Gaza Journal 51: Days of Awe
I got nothing. After almost a year of commenting on the War on Gaza, I find that there is little left to say. The war has taken on an air of surreality for those of us who are not dying under Israeli bombs, a strange sense that this is just the way things are, like bad weather or an annoying electronic whine that you just have to live with. Ten months ago, I could imagine a ceasefire; this summer, I might have imagined that the State of Israel could be forced by international pressure to pull back. But today, the day after Yom Kippur 5785, and the end of the Days if Awe, the ever-expanding...
Gaza Journal 27: Teachable Moments
One of the most pernicious narratives promoted by pro-Israel organizations like Hillel International, the World Jewish Congress, and the ADL is that (some) Jewish college students are being made to feel uncomfortable, or unwelcomed by the campus antiwar demonstrations...
Gaza Journal 26: The Golden Calf
I had planned to take it a bit easy this week. As the War grinds on, it wears me down. I am tempted to look away and write about other things, but I can’t. Still, it has been difficult to keep up the pace and engage with the horror in Gaza, and I wanted to dial it...
Gaza Journal 25: Moral Math and Memory
News outlets are describing Iran's attack on the State of Israel as a "retaliatory strike." This means that they are responding to the State of Israel's bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus. So, by any standard, the State of Israel "started it." I find the moral...
Gaza Journal 24: We Wring Our Hands
In reply to a meme going around that to the effect of “how can the world stand by and just let the genocide in Gaza happen?…” In fact, this is exactly how it happens. The world always stands by while other countries commit atrocities and genocides against other...
Gaza Journal 23: Heresies
I had no idea when I started this journal more than five months ago that it would become, in part, an extended meditation on Zionism, Jewishness, and belonging. Yet, my comments about Matisyahu last week have become characteristic of where my thoughts often go, as I...
Gaza Journal 22: “One Day”
I saw a photo today of my famous namesake Matisyahu literally wrapping himself in the Israeli flag. I don’t begrudge the singer – who, I seem to recall, is from White Plains, NY – his sense of commitment or connection to the State of Israel. I am well aware that many...
Gaza Journal 21: Glacial Change
I am not surprised by much these days. People are all-too-often who they are, incapable of any real change and set in their courses until they breathe their last breaths. It is, perhaps, a cynical view of humanity, and I am willing to wear the mantle of a cynic and...
Gaza Journal 20: Five Months
Five months into the War on Gaza, I can only imagine what is going through the minds of Israeli military planners. Five months ago, the State of Israel began a devastating bombing campaign against Gaza, followed by a ground offensive, deploying overwhelming...
Gaza Journal 19: Agonies
I spent most of the week thinking about Aaron Bushnell. His death last Sunday came as a shock; so much so that I was at a loss for words. I am at a loss for words now. Bushnell could well have been one of my students; full of promise, ideals, and pain – both for the...
Gaza Journal 18: Dissent
A myth beloved of the Baby Boom generation is “we ended Vietnam War.” By this, they mean that it was the vast mobilization of the entire youth generation that convinced the US government to withdraw from Vietnam in 1973. Make no mistake: popular opinion certainly...
Gaza Journal 17: Blood and Soil
I was interviewed for my hometown newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, about being both Jewish and pro-Palestinian. It is an honor to be included with these other shvesterkind from my hometown. I don't know them all yet, but I will. I hope that they will accept my friend...
Gaza Journal 16: The Militarist Death Cult
My parents visited the State of Israel in 1973 and came back with all sorts of knick-knacks and souvenirs, ranging from a camel carved from a piece of olive wood, to keffiyehs for my brother and me, to a couple of bottles of Sabra liqueur from the Tel Aviv duty free....
Gaza Journal 15: Vague Accusations
I didn’t comment on allegations made by Israeli intelligence that employees of the UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack on the State of Israel for a few days. I wanted to...
Gaza Journal 14: A Day in Court
I was reading Ruth Marcus’s Op-ed in the Washington Post on Friday, and I could not keep from laughing. It wasn’t a particularly cheery laugh, more of a rueful, emotionally bereft, ironic snigger. There was nothing terribly surprising in the column; if you have...
Gaza Journal 13: Idolatry
“Because actually the world is not made up of ‘nations’ and fatherlands that want only to preserve their cultural distinctions, and only if it means not sacrificing a single human life. Fatherlands and nations want much more, or much less: They have vested interests...
Gaza Journal 12: One Hundred Days
I recognize that one of my great intellectual limitations is that, while I can identify problems and ask questions, I am at a loss when it comes to solutions. That is why I try to listen respectfully to people who have constructive ideas, even if I don't necessarily...
Gaza Journal 11: How Does It End?
I am not an optimist by nature. That is perhaps an occupational hazard of being a Jew and a historian. It is difficult to see a bright future through a Jewish historian’s lens. The past, I often tell my students, is full of bad news since history is always the story...
Gaza Journal 10: Slipping into the Future
I have to ask what would happen if Washington simply stopped making "emergency weapon sales" to the State of Israel. Would Israelis suddenly find themselves in peril? Would the IDF suddenly grind to a halt? Or, would it just become that much more difficult for the...
Gaza Journal 9: Amidah
I have been posting in social media about the War on Gaza, and collecting these posts in weekly installments in The Typescript for more than two months. It began as an act of witness and resistance. The Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer wrote in Rethinking the...
Gaza Journal 8: Massacre of The Innocents
I have always expected a rupture in Am Yisroel; the definitive and irreconcilable cleavage between the Jews of Zionism and the rest of us. But I did not expect it to come so soon, or with such vehemence. I really don't believe that there will be any going back after...
Gaza Journal 7: Groping for Wisdom
Chanukah is coming. If you know me at all, you will know that I have conflicted feelings about the holiday. I welcome any holiday that brings us together as a community, and as a people, to share our heritage. I love the lights and the latkes, and it was always a...
Gaza Journal 6: Compassion Theater
What else can we call the warnings from the Israeli government - and from Benjamin Netanyahu himself - for Gazan civilians to seek safety, and the claims it is working to create “safe areas” for civilians to evacuate to, but "Compassion Theater." According the...
Gaza Journal 5: The Pause
The truce began today. I choose to call it this, since there is something ghoulish about the word “pause.” That sounds like a brief, unexpected, and unwelcomed interruption, like when the referee in a boxing match “pauses” the fight just long enough to be sure that...
Gaza Journal 4: Ground to Dust
I was riding the train to work last week, when a man sat down in the seat next to me, pulled a Talmudic text (Hebrew text within Hebrew text) from his messenger bag and started reading. I was listening to music on my headphones, and had removed my hat, so he could see...