An Israeli Poet

The following poem by Israeli  Aharon Shabtai is translated from the Hebrew by Peter Cole. It appears in his aptly entitled collection from New Directions, J’Accuse. “War” I, too, have declared war: You’ll need to…

The Work Goes on

Recently I learned that Norman Finkelstein was denied entry to Israel and banned from coming there for ten years.   Reading about this, I thought of  Antonio Gramsci, a leader of the Italian Communist Party…

Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie

I am thinking of Jimmy Carter and Rachel Corrie, and how they are quite similar. Not on the surface, for who could more dissimilar: A young college student and an august former statesman. But I can…

Good Human Material

Review of In the Shadow of the Holocaust: The Struggle Between Jews and Zionists in the Aftermath of World War II  by Yosef Grodzinsky. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press,  2004. First published in the Journal…

Remembering the Palestinian Catastrophe

Today November 29 marks the passage of the 1947 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181.  By the deliberations of this body, historic Palestine, which had most recently been under a British Mandate, was to pass…

Remembering the Nakba

Recently the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC sponsored an unusual exhibit, “Darfur: Who Will Survive Today?” Photographic images of the genocide in Darfur are flashed to incredible size at night outside on…

Deploying the Holocaust

Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, by Idith Zertal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.  Cambridge Middle East Studies 21. 208 pages. Biographies to p. 216. Glossary to p. 222.  Bibliography to p. 230. Index…