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Islamophobia Will Poison This Country

The U.S. media is once again presenting the vicious dehumanizing caricatures that make it easier to oppress and wage war on people.

Alex Skopic and Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, 07 February 2024

This article was adapted from an item in the Current Affairs Biweekly News Briefing. Subscribe today!

One of the most disturbing things about our society—we’re not alone in this—is how easily our culture slips quickly into promoting violent bigotry. Usually what happens is this: a tiny number of people who are members of a particular demographic group carry out some outrageous act, and then the group as a whole is stigmatized and made to be feared even though nearly everyone in the group had nothing to do with the outrageous act whatsoever.

After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, for instance, anti-Japanese bigotry exploded. The Democratic president, known for his compassionate social democratic politics, rounded up around 125,000 Japanese Americans, the vast majority of the population living on the U.S. mainland at the time, and put them into internment camps. The Japanese were treated as subhumans—even Dr. Seuss started drawing grotesque racist caricatures of them—and the U.S. military had no hesitation in vaporizing Japanese civilian populations. (“There are no civilians in Japan,” declared an Air Force intelligence officer, who deemed the entire population a “legitimate military target,” a view that is defended by some to this day.) As John Dower writes in War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War

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They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart—and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the “good German” in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies…. The racist code words and imagery that accompanied the war in Asia were often exceedingly graphic and contemptuous. The Western Allies, for example, consistently emphasized the “subhuman” nature of the Japanese, routinely turning to images of apes and vermin to convey this. With more tempered disdain, they portrayed the Japanese as inherently inferior men and women who had to be understood in terms of primitivism, childishness, and collective mental and emotional deficiency. Cartoonists, songwriters, filmmakers, war correspondents, and the mass media in general all seized on these images…. An endless stream of evidence ranging from atrocities to suicidal tactics could be cited…. to substantiate the belief that the Japanese were a uniquely contemptible and formidable foe who deserved no mercy and virtually demanded extermination.  

Japanese nationalists dehumanized their own enemies in the same way, of course, perpetuating myths of Japanese racial superiority. These kinds of stories about the big scary Other are ubiquitous in times of war. George Orwell observed in 1937 that “Every war is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.” Given this fact, Orwell said that our “essential job is to get people to recognize war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.” Looking back we can recognize it in the way Germans were portrayed during World War I—one infamous U.S. Army poster depicted Germany as an ape wielding a bloodstained club, with the caption “DESTROY THIS MAD BRUTE”—and in the treatment of Muslims after 9/11.

Khaled Beydoun, a scholar who studies Islamophobia around the world, spoke to Current Affairs last year about how the hatred and suspicion of Muslims spread along with the U.S. “war on terror.” He spoke, for instance, to a U.S. soldier who signed up to fight in Iraq because he believed he was going to fight a terrible enemy that had attacked the country. Instead, he found himself destroying a country whose people had never attacked the U.S. at all. Afterwards, he felt betrayed by his country, and Beydoun reflected on how effective propaganda can be:

“It’s really frightening how very good men, like the man I spoke to in the book, can be made into monsters with a scintilla of propaganda. When I sat across from this guy, he and I could be friends. We liked the same things. We live 10 miles away from one another. He was sort of an alpha male, and I say that in a benign way, where his objective was to just take care of his family and his community, and he had a love for his country. Those are beautiful things to be commended. But the way in which the media was disseminating this violent, vile information about Muslims—people like me, somebody who sat across him at the table—mobilized him to want to enlist in a war in a place that he had no knowledge of. He just knew that he wanted to defend his country and wanted vengeance, and that these Muslims, these Arabs, who were a world away, were the culprits of the 9/11 terror attacks…. [Afterward] he realized how the war had broken people like him, and how it told lies about people like me.”

By now, we have seen the same processes enough times to understand how they work, and we should be on our guard. We know that war drives people crazy. They see the body counts on their own side, and they want revenge, and empathy for the “other side” is in short supply. They see the enemy as monstrous and their own actions as purely defensive. They aren’t in the mood to make too many distinctions between civilians and soldiers on the other side.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 of last year, these familiar processes have consumed Israel completely. Even as Israel starves Gaza to death and blows thousands of children to pieces, the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis believe their government is either using the right amount of force or (!) not enough force. (The opinions of Arab Israelis are very different.) For these Israelis, the suffering of their own people is much more significant than the suffering of Palestinians.

That’s true in U.S. media, too. We know that Palestinian deaths are given a lot less weight than Israeli deaths in the American media, and even the liberal Washington Post ran (before deleting, under pressure) a nasty propaganda cartoon showing a swarthy Hamas terrorist strapping babies to his body. This past week, the major newspapers and TV networks hit a new low, with three especially egregious cases.

First was the Wall Street Journal, which ran an op-ed on February 2 calling Dearborn, Michigan, “America’s Jihad Capital.” Given the inflammatory title, you might think the author—one Steven Stalinsky—had uncovered evidence that some kind of political violence or “holy war,” as the word “jihad” is often interpreted in the West, was going on in Dearborn. But that’s not the case. Instead, Stalinsky spent 800 words clutching his pearls about the fact that—shockingly enough—some Muslims in Michigan don’t like Israel very much. The editorial is a masterpiece of dishonesty and Islamophobic fearmongering. It cherrypicks isolated expressions of anger, like when one imam said that Israel’s actions have filled his congregation with “fire in our hearts that will burn that state” and pretends they’re representative of the Michigan Muslim community as a whole, spinning them as evidence of “local enthusiasm for jihad.” It conflates simple political statements such as “America is a terrorist state”—which is straightforwardly true, if we apply the dictionary definition of “terrorism” consistently—with “open support for Hamas.” The Wall Street Journal has been on a roll lately, using the headline “Chicago Votes for Hamas” when that city called for a ceasefire in Gaza at the end of January. But Stalinsky’s rhetoric is irresponsible even by the Journal’s standards. The Detroit Free Press reports that, since the article was published, “swarms of online hate” have been directed toward Dearborn’s Muslim community, leading Mayor Abdullah Hammoud to ramp up security around mosques and other places of worship. (Not that more police will necessarily help, since U.S. law enforcement has a well-documented Islamophobia problem of its own.) All of this is a predictable consequence of publishing what amounts to a racist incitement, and any editor with even the slightest professional competence or ethics would have known better.

