by Jew Guevara [➚] · Monday, June 21st, 2010
The 2nd US Social Forum will be taking place in Detroit June 22-26, bringing together an estimated 20,000 people eager to see a big shift leftwards. Claiming that ‘another world is possible’ they further insist that it can only happen if the United States undergoes a fair amount of change as well.
I attended the first US Social Forum, as well as the first ever World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a decade ago. I’ve attended as both an Israeli and as an American. What less committed observers need to know is that this is the largest US or international gathering of people’s movements, social justice organizations and left wing political organizations. And by ‘left’ we aren’t talking about MoveOn, we’re talking about organizations that have, or had, words like ‘communist’, ‘socialist’, and ‘revolutionary’ in their name. (See here for a list of the National Planning Committee member organizations.)
At the same time, organizations well within the respectable mainstream of American society are also present, including the AFL-CIO, Jobs with Justice, and the American Friends Service Committee. The end result is a unique event that is simultaneously mass based, politically relevant, and very far to the left of what passes for political culture in the United States. It’s an antidote to all the mechanisms in place that seek to embed political change within the Democrat-Republican spectrum. More »
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Saturday, June 5th, 2010
Mondoweiss picks up the story from Ma’an:
”In attacking the Freedom Flotilla, Israel has once again demonstrated to the world a heinous brutality. But I know that there are very many Israelis who compassionately and bravely campaign for a just peace. With broadcasting journalists from mainstream television programmes accompanying our boat, Israel will have a great chance to show the world that there is another way, a way of courage rather than fear, a way of hope rather than hate’,’ says Edith Lutz, an organizer and passenger on what is being called the “Jewish boat.”
”Jüdische Stimme,” or Jewish Voice for Peace, along with European Jews for a Just Peace in the Near East, and Jews for Justice For Palestinians (UK) are “sending a call to the leaders of the world: Help Israel find her way back to reason, to a sense of humanity and a life without fear.”
I wonder what the IDF will do with a boat full of Jews.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Monday, May 17th, 2010
This has started to make the rounds today. Peter Beinart at the New York Review of Books.
The central argument:
For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.
I don’t have much to add to what’s already been written at Tablet and Mondoweiss.
Go read it and come back here to comment.
Full story.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Friday, May 14th, 2010
Just a few days after “incitement day,” today’s protest in Sheikh Jarrah was far more tense that have been the protests for the past month or so. Y-net reports:
Violent clashes broke out Friday afternoon between left-wing activists and police forces in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
About 30 protestors were arrested and one demonstrator was lightly injured. She was evacuated to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in the capital, suffering from bruises.
…
At one point, about 100 protestors settled on the road leading to the Simeon the Just compound, which was recently inhabited by four Jewish families armed with a court order following the evacuation of Arab residents.
The police declared the protest an illegal gathering and ordered the protestors sitting on the road to evacuate themselves within three minutes. The activists refused to leave and were forcibly evacuated from the area.
In the same place where earlier this week the police protected 2 days of nationalist, pro-settlement celebration, it was clear today that those of us who do not share that sentiment do not have equal rights to express our views in the neighborhood. What a country.
Full story.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Monday, May 10th, 2010
MJ Rosenberg, over at MediaMatters, has a great piece on the Millenial-American relationship to Israel, which is, as he says, typified by the worldview of the host of The Daily Show.
And what is the worldview Stewart conveys? It is skepticism about any and all ideology, a belief that racial and ethnic boundaries between people are just plain dumb, and, above all, that true believers in anything are downright funny.
Not surprisingly, Jon Stewart is Jewish and assertively so. Being a Jew is part of his shtick. But he’s clearly neither religious nor an ethnic chauvinist. As for his politics on Israel, I’d classify him as J Street. And that makes him typical of both the late boomers and their kids.
That is why all the free Birthright trips to Israel aren’t changing anything. And it’s why those cheering young AIPAC-ers do not represent anything.
The generation coming up now tries to think for themselves. And, although no smart kid would ever turn down a free trip to Washington, DC or to any foreign country with a beach, they take the propaganda with a grain of salt. It does not matter that they are told that the Palestinians are responsible for their own problems, these kids don’t buy it.
I feel like it’s a pretty decent description of my generation. When my brother was going on birthright, I sent him a copy of Joe Sacco’s Palestine for another perspective (Rosenberg’s grain ofsalt). My own politics aren’t J Street’s, but I appreciate the work they are doing to widen the acceptable conversation within the US Jewish Community – despite the recent witch-hunting in SF and Boston (I thought those were liberal cities!).
