For 17 years, the mission of Indiana Center for Middle East Peace has remained the same – “We are a voice of conscience for peace, justice, human rights, and intercultural encounter.” Every one of our board members, and all our many supporters and friends throughout the years focus like a laser beam on these core…
“Freedom is a process by which you develop the habit of being inaccessible to slavery.” Alla Gutnikova is a young Russian Jewish woman, one of four Russian student journalists (the other three, Armen Aramyan, Natasha Tyshkevich, and Volodya Metelkin) who worked from DOXA, an independent Moscow student magazine. The four were recently sentenced to two…
The Celebration of the Holy Fire and Easter are two of the most solemn yet joyful celebrations for the churches of Jerusalem, especially the Orthodox Church. This new set of unilateral restrictions, greeted by nary a peep from sister churches around the world, is just the latest piece of evidence of Israel’s matrix of control…
Artwashing, Sportswashing, Foodwashing, Veganwashing, Pinkwashing, Faithwashing See also Red, Blue, and Purple Washing. In my last blog, I talked about greenwashing in the context of the Sierra Club’s backtracking on its decision-reversal and reinstating their educational tours to Israel. Here I want to discuss other ways Israel attempts to wash its dirty laundry. Remember the…
The Sierra Club is one of the most pre-eminent progressive environmental preservation organizations in the world, so when it made the decision last week to cancel its educational tours to Israel this spring, we hailed it as a principled decision that recognized the inextricable connection between environmental justice and human rights. It was made after a…
This post is Michael’s sermon for Sunday, 13 March 2022, at Emmaus Road Mennonite Fellowship At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing…
Three Short Articles on What We’re Not Learning from the Mainstream Media Ukraine and its hero, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russia and its authoritarian strongman, Vladimir Putin, threatening Ukraine and thumbing his nose at the world. Good vs. evil. The mainstream media, even cable news pundits, all agree. It’s as simple as that. But it’s not as…
The 2022 Freedom House Report Global freedom faces a dire threat. Around the world, the enemies of liberal democracy … are accelerating their attacks. Authoritarian regimes have become more effective at co-opting or circumventing the norms and institutions meant to support basic liberties, and at providing aid to others who wish to do the same. In…
In addition to Valentine’s Day, I want to reflect on two lesser-known anniversaries we also commemorate this February 14. The first. In the fall of 1977, NASA launched the Voyager I space probe; its primary mission was to explore Jupiter and Saturn, which it successfully did in 1979 and 1980, respectively. In addition to Jupiter…
We Remember Jerry Lawson on Israel’s – and America’s – “Slaughter of the Innocents” Two significant things in my world happened early this past week: On Tuesday, Amnesty International joined Human Rights Watch, and two Israeli organizations, Yesh Din and B’Tselem, in issuing a report not only calling Israel an “apartheid state” committing “crimes against…