Jesse Bacon's blog

In an overview of changing Passover traditions, the Jerusalem Post mentions the new tradition of putting an olive on the seder plate to call for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

A few years ago, olives started showing up as a call for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

This can take kumbaya form, as in the Shalom Center’s“Passover of Peace: A Seder for the children of Abraham, Hagar and Sarah."

Last Thursday in Pearlman Hall, the Jewish Voice for Peace hosted
Palestinian speakers Amer Shurrab and Mira Dabit as part of the We
Divest! tour which promotes the boycott and divestment of as well as
sanctions against the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College
Retirement Equities Fund-a financial service that includes a retirement
system.

According to the tour's website, the purpose of the movement is to
stop TIAA-CREF from investing in large companies that profit from the
Israeli occupation.

A coalition of progressive Jewish organizations on both coasts yesterday
slammed the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s honoring of the civil rights-era
Freedom Riders while “engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry that is no less
destructive than that against which the Freedom Riders protested,” as
Alan Levine, a New York activist and civil rights lawyer who worked in
Mississippi in 1964 and 1965, put it in a press statement.

I was surprised, however, to find that the demonstrators’ claim about
the Ground Zero Mosque and School of Dance was accurate. The Simon
Wiesenthal Center, which funds the Museum of Tolerance, did oppose the
Park51 development back when that issue was still in the headlines. I’d
think the whole “tolerance” thing would include tolerating the exercise
of somebody else’s First Amendment rights.

Although Hillel remains fixed to a narrow political agenda, I am
optimistic about open dialogue within the Brandeis community. During the
past week, JVP has collected the signatures of more than 1,000 Brandeis
students opposing Hillel’s exclusionary decision and demanding a truly
pluralistic Jewish community. Hillel’s constituency trusts itself to
think critically in an open marketplace of ideas, and acknowledges the
necessity of uncensored discussion about Israel in order to achieve
peace. Together, we have challenged the status quo of uncritical support
for Israeli policy.

"Apparently the intensity of the attack in Gaza caused many people to
begin to question Israeli policy, and they haven't stopped since then,"
says Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of JVP.

Jewish Voice for Peace welcomes Grassroots International to the TIAA-CREF campagin, as they call for divestment from Elbit.

The Wall, Elbit and TIAA-CREF: Barriers to Resource Rights in Palestine

This is, I believe, what makes Hillel especially queasy: Hillel does not
take a position on the settlements, and JVP does. The settlements
policy, which has led to endless settler attacks on Palestinians and
continuing bitterness and violence in both directions, is the leading
obstacle to establishing a Palestinian state. This gigantic political
reality is not mentioned one way or the other by Hillel.

Their opening statement to the Hillel e-board, delivered jointly by all
of the JVP members present, stated that the petition, which requested
that Hillel accept JVP as a member group "to cultivate open dialogue on
this critical political issue [of achieving a just solution in Israel
and Palestine]," was signed by over 50 United States Rabbis, cantors and
rabbinical students, 25 faculty and staff members and over 50 alumni.

Some 1,000 Brandeis students, nearly a third of the student body at
the suburban Boston university, signed a petition circulated by JVP
asking the Brandeis Hillel to reconsider its decision earlier this month
not to admit JVP as a partner organization.