Some Thanksgiving Thoughts for America

7 Replies

Some reading material for you this Thanksgiving. Feel free to read excerpts around the table tonight:

A powerful meditation on lost opportunity by journalist Robert Scheer, writing in Truthdig:

How many folks from my generation are honestly sanguine about the economic future of their children and grandchildren? What I have heard constantly, and just this week from a former top investment banker addressing a college class I teach, is that our offspring probably will face a decade of lost opportunity. I thought back to my college days and how shocked any of us, even those from the most impoverished of circumstances, would have been to hear such a prediction.

As The New York Times editorialized this Thanksgiving, “One in three Americans—100 million people—is either poor or perilously close to it.”

A bummer of a message, I know, until I think of those pepper-sprayed college students linking arms, and of all the Americans, young, old and between, who have occupied their minds with a challenge—that it doesn’t have to be this way. For their brave spirit of resistance we should be most grateful this Thanksgiving.

Retired Air Force lieutenant colonel William J. Astore expresses some Thanksgiving gratitude for our nation’s public servants:

As we sit down to our Thanksgiving dinners, we should reflect on the true roots of our national greatness: Our enshrinement of individual freedoms and liberties exercised within communal settings that are consistent with principles of human dignity and decency. True public servants support such ideals, to include our troops, our police – and our protesters, who dare to confront us with reminders of democratic ideals that we as a country are failing to meet.

Yes, protesters are public servants too, deserving of a fair hearing and a measure of respect. Yet the more we deploy armed forces to suppress such protesters, the more our democracy withers from within, even as we claim to be spreading it from without.

A nation simply cannot sow the seeds of democracy in other lands while poisoning the seedlings of democracy in its own land.

This Thanksgiving, let us reflect on the dangers of using one group of public servants (the police) to suppress another group of public servants (the protesters).  Let us ponder the dangers of putting armed forces empowered by noble oaths to ignoble purposes. And let us ponder as well what suffers most when our public servants are turned against one another – and who profits most.

And finally, Aisha Ali’s excellent and important survey of the real history of Thanksgiving:

Americans should know the history behind Thanksgiving. The images of Pilgrims continually celebrating Thanksgiving, and Native Americans being invited out of goodwill is false. As tension mounted, and wars erupted between Native Americans and Pilgrims, there were no future Thanksgivings.  Native American history involves successive colonization, intrusion of colonists’ beliefs, sacrilege of lands and sacred burial sites, and the unjust force of Native Americans further west. However, this was not always the story of Native Americans.  Native Americans used to live in a harmonious society.  “Earth Mother” or “Mother Earth” was respected and she in return, blessed Native Americans with bountiful crops, peace, and health. Since then, America has become a place of corruption, racism, segregation, and capitalism– all due to the foundation on which America was built.  As Abigail Adams once questioned how could any good come from a White House that was built by half-hungry slaves, how can America be a place of good will, liberty, and welfare without acknowledging the bloodshed and tragedy of its native peoples?

What many of us eat today, including our Thanksgiving menu, comes from the harvest crop initially cultivated by Natives, which accounts for nearly 70 percent of all crops, including corn, potatoes, and tomatoes.  It is important that we teach our children the truth on which America was founded.  The images, the story, the history of Native Americans must be changed.  What we have all learned is based on both truth and myth.  It is our duty as parents to educate our children and teach them the real story of not only Thanksgiving, but also America, wholly.  How can races/ethnicities ever heal unless we are able to address the problems and move on together to face them?

Yet, the true theme existing behind Thanksgiving should not be ignored, as everyone should be thankful for his or her blessings and this is something we must instill in all children: the acknowledgment of your blessings and being grateful for them.   But most importantly, we must instill in them, the truth.

Tell JNF to Cease its Practice of Ethnic Cleansing

1 Reply

The Sumarin Family (Photo by: Michal Fattal)

From the newly formed Campaign for Bedouin – Jewish Justice in Israel (a joint project of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America and the Jewish Alliance for Change):

While many of us will be gathering with our loved ones to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Sumarin family will be anxiously sitting on suitcases and wondering whether they will have a home in another week.

The Sumarins, a Palestinian family of twelve, including five children, a pregnant mother, and a grandfather on dialysis, have lived in their home for more than forty years in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

On Monday, November 28th, they will be evicted from their home – unless we raise our voices now.

We’re deeply troubled that a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Jewish National Fund in Israel, called Himnuta, is behind this move.

To expel this family is a violation of both Jewish and human rights law.   And it risks inflaming Arab-Jewish tensions in Jerusalem, further undermining the hope for Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Send a message now to JNF CEO Russell Robinson and urge him to stop JNF’s Himnuta from expelling the Sumarin family from their home.

