Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/author/tikkun-admin/page/14/)
“…we must see the senseless murder and devaluation of the lives of animals on the continent of Africa as directly linked with the enslavement, segregation, denial of rights, and murder of African heritage people in the United States, for all this attests to the white supremacist plundering of life continuing to this very day.”
This is rich. In a Weekly Standard op-ed written by Elliot Abrams and trumpeted by Carl Rove, President Obama has been accused of promoting anti-Semitism for calling out the Israel Lobby’s influence and warmongering.
Editor’s Note:
Faced with the horrendous crimes of an ultra-orthodox Jew stabbing participants in a gay pride demonstration in Israel, and the firebombing of Palestinian homes and resulting burning to death of an 18 month old Palestinian baby while others in the family are in critical condition and may not survive, many Israelis and American Jews denounced these horrendous acts. Netanyahu and his government ordered a few Israeli settlers arrested in “administrative detention,” the polite word to describe the practice which till now has been used against thousands of Palestinian civilians–arrest without formal charges, often held in detention for months or more without trial, and in the case of Palestinians often tortured. The Israeli settlers arrested did not face what most Palestinians “suspected” of terrorist acts usually suffer: the homes of the family of the suspect are immediately blown up by the occupying Israeli Army in the West Bank. That no such punishment was immediately meted out to the Israeli settler suspects was not surprising, but just another manifestation of the racist treatment Palestinians in the Occupied territory face (though of course we don’t support this tactic against settlers or Palestinians). As many Israeli human rights and peace advocates point out, the firebombing of Palestinian homes is just one of many variants of violence visited upon Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, the goal being to make life so difficult that Palestinians will eventually be “ethnically cleansed” and Israel can make the West Bank a fully Jewish-majority part of Israel.
Like something left behind
A passport
A sweater
A child’s
Toy worn and loved
And lost
Tears and sweat
In the memory of the fabric
Supposed to be here
But not
In your icy panic
Who could you call
To find it
Bring it
Back? Shabbat candles are
For burning
Two arms
Reaching to heaven
In petition supplication the
Wax turning to warmth
A portal to heaven
A mother’s prayer that
Her children… Her children. But a house is not for burning
Not two not one
Not one single house
Nor a mother nor
Chas vShalom
Her children… Her children.
Tomorrow, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamim Netanyahu will stream a live, interactive address to millions of U.S. citizens in the American Jewish community. The goal? Convince U.S. Jews to reject President Obama’s diplomatic agreement with Iran as he and pro-Israel lobbying groups intensify pressure on Congress to do the same.
Early Friday morning, two masked settlers crouched before a home in the West Bank village of Duma, touched their fingers to its cold walls and nodded. Then they spray painted the words “vengeance” and “long live the Messiah” before breaking windows, throwing firebombs inside and fleeing as a family of four burned in their beds.
We cannot escape our destiny and it is divine. It will perhaps happen during our lifetime and we all have a part to play in it if we will but surrender to what is deepest within us: a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness or, as Emerson wrote, “The thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite”.
Eli Lake, formerly a senior national security correspondent for Newsweek and current columnist for Bloomberg, decided today to represent in a single Tweet all that is toxic within the American Jewish community when it comes to discussing Israel. Lake, himself Jewish, responded to fellow Jewish journalist Glenn Greenwald’s critique of congressional Iran-deal supporters with the following, vile description:
What caused Lake, who is no fan of the Iran deal, to parrot anti-Semitic language and direct it toward a fellow Jew? He took exception to Greenwald’s suggesting that some Republican members of Congress are prioritizing Israel’s interests over those of the United States in opposing the Iran deal. Now, the dual loyalty charge sometimes thrown at American Jews who support Israel is an anti-Semitic trope which intends to cast Jews as traitors. However, Greenwald was not making such a charge.
When an historic nuclear agreement with Iran was announced on July 14, Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, immediately lambasted it as a “historic mistake.” He then warned that Israel would not be bound by it, and pledged to lobby Congress to oppose it. And he did so after claiming that this opposition was on behalf of “the entire Jewish people.”
The historic accord reached Tuesday between Iran and a United-States-led coalition of world powers has inspired strong and varied reactions across the world. Among these, the initial reaction offered by Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has become a point of focus.