In the News: Wicca, Climate Change, Gaza and Much More
A round-up of recent religion and media stories in the news. Continue Reading →
Tag: palestine
In the News: Bill Nye, Depression, Antarctica, The Dalai Lama & More
A round-up of religion in the recent news. Continue Reading →
Our Savages
By Ann Neumann In one-inch letters the headlines told us what we were seeing: SAVAGES. Continue Reading →
Brothers All Are We? The GOP's Designs for Israel
The GOP cites Leviticus as just cause for a one-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
Paul Mutter: Mitchell Plitnick reports that in a closed meeting in January, the Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted an official resolution supporting “united Israel governed under one law for all people.” What?
Yes, according to the resolution, “the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.” The justification for this position begins with the words, “Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament.”
It seems that the bible–as Barbara Lerner expressed in the National Review,”restore what God gave Abraham’s people”–is the basis for Congressional Republican policy. So too is Rick Santorum’s telling gaffe. Christian Zionism is riding high as the 2012 elections approach. Brothers all are we? Continue Reading →
Brothers All Are We? The GOP’s Designs for Israel
The GOP cites Leviticus as just cause for a one-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.
Paul Mutter: Mitchell Plitnick reports that in a closed meeting in January, the Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted an official resolution supporting “united Israel governed under one law for all people.” What?
Yes, according to the resolution, “the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.” The justification for this position begins with the words, “Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament.”
It seems that the bible–as Barbara Lerner expressed in the National Review,”restore what God gave Abraham’s people”–is the basis for Congressional Republican policy. So too is Rick Santorum’s telling gaffe. Christian Zionism is riding high as the 2012 elections approach. Brothers all are we? Continue Reading →
Give Us This Day Our Load of Links
Some of the best reads from the past week, right here, still hot. Continue Reading →
Wiesenfeld's Obsessions
Examine what is said, not him who speaks. – Arab Proverb
According to The Forward, it’s tough times for City University of New York trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the man who opposed awarding winning playwright Tony Kusher an honorary degree last week. But Wiesenfeld, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who grew up on the Bronx streets getting bullied by the Irish and Puerto Rican kids, is tough. After much noise and embarrassment CUNY reversed their decision, though Wiesenfeld remains opposed. “There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews,” says one of Wiesenfeld’s friends, Hank Sheinkopf, about the Kushner affair.
Another of Wiesenfeld’s recent shandas: his service as chair of Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition, a group formed to oppose a dual-language Arabic public school in New York. “Taking the point of view that he was really anti-Arab is absurd and ridiculous. What he was opposed to was Shariah law,” Sheinkopf said. “He was opposed to the madrassas because he felt that Shariah law would be imposed.” Continue Reading →
Wiesenfeld’s Obsessions
Examine what is said, not him who speaks. – Arab Proverb
According to The Forward, it’s tough times for City University of New York trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the man who opposed awarding winning playwright Tony Kusher an honorary degree last week. But Wiesenfeld, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who grew up on the Bronx streets getting bullied by the Irish and Puerto Rican kids, is tough. After much noise and embarrassment CUNY reversed their decision, though Wiesenfeld remains opposed. “There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews,” says one of Wiesenfeld’s friends, Hank Sheinkopf, about the Kushner affair.
Another of Wiesenfeld’s recent shandas: his service as chair of Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition, a group formed to oppose a dual-language Arabic public school in New York. “Taking the point of view that he was really anti-Arab is absurd and ridiculous. What he was opposed to was Shariah law,” Sheinkopf said. “He was opposed to the madrassas because he felt that Shariah law would be imposed.” Continue Reading →
Wiesenfeld’s Obsessions
Examine what is said, not him who speaks. – Arab Proverb
According to The Forward, it’s tough times for City University of New York trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the man who opposed awarding winning playwright Tony Kusher an honorary degree last week. But Wiesenfeld, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who grew up on the Bronx streets getting bullied by the Irish and Puerto Rican kids, is tough. After much noise and embarrassment CUNY reversed their decision, though Wiesenfeld remains opposed. “There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews,” says one of Wiesenfeld’s friends, Hank Sheinkopf, about the Kushner affair.
Another of Wiesenfeld’s recent shandas: his service as chair of Stop the Madrassa: A Community Coalition, a group formed to oppose a dual-language Arabic public school in New York. “Taking the point of view that he was really anti-Arab is absurd and ridiculous. What he was opposed to was Shariah law,” Sheinkopf said. “He was opposed to the madrassas because he felt that Shariah law would be imposed.” Continue Reading →
Incitement Double Standards
by Matthew Berkman
This article is reposted in whole from Foreign Policy. The original article can be found here.
This week, in response to the highly publicized murder of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, a group of 27 U.S. senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to press Palestinian leaders to end “incitement directed against Jews and Israel within the Palestinian media, mosques, and schools.” According to the letter, the grisly killings in Itamar (for which no suspects, Palestinian or otherwise, have been identified), “is a sobering reminder that words matter, and that Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel can lead to violence and terror.”
As evidence for the allegation of pervasive anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian society, the letter cites a recent, official ceremony honoring Delal Mughrabi, a perpetrator of the 1978 coastal road massacre in Israel, as well as a payment of financial compensation made by the Palestinian Authority to the family of a deceased terror suspect.
Such actions are deserving of condemnation. But if it is indeed the case that “words matter” -and if the elimination of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is, as the letter says, “critical to establishing the conditions [for] a secure and lasting peace”-then what can explain the senators’ silence on the veritable carnival of hate and racist incitement against Arabs and Palestinians that has lately engulfed Israeli society? Continue Reading →