A Letter from 2005
April 6, 2005 Dear Andrew, I recently finished a small book by Edward Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism, and it made me think of many conversations we’ve had over the past couple of years. So…
Category: Activists
Righteous, Remorseful Jews
As my 61st birthday approaches, I’ve noticed that I have recently been going back to authors and works I read many years ago. For example, I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, William D. Miller’s…
Start Small
In The Art of Living class, we just finished considering Chan Khong’s classic work of engaged Buddhism, Learning True Love. I shared with my friends at the beginning of the course, “The Rules” of the…
Recent Reading
Sunday 11 April 2021 Dear Sarah, Thanks for your question about what I’ve been reading. Sometimes I make a plan, then other times I act entirely on instinct. So what follows are examples of each….
Making an Impression
Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Oneworld Publications, 2007 This is a profound meditation on truth, unpalatable as it will be for many supporters of an expansionist Israel. Pappe cuts through the decades of Nakba…
Prevailing in This Epic Struggle: A Finkelstein Collage
Regarding [Israel’s] methodical breaking of Palestinian bones, Wiesel courageously chose silence: ‘I refuse to see myself in the role of judge over Israel. The role of the Jew is to bear witness; not pass judgment.’ …
Joy
1. Always maintain only a joyful mind. —Mind-training slogan, Pema Chödrön, Always Maintain a Joyful Mind 2. The effect of wisdom is continuous joy… and only the strong, the just, and the temperate can possess…
Finkelstein/Chomsky
The Caribbean poet Aimé Césaire once wrote, “There’s room for everyone at the rendezvous of victory.” Late in life, when his political horizons broadened out, Edward Said would often quote this line. We should make…
Victorious without Vanquishing
Norman Finkelstein, What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance, and Courage OR Books, 2012 Norman Finkelstein is working on a new book on the subject of “cancel culture.” Long before the phrase attained recent prominence, Finkelstein…
From Chiapas to Rafah
The indigenous peoples who support our just cause have decided to resist without surrender, without accepting the alms with which the supreme government hopes to buy them. And they have decided this because they have…