Zionist Extremist Hate Crime Against Rabbi Lerner: 3rd Attack on His Home and the limits of "freedom of the press"

3/17/2011, Berkeley, California

Only one day after Rabbi Lerner presented the Tikkun Award to South African Justice Richard Goldstone, at a celebration of Tikkun's 25th Anniversary attended by over 600 people at the University of California, Berkeley, Rabbi Lerner's home was again assaulted by extremist Zionist haters who plastered posters over his home once again. This is the 3rd assault on his home since Lerner announced the award to Justice Goldstone whose report on Israel's human rights violations during the Israeli assault on Gaza in Dec. 2008 and Jan.2009 was denounced by the State of Israel and by the AIPAC-dominated House of Representatives last year. You would not have known about the 2nd attack, which was reported to the police but not to the media because Lerner had been advised that not giving the attackers attention might make future attacks less likely. That strategy failed.
Each time the posters have sought to display Lerner as either a tool of an evil Goldstone trying to hurt Israel. The current posters were done more professionally than the previous ones, and present a picture of Nazi officers carrying away a Jew. Lerner's name is put on one of the Nazis and "Islamic extremists" is written on the other Nazi, and the innocent Jew is identified as the State of Israel. The perspective of the attackers is clear: "Rabbi Lerner is a Nazi assaulting Israel." That is why the police have labeled this a "hate crime."

What "freedom of the press" is there if an editor is subject to this kind of personal harrassment for expressing his views in his editorials and in the gatherings sponsored by the magazine? Anyone concerned about civil liberties should be concerned about this pattern of attacks on the private home of a magazine editor.  And for those who believe that there is a new tone of civility in the Jewish world, well....it obviously has not impacted on right wing Zionist extremists. Please note, however, that we do not want to imply in any way that all Zionists are responsible directly or indirectly for this attack. The Zionist community in the U.S., while often demeaning Rabbi Lerner, has not shown any tendency toward violence or physical assaults on his person or property, and in our view would not likely do so. These have been the acts of a small group of extremists, and while the demeaning of Rabbi Lerner and Tikkun may have contributed to the climate in which these extremists believed they could get away with these assaults, there is no reason to believe, and we do not believe, that American Zionists as a whole either intended or approve of this kind of activity. And the Board of Rabbis of Northern California publicly critiqued the last attack on Rabbi Lerner's home as did other Jewish leaders.

Assaults on free speech are best met by encouraging more speech. The obvious goal of these attacks is to intimidate and  silence Tikkun, and since Tikkun is the largest circulation liberal/progressive Jewish magazine on-line and in print in the entire world, silencing Tikkun would be a huge victory for these extremists. People can assure that Tikkun stays alive by subscribing to Tikkun at www.tikkun.org, joining Tikkun's interfaith education and social action organization The Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org, making a tax-deductible contribution to Tikkun (checks can be sent to Tikkun, 2342 Shattuck Ave #1200, Berkeley, Ca. 94704--our mailbox, not the actual address of the magazine's office), and/or creating a local study group to read and discuss Tikkun articles every week, every two weeks, or once a month. You can also read Tikkun-on-line by going to our new web magazine each week to read the latest articles. You can also support us by joining other organizations that seek peace and reconciliation between Israel and Palestine, including J. Street, Jewish Voices for Peace,  Americans for Peace Now, The New Israel Fund and B'tselem.
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Tikkun Magazine 

The Egyptian Movement for Democracy and Jewish Communal Ambivalence

Tikkun  http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-egyptian-movement-for-democracy-and-jewish-communal-ambivalence

March 4, 2011

by Cherie Brown*

(Photo: A Melbourne resident demonstrates in solidarity with the Egyptian uprising. Creative Commons/Takver.)

The rising movements for democracy in Egypt and throughout the Middle East have caught many Jews off guard. For many years, Israel proclaimed with great pride that it was the only democracy in the Middle East. U.S. Jews also prided themselves as being strong advocates for pluralism and democratic values, certainly within the United States. Now Arab countries are fighting for increased democracy. What can be said about the current events in Egypt and the conflicting responses of many Jews to those events?

