Michael Lerner Says ‘I’m Sorry’ (in 1,800 Words)
Rabbi Michael Lerner is sorry.
The Tikkun magazine editor recently issued an apology to three groups that are fiercely critical of Israel — Jewish Voice for Peace, United for Peace and Justice and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. (UFPJ and the U.S. Campaign are organizing a mass mobilization next month in Washington titled, “The World Says No to Israeli Occupation!” Lerner’s Tikkun Community is a member of both coalitions, although it is not backing the June mobilization.)
“I want to personally apologize to JVP, UFPJ, and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation for clumsy wording in an article I sent out analyzing the ways that the Anti-Israel Left helps to perpetuate the Occupation,” Lerner wrote in a mass e-mail.
Lerner, never known to be stingy with his prose, then spent 1,833 words elaborating on the nuances of his apology. In summary: Lerner opposes the Israeli occupation and supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He believes that those who deny Israel’s right to exist, in favor of a “one-state solution,” are practicing a double standard and hindering the cause of peace. He regrets that in his earlier article he had inadvertently seemed to suggest that Jewish Voice for Peace, UFPJ and the U.S. Campaign back Israel’s dissolution, when in fact they leave the question open. For that, he’s sorry.
Notwithstanding his disagreements with said groups, Lerner added that he would still “invite them to work with us in creating an alternative to AIPAC, an alternative that explicitly supports the two-state-plus solution I discussed above.”
“In the long run, however,” Lerner wrote, “we advocate a ‘no state’ solution — the abandonment of all nation states and the reorganization of the planet into large eco-districts whose primary focus is to provide global coordination to supervise how the earth’s resources are to be used, how to repair the global environment, and how to guarantee human rights, individual freedoms, cultural and religious pluralism, and a new global ethos of environmental sensitivity, celebration of the universe and its mysteries, advancement of science, and universal non-violence, generosity and social justice.”
You can read the full text of Lerner’s apology here. Scroll down to read Lerner’s initial article. By the time you finish, perhaps the world will be ready for a no-state solution.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news. All donations are still being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000 until April 24.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
