Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/generalnews/page/44/)
Would prefer not to use this at all. It’s a default and can’t be removed.
Tom Pickering, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Israel, Russia and four other nations discusses the current challenges facing the United States in the Mideast, including efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
It has never been as clear as it is today that Americans who support a secure State of Israel have an obligation to oppose the Netanyahu government. That is not as daring as it sounds. Opposing Prime Minister Netanyahu only requires backing the efforts of our own government to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement and a nuclear deal with Iran. In the past few days Netanyahu has gone to war with the Obama administration on both fronts. Secretary of State John Kerry never had much of a chance to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
Amidst news of violence, kidnappings, imprisonments and much more, the world quietly celebrated International Religious Freedom Day on October 27. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry released a statement to mark this important ideal of the American consciousness with words that sounded well-intentioned and carefully thought out. While his statement was well-meaning, only time will tell whether the Obama administration is indeed committed to religious liberty in the international arena.
It started out as an ordinary day. Get up, meditate, listen to Huggy Lowdown on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, do yoga, work on my next book, stop to watch General Hospital and have an early afternoon meal, back to work, 30-minutes on the stationary bike then dinner, evening TV and bed. But, this day a package came that transformed my ordinary day into an extremely extraordinary one. A white ready post utility mailer waited for me along with some sale papers and bills in the mail. There was no return address.
Ahead of my book event tonight at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, the New York Post named my book – What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried To Kill Your Wife? – as a “Must-Read.” The book in question chronicles my reconciliation with the Palestinian family of the bomber who perpetrated the 2002 Hebrew University attack – an attack which injured my wife and killed the two friends with whom she was sitting. Clearly, my book is a work aimed at promoting the destruction of Israel. Clearly, it’s an anti-Semitic manifesto with one goal: the downfall of the Jewish state.
If a thing as simple as color reinforces the pressure males are under to be dominant, aggressive and tough, one can imagine how deeply rooted stereotypes can have strong, tragic effects. David Harris-Gershon details his experience using his wife’s pink water bottle, and the insults and interrogations he faces highlight important implications of gender norms in today’s society.
When I saw the movie Gravity in 3-D, there was a moment when a tear shed by the main character – Ryan Stone played by Sandra Bullock – appears to float off the screen and into the audience. The tear contains her image. Suppose we live in a world that exits inside the 3-D contours of a universal tear. Tears of sorrow, tears of joy, and praying tears are the stuff of our human connection to each other. The movie is about survival through the seen and unseen cords that keep us from drifting into physical and spiritual oblivion.
A Pew Survey has found that American Jews are becoming increasingly critical of Israel and its leaders’ efforts to make peace with Palestinians. This shift is occurring among American Jews under 30 who are beginning to see the settlements as self-destructive and disagree with the amount of United States support for Israel, considering the country’s policies. Could this group be the influence the US needs to exert more pressure on Israel policy?
Does Outrage Work?
When I consider how my own mind has changed, it was never because someone attacked and judged me harshly. It almost always arose from the surprising response of someone I respected. One example: I grew up literally and genuinely homophobic, one of those who are called “haters” though it was not true that I hated homosexuals.
When a head of state, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime has already used what amounts to mobile gas chambers on his own people, remains firmly in power – with no prospect of end to that power – there is nothing whatsoever about that circumstance that can be remotely characterized as a moral victory. And yet, many on the Tea Party Right and what I’d call the Neo-Soviet Left are indeed crowing about the post-August 20th series of domestic and international political events vis-a-vis the Syria crisis; political events, like the deluge of Americans calling and writing to their members of Congress, which have averted what may or may not have been a pointless and merely “symbolic” cruise missile strike against the Assad regime, a mere “shot across the bow” as President Obama put it. Simultaneously, the one-note nature of this particular brand of opposition against any U.S. military intervention in Syria has effectively midwifed a new – and exceedingly dangerous – geopolitical paradigm: the use of the United Nations to elevate the regime of a gas murdering despot to a legitimate interlocutor on the world stage. As a card-carrying liberal, as a spiritual progressive, that’s not an international system I want this generation, nor future generations, to live in. Earlier this week, at a Syria policy panel discussion held at Washington’s Busboys and Poets, Judith Le Blanc, field director of Peace Action, openly thanked Vladimir Putin – yes, the same Vladimir Putin who is presently making life a living hell for gays in Russia – for his “leadership” on bringing about the recent Syrian chemical weapons disarmament plan.