Posts Tagged ‘Mahmoud Abbas’
JERUSALEM, RAMALLAH & WASHINGTON
Once, a man stacked up piles of dried grass, sticks, branches then logs in a heat-baked land. A friend asked, “What’s with all this fuel? One spark could set the whole area ablaze.” The gatherer said, “Maybe the weather will turn cold. But relax. I certainly won’t start a fire now.” The friend shook his…
Read MoreGENOCIDE—FACT AND FANTASY
On August 1, The Movement for Black Lives issued its platform. The group represents a coalition of 60-plus organizations calling for equal treatment for African Americans in the criminal justice system and rebuilding Black communities. Among the platform’s statements: “The US […] is complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.” Around the…
Read MoreFOUR TOUGH TRUTHS
In the movie A Few Good Men (1992), Jack Nicholson is the Marine colonel commanding the U.S. base at Guantanamo. He famously tells a court martial, “You can’t handle the truth.” Given Tuesday’s election in Israel, last November’s American Congressional election and the state of the world, a number of regrettable truths confront us. Truth…
Read MoreSILWAN
A newspaper article from decades ago concerned the wise, heroic act of a teacher in a tough Chicago high school. I wish I could personally tell the story to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu. A student pulled a gun. Let me be clear. No one has the right to bring a gun into a…
Read MoreJOHN KERRY’S FRAMEWORK
My short story “White on White” in Summerset Review in a way suggests the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations shepherded by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The tale offers an updated example of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” So do the negotiations. According to Tom Friedman in the January 29 New York Times, Mr.…
Read MoreMANDELA AND JEWISH WISDOM
Nelson Mandela’s funeral is several weeks behind us. As it happens, now is a good time to consider how Mandela’s philosophy of looking forward finds antecedents in the Talmud and the Book of Proverbs. Mandela’s greatness was in thinking that while great wrongs had been done to black South Africans, hatred and recrimination serve no…
Read MoreBLACK IS WHITE—AND BLACK
In George Orwell’s novel 1984, Big Brother, the symbol of tyranny, declares that “Black is white, and white is black.” This marks just one example of “doublethink,” which twists truth and falsehood. But doublespeak is more than fiction, as we learned in Gaza last week. On Saturday, Palestinians celebrated Hamas’ twenty-fifth anniversary marked by the…
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