Monthly Archives: May 2010

Open the Gates: A Rabbinical Response to the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Tragedy

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 12 Comments

For a full, updated list of rabbinical signators to this letter, visit the Ta’anit Tzedek Blog.

Dear Friends,

In the wake of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla tragedy, we once again feel the need to raise our voices as rabbis in the Jewish community.

According to press reports, we now know that at least 9 people have been killed and many more have been injured when Israeli Navy Seals boarded a boat that held 600 people in the middle of the night – conducting a military operation against civilian activists in the midst of international waters.

We also know that the essential aim of the Freedom Flotilla was to carry humanitarian aid to those who have been severely suffering under the effects of Israel’s crushing blockade of Gaza. We call upon our community not to turn away in denial or blame those of good will and good purpose who risked their lives to relieve the beleaguered people of the Gaza strip.

We lift up our voices and call upon Israel to conduct an independent, transparent, and credible investigation of this incident. We also call upon the government of Israel to open the gates of compassion and allow these ships to dock so that they may deliver humanitarian aid to the 1.5 million citizens of Gaza. In so doing, we note the overall context of oppression in which this incident has occurred and call upon the government of Israel to turn away from the policies of occupation, siege and indifference to international law.

Our silence now is an act of betrayal to the values we purport to live by and to the words of the prophet we read every Yom Kippur:

Is this the fast I desire? A day for people to starve
their bodies? Or bow their heads like a bulrush
or wear sackcloth and smear oneself with ashes…
No! This is the fast the Lord desires:
Unlock the fetters of oppression
Untie the cords of the yoke
Let the exploited go free, break off every chain.
share your bread with the hungry,
Shelter the poor in your own house
clothe the naked and do not ignore your own kin.

As rabbis, we believe all human beings are our kin. We cannot abide the suffering inflicted upon the people of Gaza.

We lift up our voices and say: Unlock the fetters of oppression. Untie the cords of the yoke. Open the gates.

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Posted in Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

Blogosphere Reactions to the Gaza Flotilla Tragedy

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 16 Comments

Moshe Yaroni, writing in Realistic Peace:

The bottom line is that Israel raided these ships with commandoes, and the end result was a great deal of needless bloodshed. And apparently, according to the IDF spokesperson, as reported by journalist Gregg Carlstrom, they couldn’t even wait to do it until the ships had passed out of international waters, which makes it, if no explanation is forthcoming, an act of piracy as well.

Israel crossed a line today, in a way not dissimilar (though certainly of a much smaller scope, thankfully) to the line they crossed in their massive attack on Gaza in 2008-09. Whatever Israel’s detractors have said over the years, this incident, like Operation Cast Lead, was far beyond anything Israel has done in the past.

This was a shocking massacre, and there’s no way to pretty that up. These were people engaged in direct action of civil disobedience. True, the siege on Gaza should simply be lifted, but being that it’s there, yes, Israel can be expected to take action to stop the flotilla. But this doesn’t just go above and beyond and justification, it zooms light years past it.

Ashley Bates reporting on the reaction inside Gaza:

Many of the International Solidarity Movement activists living in Gaza gave interviews with the press, including Bianca Zimmit, an activist from Malta who was shot in her thigh by Israeli troops during a demonstration against the buffer zone last month. Here’s the link to a previous blog post I wrote about this incident and here’s the link to a blog post I wrote about a Palestinian demonstrator who was killed the week after Zimmit was shot.

“I’m surprised that Israel would go this far with internationals,” Zimmit said… “The reality is that they are doing this sort of thing every day with Palestinians—farmers and fishermen are killed every day….I don’t know why [Israeli citizens] would oppose these ships. Because they don’t understand what’s happening? Because they don’t understand the daily reality of the siege? The siege hurts the people, not the [Hamas] government. The poor people are bearing the brunt and are the hardest hit.”

The final word goes to the always eloquent Emily Hauser:

It doesn’t matter if the activists were armed — I’m pretty sure they were, to some degree. It doesn’t matter if they were entirely pacifist in their behavior — I’m pretty sure they weren’t. It doesn’t matter if they were planning for an armed confrontation, or merely fairly certain it might happen, or even if they were naive enough to think that when Israel turned them away (I’m pretty sure they knew they wouldn’t get to their destination) that it wouldn’t involve violence.

What matters is the blockade they were symbolically trying to break.

