Follow Me Online

Making Change Podcast

Facebook

Twitter

Gopin Associates, LLC

YouTube

Israel

  • The Israeli-Saudi Common Interest

    Dr. Moshe Maoz, one of the most senior Israeli authorities on the Islamic world has this to say recently on common Saudi and Israeli interests:

    The interfaith conference King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia convened in Madrid on July 17 is the first such conference held by this religiously strict kingdom. Jews were among the participants, including a rabbi from Israel. In 2002, when Abdullah was still crown prince, he made a significant move toward Israel that was adopted by the Arab League’s 22 members: recognizing Israel, including diplomatic relations, if Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders and a Palestinian state is established with East Jerusalem as its capital.

    Indeed, the Saudis’ realistic attitude toward Israel’s existence is not new. Back in May 1975, King Khaled told The Washington Post that his country was prepared to recognize Israel’s right to exist within the 1967 borders on condition that a Palestinian state

    …

  • HOW DOES A WAHABI DO INTERFAITH RELATIONS? A NEW ERA FOR WORLD RELIGIONS

    Wahabism is generally a short-hand expression for conservative Saudi Arabian religion. It has become synonymous in the West, but also in the Islamic world, with a very repressive form of Islam that is responsible, at least in part, for the growth of militarism in the name of Islam. I must confess that over the years I generalized about Saudis and their religion, while actually knowing very little about their culture or their religion. I heard many bad stories from Muslims and non-Muslims alike, but I did not really take the time to ask Saudis themselves. In truth, Saudi Arabia is an extremely conservative society with many religious laws in place that I do not agree with. But that did not give me the right to malign a culture in its entirety. That was reverse bigotry in the name of tolerance.

    Imagine the cognitive dissonance of an entire hall full of …

  • Which Israel on Film is Real? You Choose

    There is so much chaos in Israel and Palestine right now politically and in terms of peace and violence that it is hard for those of us who know them intimately to keep it all in perspective. For today I just ask you to choose which Israel. I thought I had seen everything. Here is a scene of a senior Israel Defense Forces commander ordering a soldier to shoot at close range a bound and blindfolded Palestinian teenager who earlier can be seen waving a Palestinian flag at a demonstration.

    This is filmed by a little girl from her window. Her father is subsequently arrested by the police. They can be heard in the background speaking in the film. Here is another version of the film accompanied by an official news story followed by an Israeli human rights group report. Of course, because this was caught on tape …

  • Heart of the Other: Between the Holocaust and a Palestinian Refugee Camp

    The Jewish Holocaust in Europe is the preeminent memory of millions of Israelis, many of whose families perished. It is a memory that spurs many Jews to suspect any possible coexistence with the Palestinians and the Arab world in general. This psychological reality of Israeli Jews has been resisted for decades by Palestinians precisely because it is so unfair that they should suffer because of what Europeans did to the Jewish people. Khaled Mahameed has challenged that resistance and has instead embraced the suffering and humanity of Jewish victims as a bridge between Palestinians and Jews, and as a way for each group to begin to humanize the other. Watch his methods in this documentary’s excerpts, especially the second video excerpt. Khaleed is representative of a cutting edge approach to conflicts that seem to be irresolvable in which courageous individuals and groups are going to the heart of the …

  • Obama Home Run with the Israelis

    Obama scored a major political victory in Jerusalem last week in his interview with The Jerusalem Post, the major English-speaking conservative newspaper of Israel. David Horovitz, its lead editor, is a hawk who watches every move of his interviewees. His immense respect for Obama’s substance and performance is irrepressible as we can see here:

    Two months ago in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush, coming to the end of a two-term presidency and presumably as expert on Israeli-Palestinian policy as he is ever going to be, was accompanied by a team of no fewer than five advisers and spokespeople during a 40-minute interview with this writer and three other Israeli journalists.

    In March, on his whirlwind visit to Israel, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, one of whose primary strengths is said to be his intimate grasp of foreign affairs, chose to bring along Sen. Joe Lieberman to

    …

  • Religious Peacemaking in the Middle East

    Below is a letter from Elana Rozenman, an important religious peacemaker in Israel. The letter is a window into a world of Jewish/Christian/Muslim/Druze peacemaking that few know anything about outside of Israel, and yet their experiments in coexistence, dialogue and cooperation need to be studied and embraced. Notice the way in which the group copes with an attack in Jerusalem.

    Hebrew translation follows תרגום לעברית בהמשך
    Dear Friends,

    July 2- 3 we held a gathering of the Abrahamic Reunion CC in Zichron Yaacov along the Northern coast of Israel. We were men and women — Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Druze — sheiks, imams, rabbis, priests, and spiritual leaders. We were Israeli and Palestinian — joined by Sufi International supporters from the U.S. and Germany, including Anna and Shahabaddin David Less, and Andy Blanch. Our joint coordinators were Eliyahu McLeah, Ibtisam Mahamid, and Jirias Mansour.

    The Jerusalem group had traveled together

    …

  • Mepeace.org

    Mepeace.org burst onto the scene of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking very recently. This is a crowded field of many fledgling and worthy groups, each seeking to make change in their own way. These groups have one overriding challenge in this most lasting Middle East conflict. That is the challenge of equality and equal voice. There is no greater or more important task today than to create a platform and envision a space in which Jews and Palestinians can engage in equality as they struggle to make positive change. There has been a lot of language thrown around in this conflict, language about coexistence, about dialogue, and about reconciliation. All good words. But we have come to understand that much of this framing is inadequate to addressing the deepest roots of the conflict, as well as a methodology of change that will really make a difference.

    The platform provided by mepeace.org, the …

  • Excellent News from Lebanon and Syria; Iran Next?

    Excellent progress has been made in the Middle East due to the clever replacement of the United States as a third party. First Turkey, which helped engineer the official channel of a rapprochement between Syria and Israel, and now France in terms of a rapprochement of Syria and Lebanon. They have both played pivotal roles in dramatically changing the possibilities on the ground. I heard through the grapevine that Syrian officials had said over a year ago, “If you see us moving toward Iran it means war, if we move toward Turkey it is peace.” This does not mean that Syria does not maintain a deep relationship with Iran, but all its major public moves of late are moving Syria toward Turkey and France.

    Most significant is that for the first time in modern history there is a real chance that Syria and Lebanon will engage in an amicable separation…

  • Leo the healer: an untold story of Jewish/Palestinian medical partnership

    Originally published in Common Ground News Service

    WASHINGTON – It is the innocent victims of war that break our hearts when nations and groups cannot lay down their arms. We watch them bleed, we watch them die on a battlefield that is their home, and then we seethe with the outrage of Biblical prophets. But there are others among us who have no patience for impassive prophetic rage. They are the ones who sidestep the violence and, instead of shirking the bleeding of the innocent, replace the lost blood. They repair the bodies and thus embrace with both arms the ancient art of healing.

    There is a particular group of healers that share a common DNA. They are from two traditions, both tracing back to Abraham/Ibrahim, whose grave lies not far from the bodies that they repair. I speak of Jewish and Palestinian doctors who have partnered in their determination …

  • American Rabbi Practices Peacemaking in Damascus

    Video courtesy of Haaretz.com TV, April 22, 2008.

    …

Categories