Mourning for the Three Murdered Israeli Teens

We at Tikkun are in mourning for the three teens murdered in the West Bank. We find this act painful and outrageous. There can be no excuse for this kind of act. And we know that the revenge/retaliation acts of Israel will only bring about more acts of violence. The cycle will continue until Israel ends the Occupation and accepts a peace arrangement generous enough both in its particulars and in the spirit in which it is offered as to undermine the support for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza and to empower the voices of Palestinian peacemakers.

Personal Reflections from Jerusalem

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.

Free the Kidnapped Israeli Teens

Kidnapping anyone, anytime is always a violation of a basic human right. But is even more outrageous when done to children or teens who are particularly vulnerable. So it is with shock and outrage that we at Tikkun and the Network of Spiritual Progressives respond to the kidnapping of 3 Israeli teens who were returning from their study at a yeshiva in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Keeping Care of All Our Brothers (and Sisters)

The tragedy of the Israeli government’s policies of segregation and separation between Israeli Jews and Palestinians is that it is easy for many within Israel to lose sight of the humanity of Palestinians, and most have little sense of the context of Palestinian daily life. The mothers of the Palestinians who have been killed, injured and imprisoned (in the hundreds) as a result of operation “Brother’s Keeper” , feel the loss of their children just as deeply as the Israeli mothers of the 3 missing teens.

Israeli Rabbi Evokes Hiroshima to Justify Collective Punishment of Palestinians

The fate of three Israeli teenagers, kidnapped last week by an unconfirmed entity in the West Bank, remains unknown, a deeply concerning truth that has refocused attention on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, while their fate remains unknown, what is known is the fate of those Palestinians who have been killed, detained and shuttered with the Israeli military’s search for the missing teens transitioning into a collective punishment of an entire people.

The Choice Is Nationalism or Human Rights

The choice is nationalism or human rights as the guiding principle. Otherwise one is left with a contorted defense, in effect: “We knew transfer had to happen for our goals to be met, and it happened — but we didn’t intend for it to happen,” letting the inhuman doctrines of ethnic nationalism determine our future as Jews.

Two Perspectives on Presbyterian Divestment from U.S. Multinationals that Sustain the Occupation

it’s hard to get the two sides in the Jewish world to sit together and discuss the issues, since anyone who supports even the very limited form of divestment proposed by the Presbyterians is, as J Street’s Jeremy Ben Ami said recently in explaining his opposition to any form of Boycotts, Divestments or Sanctions, crossing “a red line” and hence, in the view of the Jewish establishment, automatically suspect of being anti-Semitic. We believe a public debate is a more healthy way to conduct this discussion,

A Review of Ali Abunimah’s The Battle for Justice in Palestine

A review of Ali Abunimah’s latest book, The Battle for Justice in Palestine, which offers a careful explanation of what is lacking in the proposed two-state solution, and what is abundantly present in his proposed solution: self-determination for the Palestinian people.