Rosenberg closes on a hopeful note:
More »
by renaissanceboy [➚] · Friday, May 7th, 2010
As I’ve written about before, I grew up with little connection to the State of Israel. Recently, I’ve come to consider the political, economic, and cultural realities that make advocating for the disassembly of Israel impractical and completely counterproductive to the struggle for peace, but I still feel uncomfortable calling myself a Zionist, or “pro-Israel”, because I have some deep abiding problems with religious states in general.
So what do I call myself? Well, I’ve invented a new term. I’m an ambi-Zionist. Rather than being a Zionist or an anti-Zionist, I’m somewhere right in the middle. Although I don’t reject Israel as a Jewish state, I don’t feel that supporting its existence is a component of my Jewish identity. My political activism on the issue is not because of my religious inclinations, but because of my religious affiliation. In other words I’m going to be associated with the issue no matter what, so I feel that I should engage it head-on and develop an educated opinion. Additionally, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict doesn’t just belong to the Jews and the Palestinians (i.e. others can, should, and do get involved), so my activism isn’t solely because I’m Jewish.
Ambi-Zionism gives me the space to develop a Jewish identity unrelated to Israel and opinions traditionally considered Zionist, anti-Zionist, or anywhere in between. Having a name for myself doesn’t take away the need to create an identity organically, but it makes that identity easier to describe. I like that “ambi-Zionist” is fairly noncommittal but also quite expressive – it implies a level of open-mindedness and appreciation of diverse opinions that I aspire to. My hope is that it will help bring me closer to that ideal.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
One of the folks on the J Street mission said to me “if it isn’t in the New York Times, it didn’t happen.” Apparently, the Sheikh Jarrah protests are real, now.
An exceprt from Kai Bird’s April 30 op-ed:
Today East Jerusalem exudes the palpable feel of a city occupied by a foreign power. And it is, to an extent — although much of the world doesn’t recognize Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuses to halt the construction of new housing units for Jewish Israelis in the Arab neighborhoods. “Jerusalem is not a settlement,” he recently told an audience in Washington.
Not all Israelis agree with this policy. For over a year, hundreds, sometimes thousands, of Israelis and Palestinians have been gathering in Sheik Jarrah on Fridays to protest the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. Israeli courts have deemed these nonviolent demonstrations to be legal, but this has not stopped the police from arresting protesters.
In a cruel historical twist, nearly all of the Palestinians evicted from their homes in Sheik Jarrah in the last year-and-a-half were originally expelled in 1948 from their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Talbieh. In the wake of the Six-Day War, Israeli courts ruled that some of the houses these Palestinian refugees have lived in since 1948 are actually legally owned by Jewish Israelis, who have claims dating from before Israel’s founding.
Full story here.
I’ll be out of town this weekend, but if you’re in J-town, you should go.
by LastTrumpet [➚] · Monday, May 3rd, 2010
There are two bills in the Knesset that, to my mind, may begin to expose the cracks in the relationship between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. The first is the bill about conversation, about which there’s been ample coverage of late.
The official statement put out by the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements reads:
The bill threatens to alter the Law of Return and consolidate conversion power into the hands of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Both of these results could have devastating effects on the relationship between Israeli and Diaspora Jewry and thus on the broader unity of the Jewish people. Such concentration of power in favor of Ultra-Orthodox Jewry effectively negates the roles of the non-Orthodox movements both within Israel and abroad, sending the message that only the Orthodox have a place within our Homeland.
As I wrote yesterday, liberal Jews already have less religious freedom than the Orthodox in Israel (why the Reform movement doesn’t make the work of Anat Hoffman a central pillar of its Israel education baffles me and is a subject for another post). Here we have a bill that, if passed, would make it clear to the world what Rabbanut-and-therefore-government of Israel thinks of liberal Jewry, in Israel or abroad. I think in many cases, liberal Jews, out of either ignorance or ideology, support policies in Israel which go against their beliefs about human rights and democracy (not to mention against the way that they practice their Judaism), and I almost cynically hope that this bill will increase the cognitive dissonance amongst the general public.
Much less has been written about the equally worrying bill to outlaw human rights groups which criticize the Israeli government. More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
I used to work at New Voices Magazine, the only independent publication written by and for Jewish undergrads. It was the best (and worst) crash course in nonprofit management and journalism I could ask for. Thrown in the deep end of the Jewish philanthropic pool, it was sink or swim.
