Diplomats Discuss Bashar al-Assad’s Future as Syria Fights Rebels – NYTimes.com.
This is an important article on the stage we find ourselves in of the Syrian revolution. Russia’s defense to the last of the Assad regime is a significant political reality that points much more deeply to the problem and challenge of global, that is, Security Council consensus on matters of global governance when massive human rights abuses are occurring. We are still at a kind of Cold War impasse when it comes to the spheres of influence of the United States, Europe and Saudi Arabia on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other. The United States political narrative on such matters, and in…
Maybe we are not in an Arab Spring, but a Human Spring. Maybe it is the flowering of nonviolent resistance, and it is time for Jews and Arabs to march as one in Israel/Palestine, and it is time for Americans to march as one to put the banks back into the controls that helped us flourish in the forties and fifties.
אולי אנחנו לא באביב ערבי, אבל האביב האדם. אולי זה הוא הפריחה של התנגדות לא אלימה, וזה הזמן עבור יהודים וערבים כאחד לצעוד בישראל / פלסטין, וזה הזמן עבור האמריקנים לצעוד כאחד לשים את הבנקים בחזרה את הפקדים עזרו לנו לפרוח שנות הארבעים והחמישים.
ربما نحن لسنا في الربيع العربي، ولكن فصل الربيع الإنسان. ربما هو ازدهار المقاومة اللاعنفية، وحان الوقت لليهود والعرب في مسيرة واحدة في إسرائيل
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This is a wonderful article, very important timing. Ria is absolutely right on, except I suspect strongly that Petreaus is much more of an ally than she thinks. But there are other problems with the American military and political system that are preventing the rational approach that she is recommending. The ideology of killing, hard conquest, is in the way, and it still afflicts enough people at various levels of authority that moving quickly now is hard. But that is where progressives need to step up and lobby hard, with money, to do the right thing.
A role for the US in Afghan national reconciliation? by Shukria Dellawar – Common Ground News Service.
A role for
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I was reading this headline in Ha’aretz and by sheer accident, it was in the same column as another headline, “A superb day for the Jewish people’: Kagan sworn in as Supreme Court judge”
And I was just struck by the paradox of pride and shame of being an identified Jew in 2010. On the one hand, another Jewish woman reaches the most honored position of legal wisdom in the United States, an achievement that in my youth I would have called a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of the Divine Name, a testimony to the hard work of centuries of her forebears who kept alive Talmud study and the search for knowledge and wisdom and now, thankfully,…
This will be a long, hard fought battle that will leave Muslims quite weary, but it has been engaged before and successfully won. Just ask Catholics a hundred years ago, or Jews two hundred years ago. This will require persistence, coalition building, compromise, honesty, an evolution in communication skills, and patience above all. But I believe that history demonstrates that Americans of common sense generally win in the long run. I believe we are just witnessing the second wave of organized hatred that comes from political opportunists (who often wear religious garb). It will exhaust itself in embarrassment as it reaches absurd limits. Critics of Islam with legitimate gripes, such as Wafa Sultan, will begin to distance themselves…
Great article on the Islamic Center controversy in Manhattan. It has hard to think of a better example of the tragic nature of crucifixion than the shadow cast on Imam Rauf, and Daisy Khan, two of the most visionary and progressive Muslims that I know. Alas, it is in the context of legitimate New York feelings, mourning, that is stirred recklessly by politicians and ideologues with other agendas. Arthur Miller, The Crucible, understood this so well. It is exactly why all abuses in Israel devolve into emotional and manipulative appeals to the Holocaust. Legitimate feelings, illegitimate persecutions. The story of humanity.
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My Ph.D. is actually in modern Jewish philosophy from Brandeis University. Everyone knows that there has been a fundamental weakness to Jewish philosophy and theology since the loss of European Jewry in the Holocaust. But I have studied and been friends with Arthur Waskow for decades, and I can say that he has emerged as one of the most creative thinkers of contemporary Jewish spiritual life. His books are playful, down to earth, but incredibly creative on a spiritual and textual level.
More importantly Arthur is by far the most courageous in standing up to the Jewish establishment which silences all thought that questions the militancy of their supposedly pro-Israel politics, which is not very pro-Israel. Arthur has…
Jews were pioneers of Labor reform in the United States, most famously for women workers. It is this legacy in particular that still leaves most of the grandchildren and great grandchildren of these folks voting Democrat despite their extraordinary financial success, much to the chagrin of successive Republican presidents.
There are divisions emerging between Jews on these matter, of late, however. Not surprisingly, the leading militants siding with Israel’s most violent policies are also the most opposed to labor rights, such as Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is one of the most extreme influences on American Jewish establishment politics today. This comes as no surprise to me. Moral bankruptcy in Israel’s treatment of Palestinians goes hand in hand with selfishness…
This is an interesting discussion between two thoughtful Jews, Erica Brown and Jeffrey Goldberg, who cannot fathom why Jews, religious Jews, have given birth to so many ethical scandals of late. I sympathize with much of their analysis, except one elephant in the room that is always left out: a modern Jewish education focused on defense of a country, Israel, rather than a set of values that are non-negotiable. That has turned away millions of Jewish kids who look to liberalism or Buddhism instead for peace, quiet and nonviolence, and it has made a mockery of Jewish ethics. You can’t teach hate of billions of people, Muslim or Arab or Palestinian, and expect people not to sell…
