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Tag: America

  • Reading from the books that some would burn | The Shalom Center

    Hello friends, I want to join Rabbi Arthur Waskow in calling on everyone to read from the Koran on September 11 as an act of solidarity with the Muslim community of the United States as they suffer the insult of the terrible act being committed on that day in Gainesville, Florida.

    The best way to resist hatred is with love, humiliation with respect, ignorance with knowledge, alienation with friendship.

    Reading from the books that some would burnBy Rabbi Arthur Waskow | 8/31/2010 Devoting Jewish Holidays to Peace Interreligious Relations Rosh HaShanah Yom KippurClick here to see a listing of all recent blog postsIn New York, speaking out for freedom and diversity might mean joining a vigil at 7:15 pm Friday evening September 10 at 51 Park Place [near the Park Place stop of the #2 or #3 subway], the location of the Muslim-rooted community/ cultural center that has been the

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  • Defense officials back US bid to send envoy to Syria

    I am trying to figure out what kind of United States has developed where the toughest Israelis in the world, the top Israeli military brass, want a U.S. ambassador in Syria, and other gestures, whereas the true impediment to that are right wing Republican Senators supported by a militant wing of the American public goaded on by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and of course Charles Krauthamer. Where do these Americans get the arrogance to be even more violent in their politics than the Israeli military? I think it is legitimate to take sides within the Israeli debate, but I do not understand being to the right of the right of the Israeli military. Of course, there is no logic to politics, there is only the logic of vote grabbing, and one gets votes in America today by demonizing any and all foreigners you can get your hands on, …

  • A Jewish Gesture of Repair To Muslim Brothers and Sisters

    Thanks to Rabbi Gershon Steinberg for alerting me to the amazing gesture of Jews led by rabbis (Velveteen Rabbi) to an abused mosque in Queens, New York. It is wonderful to feel proud of my fellow Jews.

    Last week, a drunk man barged into the Al-Iman masjid in Astoria, Queens, and urinated on the prayer rugs. I tweeted about it, horrified at this display of Islamophobia (and also just plain atrocious behavior.) On Thursday, @stumark suggested that we raise money to replace the prayer rugs at the Al-Iman mosque in Queens. On Friday, I posted to this blog and to twitter asking for donations toward reimbursing the mosque for the costs of steam-cleaning their prayer rugs. My hope was to raise a few hundred bucks as a gesture of interfaith good will, a way of showing this one Muslim community that the actions of that drunk man do not represent

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  • U.S. was born a Christian nation – CNN.com

    Lest anyone doubt the direction and agenda of the Christian right, here is a clear statement of approval of John Jay that only Christians should rule the United States. So how could Jews with any sense of their own safety and security promote this extremism, welcome Christian extremists to Israel and take their funds for the settlements? Because the Israelis who take the money and support put their interests above those of American Jews, they don’t think American Jews should be living in America anyway they should be in Israel, they calculate that the threat against them from Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims is more immediate than the the chance that radical Christians could one day take over the American government.

    Of course, this entire way of thinking is very misguided. It never pays to think this selfishly, it always comes back on your head. Better to think in terms of justice …

  • Op-Ed Columnist – The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party – NYTimes.com

    The money trail is always critical to know coming trends in ‘popular’ American movements. This is an excellent article tracing what is happening now, and also its old American pedigree.

    I would also add that the tens of thousands on the Mall were all white, the smears of President Obama are all about him being black. The anti-mosque rallies, also financed by the same people, are also against people of color.

    We have entered yet another cycle of American white racism. This time, post-1960’s, it is necessarily less direct. After all, at least for now, the ugliest expressions of white racism are all officially illegal. And so we march on with American cycles of libertarian hatreds that occasionally well up.

    We have entered the age of Ku Klux Klan-lite.

    Op-Ed Columnist – The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party – NYTimes.com.…

  • An appalling army experience – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

    Why is everyone so angry and appalled at this 21 year old Israeli woman? I think she is a perfect creation of a system. The fact that she sees nothing wrong with the photographs of her  smiling and proud with blindfolded humiliated Palestinian prisoners is absolute proof that it is not her but the system that has prepared her as a teenager to become an occupier, not a member of an elite army, but an occupier of civilians who must be humiliated because that is the essence of occupation. she merely said on Facebook what so many say to each other in the field now. How can we blame her for being simply an expression of a system that must corrupt her mind, not to mention punish whole populations? She is the reason that most of the world has come to hate Israel, not her personally but the system, the …

  • U.S. support for Israel is decreasing, new poll shows – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News

    U.S. support for Israel is decreasing, new poll shows – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

    I am shocked, just shocked by these numbers! And think of it, these were pro-Israel pollsters. I know the response, more propaganda campaigns and greater efforts to intimidate opposition into silence both in the U.S. and in Israel. Essentially we are all being treated like we are at checkpoints, because it is the only thing Lieberman is trained to do.

    Benjy, you want to save Israel’s last remaining supportive population, Americans? You want to go down in history as something less than a disaster?  Make a new government.…

  • University of Miami president detained for questioning at Israeli airport: The Pride and Shame of Being Jewish in 2010

    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, yielding the proper results with the honor of women as equals in achievement.

    And then, and then….The same page, also an enormously distinguished good woman, my cousin as a Jew, someone of …

  • Battles Around Nation Over Proposed Mosques – NYTimes.com

    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 from hatreds they did not intend to unleash, as everyone learns, in every generation unfortunately, that nothing good comes of hate, and the mob is not controllable.

    While a high-profile battle rages

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  • New al-Qaeda leader lived in U.S. for years: What can Muslims do about this?

    AP: New al-Qaeda leader lived in U.S. for years – USATODAY.com.

    — A suspected al-Qaeda operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.

    Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.

    Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and

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