What matters is the roughly 300,000 refugees in Gaza who live in abject poverty — a 200% increase since early 2007, according to UNRWA — because of Israeli policy. What matters is the fact that many of the 1.4 million people living in Gaza must make do with 8-12 hours a day without electricity — up from 6-8 hours before the start of the year — because of Israeli policy. What matters is the “ongoing deterioration in the social, economic and environmental determinants of health” that the World Health Organization wrote about in January (back when people were still only dealing with 6-8 hours of daily power outages) — including 27 people who died while waiting for permission to leave Gaza to receive treatment — because of Israeli policy.

What matters is the blockade — what matters is the occupation.

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Posted in Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

The Freedom Flotilla Tragedy: Where is the Soul Searching?

Posted on May 31, 2010 | 8 Comments

In the wake of Israel’s military attack against Gaza flotilla activists (latest death toll: 14-20), I’ve been scouring the Israeli press to find any semblance of soul searching over how things could have come to this.

To my sorrow, all I’m finding is an analysis of the “tactical mistakes” made by the IDF and the public relations fallout of this tragic attack. In the meantime, there’s the same old defensive posturing from the government:

Jerusalem Post:

The defense minister also called on Arab and Palestinian leaders not to let this “provocation by irresponsible people” ruin the progress made in proximity peace talks…

Israeli Navy commander Vice-Admiral Eliezer Marom said Monday that IDF soldiers that raided Mavi Marmara acted with “perseverance and bravery…”

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that the flotilla of ships “was an armada of hate and violence…”

I have no doubt that the reaction of the American Jewish community will be just as defensive, if not more so.  As for me, I’ll be hoping against hope that we’ll start to hear different kinds of reactions:

- That the Freedom Flotilla was not simply a movement of provocateurs seeking to “delegitimize” Israel, but a group of activists mounting an act of civil disobedience to bring attention to 1.5 Palestinian citizens who are suffering under a crushing blockade.

- That mounting a military operation against civilian activists in international waters was bound to be futile, illegal, and yes, even immoral.

- That for all our concern over an organized “delegitimization campaign” against Israel, it may well be that Israel is actually delegitimizing itself through oppressive acts such as this.

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Posted in Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

Help Tent of Nations Fight Demolition!

Posted on May 28, 2010 | 1 Comment

Here’s an alert from Friends of Tent of Nations North America (see my previous post). Please sign the petition and look for a variety of additional action opportunities after the jump.

Dear Friends of Tent of Nations,

The Nassar Family Farm/Tent of Nations Project is in immediate jeopardy because of actions taken by Israeli authorities on Thursday afternoon, May 27, when two officers from the Israeli Civil Administration, guarded by Israeli soldiers, came to the farm and gave the family nine demolition orders for structures built without a permit from the Israeli Military Authority during the last two years. The orders are set for execution this Sunday, May 30. The Nassars’s attorney has initiated emergency legal action to stave off disaster.

We are asking you to be prepared to take every possible action, if conditions worsen, demanding that the orders not be executed. In the meantime, please sign this petition with your phone and email and forward this E-mail to your friends asking that they do likewise. We will post updates at the website www.fotonna.org.

Thank you for your solidarity.
Steering Committee
Friends of Tent of Nations North America

Continue reading →

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Posted in Coexistence, Human Rights, Israel, Nonviolence, Palestine, Peace

Alert: Tent of Nations Receives Demolition Orders

Posted on May 27, 2010 | 1 Comment

I’ve just received a horribly upsetting email from Daoud Nassar, a Palestinian farmer who lives and works in the Palestinian territory just south of Bethlehem. The Nassar’s farm, known to many as “Tent of Nations” has just received nine demolition orders for essential structures on their property.

Some background: Daoud’s farm has been in his family for four generations; his ancestor registered his land with the ruling Ottoman Empire and the Nassar’s still have the original deed. In 1991 – one quarter-century later – the Israeli military initiated proceedings to expropriate the Nasser family farm, which happens to be located between two Jewish settlements in the Gush Etzion Block.

Despite Daoud’s irrefutable proof of his family’s ownership of the land, the legal battle over it has stretched on for well over two decades – and the Nassar family has spent over $140,000 in legal fees to date. Up until now, their case has been essentially stuck in Israeli legal bureaucratic limbo.

In the meantime, the Nassar family has used their land to establish “The Tent of Nations” an inspirational center that provides arts, drama, and education to the children of the villages and refugee camps of the region. Daoud and his family have also established a Women’s Educational Center offering classes in computer literacy, English, and leadership training. (Many rabbis and rabbinical students are familiar with Tent of Nations as a primary destination for Encounter – a well-known educational program that promotes coexistence by introducing Jewish Diaspora leaders to Palestinian life.)

Those of us who know Daoud know him to be a gentle, honorable man, thoroughly dedicated to the cause of a just coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians. (On a stone next to the front gate of the Nassar farm are the words “We Will Not Be Enemies.”) Given his personal circumstance, his innate compassion is truly inspirational – and that’s what makes his email all the more heartbreaking.

