Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/politics/peacemaking/page/37/)
About war and efforts to bring about peace. About changing a foreign policy of domination to one of generosity.
Ten years ago, the first genocide of the 21st century started in Darfur. It was another in the long list of 46 genocides since the Holocaust, when the world first promised “Never Again!” Despite that promise, we’ve heard a deafening silence from the world as each of these genocides unfolded.
The B.D.S. movement needs a PR campaign to achieve its anti-liberal ends. Omar Barghouti is the movement’s Joe Camel.
It didn’t take much. Just the power of the presidency, the State Of The Union, and the whole country watching. Plus the president’s will. And AIPAC’s entire campaign to destroy America’s chance to reach an agreement with Iran crumbled. Within hours, three senators announced they were no longer cosponsoring AIPAC’s bill to kill the Iran negotiations (Gillibrand, Coons and Manchin), and AIPAC’s hopes to override Obama’s veto ended with a whimper, AIPAC’s whimper.
No, this does not mean that AIPAC and Netanyahu are giving up.
Samantha Power, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, does not have the domestic toolkit to bring about a transformation of consciousness; a consciousness that would never permit innocent people to be gassed, burned and tortured by heads of state.
Ariel Sharon was the father of the settlement movement, and his ideological and practical political moves were all about holding on to the West Bank as part of Israel. He was not a closet peacemaker, and the attempts in the media to portray him as such were nothing short of bizarre.
This achievement-compassion nexus can make one’s head spin. A writer friend, Tarn, however, has an approach I admire: she always seems to consider her writing in a spiritual light, as part of her service and connection to others, not just a race for acclaim.
Barack and Michelle Obama have a bad pattern of exploiting the sufferings of the wounded for-pay soldiers to shore up their own “patriotism brand.”
I could scarcely believe my ears when staff members at Tikkun told me that Pete Seeger had just called to ask if he could perform at the first national Tikkun conference in New York City in 1988. I had raised my son on Seeger’s music, and had myself been moved by some of his radical songs. He was already a legend, and I was already a fan when I was in high school.
Shula Aloni was the most principled Israeli elected official I ever met, a champion of the downtrodden and a fearless fighter for the rights of Palestinians.
Throwing red meat to Israel haters is not a liberal act. How the heck did so many liberals get confused on that score? Or are they really liberals in the first place?