Meanwhile, a handful of whistleblowers at CNN have confirmed what was already fairly obvious: that the network has a systematic anti-Palestinian bias in its coverage. Summing up the testimonies of six anonymous staffers, The Guardian reports that CNN has “tight restrictions on quoting Hamas and reporting other Palestinian perspectives” at an institutional level, while “Israeli official statements are often quickly cleared and make it on air on the principle that they are to be trusted at face value, seemingly rubber-stamped for broadcast….” The principle of journalistic neutrality in reporting on a conflict, it seems, has been disregarded. In particular, CNN journalists say they’ve been instructed to include the words “Hamas-controlled” any time they cite statistics from the Gaza Ministry of Health, implicitly casting doubt on the legitimacy of civilian death tolls from the region, even though the Ministry’s figures have held up to scrutiny from numerous outside observers, including Israel itself. (Israel has sometimes even suggested that Israeli bombs have been flattening bakeries and apartment blocks without killing any innocent children at all.) They also report that memos have been circulated around the newsroom instructing them to always emphasize Hamas as the “cause of this current conflict,” ignoring the decades of Israeli occupation and violence in Palestine before October 7. At the same time, prominent anchors like Anderson Cooper have allowed current and former Israeli officials, like ex-Mossad leader Rami Igra, to say blatantly inflammatory things like “the non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip is really a nonexistent term” without pushback during interviews. At this point, unless dramatic changes are made, there’s little choice but to regard CNN’s Gaza coverage as ethically compromised and unreliable and to treat it accordingly.

Finally, in a column called “Understanding the Middle East Through the Animal Kingdom,” notorious New York Times writer and Iraq War booster Thomas Friedman has decided it’s a good idea to compare a variety of Muslim and Arab people to parasitic insects. The column is so breathtakingly racist, it seems like something out of a Victorian newspaper—but don’t take our word for it, read Friedman in his own words:

Iran is to geopolitics what a recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp is to nature. What does this parasitoid wasp do? According to Science Daily, the wasp “injects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.” Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host—Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq—and eat it from the inside out. We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle.

What can you even say to something like this? It’s well-known that comparing your political enemies to rats and insects is a dehumanizing tactic, just as it was in the lead-up to Japanese internment. Certainly Friedman, who was educated at Brandeis and the University of Oxford, knows it—and yet here he is, spewing this rhetoric anyway. The late Edward Said had him dead to rights in 1989, when he described Friedman’s writing as a “threadbare repertoire of often racist clichés.” Nothing has changed. If anything, the New York Times has gotten worse, seemingly not bothering to edit the excretions of its tenured staff whatsoever. Just like in Dearborn, there are real-world consequences to promoting this kind of imagery in the paper of record. Friedman’s argument that “setting fire to the whole jungle” is the only way to kill the Iranian “wasp” is an argument for unrestrained war in the Middle East, and unfortunately many political leaders still read the New York Times. 

History shows that dehumanization takes hold easily, and its effects are deadly. At its worst, it is the road to concentration camps, gas chambers, and mass executions. We have to always be on guard against it, especially during times when war is causing a suspension of people’s usual critical faculties. It’s disgusting, but not surprising, to see even liberal papers printing, without a second thought, analysis that treats Iranians as insects. But one of the crucial lessons that history offers is that societies don’t notice themselves heading into this kind of moral abyss. Only the victims do. But their cries can’t be heard because they’re treated as menacing oppressors. Islamophobia, like all forms of bigotry, is poison to the soul of this country and portends terrible consequences for Muslims around the world. We have to fight against it—and remember that it won’t be the last time.

At a megachurch Christmas Eve service outside Atlanta, a call for a ceasefire

On Christmas Eve, congregants gathered at the New Birth Missionary Baptist church for a service unlike any other: the church choir wore keffiyehs, Palestinians shared stories of the Nakba, and the pastor’s call was clear: a ceasefire in Gaza.

Editor’s Note: The following story first appeared in 285 South, a news publication centering the stories and perspectives of immigrant and refugee communities in metro Atlanta – the heart of the New South. Learn more and subscribe here.

On Christmas Eve morning, hundreds of congregants gathered at the New Birth Missionary Baptist church, which has been described as the largest land-owning Black church in America. 

The 10,000-member megachurch in Stonecrest, GA, about 20 miles due east of Atlanta, was lit with brightly colored spotlights, huge screens broadcasting the service, and booming music filled the space. 

Yesterday’s service though, was unlike any other. Images of the Palestinian flag were on the stage and on the screens. Church choir members wore keffiyehs. And the call from the pastor was clear: a ceasefire in Gaza. 

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“We cannot ignore that up to this moment, 20,000 lives have been senselessly killed in Palestine,” said senior pastor Jamal Bryant, opening up the service. “If Jesus were born today he would have been found under rubble…because of bombs that this nation paid for and provided.” 

Bryant said he had had conversations about “Christmas being canceled,” because of the war. 

He ended up taking New Birth on another route. “Today we are calling for  America, we are calling for the world to insist that a ceasefire take place immediately. That’s what we want for Christmas.”

His call echoes hundreds of black spiritual leaders across the country. 

Father George Makhoul, a Palestinian Christian, reads a passage from the Bible in Arabic. (Photo: Sophia Qureshi/285 South)
FATHER GEORGE MAKHOUL, A PALESTINIAN CHRISTIAN, READS A PASSAGE FROM THE BIBLE IN ARABIC. (PHOTO: SOPHIA QURESHI/285 SOUTH)

Among the attendees were a number of Palestinians, seated together. Bryant welcomed them, and congregants raised their hands in prayer. 

