Graffiti on Jewish-Arab School demands end to co-existence

Last Saturday night, a bilingual Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem was firebombed and defaced by graffiti. Among the spray-painted slogans: "Kahana was right." "Enough assimilation." "No co-existence with cancer." The outpouring of public support and expressions of solidarity for the school and what it stands for were immediate and heartening, though not sufficient, as a friend of mine wrote, when I asked her whether things are getting worse. My friend went to the demonstration with her daughter, a graduate of the K-8 bilingual school Yad-be-Yad, which is the largest of five such schools across the country.

For more on the incident, see the following reports: http://www.timesofisrael.com/bilingual-jewish-arab-school-in-jerusalem-torched/ http://972mag.com/we-will-overcome-arson-mourning-at-jerusalems-bilingual-school/99428/ http://972mag.com/jerusalem-bilingual-school-set-on-fire-in-alleged-arson-attack/99391/

You can express support by donating to the school through its website at http://www.handinhandk12.org

Young Netanyahu Advocates One State Solution

Courtesy of Roger Alpher, who posted this interesting 1978 interview with a 28-year-old Ben Nitay, we can now perhaps understand better what the Israeli Prime Minister really believes. It is safe to say that he has not changed his mind on the crucial question, which is that the Palestinians don't deserve another state, as they already have one in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Whether he still believes that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza should vote in Israeli elections and become full citizens with equal rights, is another matter. To be sure, he wasn't saying that then either. It is not really clear what he was advocating then, and it is not really clear where he imagine things going now. Source: Haaretz

Ultra-Orthodox and Orthdox and Liberal Rabbis agree on one thing: Leave the Temple Mount alone!

There are now many voices speaking out against the Jewish pyromaniacs who have been trying to use the pretext of religious freedom (equal right for Jews to pray on the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif) to change the status quo in one of Jerusalem's holy places. Bless those rabbis who know how to distinguish between religion and politics! Here are a few links.

http://washingtonjewishweek.com/17194/on-the-temple-mount/
Vos iz Neias.com
Alternative News
Sephardic rabbis cited in Times of Israel

Here is Naftali Bennet's (Habayit Hayehudi) response:
jerusalem post

And here is how all this plays in the Palestinian media:
http://972mag.com/what-palestinian-media-is-saying-about-the-jerusalem-violence/98495/

Sayyed Kashua speaks with Jeremy Hobson for WBUR's Here and Now

Not sure if humor is appropriate or useful any longer, Sayyed Kashua takes temporary refuge at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The interview linked below took place in Boston on November 3, 2014, where we hosted Kashua for a workshop and a lecture at Boston University.