In the second episode of the comedy web series “Ac’tiv•ist,” Sam enjoys her campaign’s new-found success — until she meets the new volunteers.
Aspiring student organizer Samantha Rushbad grapples with the simultaneously inspiring, mind-numbingly banal, infuriatingly stupid, and downright absurd nature of campus activism as she starts a campaign to force her college to divest from Israel. As Sam steps ever-further into the labrynthine world of activism, she must also deal with her mother, love interest, teachers, and friends who fail to understand her activist life.
Well, that was awkward.
Just a few days after announcing that it had hired Simone Zimmerman to be its national Jewish outreach coordinator, the Bernie Sanders campaign suspended her position yesterday, in reaction to loud, right-wing criticism of her positions, activism, and language in opposing the Israeli occupation and its enablers. I had planned yesterday to take on her chorus of critics for their ethically compromised and sometimes farcical gotcha-combing of Zimmerman’s very public and proud paper trail. Now, I must add some serious, head-shaking, profound disappointment in the Sanders campaign for what really looks like management amateur hour.
A policy that truly defended the right to debate, or even just to listen curiously as others debate, would not require every local Hillel across the country to welcome Jewish Voices for Peace every time its name appeared on a proposed event.
Like many a Jewish Diaspora kid I grew up with a white and blue JNF pushka in my room. I even received a certificate for
Can we respect the intelligence of American Jewish kids with more than official talking points? Two innovators talk with Jewschool about doing just that.
David Levy reviews the new film by Jake Witzenfeld, screening in New York as part of The Other Israel Film Festival.
It is critically important for those who are interested in genuinely workable political frameworks for the land between the river and the sea to wean themselves from two-state dogma.
To contextualize violence does not mean to rationalize it. The violence in Israel/Palestine has a context: the occupation and creeping annexation.
Violence, pain and occupation become the dimly lit hospital in which generations are born and the cemetery in which they are buried.
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