Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/other_voices/page/29/)
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.
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.
Editor’s Note: Tikkun believes in the free exchange of ideas ala John Stuart Mill’s brilliant defense of free speech and the marketplace of ideas. For that reason we sometimes publish articles that are certain to offend a significant section of our readership. We welcome serious responses to this article and all other articles, sent to Letters@tikkun.org. It was published by a source, the Israeli settler magazine Arutz Sheva that regularly demeans all of us liberals and progressives, particularly those of us who support Palestinian rights. We as a magazine do not have the resources to hire fact-checkers, so we have no way to check the facts that they assert in this article.
Editor’s note: Rabbi Arik Ascherman is one of our great contemporary heroes. His work to save the Israeli Bedouins from being obliterated by the Israeil government deserves your fuill support. Please read his call to you below! Standing up for the humanity of everyone on the planet is part of the goal of Tikkun magazine and our interfaith and secular-humanist welcoming Network of Spiritual Progressives. To keep up with developments in the US and around the world, you are invited to receive (for FREE) updates through our Tikkun Daily Blog at
www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/join-tikkun-daily/– Rabbi Michael Lerner
Please Take action to Save the Bedouins
by Rabbi Arik Ascherman
As you read this, JNF bulldozers are preparing the first stage of building the Jewish community of “Hiran” on the rubble of the Israeli Negev Bedouin community of “Umm Al-Hiran.”
Words by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb on the JNF “special deal” for Tu B’shvat (today, January 25th).
The Jewish National Fund (JNF) is offering a special deal for Tu B’Shevat on its website: “Help celebrate TuBishvat by planting a tree in Israel…and you will be automatically entered to win a trip! Prizes include roundtrip airfare and two nights at the Carlton Hotel Tel Aviv for two.”
Meanwhile, since 1967, over 800,000 Palestinian olive trees have been destroyed by the state of Israel. In addition, tens of thousands of fruit trees, fields, wells and gardens have also been destroyed to make room for Jewish settlement. Having just received this year’s report from Palestinian farmer Daoud Nasser who’s family suffered the Israeli Defense Force’s destruction of 1500 fruit bearing trees last year, I feel deeply disconnected to JNF’s rendering of its mission and its version of history. The narrative on the JNF website resembles the United States’ narrative related to the historic site known as Colonial Williamsburg: an example of national distortions and lies that hide brutal histories. Williamsburg was literally segregated throughout much of its history. And, neither the genocidal histories of the massacre of Indigenous peoples, nor enslavement of Africans or their contributions to Colonial societies were anywhere evident. Just as African American and Indigenous presence and contributions are erased in white America’s Disneyland like portrayals of the past at so-called historic sites, so, too are Palestinians completely erased from Israel’s historic narrative, as are Bedouins, and Mizrachi and African Jews.