Slightly less wacky than Vannunu. it is often amusing to watch political events move faster than ideology can keep up:
Some 500 members of the left-leaning Tikkun Community, whose "teach-in to Congress for Middle East peace" has changed shape because of dramatic developments in the region, will be in town next week.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, the group's leader and editor of the magazine that provided its name, said that more than 200 Capitol Hill meetings have been scheduled. "Our main theme is that we want to help people understand why the Bush-Sharon axis of occupation is not good for Israel and not good for the United States," Rabbi Lerner said in an interview. Last week's Washington summit between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President Bush has "given the meeting a new urgency," Rabbi Lerner said.
Initially the Tikkun activists planned to focus on winning congressional support for last year's informal "Geneva accords," a shadow peace agreement worked out by former Israeli and Palestinian government officials. But Palestinian participants in the Geneva process said President Bush, by acknowledging that "realities on the ground" mean Israel will not have to return to its original borders, has effectively killed that plan. That has thrown the Tikkun conference into disarray.
"Does this summit mean Geneva is irrelevant?" Rabbi Lerner said. "That's one of the issues we will be dealing with next week." Increasingly, he said, peace activists are giving up on the idea of a two-state solution and arguing instead that democracy and demography should be allowed to run their course - something Rabbi Lerner conceded would mean the end of a Jewish state.
Emphasis mine. This is the first time I have heard Lerner accept the rhetoric of a one-state solution. Always previously he could be counted on to mount a strong defense of Israel's right to exist, no matter how left-wing his analyses or proposed solutions. Now the strain of trying to fit current events into his ideology has completely collapsed his integrity. (And by the way, Michael, the answer to your first question is "Duh.")
The group will focus also on what Rabbi Lerner said is Sharon's unwillingness to help Palestinian moderates, which has just reinforced groups like Hamas.
1) What Palestinian moderates? (I know, I know,
Sari Nusseibeh blah blah blah. I mean moderates that have a snowball's chance in the Negev of influencing the PA. 2)
Reinforced groups like Hamas? Well, who cares about Hamas? Our Bay Area boychik knows who the real threat is:
And Rabbi Lerner said the Washington meeting will challenge the new alliance between pro-Israel groups and Evangelical Christians who support far-right causes in Israel. "The Christian Zionists are the very same people who are circulating and popularizing the biggest piece of anti-Semitic propaganda we've seen since the defeat of Hitler," he said, referring to Mel Gibson's controversial movie The Passion of the Christ. "This presents a clear and present danger to the survival of the Jewish people worldwide," Rabbi Lerner said. "Yet our Jewish leaders are not challenging these groups and are making alliances with them."
For heavens sake.
I've posted a lot of negative pixels about that movie, but even I can tell who our real enemies are. (My main concern about any anti-semitism stirred up by
The Passion is the synergistic effect it can have on already existing bigotries. Like Egyptian TV series about the Protocols and blood libels.) Lerner used to be wrong about almost everything, but
I had some respect for his attempt to maintain a (albeit far-left) Zionist position as his fellow politicos slid slowly off the deep end. Now that he has been absorbed by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Borg, he is wrong about everything. Sad.
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