Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/editorials__actions/page/41/)
Editor’s Note: I find it disturbing that writers like this find a need to describe Israel’s immoral assault on the Gazan people as “genocide.” What Israel is doing is bad enough without trying to fit it into a category which brings up memories of real genocides–the attempt of the Nazis to wipe out every Jew and every gay person and every gypsy, the attempt of American settlers to wipe out every Native American, etc.
Is Blaspheme Punishable by Death in Islam? 5/7/2011
By: Dr. Aslam Abdullah
IslamiCity* –
There is nothing in the Quran or the authentic teachings of Prophet Muhammad justifying the killing of people for opposing, criticizing, humiliating or showing irreverence toward holy personages, religious artifacts, customs and beliefs of Islam. The Quran says:
“Revile not ye those whom they call upon besides Allah,
lest they out of spite revile Allah in their ignorance. Thus We have made alluring to each people its own doings. In the end will they return to their Lord,
and We shall then tell them the truth of all that they did.
The Network of Spiritual Progressives is excited to welcome Rev. J. Alfred Smith Sr. as co-chair and Cat J. Zavis as executive director.
After years of Obama’s capitulation to the corporate, military, and “security” elites, Dems may have a hard time selling themselves as populist champions.
A Prayer for Peace
Avinu ve’ emoteynu sheh ba shamayim, tzur Yisra’el ve’ go’aloe
Our Father and Mother energies in the cosmos, the rock of Israel and our salvation
Bless all the peoples of the Middle East with peace, security, environment sanity, and a sense of being genuinely cared for by the world and by the God/dess of all flesh, however they conceive of this God or Goddess, whatever names or language they give to the ultimate source of love and meaning in the universe. In this hour of war, violence, and pain, we reaffirm the humanity and decency of all the people on our planet, and our ability to see the humanity and God-presence in the Palestinian people, the Israeli people, and all people on the planet. We understand that each of the many sides of the conflicts tearing our world apart today have their own legitimacy, but we also know that violence cannot be the path to a peaceful and safe world. We may be outraged at the behavior of governments, political parties, or groups acting in hurtful ways, but we will not accept any attempt to generalize that righteous indignation into generalities about all people of a certain nation, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other such grouping. We ask you, the Force of Healing and Transformation in the Universe, Yud Hey Vav Hey, ALLAH, the Cosmic Christ, Krishna, whatever name people give to this Force, to open up the hearts of all humanity to each other and to the earth itself.
This article can be read on the home page of Huffington Post as it appears Friday morning, July 18. Israel: Stop the Invasion of Gaza, Stop the Bombing of Gaza, Free the Palestinian Prisoners
According to Ha’aretz correspondent Amira Hass, the IDF has been conducting mass arrests in the West Bank, between 10 and 30 every day. Twenty-four of the arrested are members of the Palestinian parliament from Hamas’ Change and Reform party. The number of those arrested since the kidnapping and murder of the Israeli teens has already exceeded 1,000. The Palestinians are convinced that most of those detained have nothing to do with the kidnapping and that these are mainly political arrests for purposes of intimidation and revenge.
Each one is a world
7:34pm
We were sitting at Lincoln Park in West Seattle, with a handful of friends who had gathered for a picnic potluck, awaiting others who would be joining us shortly. A Facebook message came through on my Smartphone from my friend Yousef Munayyer. Hey Jen, just saw some news about a young man from the Shurrab family in khan yunis being the latest victim, Name is Tayseer. Have you heard from Amer recently? Amer Shurrab was, as a matter of fact, sitting across the picnic table from me at that very moment. He had come for a few day visit from Monterrey, where he is finishing his MBA.
Hamas is “objectively even if not subjectively” the best friend of the Israeli settlers, right-wing Israeli extremists, and the Netanyahu government. Hamas leaders know very well that their bombs are not getting through Israel’s missile shield. There is no possible military advantage to continuing these futile attempts to rectify the imbalance in casualties between the 200 Palestinians already killed by Israeli attacks and the one Israeli killed by Hamas shells. But the extremists in Hamas, like the rogue band of criminals who murdered three Israeli youth, have succeeded in their goal: to create fear among Israelis that leads them to rally to those racists who wish to punish the entire Palestinian people for the actions of a few. Such reactionaries wish to thereby “prove” to the Palestinian people that there is no possibility of peace with Israel and to discredit the strategy of the Palestinian Authority that has renounced violence for the past 8 years. Still, the Palestinian Authority achieves little in the way of independence and dignity for all its efforts at negotiations with Netanyahu.
Editor’s note: We got this article (printed below) from the Times of Israel, in which Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu fully reveals that he never intended and never will negotiate an independent Palestinian state. To some this is shocking news and all the more since the Western media totally ignored this most significant statement made by Netanyahu, a full revelation of what he really thinks when he is speaking only in Hebrew and not trying to do p.r. for the West. But for many of us who have followed his actions, increasing settlements and using the despicable murder of Israeli teens as a pretext for once again escalating into war the struggle against Hamas, we have not been mesmerized by his deceitful words and there is nothing surprising in all this. Netanyahu has never been a partner for peace and the foolishness of the Obama Administration’s strategy of “get the peace negotiations going” is revealed. As I’ve said in previous editorials in Tikkun, the only thing the US can do that would be a real contribution toward peace is to go over the heads of Israeli and Palestinian leaders and go directly to the people and present a vision and a concrete plan for the terms that could actually end the conflict.
