These little stories are from an interesting article featuring good people who are making a difference. written by Harry Bellafante’s daughter, Ginnia, and. I thought little pieces of it might make good late night posts. A little bit of inspiration, perhaps, at the start of an open thread.
But talk about whatever you want!
In a year that made many of us want to give up, these unsung activists found a way to help others.
h/t hazmat
🌼
The Rabbis’ Rabbi
The war in Gaza has divided New York City’s Jewish community in a way that is nearly without precedent, in some cases rupturing friendships that have spanned decades. When rabbis find themselves needing guidance navigating tensions within their congregations, they turn to Jill Jacobs to lower the volume. Rabbi Jacobs runs T’ruah, an organization directed at advancing human rights in this country, in Israel and in the occupied territories.
“People are screaming at each other in slogans,” she said. Her job, as she sees it, “is to keep the human story front and center,” to connect rabbis to one another to share their wisdom as well as advise them. Rachel Timoner, senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, said Rabbi Jacobs “has given us language and clarity when we really needed it.”
“The moral truth that Jewish tradition calls us to — she will say it, regardless of popularity,” Rabbi Timoner added. “Her courage enables a large number of people to trust her voice. And she is fearless.”
From Six New Yorkers Who Made the City a Better, Cooler, Fairer Place in 2023. Written by Harry Bellafante’s daughter, Ginia Bellafante, who writes the Big City column, a weekly commentary on the politics, culture and life of New York City.
Open thread!
strange visitor (from another planet)
link?
eta- frist?
neat!
smike
@strange visitor (from another planet):
2th? Maybe?
HumboldtBlue
Ain’t no gas innit
Fair Economist
Netanyahu has created a worldwide mess.
Alison Rose
@Fair Economist: I think Hamas can share a bit of that blame.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
There’s an epidemic here in Greece that has nothing to do with diseases: damn near all the arguments I see, and many that I’ve been caught in myself, consist of people who are more interested in winning the argument than solving the underlying problem.
There seems to be a lot of that in Israeli and Palestinian and Israeli-Palestinian politics as well.
In other news, jet lag hits me so much harder on Day 3 than Day 2…
cain
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
Well said. It’s a problem for sure.
Chetan Murthy
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: It’s depressing to watch. I can see a future, sometime around when (if I’m lucky) I die of old age, where Israel’s fate is that of South Africa, and Jewish Israelis all flee for other places. And it didn’t have to be like this: Barak could have reached an equitable peace with Arafat — given back all the occupied territories including the settlements — and we’d be living in a different world.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Alison Rose:
Bibi allowed Hamas to build themselves into what they are now fighting.
Yes, Bibi created a worldwide mess.
strange visitor (from another planet)
… and a good chunk of IDF was in the west bank looming over the settler’s shoulders, intimidating the locals and providing the settlers impunity to instigate as a sop to bibi’s zealot allies instead of covering the southern borders.
…however i also read that IDF never prepped for a gaza strip bust-out and had no coordinated plan of response, which could ALSO be on netanyahu’s head because as the story goes, he was warned by egyptian intelligence before the attacks on the 7th that they were coming and they were going to be bad and did nothing.
Chetan Murthy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I read a tweet early in the I/P war: someone said something like “Hamas has convinced a sizable part of the West’s youth that rape, murder, mutliation, kidnapping, even of infants, are all legitimate acts of resistance”. Hamas didn’t do that singlehanded: they had a massive assist from Israel (and specifically Bibi, Likud, and the Israeli right-wing) who showed the world over a period of a quarter-century that all Israeli stood for is a boot stomping on a Palestinian face forever.
wjca
His inaction seems reminiscent of that of his soulmate TIFG on January 6, 2021.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Chetan Murthy:
The denial of a two state solution says it all. The hard right in Israel is not interested in a peaceful solution if it includes a Palestinian state. I have read and listened to enough settlers to know that they are willing to kill to take land that isn’t theirs.
Despite the hardliners in Israel I still support their country, but this government of theirs can go get fucked yesterday. I do not support it and I do not want our country to support this slaughter.
Chetan Murthy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I feel like it doesn’t actually matter what we think. What matters, is that the younger generation — the people who will run the world soon enough — are seeing with their eyes and what they see is that Israel is an oppressor. That’s all they see. I remember in the 80s when I was in grad school, there were divestment shanties on the Arts Quad (protesting South Africa), significant protests all over the country and the world. That’s happening now against Israel.
And the sad thing is, Israel is bringing all of this down on itself.
I once read a book titled _The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire_. It really impressed upon me that a country has to have a strategy for its foreign relations that looks out many decades, not just a few years. The UK had such a grand strategy: to keep Europe divided. Later, it had another: to support the US, to be the US’ best ally and friend. The US had one after WWII: rebuild Europe and Japan to be countries like us, and thereby build a world where our priorities and interests are shared widely.
