Tag: Mondoweiss

Mondoweiss, May 24, 2011

I’m fed up with criticism of Israel being shouted down as anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic. Here’s one simple reason why: a majority of the Jewish people lives in the Diaspora.

Just because this place, this strip of land, claims to represent us all doesn’t mean it does. And just because Israel claims to be the embodiment of the Jewish people’s longing for self-determination doesn’t mean it is.

Is brainwashing school-children self-determination? Is stuffing those same kids into uniforms and plunking them down, illegally, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories self-determination? Is keeping the nation chained to a conflict opposed by a majority of Jews self-determination?

Continue reading “Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism”

Mondoweiss, February 28, 2011

The Huffington Post, February 28, 2011

It’s big news here in Israel that “Strangers No More“– a documentary film that focuses on a South Tel Aviv school attended by zarim, Hebrew for foreigners or strangers–has won an Oscar.

“Thank you most of all to the exceptional immigrant and refugee children from 48 countries at Tel Aviv’s remarkable Bialik Rogozin school,” Karen Goodman, co-producer and co-director said in her acceptance speech. “You’ve shown us that through education, understanding, and tolerance, peace really is possible.”

So what is the Israeli government showing us by planning a mass expulsion of such children? Understanding and tolerance won’t be found here. (And you’d better look somewhere else for peace, too).

After a five month delay (the expulsion was scheduled to begin in October 2010), which followed a year-long battle over the matter, the deportation of 400 children and their parents is scheduled to begin on Sunday–just a week after “Strangers No More” won an Oscar. Just a week after a crowd in the US applauded the touching story of foreigners who find a home here in Israel. Just a week after the Israeli media runs its hip-hip-hooray! reports of the win, the Oz Unit will start rounding such kids up.

Continue reading “Israel preparing to deport star of Oscar winning documentary “Strangers No More””