs, statement on behalf of T’ruah.  She makes a very persuasive case for a balanced approach that in tone is very different from some on the Left who can see nothing of value in Israel.

Articles

Eyeless in Gaza

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{Editor’s Note: Uri Avnery is the leader of the Israeli peace movement Gush Shalom. Hundreds more were wounded today. Please send it out to everyone you know, also send it on Facebook and all social media, and post it on your website!–Rabbi Michael Lerner}

Uri Avnery
April 14, 2018 Eyeless in Gaza

WRITE DOWN: I, Uri Avnery, soldier number 44410 of the Israel army, hereby dissociate myself from the army sharpshooters who murder unarmed demonstrators along the Gaza Strip, and from their commanders, who give them the orders, up to the commander in chief.We don’t belong to the same army, or to the same state. We hardly belong to the same human race. IS MY government committing “war crimes” along the border of the Gaza Strip?

Editorials & Actions

A Tale of American Hubris

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A Tale of American Hubris
Or Five Lessons in the History of American Defeat 
By Tom Engelhardt

The lessons of history? Who needs them? Certainly not Washington’s present cast of characters, a crew in flight from history, the past, or knowledge of more or less any sort. Still, just for the hell of it, let’s take a few moments to think about what some of the lessons of the last years of the previous century and the first years of this one might be for the world’s most exceptional and indispensable nation, the planet’s sole superpower, the globe’s only sheriff. Those were, of course, commonplace descriptions from the pre-Trump era and yet, in the age of MAGA, already as moldy and cold as the dust in some pharaonic tomb.

Editorials & Actions

Peace-oriented Israelis prepare to demonstrate near the Gaza border

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At a junction near the Gaza border, Israelis living in the vicinity will demonstrate tomorrow (Friday) and call out: “Stop the escalation – rebuild Gaza !!!”

 

 

Members of Kol Aher (Anohter Voice), an Israeli movement living in the town of Sderot and smaller communities in the Gaza border area, will hold the demonstration at the Yad Mordechai Junction, a short distance north of the border – where they have already held numerous demonstrations and protests on earlier  occasions.  

Demonstrators will make upon the government of Israel the following calls:

 

– Cease the shooting of unarmed demonstrators!  

– Lift the siege on the Gaza Strip!  

– No violence! Yes to aid in rebuilding Gaza !!

Editorials & Actions

War Is a Lie by David Swanson

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By David Swanson

Syria All Wrong and Backwards

In the park today I saw a teenager watching two little kids, one of whom apparently stole a piece of candy from the other. The teenager rushed up to the two of them, reprimanded one of them, and stole both of their bicycles. I felt like it was my turn to step in at that point, and I confronted the bicycle thief. “Excuse me,” I said, “what makes you think you can commit a larger crime just because you witnessed a smaller one? Who do you think you are?” He stared at me for a while, and replied: “the U.S. military.”

There is no crime larger than war.

Editorials & Actions

Sign statement supporting B’tselem’s call to Israelis soldiers to refuse orders to shoot into crowds of unarmed civilians

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B’tselem, the Israeli Human Rights Organization, has called for Israeli soldiers to refuse orders to shoot into a crowd of unarmed civilians. The Israeli government justifies its killing of demonstrators last Friday and its intent to do so again this Friday by claiming that there are violence seekers among the crowd, and that some threw molotov cocktails toward the separation wall. Yet this is no excuse to kill innocent civilians. Intentionally shooting and killing nonviolent protestors is inhumane and inexcusable. We face this problem in U.S. peace and justice demonstrations when a few people smash windows or throw rocks at police.

Articles

Israeli Army Slaughters NonViolent Protesters on Eve of Passover

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We at Tikkun are in mourning for the seventeen Palestinians killed and hundreds wounded by the Israeli army on the eve of Passover. We are outraged by the use of violence and force by the Israeli soldiers who faced no threat to their safety or to the security of the State of Israel (though there were a handful of violent provocateurs among the thousands of nonviolent Gazans who came to the border with Israel to protest the ongoing blockade that has caused incredible suffering and many deaths among those living in this tiny area of mostly Palestinian refugees). We are also once again grieving for a Judaism that is being trampled on by those Jewish leaders who turn a blind eye to the brutality orchestrated by the Israeli army and justified by the Israeli government. I have included below a summary of three articles that I encourage you to read to gain a deeper understandings of the situation on the ground and responses both in Israel and the U.S. Please circulate this widely, and urge those who agree with these ideas to write letters of protest to your elected US officials in both political parties who give automatic support to every funding bill for Israel and every resolution backing Israel, and express your upset also to the various Israeli consulates and embassies around the world. We should not allow those who support the policies of Occupation to call themselves “pro-Israel” when in fact they are following a path that may lead to Israel’s destruction and already have led many people in parts of the world that never had any religious antagonism to Jews (such as, China, India, or much of Africa) to be open to hating Jews because they identify all Jews with the immoral policies of the current Israeli government.

Editorials & Actions

The Colors of our Future

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The Colors of Our Future
by Ellie Lyla Lerner

Where the pot of gold used to lie is now a vortex of gasoline,
a gloss, floating on the water we hold most dear. This rainbow is not the fairy tale book ambassador. This rainbow is not the refraction of colors, arching over a reborn world. No longer will crystal clear water droplets fill storybooks and poems with multicolored hope. For this rainbow is a story of muddy water, dirty streets and songs of smog.

Articles

Nate Terani: Donald Trump’s America– Already Hell Enough for this Muslim-American

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[Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for sharing this article by Nate Terani. The introduction is from Tom Engelhardt who edits Tom Dispatch]

Who could possibly keep up with the discordant version of musical chairs now being played out in Washington? When it comes to Donald Trump’s White House, the old sports phrase about needing a scorecard to keep track of the players pops to mind (though you would need a new one every day or maybe every few hours). The turnover rate of top White House staffers was already at 43%, a record for any administration in little more than its first year in office, before the latest round of exits even began. Recently, the president nominated Gina Haspel (“Bloody Gina”) to head the CIA.  She had, in fact, been responsible for running one of the Bush administration’s earliest and most brutal “black sites” and had a significant hand as well in destroying evidence of what CIA torturers had done there and elsewhere.

Editorials & Actions

We Never Needed to Use an Atomic Bomb–not in WWII, NEVER

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By Anthony Gronowicz

This entire race to mutual destruction began with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that were militarily unnecessary:

President Truman misled the American people into thinking that Hiroshima and Nagasaki that  were military targets. The reason for the bombing is that the Soviet Union had acceded to an Anglo-American request to enter the war against Japan the very day that Nagasaki was bombed. The bomb’s successful testing in July 1945 made Soviet participation unnecessary. One year earlier, the head of the Manhattan Project to build the world’s first atomic bomb, General Leslie Groves, had told Nobel Prize winner Joseph Rotblat that “the main purpose of the bomb was `to subdue the Russians.’”[1]

Most Americans are unaware of the anti-nuclear bomb perspective of World War II’s Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, Five-Star Fleet Admiral of the U.S. Navy and Chief of Staff to the President William D. Leahy, and Commanding General of the United States Army Air Force Henry H. Arnold—among others. Eisenhower wrote, “… I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him [Stimson] my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly, because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.”  Leahy concluded, “… [T] he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan … [I]n being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.

Editorials & Actions

A note from Keith Ellison about Farrakhan and hatred

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Rep. Keith EllisonFollow
Member of Congress from Minnesota’s Fifth District. Vice-Chair, @USProgressives
Mar 18

 

[ Editor’s Note: When you read this, it becomes even more striking and upsetting that the leaders of the Women’s March could not be equally explicit in condemning Farrakhan’s hatred of Jews and GLBQ and publicly distancing from him and his ideas. ]
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I Have Fought Against Hate My Entire Career
Standing together when those who have never been on our side seek to divide us
I ran for Congress more than a decade ago because I imagined a more inclusive, tolerant, and welcoming America and I’ve used my seat in Congress to try to make that vision a reality. I’ve voted to strengthen hate crime laws. I’ve introduced legislation to ensure that refugees fleeing war and persecution are safe and welcome in the United States.