By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jul 3, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET Writes Roger Waters in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
On Tuesday, I will be visiting Pittsburgh to perform my Pink Floyd hit “The Wall” at Consol Energy Center. By coincidence, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) has gathered this week in Pittsburgh.
One issue the Presbyterians will be debating is whether to take action in support of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank, under siege in Gaza and as second-class citizens in Israel under the rule of the apartheid government there.
I write in support of those Presbyterians who would like their church to divest its holdings in three U.S. companies — Motorola Solutions, Hewlett-Packard and Caterpillar. These companies profit directly from Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and suppression of the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Israel itself.
While there are very legitimate issues with the Israeli government’s handling of the West Bank’s disputed territories (I support the transfer of most of these lands to a new Palestinian state), the notion that Gaza is under siege by Israel (when Hamas just fired 150 rockets last week into civilian Israeli territory), or that Palestinians who live in Israel proper are second-class citizens under an apartheid regime (when they share every single right and responsibility of citizenship as their Jewish neighbors), cannot be classified as anything but malicious lies.
The decision to divest is an independent issue, and while I am strongly opposed for the reasons I outline here, reasonable minds certainly can differ. But if people base the decision on Waters’ lies, they are doing a great disservice to the dialogue.
The answer? We do need education. Indeed someone just wrote a good book on the subject…
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Jul 2, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET Fascinating video about a letter that shaped the future of religious freedom in America.
Watch below:
By Jonathan Miller, on Fri Jun 29, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET Now we know why we are losing the global war on drugs — it’s the fault of the Zionists! Read the article below from JTA:
An Iranian vice president blamed “Zionists” for the global drug trade and said the Talmud encourages promoting addiction in non-Jewish communities. Iranian First Vice-President Mohammad Reza Rahimi made the comments Tuesday as part of ceremonies marking International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Tehran.
He said evidence of the “Zionists'” direct involvement in illicit drugs is that fact that “you cannot find a single addict among the Zionists,” the semi-official Iranian FARS news service reported. Referring to the Talmud, he said, “The book teaches them how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother.”
I guess I need to reade my Talmud a little more carefully. And heed Abe Foxman’s words quoted later in the article:
“To all those who thought that anti-Semitism is a thing of the past, certainly this makes it very clear that it is alive and well again. What makes it more sinister and dangerous is the fact that it comes from a leader of a country that has vowed to destroy the Jewish state, and is making efforts to obtain the means to do it,” ADL National Director Abe Foxman said in a statement.
Click here for the full article.
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Jun 27, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET As Presbyterians prepare to convene in Pittsburgh for their biennial General Assembly, and plan to consider a resolution to divest from companies that do business with Israel, here’s a stark reminder of moral choice they are making.
As I discussed in my Huffington Post column yesterday, Hewlett-Packard — one of the companies proposed to be boycotted —
is charged with selling “hardware to the Israeli Navy that is used for its operational communications, logistics and planning including the ongoing naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.” Yet, as an official report of the notoriously anti-Israel-leaning United Nations declared in 2011, the blockade was manifestly legal, and it was instituted for the very purposes of upholding the peace. Wrote the Palmer Commission: “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza…The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
Yesterday, came this report from the Washington Free Beacon:
As Gaza militants renew violent rocket attacks on Israeli cities, a Hamas national security minister told a delegation of graduating police officers in the Gaza Strip that they should help liberate Israeli cities, such as Jerusalem, from Jewish control, according to a recently released translation of his remarks.
“None of you should give up playing with all the tools of force and equipment, which will bring us closer to our aspirations: Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Haifa, Akko, and Jaffa,” Hamas Minister Fathi Hammad declared during a Gaza police academy commencement ceremony on June 13, about a week before militants began firing hundreds of rockets into Southern Israel.
“The officers of the class graduating today will become the police chief of Jaffa, the police chief of Haifa, the police chief of Akko, the police chief of Lod, the police chief of Ramle, and of all other places,” said Hammad, an interior and national security minister said, according to a translation of his remarks by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“Therefore, from this place, we declare to all those who usurped our lands that they must prepare to leave, because we have prepared for jihad,” said the Hamas official, which remains officially committed to the destruction of Israel. “You are going to leave, while we are summoned to battle. We are the owners of this land.”
Hammad’s remarks, which are routinely echoed by Hamas officials, provide context for the currently stalled peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Click here for the full article.
I hope members of the General Assembly seriously consider whether the interests of peace are best serve by divesting from Israel, and taking the side of brutal thugs like Fathi Hammad who calls for Israel’s very destruction.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 26, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET Were you aware that this coming week, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be taking a critical vote to divest from companies that do business in Israel?
Many of my Presbyterian friends and family were not aware, and they strongly oppose such action.
Please read my piece in today’s Huffington Post, and if you are moved to take action, I urge you to do so before the weekend’s convention:
On June 30, the biennial General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) will consider the church’s divestment from three American companies because of their sales to Israel. This misguided, ineffectual proposal would have only one meaningful ramification — It would seriously deepen a growing chasm with one of the church’s strongest allies on nearly every issue of social justice: the Jewish people.
