The most urgent focus must be on the worsening conditions faced by Palestinians, not on theoretical arguments about one state vs. two.
2015
Human Evil
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Evil must be understood as the inability to see the humanity of others. Americans often justify our violence toward others by emphasizing their evil while ignoring our own.
Editorials & Actions
Islamic State Is the Cancer of Modern Capitalism by Nafeez Ahmed
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Islamic State is the Cancer of Modern Capitalism
Nafeez Ahmed
March 27, 2015
Middle East Eye
The brutal ‘Islamic State’ is a symptom of a deepening crisis of civilisation premised on fossil fuel addiction, which is undermining Western hegemony and unraveling state power across the Muslim world. In Iraq and Syria, where IS was born, the devastation of society due to prolonged conflict cannot be underestimated. , AA,
Debate about the origins of the Islamic State (IS) has largely oscillated between two extreme perspectives. One blames the West. IS is nothing more than a predictable reaction to the occupation of Iraq, yet another result of Western foreign policy blowback.
Editorials & Actions
Why the Nuclear Agreement with Iran is a Good Deal
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A Good Deal, a Long Time Coming by Scott Ritter
Posted: 04/02/2015 7:29 pm EDT Updated: 2 hours ago
The deal recently concluded between Iran and the so-called “P-5 plus 1” nations (the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) is designed to prevent Iran from being able to rapidly acquire fissile material in quantities suitable for use in a nuclear weapon. According to President Obama, the agreement is a “good deal” that “shuts down Iran’s path to a bomb.” The devil is in the details, of course, which won’t be finalized until June 30, but at first blush the deal emerging out of Switzerland accomplishes that which it was intended to. Critics maintain that Iran will be able to readily defeat restrictions imposed by the deal in order to realize its nuclear aspirations. The key to any agreement will lie in the verification measures implemented to ensure compliance.
Editorials & Actions
Henry Giroux on Hysterical Authoritarianism: Terrorism, Violence and the Culture of Madness
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Editor’s Note:
Henry Giroux’s picture of America presents a society that would be rather depressing if it were the whole picture. What it leaves out is the irrepressible desire of human beings to live in a world of love and generosity, kindness and environmental sanity. While he talks of Americans’ attraction to violence as an entertainment, I think of it more likely as a response to the frustration of their desires for a different kind of world, anger at themselves for allowing themselves to even think about an alternative given the constant preaching of everyone to everyone that one must be “realistic” and accept that the exploitative, materialistic and selfishness oriented social world cannot be changed or transcended, and then relieving that self-punishing anger by externalizing it against societally-sanctioned targets, namely the “others” who the society finds convenient to disempower and oppress. This othering can be challenged, but only by a movement that does not deal with the American public as hopelessly bamboozled by the existing entertainments, but as themselves suffering and deserving of empathy as a first step toward a process of liberation from the dominant consciousness and opening toward an alternative. That development of a counter-consciousness is precisely the goal of The Network of Spiritual Progressives, and the point of the Global Marshall Plan www.tikkun.org/gmp, the ESRA Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment www.tikkun.org and the “New Bottom Line” www.tikkun.org/newsite/yearning-for-a-world-of-love-and-justice-2 is to provide us with concrete ways to raise this new consciousness through struggles that can only be won when people become attracted to the idea of breaking through the repressive consciousness of contemporary political reality and embracing the seemingly utopian visions inherent in the Tikkun/NSP programs. Yet so much of what Giroux points to is true that it is important to read this article, and then re-read this introduction to see where you end up in this discussion.
Articles
Patty Hearst and the Twinkie Murders
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In 1975, I covered the trial of heiress Patty Hearst for the Berkeley Barb. She had been kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and was forced at gunpoint by her abductors to participate in their robbing a bank.
Editorials & Actions
By Separating Nature from Economics, we have walked blindly into tragedy– by Jeffrey Sachs
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By separating nature from economics, we have walked blindly into tragedy
Jeffrey Sachs March 10, 2015
Recent news brings yet another example of hubris followed by crisis followed by tragedy. The hubris is our ongoing neglect of human-induced climate change, leading to climate disruptions around the world. One of the many climate crises currently under way is the mega-drought in São Paulo, Brazil. The recent tragedy is an epidemic of dengue fever in the city, as mosquitos breed in the makeshift water tanks that have bought in to maintain supply through the drought. Welcome to ‘the age of sustainable development’.
Rethinking Religion
A God That Could Be Real
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Unconscious evolution of God-ideas is inevitable, but conscious evolution of God-ideas has been harshly discouraged. This must change, or else we’ll never be able to bring our best knowledge into the process of rethinking God for our time.
Editorials & Actions
Why Netanyahu is the Right Man to Address the U.S. Congress on Iran–by Yakov M. Rabkin
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by Yakov M. Rabkin, Netanya, Israel, March 2, 2015
Israel’s Prime Minister is well-placed to explain to the U.S. Congress the alleged danger of a nuclear Iran. After all, it was Israel and its allies in Washington who fabricated this issue to begin with. It is thus incumbent upon Mr. Netanyahu to try to give credence to that allegation even as U.S., European – and even Israeli – intelligence agencies agree that Iran is not trying to produce nuclear weapons. Some may remember that the claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction had come largely from the same people close to Israel’s right-wing Likud party.
The role of this Likud lobby has been seminal in stirring the campaign against Iran.
Activism
Boiling Point: Why Do We Let Big Oil Send Workers to Their Deaths?
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In exposing unsafe working conditions to the public, the refinery workers are raising not just contract demands, but a deeper challenge about the immorality of a profit-driven production system that simply monetizes the loss of human life on corporate spreadsheets.
Editorials & Actions
NO, Mr. Netanyahu! We Will NOT Let You Drag the U.S. Into a Proxy War for Israel Against Iran — Sign the NY Times Ad
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We invite you to sign and contribute financial support to make this New York Times ad possible (go to tikkun.org/peaceproject to sign and donate to make this ad possible). Would you join us as a signer of the proposed full-page New York Timesad below? If so, please give us your name as you wish it to appear. You may also include a short institutional or organizational affiliation (for identification purposes only). This ad will only be possible if you and others donate generously (please stretch a little) to make it possible. Donate Now.
Editorials & Actions
Meet Violence with Love
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Love can triumph–but only if we militantly pursue a society based on love. By militantly I mean, without apology and without self-doubt, but fully committed to changing every economic, political and social institution with The New Bottom Line: love, kindness, generosity, environmental sanity and justice, and awe/wonder/and radical amazement at the grandeur and preciousness of every human being and all of Nature. This thought stimulated by the horrible killings in the Middle East and the ongoing agony of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza while hundreds of thousands of people remain homeless and hungry, and the daily use of drone attacks and bombings by the US government around the world. So, I thought to reprint an article I got on email today from Alistair McIntosh from Scotland, along with the author’s note. -Rabbi Michael Lerner
Dear Michael, the following, which promotes your work at Tikkun as an example of hope, will be appearing this afternoon on a Scottish website, Bella Caledonia.
Editorials & Actions
Yitzhak Frankenthal–an evening with the courageous creator of the Bereaved Parents in Jerusalem
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My name is Yitzhak Frankenthal, and I’m a religious, Israeli Zionist. On July 1994 my eldest son Arik died in combat with Hamas. Since then I have worked to promote peace and reconciliation. In early 1995 I was chosen as the secretary-general of the religious, Zionist movement “Oz VeShalom – Netivot Shalom,” which I managed for 3 years. That same year I established the “Parents Circle – Families Forum” for bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families that support peace and reconciliation, which I managed for 10 years.
Analysis of Israel/Palestine
Assimilation Indeed: Hillel’s Co-optation of Progressive Jewish Students, 1967-2015
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For many Jewish students, the Six-Day War constituted the first time they experienced a connection to a Jewish cause recognized by the establishment. Unfortunately, the Hillel International of today has prioritized parroting the hasbara of expansionist Israeli governments over capacious intellectual debate.
Activism
A Wholehearted Jewish Future
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My generation has left the peace movement in Israel hanging. Now we are relying on the next generation to articulate what we have been thinking but haven’t said. What we do say, we whisper. Then we congratulate ourselves for getting that far. Why are we frightened? Why are we silent?