I can count myself as half-successful, since our editorial line of publishing critical student thought ran us into trouble with the David Project, who in 2007 intervened in our funding with the UJA-Federation of NY. We had to cut staff, I got the axe. This is a heretofore unreported detail which is harmless now to mention — yes, I lost my job because of the David Project’s branding New Voices as “bad for young Jews, bad for the Jewish state.” (As quoted to me by a UJA official who kindly read me the email David Project circulated to my funders. There was plenty more to it also.) Needless to say, I harbor a small grudge against the David Project and some of the UJA. The first is zealotry incarnate, the other a paragon of spinelessness.
So when I read Sam Green’s opinion piece in New Voices chastising all the Jewish anti-Zionists out there, I could only chuckle at the unintended (and likely unaware) incongruity. The misfortune of arguing a politics of exclusion in a publication that lost $30,000 and a staffer to being too open-minded diminishes his intended impact. Then again, only myself, my friends then, and those involved remember that episode, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect him to “know your roots” as he says. More »
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Monday, March 22nd, 2010
Here is the full text of the speech given by Sarah Beninga representing the Israeli activists at the weekly demonstration at Sheikh Jarrah on March 6. Yes, it is a few weeks old, but with everything happening in that insane corner of the world and in DC, it is nice to have a moment of hope. (Translation from the Sheikh Jarrah site. Hat tip to The Magnes Zionist.)
There is a New Left, and it is not a left that is content with peace talks; it is a left of struggle. There is a New Left that knows that there are things you have to fight against even when they are identified with the state and even when they are sanctioned by law. There’s a New Left that knows that this struggle will not be decided on paper, but on the ground, on the hills, in the vineyards, in the olive groves. There’s a New Left that is not afraid of settlers – even when they come down on us from the hills, masked and armed. This left does not succumb to political oppression by the police, nor does it care what Ma’ariv writes about it.
Sarah Beninga at Sheikh Jarrah demonstration
There is a New Left in town. This left does not want to be loved, does not dream of filling town squares and does not bask in the memories of 400,000 demonstrators. This left is a partnership of Palestinians who understand that the occupation will not be stopped by missiles and bombs, and of Israelis who understand that the Palestinian struggle is their own.
The New Left links arms with Palestinians in a cloud of tear-gas in Bili’in, and with them, bears the brunt of settler violence in the South Hebron Hills. This left stands by refugees and work immigrants in Tel-Aviv and fights the Wisconsin Project [privatized “welfare-to-work” program]. This New Left is us, all of us.
All those who came here tonight; all those who dared to cross the imaginary line separating West and East Jerusalem despite the threats and intimidation – we are all the New Left that is rising in Israel and Palestine. We are not fighting for a peace agreement; we are fighting for justice. But we believe that injustice is the main obstacle to peace. Until the Ghawis, the Hanouns and the El-Kurds return to their homes, there will be no peace; because peace will not take root where discrimination, oppression, and plunder exist. There is a New Left in town and this left stands with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah tonight, and it will continue standing with them until justice overcomes fanaticism.
But there is also a New Right in town. A Right filled with envy and racism that seduces the masses with its jingoistic rhetoric. The New Right has no interest in the well-being and the welfare of human beings. The New Right is only interested in a narrow ethnic and tribal loyalty a la Avigdor Liberman. For the New Right only the Jewish poor deserve attention. And what makes someone Jewish is that they’re not Arab. The New Right has nothing to offer but never-ending war. The New Right has nothing to offer bur hate for the other: Arabs, refugees and leftists.
This New Right creates the fanatic settlers against whom we are demonstrating tonight. These settlers hate Jerusalem. They have no love for Israel and no love for humankind – they love only themselves. There are many amongst the settlers who we can and should carry out a dialogue with. But the settlers in Sheikh Jarrah who sing songs of praise to Baruch Goldstein – must be defeated.
The New Right created the mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat. He is a technocrat who doesn’t understand or care about Jerusalem. He is a mayor who uses administrative terror against the residents of East Jerusalem and neglects the residents of West Jerusalem, while mouthing empty clichés. If Jerusalem is a powder keg, then Nir Barkat is the one who is striking the match. But Barkat doesn’t scare us and neither do the settlers or Liberman.
We will continue coming to Sheikh Jarrah and everywhere that justice is crushed by the forces of occupation and oppression. Take a look around you; we are not as few as we thought we were! And we will prevail!
