Writing a biography of Chaim Soutine; Managing editor
@readliberties
;
Art for sale
I have a weekly torah portion newsletter, DM if you'd like to receive it
@StopAntisemites
@Delta
what are you trying to do??? Publicly shame a man for wearing a pin??? Who the hell do you think you are helping you miserable bigots
Exactly four weeks ago I sent
@JeffreyGoldberg
&
@AdrienneLaF
the email below telling them my rapist works at
@TheAtlantic
. Mr. Goldberg replied that the allegation was taken extremely seriously. I have not gotten a single update since.
I will not be raped with impunity.
"Remember Amina al-Hisoni, the seven year old who was badly injured by the Iranian missile in the Negev? Today Israeli authorities put a demolition order on her home in a Bedouin area while she is still hospitalized."
זוכרים את אמינה אל-חסוני בת ה7 שנפגעה קשה ממתקפת הטילים האיראנים בנגב? הרשויות במדינת ישראל הדביקו היום צו הריסה על הבית שלה בפזורה הבדואית, בזמן שהיא מאושפזת בבית החולים.
I am a Zionist and I am grateful for the countries recognizing Palestine. I know that Israel will not be safe until Palestinians have a sovereign state. This is what I WANT, not only because it is just, but because it is a step towards safety and stability for all of us.
Palestinians deserve a state for the exact same reason Jews do: they will not be safe until they have one. We of all people must understand that, and hasten the advent of Palestine.
Y'all, if the only Jews you like are the ones who hate Israel or the only Arabs you like are the ones who hate Palestinians, you should be ashamed of yourself and you should get out more.
I asked a Palestinian friend in WB whether the polls demonstrating that Palestinians there support what Hamas did on 10/7 and he laughed and said "Celeste, Palestinians here are so afraid of Hamas and the PA, friends of mine have told me they think those polls are traps!"
Jews need to know that it's possible to both condemn the antisemitism that infects certain sectors of the progressive left, and also at the same time find space and solidarity within the pro-palestinian movement. I've seen so many Palestinians eager to condemn antisemitism today.
I was raped exactly two years ago, a violation for which I reflexively blamed myself. I wrote my way out from under that guilt & the fruit of that effort will be in this year's Best American Essays collection. On this grim anniversary, a word in defense of art about trauma:
"My girlfriend tried to kill herself today
She wasn't at the festival
She didnt want to pay for the ₪300 ticket
All her friends were there
And they all were killed
She was the only one left alive
Only bc she didn't pay the ₪300
And now she's trying to kill herself"
חברה שלי ניסתה להתאבד היום.
היא אפילו לא היתה במסיבה.
גם היא כמוני התקמצנה של 300 שקל כניסה למסיבה ולא הלכה.
אבל כל החברות שלה כן.
כולן נרצחו. ורק היא לא.
רק היא נשארה בחיים
כי היא התקמצנה על 300 שקל כניסה למסיבה.
ועכשיו היא ניסתה להתאבד.
Another thing Jews and Palestinians have in common is desperately repeating again and again that those dead bodies you either pretend to care about or grotesquely dehumanize were once people we loved
I worry that after 2024 this country will become unsafe for Jews. Israel was supposed to be the place Jews go when their countries become unsafe. But I don’t want to escape to a country where my safety comes at the price of someone else feeling the way I did in the place I fled.
Thirty years ago Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslims in Hebron during prayer. The next year, Purim 1995, the current national security minister
@itamarbengvir
dressed as Goldstein for Purim.
A decent love, a moral loyalty, demands that we condemn what is evil in ourselves.
The most radical thing one could do in the region is invest billions in the quality of life of Palestinian children and make sure that’s where that money goes. America prefers to prop up authoritarians we think we can control. These are the consequences.
Astonishing how many people (MANY OF THEM AMERICAN) seem to think that unless leftist Israelis “start a revolution against their government” they are just as bad as Netanyahu. Are any of these people aware of the blood on their own hands? There are no innocent countries.
Jewish leftists should know that there is a community on the left in which they can protest on behalf of Palestinians and against Netanyahu, Smotrich, Ben Gvir and their horrific gangs without feeling any shame for believing Israel has a right to exist. We should all organize.