Israel’s grand strategy (b/c of Bibi, Likud, Smotrich et al) seems to be to grab everything they can get. Which …. is a fine strategy if you’re a regional hegemon, but not if you rely critically on foreign military aid. I mean, maybe Israel could do everything it’s doing even without any military aid from the US and Europe. But I kinda doubt that they could do it long-term. Israel’s grand strategy should be to gain friends and allies everywhere, to convince the publics of the world that Israel is a great country and a force for good. So that they’ll always have supporters and allies. But instead, they’re convincing the publics of the world that they’re oppressors.
It’s awful to watch. Esp. this latest stuff about not letting Gazans return to North Gaza. I mean ….. the perfidy isn’t even *veiled*: it’s just completely blatant.
TBone
““The moral truth that Jewish tradition calls us to — she will say it, regardless of popularity,”… “Her courage enables a large number of people to trust her voice. And she is fearless.”
That, in my estimation, is the highest praise that can be bestowed on a human being. Fearless is what I want on my tombstone. I was born in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@TBone:
I looked up that quote and read the article. Thank you for that, good people are what we need more of in these times.
TBone
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I love the people that “do the work.” Kudos, Odie!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Chetan Murthy:
Oh I understand that this is going to shape the opinions of young people on Israel and it’s not going to be positive. What hits a discordant note for me is that the hardliners, like all Jewish people, want the horrors of the Holocaust to be remembered for eternity. Do these hardliners think that these horrors they are committing/supporting are going to just be forgotten?
I think they do and that’s why they commit them with impunity while the whole world watches. It’s almost like Bibi is happy that this happened right now and he’s finally able to unleash the IDF.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@TBone:
I liked the quote and I was curious as to the context. Thanks!
TBone
I need to do the work of learning how to put proper links here, but that is a job for another day (not the wee hours). She’s amazing:
Read Rabbi Jacobs’ recent op-eds in The Washington Post:
Oh, it worked this time!
Chetan Murthy
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Remember this?
I don’t think they worry about whether people will remember their crimes or not: they believe that they can act with impunity, writing and rewriting reality, and others will just be forced to submit. Thing is, if they were the US, they might almost (only almost) get away with it (narrator: “we didn’t get away with it either”). But Israel’s a small country surrounded by enemies, and it needs powerful allies and benefactors to survive. I fear that Bibi & Likud have forgotten that. Or maybe they think they can just unleash some nukes to keep the neighbohood in line.
They simply do not have “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind”.
TBone
@Chetan Murthy: I’m not too busy studying reality to fart in that guy’s general direction.
Geminid
@strange visitor (from another planet): The Israeli government would have been culpable for its lack of defense in the south even if the Egyptians had not warned them. Hamas’s capabilities were known. I think Israel’s leadership believed the fearsome air power they have employed since October 7 would deter Hamas, but they did not ask themselves, “What if Hamas chooses not to be deterred?”
If they had, they would not have left the areas around Gaza so weakly defended. They analysed the situation in terms of Hamas’s intentions and not their capabilities.
Geminid
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think Israel could prosecute this war without the help the U.S. is giving them. We have been airlifting and shipping munitions to them continuously since October 7, and that has enabled them to fight this offensive at the intense tempo we have seen.
Personally, I support President Biden’s basic approach to this conflict but I think we have to own our part in the destruction Israel is inflicting on Gaza and its civilians.
Donatellonerd
sorry, Water Girl, but the Gina Belafonte who is Harry Belafonte’s daughter is NOT the Ginia Bellanfante who writes for the FTFNYT. which of course does not detract from the interest of the article.
zhena gogolia
@Donatellonerd: right
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy:
That’s a rosy scenario–if it’s like South Africa I’d say the whole region got off easy.
WaterGirl
@Donatellonerd: @zhena gogolia: Dammit! I even googled to see if they were related. Fixed now. thank you.
wjca
This.
I’m old enough to remember the Six-Day War. When the opinion here was summarized by one commentator** as “Israel is so small, so democratic. And the Arab states are, to put it neuterally, Arab states.” So, back then, it was “Go, Israel! Go!”
But those who aren’t Baby Boomers don’t share that memory. Instead, they share memories of Israel as an oppressor — even before this latest fiasco. Israel once had a great image, but has relentlessly squandered it. And I suspect it will bite them sooner rather than later. Maybe not this time, maybe. But next time they are going to get burned.
** Art Hoppe A Guide for Neutral Thinkers. A riff off of the official US position to be “neutral in thought, word, and deed” — which, of course, we weren’t. (In the San Francisco Chronicle, but I don’t find a copy online.)
Paul in KY
@wjca: Or by Batshit McChimpy in pre-9/11 times.
Another Scott
@wjca:
SFGate.com seems to have his columns. (Scroll down).
I went through 10 (of ~ 45 pages) and didn’t see the one you mentioned.
Happy hunting!
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.