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“Hello, gorgeous.”

An evening to remember. Religiously every year my mom joins millions of viewers tuned to the Kennedy Center Honors, recognized as the ultimate award for performing artists in the United States. The Kennedy Center writes that an honor is “compared to a knighthood in Britain, or the French Legion of Honor–the quintessential reward for a lifetime’s endeavor.”

This year, I joined mom as actor Morgan Freeman (LOVE him), country musician George Jones (ugh), choreographer Twyla Tharp (incredible), rock musicians Pete Townsend & Roger Daltry (I didn’t know what to think of this selection), along with none other than the “jane of all trades” diva extraordinaire herself, Barbara Streisand, accepted the Kennedy award. That’s right, this was no evening of queer Jews dueling over Bette vs. Barbara (Bette Midler that is — and for the record, I refuse to take sides. I love them both).

Don’t take my word for the fabulocity that is Barbara. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not much for TV criticism–I’ve moved from LA for good reason.  However, an article in today’s NY Times struck a cord with me given these times of hope and hell.  David Carr’s “The Media Equation” reviews a new Reality show titled “Smile, You’re Under Arrest,” a hilarious (well, someone will find it hilarious…) cross between Cops and Punk’d.

Carr’s look at this new creation sent shivers down my spine.  Although, come to think of it, with the JEHT’s foundation closing and horrors in Gaza, why stop at local policing gone wild?  How about “Surprise!  We fried your innocent cousin!”  Or maybe a show about Gaza, I can see it now: “You soooo thought your house was going to be here when you got back, didn’t you?”

Now there’s some good television.

[Note: This post was backlogged from December 20th, when it was initially written. Apologies for the delay in posting.]

This week, the incredible blow of the Madoff debacle has left many reeling with anger and sadness at the staggering losses within, primarily, the Jewish philanthropic and organizational world. The Forward has a chart on “Tallying the Jewish Communal Losses,” and there is no end to media coverage giving us up-to-the-minute details as institutions scramble, large foundations doors close, towns lose pension plans, and people lose their jobs. Disbelief, sadness and outrage rightfully cycle through commentaries and conversations.

I felt a particular kick to the gut Monday morning when I heard that the JEHT Foundation was closing its doors. Working at Demos, JEHT was a major funder of our work on the right to vote, a campaign to restore the right to vote for people with felony convictions.

JEHT was a wonderful foundation that gave sizable, large grants to organizations working in the fields of criminal justice, juvenile justice, fair elections and international law. As they said themselves in their press release:

The issues the Foundation addressed received very limited philanthropic support and the loss of the foundation’s funding and leadership will cause significant pain and disruption of the work for many dedicated people and organizations.

With the U.S. being the world’s leading nation in incarceration with 2.2 million people currently in the nation’s prisons or jails, the loss of the JEHT Foundation’s support reverberates, as organizations advance platforms to influence and work with Obama’s agenda on prison and drug reform.

That said, as the week continued, like Shalom Rav over at Jewschool, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser at Zeek, and Jim Besser at the Jewish Week, I started to think about what this will mean in terms of Jewish fundraising, and how this gutting of big donors, the “old boys network” as Besser calls it, will require a rethinking in funding and fundraising methods for Jewish institutions, whether organizations like it or not.

Besser rightfully contextualizes this loss:

It’s not just that Jewish organizations and donors lost uncounted millions and that their trust in a fellow Jew who happened to be a Wall Street icon was betrayed. It’s that the losses, still being totaled, came at precisely the moment the Jewish world was most vulnerable because of a raging recession that has cut into endowments, hurt big donors and sent the demand soaring for the services many Jewish philanthropies provide.

Just as Jewish institutions started turning to Jewish social justice groups for ideas when studies verified that young Jews rooted more of their Jewish identity in change work (in part from being turned off from these same institutions), I think this marks another point where Jewish institutions will turn to Jewish social justice organizations for ideas and models of fundraising rooted in membership models. That is, if they’re also willing to take steps to further democratize their institutions. As Green Kaiser writes: Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE BELOW ON PROTESTS SATURDAY EVENING IN TEL AVIV]

Also, Israeli activists in the U.S. protested outside of the New York Israeli Consulate.