When I call myself a Zionist I’m not allying myself with the Israeli government, I’m allying myself with Israeli citizens who have been told by people around the world over the past several months that they deserve to die because of where they live. Condemn one support the other.
Millions of people live in misery under blockade for the purported purposes of keeping out weapons and keeping in militants. What is happening right now is EXACTLY what we’re told we’re being saved from.
6/25/21 an innocence was taken from me without permission. I blamed myself for that. In this essay I trace that guilt, and Persuade myself to let go of it.
@KhalilJeries
I wouldn’t bank on Trumps lack of ideology yielding liberalism. His tastes for thuggishness and brutality are not worldviews, they’re fetishes.
And the evangelicals who support him rival extremist Zionists in their anti-Palestinian rhetoric and sentiment.
"Rita and the Rifle" is the poem Mahmoud Darwish, national poet of Palestine, wrote about Tamar Ben-Ami, the Israeli woman with whom he he fell in love.
"Our activists are currently being detained in Jerusalem by police bc they are hanging posters that say "Jews and Arabs, we will get through this together". The posters were confiscated and the shirts in Hebrew and Arabic were also confiscated."
פעילי ההתנועה שלנו, רימון ומוחמד, מעוכבים כרגע בירושלים על ידי המשטרה כי - תחזיקו חזק - הם תולים פוסטרים שכתוב עליהם ״יהודים וערבים, נעבור את זה ביחד״. הפוסטרים הוחרמו והחולצות בעברית ובערבית הוחרמו גם הן. המשטרה משקיעה את זמנה בלסתום פיות במקום בלשמור עלינו. בושה ומעל הכל - סכנה
Matisse spent four years, beginning in 1948, designing every aspect of this church from the architecture to the furniture -- all for free. He completed it at the age of 82 and died 3 years later.
@VisionofT
@abesilbe
Do you think it constitutes a "good thing" that it required media attention for them to halt the demolition of a child's home while she was hospitalized?
If all the people who say "zionism is racism," "Israel has no right to exist," instead said "settlement expansion is racism" and "The settlements have no right to exist" they would A. be correct instead of incorrect and B. actually be able to improve Palestinian life.
Member of Knesset
@Ahmad_tibi
is in mourning for three family members who were killed in the explosion on the Al-nosirat refugee camp in Gaza: Dr. sachar Tibi, an education lecturer, Faisal tibi, a computer science student, and Ahmed Tibi, a ten year old boy.
בטייבה מדווחים לי שח״כ אחמד טיבי באבל על שלושה מבני משפחתו שנהרגו בהפצצות על מחנה הפליטים אל-נוסיראת בעזה. שלושת ההרוגים הם: ד״ר סחר טיבי, מרצה לחינוך במקצועה, פייסל טיבי סטונדט למדעי מחשב, ואחמד טיבי, ילד בן 10.
civilian men in Gaza stripped, cuffed, and held at gun point beg for release:
"When you arrived we waited for you because we want to live in peace. If we were guilty of anything we would have run. Let us live in peace. Our children are dying of hunger before our eyes."
Jews in the diaspora having such a difficult time condemning Netanyahu's government should have more respect for the Israelis who spent all of 2023 protesting against it.
For weeks, the biggest protests in Israel have been competing pro-hostage and anti-government protests in Tel Aviv. Last night the hostages’ families announced that the two protests would merge. This sign, which quotes Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul, is from that protest.
Those students were chanting eliminationist slogans. What they are saying is wrong - and they should absolutely have the right to say it.
hateful speech made by students with less than no power is in no way equivalent to an eliminationist Israeli gov’t six months deep in hell
I understand why Jews feel like they don’t have the power to feel for both sides. I know how heavy just our own pain is. But for every orphaned child of ours there are almost ten times as many on the other side of that fence. And for both our sakes we must feel for all of them.
It was one of the greatest honors of my career to work with Helen Vendler. Every single issue I looked forward to the hours-long phone calls we would have to go over her essays, and to discuss both our lives. It felt gluttonous to have direct access to such sharp wisdom.
