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We welcome your responses to our articles. Send letters to the editor to letters@tikkun.org. Please remember, however, not to attribute to Tikkun views other than those expressed in our editorials. We email, post, and print many articles with which we have strong disagreements because that is what makes Tikkun a location for a true diversity of ideas. Tikkun reserves the right to edit your letters to fit available space in the magazine.

Restorative Justice

I was heartened to read the many articles about restorative justice in the Winter 2012 issue, as I believe in the need for a holistic and relationally oriented revision of our often heartless, overly legalistic and unjust legal system. From what I read about restorative justice, however, I am disappointed that it seems to bear no vision for the revision of our system of civil law, which some would argue is more fraught with abuse and harm than is the criminal justice system. The articles referred only to criminal cases.

The systemic blindness to the injuries caused by the legal process itself has led me to believe that the blindfold of Lady Justice has become, instead of a guarantee of equal justice, a serious obstacle to justice. Our blindfolded lady can't see clearly enough to recognize the lives she flattens, the justice she snuffs out with the steamroller of her letter of the law. What is the vision restorative justice might contribute to such a situation?

Those charged with crimes are given free representation, yet if those facing litigation cannot afford a lawyer, they are not provided one. Rather, they are told that if they can't afford a lawyer, they will surely lose the case, regardless of the truth in the matter, so they'd better pay the settlement fee demanded by the suing party. If they can't afford that either, then their home could be sold to pay as little as a $15,000 judgment. The civil legal system, as it exists today in the United States, is practically a red carpet rolled out to those who wish to extort or exact revenge. It harmfully enables—and often financially rewards—those who are eager to find someone to blame for their own misfortune or lack of judgment. It also encourages, rather than dismisses, thousands of frivolous lawsuits that cause untold harm. The civil legal system ostensibly addresses (and often wildly exaggerates) even the smallest and most trivial degrees of injury to a suing party. However, it is completely blind to, and does not take into account, the sometimes great injury that can be done to defendants through the lawsuit process.

As a first step in the reformation of civil law, I'd like to suggest that we focus on actual injury rather than an entirely legalistic focus on violation of laws. Civil cases should be analyzed in terms of what injury may have actually occurred, and if injury did not occur, the case should be thrown out.

—Deborah Mikuteit, Oakland, CA

Pinkwashing

I write in response to a web article written by Katherine Franke and Rebecca Alpert in May 2012 defending their decision to boycott an LGBT event hosted by the Equality Forum because the event selected Israel as the featured nation and was sponsored by the Israeli Embassy and Ministry of Tourism. Franke and Alpert's explanation rested on the idea of "pinkwashing," a term coined by Sarah Schulman, a supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.

"Pinkwashing," Schulman has said, is "a deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians' human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life." The focus of Schulman's, as well as Franke and Alpert's, ire is on a marketing campaign in which the Israeli Consulate General and other Israeli government officials promote Israel to the United States LGBTQ community as a tourist destination. Their criticism was also drawn upon by others around the country, including in Seattle, where anti-Israel activists in the community successfully pressured the Seattle LGBT Commission to cancel a reception it had...