7 thoughts on “Israel’s War Against the Palestinians Hurts Jews Too – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

    1. I just read the Bronner piece & it’s full of his usual fence sitting (usually on Israel’s side). I can’t believe the amt of self-pity dripping from the text. He writes as if no reporter has ever succeeded in writing about the I-P conflict and gotten it right. He writes as if you’ll always be hated by one side or another & that you just can’t please anyone. I utterly reject the terms. Numerous NYT reporters before him have gotten things right or pretty close to right. But Bronner & to a lesser extent his predecessor, Steven Erlanger, lean in their reporting toward Israel’s perspective. They don’t always do so, but they do so more often than not.

      I also note that in quoting from his critical readers Bronner seems to have chosen the ones who expressed the most antagonistic & extreme views. Are there no thoughtful critics of his work? So he set’s up a charade saying: “you see, each side hates me. I can’t make anyone happy.” Perhaps he should try to find thoughtful criticism of his work & try to learn a thing or 2 from it instead of feeling sorry for himself & only quoting the most intrasigent critics.

      I note that my one attempt to write to Bronner was met with silence. I haven’t bothered since.

  1. I’ve been sitting at my computor, wanting to write a reply to this post and yet, words are failing me.

    Therefore, it will be short.

    I wanted to reply as a show of support for the great work you do and for caring. I’m sure you take a lot of abuse. I hope you never give up.

    1. Thanks, Julie. The abuse used to bother me more when I first started blogging. I took it more personally. Now, while it still rankles at times, I look at it more philosophically as an expression of the depths of aberrant behavior of which human beings are capable.

  2. Dear richard: I am sorry you have to get that sort of junk on regular basis (regardless of the religioon of the sender).

    I live in the middle of a very diverse Muslim community in the USA. Most of the Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs in my environment are not, understandably, big fans of Israel. A significantly smaller number may even harbour strong feeling against Jews in general. Yet I have NEVER come across anyone that utters that kind of trash expressed by hateful coward who wrote the initial comment sent to you.

    You and I both know that on all sides there are the nut ones that are already ‘lost cases’. Their ‘loud’ presence is felt consistently in the fringes regardles of the issue being discussed: religion, politics or even sports. It frequentlly seems that their mere existence is a total waste of life force, and even a waste of oxygen.

    As a believer in God, and a believer that what we face in life is a test from God, I can see the reason for hateful people to exist: they are here as test to our ability to keep sanity in the face of hate and stupidity. In the Quran (chapter 7:99) god tell us to “… MAKE due allowance for man’s nature, and enjoin the doing of what is right; and leave alone all those who choose to remain ignorant.”
    “خُذِ الْعَفْوَ وَأْمُرْ بِالْعُرْفِ وَأَعْرِضْ عَنِ الْجَاهِلِينَ”
    He, almighty, also reminds us that “… [true] servants of the Most Gracious are [only] they who walk gently on earth, and who, whenever the foolish address them, reply with [words of] peace” (chapter 25:63)
    “وَعِبَادُ الرَّحْمَنِ الَّذِينَ يَمْشُونَ عَلَى الْأَرْضِ هَوْنًا وَإِذَا خَاطَبَهُمُ الْجَاهِلُونَ قَالُوا سَلَامًا”

    I am thankful to your friend Jafer siddiqui for his thoughtful and beatiful answer.

    As for the ugly mind that posted the hateful comment, my guess is that it is just a provocateur, that wants to stir useless arguments and waste energy of the praticipants and readers of your blog. We can only pray the likes of him would not succeed in wasting our ‘communication bandwidth’.

    Finally, Richard, please accept my thanks for all that you have to go through trying to get common sense and justice to prevail.

  3. Israeli poll: Killing Palestinians shortest way to winning elections

    PIC&Ikhwanweb – Palestine

    Monday, January 26, 2009
    An Israeli opinion poll has displayed that the shortest way to win general elections in Israel was to kill the biggest possible number of Palestinians.
    The poll published by Hebrew daily Ha”aretz on Sunday indicated that the right wing parties in Israel would secure 64 seats in any current elections, which would bring Benjamin Netanyahu to the premiership.

    The Israeli war minister Ehud Barak also enjoyed soaring popularity with 70% favoring him in the poll after the war on Gaza while before the war his popularity was only 53%, the paper noted.

    Israeli foreign minister and leader of the Kadima party Tzipi Livni had warned that a new Israeli government with Netanyahu as premier would be on a collision course with the new American administration.

    Meanwhile, the same paper said that a number of issues were not solved yet despite the end of the war on Gaza, explaining that the issue of arms smuggling and that of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit were not resolved.

    Economic sanctions imposed on Gaza before the war did not benefit in changing Hamas”s demands for the release of more than a thousand prisoners from Israeli jails, the paper added.

  4. I wish I could do more than tap out the same supportive words…

    Thank You, Richard and Jerry and those who post thoughtful, nonviolent statements…

    We have so much more in common than we have dividing us. Laila Lalami wrote a wonderful passage on that theme on her blog one or two years ago…alas I didn’t copy it…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *