Amir Ahmad Nasr’s My Isl@m comes as an important corrective, a welcome and important primary document that follows Nasr’s search for meaning and belonging within his own faith even as he uses new tools and technologies to reach out to the world beyond it.

Barely in his late 20s, Nasr has already traveled a remarkable path: Born in Sudan, he was raised in Qatar and later Malaysia, never fully at home in any of the countries to which his family took him — a Third Culture Kid, “a youngster struggling to assimilate elements of my parents’ culture and other cultures in which I was immersed into a third colorful culture of my own.”

The Islam practiced by his family was relaxed and inclusive by Qatari standards but traditionalist and strict compared to what Nasr found in Malaysia. Encouraged by his parents to build friendships across religious boundaries, but taught in school that infidels would suffer excruciating torture in the afterlife (alongside lax Muslims), his personal faith has moved from a violence-tinged fundamentalism to tortured agnosticism, to where he stands today: A Sufi as dedicated to mystic involvement with the divine as he is to reason and cold, hard facts.

The journey might not have been possible, however, were it not for Nasr’s access to and involvement with the Arab and Muslim blogospheres. It’s a world in which he came to play an increasingly visible role in the course of and aftermath to the revolutions of the Arab Spring, writing about and advocating for such subversive ideas as freedom of speech and interfaith dialogue. My Isl@m is, then, as much a testament to the crucial role that the global sharing of information plays in allowing cultural change as it is a tale of one young man’s evolution of thought.

It is not a perfect book. My Isl@m relies heavily on the reproduction of conversations as if verbatim, but these often read as stilted and expository rather than genuine, and later chapters in particular occasionally come across as a live blog of a graduate-school syllabus — interesting in parts, but not as interesting as watching Nasr live his life and synthesize new ideas into something entirely his own.

But there is also much to praise here: a powerful love of the many cultures to which the author belongs, an ability to praise and criticize at the same time, and perhaps most importantly, a strong and engaging voice that welcomes readers into Nasr’s ongoing search, even as he successfully sketches a telling picture of the range and diversity within the Arab and Muslim worlds (worlds which are not, by any stretch, one and the same).

“The sincere pursuit of Truth requires you to entertain the possibility that everything you believe to be ‘true’ or ‘valid’ may in fact be wrong,” he writes. “Everything. Your nationalism. Your religious beliefs. Your upbringing. Your unexamined convictions. Your story.”

Nasr’s ability to provide a clear, nuanced view of a rich and complex world, coupled with his willingness to unflinchingly expose his own halting path, make My Isl@m an absorbing read, one that should appeal not only to readers seeking to better understand Islam’s depths, but also anyone who’s struggled with the titanic clash of cultures that living in a hyperconnected world can bring — which is to say, a great many people, indeed.

Crossposted from The Dallas Morning News.

Mohammad Amla’s back after he was attacked by IDF dogs.

When you learn a second language—even if you live in that language for a decade and a half, work, pray, fall in love, go to parties in that language—even then, there are always new words to discover. Surprises when you open the newspaper.

The API’s basic contours are identical to the basic contours of every other plan ever devised to resolve the conflict: two states, based on the 1967 borders; a shared Jerusalem; a mutually agreed-upon resolution of the refugee problem. The stated goal of the API is a comprehensive, regional peace, and normalized relations with the Israeli people.

What’s a little stunning is that this is the third time the League has tried to launch the API—the first time was in 2002. What’s more stunning is the fact that, short of a brief mention by Ehud Olmert at the 2007 Annapolis Conference (months after the League had reissued its offer), official Israel has largely ignored the Initiative. The only difference circa 2013 is that the League is now willing to openly consider mutually-agreed minor land swaps—and still Prime Minister Netanyahu is hinting that the API is an Arab effort to dictate terms.

What’s perhaps stunning-est, however, is this: Until very recently, the vast majority of Israeli Jews had little to no idea that all 22 members of the Arab League had offered to start talks with their government, with the goal of achieving a region-wide peace.

Late last month, veteran Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar revealed in al-Monitor that

even though the initiative has been on the shelf for over 11 years, 73.5 percent of the Hebrew-speaking public had never heard of it, or had heard just a hint of it but remains unfamiliar with the details. Of these, 20.5 percent were “slightly knowledgeable” about the initiative and only six percent were “very knowledgeable.”

