Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/culture/non-violent-communication-nvc/page/18/)
Gaza, Syria, and Iraq are pained by that same disease of extremism and conflict. Civilians, more specifically children and women, are bearing the brunt of the injustices. In today’s Middle East, we have sacrificed a generation to the flames of rage.
This week’s Torah stories remind us of those six Biblical ‘cities of refuge’ -places where anyone could go and seek shelter, protection from bloodshed or vengeance. But in reality there are no places of refuge. The Torah is like a dream. And then we awaken from it – and the nightmare is that there is nowhere safe from death’s sudden arrival, however guilty or innocent one might be.
In this hour of war, violence, and pain, we reaffirm the humanity and decency of all the people on our planet, and our ability to see the humanity and God-presence in all people on the planet. We understand that each of the many sides of the conflicts tearing our world apart today have their own legitimacy, but we also know that violence cannot be the path to a peaceful and safe world.
I totally and completely believe that it is only a myth that says only some of us can lead, and everyone else must only follow, not think for themselves, not participate in shaping a collective future, from the personal to the global.
How will you, Israel, manage to rise from the ashes, if there is no soul searching? How if, as Uri Avnery reports, most of your media have ignored the event– or have hidden the details on the back pages? Where is the public outcry? AYECHAH?!
Interfaith Iftar events are a dime a dozen nowadays. So this year I’m doing something different; a tiny step that may end up being the biggest step of them all, at least for me. Tonight I plan to attend a break fast event at a Jewish home, a small affair that will bring a few Muslims and Jews together on the intersection of Tzom Tamuzz and Ramadan. I’m ashamed that I know so little about the fasting traditions of the Jews, and I want to change that. Tonight we will talk about why our two faith traditions fast, and what we gain out of it, but more importantly we will talk about the elephant in the room: Israel and Palestine. We will think about how we can be friends when so many expect us, even need us, to be enemies.
Once again the violence of the Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza and the violence of Hamas and other extremist groups in Gaza have combined to create a spiraling violence. We call upon both sides to agree to an immediate cease fire.
In the wake of the heightened conflict between Palestine and Israel, Warren Blumenfeld offers lessons to be learned from Dennis Shepard, who showed his son’s murderers mercy.
Things on the ground have changed very rapidly and the old paradigms of looking at how to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict won’t work quite so easily now.
Cherrie Brown was a shaper of the co-counseling movement and then created the National Coalition Building Institute to do education work against racism. We are presenting her 3 letters from Jerusalem to give a sense of what sensitive and intelligent people experience when they go to the Holy Land without the filters often required of us by the Jewish community or by anti-Israel activists.