one country - two worlds - 5.10.26
It is impossible for me to accept the fact that the violent settlers in the west bank are my people. It is much easier to believe that the Arab inhabitants belong to me.
israeli politics
israeli politics
front page sympathy - 5.8.26
Since Oct 7, 2023, I have been opening the NYTimes every day and starting with the front page photographs. They are always of destruction primarily in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon. I check the photo in the hope that some of the horrifying damage to this country would also be acknowledged. But we don’t take photos of destruction, don’t share information that could aid for further military agression. And now that we are considered murderers, I doubt we will ever make the front page. I hope we don’t.
front page sympathy – 5.8.26 Read Post »
israeli politics
sympathy - 5.7.26
i happened to find myself in a meeting with an international literary organization that has condemned Israel repeatedly for genocide. Although I have been thinking and talking and writing about genocide for the past two years, in listening to the need for further isolation and condemnation of Israel I realized they just don’t get it. Three countries have been bombing us for well over two years and no one has complained because we had shelters and we shot down a lot of the rockets that would attack peopled areas.
And most of the civilians who were killed in Gaza we surrounding Hamas.
israeli politics
couldn't get in?
couldn’t get it? it was just a theme hiccup, and with the site’s ai i managed to fix it. But I was paranoid about it, and wasted an afternoon not talking to my husband but communicating with an ai.
It has come to that. Since the beginning of the COVID epidemic we have spent so much time alone together we don’t even discuss the news together – because we know what each other think.
Or maybe because we don’t want to scare each other. I mean our lives are dependent on what Donald decides in the next 48 hours.
So I have already bought out the grocery store in preparation for the holiday in 2 weeks. But I have not invited my kids yet.
couldn’t get in? – 5.6.26 Read Post »
israeli politics
lag b'omer - 5.4.26
this is how we celebrate l’ag b’omer this year. first, we avoid setting the foest on fire. second, we avoid letting any potential enemy know where we are. third, we avoid overeating.
Oh, come on, who celebrates nowadays? We spent the morning with the lawyer updating our wills, the afternoon at the very sad funeral of Dame Shirley Porter, and the evening trying to figure out what the bank wants from the IAWE. So a little fun was definitely in order.
lag b’omer – 5.4.26 Read Post »
israeli politics
eve of war - 5.3.26
we’re almost indifferent to it – to the fact that we may be at war if Trump decides – even tomorrow. Nothing we can do about it, so we just plan normal days.
And yet it’s normal with a constant alert. You automatically look for the nearest shelter no matter where you are, you don’t expect any office to be working normally, and you buy what’s available – but make sure it is local produce. I don’t expect to get out of the country any time soon, and I don’t make plans for anything
notice how I slipped from you to me.
eve of war – 5.3.26 Read Post »
israeli politics
pay attention - 5.3.26
Had I reported some of the incidents of anti-semitism, years ago – who knows whether it would have made a difference. and who knows whether they would have been worthy of reporting. they were small things, the kind of thing you might brush off. My brother doesn’t even remember getting his white shirt all bloodied by a small gang of boys.
One ‘trivial’ example. When I was writing my biography of Adelaide Crapsey (I was staying on long island) I discovered there a was a woman living in Garden City whose father befriended Adelaide on a cruise with his daughter. So I called her and paid her a visit. She was elderly and remembered vaguely the meeting but with a little encouragementup squeezed out a few details. I saw she was exhausted and left, promising to return next week. But when I arrived the second time her husband was waiting outside and escorted me to the drawing room, where, he said, he wanted me to hear something on his new CD player. Patiently I sat through a section of the Niebelungenlied, but when he asked me if i knew the composer I pleaded innocence. “This is Wagner!” he shouted, “He knew what to do with people like you!” Then he got up and ordered me to leave and never return.
this was in 1985.
pay attention -5.3.26 Read Post »
israeli politics
lilies that fester - 5.2.26
Lately every chance I get I talk about Shakespeare, and everyone thinks I’m being esoteric. But it’s so clear that when the king is not functioning like a king should, everything in the country goes wrong.
And now we have suddenly become painfully aware of the effects of the war upon the children. The loss of clarity, of frameworks. and suddenly the last line of this sonnet popped into my head – of how much we believed in this land, how much potential we knew we had with it, and how, since the mood that began to grow before Rabin was murdered, we saw it festering…
Sonnet 94
They that have power to hurt and will do none,
That do not do the thing they most do show,
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:
They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces
And husband nature’s riches from expense;
They are the lords and owners of their faces,
Others but stewards of their excellence.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity:
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.