Bless Your Heart
One of the most powerful responses To my novel Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine Was yours I sent you a draft You stopped reading After fifty pages It was the chapter in which the Israeli…
Tag: Palestine
Initial Questions about Preparation for Going to Work in Palestine
How do you prepare, state-side, for sound bombs? How do you prepare for beatings, tear gas? How do you role play that? How do you get yourself ready for sleep deprivation? How do you prepare…
Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable
At this stage, we have an obligation to make those who shield Israel from criticism feel uncomfortable—not because they are Jewish, but because they are complicit in the commission of crimes against a vulnerable people…
Stating the Obvious
for Savannah Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “The Good News” is good news Universal Design is good news Sunday potlucks are good news Song lyrics dedicated to a friend are good news Vigiling for Palestine is…
Boeing’s Dr. King, Our Dr. King
You remember your Dr. King We remember ours You believe that in these times Dr. King would like diversity and inclusion You cite his “content of their character” “rather than the color of their skin”…
That Day at Café Ventana
What I really want to say is Lindsey, thank you For sitting here Sunshining at Café Ventana All those wrist bracelets that have 33 stories behind them All those memories of El Salvador Paralleling my…
Your Life Is Your Message: A Toast
An older Gujarati man was sitting in a train about to leave When a reporter came up to his compartment window and asked “Do you have a message I can take back to my people?”…
Palestinian Identity
Sharifa, Apropos of our conversation today, here begins the opening paragraph (and after) of chapter 1 of Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness… The quintessential Palestinian experience, which illustrates some of…
Mobilizing the Bible
The following review is forthcoming in the summer edition of the Journal of Palestine Studies. The Bible and Zionism: Invented Traditions, Archaeology and Post-Colonialism in Israel-Palestine, by Nur Masalha. New York and London: Zed Books, 2007….
A Preferential Option for the Iraqi People
Here is the last paragraph of Dahr Jamail’s book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq: If the people of the United States had the real story about what their government…