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20140629-refusing-sanctuary-to-children-in-need.ece
Refusing sanctuary to children in need
Exactly 75 years and one month ago the St. Louis, a German trans-Atlantic liner carrying 938 Jewish refugees, was turned away from the United States, forced to return to Europe. U.S. law didn’t allow them sanctuary. Today we are preparing to send 45,000 children back to Central American countries controlled by drug cartels that routinely torture, rape and kill children who refuse to work for them. So routinely, so often are children menaced that their families sent them away, alone, across thousands of miles on just the slimmest of hopes that they might be safe.
Women Rising for the Middle East, in solidarity with Zahira and the women of ME
Dearest Zahira, dearest Wise Women of our Circle,
First, Zahira, thank you for connecting with all of us as the unbearable situation unfolds in Palestine and Israel. Your message of last Saturday is exactly the ‘ALARM BELL’, the ‘wake up call’ that Scilla so powerfully evoked in Charney Manor, and that we all deeply felt.
This is our raison d’etre as a women’s initiative: When we hear the wake up call of such terrible suffering, we know that a deeper, wiser, more compassionate and far-sighted response that serves the highest interest of everyone is needed and is possible; and we know and that we as women are best placed to tap into it, to voice it, and to implement it together. In this holy month of Ramadan, Palestine, and the entire Middle East is burning – again. We women know these flames could envelop the world if we don’t ‘inner act’ – from our souls – NOW. As the Israel-Palestine crisis broke and ISIS captured Mosul, I was on a peace mission in Turkey to meet exiled Syrian peace activists and refugees from Syria, Iraq and Palestine.
Once again the violence of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and the violence of Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza have combined to create a spiraling violence that serves the extremists on both sides who can point to the intended violence on the other side to justify their own. We call upon both sides to agree to an immediate cease fire from both sides. In my book Embracing Israel/Palestine, I show how both sides have co-created this mess, and why it is futile, stupid, intellectually lacking in credibility, and ethically perverse to try to pin the blame on one side or the other, because both sides have been incredibly tone deaf to the suffering of the other side and the most negative possible interpretation of the other side’s intentions increasingly prevails in the public perceptions on each side of the intentions of the other. Of course at the moment there is no equivalence in power or violence. Israel has already killed over 150 Palestinians, and wounder hundreds; Gazans have not inflicted any deaths and few injuries on Israelis (which I’m glad about–I don’t want Israeli blood to flow any more than I want Palesitnian blood to flow!
A variety of Memories of Rabbi Zalman Schachter Shalomi (z’l). We invited people in the Tikkun community to share some memories of their personal connections to Zalman. We cannot publish them all—so many hundreds of people pouring out their wonderful experiences and wishing to honor this great Tzaddik! So we’ve selected a representative sample. I have so many memories myself I didn’t mention in the earlier piece I sent out. One that comes to mind as I read the Israeli press describing mobs of Israelis roaming the streets of Israeli towns and beating up Israeli Palestinians that they come upon, while the Israeli army blows up homes of “suspected terrorists” though they have no plausible connection with the horrible murder committed against 3 Israeli youth last week, and reading about the Palestinian youth murdered by Israeli settlers (according to the latest information from the Israeli investigators of that crime).
Editor’s Note: The following article from The Forward by JJ Goldberg tells us how the Israeli government lied about what it knew and when it knew it, and about how it manipulated reports of the circumstances of the kidnapping and murders to create a full scale attack on Hamas, despite Hamas having done what it could to avoid confrontation with Israel. Please read it carefully and then understand how little you can believe in the media when it comes to Israel/Palestine. Personally, I’m shocked and angered at what this story reveals about Israeli behavior, how the Netanyahu government conspired to rile up public opinion to blame the kidnapping of the Israeli teens on Hamas though it knew that Hamas had nothing to do with it, and to justify a war with Hamas (presumably to force the Palestinian Authority to break its newly shaped reconciliation with Hamas). I commend JJ Goldberg for writing this account and the Forward for publishing it. –Rabbi Michael Lerner RabbiLerner.tikkun@gmail.com
It is then followed by other articles about the war Israel is waging against Palesitnians
Bloody Gaza Onslaught Built on Foundation of Politics and Lies
Israeli Military Dragged Into New Quagmire by Politicians
By J.J. Goldberg (a weekly columnist of long and distinguished pedigree)
The Forward, Published July 10, 2014, issue of July 18, 2014
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/201764/bloody-gaza-onslaught-built-on-foundation-of-polit/?p=all#ixzz374CXcrLV <http://forward.com/articles/201764/bloody-gaza-onslaught-built-on-foundation-of-polit/?p=all#ixzz374CXcrLV>
In the flood of angry words that poured out of Israel and Gaza during a week of spiraling violence, few statements were more blunt, or more telling, than this throwaway line by the chief spokesman of the Israeli military, Brigadier General Moti Almoz, speaking July 8 on Army Radio’s morning show: “We have been instructed by the political echelon to hit Hamas hard.”
That’s unusual language for a military mouthpiece. Typically they spout lines like “We will take all necessary actions” or “The state of Israel will defend its citizens.” You don’t expect to hear: “This is the politicians’ idea.
Jerusalem Light Rail Train
Amjad Shbita, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, an activist in the Israeli Hadash-Maki party (Jewish and Palestinian socialists), who has also worked at the Knesset as a parliamentary assistant, introduces this harrowing account on Facebook by asking a theoretical question: “Fascists in a colonial regime? Is that a historical precedent?”
The account was written by Nijmeh Ali, a woman. It follows, in translation:
“The light train in Jerusalem. I am sitting quietly. Some yelling is heard and the train gets stuck.