Ruth Messinger, president of American Jewish World Service
A couple weeks back we published Michael Deheeger’s statement about quitting Avodah, a domestic Jewish anti-poverty group, because of its decision to co-sponsor a 2012 trip to Israel that is intended to show “Israel’s prettier face” to young Jews who work for justice.
I believe it is irresponsible for social justice organizations to organize a trip that focuses on “diversity, poverty and social integration” without meaningfully, and publicly, addressing Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land, systematic oppression of Palestinians across “Israel proper” and the Occupied Territories, and enforced exile of Palestinian refugees.
I believe doing so contributes to the “normalization” of a deeply abnormal oppressive situation
Deheeger scored the role of the American Jewish World Service in sponsoring the tour: “Through this trip, AVODAH and AJWS become active participants in covering up oppression.”
Well the Forward’s Josh Nathan-Kazis now reports (actually last week; I’m slow) that the trip came about because AJWS, a Jewish global justice org that does everything it can to avoid the Israel question, came under pressure from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, a wealthy funder of Zionist causes.
Additional controversy has focused on the nature of the grant subsidizing the trip. The money is coming from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. [Lev] Hirschhorn [a participant in Avodah’s Chicago program] said that an Avodah official told members of the Chicago program that the trip was arranged under pressure from the Schusterman Foundation.
In an interview, [Ruth] Messinger [of the American Jewish World Service] said that the trip was the Schusterman Foundation’s idea. “They suggested it, and we agreed to do it,” Messinger said. The agreement came as part of the Schusterman Foundation’s larger general support for Pursue [Avodah group]
“Two of our most important values and priorities at the foundation are to give young people a deeper connection to the Jewish value of service and a deeper firsthand understanding of Israel,” said Lisa Eisen, the Schusterman Foundation’s national director. “Their boards signed off on the grant agreements, and from what we understand, there has been a lot of interest and enthusiasm about the trip.”
Schusterman is an ultra-Zionist organization. It funds AIPAC and helped start the AIPAC offshoot (AIEF) that sent 81 congresspeople to Israel last summer. Lynn Schusterman has said she fell in love with being Jewish on a trip to Israel in 1977– another sign of how important Israel is to modern Jewish identity construction.
Nathan-Kazis is right to observe: “The episode appears to underscore the extent to which Israel, once the unifier of the Jewish community, has become a source of division among some of its youth.”
When she was on the New York City Council Messinger supported methodone centers so long as they were stuck in one far corner of her district, which, by coincidence was the same spot where adjoining districts placed their methadone centers. The affected neighbors were just thrilled to have so many drug addicts take over their neighborhood. She’s a classic liberal, a la Bloomberg who has been such a sweetheart for the homeless.
from the forward (my bold):
that’s 20% of alumni and current participants. and that doesn’t take into account people who might not want their name on the petition for fear of retribution or other “for the record” purposes.
but this line “where anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews are tolerated.”
20%. tolerated?
RE: “Ruth Messinger bowed to pressure from Zionist funder to sponsor Israel tour” ~ Weiss
Oh, come, all ye “conscious pariahs”, Joyful and triumphant! Oh, come ye, oh, come ye…
FACEBOOK GROUP
Name – Hannah Arendt: Integrity Personified
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P.S. ALSO SEE – Sinning against Zionism: Traitor to Country, by William A. Cook , Dissident Voice, 4/21/11
“Hell is where many false commitments must be unlearned.” — Ricardo J.
Quinones, Dante Alighieri
(excerpt) Richard Goldstone’s journey from Justice to Sinner represents the spiritual act of dying in the Zionist world. By recanting his own report he has attempted to break the bonds that cast him into the sufferings in Caina, Antenora, and Judecca where, in Dante’s Inferno, those treacherous to their own, are removed from the light and warmth of their kin, their country, and their masters and suffer eternal damnation in the remorseless dead center of the ice in the most bottomless circle of Hell.
Fortunately, Goldstone like Dante can learn that he has, in his journey, aligned himself with many false gods and many false attachments ignoring on the way the elementary truths that bind humankind ineluctably in one race in a bond of human grace.
The Zionist world needs no Hell since it heeds no conscience. It exists on one foundation, a solid block of ice that freezes the soul of all who bear allegiance to its creed of absolute obedience, an ancient form of tribal slavery bound by fear that shackles the soul, by isolation that instills despair, by humiliation that corrodes self, and by victimhood that bonds the tribe in self-perpetuating agony. It is in this sense Medieval, a remnant of the inquisitorial mind that harbored no dissent, gave no credence to personal freedom, and obligated all to one monolithic understanding of commitment to the powers that control…
ENTIRE COMMENTARY – http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/sinning-against-zionism-traitor-to-country/