When I was learning about South African apartheid, its (formal) collapse, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, I remember learning about a very telling story about what aspects of apartheid the TRC process concentrated on, and what it avoided. One day, at the time that TRC’s were hearing [...]
Archive for the ‘Commentary’ Category
October 2nd, 2009 - 10:19 pm § in Commentary
Violence and the Crime of Dispossession in Israel/Palestine
September 15th, 2009 - 6:39 pm § in Activism, Commentary
MaGav: Thoughts on race and class in Israel’s border police
Whenever I encounter people who have been or continue to serve in the Israel Defense Force in my travels through the Jewish-Israeli community, sooner or later we get to talking about the occupation. I always find myself in an awkward place: it seems that there is a disjuncture between what the soldi[...]
“Economic Peace” in the New York Times?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently went public with an Israeli plan for ‘economic peace’ with the Palestinian people. This concept is distinct from political peace, which addresses the stated demands of the Palestinian authority, in that it ‘circumvents’ this [...]
July 19th, 2009 - 1:01 am § in Commentary
An Exception to the Rule: Knowledge at the Borders
In general, I am not satisfied with my degree of knowledge about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip, and its various implements of destruction and pacification. But what can people who do not have comprehensive, encyclopedic knowledge of the occupation really know about it? What [...]
July 10th, 2009 - 1:11 pm § in Commentary, Current Events
Beware Self-Righteousness
When people write about lessons to be drawn from the Jewish Holocaust, they often contrast two distinct positions: the nationalist interpretation, and the universal one. The first school’s lessons usually involve the deployment of military force. A typical example is the Israeli Chief of Staff[...]
Stonewall and the Occupation
Recently dozens of LGBT pride parades were planned in cities around the world to mark the annual pride week. For many people with commitments to LGBT liberation, this time is set aside in reflection on the struggle for the rights of LGBT people, their history and contributions, and on the need to re[...]
July 7th, 2009 - 11:00 pm § in Commentary
Right wing patriotism as synecdoche
A synecdoche is a figure of speech used to refer to something by using a name other than its own. Totum pro parte is a particular kind of synecdoche, whereby the name of the whole is used to refer to only a part. I might say, for example, “Beijing” when I really mean the Chinese [...][...]
Nepal: Land of the Landless, Government of Non-Governments
In Hebrew, Nepal is still referred to as a “poor country,” but in English development practitioners have long ago adopted the much nicer sounding term “impoverished.” Progress seems to have come to the very discourse of progress itself. But in my bilingual program Tevel Be’Tzedek (The Eart[...]