18 August 2010
03 August 2010
30 July 2010
23 July 2010
21 July 2010
25 June 2010
22 June 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 06/22/2010
ARZA Notebook: From the 36th World Zionist Congress, Our Many Accomplishments (Reform Judaism)
- Overwhelming support to oppose the currently proposed changes in Israeli conversion law that will both negate the Law of Return and prejudice the rights of Jewish communities to act, each in its own way, regarding the conversion process.
- Equal funding for all Jewish religious streams within the WZO budget. This could mean an additional $500,000 for the IMPJ.
- 80% positive support stating that the Government of Israel should recognize all streams of Judaism and their right to perform marriages and conversion in Israel.
- Approved a new requirement that 30% of the membership in all WZO committees, boards, etc. must be women.
Our accomplishments through the resolutions process partially include:
This was the first time that a charedi (ultra orthodox) group joined the WZO. In this case it was the Shas party that represents mostly the Sephardic community and more specifically Moroccan Jews. One of their agenda items at the Congress was to have the concept of Jewish pluralism deleted from the WZO body politic. They proposed resolutions to set up pre conversion institutions in the Diaspora to avoid our congregations and rabbis as well as those of the Conservative movement and modern Orthodox. They proposed that the WZO expend its limited funds on substantial projects in the West Bank to protect ancient Jewish religious sites. They opposed the serious inclusion of women.
Led by our delegation, all of the Shas efforts were soundly defeated. Will this affect Israeli Government policies that we would like to see changed? Perhaps. Our collective actions do, however, put the majority of affiliated Jews on record as being for pluralism, tolerance and the rule of law in a Jewish, civil, democratic state.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
10 June 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 06/10/2010
Jews, Poles & Nazis: The Terrible History (The New York Review of Books)
- The Warsaw Uprising was a major example of armed Jewish resistance to the Germans during World War II. Indeed, it is quite possible that more people of Jewish origin took part in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 than in the Ghetto Uprising of 1943.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
02 June 2010
01 June 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 06/01/2010
- - post by maskil
The percentage of ultra-Orthodox men not working has more than tripled over the past 30 years. In 2008, 65% of Haredi men did not work, compared to only 21% in 1979, reveals the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel in its annual report.
Professor Dan Ben-David, the Taub Center's executive director, said the state's increased allowances and funding for groups including the ultra-Orthodox have enabled them to choose workforce nonparticipation as a lifestyle.
Old is the New Green — To Retrofit or Rebuild (The Times Record > Archives > Features)
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
22 May 2010
15 May 2010
14 May 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 05/14/2010
Welfare system could cause Israel to collapse, economist warns (Page 2 - Los Angeles Times)
But Ben-David said the government has relied too heavily on a quick fix. With heavy lobbying from ultra-Orthodox parties that often prove crucial in forming government coalitions, Israel has increased welfare payments fivefold since 1970, while the standard of living has doubled, he said.
Nearly a decade ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then finance minister, won praise for slashing welfare payments, including monthly per-child allowances. But last year Netanyahu, in a nod to his right-wing coalition partners, agreed to nearly double some child allowances.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
29 April 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 04/29/2010
Jerusalem and Elie Wiesel by Daniel Seideman (The Middle East Channel)
- Before our eyes, Jerusalem is becoming the arena
where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morphing from a resolvable national
conflict into a religious war - a transformation that, if it continues, poses
an existential threat to Israel.
And what starts in Jerusalem does not stay in Jerusalem: conflict in Jerusalem resonates throughout the region and
beyond, wind in the sails of every jihadist.
By asserting the Jewish people's exclusive "ownership" of Jerusalem, Wiesel
embraces the policies that are accelerating this metamorphosis.
Wiesel ignores these facts. He ignores the fact that the policies he is
defending will soon turn Jerusalem into a city so balkanized, geographically
and demographically, that the two-state solution will no longer be
possible. And the demise of the two-state solution portends the end of Israel as a
Jewish, democratic state, to be replaced by either an apartheid-like reality
with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority, or by a bi-national
Arab-Jewish state.
Israel is at an existential
crossroads with Jerusalem.
Current policies cannot be justified - even by Elie Wiesel, even to Israel's
staunchest allies. These policies consistently derail the resumption of
negotiations towards a conflict-ending agreement between Israel and the
Palestinians. The cumulative impact of these policies will be the
destruction of the two-state solution, the radicalization of the conflict and
the de-legitimization of Israel.
With these policies, Jerusalem is becoming the
place where Israel
slides down the slippery slope into pariah status.
Israel's Right to Exist as a Jewish Homeland (American Thinker)
- In San Remo -- and for the first time in 1,800 years, since Roman times -- the geographical region known as "Palestine" acquired a legal identity. Even though the boundaries of Palestine were not precisely defined in San Remo, the prevailing idea was to draw them as close as possible to the historical boundaries of the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah. In that regard, the expression "from Dan to Beersheba" was introduced by Lloyd George, the British Prime Minister at the time, and it often appeared in subsequent documents.By referring specifically to the Balfour Declaration of November 1917 -- which was essentially an expression of British foreign policy -- and by reproducing its wording literally, the San Remo Resolution entrenched the provisions of the Balfour Declaration in international law. Thus, the reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine received international recognition.The legal title to Palestine was officially transferred from the League of Nations -- when Turkey was dispossessed of its rights to the region at the Paris Peace Conference a year earlier -- to the Jewish people, who became the national beneficiary under a mandate awarded to Britain, thereby designated as the trustee.The transfer of title and the sovereignty of the Jewish people in Palestine remain binding in international law to this day. Similarly, equivalent national rights were conferred to the Arabs in both Syria/Lebanon and present-day Iraq under two other transitional mandates awarded to France and Britain, respectively. It should therefore be apparent that the legitimacy of the present Arab states of Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq derives from the same international law which reconstituted the Jewish nation in Palestine.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
24 April 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 04/24/2010
Searching for the Better Text (Biblical Archaeology Review)
The Samaritans, not surprisingly, tell a different tale. They explain their name as deriving from the word shomerim, (guardians) because they were the guardians of the true religion of Israel. According to their Chronicles, they are the descendants of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and have continuously inhabited their ancestral land. Though the Samaritans had offered to help their coreligionists who were returning from the Exile, they were rejected, mistreated and finally attacked by the Hasmonean king John Hyrcanus in 128 B.C.E. Their temple, located on Mt. Gerizim, rather than in Jerusalem, was destroyed.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
20 April 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 04/20/2010
Unemployment: Israel's other existential threat (Haaretz - Israel News)
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is apparently unperturbed, more concerned about the stability of his government coalition than anything else. He knows that to stop these dangerous processes he will have to take unprecedented measures that will not be popular.
