WAR between HAMAS and ISRAEL – Jackson Community Church

LOCAL RESPONSE by Mt Washington Valley Chavurah

We are saddened and disheartened to see and hear what is happening in Israel. The situation there has long been complicated and we all have strong and often diverse opinions. However, the current acts of terrorism are outrageous.
We must express our horror that innocent civilians, young children, the elderly, members of the audience at a concert, citizens of a number of countries from around the world and others have been taken hostage. The images are brutal.
Today, we plead for an end to violence and our hope that a peaceful solution can quickly be negotiated so that all sides may live in a just and equitable world.
— SMWV Jewish Community’s Corresponding Secretary

Note fom JCC: As local spiritual leaders share additional infomation or responses that might be meaningfl to our community, we will share these updates.

INFORMATIONAL RESOURCES:

Axios: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/08/israel-gaza-hamas-war-explainer
BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c207p54m4rqt
Wall Street Journal world news: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/israel-hamas-war-gaza
Al Jazeera: https://www.aljazeera.com/tag/israel-palestine-conflict
AP: Ihttps://apnews.com/live/israel-hamas-war-live-updates
972 news magazine run by Israelis and Palestinianss: hthttps://www.972mag.com/topic/october-2023-war/

OTHER INFO:

My Jewish Learning:
- Modern Israel: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/contemporary-israel-101/
- 1973 Yom Kippur War history: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/yom-kippur-war/?utm_source=mjl_maropost&utm_campaign=MJL&utm_medium=email
- What Jews pray for when they pray for peace: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/what-jews-pray-for-when-they-pray-for-peace/
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict – a chronology by The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/israel-palestine-conflict-timeline-history-explained/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us
UCC (United Church of Christ), as part of Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), statement on this issue: https://www.ucc.org/churches-for-middle-east-peace-condemns-violence-calls-for-prayer-and-implores-global-leaders-to-address-war-between-hamas-and-israel

In the sky of the Old City
a kite
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can’t see
because of the wall.

—Yehuda Amichai (excerpt)

… UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder said t… “When you listen to the testimonies coming out of Gaza, from children in Israel, it is consistent stories of fear, of suffering, of pain,” Mr. Elder said.
“We have to listen to those children of Gaza and of Israel who are very clearly and usually through tears saying, ‘Enough. Leave us alone.’” — UN News, full article: https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142097

Hamas and Israel are at open war
Again

Israelis have been killed
Barbarically
And Palestinians have been killed
Randomly
And I know this because
I have been reading comments
On a DK post

And learning
Both sides are right,
Both sides are wrong,
One side is more right
Than the other

And conditions have been really bad
The last few years
Or it started back in 1948
Or from events in distant history
Or all this is true
Or not

And this is all I know
About the subject currently
‘Cause I have not watched TV
News shows this weekend

And really!
What can I do about it?

Living 7,000 miles away
In a small home
That’s turned cold enough
To need another blanket on the bed,
Where my personal fretting is over
The food budget …

The only way I can see
To change the world
Is to increase my level of kindness
To my wife
And everyone else I come in
Contact with and hope
It spreads onward

And to vote for sanity
When it is that time
Again.

.. As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.

Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.
— Haggai Matar is an award-winning Israeli journalist and political activist, and is the executive director of +972 Magazine

How reliable is your news source?

Evaluations of biases within different news outlets.

Source for the graphic above and coverage of the topic: https://my.lwv.org/california/torrance-area/article/how-reliable-your-news-source-understanding-media-bias-2022
Pace Universaity’s guide: Liberal, Conservative & Non-Partisan Periodicals – The purpose of this guide is to provide information and resources on the role of news and magazines and how to evaluate them for bias. https://libguides.pace.edu/c.php?g=63918&p=410866

About TikTok as News Source (full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/10/tiktok-hamas-israel-war-videos/)
… As the audience for traditional news outlets is shrinking, 20 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds say they use TikTok as a source for news, according to a recent report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism — up five percentage points from last year.
… For news content creators who don’t want to take a side, the landscape can be fraught. Users want the people they follow for news to be overt and clear about their opinions and allegiances, and any effort to obfuscate or push a both-sides narrative about the conflict can be met with hostility, according to Jessica Yellin, a former chief White House correspondent for CNN who runs her own media brand and posts to TikTok …
“People are taking sides in what seems to be a sporting event,” she said. “The emotional stuff gets accelerated over the information. People who report with emotion, passion, outrage and fear, their content explodes. If you’re calm and measured and you base your content in actual information, it doesn’t get pickup. I think it’s embedded in how these platforms and algorithms are designed.” Yellen said the discourse has been especially toxic on this issue, which has elicited an “intense rage and vitriol” from social media users.
But [Jamie Cohen, assistant professor of media studies at Queens College in the City University of New York] said that it’s that exact emotion and passion that’s leading so many more people to engage with news content. Young people want to be politically engaged in the world, he explained, and they don’t want to hear news from a dispassionate, imaginary middle ground. ###

WAR between HAMAS and ISRAEL