UPDATE: Via Alisa Solomon, photos of Saturday evening’s protest in Tel Aviv of the Gaza siege and bombing of Gaza as the government began a ground invasion. Read the rest of this entry »

[Note: This was written before the ground invasion of Gaza by Israeli troops began.]

As I write, Israel is pounding Gaza with bombs and bullets, not yet satisfied with having killed and injured 1500 people, over a third women and children. Israel claims they don’t target civilians. Six little girls in one family were shot dead in front of their house, making this claim meaningless. The U.S. media tells us Israel is “at war” with Hamas. To call the relentless bombing of a 139 square mile area by the world’s 4th largest military “war” is ludicrous, just one more trick to keep us distracted from thinking too long or hard about the power imbalance of a 4-decades long inhumane Occupation.

I can hear the howl of protests now from the organized Jewish community, which would prefer to label me a self-hating anti-Semitic Jew than face the realities of how Israel is changing the face of Judaism. We forget that less than 50 years ago the Jewish community was hotly debating the pros and cons of statehood; we were free to argue either side without the vicious labels that function as labels always do – to stop people from thinking about what is being said and instead focus on the person saying it. The anti-Zionist arguments of the ‘30s and ‘40s have become dangerously and heartbreakingly realized – we are so obsessed with the mechanisms of statehood that we have willingly forsaken the meaning of our identity as Jews. Read the rest of this entry »

There has been an unusual amount of introspection in the Jewish community this holiday season. Hanukkah was almost overshadowed by the Madoff scandal and the accompanying uproar about his impact on the Jewish community. The frenzy of handwringing and accusation culminated with the call for Madoff’s excommunication from Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Connecticut, who stated in a passionate a letter to Malcolm Hoenlein that “never before has one man done such damage to individual Jews, Jewish organizations and Judaism itself.” Hammerman was motivated by fears for the future of Judaism: “Our own children are watching us.”

The future of Judaism and the moral standing of the US Jewish community are being threatened, but ironically, and tragically, it is happening far from the country clubs of Palm Beach and the mansions of Long Island. It is happening in Gaza. And unfortunately there is far too little handwringing about it in the Jewish leadership.

On the seventh day of Hanukkah, Israel unleashed an aerial assault on the Gaza Strip. This attack was ostensibly in retaliation for Qassam missiles shot from Gaza, but as was also seen in the 2006 war in Lebanon, the barrage was overwhelming and disproportional. At the end of the first three days of fighting over 350 Gazans had been killed and 1,600 injured. These deaths included children coming home from school, women shopping in open-air markets, and people waiting for buses. The indiscriminate nature of the attack combined with the ongoing siege of Gaza, which continues to cut the civilian population off from food, medicine, water, fuel and electricity, constitutes a horrific form of collective punishment.

I hoped that the Jewish community would stand against such an atrocity, but instead our communal leaders led the charge. Among others, the AJC “expressed strong support for Israel today in its military operation” and David Harris regurgitated Israeli foreign ministry talking points as children died in Gaza’s barren hospitals. Eric Yoffe, President of the Union for Reform Judaism, lamented “We note, with sadness, the predictable chorus of those in the international community who call for Israeli ‘restraint,’” and placed the Palestinian destruction at their own feet, “We hope that the Palestinian leadership will demand an end to missile fire and a return to the path of peace and the negotiations begun in Annapolis. And we pray that the Palestinian people will strengthen the hand of all who are prepared to make peace a reality.”

I could not celebrate Hanukkah this year. Even before the Israeli attacks began, the images from the human-made disaster of the Gaza siege made celebration impossible. The Israeli peace activist Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who helped start the Bereaved Families Forum after her 13-year-old daughter Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber, summed up my feelings in a letter to other recipients of the prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought:

I call upon all of us, who have won a privilege as well as duty by receiving the Sakharov prize, to arise and go to Gaza and any other city of oppression and slaughter; to defy all blockades and high walls and not to give up until all barriers are broken.

