Nadene Goldfoot
JBS had Amanda Berman on the spotlight, explaining about all the Israelis in the streets demonstrating over Netanyahu's new government problem of Judicial Reform. She said that was Democracy acting. Berman is a young American Israeli with a mother in Philadelphia, and a lawyer.
Amanda Berman (she/her) is the Founder and Executive Director of the Zioness Movement, where she works to empower and activate Zionists on the progressive left to stand proudly in social justice spaces as Jews and Zionists.
She is also a civil rights attorney who previously worked to fight antisemitism legally, spearheading such groundbreaking initiatives as the international action against Kuwait Airways for its discrimination against Israeli nationals, and the dual cases against San Francisco State University for its constitutional and civil rights violations against Jewish and Israeli students and community members.
Amanda graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Diplomatic History and a Master of Governmental Administration and received her Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where she was a Public Service Scholar; served in the Bet Tzedek Legal Services Clinic, providing legal services to the underrepresented; served in the Advanced Human Rights Clinic, providing legal services to immigrants and refugees; sat on the Executive Board of the Cardozo Advocates for Battered Women; and was a Fellow in the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Clinic. She practiced securities litigation at Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP before dedicating her career to the advancement and protection of the Jewish people and the Zionist community. Amanda Berman is an attorney and the Director of Legal Affairs at The Lawfare Project, a New York City-based legal think tank combating lawfare – the abuse of the law as a weapon of war against Western democracies.
Besides JBS, there's Rabbi Hirsh. About ‘In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch’: Every other week, Rabbi Ammi Hirsch hosts intellectually honest conversations unpacking current events through the lens of Jewish wisdom. Unbound by politics and untethered by party lines, Ammi and his expert guests discuss everything from race and antisemitism to all the other issues that keep you up at night. Recorded from New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, a historic Reform congregation deeply rooted in liberalism, support for Israel and social justice. He's had Amanda Berman on his program. Her aim is that there are some people who’d have you believe it’s impossible to support liberal causes and be a Zionist. But as founder and executive director of Zioness, Amanda Berman is fighting as hard as she can to reclaim progressive spaces for Jews. She felt that the Republicans abandoned Jewish students.
Amanda Berman is a great example of a woman fighting for Israel and the law which centers around Zionism for Israel. There was a Jacob Berman and wife Annie who immigrated to Philadelphia from "Russia" in 1896 who was a tailor of ladies' suits. They had 5 children. They produced some wonderful descendants.
She wrote: Facts Over Feeling;
People have seemingly forgotten that there are such things as facts, instead waging supposedly intellectual arguments based on terrorist-manufactured feelings. So, in response to all those wannabe debaters I have been so vigorously ignoring…
If you see ANY moral parity between Israel and Hamas; If the only thing driving your passion and informing your “opinion” is sympathy for dead civilians; If you believe that “Palestine” was a state or any other type of recognized entity that was “stolen” from its people in 1948, or that “Palestinian” is, or has ever been, a nationality[1]; If you do not recognize the absolute fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization[2], whose charter calls for the elimination of Jews worldwide and total destruction of the Jewish state[3]; If you don’t know (or care) that Israel was acting entirely in self-defense in this conflict, after eleven thousand rockets rained down on its civilian population centers[4] in the 9 years since the IDF pulled every last Jew (often at gunpoint) out of the Gaza Strip[5], and Hamas orchestrated the kidnapping and brutal murder of 3 innocent Israeli teenagers[6]; If you deny that Hamas very intentionally puts its own women and children in the direct line of fire[7], and stores its weapons caches in schools and mosques[8], and sets up its own operating centers in hospitals[9];
If you refuse to appreciate the words of Colonel Richard Kemp (fmr. commander of all British forces in Afghanistan), who said the IDF is the “most moral army in the world”[10], UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who “express[ed] his outrage and regret at [Hamas’s] placing of weapons in a UN-administered school [and] endangering the lives of innocent children, UN employees…and anyone using the UN schools as shelter”[11], and even Judge Richard Goldstone, who retracted his own UN report to proclaim that the IDF categorically does NOT target civilians[12]; If you deny that IDF efforts to prevent civilians casualties are unparalleled, unprecedented, and stunningly tactically disadvantageous[13]; If you are unaware of the more than 500 Hamas rockets which did not reach their intended destinations in Israel but instead landed on the homes or community centers of their own people in Gaza (including one of the much-publicized UN schools/rocket launching pads where at least a dozen children were killed)[14];
If you accuse Israel of imprisoning Palestinians with no opportunity for state-building but remain totally oblivious to the billions of dollars in aid given to the them[15], used for terror tunnels instead of infrastructure[16], or the truckloads of humanitarian supplies Israel continues to deliver to the Strip, even while Palestinians bomb the only border crossing open for the passage of goods[17]; If you argue that there is nowhere for Palestinian civilians to go to avoid injury or death when Israel sends them warning of a potential strike[18]; If you can’t understand the equality of the value of ALL human life evident in Israel’s decision to avoid a strictly aerial campaign that would save Israelis but kill more Palestinians, instead losing 67 of its own sons;
If you’ve never wondered what happened to the one million Jewish refugees whose homes were looted and burned and families threatened across the Middle East and North Africa in response to the UN partition plan[19];
If you’re unaware that in 2007, Hamas murdered 260 Fatah members – their rival Palestinian faction which has acknowledged Israel’s right to exist – and expelled them to the West Bank so they could create a terrorist state in Gaza committed to destruction as opposed to negotiation[20]; If you trust the casualty statistics being reported by Hamas[21]; If you have never opened your mouth to protest the humanitarian atrocities taking place in Iraq[22], Syria[23], Nigeria[24], Iran[25], Afghanistan[26], Ukraine[27], Pakistan[28], and dozens of other countries around the world, but you so vehemently decry the death toll in this comparatively miniscule conflict;
If you think the media is unbiased (or more ignorantly, you think it’s pro-Israel)[29], and you think the UN has no prejudice[30]; If you think Hamas cares more about its people than its weapons, or about creating a state rather than destroying one[31]… then your beliefs are not based in fact, and I can’t take your arguments seriously.
She makes the point that you can't win an argument with people who do not use facts, but instead only their own feelings about the issue.
Resource:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/facts-over-feelings/
https://zioness.org/members/amanda-berman/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/spotlight/amanda-berman-on-liberal-zionism/
forward.com-$ subscription, about Amanda Berman
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