As an Israeli who chose to leave rather than raise my family in a polity so enmeshed in military occupation, I’m often frustrated by my people’s apparent inability to see beyond the fears (genuine though they are) that serve to buttress so many of our politicians’ ideologies.

Currently home for a visit, I happen to be typing these words in a busy Jerusalem café—surrounded by laughter and chatter about birthdays and foreign travel, I watch the delivery of café au lait and pastries, and the cognitive dissonance, the ability of my fellow coffee drinkers to live quiet, coffee-sipping lives even as the people they fear labor under the control of the region’s mightiest military, is deafening. I want to ask the folks one table over how it is that we so often refuse to see the reality in which we live; I’m not sure I want to hear the response.

And yet, I can’t help but consider that statistic: Nearly three-quarters of Hebrew-speaking Israelis had no idea that the Arab world had offered to negotiate peace—not once, not twice, but three times.

When that many people are that ignorant of information that vital, it speaks to something much greater than a simple failure to stay up-to-date. It’s a kind of ignorance that serves those anxious to exploit it, those who have no interest in achieving rapprochement, those for whom fear is a stepping stone to hegemony and ethnic purity. It points to an unavoidable but largely unacknowledged fact: Israel’s elites have not found it in their interests to prepare their people for the possibility of an end to conflict—and so they’ve chosen not to.

Politicians haven’t talked about the Initiative, haven’t responded to the Initiative, haven’t floated the Initiative via influential proxies, and (perhaps most damningly) the press hasn’t paid it much attention, either. Instead, we’ve seen government efforts to cleanse the educational system of any reference to the Palestinian story, government insistence that any and all Palestinian demands are a threat to the Jewish state, and a press that’s too often willing to follow wherever the official narrative leads. After all, no one fails to report Palestinian violence—but nonviolent Palestinian activism? Meh.

So the question has to be asked: To what extent is a people responsible for knowing that which is knowingly kept from them? To what extent do they need to guess what no one is saying?

When the API’s general outline was spelled out, 55 percent of those surveyed said they’d support it to some extent; when asked whether they’d support Netanyahu if he reached a final status agreement based on those same principles, the yeses jumped to 69 percent.

No one has tried to prepare my fellow Israelis for the possibility of peace, and yet when presented with the truth about what’s actually on the table, nearly the same number that expressed prior ignorance expressed support.

We can’t know what the Middle East would look like today if Israel had pursued the API eleven years ago (or five years ago). We can’t know how Israelis would greet the Initiative today if they’d known about it all along.

But surely it matters that they didn’t know. Surely it matters that those with the power to tell them chose not to. And surely it matters that with just a little bit of knowledge, in spite of everything, Israelis say they want what the Arab League has to offer.

The most important question, though, is whether all this will matter to the politicians who kept the information from them in the first place.

Graffiti in upscale Jerusalem neighborhood reads “Those who believe him are afraid,” a play on the popular religious saying: “Those who believe are not afraid.”

Crossposted from Open Zion/The Daily Beast. (To follow the links embedded in the post – particularly those relevant to Palestinian nonviolence).

The most onerous items [in the budget] include a 1.5 percent increase in income tax rates, a [$2 billion] cut in government spending in the remaining months of 2013 and another [$4 billion next year]. VAT will rise 1 percent in June and children’s allowances will be cut to [$39] a month per child.

VAT, for instance, is just about the most regressive tax around: An extra 1 percent tax on life’s essentials will hardly be felt by the wealthy and will sting those in the middle—but the poor will find themselves struggling to choose between healthy food and cheap food, clothes for the kids or the electricity bill. As Ynet reported last month, another 40,000 Israeli families are likely to find themselves living under the poverty line if Lapid’s budget is passed, and the poor will simply, inexorably, grow poorer. Given that just last month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found Israel to have the highest poverty rate among all its 33 members, additional burdens on the poor seem particularly cruel.