“I have family still in Gaza…I come from a long line of Christians in Gaza,” said Lydia El-Sayegh, to the crowd of congregants from the stage.

Father George Makhoul read scripture from the Bible in Arabic. Later, Reverend Fahed Abu-Akel gave congregants historical context of the conflict. “American television tells us that everything started October 7,” Abu-Akel said as he spoke about his memories of him and his family being expelled from their home in Palestine in 1948, when he was four years old. “When I see the kids in Gaza, I see myself, leaving my home.”

He was inspired, he said, by Martin Luther King as a child, from 10,000 miles away. “We want American Christians to know that Palestinian Christians are in existence in Gaza and all over Palestine.”

“Embarrasingly there has been a silence from the church. The Christian church has really not echoed and amplified its voice to this genocide that is happening in broad daylight,” said Bryant. But on this Christmas at this sprawling megachurch in Dekalb County, Georgia there was anything but silence.

Congregants at New Birth raise their hands in prayer at the Christmas Eve service. (Photo: Sophia Qureshi/285 South)
A dance performance at the Christmas Eve service at New Birth. (Photo: Sophia Qureshi/285 South)

Sophia Qureshi
Sophia Qureshi is the founder and editor of 285 South, the first news publication dedicated solely to reporting on Metro Atlanta’s fast growing and diverse communities. Before launching 285 South, she worked for over 15 years in media and communications, including at Al Jazeera Media Network, The Center for Public Integrity, the United Nations Development Programme, CNN, and South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT).


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With your support, we will continue covering the ongoing events in Gaza and across Palestine, as well as amplifying the Palestine movement worldwide. Together, we will make sure to keep reporting Palestinian stories, even when the rest of the world looks away.

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Faith Leaders Oppose F-35 Fighter Jets

Find inspiration and hope reading this full-page ad from the July 29 Wisconsin State Journal.

In an expression of moral solidarity, 39 leaders of local faith organizations clearly state why they oppose bringing F-35 Striker Force jets to our county and our country. Calling on our Senators to stop supporting these deadly war machines, these leaders call on us to demand state and federal officials oppose their deployment and find a new mission for the Wisconsin National Guard at Truax “more in keeping with the humane values of peace, equity, sustainability and concern for the health and security of our community.”

What you can do:

  • “Tell Leader Pelosi: NO COVID-19 relief money for weapons of war!” on Win Without War’s Action page.
  • Contact your House and Senate members and tell them to reject the Pentagon giveaways in COVID-19 relief.

Text of Wisconsin State Journal Ad, 29 July 2020 (PDF of scan):

We, the undersigned faith leaders, wish to publicly raise our voices in opposition to the basing of an F-35A Joint Strike Fighter Force in the Madison community. For a number of reasons, we find this deployment morally offensive and feel compelled to speak out against it.

First, the F-35 is not just the most expensive weapons system in the history of our planet. It is also a critical component of our country’s new nuclear strategy. This plane is sometimes called the most dangerous weapon in the nuclear arsenal of the United States because it is designed to carry the B61-12 guided nuclear bomb, a bomb small enough to be considered “usable” in the minds of some war planners.

Starting with Barack Obama and continuing with Donald Trump, the horrifying idea of a “winnable” nuclear war has been revived as official policy and the F-35 is at the heart of this nightmare notion. Defense analyst Pierre Sprey has pointed out that the F-35 was mentioned eight times in the Nuclear Posture Review released by President Trump and the Department of Defense in 2018.

(See Nuclear Posture Review, Office of the Secretary of Defense, February 2018)

The Air Force has assured us that the jets coming to Madison will not be equipped with nuclear weapons. Pierre Sprey, who helped design two previous jet fighters, said that, while no F-35s are currently equipped for nuclear bombs, all of them could be in the future. One year ago, Sprey addressed the state legislature in Vermont, where residents were also assured that their airbase would have no nuclear mission. The F-35 “will be the first weapons system deployed with this whole new emphasis placed on small nuclear weapons,” he told the legislators. “The F-35 is the opening wedge for the small nuclear warhead and the supposed ability to fight a small nuclear war, and that will be coming here.”

(See Public Testimony by Pierre Sprey, Vermont Senate Government Committee Hearing, May 7, 2018 and Vermont Senate Resolution 5 adopted by Vermont Senate, May 23, 2018)

We find the F-35 to be a morally offensive weapon system not just because it threatens the planet and its people but also because it claims funds desperately needed to address urgent human and environmental needs. As Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis of the Poor People’s Campaign and Stephen Miles of Win Without War wrote recently, “funneling trillions of dollars into institutions designed to violently protect the status quo – be they police or military – does not make ourselves, our loved ones, or our communities safer. As cities and states face budget crises, education and healthcare find themselves on the chopping block while police budgets are protected and even increased. This makes us less, not more secure.

“As demands to demilitarize the police and redistribute funds to programs of social uplift gain traction across the country,” they continued, “we call to similarly reimagine our approach to national security. To create real security, we must slash the Pentagon budget, dismantle the war economy, and invest instead in meeting everyone’s basic human needs.”

We also oppose this project because it will have a disproportionately negative impact on low- income people, people of color, and children, groups whose well-being is one of the highest priorities of our faith communities. The Air Force itself made this clear in its final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).  It admitted F-35s will bring more air and noise pollution to parts of the north and east sides of Madison which are home to significant populations of poor people and people of color.

Low-income residents and people of color have long fished in Starkweather Creek and Lake Monona, some for subsistence. Their children play in the creek, now one of the most polluted bodies of water in Wisconsin. Their health is at risk because the creek, the groundwater (and some of our drinking water) has been contaminated with Per and Polyfluoroalky substances (PFAS) and other toxins related to Truax Field.