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Although I am a devout Jew, I have always enjoyed a special kinship with the Presbyterian Church. My paternal cousins, though intermarriage, are active Presbyterians, and I have been proud to celebrate a lifetime of life cycle events at their church. As a child, when my small synagogue in Lexington, Kentucky could not field a basketball team, I played point guard for First Presbyterian; and as a requirement of my team membership, I attended church at least once a year. And with Presbyterian Church (USA)’s headquarters in nearby Louisville, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with several of its national leaders in my former roles as Kentucky’s State Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer.
I learned from these experiences about the wide spectrum of values shared by Jews and Presbyterians. First and foremost is a passion for social justice — whether our inspiration comes from the Hebrew Prophets or the Gospels of Jesus, one of our most sacred missions is to serve the poor, promote the rights of the disenfranchised, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s no wonder that over the past several decades, Jews and Presbyterians have walked arm in arm in efforts to establish equal rights for women, African-Americans, and gays and lesbians; to battle callous government policies that exacerbate income inequality; and to promote peace throughout the world.
A serious cleavage in the interfaith relationship emerged, however, upon passage of a policy by the 2004 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) for a “phased, selective” divestment of Israel. After strong protest by Jewish groups — as well as many Presbyterian parishioners — the 2006 General Assembly reversed course, calling for “corporate engagement” to promote peaceful solutions in the Middle East.
This February, however, citing the failure of corporate engagement to produce results, the church’s General Assembly Mission Council recommended that the church divest its stock from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions, and Hewlett-Packard “until they have ceased profiting from non-peaceful activities in Israel-Palestine.” The church will consider this resolution at its 220th General Assembly meeting that begins June 30 in Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, the church’s proposed actions have little grounding in reality. Caterpillar, for example, does not actually sell equipment to Israel; it sells tractors to the U.S. government which then transfers them to about 150 countries around the globe, including Israel. To address the church’s objectives, Caterpillar would have to refuse to sell bulldozers to its own government, a move that would level a devastating,, if not existential blow to the company, its shareholders, and its thousands of U.S. employees.
Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard is charged with selling “hardware to the Israeli Navy that is used for its operational communications, logistics and planning including the ongoing naval blockade of the Gaza Strip.” Yet, as an official report of the notoriously anti-Israel-leaning United Nations declared in 2011, the blockade was manifestly legal and instituted for the very purposes of upholding the peace: “Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza…The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
Click here to read myfull column at The Huffington Post.
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 26, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET No, the RP hasn’t suddenly become a man of the cloth. The following beautiful words were part of a sermon delivered by Rabbi Jonathan Miller of Temple Emanu-El in Birmingham, Alabama on June 24, 2012, delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham:
 Rabbi Jonathan Miller I have a love affair with the State of Israel. I love its geography, from the sea to the desert to the mountains and hills. I love the orange groves and the high tech office parks. I love the oases and desert watercourses and the short lived blossoms on the hills after the rains. I love the golden city of Jerusalem, the city of such promise—the promise of the coming of the Lord and the coming together of all peoples. I love the people of Israel: the farmers and high tech innovators, the citizen soldiers and the doctors, the actors and the filmmakers, the mystics and the professors, the journalists and the scientists, the dancers and the store clerks and even the beggars on the street—they are mostly short tempered, quick to make decisions, overly generous, colorful and sweet. They will let you know their opinion before they have thought it out themselves.
I love Hebrew. After two thousand years of lying in books read by scholars and holy people, it is now used on the street by cops and crooks and little children on the playground. Hebrew is the only dead language in human history that has been reinvented by a people to use in their everyday life. The resurrection of Hebrew represents the triumph of the human spirit over the hopelessness of human pessimism.
 And I love the people of Israel. I love how the cultures mix in this energetic melting pot. I love how the Jews, my people have flocked from the ghettos of Eastern Europe and the Soviet gulags, from the Ethiopian desert and the villages of Arabia, from the casbahs in Morocco to the hill tribe settlements in India, from France, from Egypt, from Yemen, from Tunisia, from Iraq, from Iran, from Rumania, South Africa and the United States—all colors, all stripes, a holy concoction of believers and non-believers, educated and primitive, to create a nation and a culture from the cauldrons of hate and the hopelessness of exile. Like my own country, the United States of America, Israel is to me that beacon of hope that expresses the fundamental truth of the human condition: that our destiny is in our own hands; that in the future, we are not subject to defeat just because we have been defeated in the past. Israel to me is the world’s quintessential symbol of the fact that the human spirit cannot easily be vanquished.
Read the rest of…
Rabbi Jonathan Miller: Why This Liberal Jew Loves Israel
By RP Staff, on Wed Jun 20, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET Picture Courtesy of LEO Weekly
In recent months, the Commonwealth of Kentucky has received some criticism for the $43 million in tax incentives it is providing for “Ark Encounter” — a theme park offering a full-size recreation of Noah’s Ark developed by Answers in Genesis, a “Young Earth” fundamentalist Christian group that also hosts the “Creation Museum” — dedicated to the proposition that the Earth is less than 6000 years old.
