Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/page/15/)
Editor’s note: Tikkun presents this note from the Arab American Institute in part because it highlights the need of people of the world to stand up in defense of Christians in the Middle East who are often under attack from some (not all) Islamic forces in the region. The precarious situation of Christians, particularly in Egypt, but also in other Middle Eastern states, mirrors that of Jews in those same states in the 1900s until they fled to safety in Israel in 1948 and thereafter.
Editor’s note: As in all articles published by Tikkun, except our editorials, Tikkun does not necessarily agree or endorse the views we publish. We choose our articles to present views that are rarely aired in the mainstream media and which might contribute to the healing and transformation of our world that Tikkun seeks. But we don’t have staff or resources sufficient to ensure that the views and facts presented in our articles are accurate or that they will for sure lead to the world we want. Sad, but with a total of 2.5 people working at Tikkun, it’s the best we can do!–Rabbi Michael Lerner, Editor
US Imperialism: Changing Direction?
By Zoltan Zigedy
Developments over the last few weeks further remove the fog obscuring the foreign policy objectives of the US ruling class. A series of seemingly unrelated events casts light on the goals of US policy makers in an era of intensifying international rivalries.
12 Reasons to Embrace the Chaos and Move Forward in Life
BOB MIGLANI
“What’s the point?”, I sometimes ask myself. It’s such an uncertain world out there. I mean, “It all looks so bleak. Why should I even bother to try to move forward in life or my career? Why should I try to improve my circumstances when I don’t think it will lead anywhere?
June 5, 2017
America’s Long War or Global War on Terror has taken some ugly turns as the West’s continued war-making in the Muslim world leads to new terrorism against Western targets, with no end in sight, explains Nicolas J S Davies.
By Nicolas J S Davies
The recent news from Kabul (in Afghanistan), from Manchester and London (in England), from Mosul (in Iraq), from Raqqa (in Syria), from Marib (in Yemen) and from too many devastated and traumatized communities to list makes it only too clear that the world is trapped in an unprecedented and intractable cycle of violence. And yet, incredibly, none of the main parties to all this violence are talking seriously about how to end it, let alone taking action to do so. At the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush ordered the U.S. military to conduct a devastating aerial assault on Baghdad, known as “shock and awe.”
After 15 years of ever-spreading conflict has killed two to five million people, the main perpetrators are still getting away with framing their violence entirely as a response to the violence of their enemies. How much violence and chaos will the world accept before people start holding their own leaders morally and legally accountable for decisions and policies that predictably and repeatedly result in massive loss of life, cities reduced to rubble and shattered societies? The neoconservative vision of a “Long War” or “generational conflict” to reshape the Middle East and other parts of the world has, in effect, created its own reality, as its proponents in the Bush II administration promised. The new crony-capitalist order they envisioned has taken root in places where entrenched ruling classes were already predisposed to it, like the Persian Gulf monarchies. But wherever the would-be new rulers of the world – the U.S., NATO and the Arab royals – have made good on their threats to impose their new order by force, the results have only confirmed the soundness of the United Nations Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of force and the urgency of actually enforcing it.
Here’s a reasonable question to ask in our unreasonable world: Does Donald Trump even know where North Korea is? The answer matters and if you wonder why I ask, just remember his comment upon landing in Israel after his visit to Saudi Arabia. “We just got back from the Middle East,” he said. In response, reported the Washington Post, “the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Ron Dermer, put his forehead in his palm.” Which brings us back to North Korea. As pollsters working for the New York Times recently discovered, were President Trump to have only the foggiest idea of that country’s location, he would be in remarkably good company. Of the 1,746 American adults the polling group Morning Consult queried, only 36% could accurately point to North Korea on a map of Asia.
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? A World that Cares Little for Civilian Victims of War
By Howard Lisnoff
June 01, 2017 “Information Clearing House” – 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 the bombing of the buses carrying these refugees, among whom were 68 children. A total of 126 people were killed according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (“‘Sixty-eight children among dead’ of suicide bombing attack in Syria,” Guardian, April 16, 2017)Compare the latter to the horrific suicide bombing attack in Manchester, England, where 22 people were ruthlessly killed.
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).
Editor’s Note: Thanks to our media ally TomDispatch.com for this valuable analysis of US spending for war (consistently and not a product of only one political party).
The American Way of War Is a Budget-Breaker
Never Has a Society Spent More for Less
By William D. Hartung
When Donald Trump wanted to “do something” about the use of chemical weapons on civilians in Syria, he had the U.S. Navy lob 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield (cost: $89 million). The strike was symbolic at best, as the Assad regime ran bombing missions from the same airfield the very next day, but it did underscore one thing: the immense costs of military action of just about any sort in our era. While $89 million is a rounding error in the Pentagon’s $600 billion budget, it represents real money for other agencies. It’s more than twice the $38 million annual budget of the U.S. Institute of Peace and more than half the $149 million budget of the National Endowment of the Arts, both slated for elimination under Trump’s budget blueprint. If the strikes had somehow made us — or anyone — safer, perhaps they would have been worth it, but they did not.