The wailing wall in the foreground and the dome of the rock in the background, to me reflect many commonalities between Judaism and Islam
Source: Democracy Now
By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
The Israeli assault on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip has entered its fourth week. This military attack, waged by land, sea and air, has been going on longer than the devastating assault in 2008/2009, which killed more than 1,400 Palestinians. The death toll in this current attack is at least 1,300, overwhelmingly civilians. As this column was being written, the United Nations confirmed that a U.N. school in Gaza, where thousands of civilians were seeking shelter, was bombed by the Israeli Defense Forces, killing at least 20 people. The United Nations said it reported the exact coordinates of the shelter to the Israeli military 17 times.
Henry Siegman, a venerable dean of American Jewish thought and president of the U.S./Middle East Project, sat down for an interview with the Democracy Now! news hour. An ordained rabbi, Siegman is the former executive director of the American Jewish Congress and former executive head of the Synagogue Council of America, two of the major, mainstream Jewish organizations in the United States. He says the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories must end.
“There is a Talmudic saying in the ‘Ethics of the Fathers,’” Siegman started, “‘Don’t judge your neighbor until you can imagine yourself in his place.’ So, my first question when I deal with any issue related to the Israeli-Palestinian issue: What if we were in their place?”
He elaborated, “No country and no people would live the way Gazans have been made to live … our media rarely ever points out that these are people who have a right to live a decent, normal life, too. And they, too, must think, ‘What can we do to put an end to this?’”
Click here to read the rest of the column posted at Truthdig.
Watch the 60-minute interview with Henry Siegman on Democracy Now!, which was aired in two parts.
Additional Reading
Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, bases its spirituality in human compassion:
May God open the eyes of these people.
It takes a courageous man (person) to speak the truth. Thank you Henry Seigman you are one the rare breeds to speak the TRUTH.
Henry siegmann is a real human who told the truth demanded the freedom for Palestinian. Which is great. He took courage to speak the truth. God bless him.