01 Nov
Latest

Groundswell: Kristy Drutman on Content Creation

With more than 56 thousand followers on Instagram alone, and a blog and podcast to boot, Kristy Drutman (@browngirl_green) interviews leaders in environmental causes, advocates for diversity and inclusion, and creates educational material. She is part of a new generation of “independent content producers” currently raising awareness from the ground in Glasgow. Part of Moment's ongoing Groundswell series on grassroots climate changemakers. What do you see as your role in confronting the climate crisis? I would say my role is definitely as a communicator and an educator. I'm trying to make information about what's going on with the environment and the planet more accessible to more people using online media. I've created videos, I've created informational graphics, I've created posts that inspire engaging conversations. It's a very direct way to cut through the bureaucracy of both academia...

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15 May
2018 May/June, Israel, Jewish World

Opinion Interview | Gabriela Shalev on The United Nations and Israel

What are the high and low points in Israel’s history with the United Nations? I still remember the night my father woke me up at age six in Tel Aviv and we joined the dancing in the streets. The UN had voted to end the British Mandate and partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The UN embraced Israel at that time and cleared the way for its establishment. A year later, Israel became its 59th member. If the Arab or Palestinian side could only have adopted this decision as we did, reluctantly—the Jewish leaders were not very keen on partition, either—we would now be in a completely different situation. Many years later, when I was ambassador to the UN, I would look back and ask myself, how did the relationship become so spoiled? How...

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15 Nov
Uncategorized

The Goldstone Saga

by Erica Shaps Every year at Brandeis University there is at least one Israel/Palestine-related event that lights a fire under the campus. My freshman year, it was a well-publicized and well-attended debate between Justice Richard Goldstone and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold over the contents of the 2009 United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict (known as the Goldstone Report). To be honest, I remember the speakers’ rhetorical styles better than their arguments. Gold’s voice echoed abrasively, and he came armed with an aesthetically disarming Powerpoint. Goldstone, on the other hand, tried to explain himself calmly in a lilting South African accent. He came across as a gentle Jewish grandfather. Although I disagreed with many of his report’s harshest conclusions, some of which he later retracted, it was impossible to...

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12 Jul
Uncategorized

United (Nations) We Fall

By Adina Rosenthal Anthony Weiner may have proved that social media can reveal the naked truth, but a far more stark reality has emerged from the personal blog of the United Nations Special Rapporteur to the Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk.  Earlier this month, he posted a cartoon on his personal blog depicting a dog on a leash wearing a kippah bearing the Star of David, bloodied by chewing on a pile of bones while urinating on his owner, Lady Justice. In response, both the United States and Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League, have called for U.N. Human High Commissioner, Navi Pillay, to condemn Falk, and demanded his resignation. Though initially denying the cartoon’s anti-Semitic connotations, as Falk himself is Jewish, he eventually deleted the post and issued an apology, claiming he did not see the Jewish...

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24 Feb
Uncategorized

NGOs Fail Palestinian Women at the UN

By Paula Kweskin In April 2010, a 32-year-old woman was shot to death in a town in the northern Gaza Strip.  Several men, including her father, were arrested for the crime.  A year prior, a girl from a Palestinian village south of Qalqilya was smothered to death by her brother.  In 2005, a father murdered two of his daughters and badly injured a third for an alleged sexual affair.  In December 2008, two Palestinian girls were killed when militants' rockets directed at Israel fell short of their targets.  Two years later, a teenage girl was injured in central Israel when Hamas militants fired rockets on her kibbutz. Unfortunately, at the UN review of Israel’s compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in January, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) squandered the opportunity...

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22 Sep
Latest

UN Roundup

What with non-stop hoopla at the convening of the United Nations General Assembly this week in New York, we offer a quick recap of the main issues to help you sift through the news coverage. Predictably, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created the most amount of controversy. One example: The American Jewish Committee wrote an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon protesting a dinner at which Ahmadinejad will be honored. Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin has also made headlines, primarily because of her planned appearance at a rally organized today to voice opposition to Ahmadinejad. This is the rally that Hillary Clinton pulled out of because she didn't want to make it a political circus. In turn, it has become a political circus. Update 3:05 PM: JTA puts the number of protesters in the thousands. Palin...

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