The Way It Looked in 1923
Any native people (It’s all the same whether they are civilized or savage) Views their country as their national home Of which they will always be the complete masters They will not voluntarily allow Not…
Category: Israel
The Way It Looked in 1973
In March 1973 Israel’s prime minister Golda Meir Paid a visit to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger Politicians shmooze as easily as they breathe Meir was grateful for US support of Israel And urged the…
Episodes/2 (How to Sleep at Night)
During Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 Diaspora moralist Elie Wiesel was of the opinion That given the dramatic sweep of thousands of years of Jewish history What was then taking place— The bombing of…
Reasons of State Or Reasons of Memory
First published in The Ecumenist, 1997. Edward T. Linenthal, Preserving Memory: The Struggle to Create America’s Holocaust Museum. New York: Penguin USA, 1995. $27.95, U.S.A; $36.99, Canada. Throughout this spring, there have been several…
Sara Roy Challenges Elie Wiesel
This is a must-read prophetic address by researcher Sara Roy to Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel on the latter’s contribution to Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
Two Epigraphs from Neve Gordon’s Book, “Israel’s Occupation”
The PLO struck a political bargain with the Israeli government: In return for recognition and permission to return to the occupied territories, the Palestinians would police the local population and refrain from insisting that Israel…
Boeing/Gaza (“It’s Not Personal; It’s Strictly Business”)
The Boeing Company must have been thrilled this past month Its warplanes performing so expertly in front of the world And Boeing is proud of its “products” and its customers Conflicts, massacres, wars They’re all…
Free Palestine
Over the weekend (Scores of Palestinians being killed) The pro basketball player tweeted Free Palestine The president of the Zionist Organization of America stated “Anyone who uses the phrase ‘Free Palestine’ is either ignorant of…
Elie Wiesel and the Question of Palestine
This essay was first published in Tikkun, November-December 2002. In his 1986 Nobel lecture, Elie Wiesel spoke with characteristic gravity on any attempt to reckon with the Holocaust: “There are no theological answers, there are no…
Remembering and Forgetting
1. The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. –Milan Kundera, Czech/French novelist 2. The Jews of my city are now forgotten, erased from its memory. Before, there were some…