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Jun
7
Lebanon elections show cautious promise for (slow) sea change
Filed Under Barack Obama, democracy, Government, Israel, leadership, middle east, peace, Politics, Religion, Voting, war | Comments Off
A couple of weeks ago, I went to a small breakfast hosted by the American Jewish Committee (I’m being installed onto their board later this week – isn’t that a weird expression – sounds like a stereo into a car) that featured Jason Isaacson, AJC’s Director of Government & International Affairs. There were less than 20 of us I think and we had a chance to talk about many topics and ask questions. One thing I’ve been noticing is how Lebanon has been pretty much absent from almost any mainstream Middle East peace conversation, and I was finding that so incredibly sad.
Lebanon has the potential to be a pilot project, an excellent location and demographic, to show what can be possible in a country with multiple faiths and political ideologies within one set of borders, no matter how gerrymandered we could argue they are. As the New York Times says in its coverage that will be printed tomorrow:
Lebanon has long been seen as a proxy battlefield for regional and global interests, and so foreign powers from Washington to Tehran have paid close attention. But its politics are also intensely local, with power divided among sect leaders who jealously guard their interests.
I made this point on CNN.com/LIVE just last week.
But as I read stories leading up to today’s elections in Lebanon, I was extremely fearful about Hizbollah taking a greater hold on that country’s government. The fact that all reports indicate that that’s not what happened and that in fact there was a record voter turnout doesn’t mean that Lebanon will see smooth sailing. Far from it. We now must wait and see what Syria says and what Iran says – is there some other endgame? (The BBC has a data-packed article here.)
But hopefully we will hear from strong voices that seek to continue to build a democratic nation with multiple political parties and faiths governing to prosperity that for many years seemed to be Lebanon’s destiny.
The next thing to watch for: whether President Obama’s speech in Cairo had an impact on voters and their morale that could have persuaded them that they had nothing to lose by voting for non-Hizbollah allies. Can Lebanon lead the way?
See for example already this Huffington Post entry and tweets about The Obama Effect.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:56 pm June 7th, 2009 in Barack Obama, democracy, Government, Israel, leadership, middle east, peace, Politics, Religion, Voting, war | Comments Off
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Jun
7
[video] Blogging to Do Better, in honor of Dr. George Tiller
Filed Under Abortion, activism, Blogging, Ethics, Parenting, peace, Social Issues, Writing, Youth | 1 Comment
All of us – as progressive activists, bloggers, organizers, hell-raisers, trouble makers – whatever we self-identify as – have the opportunity to take action and turn the increasing violence and hate into a teachable moment.
I don’t think this will be a persuasive action; in other words, I don’t think that we’re going to change people’s limited and bigoted mind-set. But I think it’s a a chance to come together in a new way and connect with one another. So that when the threats, deaths, allegations become even more escalated, we will have enhanced our network of allies. I think of it as “laying pipe.”
I hope you consider using the Do Better tag on this platform and elsewhere. I feel that the hate that’s being spewed could be an opportunity that helps coalesce the new Civil Rights movement.
Please post your links if you participate in the comments section of this post or to the event page on Facebook. You can also use the #dobetter hashtag if you post to twitter. On Monday, I will do a roundup of what people wrote about, and I’m also hoping this action will help generate traffic.
We Can Do Better As Parents
My contribution to doing better comes from the life I live as a mother of three kids, all still minors, in K-12 grades because I believe our choices demonstrate for our kids what choices they should make. My choices aren’t for everyone but I’ve seen them pay dividends when it comes to the rejection of physical aggression by my kids.
We can do better with discipline
This is very controversial. I have close friends, very close friends, who use spanking as a threat and have on very rare occasions spanked their children. But short of it being the child going to the electrical outlet or in an extreme case of self-defense on a playground or other social situation, we teach that there is always an alternative and that spanking is just another form of bullying along the spectrum of violence. I know – there are many supporters of spanking, and there are many like me as well. But if we want to see the use of violence diminish, I don’t see how we do that without leaving that supposed tool of parenting in the tool chest permanently.
We can do better in toy and amusement selections: my kids don’t have toy weapons – not even squirt guns
This is another controversial path I’ve chosen but even when one of my kids got a set of toy tanks, I took the unopened package and donated it. We have no light sabers, no swords, no darts. Yes, kids take sticks. Yes, kids go to other kids’ homes where these things can be found. Yes, they view the use of these things in cartoons, in movies and in video games. But eliminating them as a toy choice means they have to choose other methods to be in charge when they’re role-playing – like maybe their brain and their words – and not a weapon. (And by the way, when someone tried to give my daughter a Bratz lunchbox filled to brim with Sweeties kind of candy, that went to the donation bin too.) And don’t think for a minute that I don’t control how much time they spend with the screens either.
We can do better in encouraging our kids to stand up and speak out
My kids have been teased and/or bullied and they’ve also each stood up for kids who were being bullied. But when my oldest was still in grade school, there was an incident that involved one or two kids bullying him and three or so others egging on those two. All five got written up. The mother of one of the eggers-on called me and was upset. She wanted to know why I’d have her kid written up when in her mind there was no direct bullying. I said, because he encouraged and laughed as the bullying went on and in my mind, that was enabling the bullies. The school of course had the final say for who got written up anyway and clearly the school felt the eggers-on should be disciplined. But the mother said to me, and I’ll never forget this, “But now he’ll always have that in his record.” Well – yeah. And maybe it will make him think twice. We should always think twice – before being silent, enabling or speaking out. And choose the right action.