1. Israel, bolstered by the United States, has always been in a precarious position due to its policies, which have been anathema to large parts of the Arab world.
2. In the past, many of the autocratic rulers in Arab countries used anti-Israel rhetoric to mobilize their own peoples against Israel, thereby maintaining their regimes by diverting their people’s attention away from challenging their own oppressive conditions.
3. The United States and Israel have supported autocratic governments in many Middle Eastern countries, turning a blind eye to the repression of these rulers against their own people, as long as those countries were friendly to U.S. and Israeli interests.
4. Israel has often ended up being a buffer between U.S. interests in the region (i.e., keeping the Suez Canal open and oil flowing) and Arab autocracies.
5. Most importantly, decades of unhealed terror from the Holocaust, the Pogroms, and a history of betrayal at the hands of others have left many Jews unable to seize new opportunities for alliance-building, instead reverting back to old fear-based responses that keep Israel isolated.

What is actually needed now will be challenging given how entrenched many of these responses are. What if Jews, and Israeli Jews in particular, could take the lead in celebrating the momentous changes taking place in Egypt and elsewhere? What if Jews, and Israeli Jews in particular, could seize on this new moment, unencumbered by the fears of the past, and seize this key time to reach out to the young Arab leaders in these pro-democracy movements? What if the Israeli peace movement would lead the way in reaching out to Arab protest leaders?

There is always a possibility that these new people’s movements could once again use anti-Israel (and anti-Semitic) rhetoric, as did the autocratic rulers they seek to topple, to help fuel their movements. It is most noteworthy that to date, there has been relatively little anti-Israel rhetoric on the ground in Egypt. This should help to contradict Jewish fears and interrupt the historic tendency to view popular uprisings in Arab countries through a prism of fear and trepidation. The Arab autocratic rulers used anti-Israel rhetoric whenever it served their needs. The new youth leaders are focused much more on achieving democratic reforms than calling on the old anti-Israel rhetoric as an organizing tool.

In the end, however difficult it may be to achieve, Israel’s full flourishing in the Middle East will require strong relationships with its Arab neighbors. The momentous changes taking place now in the Middle East provide Israel with a new moment to leave behind its historical fear responses and instead lead the way in welcoming the leaders of these new Arab protest movements.

* Cherie Brown is the executive director of the National Coalition Building Institute, an anti-oppression leadership training organization with headquarters in Washington, D.C. She has been a frequent writer for Tikkun magazine and has been active in U.S. Jewish Middle East peace organizations for over forty years.

A. Latina compromete-se a impulsionar processo de paz no O. Médio

San José, 12 março 2011 (EFE).- Representantes da sociedade civil da América Latina comprometeram-se neste sábado na Costa Rica a impulsionar o processo de paz entre Israel e palestinos.
Os participantes do fórum sobre o papel da América Latina do processo de paz no Oriente Médio assinaram uma declaração na qual ratificaram seu compromisso para acompanhar as conversas de paz na região.
"As negociações entre israelenses e palestinos devem ser retomadas o mais breve possível, a fim de enfrentar questões básicas como as fronteiras, os assentamentos, os refugiados, a água, e Jerusalém", expressa a declaração assinada em San José.
"O resultado destas negociações deve ser o estabelecimento de dois Estados que vivam um junto ao outro em paz e segurança. Isto demonstra uma vontade poderosa em toda a América Latina de participar mais diretamente na paz no Oriente Médio e ampliar o número de atores internacionais em um acordo de paz de dois Estados", acrescenta o documento.
Os participantes do fórum, organizado pela Fundação Global Democracia e Desenvolvimento (Funglode) destacaram que "a paz no Oriente Médio deve se basear em um fim da ocupação dos territórios palestinos que começou em 1967".
Além disso, defenderam a "criação de um Estado palestino independente e soberano nos territórios, com Jerusalém Oriental como sua capital, para viver junto a Israel em paz e segurança".
"Esta deve ser a peça central de uma mais ampla, a paz árabe-israelense, que permite o reconhecimento de Israel por todo o mundo árabe", diz a declaração, que também reconhece "o direito de Israel de viver em paz e segurança" dentro de suas fronteiras. EFE