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Words of the Week: David Horovitz

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

In which Horovitz imagines an all-too-unlikely statement from the U.N. Security Council:

“Members of the United Nations Security Council commend Israel on the innovative technology behind the Iron Dome missile defense system, which is proving so mercifully successful in intercepting relentless rocket salvoes fired indiscriminately at Israel’s citizens from the Gaza Strip.

The Council recognizes with profound dismay that the approximately 1,000 rockets launched at Israel by Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Strip over the past seven days were designed to kill and maim the people of Israel, and to terrorize the entire nation, in pursuit of Hamas’s hideous stated goal of destroying Israel. Members of the Council shudder at the thought of the widespread loss of life and devastation these hundreds of rockets were intended to cause, and would have caused, in the absence of the Israeli missile defense system. The Council cautions that terrorist organizations in Gaza and elsewhere can be relied upon to seek new means to wreak such devastation upon Israel and its people, including by evading Iron Dome and other defenses, and offers any assistance Israel may need in continuing to thwart such pernicious efforts.”

Read the rest of this remarkable “Statement Not Issued by the U.N. Security Council”.

Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • A thoughtful review of Nora Gold’s Fields of Exile, which you’ve heard about here before.
  • Interesting call: “For this special issue of Prooftexts on Jewish Literature/World Literature, we seek papers that address Jewish literary multilingualism, translation, and circulation. Essays should combine theoretical and methodological concerns with readings of Jewish-language texts to illustrate the productive intersections of Jewish literature with the discourse on world literature.”
  • On the Lilith blog, Talia Lavin writes “On Mothers, Sisters, Narrative and War.”
  • “The interdisciplinary symposium ‘Global Yiddish Culture, 1938 – 1948’ invites historians, literary scholars, sociologists, cinema and theatre scholars to think about the nature of Yiddish culture that developed during this difficult period in Jewish history.”
  • Finally, I’m sad to say that this poem of mine, “Questions for the Critics,” is once again relevant.

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Words of the Week: David Horovitz

    by Erika Dreifus on
    2

    “It becomes wearying, conflict after conflict, but it is necessary, nonetheless, to urge policy-makers and opinion-shapers overseas to make just a modicum of effort, to look just a little closer, to exercise just a smidgen of intellectual honesty. And to recognize the bottom line: If there was no rocket fire from this non-disputed enclave, there would be no Israeli response, and nobody would be dying.”

    Source: David Horovitz, “Why Are We Fighting with Gaza, Again?” – a must-read piece in The Times of Israel

    Jewish Literary Links for Shabbat

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    Photo Credit: Reut Miryam Cohen
    Every Friday morning My Machberet presents an assortment of Jewish-interest links, primarily of the literary variety.

  • Barbara Krasner fills us in on the most recent conference of the Association of Jewish Libraries.
  • In this month’s Mosaic essay, Martin Kramer questions Ari Shavit’s much-publicized account of Lydda, 1948.
  • On Lilith blog: an interview with Nora Gold about her new novel Fields of Exile (which we discussed with her, too).
  • I mentioned last week how disappointed I was that I wouldn’t be able to attend “Pew-ish: Artists Responding to the New Jewish Identity,” a staged reading of short plays. Luckily, though, Gordon Haber made it to the event–and covered it for The Forward.
  • TBR: short stories from Poetica Magazine, which features contemporary Jewish writing.

    • Shabbat shalom.

    Words of the Week: Thane Rosenbaum

    by Erika Dreifus on
    Disabled

    “The problem, however, is not just one of proportionate loss but the casualness with which many insist on drawing a moral equivalence between acts of terror and self-defense, between the purposeful kidnapping of teenagers hitching a ride and the inadvertent killing of teenagers who are hurling homemade grenades at armed soldiers going house-to-house in search of three boys who they don’t realize are already dead.

    There is no moral equivalence here, and there is a danger in continuing to make these false comparisons.”

    Source: Thane Rosenbaum, “There Is No Moral Equivalent to the Murder of Three Israeli Teenagers,” The Daily Beast.