Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/page/91/)
Posts about politics and social change, from a spiritual progressive perspective
Is it possible that, like their victims in Pakistan and Yemen who say that they are going mad from the constant buzz of drones overhead and the fear of sudden death without warning, drone pilots, too, are fleeing into the night as soon as they can?
Days after Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, claimed to speak for “the entire Jewish people” in his speech before Congress, tens of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, rejecting such a ridiculous notion by calling for his ouster.
Content from our print issue is usually only available to subscribers, but this week we’re offering free access (for a limited time only!) to one article from our current issue on Jubilee and Debt Abolition.
This was one encampment. There were one or two such sites on every street. The three of us in the car were shocked and depressed. We should be shocked and depressed. We were trying to drain an ocean with a spoon.
I am immensely curious to understand the obstacles to having gift economy experiences be the norm rather than the exception. In this post, I am writing about one piece of this huge puzzle that fell into place for me: why the idea of “deserving” might have come into existence, and how it’s related to the difficulties in establishing gifting and collaboration.
On Tuesday, Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, used the U.S. Congress to stage a most elaborate campaign commercial in the run-up to Israel’s elections in two weeks. He did so at the behest of GOP leaders, and damaged every conceivable metric he claims to be invested in save one: his own suddenly-rising poll numbers back home.
For centuries we were safe from the bloodletting that we fantasized about, because we were powerless on the whole, and our blood was being let. The fantasy of turning the tables was a fantasy of comfort. Now, however, our oppression has—in most parts of the world—ended. The State of Israel is powerful, armed, mighty, yet we continue to read and celebrate the fantasies of revenge.
So should we stop remembering – and like, our classical Liberal forebears, cease to commemorate Purim and Tishah B’Av? Alternatively – and this is what I would recommend – should we commit ourselves to a fuller and more dimensioned understanding of Jewish history that acknowledges the achievements and astounding creativity of Jewish life alongside the suffering?
While Netanyahu positioned the Iranian Ayatollah as the modern-day evil Persian vizier Haman under King Ahasuerus on the eve of the Jewish holiday, Purim, I would tell Mr. Netanyahu that he certainly is no Queen Esther. This is not 1938, and the President of the United States is not English Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Obama is certainly under no illusions with whom he is dealing. He is not as naïve and untested as Netanyahu imagines.
The visit of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the USA while he is in a political campaign in Israel, that does not have the sanction of President Obama, has reminded me of another manifestation of a street corner bit of analysis that I first heard as I was growing up in North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina; “If you are white, you are alright, if you are brown stick around, if you are black, stand back.” The whiteness of Prime Minister Netanyahu trumps the blackness of President Obama, and the assumption of those who invited the Prime Minister is that President Obama must stand back, because he is black.