First, the money flow must be stemmed to the independent schools systems run by the Shas and Agudat Yisrael parties and the Islamic Movement. Every child in Israel should be taught from the same curriculum based on core subjects like science, mathematics, English and history. Later on in the school day, each sector can teach its students what it likes.
Budgetary support for yeshivas must also be cut, and every ultra-Orthodox individual drafted to the military. They too should put their lives at risk; perhaps their worldview would change as a result. Military service would connect them to Israeli society and its problems, and raise the likelihood that they will turn into citizens who earn their own livelihoods.
Family allowances ought to be cut as well, starting with the fifth child. In most families with many children, each new birth automatically perpetuates the cycle of poverty. If parents want eight children, let them support their brood themselves. Of course, entering the workforce should also be encouraged by subsidizing public transportation, building day care centers, augmenting the Wisconsin welfare-to-work program and instituting a negative income tax.
In its 62nd year, Israel is in a diplomatic, security and moral limbo (Haaretz - Israel News)
- Unfortunately, Israel's 62nd Independence Day finds it in a kind of diplomatic, security and moral limbo that is certainly no cause for celebration. It is isolated globally and embroiled in a conflict with the superpower whose friendship and support are vital to its very existence. It is devoid of any diplomatic plan aside from holding onto the territories and afraid of any movement. It wallows in a sense of existential threat that has only grown with time. It seizes on every instance of anti-Semitism, whether real or imagined, as a pretext for continued apathy and passivity. In many respects, it seems that Israel has lost the dynamism and hope of its early decades, and is once again mired in the ghetto mentality against which its founders rebelled.
Granted, Israel is not the sole custodian of its fate. Yet the shortcomings that have cast a pall over the country since its founding - the ethnocentrism, the dominance of the army and religious functionaries, the socioeconomic gaps, the subservience to the settlers, the mystical mode of thinking and the adherence to false beliefs - have, instead of disappearing over time, only gathered steam. The optimistic, pragmatic, peace-seeking spirit that once filled the Israeli people, in tune with the Zionist revolution, which sought to alter Jewish fate, has weakened. And it is not clear whether the current government is deepening the reactionary counterrevolution or merely giving it faithful expression.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
19 April 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 04/19/2010
Israelis can learn a thing or two from Diaspora Jews (Haaretz - Israel News)
Diaspora Jews should be less tolerant of the usual Israeli brush-offs. Whether it's about the steps Israel needs to take in the peace process, or the laws it needs to pass to defend religious pluralism, or the battles it needs to fight against racism, Diaspora Jews must learn to challenge the excuse "what we see from here, you don't see from there."
No, the response must be, sometimes, it's the other way round. We see things differently, and if you were only to listen, maybe you would see things differently too. Maybe you Israelis could learn something from our outside-but-caring perspective.
We Israelis need to take these ideas to heart in our interactions with our friends abroad, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It's true that they don't pay taxes here, or serve in the army here, and so, both financially and physically, they have much less at stake than we Israelis do when it comes to the results of our policies.
But sometimes they can help us see things that we can't. We are so dizzy from the spinning turbulence of life here, we are so deafened by the noise of Israeli public "debate", that we can?t think straight.
It is true that we have sometimes been victims and experienced terrible events; but our national post-traumatic stress disorder prevents us from taking the course of action that is the best one for us to take in the long term. It might feel hard at first, but we Israelis have to practie, practice, and practice again saying: what you see from there, we don't see from here
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
16 April 2010
Post to Maskil_Activity 04/16/2010
A time to protest (Haaretz - Israel News)
- In the eyes of world, the occupation is over, and now we have to reach the same conclusion urgently. We did not return here after two millennia of exile to be drowned in a single state between the Jordan and the Mediterranean with a Palestinian majority and an Israeli minority. We came back here in the wake of Benjamin Zeev (Theodor) Herzl's vision, and we declared our state, in the words of the Declaration of Independence as read out by David Ben-Gurion, because "this right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign state."
The criminals on the West Bank hilltops, the Israeli government and its head, Benjamin Netanyahu, are the new post-Zionists. They are the binational, piggishly capitalist camp that stands opposed to the national camp, which believes the end of the occupation is an Israeli interest, with an agreement or without one. To withdraw from the occupied territories so there will be a Jewish democratic state here. To draw the permanent boundaries and to defend Israel from the Qassams and the rockets, from our side of the fence.
Barack Obama is a true friend of Israel. As such, he told Netanyahu what most of us know in our hearts: End the occupation. The time has come to look after ourselves and to go back to building everything from the beginning again. Close your eyes and think what Israeli society could have been like within the Green Line, if $100 billion had not been burned up in the territories, which we will soon be leaving.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
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