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Tag: Israel

  • AMERICAN STRIKE ON SYRIA: A GIFT FROM CHENEY TO MCCAIN?

    The timing is amazing from a neoconservative point of view, a few days before the American elections. Right now, after years of scrupulously avoiding crossing into Syrian territory, the American military receives instructions to invade a town in Syria and kill 8 people.

    A U.S. military official confirmed late Sunday an American helicopter attack in an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, which left 8 people dead and three people wounded.

    Syria condemned the attack, which it called “serious aggression.”

    We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused …

  • A NEW AKKO, A NEW ISRAEL?

    Wonderful article by Avnery entitled “Is Akko Burning?”, with the usual insight. Only thing I would add to understanding the tragedy in Akko, as well as racial situations in America, is that intentionally or unintentionally, racism is always bred when an underprivileged wing of the dominant race or religious group, like the poor ethnic Jewish groups in Acre, or the poorer ethnic groups in America’s poor sections, always become the ‘front lines’ of the race war of a country, against some group that they can see as beneath even them. I have seen this in the ‘religious’ conflict in Belfast as well. Poor against poor, grievance against grievance. Cynically, the Mayor and others have pitted Jews who are bitter about Gaza, or about their financial condition, against the Arabs in Akko. Cynically, there are indeed Islamists and Arab politicians who have done the same, everyone using grievances, financial instability …

  • Acre

    The tragic riots in Acre that started on Yom Kippur demand our attention. Middle East coverage of the riots provides all too clear an example of the divide in perspective defined by the very nature of the conflict.…

  • Problems & SOLUTIONS in Akko (Acre)

    Riots between Arabs and Jews have plagued the Israeli town of Akko for days now. There has been outrageous behavior and frightening experiences for everyone. The facts of what really happened will be contested, as is expected in this ongoing conflict of Arabs and Jews. But…

    John Lennon once said,
    “Well I tell them there’s no problem, only solutions.”

    With this in mind, here is something going on in Akko that unfortunately, you won’t read about in the newspapers:

    “Peace Sukkah in Akko/Sulha Tent
    Thursday, October 16, 12:00
    Tentative meeting place: Outside Akko Theater
    (please contact Orly for a final location 054-210-3139)

    Join us in promoting reconciliation among Akko residents. 
If you want to see the crisis as an opportunity for a meeting, getting closer and reform, join us in a conversation, in creating a space which allows sharing of pain and hopes for reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews.

    Activity …

  • Lose Weight and Lose War: The Infinite Paths to Peace

    This is a wonderful video about yet another way that people without any training in conflict resolution or diplomacy can become a part of the solution rather than part of the problem when it comes to global conflicts. I call them citizen diplomats, and I think they represent the infinite and creative ways that individuals can choose to move beyond the boundaries of group hatreds and fears.

    Starting after the Muslim Ramadan and the Jewish New Year, group of Palestinian and Israeli women will be meeting face to face in Jerusalem. Not for political reasons, not to cast blame on who’s right or wrong in the Middle East conflict – these women will be focusing on their waistline, and sharing a simple and common desire to lose weight.

    “A Slim Peace” is a group founded in 2006 by Yael Luttwak, a 36-year-old American-Israeli filmmaker who grew up in Washington D.C.

    …

  • McCain Advisers: Down on Syria Talks, Peace Process Not a Priority

    Two McCain advisers told participants in a weekend retreat that his administration would discourage Israeli-Syrian talks and would not prioritize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

    A McCain administration would discourage Israeli-Syrian talks and would not prioritize the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

    That was the collective message delivered over the weekend by two McCain advisers — Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Richard Williamson, the Bush administration’s special envoy to Sudan — during a retreat hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy at the Lansdowne Resort in rural Virginia.

    One of Barack Obama’s representatives — Richard Danzig, a Clinton administration Navy secretary — said the Democratic presidential candidate would take the opposite approach on both issues.

    In an interview with the Atlantic magazine over the summer, U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) insisted that in his presidency he would serve as the chief negotiator in the

    …

  • Change in U.S. Middle East Policy: A Religious Argument to Obama and McCain

    I just published this piece in the Washington Jewish Week. I wrote it as a member of the Rabbinic Cabinet of Brit Tzedek Ve’Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace, a national American Jewish organization with over thirty thousand members and thirty eight chapters, which argues in Washington for a just solution to the Arab/Israeli conflict.

    It is settled: The election is about change. Sen. Barack Obama had made that his central motif all along, but now Sen. John McCain is onboard. Now that everyone is using the word “change,” it begs a question. The question is not “Who stands for change?” but rather, “Whose changes are going to really make a difference, and what are those changes?”

    One place where change is desperately needed is in the disastrous United States policy toward the Arab-Israeli conflict that has been in effect for the past eight years. It

    …

  • Does the U.S. Bipartisan Group’s Report on Engaging the Islamic World Favor Obama?

    The recent U.S. report on Muslim engagement was crafted carefully by a very bipartisan group in which I played a role, but this article argues that it strongly favors Obama’s foreign policy.

    U.S.: Bipartisan Group Urges Deeper Diplomacy with Muslim World

    WASHINGTON, Sep 24 (IPS) – In an implicit indictment of President George W. Bush’s “global war on terror” and the hawkish pronouncements by Republican candidate John McCain, a bipartisan group of nearly three dozen U.S. leaders called here Wednesday for Bush’s successor to place much greater emphasis on high-level diplomacy — including direct engagement with Iran and Syria — in dealing with the Middle East and the Muslim world.

    In a 152-page report, the group, which included former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Bush’s former Deputy Secretary of State and McCain adviser Richard Armitage, also called for any new administration to work “intensively for immediate de-escalation of the

    …

  • What is *Reality*? – Welcome to the Sulha

    In the context of major global conflicts, where everyone is analyzing what is right or wrong, black or white, left or right, it has occured to me that the definition of reality sometimes gets lost in the mix.

    Here are few definitons of reality occording to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

    ‘Reality’

    1: the quality or state of being real

    2 a (1): a real event, entity, or state of affairs reality(2): the totality of real things and events realityb: something that is neither derivative nor dependent but exists necessarily

    Imagine for just a moment if headlines coming out of the Middle East read like this tomorrow….

    Today thousands of Arabs, Jews, Israelis,
    Palestinians, Seculars and Religious, Christians, Muslims,
    Druze, young and old gathered to dance, to cry, to share, to
    laugh, to work, to play and ultimately, to live together for
    three days just a few miles outside of     …

  • A New Direction for US-Muslim Relations

    Yesterday Marc participated in panels on Capitol Hill and at  The National Press Club to coincide with the release of a seminal report entitled “Changing Course: A New Direction for Relations with the Muslim World” issued by The US-Muslim Engagement Project. Marc was one of thirty four Americans who constituted the Leadership Council on U.S. Muslim Engagement. It was a bipartisan group of leading Republicans, Democrats, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, secular and religious, liberal and conservative. They met over a period of two years to create this report which has detailed recommendations for the United States Government, NGO’s, and for the governments of the Muslim world. The convening this extremely diverse group was also meant as a model of how to change course and what kind of negotiations need to take place in the United States in order to create positive change, as well as in the global …

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