The Silwan neighborhood has long been a flash point in the struggle over land in and around the Old City of Jerusalem and the site of clashes between Jews and Palestinians.

Twenty years ago, an ultra-nationalist Israeli government bent on expanding Jewish control in East Jerusalem took legal possession of the Sumarin home, along with other Arab properties in Silwan. The government transferred the Sumarins’ home to JNF’s Himnuta, along with seven other houses in Silwan.

Himnuta then turned its other East Jerusalem properties over to ELAD, a group whose explicit political agenda is to expropriate Palestinian homes and land in Silwan and transfer them to the control of Jewish settlers. There is every reason to expect that the Sumarins’ home will also end up in ELAD’s hands.

How has the Israeli government used the law to expropriate Palestinian property and land in East Jerusalem for Jewish settlers?Go here for the story.

Remind JNF CEO Russell Robinson that “legal” does not mean “just.”  The many anti-democratic and anti-Arab laws recently passed by the Knesset add yet more tragic testimony of the ways law can be used for injustice.

This will not be the last expulsion of a Palestinian family from Silwan by JNF’s Himnuta or ELAD.   Other families are facing the same threat.

Tell JNF CEO Russell Robinson: It’s time to end JNF’s role in expulsions or demolitions of Palestinian and Bedouin homes, whether in the Negev or East Jerusalem.

For more information, see this recent article in Ha’aretz and this post from Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity.

What Do You Think of Benetton’s New Ad Campaign?

2 Replies

From the website of Benetton’s newly created “Unhate Foundation:”

The UNHATE Foundation, desired and founded by the Benetton Group, seeks to contribute to the creation of a new culture of tolerance, to combat hatred, building on Benetton’s underpinning values. It is another important step in the group’s social responsibility strategy: not a cosmetic exercise, but a contribution that will have a real impact on the international community, especially through the vehicle of communication, which can reach social players in different areas.

The Foundation will organise initiatives involving different stakeholders, from the new generations to the institutions, international organisations and NGOs, through to civil society.

The Foundation also aims to be a think tank, attracting personalities and talents from the fields of culture, economy, law and politics, and people who have gone from simple citizens to leaders of movements, distinguishing themselves through their ideas and actions against the causes and effects of hatred.

If the pairing of Abu Mazen and Bibi aren’t your cup of tea, the campaign also includes other pix of unlikely political smooching partners…

(h/t Susan Klonsky)

“Social Justice” Israel Trips Must Not Cover Up Oppression

22 Replies

Here is a guest post by Michael Deheeger, who you may know from the radio interview about our JRC Israel/Palestine Study Tour last year.

Michael grew up in my congregation and has worked for several years as in Chicago as a political activist and a community organizer. His most recent job, from which he has just resigned, was as Program Director for AVODAH: Jewish Service Corps in Chicago.

On October 26, I resigned from my position as Chicago Program Director for AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. Each day I have spent in this job has been a blessing, but I have no choice in light of AVODAH’s decision to co-sponsor a 10-day “service-learning” trip to Israel with the American Jewish World Service through their joint initiative Pursue: Action for a Just World.

AVODAH and AJWS agreed to this trip as a grant stipulation for funding from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, a prominent donor in the Jewish nonprofit world, major supporter of pro-Israel causes, and Pursue’s principal funder.

I believe it is irresponsible for social justice organizations to organize a trip that focuses on “diversity, poverty and social integration” without meaningfully, and publicly, addressing Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land, systematic oppression of Palestinians across “Israel proper” and the Occupied Territories, and enforced exile of Palestinian refugees.

I believe doing so contributes to the “normalization” of a deeply abnormal oppressive situation – presenting Israel as a liberal democracy with nothing more than the usual challenges rather than a state which imposes an ethnicity-based military regime on millions of people. It perpetuates the idea that it is acceptable to ignore Israel’s daily abuses of Palestinians in the pursuit of cultural, religious, financial or other interests.

Similar Jewish “social justice”, artistic, LGBTQ and environmental trips are often used to mount a facade of democracy over Israel’s state-sponsored human rights abuses.  It is well known that Israeli government ministries and American Jewish organizations have been collaborating on an extravagantly funded “Brand Israel” project designed to improve the country’s image abroad by “avoiding any discussion of the conflict with the Palestinians.” Arye Mekel, former Deputy Director-General for Cultural Affairs with Israel’s Foreign Ministry, has described this strategy as a way to “show Israel’s prettier face.” I have no doubt that the Schusterman Foundation has a similar agenda for this Pursue trip.

