.

Michael Lerner on Israel/Palestine
http://www.tikkun.org/core_vision


'PEACE, JUSTICE AND RECONCILIATION' FOR ISRAEL AND PALESTINE


We are committed to full and complete reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinian people within the context of social justice for the Palestinians and security for Israel. We call upon Israel to end the Occupation, to return settlers to the pre-1967 borders of Israel (providing them with decent housing), and to take major (though not total) responsibility for Palestinian refugees. We oppose Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights and we insist that Israel adopt a strategy based on open-heartedness toward the Palestinians, repentance for past misdeeds, reparation, and genuine acknowledgement of the ways that some Israelis were oppressive, murderous, and oblivious to the legitimate needs of the Palestinian people. We call for an end to the teachings in Jewish and Israeli schools and media which demean or demonize the Palestinian people; instead we seek to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the Palestinian people, Arabs and Muslims. Although we affirm Israel as a Jewish state side by side with Palestine, we believe that all non-Jews in Israel, including most importantly Arab or Palestinian citizens of Israel, should have full civil rights in Israel and equal economic entitlements to any Israeli who has served in the army.

We call upon the Palestinian people to acknowledge the right of Jews to maintain their own homeland in the pre-1967 borders of the state of Israel, with Jewish control over the Jewish section of Jerusalem (including French Hill and Mt. Scopus and the Jewish Quarter of the Old City) and the Western Wall, and unimpeded access to the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. We call upon the Palestinian people to stop acts of terror against Israel and to listen and heed the growing number of Palestinian voices that are calling for a strategy of nonviolent civil disobedience We call upon Palestinians to end all teachings in their schools and media which demean or demonize the Jewish people or Israel and to replace those with teachings that emphasize the humanity and goodness of the Jewish people.

We recognize that some Palestinians will respond by pointing out the structural violence inherent in the presence of the Israeli Occupation and the settlements. We agree with these points, but still believe that the breakthrough necessary to free Palestinians from Occupation will only come when the Israeli people feel enough safety to contemplate arrangements based on trust. Just as Israelis must demonstrate that they see Palestinians as created in the image of God and deserving of full respect, so the Palestinians must demonstrate that they see Israelis as created in the image of God and are deserving of full respect.

Both sides need to recognize a need for repentance for past deeds that were hurtful and oppressive. Jews must understand why Palestinians were fearful that the more highly organized and politically sophisticated Zionist movement that began to emerge in the period 1920-1948 might lead to the disenfranchisement of Palestinians, and why Palestinians today feel that "the right to return" to their homes is no different from the right of return that was at the basis of Zionism.

Similarly, Palestinians need to acknowledge their own role in helping create the conflict by their armed resistance to Jewish immigration to Palestine in the years when Jews were being annihilated or when Jews were crawling out of the death camps and crematoria of Europe.

This is just a sample of the stories we must learn from each other so that we can build reconciliation of the heart, based on genuine compassion for each other. Political arrangements cannot be trusted until there is a serious commitment on both sides to compassionate listening to each other. Its only when both sides can tell the other side's story with compassion and conviction, and both sides recognize that in some important respects both sides are wrong and both sides are right that we can hope to move to a real reconciliation of the heart.

All the fancy agreements and all the political maneuvering is secondary to developing an open-heartedness and generosity in both peoples to the legitimate needs of the other. We believe an important step in that process is for both sides to learn how to tell the other other side's narrative in a convincing and compassionate way. This has been done in part in Rabbi Michael Lerner’s book Healing Israel/Palestine, and in the works of various Israeli and Palestinian thinkers who are able to transcend their own community’s demand for proving that their side is the “righteous victim” and the other side is “the evil oppressor.”

We call upon the United States and other world powers to intervene with all their influence and economic power both to stop the cycle of violence and to achieve the creation of a demilitarized Palestinian state in all of the West Bank and Gaza (minus the most minimal border alterations), an end to the Occupation, and an end to acts of terror. We will support efforts to convince the United States to condition aid to Israel on the end of the Occupation. We call upon the peoples of the world to come to Israel and Palestine and actively interpose ourselves between the warring sides to provide protection to civilians on both sides. And we call for all parties to adopt the nonviolent philosophies and strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi.

Although we do not support any form of nationalism as an ultimate good, we understand why, in this historical moment, the Jewish people need a state of our own. With memories of the murder and genocide of our people still fresh and the perception that we would have been far less vulnerable had we had a state and an army—with the persistence of virulent anti-Semitism in the world today—the Jewish people cannot be asked to be the first to voluntarily eliminate the protections of the nation state. That’s why, at this point in time, the TIKKUN Community is supporting a two-state rather than a bi-national solution to the Israel-Palestinian crisis, even though some members of our community believe that such a bi-national state is the only way to achieve social justice for Palestinians.

After what Jews have been through, it is not reasonable to expect them to be the first to give up the protections of an armed state. On the other hand, we see nationalism as a perverting influence in Jewish life—and one that must be overcome. So we do hope Israel will become one of the first 20 percent of countries of the world to overcome the trappings of national chauvinism, militarism, and excessive focus on boundaries-—say, for example, after the United States, Russia, China, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, India, Pakistan, England, France, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Poland, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, and South Africa have pioneered that path by abolishing borders and accomplished full disarmament. Until then, the Jewish people have a right to their own state, which we hope will eventually move in the direction of confederation with Palestine and Jordan for economic and political cooperation.