And all of that is, frankly, awful. But you know what makes it worse? This, reported just last week:

An analysis of the list of the 500 wealthiest Israelis reveals that the past year has been one of the best ever for the rich here. The value of their collective assets has climbed from [$23.2 billion] a year ago to [$26 billion] this year—a new record. The number of billionaires here has risen to 67—another record. Why is that? Most of the billionaires did absolutely nothing that would explain their bonanzas. For most of them, the money was like a gift from the heavens, just another manifestation of an extraordinary period for the global markets.

…Plain and simply, if you were rich 12 months ago, now you are richer—even if you never left home or took a year-long vacation from your business affairs.

Also reported just last week:

The Bank of Israel on Monday published a report on the banking system, exposing figures that had been kept secret for years… showing that the banks have tens of thousands of workers who earn five and ten times as much as the average wage. It isn’t just the top executives at each bank…. Billions are going to an entire caste. Call it the banking caste.

In the last two years, under pressure from the social justice protest and campaigns led by this newspaper [Haaretz], Israelis became aware of economic concentration: the ways that a handful of powerful connected people and thousands of their cronies bilk the public of millions each year. En route they have trampled the press, politics and the other watchdogs of democracy and the free market. But the true distortions in the Israeli economy are far deeper and wider. Alongside the economic-concentration clique is a long list of organized pressure groups, who through decades of lobbying organized the economy for their own greater good. The banking system is one such giant pressure group.

And, on a much smaller scale, there was of course this, about which I wrote last month:

Per Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office’s request, a special “rest chamber” was installed in the airplane which took the PM and his wife to Margaret Thatcher’s funeral in London.

… The airline received $427,000 for the flight, $127,000 of which were paid for the chamber and its complex installation, which required electricians, engineers, porters and additional workers.

A lot has happened since the Jewish State was established in 1948. Television, for instance (even in Israel). Peace with Egypt and Jordan. A virtual end to the original idea of the kibbutz. Israel even won the Eurovision Song Contest a few times, once led to the win by a transgender pioneer. Things change, is what I’m saying, and I don’t think we should be shocked that the social support and communal identity that once marked Israel’s particular form of socialism has essentially passed from the world.

But this? Literally forcing more children to go hungry while Bibi travels in style and bankers and billionaires add to their wealth by doing nothing?

This is not just a repudiation of musty notions of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”—this is a shanda of the first order. Yair Lapid, and this entire government, should be ashamed.

Crossposted from Open Zion/The Daily Beast. (To follow the links relevant to this post, please click through to the post on Open Zion).

Reporting on “Asi and Tuvia,” a new internet series produced for the dati leumi sector (“national religious,” that is: Israel’s largely right-wing modern Orthodox community) Tamar Rotem writes in Haaretz that:

[“Asi and Tuvia”] is actually pretty relatable, even for a secular audience…. It’s only when watching a whole batch of episodes in a row that one notices something startling: None of them feature a single girl or a woman.

Just to be clear: “Asi and Tuvia” isn’t geared toward the ultra-Orthodox. Israel’s ultra-Orthodox aren’t likely to have TVs or computers in their homes, and if they do, the kids aren’t sitting and watching smiling men in knitted kippot, they’re being kept very far away.

No, this woman-free landscape is created specifically with the modern Orthodox in mind.

Arutz Meir caters specifically to families from the religious Zionist sector, a population which has moved more and more in recent years toward gender-segregation and the exclusion of women…. Public singing by women, even by 4-year-old girls, is no longer permissible, let alone on-screen. In fact, any mention of women has been removed from many of the schoolbooks used in religious schools.

The absence of women has become especially prominent in illustrated Jewish texts, such as the Passover Hagaddah and the Megillat Esther for Purim. “It’s absurd that there are now Hagaddah books in which it looks as if only men left Egypt,” says Rachel Azaria, a Jerusalem councilwoman who represents the Yerushalmim Party and is one of the leading figures in the struggle against gender-segregation and the exclusion of women.

“Our religious Zionist kindergarten had a Passover Hagaddah in which Pharaoh’s daughter is pulling Moses out of the water. Only her hand could be seen; her face was hidden behind bushes,” says Azaria…. “What is of concern here is the question of what part women play in the Jewish story.”