We are also concerned about the noise the F-35s will bring. There has been much debate about the severity of this noise, but two things are clear: the noise from the current F-16s is nearly intolerable now for those who live under the flight path. The noise from the F-35s is likely to be considerably worse.

There is a growing body of evidence, including that cited by the Air Force EIS reports for Vermont and Madison, that the negative impact of noise on children is far greater than on other people. Heightened noise interruptions for children – in school, on the playground or at home – can lead to delayed speech development, reduced attention, and impaired concentration. It can also cause long-term memory problems and decreased math and reading comprehension.

(See Dr. Elizabeth Neary, pediatrician, “If We Care About Children, We Should Oppose F-35s in Madison, guest column, Capital Times, October 31, 2019; Public Health Madison & Dane County, Noise Exposure: Health Effects & Equity, flyer, September, 2019; and Anne Tigan, RN, Letter to School Board & Brief Bibliography, September 22, 2019)

There are approximately a dozen K-12 schools and 15 childcare centers in the vicinity of Truax Field, where the sound will be the greatest. According to a 2018 neighborhood study by the City of Madison, kids in the Truax area are struggling even before they start school, with only 48 percent considered “kindergarten ready.”

(See Neighborhood Indicators Project, City of Madison Planning Division, 2018 Edition)

One of the schools destined to suffer the worst noise impacts is Hawthorne Elementary, where most children are low-income and of color. In a city struggling to overcome persistent racial disparities, flying an obnoxiously noisy fighter jet over our elementary schools more often is likely to intensify these disparities.

Some people say the sound of fighter jets is “the sound of freedom.” But in fact, for children in the area around Truax, the sound of fighter jets is a horrific noise signifying a threat to health and a barrier to learning; and for children in countries that the U.S. bombs or countries that are bombed by their own governments with jets and bombs provided by the U.S., the sound of fighter jets is the sound of danger, oppression, fear and death. To many people who care about peace, justice and the health of our planet, the sound of a fighter jet is a sickening sound.

Finally, we oppose the F-35 for ecological reasons. The U.S. military is the world’s worst polluter. In 2014, a Pentagon official reported that her environmental program office had to contend with 39,000 contaminated areas spread across 19 million acres in the United States alone. Almost 900 of nearly 1,200 Superfund sites in the U.S. are abandoned military facilities or sites that support military needs, not counting military bases themselves. The Pentagon has stated that 651 military sites are contaminated with toxic PFAS substances.

(See Whitney Webb, U.S. Military is World’s Biggest Polluter, MintPress News, May 15, 2017 and Pentagon Report 250, New Sites Are Contaminated with PFAS, Military Poisons website, March 19, 2020)

The Air Force and Air National Guard at Truax have been polluting the water and soil in our area for a half-century or more. When the Air Force proposed a major demolition and construction project for Truax Field in early 2019, the EPA instructed the Air Force to describe how the proposed project might affect water bodies listed as “impaired” by the Wisconsin DNR, and to document the presence of what it called “legacy pollution” (PFAS and other chemicals), and how it proposed to address these problems. The agency also recommended that the Air Force “ensure that the project would not have disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority and/or low-income populations.”

(See Environmental Assessment for Construction and Demolition Projects at the 115th Fighter Wing Installation, Dane County Regional Airport, Madison, Wisconsin, March 1, 2019 and Letter from Kenneth A. Westlake, Chief NEPA Implementation Section, Environmental Protection Agency)

The Air Force quietly completed its environmental assessment (EA) process and basically ignored all these issues.

So far, the military has refused to clean up the messes it has made. The Department of Defense does not accept responsibility for its destructive environmental behavior and the Air Force has even been claiming in federal courts that “federal sovereign immunity” allows it to disregard any state’s regulations pertaining to PFAS contamination. The refusal of the military to clean up the environmental messes it makes is understandable, since its mission is not environmental stewardship but the expansion and protection of U.S. domination, often pursued through violence and war.

In closing, we believe it is worth pointing out that our last two concerns, our concern for the most vulnerable among us and our concern for the environment,  are deeply intertwined, since the people who most often bear the brunt of  environmental destruction and deterioration are the poor and people of color. This has been the case for so long there is now a term for it: environmental justice. When the Air Force proposed a major demolition and construction project for Truax Field in early 2019, the U.S. EPA advised the Air Force that “communities with environmental justice (EJ) concerns are located near Truax Field.”

With all these concerns in mind, we call on U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin to reverse her position on the deployment of the F-35 at Truax and to oppose the Air Force’s plans to station the F-35s in Madison. Likewise, we call on Congressman Mark Pocan, Governor Tony Evers, and Wisconsin Adjutant General Paul Knapp to inform the Air Force that they oppose this project.

We ask the citizens of Madison to contact these public officials, urging them to oppose the deployment of the F-35 at Truax Field and to advocate with the Wisconsin Air National Guard that Truax Field be assigned a new mission more in keeping with the humane values of peace, equity, sustainability and concern for the health and security of our neighbors and neighborhoods.

