Tikkun - The Prophetic Jewish, Interfaith & Secular Voice to Heal and Transform the World

The Prophetic Jewish, Interfaith & Secular Voice to Heal and Transform the World

Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/this-time-it-is-not-israel-responsible-for-palestinian-suffering-see-the-situation-in/)

This time it is not Israel responsible for Palestinian suffering–see the situation in Yarmouk, Syria

By Rabbi Michael Lerner | April 13, 2015

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

About Rabbi Michael Lerner

Rabbi Michael Lerner holds a Ph.D. in philosophy (1972) and a second Ph.D. in psychology (1977), is editor of Tikkun www.tikkun.org, executive director of the Institute for Labor and Mental Health, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue-Without-Walls in Berkeley, chair of the international Network of Spiritual Progressives, and author of 12 books, most recently Revolutionary Love published by the University of California Press (more info about this book at www.tikkun.org/lj). Lerner was recently described by Professor Cornel West of Harvard U. as “one of the most significant prophetic public intellectuals and spiritual leaders of our generation” and Keith Ellison, Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, says: “The caring society is the only realistic path for humanity to survive, and in Revolutionary Love Rabbi Lerner lays out a powerful and compassionate plan for building that caring society.” Talking about his book Revolutionary Love, Gloria Steinem, a founding editor of Ms. Magazine, says “Michael Lerner takes the universal qualities wrongly diminished as ‘feminine’—caring, kindness, empathy, love—and dares to make them guides to a new kind of politics that can challenge the cruelty, competition, and dominance wrongly elevated as ‘masculine.’ Revolutionary Love opens our minds and hearts to a fully human way of living and governing.”

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