Heated Facebook discussions often end badly, sometimes involving a Hitler comparison or two. Recently I had one that ended surprisingly well, with all the parties friending each other. But it was quite heated nonetheless. The subject was some recent comments by Norman Finkelstein. [...]
Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
Imagining Return
Dedicated to my comrades in Students for Justice in Palestine I should have taken your email! People were all around us at the rally, shouting and singing, I really wanted to talk to someone but I didn’t notice how well you were listening, how you had patience to talk to me and read t[...]
November 4th, 2009 - 1:03 am § in Literature, Politics
Learning About 1948
I remember when I bought my first copy of Benny Morris’ book on the Birth of the Refugee Problem. It was book-week in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, over ten years ago, all lit up and bustling with crowds of people. I didn’t know what to expect: a part of me didn’t want to know, really [.[...]
Why Talk of a One-State Solution?
Yesterday, Students for Justice in Palestine held its first event of the year at UC Berkeley. The Multicultural Center at the MLK student building was packed – I had to sit on the floor between the aisles for most of the evening. Our speakers, Israeli refusers Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, gave a h[...]
Changing what we can believe in: the ballot box isn’t good enough
How does one move from a condition of rightless-ness to one of entitlement, from a condition of despair to one of empowerment? We are so fixated on representative institutions as the means by which we might effect change, that we forget to ask how one brings about that condition that enables certain[...]
“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 [...]
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[...]