Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/tag/israel/page/4/)
Earlier this year, a friend and I were returning to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. It being summer and us coming from the beach, my friend was wearing a long dress that covered everything expect her shoulders. As we were walking out of the central bus station to catch a local bus home, a woman approaches my friend and says to her:
What are we to make of the recent flood of stories on religious extremism coming from Israel?
Many Americans know about Rosa Parks, who became the “mother of the modern-day civil rights movement,” when she refused to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, on Dec. 1, 1955. Parks’ arrest sparked the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, which led to the Supreme Court ruling that racially segregated public buses are illegal. The president of the Montgomery Improvement Association was a Christian minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., who galvanized the nonviolent movement to dismantle Jim Crow, the system of American apartheid in the South.Now Israel has a “Rosa Parks” — her name is Yocheved Horowitz, and she belongs to the ultra-Orthodox Gur community in Ashdod. In December, according to a report by Tamar Rotem in Haaretz, Horowitz boarded an Egged bus in her religious enclave in Ashdod, and took a seat in the second row. Continue Reading
The seeds for the first Global Women’s Leadership Convening, held July 13-21, 2011, at St. Catherine University, were planted a decade ago. While visiting her daughters in Israel, Minnesota State Sen. Sandy Pappas became friends with Rina Bar-Tal, chair of the Israel Women’s Network, a nonpartisan organization that promotes the status of women in Israel.The Global Women’s Leadership Convening “is such a women’s story about relationships,” Pappas said. Over the past decade, Pappas and Bar-Tal organized groups of women to travel between Minnesota and Israel to share ideas with each other about getting women elected and about programs serving women.During a 2009 trip to Israel by Minnesota women, led by Pappas, another 35 miles was added when they traveled to Jordan. There they met Rula Quawas, an English professor at the University of Jordan and founder of the gender studies program and the Jordanian Women’s Commission.Pappas approached both Bar-Tal and Quawas about bringing a group of Israeli and Jordanian women leaders to Minnesota for a leadership training program, with the intent of elevating the level of involvement and setting goals around global women’s leadership. Continue Reading
There’s a question that we all know. The one that without fail comes up in every discussion of identity. The one every Jew living in American has most likely heard at least once in their life.
“Are you an American Jew or a Jewish American?”
KFAI’s Mike Fischbein spoke with Break the Bonds’ Phil Benson and plaintiff Sylvia Schwartz about the group’s recently filed suit against the Minnesota State Board of Investment. The lawsuit is over what the group considers to be illegal investments in Israel through the purchase of Israel bonds. [Audio below] Continue Reading
The Shalaam Coalition at Macalester College will host Israel-Palestine Week, beginning Sunday, Nov. 13.
It is appropriate that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in the United States on the very day that Harold Camping has determined is Judgment Day: May 21, 2011, at 6 p.m. (As I write at 8 a.m. CDT, it is already 6 p.m. Continue Reading
January 27 is the UN designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the anniversary of the day in 1945 when the Nazi death camp Auschwitz was liberated. Two Jewish men, who had survived months in that hell, finally tasted freedom that day, and went on to teach the world the lessons of the Holocaust.These men moved on to become authors and speakers; both are intelligent, thoughtful, and well-spoken, yet have arrived at very different conclusions about what the lessons of the Holocaust actually are.This enigma has puzzled me for years: how can two people with such similar backgrounds and experiences come away with such different viewpoints? What could explain the differences in their views?In the case of Elie Wiesel, the paragon of human rights champion, who protested against South African Apartheid, delivered food to starving Cambodians, and said that although the world knew what was happening in the Nazi concentration camps people did nothing. “That is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.” Yet when it comes to Palestinians he can’t quite see their suffering and humiliation. Continue Reading
