Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Let liberal Jews weep for their dream of Israel, and move on

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Let liberal Jews weep for their dream of Israel, and move on

Click here to access article by Philip Weiss from Mondoweiss.

From Our Body Ourselves website we learn:

Alice Rothchild is a Boston ob-gyn who has been active in the women’s movement since the early 1970s, when she worked on the first “Our Bodies, Ourselves” and joined her first consciousness raising group.

She also became involved in the health care reform movement and is a longtime member of Physicians for a National Health Program. She currently is focused on the Israel/Palestine conflict and co-organizes health and human rights delegations to Israel/Palestine through American Jews for a Just Peace. She is also active in Jewish Voice for Peace Boston.

Weiss provides two videos and a report by Rothchild on her widespread efforts to demolish the myths about Israel that many Jews have which are based on their experience in Nazi Germany and their subsequent hopes and dreams for Israel, and the indoctrination in these myths by other Zionists and Jewish sympathizers.

The other night I went to Hunter College to hear Alice Rothchild read from her new book, On the Brink: Israel and Palestine on the eve of the 2014 Gaza Invasion. The room was jammed with students and faculty, and Rothchild, a doctor and activist, was engaging, lively, warm, and genuine– the most you could ask from someone describing what she’d seen and seeking to change people’s minds back home.