Yours in Peace,

Rev. Scott Anderson, pastor, Presbyterian Church (USA)
Annie Bachman, Madison Tao Shiatsu Center
Rev. Mary Kay Baum, pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)
Rev. Ann Beaty, pastor, First Congregational United Church of Christ
Rev. Peter Beeson, lead pastor, St. John’s Lutheran, ELCA
Vicki Berenson, Society of Friends (Quakers)
Rabbi Jonathan Biatch, Temple Beth-El, Reform Judaism
Rev. Winton Boyd, pastor, United Church of Christ (UCC)
Timothy Cordon, First Unitarian Society Social Justice Ministry
Rev. Cindy Crane, pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Dr. Jerry Folk, pastor, ELCA, Interfaith Peace Working Group
Rabbi Betsy Forester, Beth Israel Center
Rev. Kristin Gorton, pastor, Memorial United Church of Christ
Rev. Phil Haslanger, pastor, United Church of Christ
Rev. Eldonna Hazen, pastor, First Congregational Church, UCC
Rev. John Helt, pastor, United Church of Christ
Rev. Sonja lngebritson, Community of Hope UCC
Jane H and Vince Kavaloski, Society of Friends (Quakers)
Linda Ketcham, United Church of Christ
Dr. Paul Knitter, Emeritus Prof. of Theology and Religion, Union Theological Seminary, New York
Dr. John Leonard, PhD, Professor of Religious Studies, Edgewood College
Rev. Lex Liberatore, pastor, Lake Edge United Church of Christ
Rev. Thomas F. Loftus, pastor, ELCA
Rabbi Bonnie Margulis, Executive Director, Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice
Sr. Maureen McDonnell, O.P., Interfaith Peace Working Group
Sr. Reg McKillip, O.P, Peace and Justice Promoter, Sinsinawa Dominicans
Fr. Jim Murphy, pastor, Roman Catholic Church
Rev. Kenneth Pennings, Associate Pastor, Orchard Ridge UCC
Dr. Carmen Porco, pastor, American Baptist Church
Carl Rasmussen and Catherine Crow Rasmussen, United Church of Christ
Rev. Franz Rigert, Conference Minister, Wisconsin Conference, UCC
Rev. Dr. Larry Sexe, pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America;President, Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice
Rev. Valerie Showalter, pastor, Mennonite Church, USA
Rev, Bryan Sirchio, pastor, United Church of Christ
The Sisters at Holy Wisdom Monastery
Rev. Frederick R. Trost, pastor, UCC, Interfaith Peace Working Group
Rev. Nick Utphall, pastor, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, Congregation Shaarei Shamayim

Sponsored by Interfaith Peace Working Group

Barbara Olson and Tsela Barr: Congress needs to stand against Israeli travel bans


In this July 15, 2019, file photo, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, right, speaks, as U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., listens, during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. (J. Scott Applewhite)

TSELA BARR AND BARB OLSON, The Cap Times, August 23, 2019

Last week, the Israeli government took the unprecedented step of denying two sitting members of the U.S. Congress, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, entry to Israel.

Their crime was to set up their own independent fact-finding trip to visit Palestine rather than participate in the scripted, AIPAC-sponsored free trip to Israel that most Congress members participate in.

They couldn’t be allowed to meet with Israeli or Palestinian peace activists, or visit places like heavily occupied Hebron that aren’t on the itinerary of the AIPAC junket.

Tlaib and Omar had to be kept out because they had the gall to criticize Israel and express support for the non-violent South Africa-inspired Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement seeking justice and human rights for Palestinians.

This may be outrageous, but it is hardly surprising. Israel has been denying entry to Palestinians since they began expelling them in 1948. The discrimination and harassment experienced by Palestinian, Arab and/or Muslim travelers seeking to enter Israel, or just pass through it to visit the illegally occupied Palestinian territories, is well-known. Recently they have also kept out Jewish Americans who support BDS and champion Palestinian human rights.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration revoked the visa of Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court; denied a visa to Palestinian diplomat Hanan Ashrawi; and prevented Palestinian civil society activist Omar Barghouti from traveling to the U.S. for his daughter’s wedding.

It is also not surprising that Trump, no friend of human rights anywhere, seeks to score political points with his base by continuing his racist and Islamophobic attacks on Omar and Tlaib, as well as fellow Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Presley.

But alarm bells should ring out when a U.S. president openly collaborates with the government of a foreign country to which Congress generously provides some $5 billion per year in U.S. tax money in order to stop members of that same Congress from seeing the reality on the ground there.

Many members of Congress are speaking out against the Trump/Netanyahu action. One of these is our own Rep. Mark Pocan, who tweeted “Prime Minister Netanyahu is wrong to deny @RepRashida & @Ilhan entry into Israel. The U.S. is Israel’s strongest ally & has provided billions in support. PM Netanyahu must reverse this decision & no member of Congress should visit Israel until all members of Congress are welcome. “

One who has yet to speak out is Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Baldwin is a co-sponsor of Senate Resolution 120 that slanders the BDS movement, implies that it is anti-Semitic, and condemns this legally protected exercise of First Amendment rights.

Even Sen. Ron Johnson has yet to co-sponsor this bill.

Unlike earlier bills that would have imposed draconian legal and financial penalties for those who support BDS and which are being thrown out by the courts, this resolution has no “teeth.” Yet clearly it provides fertile ground for what just happened to Omar and Tlaib, and what will happen to others with far less ability to fight back.

More than ever, Baldwin needs to withdraw her support of this anti-democratic resolution.

It is long past time for Israel to change its racist and exclusionary policies towards Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims. The Palestinian people, like people everywhere, including members of the U.S. Congress, should have the freedom to visit their families (as Tlaib hoped to do in the occupied West Bank), to see the impact on the ground of U.S. policies, and to take action for justice and human rights.

Tsela Barr is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Madison. Barb Olson is a member of the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project.

Share your opinion on this topic by sending a letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

Rise against Racism! #CounterCUFI

Friends of Sabeel – North America (FOSNA)

For too long, Palestinians have been calling for freedom, justice, and equality. As organizations that share these values, we urge you to join us in confronting Christians United for Israel (CUFI).

CUFI has quietly become the largest organization in the United States driving support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. With over five million members, CUFI uses its political leverage to ensure ongoing U.S. support for Israel’s colonization and military occupation of Palestine, including imprisoning Palestinian children; bombing homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza; massacring peaceful protestors; and confiscating Palestinian land.

By its own admission, CUFI “led the charge to have the U.S. recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital,” and it continues to push for unconstitutional anti-BDS legislation and illegal settlement expansion.

