Here is Michael Lerner, on why Obama’s Israel straddle is going to give him a political hernia:
In recent days, we at Tikkun magazine have had hundreds of emails
from young Jews distraught at the television images of tens of
thousands of Palestinians breaking out of the prison camp that Gaza has
become, desperate for food, fuel and other goods that have been denied
entry into Gaza by the Israeli army. A new generation of young Jews no
longer blindly adopts the strategy of domination or salutes to the
policies of the current government of Israel. It is these Jews who are
the future, but they do not yet control the institutions of Jewish
life. They understand that Israel will be far more secure if it adopts
a strategy of generosity, and stops trying to show how “tough” it
really is, but they also despair about Israel ever “getting it” in time
to save itself from policies that further inflame hatred against it by
human-rights respecting people around the world. [Emphasis Weiss’s] No matter how much
these young Jews may agree that Palestinian acts of terror or Hamas
shelling of Sderot are also ugly and morally inexcusable acts, they
understand that the overwhelming power of the Israeli military gives
Israel the obligation to take the first definitive steps toward peace…
Tikkun.Obama’s problem is that his spiritual progressive worldview is in
conflict with the demands of the older generation of Jews who control
the Jewish institutions and define what it is to be pro-Jewish [Emphasis Weiss’s], while
his base consists of many young Jews who support him precisely because
he is willing to publicly stand for the values that they hold.
