One great thing about this blog is that in addition to meeting Arabists and Arabs on the pretext, It's My Job, I have gotten the social comfort-food of meeting a lot of Jews who feel just the way I do: That the occupation is central to Jewish life here and now, and that it must be smote hip and thigh. Like my friend David Bloom who I've never laid eyes on but holds my hand when I go to bed at night. He just sent me this from Tirzah Firestone, a rabbi in Boulder, Colorado, writing in the Birmingham Post. Birmingham, Alabama? Nope Birmingham England of course. They don't run this kind of stuff–
This summer, towns like Nablus, Jenin, Hebron and even Bethlehem,
are locked down like ghettos, subjected to terror raids by night, and
long, dehumanizing lines at checkpoints by day.
I think of
Qalqilya, a town of 45,000, with one heavily guarded gate through which
thousands of occupants must enter and exit. Its sandy roads are swept
several times a day so that soldiers can look for footprints to make
sure no one has escaped.
in the old USA. Shame shame shame. The headline is "A Rabbi's shame at Israel's treatment of Palestinians.." I love you Tirzah. I grew up with guilt, now I got shame. How did it happen, rabbi? I thought the Christians were the shame culture.
Speaking of righteous Jews–a double entendre on righteous gentiles–here is Adam Shapiro speaking next week in New York on the Nakba Dailies, which seems to be a filmic effort to make those events of 60 years ago leap out as real and fresh:
