Healing Israel/Palestine

Emergency Committee For Israel Misrepresents Its Mission

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The Emergency Committee For Israel (ECI) seems to more closely mirror a right wing Super PAC than an organization sincerely interested in helping Israel respond to emergencies. Or maybe my definition of “emergency” just differs from theirs. You be the judge. Back in October, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), two of the leading Jewish-American organizations in the United States, fearing the possibility that bipartisan support for Israel could become a political wedge issue, asked that Jewish and pro-Israel groups refrain from criticizing President Obama’s overall record on Israel. Specific points of policy disagreements are fine, they said, but to engage in an attack on Obama’s Israel record could risk Israel becoming a Democratic and Republican political football.

GMP

Help Tikkun Place a New York Times Ad Against Striking Iran

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Would you please help us put an ad in the New York Times, Washington Post (or maybe also Ha’aretz and Yediot in Israel, and other media, depending on how much money we can raise) to put public pressure on President Obama to NOT agree to overtly or covertly approve an Israeli preemptive strike on sites where Iran is developing its nuclear capacities? Click HERE to see the ad and hopefully make a donation. As of now, Iran does not have those capacities, and though Israeli leaders are arguing that they must strike now before it becomes impossible to block the development of nuclear weapons, U.S. intelligence sources said on Friday, Feb. 24th, that Iran had not made any decision to go forward with developing nuclear weapons. You can view a sample version of the ad below(though when it is layed out beautifully on a full page in the NY Times and Washington Post, it will not look as wordy as it looks now, and there will be room for the names of some who have signed and donated to it).

Healing Israel/Palestine

"I Want My Ball Back": A Call for Israelis and Palestinians to Bridge the Mutual Distrust

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One line of graffiti on the wall in Bethlehem simply said, “I want my ball back.” Wanting your ball back could be a metaphorical statement that, for Palestinians, simply expresses a desire for normalcy and to have a Palestinian state that is fully under Palestinian control. It is a desire, for example, to not depend on Israel to supply and control your water. That water is now delivered only at specified times and then stored by Palestinian families in their roof top water tanks, always hopeful that their limited supply lasts until the next distribution date. Water scarcity is one of the reasons why toilet paper is customarily deposited in a trash receptacle and not flushed.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Norman Finkelstein Supports 2 State Solution

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Back in 2007, Norman Finkelstein was supposed to take part in an Oxford University Student Union debate about the future of Israel and Palestine. Incongruously to the British-Jewish organizations that vociferously objected to, and torpedoed his participation at the time, Finkelstein was scheduled to debate for a two-state solution. Widely known as a stridently anti-Israel writer-activist, the former academic supports Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) as tactics against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, but condemns the global BDS movement for being dishonest about its real agenda of displacing Israel as a Jewish-majority state. He also views a full right of return for Palestinians as unrealistic. To the outrage of the anti-Israel far-left, he denounces the BDS movement as a “cult.” Finkelstein says he’s “not going to be in a cult again,” as he admits to having been a Maoist in his youth.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Israel's Repressive System of Military Justice Is No Longer Invisible

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Israel’s system of military justice – the complex and suffocating legal framework which has governed Palestinians in the Occupied Territories for decades – has been largely invisible to the outside world, including to many Israelis. However, a confluence of events in the past month is illuminating on a grand scale this cruel and repressive legal system that has dominated the lives of Palestinians for far too long. Last month, a piercing documentary by Israeli filmmaker Ra’anan Alexandrowicz – The Law in These Parts – won the 2012 World Cinema Grand Jury Documentary Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The film forces former IDF officials and judges to wrestle with the inherent injustices they helped create in forming Israel’s military justice system – including the practices of indefinite detention, land confiscation for settlements and the use of torture in interrogations. The Law in These Parts, and the prestigious award it garnered, helped spark conversations in Israel and abroad about the legal system which enables Israel’s occupation.

Healing Israel/Palestine

How Would a One-State Israel & Palestine Work?

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One aches for a solution to a long-standing conflict that continues to bedevil Arabs and Jews on both sides of the divide, and in which neither side seems capable of making adequate concessions or accommodations to the other. … Still, it’s up to the one-state advocates to convince the majority of Israelis and Palestinians how one state would work.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Hope for Peace from Jerusalem

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For two weeks (interspersed with two nights in the Galilee) I have been in the Holy City with a group called Living Stones. Our main intention was to show solidarity with the Christian churches during Unity Week 2012. This involved sharing in prayer in Anglican, Lutheran, Latin, Armenian, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian, Syrian and Coptic Orthodox, and Greek Melkite communities each night, meeting members of the communities and trying to understand their concerns. Much was fruitful and hospitality was wonderful. But there was a feeling of sadness that church leaders — with one exception — did not take the opportunity of the coming together to address specific peace issues.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Introducing New Leader of Israel's Left-Zionist Party

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On Monday night, Zehava Gal-On was overwhelmingly elected the new chair of the Meretz party. She is now the third female leader of an Israeli political party represented in the Knesset, joining Tzipi Livni of Kadima and Shelly Yachimovich of Labor. (In addition, Einat Wilif is the Knesset caucus leader of Ehud Barak’s new Independence party.)

In her victory speech, Gal-On promised to re-energize the party, and bring back its sharp, smart, brash, against-the-stream spirit. She said the party would be the party of the Left, and would not court the “Center” or choose its positions based on what was easily marketable. Y-net sums up her speech with this quote:

Under my leadership, Meretz will bring Israel’s Left home…

Healing Israel/Palestine

What Pro-Israel Means (Or Should Mean)

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The next several articles will focus on what has become an increasingly important issue within the Jewish community: What does pro-Israel really mean? For Atlanta Jewish Times publisher Andrew Adler, pro-Israel means calling for Israel’s Mossad to consider assassinating U.S. President Barack Obama. Thankfully, Adler’s addled response to Obama’s supposedly anti-Israel policies and actions was widely denounced within the Jewish community and resulted in a U.S. Secret Service investigation of Adler’s views. Hopefully that investigation will be more conclusive than the effort to define what it really means to be pro-Israel. Is AIPAC’s pro-Israel definition different from ADL’s, AJC’s, J Street’s or Christians United For Israel’s?