Through this trip, AVODAH and AJWS become active participants in covering up oppression, whether that is their intention or not. They publicly lend their organizations’ names and reputations to injustice, violating the social justice principles enshrined in their missions which inspired me to join AVODAH’s staff in the first place.

My decision to resign is informed by my support of the Palestinian call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Initiated in 2005, BDS is a call endorsed by the great majority of Palestinian civil society groups as a nonviolent strategy to pressure Israel into ceasing its systematic oppression of Palestinians.

I believe in listening to people fighting their own oppression when they lay out a strategy to achieve their human rights. For the overwhelming number of Palestinians, BDS is that strategy.  Being strong allies and taking our lead from people directly impacted by oppression is, in fact, a philosophy deeply held by organizations such as AVODAH and AJWS.

I decided to write about my decision in the spirit of Tokhecha, or sacred rebuke, a central value of Torah:

Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him” (Leviticus 19:17)

Rashi’s interpretation of “incur not guilt” is “Do not embarrass [them] in public.” My goal is not to embarrass or shame AVODAH or AJWS. I love and respect AVODAH, which is staffed by dedicated and thoughtful individuals, and which remains committed to open discussion on this and other issues among its participants and alums.

However, this trip communicates a public message – that these organizations are willing to overlook Israel’s oppression of Palestinians in exchange for funding. It therefore requires a public response.

My understanding of Tokhecha is that it includes the responsibility to help those to whom it is directed make amends. I echo the call put out by AVODAH alums and current Corps members that AVODAH and AJWS commit publicly to “never sponsor an Israel trip in this way again.”

We in the Jewish social justice community have a choice. On the one hand, we can stay silent and try to avoid provoking the ire of powerful donors like the Schusterman Foundation. On the other hand, we can publicly oppose, or at least not cover up, the oppression Israel commits directly in our name.

I have faith that our community, increasingly, will choose the latter, and that as BDS continues to gain traction among young Jews, there will be a growing cost in staff and participants for organizations that allow themselves to be used as cover for the oppression of Palestinians.

From the American South to the West Bank: A Freedom Rider Bears Witness to Human Rights in Israel/Palestine

5 Replies

On November 15, Palestinian activists will attempt to board segregated Israeli settler public transport headed to occupied East Jerusalem in an act of civil disobedience inspired by the Freedom Riders of the US Civil Rights Movement.

Fifty years after the US Freedom Riders staged mixed-race bus rides through the roads of the segregated American South, Palestinian Freedom Riders will be asserting their right for liberty and dignity by disrupting the military regime of the Occupation through peaceful civil disobedience. Organizers say this ride to demand liberty, equality, and access to Jerusalem is the first of many to come.

Ta’anit Tzedek – Jewish Fast for Gaza will stand in solidarity with the West Bank Freedom Riders with a very special conference call on the day of the demonstration. Please join us Tuesday, November 15 at 12 pm Eastern Time  to join our conversation with Ellen Broms, one of the original Freedom Riders for civil rights in the American South and currently an activist for a just peace in Israel/Palestine.

During our call, Ms. Broms will talk about her own experiences as an activist/demonstrator for civil rights in the 1960’s and why her activism has led her to take a stand on behalf of Palestinian human and civil rights.

Ellen Broms is a retired state worker who resides in Sacramento, CA. Her involvement in the civil rights movement began when, as a student at Los Angeles City College, she demonstrated at Woolworth lunch counters in support of  similar sit-ins by students in the South.

In June 1961, Ms. Brom attended a freedom rally at the Sports Arena in Los Angeles where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the keynote speech.  After hearing a freedom rider speak, she was inspired to participate in the rides herself. On August 11, Ms. Brom was arrested with other freedom riders after they sat down and demonstrated in a Houston coffee shop.

In her words:

The police arrived, having been summoned by the owner and we were charged with unlawful assembly and taken to the Houston city jail. We were fingerprinted, mugged, and classified at the city jail and then transferred to the Harris County Jail. Ironically, I was booked as a “Negro” because of my dark hair and complexion. We declined to state “race” and they classified me as “High Yellow”. Marjorie, a very fair skinned, green eyed female rider of African American descent was classified and booked as white. I was placed in the “tank” for black women and Marjorie went to the white women’s tank. If we did nothing else during that ride, we did succeed in briefly integrating the jail.

After spending eight days in jail, Ms. Brom was released. The riders were found guilty of “unlawful assembly” by an all-white jury and fined $100 each. Their case was eventually appealed to a higher court and overturned.