When Jewish poet Bialik wrote after the Pogrom against the Jews in Kishiniev, “Satan has not yet created Vengeance for the blood of a small child,” It did not occur to him that the child would be a Palestinian child from Gaza and his slaughterers would be Jewish soldiers.

I could not celebrate while Gaza was dying - while cities were cut off from electricity, from water, from food. I could not join my community who, if not actively celebrating and promoting this barbaric behavior, were sitting idly by while others are forced to starve and be killed in our name.

I was reminded of Prof. Marc Ellis’s writings on Jewish theology where he often quotes Rabbi Irving Greenberg. Ellis frequently references Greenberg’s belief that: “no statement theological or otherwise should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children” referring to those lost in the Holocaust. Ellis has amended Greenberg by taking his theology from the particular to the universal. In Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation, he writes:

As risky and problematic as it is, we are called today to the wilderness; but the call is a promise of liberation. Chastened by history, we can no longer see liberation as the omnipotent preserve of God hovering over us by day and leading us by night, or simply as the search for the empowerment of our own people in America and Israel. We can ill afford such innocence in the presence of burning children, whether they be in Poland or in Palestine.

I carry these words with me. No statement about Israel/Palestine, about the destruction of Gaza, about our Jewish tradition of justice, or about (yet another) Jewish holiday that commemorates overcoming oppression should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the people of Gaza.

I do not share Rabbi Hammerman’s desire to ex-communicate anyone from the Jewish people, but I do share the Rabbi’s concern for the future - for the future of Judaism and the messages we are sending the next generations. The siege and destruction of Gaza is the political, humanitarian, and moral crisis of our time. Where is the moral standing of a community whose leaders promote the slaughter of innocents? And when will we agonize over scandals where lives are lost at Jewish hands, and not just fortunes?

Quick hit on a new blog:

In light of the fighting in Gaza and in Southern Israel, Israeli human rights groups are sending out ongoing updates about the impact on civilians. Our aim is to inform the Israeli public of events that are not being covered by the media. Each group is posting the information at its disposal, which is necessarily limited and cannot be taken as a comprehensive picture of the human rights violations currently taking place. Since the fieldworkers cannot access most locations at present, much of the information is being conveyed over the phone. The data has been verified to our best ability under the circumstances.

Here are the groups reporting:
* Adalah - The legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel
* Amnesty International Israel Section
* B’Tselem - the Israeli Informaion Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
* Bimkom - Planners for Planning Rights
* Hamoked - Center for the Defense of the Individual
* Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
* Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
* Rabbis for Human Rights
* The Association for Civil Rights in Israel
* Yesh Din - Volunteers for Human Rights

(Knesset member Taleb al-Sana speaks at protest)

When I asked the man standing next to me if he thought the Gaza attacks would spark the Third Intifada, he replied, “Inshallah.” God willing. Three days ago in Laqiya, one of seven Bedouin townships in the Negev, a protest march erupted in response to Israel’s air strikes on Gaza. Across the country Israeli Arabs have taken to the streets to protest the siege of Gaza, what they see as unchecked Israeli aggression against the people of Palestine. As the megaphone went around, one man declared: “This is our flesh, our blood, our brothers who are dying in Gaza. We need to send a clear message to the occupier that we are not a silent minority.” The mood here is one of bitter powerlessness, a frustration bred from years of marginalization.

You’ve seen the picture in the news before: angry kuffiya-clad youth waving Palestinian flags and chanting. But these are Israeli citizens: citizens who vote, pay taxes, and go to work every day in Israeli cities. But this anger doesn’t come out of nowhere. Despite being toted as Israel’s “safe Arabs,” the Bedouin have been systematically robbed of their land, denied the basic services we feel entitled to in an industrial democracy, and herded into 45 crowded villages bereft of infrastructure and services. They show up on no official maps, and the residents are under constant threat of home demolition, as all Bedouin homes in the villages have been ruled ‘illegal,’ despite the fact that no method of attaining a legal building permit exists for the Bedouin. No bureau to go to, no official to speak to, nothing.

