Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Breaking the Silence, the Israeli anti-Occupation group composed of IDF veterans, is sponsoring a photo exhibition in Philadelphia and Boston. It consists of photographs shot by active duty IDF troops during their service in Hebron. The shots run the gamut from the most banal to the most deeply disturbing. They all document what it is like to defend a tiny Jewish settler minority from the massively larger native Palestinian population. There is boredom, insults, play, fellowship, hate and fear inscribed in every image.

I’ve published my first article in the Jewish Forward, Warring Views, about the exhibition. I must thank Vanity Fair writer, David Margolick, who arranged a shiduch with Alana Newhouse, the Forward’s arts and culture editor, who asked me to write this piece. I should also thank Alana for her interest in my work. Thanks to Breaking the Silence co-founder, Mikhael Manekin for his interview.

The article is quite short. I plan to publish an expanded version here in the coming days.

Breaking the Silence Exhibit:
Israeli Soldiers Talk About the Occupied Territories

March 1 – March 16
Beren Hall (second floor) at Harvard Hillel
52 Mt. Auburn Street
Exhibit open hours:
Mon – Thurs: 2 pm – 8 pm
Fri: 10 am – 4 pm
Sat: Closed
Sun: 12 pm – 8 pm

Opening Night Reception on Saturday, March 1 at 7 pm

tags breaking-the-silence-photo-exhibit, hebron, israeli-occupation, jewish-forward, jewish-settlers, warring-views

The Forward carries a review of what promises to be a wonderful collection of poetry by Israeli-American poet, Rachel Tzvia Back. Though I studied for a PhD in Hebrew literature until 1983, I haven’t kept up with new developments in the field and her work is unfamiliar to me. But after reading this review I long to hear her give a reading and read more of her work:

Many of the poems in “On Ruins & Return” have strong political implications — razed homes and wells, ambulances stopped at roadblocks, Arab families forced to stand outside in the cold night as soldiers in jeeps search their village — but a political agenda does not dominate. Back’s images of near-daily Israeli trauma during the height of the intifada — “mangled/metal blood flesh/to be scraped off the street/collected in sandwich bags”(“On the Ruins of Palestine”), “burnt out bus carcasses” (“A Dream”) and “mothers watching/soldiers on their knees/sifting and searching for body parts/do not think of next worlds/they think only of/lost worlds” (“Soldiers on Their Knees in the Sand”) — are searing, and unforgettable. Back’s words stem from a place in the heart that does not distinguish Palestinian from Israeli, but rather weeps for lost limbs, marred bodies and drops of blood, regardless of nationality…

The collection’s finest, most chilling pieces, “A Fable and a Nursery Rhyme” and “Their Sons, My Sons,” are companion poems of sorts, the first inspired by a Palestinian bombing of a Jewish school bus, the latter written after an Israeli bomb fell on an Arab strawberry field. Whatever your political affiliations, both poems — with visceral scenes of Back’s three children searching for the body parts of three children their own ages, and an Arab mother gathering in a head scarf her sons’ flesh among strawberries — will grab you in the gut.

tags A-Poet-of-Israels-Pain-And-Its-Hope, israeli-occupation, jewish-forward, jewish-literature, poetry, rachel-tzvia-back

I kid you not. Alan Dershowitz plans to write an opera. Of course his entire life is an opera–and a very bad one at that. Imagine the character of Dershowitz outside the Leviev diamond showroom pictured in the YouTube video singing his defiance at the Adalah protesters. It would do boffo box office. Or he could write a great opera about the battle of the Jewish titans, Finkelstein and Dershowitz, though he would never do justice to Finkelstein of course and this would destroy the dramatic tension.

Alas, Dershowitz plans his opera on the life of a Warsaw cantor, Gershon Sirota, who perished in the Holocaust. The story sounds like it actually could make a fine opera, though not if written by the Dersh.

Other than clearly loving opera and good singing, his musical qualifications seem a bit slim:

Dershowitz is not without musical experience — he was a choirboy growing up in Brooklyn’s Boro Park at Temple Beth El, and at one point he dreamed of becoming a cantor — but he readily admits the limitations of his prowess. He is writing the libretto for the opera and picking out melodies on the piano, and down the road he plans to get help from more seasoned musicians.

“But even Gershwin needed an arranger,” he said, adding that his musical idol’s original last name was Gershowitz, and that g’s and d’s occasionally get mixed up.

Note the presumption of implying a possible family relationship with Gershwin. I think he needs more than an arranger. He needs a ghost composer.

tags alan-dershowitzs-musical-endeavors, gershon-sirota, jewish-forward, jewish-opera

A cri de coeur from Haaretz’s eminent columnist, Akiva Eldar, reinforcing how critical is the American Jewish community’s support for the Annapolis conference and a two state deal with the Palestinians:

American Jews can make a powerful contribution to helping diplomacy succeed. But doing so will require a break with the past.

We constantly hear that the Jewish community supports Israel — wherever its government stands. For more than 40 years, however, the community’s moral, political and financial power has been mostly occupied in building Israel’s strategic supremacy, and in containing any pressure from American administrations for Israel to change its policies in the territories.