Given the growing number of kids being taught in Israel’s religious schools—nearly a quarter of all Hebrew-speaking kids—this trend isn’t some little religious curiosity, it’s a real problem. Witness, for instance, the fact that these state-funded schools now enforce segregated classrooms from the moment the girls leave third grade.

Women have only ever clung to the margins of the Jewish narrative, and it’s only been in the past half-century or so that brave women and their male allies have begun to successfully push back against the denial of our reality. Half of history’s Jews have already had their history systematically erased—every textbook devoid of women’s faces just makes the problem worse.

Needless to say, the reason for the removal of women from public discourse is because we might tempt or distract the men—a policy which a priori sexualizes women (and, apparently, four year old girls) just as badly (if not, in fact, more so) than secular society.

Asi Tzobel, co-star and content manager for the internet channel on which “Asi and Tuvia” is broadcast, describes himself as “more liberal” than some of the families to which his show is geared, but says that, regardless of his own opinions, “the Orthodox person looks at secular culture and sees a breakdown, a real catastrophe…. I can sympathize with these sentiments.”
Tamar Rotem continues:

But why not show girls and women in modest attire? Why should they be completely left out, and how does this address the supposed breakdown in society?

Tzobel acknowledges that total segregation may be extreme. “In navigation there is a term called ‘deliberate deviation.’ You aim slightly off-target in order to find the right path,” he says. “What is happening in the other [secular] camp offers no real alternative. So we try to follow a safe path, knowing that we can make adjustments later, as is happening now with the advent of a [religious] cable channel.”

“The other camp offers no real alternative.” Huh.

How’s this for an alternative: How about having enough respect for the divine image that the Holy One Blessed Be He invested in all humans to not see all women (and girls) everywhere as sirens attempting to lure the pure-hearted and vulnerable males of the species into acts of depravity? How about holding men responsible for their own actions? How about not fetishizing the female form until it no longer holds any humanity? How about not being afraid of the very sexuality with which the Holy One gifted us, in all His mercy?

Oh well.  A woman can dream.

As long as she does it silently, and in the dark.

Crossposted from Open Zion/The Daily Beast (to get to the links embedded in the original post, please click through to the original post!)

Late yesterday, The Forward’s J.J. Goldberg wrote that Danon is hardly the only in-house refuesnik, and that indeed,

coalition whip Yariv Levin of Likud—he’s the guy in charge of rounding up Knesset votes whenever a bill comes to the floor—announced Wednesday that he would be assuming co-chairmanship of a new Lobby for the Land of Israel caucus within the Knesset to oppose any territorial concessions in the West Bank.

coalition whip Yariv Levin of Likud—he’s the guy in charge of rounding up Knesset votes whenever a bill comes to the floor—announced Wednesday that he would be assuming co-chairmanship of a new Lobby for the Land of Israel caucus within the Knesset to oppose any territorial concessions in the West Bank.

Levin is set to launch the new caucus with his fellow coalition hawks on Tuesday evening; Gil Hoffman reports in the Jerusalem Post that it will boast 35 Members of Knesset, “plus the outside support of several cabinet ministers who cannot join caucuses”—which, according to Arutz 7, includes Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon, Housing Minister Uri Ariel, and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, “to name a few.” Goldberg does the math and finds that Levin’s caucus appears to now be home to a majority of Netanyhu’s 68-member government coalition. (Also notable is the fact that two members of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party have joined the caucus, despite of their party boss’s professed support for a two-state solution.)

Levin told the Jerusalem Post that “this is not intended to be a maneuver against the prime minister, and it should not be interpreted that way,” but it’s just a little bit hard for any observer of Israeli politics not currently under a rock to see it as anything but.

After all, Levin is also the author of a bill intended to render Israel’s democracy subservient to its Jewish nature, and is numbered among Likud’s hard-right younger generation, a group which includes not only Deputy Defense Minister Danon, but also Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin (on record as wanting to extend Israeli sovereignty over “the maximum” of the West Bank) and Deputy Transportation Minister Tzipi Hotovely. As Goldberg notes,

after doing well in the Likud primaries last fall, the group was expecting that a few of their number would be appointed ministers in the new cabinet. Instead they all received deputy ministerships, a snub that’s only fueled their readiness to confront and embarrass Bibi.

