‘Jews who sell to Arabs are enemies’
By Matthew Wagner
A Jew who sells land to an Arab in Israel should not be allowed to lead prayers in synagogue, should not be given the right to make a blessing during the Torah reading, should not be counted among the quorum needed for public prayers and is considered an abettor to the enemies of Israel, according to a halachic decision issued on Monday night by a group of rabbis calling themselves “The New Sanhedrin.”
What astonishes are the last lines of this piece:
Eliyahu said that in his own city of Safed, a Jew who sold to an Arab was boycotted by the community. “He owned a grocery store and people boycotted it.”
Halacha forbids the sale of land in Israel owned by Jews to non-Jews. However, there is nothing in Jewish law that prevents someone who does so from
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 in labor relations. This is why the poison of the Occupation must go, so that, in addition to doing the right thing, Jews can recapture the proud political traditions of their ancestors …
Iran threat pushing Arabs closer to normalization with Israel
By Akiva Eldar
…Sheikh Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa notes that peace is not a light bulb easily switched on, but admits that the Arabs have made public-relations blunders. “An Israeli might be forgiven for thinking that every Muslim voice is raised in hatred,” he writes, “because that is usually the only one he hears. Just as an Arab might be forgiven for thinking every Israeli wants the destruction of every Palestinian.” Khalifa urges the Arabs to communicate directly with the Israelis and tell them their story.
If Olmert’s defense of the settlements was grist for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mill, the Bahraini prince’s call for normalization made Obama’s weekend. The start of normalization between the nations is a key item on the president’s agenda. It’s the undertone intended to ease the creation of a blueprint for a final-status agreement.
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 kidneys, torture animals, and destroy foreign workers’ lives. The human psyche does not work that way. And this is an overwhelming reason for the sorry state of Jewish religious life.…
This video just blew me away. I know the secular progressives among you will be horrified. How can this man try to convince everyone that Palestinians are actually Jewish and THAT is why Jews should care for them and treat them as brothers. This does not conform to the classic enlightenment and democratic approach to social justice. On the other hand, I never cease to be amazed by how many conflicts around the world seem to be solved in some people’s world view by an appeal to kinship and family. Kin means everything to billions of people. I frankly don’t care at this point how people come to a nonviolent politics, just that they do. Tell me what you think?
Marc, Aziz , and Scott will be speaking Tuesday night in Boston. See the details below. Please come, or send others who you know in New England!
“Positive Change: Peace Steps that Can Make a Difference in the Middle East”
Come Tuesday night and get first hand inside information on the situation both in Syria and Palestine from two leading experts on the practice of citizen diplomacy and peacebuilding in the region. The Center for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, GMU, is engaged in vital work from Damascus to Jerusalem, but we need you to participate in developing a social network for positive change domestically and globally. The speakers: Aziz Abu Sarah, CRDC’s new director of Middle East Projects and a native of Jerusalem and Hebron, is one of the most important pioneers of nonviolent resistance and peacebuilding in Palestine who has received warm responses from hundreds of Jewish …
There has been extensive analysis in the last decade of the genetic origins of Jews and their relationship to other groups, especially in the Middle East. I am still in a state of shock from these many studies. This research has been overshadowed by the wars of Jews and Palestinians, but the genetic research provides an opportunity for profound reflection on what actually is happening when Jews and Palestinians fight, who they really are, and where these two peoples have been for the past 10,000 years.
In this video I react to that evidence. I explore the relationship between genetics, science, the Book of Genesis, and some basic truths of the Palestinian/Jewish relationship. Below the video please find a genetic map of the Jewish people’s y chromosomes, and where Palestinians and Syrians, and other Middle Eastern groups, fall.
“Our best protection is to communicate with the people we are most afraid of.”
By Kobi Skolnick
Before becoming a peace activist, I spent years as a settler in the hills of the West Bank, planting trees and cultivating the soil. Some of my family and friends still live there, and I remain deeply connected to them. For this reason, as the Obama administration’s new policies unfold, I am of two minds. I understand the settler perspective, but I have a second view that comes from years of experience working for peace.
My two perspectives are reflected by millions of people in the world. After Obama’s speech on June fourth , one group rejoiced, but for others his words were a dark cloud. For the first group, their hearts were filled with excitement, but others felt the tight grip of fear and distress. Some looked at his words and saw …
Here is a short clip from the upcoming video series about Friends Across the Divide. It is a series of stories of pairs o f friends in the Middle East who have worked together for many years to build strong bridges between Jews and Arabs as they struggle together for peace and justice. The power of pairs of friends to change history, to impact deeply rooted conflict, is one of the most important themes of Marc’s new book on citizen diplomacy. See here for a full description of the book and its reviews.
