Archive for July, 2008

Diaspora funders: Let Israel politicians go


Just starting some shit over at Jewschool again with a post on how American Jewish donors love Bib Netanyahu more than his own people. Or rather, how Israeli democracy is bought and sold by foreign Jews in a way that Americans would never stand for with their own country.


ENFJ


I love putting people into categories. Seriously. It’s nothing I can quite avoid, even as I resist labels myself, because that’s the shorthand I use to understand the world. I love personality sorters, like the Myers-Briggs or this quick facsimile thereof. So this is me, ENFJ, 2% of the population. Summary: People make me happy. [...]


All of this is ours


All of this is ours! From the heights we can see to the low points, Where we spilt blood, Wrestled and fought For the ephemeral. Yes, we fought. For a dream Which will never be. All of this is ours, It belongs to us, To our people, God promised us. All this pain, This wandering [...]


Obama and McCain — Genocide and Hypocrisy


I’m reading a book now called A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (on loan from General Anna) and I just finished the introductory chapter which summarizes America’s failings since the Armenian genocide to intervene in any real way in any of the past five or six genocidal conflicts. It did so [...]


JTA hunts for big story in old news


JTA just published online a lengthy, nearly 5,000 word invective against the Ford Foundation, the second largest foundation in America, entitled “Ford Foundation still funding anti-Israel groups“. The article nearly wallows in self-pride at JTA’s seven-year-old expose of boycott work conducted by Ford grantees around the U.N anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa in 2001. [...]


A second to breathe, a look at New Jewish Culture’s impact on Israel


I have 30 minutes to take a breather before continuing this pellmell pace of life. I met a great researcher last night who is conducting an ethnographic study of the intersection of “new Jewish culture” and Israel politics. I’m sure he’d rephrase it better than that, but it was the most wonderfully interesting and rambling [...]


Said better than I could, on the return of the Israeli soldiers


It makes me incredibly proud of Jewschool that we find space to be both outraged at Hezbollah and centered confidently on our own house also, as Justin Goldstein says so eloquently today. The excerpts with which I identify the most: Whatever happened to the intelligence community that “could listen to toilets flushing in Damascus,” that [...]


Non-existential news


A post not involving too much navelgazing for a change: I’m buried up to my eyeballs in Havurah Institute work — I would love it if you joined me! Register online here. Until August 17, I will continue to be dead to the outside world. I’m addicted to Israeli hip hop artist Vulkan’s song Ha’Aliyah [...]


Zochrei Shabbat


Zochrei Shabbat, adj., Hebrew 1. Lit. “to remember Shabbat” 2. Different from shomer shabbat (“to keep Shabbat”), a post-denominational term for a Shabbat observance which is less stringent in it’s prohibitions, particularly on forbidden activities which otherwise contribute to a meaningful Shabbat, ie, riding a subway or driving a car to attend shul, answering a [...]


Context is bullshit


A post I began to write while following the work of Breaking the Silence’s exhibit in the States: Breaking the Silence gets a lot of flak for “context” either it’s lack of it or incorrect framing. And while I understand both sides of the argument, I generally agree that context is bullshit. The thinking goes [...]





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I Boycott the Settlements