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Friday, March 12th, 2010
This just in: Ronen Shuval, front man for Im Tirtzu’s attacks on the New Israel Fund and Israeli human rights groups, has threatened to sue the creator of the Facebook group “Im Tirtzu is a Fascist Movement” for (get this) “libel and lashon hara.”
Group creator Roy Yellen received an email saying in part, “Roy, hello. From looking at the ‘Im Tirtzu is a Fascist Movement’ group, it looks like you’re the creator. Im Tirtzu is not fascist and will not put up with libel and lashon hara.” The message then states that unless Yellen deletes the group with 72 hours, Shuval will consult a lawyer and sue, even if Yellen turns over ownership to another individual.
Yellen responded: “I received your threat to sue me. The reason this group was created is because of the false and misleading campaign against the New Israel Fund and Professor Naomi Chazan, its head. In this losing campaign, which was accompanied by Der Schtermer-like caricatures of Chazan, you blame the New Israel Fund and human rights organizations for hating the country and trying to purposely hurt it. And you put on a protest outside Prof. Chazan’s house that was reminiscent of the horrible days preceding Yitzak Rabin’s assassination by masquerading as Hamas activists…As a supporter of human rights organizations, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of assembly, I found it right to respond and so did 2,000 friends who joined. I have no intention of removing it. If needed, I will prove that I am speaking the truth in court.”
It’s necessary to mention that if civility is Shuval’s objection, then he should be the last to talk. Im Tirtzu ran an estimated $900,000 worth of 30 full-size billboards depicting former Deputy Knesset Speaker Naomi Chazan as a horned beast out to collaborate with the Goldstone Commission to weaken Israel. Their “research” was faked and very thoroughly debunked. Yet the campaign has culminated in one horrifyingly viable Knesset bill aimed at defunding social change groups. More »
by TheWanderingJew [➚] · Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Every now and again, I’m forwarded an opinion piece because, obviously, as a Canadian Jew, I’ll find it interesting and want to sing its praises here on Jewschool. This is seldom the case. Today’s gem came via an email from the Canadian Jewish Congress. They sent out an op-ed written for the Ottawa Citizen by Leonard Stern.
I’m tempted to argue with the whole piece, line by line, but instead, I’m just going to draw out a few problems.
Beginning Monday, university campuses play host to an annual event known as Israeli Apartheid Week, where Israel is assigned the role of Jew among the nations — singled-out, cursed and harassed.
Some Jewish students at Carleton and the University of Ottawa will discreetly choose to stay home, to avoid having to answer for the Jewish state. The whiff of something medieval hangs over this March ritual.
This isn’t about Jews, say the organizers. It’s about Zionists. Problem is, the activist groups behind Israeli Apartheid Week are doing everything to erase the distinction. One of those organizations, the Ottawa Public Interest Research Group, refused in 2008 to promote a lecture on African development because Jewish students happened to be organizing it. The event had zero connection to Israel but OPIRG said it wouldn’t partner with the Jewish students’ union due to the latter’s “relationship to apartheid Israel.”
That’s an ominous introduction to the article. Too bad I need to argue it down. So long as the Canadian Jewish community (like the vocal majority of many countries’ Jewish communities) maintains that Israel and zionism are an integral part of Jewish identity, and are inherently linked, I can’t blame student groups and other organizations for drawing a similar conclusion. So long as Hillels across Canada (and across the US) house Israel advocacy and zionist groups, and many have histories of bashing Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian groups, I see no reason why those groups shouldn’t be able to “retaliate” with Israel Apartheid Week. More »
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Nathaniel Berman has a fascinating and provocative piece over at Zeek questioning the two state solution:
Indeed, the “two-state solution” has now come to function as an apologetic myth for the Jewish mainstream.Today, it is an alibi for its refusal to confront the concrete situation. That concrete situation is one in which, since 1967, i.e., approximately two-thirds of Israel’s existence, there has been “one state” between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Since the basic positions of both Palestinian and mainstream Israeli leaders mean that two states will never be set up, the “one-state” status quo, which is what we have and will have for the foreseeable future, is what we have to face up to.