Netanyahu has said that these MKs don’t speak for the government, and that neither does Danon. But if their views represent the opinion of more than half his coalition—who on earth does speak for the government? Four years ago, Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan University that he would pursue a two-state peace—are we to honestly believe that that “commitment” carries more weight than the people who get to vote on it (should he, you know, ever bring it to a vote)?

Funny side note: Yariv Levin, founder of the Land of Israel Caucus, is also on recent record as being very annoyed with Justice Minister Tzipi Livni over appointments to the Knesset’s Judicial Appointments Committee. Venting his irritation to Haaretz, he said:

The main problem is that members of the current coalition are systematically seeking to hamper each other instead of working together … Ministers veto one another instead of looking for ways to cooperate with each other. That is the coalition’s main problem.

There’s a Hebrew word for people like Yariv Levin: Chutzpadik. And there’s an English word for governments like Netanyahu’s: Troubled.

That last word also applies, in case you’re wondering, to diplomatic efforts like those of John Kerry.

Crossposted from Open Zion/The Daily Beast. (There are also a bunch of links embedded in the original. If you want to follow the reporting trail, check the post out at OZ, please!)

We’re in Israel for the next couple of weeks and though I meant to post something to that effect on Friday, Friday was a bit crazy (but very productive!) and it just didn’t happen. So here we are!

And now I’m trying to embed a funny, geeky, Star Treky picture, but am working on a mobile platform and haven’t figured it out yet, so hey! If you’re bored and like Next Gen, click here!
http://t.co/1qH7CgRBEr

I may or may not be posting a bit here and there – I will at the very least be keeping up with my Open Zion posts. For whatever that’s worth.

Anyhoo, happy mid-June! Don’t forget me, and please pass the cake.

But what is also a thing, what is also real, is Israel’s actual LGBTQ community, and the joyous celebration that is Tel Aviv’s Gay Pride Week—a multi-hued happening to which people travel from all over the world, because it’s a blast. Witness the fact that this year’s “Official Video of Tel Aviv Pride Week” (which, okay, I admit: I did not knowthat was a thing) is performed by the straight and wildly popular Mizrahi singer Omer Adam (video below). Gay or straight, Pride is one of the best weeks of the year to be in the city that I still consider my home.

The big event is, of course, the parade itself, which will take place on Friday. It’ll feature all the usual suspects—Adonises and Amazons in itty-bitty clothes; rainbow flags, clothes, and hair; the famous and the wanna-be. But participants will also find a quieter, ultimately more subversive presence, as well:

Havruta, the organization for religious gay men, and Bat Kol, the organization for religious lesbian women, have been marching in Pride parades in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa for the past four years.

“In the past few years, we realized we bring a different and unique voice to the march, especially in Tel Aviv,” says one of Havruta’s chairmen, Daniel Jonas, explaining how their presence helps bridge Judaism and the LGBT community. “We represent something else, more moderate, more communal,” he says.

He admits that the parade’s debauched atmosphere doesn’t totally jive with their taste – “It’s not exactly something you’d see in a synagogue” – but the visibility is important.

An activist paints a literal Green Line on June 5, 2013 in Jerusalem, Israel. (A. Daniel Roth)

There is a green line that runs through the city of Jerusalem.

It exists only on maps, and pretty much only on maps not printed by the State of Israel or other Jewish institutions, but it exists, and it represents a part of the international border between Israel and the West Bank as of June 4, 1967.

Not every international diplomat has both flown an Israeli Air Force jet, and can do a credible impression of the Israeli accent. Speaking to the American Jewish Congress on Monday, John Kerry employed the latter as he related the former: “Senator!” he said, recalling the Israeli co-pilot with whom he had flown, “You’re about to go over Egypt! Turn!”

Furthermore, not every international diplomat would overtly link Golda Meir’s philosophy of nationalism to the very people whose existence she denied. After quoting Meir (“We only want that which is given naturally to all peoples of the world: to be masters of our own fate, not of others”), Kerry said “the best way to truly ensure Israel’s security today… [is]by reaching a negotiated resolution that results in two states for two peoples, each able to fulfill their legitimate national aspirations.”

And finally, not every international diplomat would say flat-out that Israel’s propensity for unilateralism is actually a problem: