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An Israeli protest group is inviting strangers to debate politics in their sukkahs
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Every Saturday night, Michal Muszkat-Barkan heads out to the streets of Jerusalem to oppose the government’s effort to weaken the judiciary. As the leader of a protest group called Safeguarding Our Shared Home, she is one of many activists who have brought out hundreds of thousands of Israelis to demonstrate against the judicial overhaul.
But this week, Muszkat-Barkan’s group has been engaging people in another sort of group endeavor — aiming not to persuade or demonstrate, but to listen to differing views across the political and religious spectrum.
The initiative is tied to the weeklong fall festival of Sukkot, in which Jews traditionally eat meals with guests in sukkahs, outdoor huts constructed for the holiday. Muszkat-Barkan’s movement, abbreviated as SOS Home, has enlisted more than 250 people across Israel to open their sukkahs to strangers, inviting Israelis from all walks of life to engage in dialogue on some of the key issues plaguing the country today — including but not limited to the judicial overhaul.
“We want the public to learn and understand the issues at play here, and not just to learn how to protest,” Muszkat-Barkan, who is a Jewish education professor at Hebrew Union College, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Sukkot is a time when we leave our safe spaces,” she added. “You feel everything more – the cold, the heat, the rain — and there’s an underlying symbolism there. There’s also the idea of… inviting guests who aren’t immediate family, and here we’re inviting people that we wouldn’t otherwise necessarily talk to.”
SOS Home organized the project with 929, an Israeli Bible study initiative that was similarly founded to engage people across demographics in a shared Jewish activity. People who sign up for the project get matched with a sukkah, where a facilitator guides the group through conversations on Israel’s political and social issues, in addition to what it means to be Jewish and Israeli.
Participants are asked to ponder what the past 10 months — during which Israeli social strife has spiked — have meant to them. If there was one guest, either living or from the past century, whom they could invite to their sukkah, who would it be? What do they think about the judicial overhaul? What does it mean for Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state?
The group has trained more than 100 facilitators to lead the discussions taking place in the sukkot, including famous Israeli musicians such as Ivri Lider and Berry Sakharof and liberal politicians and activists including Yaya Fink and Yuli Tamir. The list of facilitators also includes liberal religious Zionist Rabbi Benny Lau, who leads 929, and at least one prominent right-wing figure who supports the judicial overhaul, former Likud lawmaker Yehuda Glick. The sessions include “people calling to end the occupation alongside settlers,” Muszkat-Barkan said.
Several of the hosting sukkahs are in West Bank settlements, while others are hosted by members of cohorts of religious Jews who have moved into urban centers. Sarah Eliash, a former high school principal from the northern West Bank settlement of Kedumim and a political activist who is pushing for compromise on the judicial legislation, was a guest at one of the sukkahs.
“I certainly don’t share political ideologies with many of the others, but I will never dismiss them. We live here together and we need to find a way to straighten out our differences,” Eliash told JTA.
Muszkat-Barkan sees a continuum between the protest movement and the dialogue initiative her group is now leading. At the demonstrations, she said, the group has extended invitations to representatives of minority communities, including Ethiopian, Russian and haredi Orthodox Israelis. They have also invited Reform and Conservative Jewish leaders.
“No doubt that a lot of people won’t believe that a protest movement can also call for dialogue,” she told JTA. “But anyone who knows us knows that from the very first moment, that’s what we’ve called for.”
She added, “A lot of people say, your voice is one that we need. On the one hand, a voice of protest, of preserving democracy and a separation of powers, and on the other, a voice calling for a mechanism of broad consensus.”
She also isn’t concerned that opponents of the judicial overhaul will come to support the legislation after the dialogue sessions, though she said any participant “may arrive at different conclusions than those he entered with.”
“I’m not concerned that people who thought the reform was bad for Israel will now leave and be convinced it’s a good thing, but yes, they may leave thinking there’s a way forward for dialogue and agreement,” she said. “It’s really essential.”
Although this initiative was planned well before the start of the fall Jewish holiday season a few weeks ago, it gained added urgency for Muszkat-Barkan following Yom Kippur, when clashes broke out between secular protesters and worshipers at public prayers organized by an Orthodox outreach group in Tel Aviv. “This wasn’t a reaction to what happened on Yom Kippur because it was organized long before that, but in hindsight it stood as a kind of response,” she said.
“People are hurting badly,” she added. “They are angry at the leadership which is pushing us to hate one another. By and large, Israeli society is a very warm one but our leaders are trying to build walls between us. It’s a historical travesty.”
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.