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Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

Stabbings have no siren so we don’t know when to run.

There are no cute little songs for my kids to learn in preschool and sing before they go to sleep each night, before they say the Sh’ma.

Stabbings can happen anywhere at any time.

Stabbings can happen in a park on a quiet bench. They can happen in the market, with soldiers standing just a few steps away. They can happen in front of a school or in a synagogue or on the street.

Everyone is on edge right now — most of us feel that prickle of fear just below the neck or deep in our stomachs — because when these attacks are random, everyone is a potential target.

Everyone.

Source: Sarah Tuttle-Singer, “There Are No Sirens Before a Stabbing” (Times of Israel)

See also: the latest “Sunday Sentence” on my other blog, Practicing Writing.

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
3

The list goes on: shootings, stabbings, and stonings are all rampant, and they’re almost always perpetrated or encouraged by Palestinian officialdom.

Western leaders and even a portion of diaspora Jewry justifies its refusal to notice or name the current wave of murderous Palestinian terror attacks on the grounds that the deceased are mostly “settlers”—a special category of civilians whose murder is always, if not justified, then easy enough for those who attended the right universities and who read the right newspapers to understand.

Source: Liel Leibovitz, “The Murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin” (Tablet)

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
2

What to do? Well, individually and as a community, make sure you know as much as you possibly can. Be fully informed. And then fight back — through academia, or journalism, or political action, or whichever is your area of expertise. Help others understand what Israel faces.

You won’t persuade the haters. But you can help prevent fair-minded people being manipulated and misled by the haters. And the benefits of meeting this challenge are enormous: you’ll be protecting Israel, and you’ll be working toward a smart, more knowledgeable climate for Jews in the UK and Europe. We are inextricably linked — the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the UK and the rest of the Diaspora. Our well-being is linked. We had better stand together.

Source: David Horovitz, “Strategies for Israel, and those who love her” (Times of Israel)

Sunday Sentence

by Erika Dreifus on
1

In which I participate in David Abrams’s “Sunday Sentence” project, sharing the best sentence I’ve read during the past week, “out of context and without commentary.”

Sentence first read and marked during the fall semester of 1989. Reread countless times--most recently, this week.
Sentence first read and marked during the fall semester of 1989. Reread countless times–most recently, this week.

Source: Stanley Hoffmann, “In the Looking Glass,” introduction to The Sorrow and the Pity: A Film by Marcel Ophuls (filmscript translated by Mireille Johnston), 1972.

Words of the Week

by Erika Dreifus on
Disabled

On Thursday, Regent Norman Pattiz urged the body to take a real stand against the anti-Semitic incidents described by students and said that was the intent behind making such a declaration. UC is the first statewide university to consider adopting such a set of principles against intolerance.

“To not recognize why this subject is even being brought up is to do a disservice to those who brought it up in the first place,” he said.

His comments were echoed by other regents and welcomed by Jewish students and groups. They said they hope a new statement will address a rash of anti-Semitic incidents.

Source: “U of California’s new tolerance rules fail to condemn anti-Semitism” (The Times of Israel)