The full essay is here.
by E. [➚] · Sunday, February 21st, 2010
The Jewish Literary Salon in Krakow, Poland - one of the many complex Jewish projects in contemporary Poland
In Dan Sieradski’s recent web project
31 Days, 31 Ideas, cartoonist and rootsman thinker
Eli Valley suggests that the American Jewish community create “Birthright Diaspora.” Awkwardly conceived as a 10-day immersion in a Jewish diasporic site, the
manifesto suggests that by creating a program in which Israeli and American Jews visit “global” Jewish communities located far from their own, their Jewish identities will transform into something better. Valley
writes:
It’s time to expand our notions of positive Jewish identity and at long last move beyond an ideology that fretfully masquerades self-hatred as Jewish empowerment. By digging through centuries of global Jewish life, Birthright Diaspora will help transform Jewish self-awareness and break the dichotomy of “hero” and “victim” that has handicapped internal Jewish intellectual inquiry for decades. The goal is not merely widespread immersion experiences in global Jewish communities but a renewed understanding of Diaspora as a Birthright that forms the roots of Jewish consciousness. If implemented effectively, Birthright Diaspora can lead to an existential transformation in the way Jews and Israelis view themselves and the world.
It is a heartfelt manifesto, and what it lacks in theoretical precision it regains in passion. For many years now, there has been an emphasis on the next big “program” that will contribute to the strengthening of what we have come to call Jewish Identity and Community. Various ideological camps, including Jewschool, have claimed that by funding the notion of “global Jewish Peoplehood,” Jewish identity and community will bz’h undergo the type of “existential transformation” that Valley describes.
I am confident that longing for this type of existential transformation is a red herring, or even more troubling, a fantasy of our own power. By denying the reality that the Jewish Diaspora has geographically contracted and remained intact, our cultural activists continue to accept a model of a “shackled” community that pivots off a vague notion that, as Valley writes, “in the Jewish world, the interconnectivity often manifests itself through ripples emanating from the perceived center of Jewish life in Jerusalem.”
More »
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
Democracy or ethnocracy? The only democracy in the Middle East or just the easiest to swallow?
Israel offers many of the protections we expect of self-labeled Western democracies. Women can vote. The press is vibrant. There is separation of governmental powers. In some cases, Israel is ahead of the US, such as permitting openly gay soldiers. Even with the fraught contradictions of defining Jewishness and rabbinical courts’ monopoly over civil marriage matters, Israel was founded with many good principles in mind. (You know, Zionism itself aside…)
That is, until those very democratic principles come under assault. The actions of Bibi Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition have seen a slew of anti-democratic legislation — normally relagated to die in committee — that are discussed seriously, have made it through Knesset hurdles, or have come up for vote. In the battle over what a “Jewish democracy” entails, there are plenty who want the J-word at 72-point font and the d-word at 9 points.
The following are the top 2009 Knesset proposals that threaten civil rights and the brain job we need to stop them: More »
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Shlomo Sand‘s book The Invention of the Jewish People has come out in English translation. It is intentionally provocative and explicitly political, and it has hit a cultural nerve. The New York Times, the largest circulation Jewish daily in the world, has taken it up, as have others.
Here is a sampling:
(Hat tip to Jewlicious for the Schama piece.)
by Aryeh Cohen [➚] · Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Shaul Magid has an interesting and provocative piece up at Zeek about the J Street conference.
“I love Israel.” What exactly does that mean? I know what it means to love my child, my family, my partner, my parents, even my dog. Love is relational, it is reciprocal, it is personal. What exactly is Israel as an object of love? Is it the state? Its people? The land? The idea? How can I love the people, most of whom I don’t know? From what I know of them I can say with some confidence that I don’t love Baruch Goldstein, or Yigal Amir, or Meir Kahane, or Moshe Levinger (and I am quite sure they don’t love me either).
Full article here.
by Kung Fu Jew [➚] · Thursday, October 29th, 2009
I suspect we direct our most bruised anger at those most likely to be our supporters…who don’t. That “self-hater” is such a cutting insult is part and parcel of that emotion. And it’s why it’s taken me a couple days to come down from the anger I felt towards Rabbi Eric Yoffie following his speech at J Street.
On Tuesday, he spoke strongly and provocatively. He did not shy from controversy and never wavered. He has the prophetic instinct to make himself unwelcome in his own house, which I support and commend. It’s a talent I value, admire and aspire to. Kol hakavod to him.
Most of his speech was right on the money, leading me to applaud many times, but two moments left me seething, ready to verbally skewer him and decry him as a traitor. Thanks to Noam Shelef of Americans for Peace Now, I now have a term for my eagerness to briefly disown Yoffie: the narcissism of small differences. I have since cooled off my anger and I wish to give Yoffie a second chance. More »
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