CUFI is a Christian Zionist organization: Its ideology and politics are deeply entrenched in white nationalism, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Semitism, and other systems of oppression. In spite of its strong political influence on the Hill, CUFI has operated largely under the radar and received little attention in comparison with groups like AIPAC.

Until now. This is the moment to act: This July, many of your Congressional representatives will be attending CUFI’s annual summit as invited guests. We cannot allow CUFI’s influence to go unchallenged. Come to Washington, D.C. on July 7 and 8 to tell the world to #CounterCUFI!

It will take each and every one of us to rise against racism, to reclaim and protect our communities, and to uphold the liberation of all people in the vision of justice, equality, and freedom.

Signed,
Friends of Sabeel North America
Jewish Voice for Peace
American Muslims for Palestine
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
Madison-Rafah Sister City Project

We will be congregating in Washington, D.C. on July 7 and 8 to challenge Christian Zionism and express our solidarity for the Palestinian people. Join us in person in D.C. by registering here and help make the action possible by donating here.

Will Christchurch be our wakeup call??

Many of those killed in the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque attack were, in fact, Palestinians. Rifat Audeh is a Palestinian-Canadian who participated in the Freedom Flotilla when the activists on the Mavi Marmara were murdered; he later produced a documentary about that experience: The Truth: LOST AT SEA.

Rifat Audeh, Scoop Media, 19 March 2019

Yesterday I met my cousin, although he was killed in cold blood a few days ago, at the Christchurch terror attack in New Zealand. I “met” him upon visiting his aunt’s house and learnt much more about this ambitious 33-year-old whose life was cut so short.

While my cousin Atta Elayyan lived in Kuwait and later New Zealand, I was living in Jordan and North America, and we never crossed paths. During my visit, I heard about how kind and supportive he was to his family, how intelligent and ambitious he was as a tech entrepreneur establishing his own company, and how energetic and athletic he was as a member of New Zealand’s national futsal team. His father, Mohammed Elayyan, who founded the Alnoor Mosque in Christchurch, was also injured in the shooting. I struggled to hold back my tears as I saw a video of Atta’s father speaking from his hospital bed about Islam being a religion of love and the need to love one another. Mohammed had spearheaded efforts to assist the local community during the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake, providing food and shelter in the mosque to many.

These past couple of days, I’ve been reading news items addressing this terror attack, including reports analysing how the media disproportionately blames terror attacks globally on Muslims. This propaganda is effectively brainwashing many, and increasing hate and distrust between people. Yet these reports fall short not only in their scope of what they cover but also what they fail to mention. The reports and news items mostly discuss individual terror attacks like the one committed in Christchurch. Yet in many instances they fail to mention several important points.

First, Muslims have been the biggest victims of such attacks globally. One such contrast I remember includes the January 2015 terror attacks in France, which killed 10-20 people. This was followed by a global outcry with dozens of world officials gathering in France and leading a massive march in Paris in protest. Yet in July 2016, a single terrorist attack killed close to 400 people, mostly Muslims, in Baghdad’s Karrada district. For the most part, this barely made a blip on the radar of media globally, with the victims dying silently, since this was once again just one terror attack among hundreds of others against Muslims.

Second, the fact is that many terrorist groups in the world today including ISIS, who have killed so many Muslims as they did in the aforementioned attack, have been created and supported by Western intelligence agencies. Ironically, even the name given to such groups i.e. “Islamic State of…” further divides East and West, giving non-Muslims the illusion that this is being done under the name of Islam itself or with the somehow implicit consent of Muslims.

Third, and perhaps most significantly of all, is the terror perpetrated by various Western governments – notably the USA- and their client puppet states, which continue to kill millions of people globally and throughout history. When looking at individual terrorist attacks like those committed by white supremacists in Christchurch, we must not forget that the wars and oppression waged on places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Palestine and elsewhere, are the epitome and manifestation of terror, practiced against civilian populations. We must never be naïve enough to accept the actions of governments when they attempt to shroud the massacres, wars and terror they perpetrate and perpetuate in a false cloak of legitimacy.

And yet, despite all of this and despite the millions of Muslims who continue to be killed by mostly white Christian men in positions of power, the vast majority of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims do not hate the West or people from other religions. This sentiment manifested itself clearly when one of the first victims to be killed at the Alnoor mosque greeted the terrorist coming to kill him with words of love saying “Hello brother”.

The attack has backfired on this white supremacist, and the love shown towards the Muslim community has exemplified his failure. My cousin leaves behind his wife and two-year-old daughter. Hopefully, if we all work together hard enough, she can grow up in a world better than ours.

Rifat Audeh is a lifelong human rights activist and award-winning filmmaker. His writings have appeared in various media outlets and he has a Masters degree in Media and Journalism.

October 7, 2018
Demystifying Muslims and Islam

Demystifying Muslim and Islam

October 7
UW-Madison Union South
1308 West Dayton St
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

    Door opens at 1:00 PM
    1:30 PM: Welcome Remarks by Masood Akhtar, Founder, We Are Many – United Against Hate
    1:40 PM: National News Coverage, Muslim Father Forgives Son’s Murderer
    1:45 PM: “Demystifying Muslims and Islam” by Dalia Mogahed, Director of Research, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding
    2:15 PM: Q&A

Organizers
Muslim Women United for Peace
We are Many – United Against Hate

Sep 27-28: Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) National Conference

You are invited to FOSNA’s national meeting in Minneapolis: Prophetic Action. This event is on track to be one of the largest ecumenical gatherings of Christian leaders and activists for Palestinian rights. Participants will discuss liberative theologies across faiths, celebrate growing church wins, and reflect on the impact of their activism!

