Healing Israel/Palestine

Don’t Blame ‘Zionism’, Part 2

By |

This is my sketchy outline (all I can do in a blog post) of how close we were several times to peace in the last two decades, and what undermined this each time:
The first major blow to the Oslo peace process was Baruch Goldstein’s mass murder of Palestinians at prayer in Hebron. Israel contritely apologized but didn’t act as Meretz and other doves urged at the time, to forcibly evict the extremist settlers in Hebron and/or nearby Kiryat Araba. This was seriously considered by Prime Minister Rabin, but fatally rejected in the conviction that the timetable for final-status talks on the disposition of the settlements should not be disrupted. There were a couple of small Palestinian terrorist incidents before the Goldstein massacre, but they escalated precipitously afterward. Then, there was the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in Nov.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Democracy Rises for Arabs, Retreats for Israelis?

By |

Naomi Chazan, the former Meretz Knesset member who now serves as the New Israel Fund’s president, is in New York this week for an NIF board meeting. So I saw her twice this past weekend at shuls that I occasionally attend on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. First, she was the guest speaker in front of a standing-room only crowd at a Seudah Shlishit (the ceremonial third meal that traditionally concludes Shabbat with study). An impassioned speaker, she surely left a striking impression for the moderately liberal Conservative-affiliated synagogue, Ansche Chesed. The audience was unfailingly polite and mostly receptive to her message, which contrasted the massive upheavals for democracy and human rights going on in Tunisia and Egypt right now (including spillovers in at least a couple of other Arab countries) with a contraction of democracy and civil rights threatening to take hold in Israel.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Jewish Resonances on Gabrielle Giffords

By |

A surprising outgrowth to this heartbreaking and heartwarming national story are its “Jewish” aspects. First of all, there is the fact that (according to the JTA new service) Congresswoman Giffords, the daughter of a Christian Scientist mother and a Jewish father who was “brought up in both faiths,” identifies strongly as Jewish and is a member of a Reform synagogue. Secondly, there’s the sudden currency in the headlines of a historic term associated with the persecution of Jews, “blood libel.” Sarah Palin has accused the media of engaging in this hateful practice in asserting that the hyperbolic tone of political debate in this country, tinged with violent and threatening imagery coming from the right, contributed to the shooting of Ms. Giffords and the others at her event. Palin deserves to be sensitive on this point because it was Giffords who first rose to national prominence in March of 2010 by calling attention to the graphic gunsight imagery employed by Palin in targeting Giffords and about 20 other Democrats for defeat in last year’s campaign.

Culture

Orlando: Surreal Film Ridicules Gender Roles and War

By |

By Ralph Seliger
“Orlando” is a 1992 film of exceeding crispness and beauty, being re-released on July 23. Spoiler alert: because of the paucity of dialogue and plot, I provide more detail than I normally would in a review, but I suggest that this is not a problem. Its plot basically serves as a vehicle for conveying a memorable cinematic experience. Yet since nothing other than the fantastic seems to happen, this is not for moviegoers who only appreciate realism. For those who can enjoy more, it’s remarkable for (among other things) a stately pace that never seems to drag.