Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

For months, I’ve been following the plans for a possible new progressive alternative to AIPAC being formed within the American Jewish community. I was tremendously excited when George Soros was named as a possible supporter and funder. When he backed out (foolishly in my opinion), I thought the idea was likely dead. [...]

Brit Tzedek hosted a conference call with Rashid Khalidi today that was most interesting. I was most impressed with how acute his thinking is on the conflict. This is the kind of person who could’ve been a prominent international lawyer or even foreign policy wonk if he’d chosen to be. Not the [...]

Those following this blog will know of the Los Angeles Israeli consul general report scurrilously accusing the refusenik groups Combatants for Peace and Breaking the Silence of financing their U.S. tours with U.S. Palestinian funding. The report also claimed the refuseniks were misleading American college students into believing that the former represented the Israeli [...]

Brit Tzedek has sponsored a 22 city U.S. tour of the Israeli refusenik group, Combatants for Peace. Shimon Katz and Sulaiman al Hamri reached Seattle this past week for the tour’s final stop and spoke at Seattle University, Temple DeHirsch Sinai and the University of Washington Hillel. I was responsible for media outreach [...]

JTA published today a mini-story on the Los Angeles Israeli consul general’s report savagely criticizing Israeli refusenik groups for speaking in the U.S. against the Israeli Occupation. Unfortunately, the impetus for their story came from a rambling press release by Mort Klein of the ZOA full of scurrilous propaganda against the Union of Progressive [...]

Headline of scurrilous Yediot article: “U.S. Palestinian Groups Bankroll Refuseniks” (scan courtesy Amir Terkel)
Thanks especially to Amir Terkel (and also Judith Kolokoff), I was the first news source outside Israel to report that Israel’s Los Angeles consul general, Ehud Danoch, smeared Brit Tzedek, Combatants for Peace, and Breaking the Silence, accusing their national tours of [...]

There is much individual suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more often than not I write less about individual suffering and more about broad concepts and analysis of policy. Today’s post returns to the theme of individual suffering.
I am a member of Brit Tzedek. As such I do various tasks on behalf [...]

If you’re sick and tired of a dithering U.S. Mideast policy; if you’re sick of ceding American Jewry’s voice on the Israel-Palestine conflict to groups like Aipac; if you want to see bold initiatives for peace–consider joining Brit Tzedek’s National Advocacy Days in Washington, DC on June 18-20th. You will be educated by talks [...]

Aipac might like America to believe that Jews march in lockstep with their hard-right views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I’m pleased to say that Brit Tzedek V’Shalom, the national Jewish group advocating for Israeli-Palestinian peace, is marching to a different beat. It organized a national effort among rabbis to tell President Bush [...]