Melyssa-with-a-Y

Last week, a gunman entered a LGBT Center in Tel Aviv and killed two people, and wounded a dozen more. Unfortunately, violence in Israel isn't exactly unusual, and while I frequently get choked up about it, this one was different. Because of Aubrey, I know a lot about the LGBT community in Austin (and have spent plenty of time in gay bars!), including the existence of Out Youth , which is an outreach center for young people, exactly like the one that was attacked in Tel Aviv. I went to their prom! --> Tonight, Out Youth, together with other LGBT community organizations and the Jewish Community Association of Austin, co-sponsored a vigil at City Hall to honor the victims in Tel Aviv. I had to go. When I started thinking about the whole situation earlier in the day, I started to cry. There is certainly no question that what happened in Tel Aviv was horrible. Any shooting, and particularly the shooting of children, is tragic. But even moreso because, of all of the places in ...

For your reading pleasure (or discomfort, in this case), here's a post detailing the various actions going on in other parts of Israel, instigated by the same Arab countries who won't admit to directly helping Hamas, and won't help the Palestinian civilians in Gaza. If you are inclined to 'poo poo' the seriousness of these attacks or downplay their impact on Israeli morale, just think back to 2002 when the 'Beltway Sniper' was able to terrorize the entire eastern seaboard of the United states into immobility with nothing more than a hunting rifle and an old Chevy Caprice. Also, with Israel at war on one front, just how much restraint are we really expected to practice with all the other belligerents in the neighborhood? A fair question, I think. Americans have never been exposed to this kind of constant barrage -- Beltway Sniper notwithstanding -- he could only fire in one place at a time. How can we be expected to understand the mentality of the Israeli ...

I have (until now) refrained from posting any rants here about the situation in Gaza -- how Hamas is getting their own people killed; Israel's right to defend herself... etc. I mean, seriously, if crazies in Cuba or Mexico or Canada were indiscriminately dropping rockets on New York or Miami or Houston -- TRYING to kill civilians -- wouldn't we fight back? Damn right we would! But now apparently all Jewish children are targets , no matter where we live -- as Jeffrey Goldberg points out on his blog: Put aside Zahar's chutzpah -- Hamas has been happily killing Jewish children for years. What's important is that he is making an explicit plea to jihadists everywhere to take matters into their own hands and kill Jews. Any Jewish school or synagogue or JCC anywhere in the world that doesn't take this seriously is beyond negligent. This is not a time for panic, just preparation. But if you read further down in that article, French President Sarkozy points out that the m...

I don't think I've ever written about Israel on the blog before: how much it pains me when I read about Israeli soldiers and civilians dying, how connected I feel to a place I've only visited once (20+ years ago), and how important it is that Israel continues to be a strong force for democracy in the Middle East. On the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, much is being written on these topics. After Rosh Hashanah last year, I signed up for "10 minutes of Torah," a daily email from the Union of Reform Judaism. Sometimes the emails are a quick read (the definition of a Hebrew word, in today's context) and some of them are gripping. This week's emails have been the latter. Wednesday's post, by Rabbi Robert Orkand, was entitled "Why Israel Matters to Me." While I didn't grow up in the 50's and 60's, my attitude toward Israel (3rd paragraph, below) is identical. In those days before email and relatively easy air t...