Please, please read it, send it to friends, and be prepared to act as soon as more news is available. I will provide regular updates.

Let us hope, pray and work to ensure that these unjust demolition orders are overturned.

Dear Friends of Tent of Nations all over the world

Today at 2.00 pm in the afternoon, 2 officers form the Israeli Civil Administration guarded by Israeli soldiers came to our farm and gave us NINE demolishing orders for nine (structures) we built in the last years without a building permit from the Israeli Military Authority. The demolishing orders are for: tents, animals shelters, metal roof in front of both old houses, the restrooms (Shelters) , a water cistern, a metal container and 2 underground renovated cave structures. One officer was writing the demolishing orders and the other was taking pictures with two cameras, Israeli soldiers were following them everywhere and pointing their guns on us.

The demolishing orders were written in Hebrew and I refused to sign receiving them. We have 3 days only to react against those demolishing orders. The timing for delivering the demolishing orders was plant properly and purposely on Thursday, in order to make it difficult for us to try to stop those orders by the Israeli court within 3 days, because of the Jewish weekend (Friday and Saturday). The idea is to make it impossible for us to act quickly. I contacted our Lawyer and he will write an opposition and send it to the military court on Sunday morning. We hope to get a paper from the court through our Lawyer on Sunday morning to stop the demolishing orders.

We would like to ask you to be prepared and alert for actions, if anything might happen. We will keep you updated and will guide you for actions but please forward this E-mail to your friends.

PLEASE be prepared for actions. Thank you for all your solidarity and support.

They are trying to destroy our spirit, but we are determined to resist and overcome the Evil with GOOD and justice will prevail.

Blessings and Salaam,

Daoud

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Posted in Coexistence, Human Rights, Israel, Nonviolence, Palestine, Peace

South Park and the Religion of Blasphemy

Posted on May 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

The brouhaha over South Park’s depiction of Mohammed in a recent episode has given rise to some pretty illuminating commentary about the relationship between religion and open society.  I’ve waded through several and recommend two in particular:

- Glenn Greenwald’s important column in Salon, in which he correctly points out the “delusional” assumption that it is only Muslims who issue death threats against religious satire that they find offensive.

- Austin Dacey’s amazing piece in Religion Dispatches, in which he shows how puerile anti-religious satire actually predates South Park by several centuries:

Forget the South Park dust up; forget Everybody Draw Muhammad Day. If you want to see truly shocking anti-religious cartoons, you have to go back to the sixteenth century. Near the end of Luther’s life, his propaganda campaign against Rome grew increasingly vitriolic and his language grotesquely pungent. He took to calling his ecclesiastical enemies ‘asses,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘pigs,’ ‘blockheads,’ ‘basilisks,’ and ‘pupils of Satan,’ and the Pope himself ‘Her Sodomitical Hellishness’ and ‘fart-ass’ (no, it doesn’t sound much more dignified in German—fartz-Esel). Eric Cartman would be in awe.

His conclusion?

The debate over cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad is often framed as a clash between free speech and religious attitudes. But it is just as much a clash between conflicting religious attitudes, and the freedom at stake is not only freedom of expression but freedom of religion…

The orthodoxy of today is the blasphemy of yesterday. From the beginning, the spiritual search for religious truth has not been against blasphemy, but by way of blasphemy. Depending on where we sit metaphysically, we may want that search called off, or we may want it furthered. Either way, we must welcome religious offense as the unavoidable consequence of a free religious conscience.

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Posted in Christianity, Islam, Religion

The Occupation: Attention Must Be Paid

Posted on May 24, 2010 | 10 Comments

Photo from ActiveStills

Moshe Yaroni, writing in Zeek, offers an extremely eloquent answer to the question “Why is there so much attention on Israel’s human rights abuses when there are so many other worse offenders, including Iran and any number of Arab states?”

This is a tired argument. Few states enjoy such close cooperation in the diplomatic, industrial, political and economic arenas with the United States than Israel. None of these countries have the kinds of human rights violations allegations made against it that Israel does due to a forty three year long occupation, one that has only grown harsher and more complex in its severity since the peace process first began in the early 1990s.

Israel is welcomed into the family of Western democracies, by the US and Europe, and therefore enjoys many benefits that Arab states and Iran and other states do not. Israel’s recent admission to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is the latest example. These benefits should carry with it raised expectations—Israel is supposed to behave better than Iran or Saudi Arabia.

The occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza are very serious issues. They are sources of immiseration and exploitation, with enormous global consequences. It is a fallacy to suggest that these issues, which involve American governmental and corporate support to a much greater degree than many other issues, cannot be protested simply because there are worse problems in other places.

Finally, few human rights issues around the world affect Americans to the extent that the Occupation does. Not only do they complicate American diplomatic and military efforts in the Middle East (even Dennis Ross, who wrote, with David Makovsky, the strongest argument against what they called “linkage” recently admitted this) but Israel is a close ally on many levels and is a focal point for the faiths of a majority of religious Americans. There is every reason for Americans to focus on this conflict.

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Posted in Human Rights, Iran, Israel, Palestine, Politics

Elegy for Janine Denomme

Posted on May 19, 2010 | 7 Comments

It’s a brave new world. I’ve just officiated at the shiva for Janine Denomme, a 45 year old woman who also happened to be an ordained Catholic priest.

I did not have the honor of knowing Janine personally, but I do know she was a profoundly important spiritual teacher to many. She was active in the Catholic Church and served as a lay preacher, church musician, parish council member, spiritual director and religion teacher. And though she was a gay woman, she consistently considered the Catholic Church to be her spiritual home, and had always dreamed of becoming a priest.

Janine was ordained just this last April by Roman Catholic Womenpriests, an initiative within the Catholic Church that seeks to create “a more inclusive, Christ-centered Church of equals in the twenty-first century.”  Tragically, Janine was diagnosed with cancer as she prepared for ordination – but as it turned out, her struggle with her illness gave her a new spiritual calling. She wrote deeply profound reflections on the journey of a cancer patient, primarily through her Caring Bridge blog. I’ve just finished reading “Via Delorosa” – a piece she wrote this past February in which she charts the stages of her chemo treatment using the religious symbolism of the Stations of the Cross.  It’s quite simply as powerful a piece of contemporary spiritual writing as I’ve ever read.

Needless to say, the Catholic Church does not recognize Janine’s ordination in any fashion – and even more painfully, the Archdiocese of Chicago refused to allow her to be buried in her Catholic parish. Her funeral mass will take place in a Methodist church in Evanston this Saturday.

In a final 21st century twist to this story: Janine’s beloved partner, Nancy Katz, is a member of my congregation – and it was my honor to preside over a Shiva service at their home this evening. Truly an interfaith gathering of the most sacred kind.

You can read more about Janine here in the Windy City Times and in this piece from the Huffington Post. May her memory be for a blessing.

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Posted in Christianity, LGBTQ Issues, Religion

Jewish Blogger Panel Video Now Online

Posted on May 14, 2010 | 4 Comments

Last January I participated in a panel discussion on Jewish blogging sponsored by the Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine. I was honored to join two of my favorite bloggers in the world, Adam Horowitz of Mondoweiss and Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch, for what turned out to be an extensive and incredibly thought-provoking conversation.

CJPIP has just uploaded a video of the program to their website. Click here to watch.

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Posted in Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Peace, Politics

Alan Dershowitz and the Politics of Desperation

Posted on May 11, 2010 | 13 Comments

From a piece I’ve just posted in the Huffington Post:

I’ve noticed an interesting pattern in Alan Dershowitz’s recent HuffPo columns.

On April 21 he smeared Jeremy Ben Ami and the pro-peace, pro-Israel lobbying group J Street, putting words in Ben Ami’s mouth and saying that J Street has “gone over to the dark side.”

On May 4 it was Rabbi Michael Lerner, a leading figure of the American Jewish left, and editor of Tikkun Magazine. Dershowitz accused Tikkun of “McCarthyism,” disregarded the recent attack on Lerner’s home, and characterized Lerner’s criticism of Israeli policy as “blood libel.”

In between the two, Dershowitz lambasted Judge Richard Goldstone, the highly regarded international jurist who prepared a UN report on Israel’s Gaza War. He labeled the report as “evil” and attacked me and a group of American rabbis for having the temerity to find merit in Goldstone’s work – we are “bigoted,” apparently, and “ignorant,” and are – yes – leveling a “blood libel” against the Israeli government. Most recently, Dershowitz hit a new low when he went on Israeli television and compared Judge Goldstone to Dr. Joseph Mengele.

When a Jew starts to accuse rabbis of blood libel; when an American shouts “McCarthyism” at an American magazine editor whose life is dedicated to dialogue; when a professional, highly experienced lawyer accuses a world-renown jurist of “evil,” equating him with the Nazi “Angel of Death,” and uses Star Wars terminology against a legitimate, widely-supported political lobbying group – well, it adds up, and it indicates one thing: Desperation.

Click here to read the entire article.

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Posted in Gaza, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Politics, UN