Ellen Broms has since been honored by Congress, the state of Texas and the city of Houston for risking incarceration and violence as a Freedom Rider. She continues to work as an activist for peace and justice, particularly in the area of a just peace in Israel/Palestine. She is actively involved in the Sacramento branch of Jewish Voice for Peace and is campaigning on behalf of the West Bank Freedom Riders.

To participate in the call:

Dial Access Number: 1.800.920.7487
Enter Participant Code: 92247763#

There will be opportunities for questions and answers during the call.

Please click here for more information about how you can get involved in support of the West Bank Freedom Riders. Please share this information with others you think may be interested in participating.

We looking forward to your joining the call!

Israel Seeks Attack on Iran (aka “Politics as Usual”)

5 Replies

Netanyahu is seeking support in his cabinet for a military attack on Iran. Shimon Peres has just said an attack is “more and more likely.” This, despite the fact that numerous leaders in Israel’s security establishment, including former Mossad chief Meir Dagan, feel that such action would be disastrous.

Make no mistake: this has nothing to do with any imminent threat and everything to do with politics. Even Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said publicly he doesn’t believe Iran would ever drop a nuclear bomb on Israel.

So why this latest panic? Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar hits it right on the head: Netanyahu knows that Obama is politically hamstrung on this issue and he smells serious blood in the water:

(Newt) Gingrich…declared at the week’s end that if the Israeli prime minister reaches the conclusion that the country is in danger, no American president could doubt it and expect Israel to sit with its arms folded and face the danger of another Holocaust. One of his rivals for the candidacy, Rick Perry, then hastened to announce that if Israel decided to attack Iran, he would demand that the United States stand behind it.

What do they have to lose? If this is a false threat designed to goad the United States into exerting more pressure on Tehran, they can wave their support. If a military assault is a new version of the last war in Iraq, they will be able to place the blame on President Barack Obama.

The problem with all this political saber-rattling, as Iran analyst Trita Parsi correctly points out, is that the more Israel presses its cynical “another Holocaust” narrative against Iran, the harder it will be “for any Israeli politician to walk back the threat depiction without losing critical political capital at home.” In other words, all this political bluster could well create a disastrous military fait accomplis.

Last word to David Remnick, who recently posted an important piece on this subject in the New Yorker blog:

A unilateral attack from Israel…would be a grave mistake for all the reasons made plain by Meir Dagan and so many others. It is terrible enough to imagine what might happen if Iran came to possess a bomb; but an attack now would almost certainly lead to a tide of blood in the region. The Middle East today is in a state of fragile possibility, full of peril, to be sure, but also pregnant with promise. A premature unilateral attack could upend everything and one result of many would be an Israel under fire, under attack, and more deeply isolated than ever before.

UNESCO Admits Palestine, the US Pulls $60 Million

4 Replies

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voted yesterday to admit Palestine as its newest member – and the United States promptly responded by cutting off $60 million of funding for the agency.

Apparently our administration feels that Palestine’s membership in an organization committed to “the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue” is “reckless,” “anti-Israel and anti-peace.”

Is there anything at all the US will not do for Israel?

From a smart CNN editorial yesterday:

The irony of the decision to cut funding is that UNESCO is one of the few United Nations groups where the U.S. finds a sympathetic ear on issues related to Israel.  UNESCO is actively working with America to promote tolerance and is working to deepen understanding of the Holocaust in countries where people don’t even believe it existed.

Even more important U.S. interests will be at stake if the World Intellectual Property Organization grants Palestinians membership, which as an affiliate of UNESCO they are almost certain to do.  That is where you start directly encountering obvious and significant interests to American business.

To my mind, the best commentary on the absurdity of all this came when AP reporter Matthew Lee questioned State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland during a press conference yesterday. You can watch the whole thing above or read a full transcript on Sami Kishawi’s blog.

Here’s my favorite part – Kafka couldn’t have written it better:

Reporter: Okay, and how does it undermine exactly the prospect of where you want to go?

Victoria Nuland: The concern is that it creates tensions when all of us should be concerting our efforts to get the parties back to the table.

Reporter: The only thing it does is it upsets Israel and it triggers this law that you said will require you to stop funding UNESCO. Is there anything else? There’s nothing that changes on the ground, is there?

Victoria Nuland: Our concern is that this could exacerbate the environment which we are trying to work through so that the parties will get back to the table.

Reporter: How exactly does it exacerbate the environment if it changes nothing on the ground unlike, say, construction of settlements? It changes nothing on the ground. It gives Palestine membership in UNESCO, which was a body the US was so unconcerned about for many years that it wasn’t even a member.

Victoria Nuland: Well, I think you know that this administration is committed to UNESCO, rejoined UNESCO, wants to see UNESCO’s work go forward.

