Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/peacemaking/healing-israel-palestine/page/23/)
Ada Glustein writes about the awakening process she and others might face upon discovering that the “new home for Jews” came along with the displacement of the Palestinians. She offers compassionate advice of what can be done to rid the Jewish community of fear and ignorance and replenish it with love and care.
My hope for this weekend and beyond is that J Street will encourage its younger members to explore and educate themselves beyond these three conference days; to question what they learn, to honor their own instincts, and to understand that there is no right answer; the road toward a solution to the conflict in Israel/Palestine is fluid and in always flux.
At President Obama’s United Nations General Assembly address today, much attention was paid to his overtures toward Iran. However, his pointed comments directed toward Israel – which placed resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on equal footing with Iran – were just as significant.
As Bashar al-Assad proves, dictators who gas people to death still exist. So does a complacent international system. Why are some on the left, like Ian Lustick, more concerned with making sure a Jewish state doesn’t exist?
Those who have no sense of personal dignity, including elected officials, are not capable of contributing to democracy, and inevitably scapegoat others for their failures.
Across the West Bank, Israel’s occupation has given rise in recent years to a nonviolent “popular resistance” movement that should be an inspiration to people across the globe. On my trip to the West Bank, Leaders of the Palestinian popular resistance – from intellectuals to grassroots villagers who’d been repeatedly jailed – spoke to us about universal human rights, about a human family in which all deserve equal rights regardless of religion or nationality.
Universal human dignity, individual rights and collective responsibilities are the Jewish values of democracy that I was taught to take pride in as a Jewish youngster. During our current “Age of Zionism,” we have distorted Jewish ethics, forming a sort of Jewish Orwellian “doublethink.”
Today, I learned that – due to my writing for Daily Kos and Tikkun – I have been officially declared a self-hating Jew, joining the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman on a list I’m only too proud to embrace (links to which appear below). How did this happen? It’s quite simple and rather mundane.
It’s time to end the charade and that means pulling the plug on the peace process surrounding the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Doing so will have no effect on the Palestinians who already know that they are on their own. But it will send a clear message to the Israeli people that no one is going to bail them out of problems their government has created for them. The irony, of course, is that if the United States wanted to resolve the conflict, rather than to pretend to, it can.
“The Attack” is a powerful, must-see film for those of us interested in Israel and its conflict with the Palestinians. This essay briefly analyzes the film with attention to its divergence from the book on which it is based and analysis of the politics surrounding these changes.