Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Rabbi Mordechai Liebling, former head of the congregational arm of the Reconstructionist movement and a long-time activist with the Jewish Funds for Justice, has published a piece with Jewish Voice for Peace about why he recently came out in support of church participation in the movement to divest in corporations that profit from Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. Several years ago, Rabbi Liebling published a piece for Meretz USA explaining why divestment is a counterproductive strategy. It’s a very useful exercise to read arguments on both sides of the issue from the same thoughtful man, so here goes:

Why Divestment is Counterproductive by Rabbi Mordechai Liebling

Why I Signed a Letter in Support of Church Divestment by Rabbi Mordechai Liebling

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr

{ 1 comment }

Khad Gadya, the old Aramaic fable sung at the end of the Passover seder, is often associated with a sense of relief that the long evening is finally over.  It also helps that it comes after four glasses of wine. It traces a cascade of events beginning with a baby goat being devoured by a cat. Each verse adds a link to the chain reaction: a dog comes and bites the cat, a stick beats the dog, fire burns the stick, water puts out the fire . . . and on it goes. Each successive verse gets longer until the fable ends in a final karmic stroke; God kills the Death Angel. It’s part morality-play, part Rube Goldberg device.

It’s also a great metaphor, making its appearance in a painful contemporary poem by Yehudah Amichai;

An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
and on the opposite mountain I am searching
for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
both in their temporary failure.
Our voices meet above the Sultan’s Pool
in the valley between us. Neither of us wants
the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels
of the terrible Khad Gadya machine…

Amichai’s metaphor — the terrible Khad Gadya machine — is pitch-perfect for the Arab-Israeli conflict, with violence generated and regenerated by self-righteous rage, desperation and vengeance. [click to continue…]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr

{ 0 comments }

March 27: The Passover Suicide Bombing

by Lawrence Bush on March 26, 2012

Hamas conducted a suicide-bomber attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel, during a Passover seder on this date in 2002, killing thirty civilians and injuring 140. Most of the victims were elderly, including some Holocaust survivors. The attack, the deadliest of the Second Intifadah, was intended to kill in its cradle a new peace initiative by the Saudi Arabian government, which based a normalization of Israeli-Arab relations upon Israel’s withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders. (The initiative was reiterated in 2007 but has been largely ignored by the Israeli government.) Israel responded to the terrorist attack with Operation Defensive Shield, a two-month operation in the West Bank that held Yasser Arafat under siege in his Ramallah compound, killed numerous Hamas operatives, and devastated the town of Jenin. The combined toll of the military operation, along with additional suicide bombings, was 130 Israelis killed (100 noncombatants) and 238 Palestinians killed (at least 83 noncombatants). The conflict ended Yasser Arafat’s relevance as a leader and thereby helped strengthen Hamas.

“It was so pretty, with crisp white tablecloths and flower arrangements, and then everything turned black.” —Maxim Elkrief

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr

{ 0 comments }

February 25: The Purim Massacre

by Lawrence Bush on February 24, 2012

Baruch Goldstein, an Brooklyn-born Orthodox Jewish physician, murdered 29 Palestinians and wounded 125 others by opening fire in a mosque in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on this date, the Purim holiday, in 1994. Goldstein was attacked and killed by survivors of the massacre. His grave in Meir Kahane Memorial Park in Hebron became a site of veneration for extremist settlers, with a plaque praising “the holy Baruch Goldstein, who gave his life for the Jewish people, the Torah and the nation of Israel.” Goldstein was a charter member of the Jewish Defense League and a dyed-in-the-wool racist; four years before the massacre, an Israeli intelligence agent who had infiltrated Kahane’s Kach movement had warned his superiors about Goldstein.

“You are not part of the community of Israel… You are not part of the national democratic camp which we all belong to in this house, and many of the people despise you. You are not partners in the Zionist enterprise. You are a foreign implant. . . .We say to this horrible man and those like him: you are a shame on Zionism and an embarrassment to Judaism.” —Yitzhak Rabin

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr

{ 0 comments }

January 18: Ceasefire in Gaza

January 17, 2012

Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s three-week invasion of Gaza to suppress rocket fire and halt arms smuggling, was suspended on this date in 2009. The war, a tight, intense conflict with more than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis killed, was condemned by a United Nations mission, headed by South African Justice Richard Goldstone, which accused both [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →

December 8: The First Intifadah

December 7, 2011

Four residents of the Jabalya refugee camp, the largest in Gaza, were killed by a truck driven by an Israeli driver on this date in 1987. The accident sparked rioting, which skyrocketed within two days into the first Palestinian intifadah (“shrugging off”), involving strikes, demonstrations, rioting, boycotts, the withholding of taxes, stone-throwing, and a general [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →

Bruce H. Bernstein: A “Listening Tour,” Final Installment

November 21, 2011

It’s midnight on Saturday, November 13. Our flight, which was supposed to take off at 11:40 pm, will now depart at 7:45 am, Inch’allah. I’m with Lita, Hanny, Judy, and Carol near our departure gate, trying to get as comfortable as possible. Wally and Chick are in another part of the airport, and Tom and [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →

Bruce H. Bernstein: A “Listening Tour,” #7

November 14, 2011

Time is flying by. We are still staying at Kibbutz Ginosar, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. There has been so much going on, rushing from place to place, that we have not had time to process/integrate the experience. That totality, coupled with the diversity, and as Daniel would say, the multiplicity of voices that make [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →

Bruce H. Bernstein, A “Listening Tour,” # 6

November 11, 2011

Jonathan Gershovitz, Dartmouth ’62 showed up at our hotel an hour early, just as we returned from our afternoon with Rabbi Ofer Sabath Beit Halachmi. Dan Tompkins, Dartmouth ’62 had put us in touch with him. Jonathan was our guest for the evening. Since he was early, I got to talk with him for a [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →

Bruce H. Bernstein: A “Listening Tour,” # 5

November 10, 2011

I am sitting in the cafeteria at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. It’s Monday morning and the rest of the group is touring the museum. Somehow I don’t feel like I can handle it today, so I’m taking the opportunity to catch up on my notes. This experience has been very powerful for me in [...]

Share and Enjoy:
  • email
  • Print
  • Google Bookmarks
  • del.icio.us
  • Digg
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Tumblr
Read the full article →