Joe Sonka, a local liberal blogger, now with Louisville’s LEO Weekly alternative magazine, has been perhaps Ark Encounter’s loudest, most vociferous, and downright funniest critic. Click here and here and here to read some of his columns.
In this week’s “Fake Issue” of LEOWeekly, Sonka writes about a new project coming to Kentucky, Koran Kountry:
MUHLENBERG COUNTY, KY — Gov. Steve Beshear attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday for the opening of Koran Kountry, the radical Islamic theme park that could receive up to $75 million in tax incentives from the state.
“We are excited to be here for the grand opening of Koran Kountry,” Beshear said. “This park will bring almost 1,000 jobs to this region and give a vital boost to our economy, with millions of tourists visiting the commonwealth.”
The controversial park is the creation of Answers in Koran, LLC, who seek to bring visitors to the “family-friendly attraction that celebrates the truth of the Koran, and the power of the global jihadist movement to liberate Muslims from the oppression of the infidels and Jews. We also have roller coasters.”
The $300 million park, built on top of a reclaimed surface mining site in Muhlenberg County, was constructed with the help of unnamed international investors from Pakistan and Iran. Their feasibility study projects millions of tourists from the Middle East and South Asia will come to the park in its first three years of operation.
“This day would not be possible without the great help we received from the Beshear administration,” said Kenwal Hamza, CEO of Answers in Koran. “Muhlenberg County is now truly the closest thing to Paradise on Earth.”
In addition to potentially $75 million in tax rebates from the state if the park meets its attendance projections, the state also spent $27 million on infrastructure improvements to the Wendell Ford Parkway and the Muhlenberg County Airport to accommodate the influx of tourists.
Koran Kountry contains a dozen thrill rides, including the Dead Sea Water Safari and the “Paradise Sling Shot,” which flings riders 400-feet straight up into the air, “recreating the ascension of the prophet Muhammad into the heavens.” There are also carnival-type games, including one in which people throw rocks at a female mannequin wearing a bikini in order to win a prize. The park also contains several high-tech multimedia shows in the “Martyrs Exhibit Hall,” celebrating the history of such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah, and attacking “the Zionist and Christian crusaders who occupy our homeland.”
Click here to read further. WARNING — It gets to be spit-take funny.
By RP Staff, on Wed Jun 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM ET  The Israel Project Conference Call: Jonathan Miller TODAY @ 12:00 P.M. EDT
Author, public servant and Huffington Post contributor Jonathan Miller spent nearly two decades in politics before joining the private sector last year.
A former two-term elected Kentucky State Treasurer, he is the author of the recently released book “The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State,” in which he highlights deep factual misunderstandings, media disinformation, and the perpetuation of “Eight Crazy Lies” by those who seek the Jewish State’s total destruction.
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By Jonathan Miller, on Tue Jun 19, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET Is it possible that the Man in Black was America’s first Christian Zionist? So says Professor Shalom Goldman in this article from the Jerusalem Post excerpted below:
Way before the modern-day Christian Zionist movement became a bastion of American support for Israel, there was the Man in Black.
Johnny Cash, the all-American country music great whose career spanned six decades, carried on an ardent love affair with Israel for most of that time. Cash, a devout Christian who died in 2003 at the age of 71, visited the country five times from 1966 through the mid-1990s along with his wife June Carter Cash and their children. And it wasn’t only with his footsteps that he he demonstrated his connection to the country – he recorded complete albums of inspirational hymns about the holy land and made films about his journeys to Biblical sites.
Cash’s ties with Israel have long fascinated Shalom Goldman, a professor of religion at Duke University. The author of the book Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land, Goldman theorized that Cash symbolized American Christian enthusiasm for Israel before it became labeled as a far-Right movement.
For the last year, he’s been giving a presentation mostly on college campuses: In The Holy Land with Johnny Cash: Christian Zionism and American Popular Culture, a lecture about the religious aspects of Cash’s life and work – including his baptism in the Jordan River – augmented by slides of his pilgrimages to the holy land and live performances of a selection of his Zion-flavored gospel songs.
“Cash was a Christian Zionist for at least a decade before the Christian Right moved into a place of political power in the late 1970s,” said Goldman, speaking from a summer cabin in Georgia last week before heading to Israel, where he’ll give his Cash presentation on Tuesday evening at the Tmol Shilshom bookstore in Jerusalem, accompanied by local folk singer Hila Tam.
Click here to read the entire article, “The Man in Black’s Zionist roots”
By RP Staff, on Tue Jun 19, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET The Israel Project Conference Call: Jonathan Miller Wednesday, June 20, 2012 @ 12:00 P.M. EDT
Author, public servant and Huffington Post contributor Jonathan Miller spent nearly two decades in politics before joining the private sector last year.
A former two-term elected Kentucky State Treasurer, he is the author of the recently released book “The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State,” in which he highlights deep factual misunderstandings, media disinformation, and the perpetuation of “Eight Crazy Lies” by those who seek the Jewish State’s total destruction.
RSVP Here
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