Along with keynote speaker, Reverend Traci Blackmon, participants will hear from other faith leaders and Palestinian organizers throughout the convening, including Reverend Jim Bear Jacobs from the Racial Justice at Minnesota Council of Churches, Lara Kiswani from the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Omar Haramy from Sabeel Jerusalem, and Sandra Tamari from the Adalah Justice Project. Schedule and full program, including link to register.

July 26, 2018
Palestine and Us: Grassroots Mobilization with Rev. Graylan Hagler

ONLINE from The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
12 noon – 1 pm Central

Pastor and activist Rev. Graylan Hagler will highlight the intersections between the Palestinian cause and other contemporary social movements. His work has focused on Black liberation, economic justice, community organizing, and mobilizing faith communities.

Watch the event live online.

Biography of Speaker
Rev. Graylan Hagler, an African-American pastor and activist, was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. Hagler received a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion from Oberlin College, Ohio, in 1976. Rev. Hagler is presently the Senior Minister of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, D.C., and the Immediate Past National President of Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice (MRSEJ). Rev. Hagler is a long-time social justice advocate and active in the Palestine solidarity movement. He recently returned from an all-Black delegation trip to Palestine consisting of Hip Hop and Spoken Word artists as well as an activist in the labor movement, and academic on Black Liberation and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide.

July 24, 2018
Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb on “Hope in the Shadow of the Wall”

Tuesday, July 24 at 7 PM – 9 PM
First Unitarian Society of Madison
900 University Bay Dr, Madison, Wisconsin

Join us for a special presentation by Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb, “Hope in the Shadow of the Wall” at First Unitarian Society of Madison. July 24, 7pm. Free and open to the public.

Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb
Rev. Dr. Raheb is President of Bright Stars of Bethlehem and founding President of Dar al-Kalima University of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem. Former Senior Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and the most widely published Palestinian theologian to date, Dr. Raheb is the author of 17 books most recently including, The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine, and Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes. A civic leader and social entrepreneur, Dr. Raheb has founded numerous organizations and serves on many regional and international boards.

A sought-after speaker, Dr. Raheb has been widely featured on international media outlets including CBS, CNN, ABC, BBC, PBS, The Economist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsweek, and 60 minutes. Dr. Raheb holds a Doctorate in Theology from Philipps University of Marburg, Germany.

SPONSORED BY: First Unitarian Society, Shaarei Shamayim Jewish Synagogue, Lake Edge Lutheran Church, Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church, and Bright Stars of Bethlehem Madison Area Representatives.

July 25, 2018
Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb and Pastor Everett Mitchell

Wednesday, July 25 at 7 PM – 9 PM
Christ The Solid Rock Baptist Church
1502 Parkside Dr, Madison, Wisconsin

Pastor Mitchell of Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church will present with Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb on “The Black Church and Palestinian Theologies: Intersections of Faith in the Face of Empire”.

Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb
Rev. Dr. Raheb is President of Bright Stars of Bethlehem and founding President of Dar al-Kalima University of Arts and Culture in Bethlehem. Former Senior Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and the most widely published Palestinian theologian to date, Dr. Raheb is the author of 17 books most recently including, The Cross in Contexts: Suffering and Redemption in Palestine, and Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes. A civic leader and social entrepreneur, Dr. Raheb has founded numerous organizations and serves on many regional and international boards.

A sought-after speaker, Dr. Raheb has been widely featured on international media outlets including CBS, CNN, ABC, BBC, PBS, The Economist, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Newsweek, and 60 minutes. Dr. Raheb holds a Doctorate in Theology from Philipps University of Marburg, Germany.

Pastor Everett Mitchell
Reverend Mitchell is the Senior Pastor of Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church in Madison, WI. He is also currently the Director of Community Relations for the University of Wisconsin Madison. He was formerly an Assistant District Attorney in Dane County Wisconsin. In the past, he served as the Associate Director of Madison-area Urban Ministry. Rev. Mitchell’s theological focus has been examining the relationship of the church to social issues, such as poverty, war, incarceration and immigration. He holds both a Masters of Divinity (M.Div.) in Christian Ethics and a Masters of Theology (Th.M.) in Social Ethics from Princeton Theological Seminary.

SPONSORED BY: First Unitarian Society, Shaarei Shamayim Jewish Synagogue, Lake Edge Lutheran Church, Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church, and Bright Stars of Bethlehem Madison Area Representatives.

Supreme Court Upholds Muslim Ban

Statement from AAI Executive Director Maya Berry on the Supreme Court’s decision in Trump v. Hawai’i, June 26, 2018

Washington, DC — Today, Arab American Institute Executive Director Maya Berry released the following statement in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Muslim Ban case:

“Along ideological lines, the Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s xenophobic Muslim Ban that discriminates against individuals predominantly because of their Muslim faith or national origin. A vast majority of those impacted by the ban are Muslim, with four Arab countries included in those singled out. This policy is not rationally related to national security interests and will continue to tear families apart while undermining America’s standing in the world.

The Muslim Ban was implemented among an unprecedented amount of evidence of a policy enacted to codify the religious animus of the Trump administration. As a candidate for the presidency, Donald Trump stated, “I think Islam hates us… we can’t allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States…” He called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” Once in office, President Trump added security concerns as a mere pretext for bigotry, noting that “People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can’t use the word Muslim… I’m talking territory instead of Muslim. The majority’s unwillingness to recognize this reality renders those justices complicit in the damage this policy will continue to inflict on immigrant communities in this country.

President Trump justified his Muslim Ban by stating that Roosevelt “did the same thing” regarding the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. As the dissent notes, this holding will echo Korematsu v. United States as a standard of judicial injustice history will not soon forget. Justice Sotomayor wrote, “the Court redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one “gravely wrong” decision with another.” The U.S. Government formally apologized for the injustice of interning Japanese Americans 46 year after that horrific episode. Arab American and American Muslim communities should not be victimized by a repetition of history, subjected to discrimination without apology or consequence while the Government slowly finds its moral compass.

