Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/195/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Having worked at AIPAC and having worked with it as a legislative aide in Congress for 20 years, I know that the lobby is not really about Israel. It is about exerting influence, pushing our government around and promoting war with Muslims and Arabs, but it hasn’t been about Israel for decades.
I hadn’t realized that I still held a faint hope that Obama would “come out” as a progressive now that he has no re-election potential, but my disappointment upon hearing about Obama nominating John Brennan to be the director of the CIA made me realize I was still holding out hope.
Juliane Okot Bitek knows the power of narrative. An award winning writer living in Vancouver, Canada, Okot Bitek is also an Acholi woman who calls Gulu in Northern Uganda home. Considering the civil war (1986- 2006) that plagued northern Ugandans, it’s no wonder much of Okot Bitek’s passionate writing focuses on social and political issues. In the last decade, through her poetry, essays, fiction, nonfiction and opinion pieces, Okot Bitek has fought both to make sense of, and to expose the tragedies of her homeland.
American Jews (with the exception of a tiny, tiny minority) will not tolerate the suggestion that they are anything but loyal Americans. Hence opposing a president in favor of the prime minister of Israel, after the president invoked the U.S. national interest, would not be sustainable. In that situation, the lobby would back down. And with it Congress and, then, the Israeli government (which depends on U.S. assistance to survive).
It is hard to believe that the lobby (call it the Israel Lobby, the Jewish Lobby or whatever) is going to oppose President Obama’s choice of former Senator Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense in the name of Jews.
With Israel’s election only weeks away, a rather remarkable online initiative has begun: Israelis are offering to give their votes to Palestinians occupied by Israel in the West Bank.
The idea behind this initiative is simple: Palestinians subjected to a military system of justice in the Occupied Territories, and wholly under Israel’s control, have no democratic say in the process that binds them. And so Israelis, to protest the occupation and this undemocratic dynamic, are offering to give their vote to a Palestinian and cast a ballot as their matched counterpart in the West Bank desires.
Don’t miss this major New York Times Sunday magazine article on a significant story we covered first a year ago in Tikkun in The Day the Jail Walls Cracked: A Restorative Plea Deal by Sujatha Baliga. A 19-year-old man shot and killed his girlfriend, and the young woman’s parents forgave him, motivated by a deep Catholic belief in forgiveness, a sense that both their daughter and Jesus wanted them to forgive, and an understanding that the forgiveness would enable them to survive.
Thus far, President Barack Obama is sitting out the January 22nd Israeli elections. There is no indication about who he hopes to see as the next Israeli prime minister. His noninterference, even disinterest, is not surprising except when contrasted with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s open preference for the Republicans in the U.S. election two months ago. One might have thought that a little payback would be in order.
My mom told me she’s a lesbian
and it rained for a week,
not because she told me she’s a lesbian
but because sometimes it just rains like that
Nonetheless, presidential rejection of Hagel will not represent victory for the lobby because, as never before, its behind-the-scenes machinations have been exposed by virtually ever major news outlet.
The lobby hates that kind of exposure more than almost anything.