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Updated 11/20/09 @ 11:30AM EDT
- Canada's opposition Liberal Party is crying foul after the ruling Conservatives mailed out flyers extolling themselves as stronger supporters of Israel.
- Israel arrested five Palestinian Authority intelligence officers in the West Bank.
- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel is conducting secret negotiations with Hamas.
- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was welcomed Thursday in Brazil by a state governor who is Jewish.
- Prominent South African Jewish leader and philanthropist Mendel Kaplan has died at the age of 73.
- Canadian Liberals object after Conservatives say they’re stronger Israel backers
- Israel arrests five P.A. officers
- Abbas: Israel talking to Hamas
- Abbas welcomed by Jewish pol in Brazil
- South African Jewish leader Mendel Kaplan dies
- Israel will send ship to NATO anti-terror force
- Obama: New Iran sanctions coming within weeks
- What should we bring? Thanksgiving foods that travel well
- Female Orthodox scholars helping women talk about sex
- Obama half-brother has Jewish roots
- Lieberman: Fort Hood could be terror attack
- J Street confab shows generational divide on Israel
- What really happened at the Reform biennial in Toronto
- Rubashkin convicted on 86 charges
- Obama shifts to Israel’s corner, but tries not to show it
- Pro-Israel fliers confiscated at campus speech
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Posted in: Foxman blasts J Street on Palin, questions its 'pro-Israel' slogan
11/20/09 01:23 PM
I should have made clear --- the Goldstone report ALSO provided serious evidence that Hamas had committed war crimes and called for Hamas as well to convene an independent investigation. Goldstone specifically demanded and received an expansion of the original Commission mandate, which focused on Israel only, and said he would do this job only if it included a clear-eyed look at both warring parties. --- Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Posted in: Foxman blasts J Street on Palin, questions its 'pro-Israel' slogan
11/20/09 12:04 PM
Mr."Anti-Defamation" knows perfectly well how to defame people he doesn;t agree with. To say "Israel determines its own security" is both false and unethical. No state can "determine its own security:" if it is violating international law, using disproortionate force to defend itself, etc. Not the USA , not the nascent Palestinian state, not Syria, not the USSR, not Israel. The Goldstone report brings serious evidence that israel went over the legal and moral line in its attack on Gaza, the report urged Israel to convene its own independent judicial investigation. Why Not?? Rabbi Arthur Waskow The Shalom Center www.theshalomcenter.org
Posted in: Ruth Brin, Reform liturgist, dies
10/02/09 12:44 PM
Ruth Brin, whom I knew and deeply admired, was a Reconstructionist Jew, not a Reform Jew. She was part of the Recon movement practically her whole life, and her daughter Deborah is a Recon rabbi. Her liturgical poems were so good that they appeared not only in Recon but Reform and Conservative siddurim, but that doesn't change who she was. I hope JTA will correct this egregious mistake. --- Good shabbos and good yontif, Rabbi Arthur Waskow.
Posted in: Obama appeals to rabbis to help pass health care reform
08/20/09 01:20 PM
Once upon a time there was a President who used the phrases "economic royalists" and "malefactors of great wealth" to describe the Wall Street greedies who opposed policies the country deserately needed. Once upon a time thre was a President who dem=nopunced BY NAME the right-wing Congressmen who tried tostall the New Deal -- "Mahtin, Bahton, & Fish!" He saved caapialism by denouncing the greed of capitalists. Now we have a President who turns tail when the provision for a publlc option that he himself originally said was the only way to keep the insurance companies honest is attacked. Already two months agp when he was asked in a press conference whether he would veto a health bill that came to him without a public option, when he said he would not. i knew then it would come to this -- What's the use of asking us rabbis to fight for a bill he won;t fight for himself? Of cpurse we need to fight. But we need to be fighting DESPITE this president's weak knees, not for his periodic kneeling exercises. What needs to happen now is a direct campaign to keep the House pf Representatives standing up to the insurance companies, the senate, AND the President. If the mangled health care bill is passed with no public option, the windfall for Big Insurance and Big Pharma will outdo even their treasure hunt in the Bush Medicare windfall. Why? How? Because the bill requires practically everybody to buy insurance, and the public will have no way of keeping down what the insurance companies charge all those new and old customers. Another gravy train like Bush's medicare drug plan --- on our money. The companies get paid to support lousy care, with private companies refusing payment whenever they decide to boost corporate profits. If progressive members of the House of Representatives who understand this stand firm, no matter what the Senate does, no matter what the White House does -- then no bill can pass without a public option Better to fight this out, since at least two-thirds of the public supports a real public option. Please write your Member of the House right away with a simple, serious, straight-out message: No public option, no bill! You can tell your Congressperson exactly that: Please click here - http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/602/t/4180/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27788 If the President won't defend what's true & just, we have to. Shalom, Rabbi Arthur Waskow The Shalom Center www.shalomctr.org
Posted in: Mary Robinson: "You Just Don't Understand!"
08/18/09 01:27 PM
Kampeas somehow avoids mentioning that Robinson in her CBS interview specifically says that she fought against the "Zionism is racism" resolution at Durban and that it was removed before the end of the conference. That doesn;t seem to me in the least obtuse. It seems to me rather that Kampeas is being opaque -- -- by accident? Deliberately? How could he have possibly left that out? Her attacker on CBS thinks the Durban conference was a joke even if it had not included an attack on Zionism. Why would a serious attempt to address the world problem of racism be a joke?? Except of course for someone who doesn't think racism itself is important. The worst things he could think to say about her is that she kept a useless conference from being worse, and that she was not as great a figure in world history as Mandela. . Is that why Kampeas has expressed so much animus against her? And against Obama for naming her? Did Jack Kemp compare in history to Mandelka? Why wasn't there criticism of Obama for naming Kemp? Something is rotten in the journalistic cheese here. Rabbi Arthur Waskow The Shalom Center www.shalomctr.org
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