Three weeks ago, a government-created commission ruled to recognize the majority of the villages, and many felt that at last the era of the Unrecognized Villages was coming to an end. A week later, the government demolished an entire Bedouin village and forcibly expelled its inhabitants. This past Thursday, the police came and demolished the first ecologically sustainable mosque in Israel, built from mud and straw, as well as a woman’s house that had stood for 30 years. These bring the annual total of Bedouin homes destroyed to 139.

The question therefore becomes: how long until the camel’s back snaps under the pressure of thousands of such straws? Will Israel’s treatment of the Bedouin eventually provoke a violent reaction among them? If we are to prevent a violent insurrection among our own citizens, our neighbors and coworkers, the government must take steps to reverse the alienation many feel towards the state. The man at the protest who wishes the Third Intifada upon us is not a Hamas terrorist, or an extremist trained in Pakistani jihad camps. He is an Israeli citizen, a veteran of the IDF, and compared to many of his co-religionists in the region, a decidedly middle-of-the-road voter. His views are not unique, and one must wonder what happened to turn someone who once believed in a safe and secure Israel to someone who now hopes for another Intifada.

Update: After posting this, I saw Shalom Rav has a post up on Jewschool that tackles similar questions and frustrations over the “who started it” narrative, and a search for a new moral calculus, which I appreciate. (And on another note, I (and others) have been taking a much needed break from blogging. The Gaza attacks have brought some back sooner than later, while, in the interim, obviously there’s been a lot that hasn’t been discussed. But we’re a contemplative bunch, so I’m sure we’ll come back around to some of it.)

Ezra Klein has excellent posts up on the Gaza assaults, addressing themes including need, fear, and also the who started it narratives:

The Israeli Narrative: After the temporary ceasefire ended 10 days ago, Hamas began launching rockets into Southern Israel. This echoed not only Hamas’s actions before the ceasefire, but Hezbollah’s actions in the weeks leading to the 2006 war. The rockets may have proven harmless, but they posed a continuing threat and were, under any standard, an act of war by the sovereign government of a neighboring territory. Israel’s attack on Gaza was a response to this provocation.

The Palestinian Narrative: For the past year or so, following Hamas’s victory in the Gaza elections, Israel has sealed the border to Gaza, cutting off both humanitarian aid and commercial traffic. In June, a coalition of eight international non-profits released a report demonstrating that conditions in Gaza were worse than at any point since 1967. 80 percent of the residents were now on food aid, more than 40 percent were unemployed, water and sewage systems were in collapse, and hospitals were suffering power shortages of up to 12 hours a day. The situation has only worsened. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has been unable to get needed medical supplies into Gaza for more than a year because of Israel’s blockade on border crossings. It is this enforced poverty and immiseration that Hamas’s rocket fire was a response to.

The point is simple: You can argue, as Israel is arguing, that their air strikes are a response to Hamas’s missiles. But to the Palestinians, Hamas’s missiles were a response to the blockade (under international law, a blockade is indeed an act of war). Israel, of course, would argue that the blockade was a response to Hamas’s past attacks. And Hamas would argue that past attacks were a response to Israel’s unceasing oppression of the Palestinian people. And Israel would argue that…

The provocations and cassus belli travel as far back as anyone might care to trace. And whether you believe Israel, the Palestinians, or the international partitioners originally at fault, starting the clock on December 10th, when the ceasefire expired and Hamas’s missiles crashed into the fields around Sderot, is merely an Israeli press strategy. This is the latest tactic in an ongoing struggle over land and freedom and security and money and politics and religion and elections and oppression. It did not begin with the rockets, and it will not end with this attack.

Dan Fleshler also tackles how the PR strategy is being promoted by the Israeli government, and Charles pointedly debunks popular notions propagated in the media with “Ten Myths about Israel and the Palestinians.”