Instead of neutral arbiters upholding fundamental rights, today’s decision seems to have been reached by politicians in robes. The majority bought President Trump’s bigotry hook, line, and sinker. This decision undermines both the world’s confidence in America, and America’s confidence in our highest court.

With this ruling, the majority has given a blank check to President Trump and future presidents to discriminate simply by claiming national security justifications. Today we need Congress, as a coequal branch of government, to act to affirm the equal dignity of all, regardless of religion or national origin. In spite of this decision, AAI will continue work tirelessly with both the legislative and judicial branches toward the goal of ensuring that all Americans, as well as guests in our country, are free from government-sponsored discrimination.”

Founded in 1985, the Arab American Institute (AAI) is a nonprofit organization committed to the civic and political empowerment of Americans of Arab descent. AAI provides policy, research and public affairs services to support a broad range of community activities. For more information please visit aaiusa.org.

RE/MAX Israel Sells Properties in Illegal Israeli Settlements

CODEPINK, June 16, 2016

This weekend is the Presbyterian Church’s biannual General Assembly. Among the many social justice issues they will address is a resolution calling on real estate giant RE/MAX to stop facilitating property sales in illegal Israeli settlements.

In 2016, right before the last Presbyterian Church General Assembly, RE/MAX founder and then-CEO Dave Liniger announced that the company would stop receiving revenues from settlement properties. But they continue to allow their Israeli franchise to rent and sell settlement houses, and they continue to include settlement properties in their global database. With your help, this time we will succeed in getting RE/MAX to fully extricate themselves from Israel’s settlement enterprise. Add your name to the letter we are sending to current CEO Adam Contos at this year’s General Assembly!

There is no question about the illegality of Israeli settlements. They violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, which says that an occupying power may not move its people onto the land it is occupying. Numerous UN resolutions have been passed calling for Israel to stop settlement construction. Numerous reports from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and others have been published citing the direct role settlements play in human rights abuses against Palestinians and calling on companies like RE/MAX to immediately cease all settlement business.

We have been protesting RE/MAX’s involvement in Israeli crimes since 2014. We have held rallies outside RE/MAX offices and at the RE/MAX, LLC headquarters in Denver. We have disrupted RE/MAX conventions and shareholder meetings. We know we are close to a win. Now, it is time for the final push. Join our letter to RE/MAX, LLC telling them to immediately remove settlement listings from their global database and end all complicity in Jewish-only Israeli settlements.

Towards freedom and equality in Palestine,
Ariel and everyone at CODEPINK
 

Standing with my Muslim neighbors in the wake of Jerusalem and Gaza

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman, The Cap Times, May 17, 2018


Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks at the opening ceremony of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem on Monday, May 14, 2018, left, and on the same day, Palestinians in Gaza City carry the body of Mousab Abu Leila, who was killed during a protest at the border of Israel and Gaza. Netanyahu praised the inauguration of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem as a “great day for peace,” as dozens of Palestinians have been killed in Gaza amidst ongoing clashes. (AP Photo)

As I watched the glitz and glamour of the celebration marking President Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, I was filled with shame. The backdrop of Israeli and American flags emblazoned with “Thank You President Trump” smacked of self-righteousness and complacency. One political leader after another emphasized his or her unwavering support for Israel without regard for Palestinian rights or sovereignty. Two evangelical pastors invited to bless the celebration had long public records of vilifying Muslims and Jews, among many others. As a rabbi I felt deeply shaken; this spectacle was a violation of everything I believe in.

As I watched, scenes of the Israeli military firing live ammunition on protesters in Gaza flashed across my screen. On this one day, May 14, the military killed 58 Palestinians and injured thousands. The excessive and lethal force against protesters who posed no imminent threat to Israeli soldiers or civilians was chilling. Palestinian leaders explained why they were protesting in the Great March of Return: Israel’s military siege was strangling their economy, making every aspect of their lives intolerable. They wanted the world to know that 70 years ago their people became refugees as Jews, many of them refugees themselves, established the state of Israel.

While most American Jewish organizations rejoiced at the Embassy move and defended the killings in Gaza, I sensed that many American Jews were not so sure. After all, we overwhelmingly distrust President Trump and oppose every move of his presidency, from the Muslim ban to anti-immigrant legislation to support for the NRA to stripping the poor of what’s left of a meager safety net. That he panders to antisemitic white supremacist groups and aligns himself with the Christian right’s anti-woman platform only fuels our disgust.

We recognize that Jerusalem is a city of many faiths, filled with religious sites that are sacred to Jews, Muslims, and Christians. By moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, the United States and Israel have destroyed Palestinian aspirations that it could be the shared capital of both peoples, and Trump has sent a clear message: He is opposed to brokering a just and viable Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.

To fully appreciate why Palestinians are protesting in Gaza, we must try to comprehend the humanitarian disaster on this tiny strip of land that is home to 2 million Palestinians. Gaza is an open-air prison. Israel controls its borders, allowing very few people or goods in or out. As the unemployment rate soars over 40 percent, despair runs deep. Three wars have pounded the Strip to dust, destroying its basic infrastructure. Now, most people enjoy just a few hours of electricity a day. Hospitals are gravely short on medications and supplies. Most Palestinians do not have access to clean drinking water. In just two years, according to the United Nations, their one source of water will be depleted.

Our leaders refuse to listen. Instead, they celebrate the Embassy’s move to Jerusalem and defend Israel’s disproportionate response in Gaza. But we must recognize this for the hubris it is. As the Hebrew Bible teaches, “Do not stand idly by while your neighbor’s blood is shed.”

As the holy month of Ramadan begins for my Muslim neighbors and friends, please know that many Jews stand with you. We refuse to be silent in the wake of the Embassy move and Gaza killings. We hold the Israeli government responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. We embrace a vision of a shared Jerusalem as we honor your religious traditions.

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman is rabbi with Congregation Shaarei Shamayim in Madison.