Nonviolence

Andy Bichlbaum The Palestine solidarity movement has been an important voice for justice in recent months. It has mobilized millions behind the call for a desperately needed ceasefire, and has successfully pressured some key politicians, like Bernie Sanders, to take a stronger stand against Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza. That said, the Palestine solidarity movement, […]

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What the World needs Now is another Winter Truce

Arnold Oliver

Tiffin, Oh. (Special to Informed Comment) – An iconic song back in the 1960’s addressed the causes of war, and what leads young people to fight in them. Buffy Saint Marie’s Universal Soldier advised that we could end war if soldiers refused to fight. So what if we gave her idea a test this Winter? […]

Israel/ Palestine

Is it Time (Once Again) for Nonviolent Rebellion? On Ending Dreams of Revenge in Israel, Palestine, and Elsewhere

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com) – When I was in my early twenties, I seriously considered murdering someone. He had given my best friend genital herpes, which many health practitioners then believed was the agent responsible for causing cervical cancer in women. (It wasn’t.) Back in the 1970s, though, I believed that, by infecting my friend, he might […]

Nonviolence

Why we Need Armistice Day Back: Remembering the Horrors of War

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – November 11 – at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month” – marks 105 years since the World War 1 Armistice, which ended the nightmare of the deadliest war in history until then. The brutality of that first industrial war robbed 20 million soldiers […]

Israel/ Palestine

Why so Many Jews Denounce Israel’s War on Gaza

Yakov M. Rabkin

By Yakov M. Rabkin ( Pressenza ) – A profound division exists between Zionist advocates of Israel on the one hand, and both secular and religious Jews, on the other, who reject Zionism and thus the very idea of a separate state for the Jews. Most Jews must be somewhere in between. For years, they […]

Israel/ Palestine

We Need an Immediate Ceasefire in Gaza

Phyllis Bennis

By Phyllis Bennis | ( Otherwords) – The violence in the Middle East is bringing horrifying new levels of human suffering to both Israelis and Palestinians. We need an immediate ceasefire right now. Both sides have committed heinous violations of international law. But if we’re serious about preventing such horrors in the future, we have […]

Israel/ Palestine

How Jewish Nonviolence can help guide the Path forward on Israel-Palestine

Waging Nonviolence

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb ( Waging Nonviolence ) – In an article entitled “What does Jewish law say about the war between Israel and Hamas,” Jay Michaelson explores biblical, talmudic and medieval sources to answer that question, noting the long arc of rabbinic tradition bends toward nonviolence. In Jewish life, the normative perception of Torah is […]

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War is not Inevitable, and Social Scientists are Finding Peace Movements more Effective

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, MA (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – I am heartened each time I come across a study affirming that waging war is not an innate part of human nature, that we humans are just as likely to be peaceful as we are to be violent. To quote the revered anthropologist Margaret Mead, “warfare is only […]

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Muslims are understandably Protesting Qur’an Burning in Sweden, but the Qur’an itself urges them to do so Peacefully

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Swedish police permitted the burning of the Muslim scripture, the Qur’an (Koran) in front of the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm, on the grounds that previous attempts to stop such acts have been overruled by the courts on freedom of speech grounds. Hate acts targeting minorities are not actually free […]