Israeli-Palestinian Collision

VOTING OUR VALUES
Judaism & American Life
“To be is to stand for.”
—Abraham Joshua Heschel
RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION:
A JEWISH CALL FOR JUSTICE

Judaism & American Life
Elections offer us the opportunity to reflect upon, and
to recommit ourselves to, our core values. This Jewish
non-partisan election guide is intended as catalyst for
thought and action during the 2008 election season.

The guide includes seven topics that the Righteous
Indignation staff has identified as key election issues
based on our research and in consultation with religious
and political leaders across the country. In addition, the

New York Jewish Week 10/12/2008
by Joshua Mitnick, 
Israel Correspondent

Acre, Israel — Five days after a wave of Arab-Jewish rioting first broke out on the eve of Yom Kippur, the garrisons of law enforcement officers turned this northern Israeli city into one under occupation to restore a measure of order.

While hundreds of blue-uniformed municipal police carrying batons and paramilitary border police toting M-16s patrolled the streets, busloads of reinforcements were stationed at road junctions outside of the neighborhood.
But the huge police presence in this mixed Israeli Jewish and Israeli Arab coastal town of 50,000 didn’t ease the smoldering tensions many likened to the nationwide clashes that broke out at the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in October 2000.

Physicians for Human Rights -Israel: Urgent Update: received March 2, 2008

Palestinian Health System in Gaza on Brink of Collapse

Israeli military forces commenced widespread operations against Gaza on 27.2.08, following the death of an Israeli civilian in a college campus in the south of Israel, and damage caused by a Qassam rocket to a hospital campus in the town of Ashqelon. As a result of these operations 101 Palestinians (according to Palestinian counts), the majority of whom were civilians, have been killed. Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed. This number of casualties is the highest since the start of the AlAqsa Intifada in 2000.

Obama reaches out to Jewish leaders

By Ami Eden  of the Jewish Telegraphic Association (JTA)
We've received a rough transcript that came from the Obama campaign of a
closed meeting that the candidate held Sunday in Cleveland with about 100
Jewish communal leaders. Whoever recorded the remarks was only able to get
Obama's answers, not the actual questions from the audience.

For the most part, Obama sought to reassure the audience — on Israel, Iran,
his church, his pastor, his foreign policy advisers, his religion. At the
same time, he picked a few spots to push back against some of his critics in

Sara Roy is Senior Research Scholar at the Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The following is the Second Annual Holocaust Remembrance Lecture given April 8, 2002 at Baylor University. It was first published in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Volume 32, Number 1, Autumn 2002.

Some months ago I was invited to reflect on my journey as a child of Holocaust survivors. This journey continues and shall continue until the day I die. Though I cannot possibly say everything, it seems especially poignant that I should be addressing this topic at a time when the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is descending so tragically into a moral abyss and when, for me at least, the very essence of Judaism, of what it means to be a Jew, seems to be descending with it.

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow

[As we approach the fortieth anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories, it is clear there have been ethical disasters on all sides.

[Taking them into account, I want to ask: What spiritual disorders led to this series of ethical disasters? What might help to heal them?

[The war itself, the 40-year occupation, and the frequent choice of terror attacks on civilians to "resist" the occupation were all both the results and the causes of disastrous ethical and practical choices by the Arab states, the Israeli government, and the Palestinian leadership.

Dear Friends,

In 2004, as religious animosities worsened around the globe, I joined with Sister Joan Chittister, a world-renowned Benedictine nun, and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti (Neil Douglas-Klotz), a Muslim Sufi who has written a remarkable series of books on Aramaic, Gnostic, and Sufi spirituality --

-- to write a book called THE TENT OF ABRAHAM: STORIES OF HOPE AND PEACE FOR JEWS, CHRISTIANS, & MUSLIMS.

We sent the manuscript to Karen Armstrong. She was so excited by the book that she wrote a Preface for it.

It was (June 2006) published by Beacon Press and won an enthusiastic "Starred Review" from the Library Journal. That review and others are below.