One of the Early Influences on “Dear Layla”
We could be like two people who inject themselves with truth serum and at long last have to tell it, the truth. I want to be able to say to myself, “I bled truth…
Category: Israel
The Way It Looked in 1976
Thus goes the fate of Israel. Tragedy upon tragedy, folly on folly. Foreign “advisers” dumping their witless plans on its benighted leaders, its people increasingly helpless and isolated, embittered, at sea, denied world sympathy, urged…
Life under Occupation/95
With the passing of every day I feel angrier because I am restricted from walking, from going places in my car, from taking breaks away from the house, from going on with my life, going…
My Bronx, Your Bronx
When Allen Ginsberg visited Israel in 1961, he met up with the eminent scholar Gerschom Scholem. Scholem found Ginsberg “A likable fellow. Genuine. Strange, mad, but genuine.” At one point in their getting acquainted,…
On the Phone with Hedy
Even her detractors might agree: Two of Hedy Epstein’s characteristics— Pertinacity and indomitability I’ll add a third and fourth Tenderness and compassion As when I called her from Ramallah To explain why I was unable…
Israel’s Checklist for Palestinians to Reach a Settlement
Dear Bella Levenshteyn If you read the US press The following will strike you As conventional wisdom Perry Destroy your rockets. Quit whining. No more stone-throwing. Enough already of this “we’re the victim” routine. Forget…
The Way It Looked in 1996
The main intellectual task is to confront the Israeli conscience with the serious human and political claims of the Palestinians: these require moral, intellectual, cultural attention of the most profound kind, and cannot easily be…
Sumud
Another sunny Ramadan morning in Rafah We head out to meet some people in Block J It, too, had been battered during Israel’s Operation Root Canal A few weeks before we internationals arrived We attract…
“I refuse to give academics more importance than being a human being responding to other human beings in need”
Cook School of Business, Saint Louis University, where I read (with several SLU undergrads) from Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine for the Social Justice and Advocacy Series; Friday afternoon 30 October 2015 When Grades…
Face to Face with Elie Wiesel
This short review was originally published in the bulletin of the Center for Ethics and Social Policy in Berkeley, April 1993. My book, Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership, was published in spring 2001….