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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.”


The post An Israeli protest group is inviting strangers to debate politics in their sukkahs appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Iran Foreign Minister Denies Plot to Kill Trump, Urges Confidence-Building with US

Republican presidential nominee and former US President Donald Trump looks on during a rally at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York, US, Sept. 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi denied US charges that Tehran was linked to an alleged plot to kill Donald Trump and called on Saturday for confidence-building between the two hostile countries.

“Now … a new scenario is fabricated … as a killer does not exist in reality, scriptwriters are brought in to manufacture a third-rate comedy,” Araqchi said in a post on X.

He was referring to the alleged plot which Washington said was ordered by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards to assassinate Trump, who won Tuesday’s presidential election and takes office in January.

“The American people have made their decision. And Iran respects their right to elect the President of their choice. The path forward is also a choice. It begins with respect,” Araqchi said.

“Iran is NOT after nuclear weapons, period. This is a policy based on Islamic teachings and our security calculations. Confidence-building is needed from both sides. It is not a one-way street,” he added.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said earlier that the claim was a “repulsive” plot by Israel and the Iranian opposition outside the country to “complicate matters between America and Iran.”

Iranian analysts and insiders have not dismissed the possibility of a detente between Tehran and Washington under Trump, although without restoring diplomatic ties.

“Iran will act based on its own interests. It is possible that secret talks between Tehran and Washington take place. If security threats against the Islamic Republic are removed, anything is possible,” Tehran-based analyst Saeed Laylaz said this week.

While facing off against arch-foe Israel, Iran’s clerical leadership is also concerned about the possibility of an all-out war in the region, where Israel is engaged in conflicts with Tehran’s allies in Gaza and Lebanon.

The post Iran Foreign Minister Denies Plot to Kill Trump, Urges Confidence-Building with US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Evidence from WhatsApp, Telegram Groups Shows Amsterdam Pogrom Was Organized

The Telegram logo is seen on a screen of a smartphone in this picture illustration taken April 13, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Ilya Naymushin.

i24 NewsScreenshots of electronic messages on WhatsApp and Telegram obtained by the Daily Telegraph show that the attacks on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam represent a planned and organized pogrom.

One message sent to a Dutch-language WhatsApp group the day before Thursday night’s violent outbursts reads “tomorrow after the game, at night, part 2 of the Jew Hunt. Tomorrow we work them.”

Another message reads “who can sort fireworks? We need a lot of fireworks.” The pro-Palestinian activists refer to “cancer dogs,” an insult considered particularly vile in Holland.

The lackluster response of Dutch authorities was noted by many.

Dutch king Willem-Alexander reportedly said to Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in a phone call on Friday morning that “we failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during World War II, and last night we failed again.”

The post Evidence from WhatsApp, Telegram Groups Shows Amsterdam Pogrom Was Organized first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Qatar to End Gaza-Ceasefire Mediation: Report

Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani makes statements to the media with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Doha, Qatar, Oct. 13, 2023. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Pool via REUTERS

JNS.orgQatar will end its role as a mediator between Hamas and Israel in pursuit of a Gaza-ceasefire and hostage-release deal, an official “briefed on the matter” told Reuters on Saturday.

“The Qataris have said since the start of the conflict that they can only mediate when both parties demonstrate a genuine interest in finding a resolution,” the official added, according to Reuters.

Since diplomatic negotiations have not yielded fruitful results for months, the Gulf state concluded that Hamas’s political office in Doha “no longer serves its purpose,” the official was cited as saying.

These statements come in the wake of a Reuters report on Friday, according to which a senior US official told the outlet: “After rejecting repeated proposals to release hostages, [Hamas’s] leaders should no longer be welcome in the capitals of any American partner. We made that clear to Qatar following Hamas’s rejection weeks ago of another hostage release proposal.”

Doha passed on the message to Hamas around 10 days ago, the official said, adding that the United States was monitoring the situation and pressuring Qatar to close Hamas’s political office.

The last talks intermediated by Qatar broke down in mid-October, after a series of attempts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and a deal that would swap Palestinian prisoners with the remaining 101 Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

Qatar’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request by Reuters for a comment, though three Hamas officials denied they were being expelled from the Gulf state.

Qatar, a major American ally, which senior US officials frequently thank for its role in negotiating on behalf of Hamas in ongoing efforts to broker a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, has long harbored Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’s acting political leader.

At a press conference late last month, JNS asked State Department spokesman Matthew Miller why Washington wasn’t pressuring Qatar to push Mashaal into a deal, given that the terror leader is a guest in the Gulf state.

Miller cited the prior “tireless efforts” and “intense focus” of Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to try to seal an agreement.

“They have a channel with Hamas that is productive for trying to reach this agreement,” Miller said. “The fact is it’s Hamas that holds the hostages, and so it’s Hamas with whom they have to negotiate.”

In September, the US Justice Department unsealed charges against Mashaal for his role in orchestrating the Oct. 7 attacks.

In a press release, the Justice Department declared, “On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists, led by these defendants, murdered nearly 1,200 people, including over 40 Americans, and kidnapped hundreds of civilians… The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’s operations. These actions will not be our last.”

Doha has welcomed Hamas officials since 2012 as part of an agreement with Washington.

On Friday, 14 Republican senators called on the State Department to immediately freeze assets of Hamas leaders living in Qatar. The senators also urged the Biden administration to ask Doha to “end its hospitality to Hamas’s senior leadership.”

Al Thani has reiterated his position since Oct. 7 that Hamas’s presence in his country is contingent on the usefulness of the ongoing negotiations.

According to Israel’s Channel 12 News, a senior official in Jerusalem lauded Doha’s decision, saying that “Israel and the United States have pressured Qatar’s leaders not to host Hamas seniors [in their country] for a long time. It is good that Hamas, which is nothing but a murderous terrorist group, will be persecuted everywhere in the world and not welcomed by any country.”

The post Qatar to End Gaza-Ceasefire Mediation: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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