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Obama
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The Ghost of Cyrus: Iranian Potential for Reform in the Nuclear Age
(Originally published at Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility, in a very good issue dedicated to Iran. It will give you a good overview of thinking in the American Jewish community right now on the slowly moving crisis with Iran)
Over the past 25 years I’ve developed relationships across the Middle East; in Syria, specifically, over the past five years. While I traveled as a peacemaker, to be cautious I would emphasize my role as a professor and only reveal my role as a rabbi when it felt safe. I never experienced any negative comments because I am a rabbi; rather I heard from some a longing to meet with old Jewish friends. Experiences with Syrians have given me confidence that similar inroads can be made in Iran. What Iran shares with Syria, most importantly, is a historical tradition of religious pluralism and progressive religious thinking. There is still …
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Mr. President, Inspire Parties to Conflict Overseas, But Don’t Believe Everything You Are Hearing
I was concerned by a recent description in the New York Times of the inner workings of Fatah, and the questions facing the United States and Israel. The author writes as if he accepts everything that Israeli leaders tell him at face value. Speaking about the question of a Fatah meeting in order to reform the movement and thus present a better challenge to Hamas at the polls, he writes:
For Israel and the United States, the problem is equally vexing. They have an interest in helping the nationalists to reform and hold their congress. But they also have to decide how much to help the new leaders, some of whom may end up becoming opponents if the peace negotiating process fails.
Oh really? Endless interviews with Fatah activists over the years come back to one theme: the leadership of Israel, in order to hold onto Judea and Samaria for …
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A Rational Confrontation with Iran: Time for a New Middle Eastern Approach
A must read by Roger Cohen on Iran, the Arab states and Israel. I think that Roger underestimates the threat from Iran to its neighbors and to Israel, but he is right on that the neoconservative logic of dominance, isolation, and intimidation, and purposeful perpetuation of the inhumane status quos from Egypt to the West Bank have actually fed the rise of a militant Iran. A grand strategy requires a reversal of the last thirty years of mistakes. It also requires a reversal of tendency in the Middle East to engage in the perpetual fallacies of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. This has led to never ending rivalries that is the intellectual opposite of notions of collective security that have allowed Europe, for example, to thrive in recent decades. Engagement with Iran done well is going to shift the balance of power in Iran which will ultimately …
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GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CONTRACT: THE ONLY WAY FORWARD
I continue to be completely immersed in Sari Nusseibeh’s Once Upon a Country. I must admit that when I met him once, appeared on a panel with him and spent some time with him I was a little bit in awe and did not know quite what to say. Now that I know the depths of his life, his triumphs and losses, his father, I wish I could speak more to him.
But the one thing that emerges from the reading again and again is the same lesson I have been gathering from all over the globe. I can sum it up in an Aramaic sentence from the ancient Talmud that describes a chaotic world of lawlessness, L’es Din ve’l’es dayyan, which translates roughly as, “There is no law in sight and no judge in sight either”. What amazes me from Palestine under occupation to Rwanda to all the …
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OVERCOMING THE ‘AMERICAN PARANOID STYLE’: A NEW STAGE IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Rush Limbaugh and others have been quick to associate the President with the swine flu and all other ills, it seems. Apparently this is a convenient way for Obama to get his choice for Director of Health and Human Services quickly appointed. The reality of this hate radio is shocking.
I have been thinking long and hard for many years about Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics“. This is one of the most important essays in American history by one of the most influential and insightful of America’s historians.
Here are some critical quotes:
…American politics has often been an arena for angry minds. In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among extreme right-wingers, who have now demonstrated in the Goldwater movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority.
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SORROW FOR IRANIANS IN BAGHDAD
It has become commonplace for innocent religious worshippers to be a focal point of war. This time it is Iranian pilgrims in Baghdad, and we must mourn for them. It is true that the United States is responsible for the destruction of Iraq, but no one familiar with the politics and leaders of the region can fail to note the decades long devastation from proxy Sunni-Shiite wars fought since the Iranian Revolution. Al Qaeda knows how to stir that pot as an extremist Sunni organization, but the current leaders of Iran stir it further by proxy wars and agitations all over the Middle East. It is time for opinion of the majority of the Iranian people to dominate their politics and foreign policy, which is a focus on prosperity, basic human needs and dignity. One senses the trap that leaderships across the region are in as far as Sunni/Shiite violence. …
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An Inside Look at the Occupation. Is it Murder? You Decide
NOT FOR CHILDREN UNDER 18
Find the courage to watch the slow death of an unarmed demonstrator in Palestine. Shamai Leibowitz, veteran Israeli Jewish human rights activist in Pursuing Justice reflects on evidence of an Israel Defense Forces murder of an unarmed and un-threatening demonstrator in the Palestinian village of Bil’in. You be the judge.
Did you notice what a sunny, beautiful day it is in the film? Does it remind you of the day on the beach in Camus’ The Stranger? The simplicity of killing, the natural beauty that can coexist with it and not be somehow implicated in a crime against humanity? Are you haunted by Biblical verses on oppressing strangers and God driving people out of promised lands? Such warnings are a strange and timeless echo of history that screams back at the banality of murder that Camus depicts on the warm, sunny beach. Camus’ …
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PATHBREAKING INTERVIEW ON SYRIAN/AMERICAN/ISRAELI RELATIONS
Syrian Ambassador to the United States gives an important interview to CNN. The story is significant because Moustapha lays out the parameters of a separate Syrian/Israeli peace track, while also stressing the importance of a ‘comprehensive’ peace for Israel, which must include the Palestinian track. He also stresses that Lieberman is a more honest face of Israel than Livni and Olmert, considering the atrocities in Gaza. He would rather engage the real deal in Israel rather than deal with fake rhetoric. The nuances of his position are quite revealing of the different positions of Syria and Fatah. There is also praise for Obama and Mitchell, but caution that Mitchell’s job is harder than Ireland due to the pro-Israel lobby in Washington.…
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KAZAKHSTAN TO THE RESCUE? A POSSIBLE BREAKTHROUGH TO IRAN
Hope springs eternal–and strangely. Kazakhstan, a nation with strong new ambitions, is offering to host a nuclear bank that would make it unnecessary for multiple nations to develop highly enriched unranium on their own. This is a critical alternative to many nations developing dual use technology leading to nuclear weapons grade material. President Obama, of course, is supporting this proposal–and so is President Ahmadanijad of Iran. If this moves ahead it could form the basis of a non-military solution to the crisis between Iran, its neighbors, Israel and the West. Stay tuned.
There is a trend emerging here. First Turkey, now Kazakhstan, non-Arab Muslim nations who are stepping up to the plate to break the impasses of the Middle East that have dogged the world for hundreds of years. A confluence of new found confidence of emerging Islamic nations and the arrival of President Obama may be providing a way …
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BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: MERCY ON PASSOVER, MERCY IN GAZA
See Rabbi Edward Feld’s agonized sermon on the state of ethics of Israel’s military chaplaincy that encouraged war crimes in Gaza. This is a reflective sermon that brings into sharp relief the choices of religious people between violent texts to justify their violence and nonviolent texts to articulate their deepest values, hopes and aspirations. The rabbis who have taken control of the Israel Defense Forces have made their choice, and other rabbis like Rabbi Feld have made theirs. Here is Rabbi Feld:
“When you have mercy on a cruel enemy you are thereby showing cruelty to innocent and honest soldiers. It is a terrible immorality……This is a war against murderers.”
The above excerpt is from Go Fight My War, a booklet published by the Jewish Awareness Department of the Chief Military Rabbinate in Israel, and distributed to soldiers in the fighting units before they entered Gaza as part of Operation …
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