Podcast: Play in new window | Download
American Jews Redefining Judaism
Israeli war planes are bombing the northern half of the Gaza Strip, reducing everything – hospitals, mosques, schools, homes – to rubble. Those who survive the march south may be driven into the Sinai desert. More than 1 million Palestinians had lived there. They have been ordered to vacate their homes and walk south on pain of death. Food, water, electricity, and medical supplies have been cut off to these people, half of whom are children. This is being facilitated by American military, financial, diplomatic, and media support.
Guest – Rabbi Brant Rosen is the leader of the congregation Tzedek Chicago whose members are not Zionists and who oppose the historic Zionist project of dispossessing the native Palestinians forcing them out of their homeland. The attention of the world today is focused on the tiny northern half of the Gaza Strip. Tsedek Chicago’s website states that “during the course of his rabbinate, Rabbi Brant Rosen became an increasingly vocal activist for justice and human rights, particularly in Israel/Palestine. After publicly wrestling with his relationship with Israel and openly questioning his lifelong Zionism, he eventually became a prominent Jewish presence in the Palestine solidarity movement cofounding the Jewish Voice for Peace rabbinical council .“
Rabbi Brant’s writings have appeared in many journals and publications, including Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, the Jewish Forward, Tikkun, and Truthout. Tikkun, magazine editor Rabbi Michael Lerner wrote that Rabbi Brant Rosen is “at once a courageous rabbi and the voice of a new generation of American Jews who are refusing to allow the right wing voice of the Jewish world to define Judaism.“
—-
Christian Fascism Poised To Reshape The United States
Our guest today claims that we are far down the road that leads to fascism in the United States, and he places the blame at the feet of the liberal class to halt the corporate assault on working people that has spawned an ascendant Christian fascism that is poised to seize power and radically reshape America. As he says in his article of October 8th, “the parting gift, I expect, of the bankrupt liberalism of the Democratic Party will be a Christianized fascist state.
The Liberal class, a creature of corporate power, captive to the war industry and the security state, unable or unwilling to ameliorate the prolonged economic security and misery of the working class, blinded by a self-righteous woke ideology that reeks of hypocrisy and disingenuousness and bereft of any political vision, is the bedrock on which the Christian fascists, who have coalesced in cult-like mobs around Donald Trump, have built their terrifying movement.”
Guest – Chris Hedges, award-winning journalist and political writer reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005 and served as the Times’ Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001 Hedges was one of the Times’ writers on an entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting. Prior to his work for the Times, he worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and the Dallas Morning News. His books include Death of the Liberal Class, War on America, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, and his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction.
Hosted by attorneys Michael Smith and Jim Lafferty
————————————