Nonviolence could be the way of nations—and that might just save us.
2015
Making Nonviolent Statecraft into a Self-Evident Truth
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The precedents and models exist to make the case for nonviolent statecraft in the United States, but we need to make this case so self-evident that the war options become plainly absurd.
Editorials & Actions
Who is hoping to lead us into war with Iran?
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THE STRANGE ALLIANCE OF FUNDAMENTALIST JEWS AND CHRISTIANS WHO
ACHE FOR ARMAGEDDON
BY
ALLAN C. BROWNFELD
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It has often been said that politics makes for strange bedfellows. This adage is certainly reflected in the unusual alliance between fundamentalist Jews and Christians, who have joined together to oppose the creation of a Palestinian state and, now, to oppose any nuclear agreement with Iran and to silence campus debate on the Middle East. In June, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson held a meeting in Las Vegas to raise funds and create an organization, Campus Maccabees, to aggressively counter the movement on some college campuses to divest from companies doing business in the occupied territories and to boycott and divest from Israel, the so-called BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) movement. Adelson calls this movement “anti-Semitic,” although many of its leaders and supporters are Jewish. Open debate is being challenged, somehow, as “hate speech.”
Israel/Palestine
For Hazhir
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Jon Swan’s poem about drones is a haunting vision. “The drone hovers under the iron-gray dome of heaven . . .”
Editorials & Actions
This time it is not Israel responsible for Palestinian suffering–see the situation in Yarmouk, Syria
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Palestinians trapped dying in Yarmouk, Syria – a test for the left
If, as progressives, we truly care about injustices done to Palestinians, if our goal as leftists goes beyond expressing fury toward Israel, we must raise our voices every bit as forcefully, right now, to try to help the people of Yarmouk. By Bradley Burston
It was once the largest Palestinian community in Syria. Situated barely a few miles from President Bashar Assad’s palace in Damascus, the two square kilometers of the Yarmouk district were a de facto refugee camp, home to well over 100,000 people. But that was before the Syrian civil war made the camp into a battleground four years ago, before the Assad government besieged the camp for more than two years, and, most recently, before ISIS invaded it as a strategic prize, Syrian aircraft barrel-bombed it, and the 18,000 Palestinians left there have been trapped, slowly starving, vulnerable to disease, deadly crossfire, and the horrifying prospects of ISIS rule. Read Brad Burston’s insightful column in Ha’aretz at: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/1.650850
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
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.
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.
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.
Articles
Letter to a Jewish Girl
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I write this letter for the Jewish girl who was afraid to put her name to this letter for fear of being deemed too controversial to be hired within the American Jewish community. I write this letter for the Jewish girl who debates the news schizophrenically with herself inside her head. I write this letter for the Jewish girl who was told that her politics went wrong when she let a few experiences with “good Arabs” distract her from the bigger picture.
Articles
Jewish Education During the Nazis as Spiritual Resistance
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“Somehow Nazism and Martin Buber worked together to give a lot of us a much deeper feeling for what Judaism offers.”
2014
Angry Jews on the Freedom Bus
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“We have to change the way we talk about and relate to the State of Israel. And we have to do it now.”
So declared one of the almost dozen Jewish participants in the most recent Freedom Bus ride through Palestine. I recently traveled the length and breadth of the West Bank on the annual Freedom Bus trip sponsored by the Jenin Freedom Theatre, a cultural center and theater based in the Jenin refugee camp. Despite having spent more than two decades living in, working on, and writing about Palestine/Israel, I was struck by the intensity of traveling through frontline communities in the unending struggle over land in the West Bank. Reading a Haaretz headline declaring that “Israel authorizes record amount of West Bank land for settlement construction” is one thing; experiencing the realities of constant settlement expansion from the perspective of the residents whose lives are most directly and deleteriously impacted by it, is quite another.
Editorials & Actions
From Just War to Just Peace–a message from progressive Catholics
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From Just War to Just Peace: The Time Is Now
“Those who use the sword are sooner or later destroyed by it.”
– Matthew 27:52
“If we cannot know from the New Testament that Christ totally rejects violence, then we can know nothing of His person or message. It is the clearest of teachings.”
– Rev. John L. McKenzie, Biblical Scholar
“War is the suicide of humanity because it kills the heart and kills love.” – Pope Francis, June 2, 2013
As Catholic Christians, we call on our Church to embrace gospel nonviolence as the only stance consistent with Christian discipleship and to reject the just war tradition (JWT), as expressed, among other places, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (¶ 2309). The JWT is unChristian and obsolete. War undermines human development and human dignity.