Interviews

Gershon Baskin testified this week that security guards had accosted him to prevent him from photographing the construction site and threatened him with police arrest.

Gershon Baskin writes to President-Elect Obama citing Rabbi Froman who envisages a shared Jerusalem where the Old City, containing the main sites sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews, is ex-territoria, a Jerusalem that houses the headquarters for international institutions.

Gershon Baskin urges Jews to think about how we respond when somewhere in the world a museum or any other institution is built on a Jewish cemetery.

Baskin wisely articulates his argument not on the basis of it being the right thing to do for Muslims or in legal terms.  But rather on the basis that it is the right thing to do as Jews.

Gershon Baskin claims that American Jews are by majority behind Obama and most Israelis would vote for McCain, especially among American Israelis, who tend to be more right-wing and more religious.

Gershon Baskin said he regards the election of Obama as “essential for Israel,” but he also said that the majority of Israelis will never agree with him as he doesn’t have the knee-jerk reaction of using force to fix everything, which is a widespread Israeli position on much of the left as well as the right.

Dr. Gershon Baskin thinks it is “great” that Carter wants to meet with the Hamas leader and it would take someone like Carter to open a dialogue with the Hamas.

Gershon Baskin, an Israeli with deep roots in that country’s peace movement suggested a framework for resolving the conflict in the Middle East with maintenance of the “Jewish character” of the State of Israel.

Gershon Baskin feels that Jimmy Carter’s insistence that Hamas would accept a two-state solution is enormous, and the first indication that Hamas is turning its back on its own covenant of never recognizing Israel.

In his remarks, Gershon Baskin pointed to the paradox that the substance of what a political agreement would entail is widely agreed upon, and yet the process by which to get there continues to elude both sides.