Israel is only acting to protect its citizens from rockets and terrorism

False. Israel has interests, and they include more than just “security.” For example, they seek to position themselves better for future negotiations where they can keep settlements, prevent full Palestinian sovereignty and get a better deal regarding Jerusalem and the refugee question. These are not “security” questions, they are ideologically motivated national interests.

There is no one to talk to

False. Just as Israel waited for many years before finally talking to the PLO, we are in a situation where Hamas is willing to negotiate, but Israel is refusing.

Palestinians harm civilians on purpose, but Israel only aims at terrorists

Israel has killed many civilians via aerial bombardment. This is terror on a mass scale. The idea that when Israel commits violence it is somehow morally distinct from Hamas violence is false. Israel aims to defeat the Palestinian resistance, be it violent or nonviolent, centered in organizations like Hamas or popular actions like in Bil’in. The various human rights groups have documented ongoing Israeli violations committed by Israel against Palestinian civilians since the occupation began, more than 40 years ago.

Israel has left Gaza

Israel withdrew troops from Gaza but kept control over the coastline and land crossings. Israel has had Gaza under full or partial siege since the Palestinian Authority was established there. Only when there is Palestinian state with full sovereignty can we talk about Gaza being free from occupation. And until the occupation ends, resistance will continue.

If the Palestinians stopped violent attacks, then Israel would resume negotiations and support the creation of a Palestinian state

There have been many periods of calm since 1993. Israel has rejected peace because the terms were not to its liking. Military conflict is the result of both sides jockeying for better terms. At the end of the day, nothing is stopping Israel from ending the occupation. All they have to do is announce that all elements of the Israeli state are leaving the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem by such and such date, and leave. Of course, if they want things like the right to keep some settlement blocs, or to have the occupation of East Jerusalem recognized as legal, then they need a Palestinian negotiating partner.

Full piece

all of the journalistic words have been, are being, said already. look here on Electronic Intifada for some of the best of both personal accounts and analytic writing. and here and here for a sharp look at the regional context from Abu Aardvark.

to me, there’s only one thing worth saying on the journalistic side:

24 israelis have been killed by rocket or mortar attacks from gaza, ever.
more than 300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli blitzkrieg in gaza in the past 2 days.
more than 3,300 palestinians have been killed by the israeli military in gaza since 2000.

and it needs to be said over and over and over again.

beyond the journalistic. words aren’t worth much, or are everything.

i’ve been looking for a translation of perets markish’s “di kupe” ['the heap'], which i remember as a powerful poetic response to the willful destruction of a city, but i can’t find it.

so this will have to do, from howard fast’s raw, flawed, “Never to Forget”:

LET the memory be cold as ice, clear as glass, and bright as a diamond!
For every child killed, for every body flayed,
For every tear wept, for every moan, every scream, every pain,
For every naked body in a mass grave,
For every cut and bruise,
For every oven where flesh became ash, for every gas chamber,
For every diabolical device,
For every gallows where the bodies, swaying, measured the wind,
For every ignominy, for every wrong,
Let there be no forgetfulness,
Let there be no dimming of the memory.

this is not a substitute for our voices in the street, and our concrete solidarity in action. there are demonstrations in solidarity with the people of gaza all over the place today and tomorrow. if there isn’t one planned where you are yet, organize it. and palestinian civil society organizations from across the political spectrum and around the world are reminding us all that they have made a single, specific request of all of us: to actively boycott, divest from, and call for sanctions on israel.

that means following the same principles that the anti-apartheid resistance followed in south africa, and that the worldwide boycott of nazi germany followed (until it was undermined by the zionist ‘transfer agreement’). that means a consumer boycott (if the barcode begins with 729, don’t buy it), a tourism boycott, a boycott of cultural institutions, and equally broad divestment campaigns. all of which will continue until the israeli government complies with international law by

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

you can look here for the palestinian civil society calls to action, and for more concrete details on the boycott campaign, or here for an example of a local, highly effective divestment campaign (and in you’re in NYC, join us!)…

let there be no dimming of the memory

keynmol = keynmol
khurbn = khurbn
shveygn = toyt