Reporter: Actually, it was the last administration that rejoined UNESCO, not this one. But I need to have some kind of clarity on how this undermines the peace process — other than the fact that it upsets Israel.

Victoria Nuland: Again, we are trying to get both of these parties back to the table. That’s what we’ve been doing all along. That was the basis for the President’s speech in May, basis of the diplomacy that the Quartet did through the summer, the basis of the statement that the Quartet came out with in September. So in that context, we have been trying to improve the relationship between these parties, improve the environment between them, and we are concerned that we exacerbate tensions with this, and it makes it harder to get the parties back to the table.

Reporter: Since the talks broke off last September until today, how many times have they met together, with all your effort?

Victoria Nuland: How many times have the parties met?

Reporter: Yes.

Victoria Nuland: I think you know the answer to that question.

Reporter: Correct.

Sorry Newt, but there is no Anti-Semitism at Occupy Wall St.

4 Replies

Accusations of anti-semitism in the Occupy Wall Street movement are flying fast and furious now. Newt Kingrich leveled the charge today on the CBS’s Early Show. David Brooks insinuated it in the NY Times not long ago. And Bill Kristol’s Emergency Committee on Israel has actually bought air time in New York and DC to run a laughably misleading ad that implores viewers to “Tell Obama and Leader Pelosi to stand up to the (anti-semitic, anti-Israel) mob.”

Watch the above clip for the real story.  Then read this thorough piece by commentator MJ Rosenberg. It would all be pretty hilarious if it wasn’t such a horribly cynical exploitation exploit the real pain and fear of anti-semitism to slow down a movement committed to justice and dignity for all – which is, in the end, what Judaism is all about.

We’re Leaving But Not Really Leaving Iraq

5 Replies

The new American embassy in Iraq is the largest in the world and is built on a tract of land roughly the size of the Vatican

In my recent Yom Kippur sermon, I linked to an article that explained why, even if Obama did honor the pledge to withdraw US troops at the end of 2011, this wouldn’t be the end of our militarized presence in that country by a long shot.

So now that Obama has formally announced the Iraq withdrawal, just pay close, close attention to the heavily militarized State Department presence that will remain.

From a recent WashPo article:

The list of responsibilities the State Department will pick up from the military is daunting. It will have to provide security for the roughly 1,750 traditional embassy personnel — diplomats, aid workers, Treasury employees and so on — in a country rocked by daily bombings and assassinations.

To do so, the department is contracting about 5,000 security personnel. They will protect the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad plus two consulates, a pair of support sites at Iraqi airports and three police-training facilities.

The department will also operate its own air service — the 46-aircraft Embassy Air Iraq — and its own hospitals, functions the U.S. military has been performing. About 4,600 contractors, mostly non-American, will provide cooking, cleaning, medical care and other services. Rounding out the civilian presence will be about 4,600 people scattered over 10 or 11 sites, where Iraqis will be instructed on how to use U.S. military equipment their country has purchased.

“This is not what State Department people train for, to run an operation of this size. Ever since 2003, they’ve been heavily reliant on U.S. military support,” said Max Boot, a national security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Make no mistake: we’re all going to be paying for Bush’s Folly for a long, long time to come…

The Return of Gilad Shalit: Reactions

23 Replies

On the subject of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, I can’t put it any better than blogger Emily Hauser, who has written a number of eloquent posts on this subject over the years. Click here and here to read her latest reactions.

Also highly recommended: this recent op-ed by journalist Rachel Shabi:

But meanwhile, the terms of the Israel-Hamas brokered prisoner swap – one Israeli, whose name the world knows, for 1027 faceless Palestinians – has generated some absurd comments on the value each side places on human life. In reports of how much Israelis care about the soldier Shalit – all true – there is somehow the inference that Palestinians don’t cherish their loved ones in the same way. But it is clearly more approachable a task to keep one soldier’s name in people’s hearts and in the headlines, than it is with countless thousands of Palestinian men. And the undertaking is smoothed by a media skew on the subject: taking part in a panel discussion on reporting the conflict last year, I heard a European journalist explain that Shalit was an easier pitch because he seemed innocent and blameless, while Palestinian prisoners didn’t generate the same assumptions. Meanwhile, the cold exchange rate of a thousand prisoners to one Israeli obviously doesn’t mean that Palestinians morally agree with this equation; it just points to the brutal asymmetry of forces and capacity in this struggle.

There is, however, one setting in which the two sides stand on level ground. When the prisoner deal was announced this week, there were jarringly rare images of both Israelis and Gaza strip Palestinians joyously celebrating the same news story. There it was, in that moment: an equality borne of shared humanity.