As parents, we play an enormous role in setting the stage for how acceptable our kids will view violence as an option. I believe it’s our obligation to equip them with every single tool possible so that they may never need to use violence to resolve or solve a single thing.
On the eve of the Tony awards, what better song than this to inspire us all to be competitive when it comes to doing better, making better choices than violence?
By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:27 pm June 7th, 2009 in Abortion, activism, Blogging, Ethics, Parenting, peace, Social Issues, Writing, Youth | 1 Comment
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Jun
7
Beachwood HS students’ film on Holocaust survivors living in Cleveland debuts Yom HaShoah 2010
Filed Under anti-semitism, Civil Rights, democracy, Education, Ethics, Jewish, Judaism, leadership, Ohio, peace, Social Issues, war | Comments Off
During his first year as Beachwood schools superintendent in 2004-05, Richard Markwardt realized the district has a valuable resource in its senior citizens.
The group includes survivors of the Holocaust – the systematic persecution and murder of about six million European Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II.
“They lived a part of history we can’t afford to forget,” Markwardt said. “Their story is as vibrant today as it ever was, but there are fewer voices to share it.”
In 2006, Markwardt approached Sheila Heyman, who teaches public speaking at Beachwood High School, about having students interview Holocaust survivors. The interviews would be incorporated into a film as part of a class project.
The result is a student-produced documentary film, “From the Holocaust to Freedom: A Journey to Cleveland.” It’s scheduled to premiere April 11, 2010.
The article details the number of students and survivors who participated and other information about the process and its impact. I’m humbled to say that one of the individuals who was interviewed and is shown in a photo that accompanies the article, Nina Frankel, is the mother of a friend of mine and I’ve had the opportunity to listen to her talk about her experience and its impact on her. Additionally, her daughter and her family were on the trip to Israel that I took with my family last August and during our day at Yad Vashem, which happened to be the fast day of Tish B’Av, a commemoration of the destruction of the Temple, she shared with us, with all of its emotion, the story of her mother’s hour by hour, day by day existence as she struggled to survive. I really can’t describe her description to us except to say that I’ve heard bits and pieces since then, and every time, it’s as though the story is being told for the first time, the images are so vivid and visceral.
Other cool facts about this production, gleaned from the article:
- The Beachwood High School Orchestra is providing the music.
- DVDs of the documentary are being provided to the survivors and their families.
- The accompanying website will serve as an ongoing resource, including a place to learn more about the debut of the film and how other institutions may get copies to show as part of an educational program.
- The students hope to take 20 hours of interviews and pare that down to 45 minutes.
- They would like to premiere the film at a venue like the Cedar Lee movie theaters.
These types of productions are always so intense. And though I’m only in my mid-40s, I have been seeing films about the Holocaust since I was younger than 10 years old. And the intensity never seems to wane, if anything it increases.
As a side note, while I was at my college reunion last weekend, I saw the memorial statue that was placed on the campus in a wonderful spot – next to a beautiful stone building called White Gravenor. Here’s a photo of it (and there’s a similar one in NYC):
The person on the bench in the middle of a game of chess is one of my former professors and one of the most famous righteous Gentiles – Jan Karski. I’ve written about him before. He was an amazing person and thinker who, even as a young Polish Catholic man, chose to risk his life to save as many other lives – Jew and non-Jew – as he could. He didn’t speak of his role until Claude Lanzmann made the movie, Shoah - as a student there, I recall extremely well when the rumors started going around campus, “Did you know what Karski did in World War II???”
Thank goodness that movie was made and Karski’s story was told. He passed away in 2000. Yad Vashem also has an entire section of an exhibit dedicated to Karski, including a lengthy film clip of him talking about how the U.S. president brushed aside Karski’s exhortations about the death and dying going in the concentration camps.
Finally, something very powerful which I did not know until reading this resource:
In 1965 he married Pola Nirenska, a dancer and choreographer, who had been born Pola Nirensztajn in Poland, the daughter of an observant Jewish father. All her many relatives had been killed in the Holocaust, but she had survived the war in London and had become a major force in dance in Washington, teaching, choreographing her own work, and leading her own company, when they met.
They were a very devoted couple. In 1981, a year before the Israeli government recognized him as one of “the righteous among nations,” Mr. Karski attended a conference organized by Elie Wiesel in Washington, where he reflected on the links between his life and his marriage. He said:
“The Lord assigned me a role to speak and write during the war when — as it seemed to me — it might help. It did not … . Then I became a Jew. Like the family of my wife — all of them perished in the ghettos, in the concentration camps, in the gas chambers — so all murdered Jews became my family. But I am a Christian Jew. I am a practicing Catholic. Although I am not a heretic, still my faith tells me the second Original Sin has been committed by humanity: through commission, or omission, or self-imposed ignorance, or insensitivity, or self-interest, or hypocrisy, or heartless rationalization.
By Jill Miller Zimon at 12:36 pm June 7th, 2009 in anti-semitism, Civil Rights, democracy, Education, Ethics, Jewish, Judaism, leadership, Ohio, peace, Social Issues, war | Comments Off
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