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.
Shalom Rav 
One of the best panel discussions I’ve attended, and it was just as good the second time on video!
I loved Cecilie’s very quotable statement about Jewish liberation being tied up with Palestinian liberation.
I also think what you said was very important for people in the American Jewish community to think about: many of us have felt alienated from synogogue life solely because of this issue. When a safe space is created for us by “insiders” like you, we can come back and not feel we have to compromise our values because we can learn about how our values on the Israel/Palestine issue ARE Jewish values.
This was an amazing panel. These bloggers have tremendous courage to speak out on issues crucial to the Jewish community!
Good panel =)
I see that one of Sursaky’s disappointments is that during her visit to Israel she discovered that it wasn’t the “socialist” paradise her grandparents dreamed about. I know many “progressives” were attracted to Israel decades ago was because of the socialist ideology of the MAPAI-MAPAM ruling parties (today’s Labor and MERETZ). However, my having made aliyah in the 1980’s , during the breakup of the socialist system in Israel, I discovered that large majority of Israelis DESPISED socialism, finding it to be a corrupt, suffocating system that caused the spread of “proteksia” (favoritism) and social INEQUALITIES made in the name of EQUALITY becaue the gov’t would define certain groups, such as the kibbutzim as being “favored” (using the justification that their grandparents had drained the swamps and their parents served as army officers) and giving them more goodies than other groups would receive.
Surasky’s grandparents should have been happy that while they may have admired Israel’s socialism from afair, they were able to get ahead in America’s free, capitalist society. It seems that those who admire socialism the most are those who don’t have live under its onerous restrictions.