In the early 1990s, Jewish activists were all over Washington, lobbying Congress to confront the first President Bush. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle stood up to the president, who had the chutzpah to push Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to stop expanding settlements as the White House tried to organize a Mideast peace conference. Four years later, as President Clinton was bringing Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat together to douse the fires in the region, Aipac convinced Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole to introduce a bill demanding the American Embassy be moved to Jerusalem.

As we all know, the American Embassy still has not moved to Israel’s capital. It seems it’s much easier to lobby for empty bills than to call for an active American role in the peace process. It’s more popular to sign petitions against “dividing” Jerusalem (how can one re-divide a city that was never really reunited?) than to encourage Prime Minister Olmert to turn the phrase “City of Peace” from a cliché into a reality.

We Israelis who experienced the traumatic days of the eve of the Six Day War will never forget the great support we received at the time from our Jewish brothers and sisters in America. We will always remember the many young volunteers who lined up to get a seat on a flight to Israel.

Forty years later, Israeli flags fly in front of our embassies in Cairo and Jordan. Now, the other members of the Arab League are offering the prospect of opening their own embassies in Israel. Yes, in return for peace, Israel will have to give up the West Bank and Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. In return, however, it will regain its Jewish, democratic and moral values.

As always, the final decision will be in the hands of the Israelis. But the American Jewish community has to decide whether it wants to be helpful in making peace or only in times of war.

Please God, Howard Kohr and his AIPAC chevra read this and took it very seriously (though I doubt it).

tags aipac-israel-lobby, akiva-eldar, annapolis-peace-conference, jewish-forward, jewish-lobby-israel-needs

Abraham Cahan is turning over in his grave. The trail-blazing founder of the Jewish Daily Forward created one of the first advice columns in American journalism, the Bintel Brief. The Forward editors are turning over the latter day version of the column to Alan Dershowitz (yup, you heard me right). Imagine Dersh as a neocon Ann Landers. I’d laugh at this if it weren’t so cruelly and darkly ironic:

Alan Dershowitz is one of the most famous names in the American legal profession, his counsel highly sought after. Now he will be offering his counsel to our readers, as the Forward’s next Bintel Brief guest advice columnist.

In addition to his stellar legal career, the famed Harvard Law professor has distinguished himself as one of America’s leading Jewish activists and most prolific pundits. With such books as “The Vanishing American Jew,” “The Case for Israel” and “The Case for Peace,” he has shaped the Jewish communal conversation.

Are you facing a Jewish dilemma, an ethical conundrum or family difficulties? Could you use some advice related to advocacy or activism? Send your questions for the Bintel Brief to bintelblog at forward dot com.

Check the Forward’s Web site Mondays in July for new installments of the Bintel Brief, featuring Dershowitz dispensing some wise counsel.

His “counsel highly sought after?” A “stellar career?” “America’s leading Jewish activist and prolific pundit?” Dershowitz’s “wise counsel?” Surely they jest. I especially like the suggestion that readers ask about their ‘ethical conundrums.’ Does the shaister who suggested that Norman Finkelstein believed his Shoah-survivor mother was a kapo have the right to utter one word about anyone else’s “ethical conundrums?”

Back in the day, the original Bintel Brief used to give advice to the love-lorn. It helped Jewish immigrants through the suffering of emigration and taught them to adapt to the New World. It always tried to speak plainly, simply and honestly to common folk. It always tried to make them a little better human beings. What can Alan Dershowitz have to say on that score to latter day Jews?

I’d like to suggest a contest. Perhaps some other progressive bloggers can join in. Let’s think of the most damaging advice we can ask Dershowitz involving his own ethically-challenged, demagogic, lying, scummy, baiting, dishonest behavior. It won’t get into The Forward. But we can have some fun with it. Readers, I challenge your wit with my own contribution:

Tyereh Professor: I am a recent immigrant to this country who escaped the Cossacks and the Czar’s army to arrive here in the Goldene Medinah, land of the free. Tell me, when you justify torture how are you any different than the tyrants I fled in Russia?

Maybe a Lebanese can write in and ask advice about how he can rebuild a life shattered with the help of pro-Israel ideologues like Big D. who justified Israel’s decimation of Lebanon. Maybe Norman Finkelstein can ask what to do in the case of a someone whose promotion is derailed by a spiteful, evil colleague.

HTML Mencken at Sadly, No! has given this news the acid satirical treatment it so richly deserves. It should be read and chuckled over.

I should make clear that I genuinely admire The Forward. But this idea has really come a cropper. Any humor we wring out of this is fully deserved.

tags advice-column, alan-dershowitz, bintel-brief, jewish-forward

Tikun Olam has been in the news today in no less than three publications and I'm delighted. First, after hocking everyone I could think of including The Forward about the Bishara story for some time, they assigned their Israeli correspondent, Orly Halpern to write about it. She did an estimable job though she didn't report on the substance of the alleged charges. The Forward also ran a short account of my reportage on the case: Although Israel-based journalists are barred from publishing the particulars of the Azmi Bishara case, some details have been reported in Arab media outlets and in the blogosphere. One of the most explicit and seemingly reliable accounts appeared in the Tikun Olam Web site ...