People who extrapolate from the Mein Kampf in Gaza that all Gazan children have memorized Mein Kampf are morally equivalent to the people who extrapolate from Chotiner's interview that all Israelis are radical settlers.
Recognizing Palestinian humanity and condemning the degradation of the Palestinian people is IN NO WAY a betrayal of the Jewish people - quite the contrary. It never has been and it never will be.
I’m so ashamed and furious that this needs to be said.
In a new interview,
@IChotiner
speaks to Charles Birch, who oversees the United Nations Mine Action Service in the Palestinian territories, about why clearing Gaza of ordnance and rubble could pose a challenge unseen since the Second World War.
“No public is inherently right or left; it requires a movement to create new political possibilities.such a movement is already getting support from Israelis and their allies abroad. But it also needs international backing.”
@Etanetan23
I really can't stop thinking about this. If it were two million Jews starving to death and one hundred and thirty Palestinians held captive, and the Secretary of State started his remarks this way, I would lose my mind.
If two million Jews were being starved to death and the Secretary of State of the Unites States began his remarks by talking about 130 non-Jewish hostages being held captive by terrorists I would not be able to contain my fury
"Isabelle Huppert’s belief in the limitations of language is mystical. It is symptomatic of a sophisticated lack of faith in human reason. She thinks that human behavior is chronically incomprehensible, and she makes films which reflect that conception."
A woman reached asked me why I was raising money for a Palestinian instead of for Israelis since I'm a Jew. Are you woke like the rest of them??? she wanted to know. This was my answer:
Do not allow yourself to dehumanize an entire people. Do not allow yourself to hate so deeply that you yourself become inhuman. Steel yourself against that evil.
It is a tragic fact that American leftists have far more power than any Palestinian to hasten the advent of a Palestinian state. We have a responsibility to push for a two state solution. Fantastical demands, like the elimination of Israel, are a dereliction of duty.
IDF’S OLDEST RESERVIST PROMOTED
Ezra Yakhin, a 96-year-old veteran of the Lehi movement, was promoted to Command Sergeant Major in a special IDF ceremony. Despite his age, Yakhin continues to serve in the reserves, primarily contributing his experience and dedication.
This barbaric statement is a Chilul Hashem - a desecration of God's name. Slandering a peace loving, kind leader like
@hamzeAwawde
is antithetical to common sense as well as decency. We are lucky to have Palestinian leaders like him with whom we can build a better future.
Both our peoples have ancient shards of pottery which prove that we have been on the land since time immemorial.
The problem is not that either side is lying, the problem is that neither side is lying: both of us have just claims to ALL the land. So we must share it.
If you’ve never been to the region and you’ve never spent time with people from Israel or Gaza or the West Bank, most of what you see is the most extreme on both sides. But they are all human beings and like all people what most of them want most is for their families to be safe.
1. A good friend with good intentions asked me recently how I could feel that the left has abandoned me.
I think it must be very hard for someone who was not raised in the Jewish tradition, studying texts in which our slaughter is routinely recounted, to understand what 10/7 was
I don't know what the word "zionist" means for others. I know that for me, it is a condition of permanent connection. I will always be implicated by Israel's crimes, I will always love its people. I will always long and work for a more just version of it than the one that exists.
I'm writing a book about Chaim Soutine! Leon and I talk about him and the wild and wonderful circles in which he lived in this episode of LibertiesTalk. Give it a listen:
I cant think about what Smotrich and Ben Gvir have done to desecrate our religion without losing it. I dont understand why every Jew who cares about our heritage doesn't hate & actively oppose them.
Look what they've done to us. Look how they soak our books in blood.
A person I once loved very much DMed me yesterday to show me the “UN report” (an instagram post) “proving” that there was no rape on 10.7 and telling me that saying there was is justifying this war.
So for anyone who needs to hear this: no it doesn’t and you must condemn both.
My heart is so broken, functioning has been difficult for months. I think its worthwhile to share that, because it's easy to forget that, for every utterance of certainty and outrage, there are a thousand hearts breaking, pulled in opposite directions and pathetically human.
"Wowowow! another conference of Jews and Arabs, full without a single place to sit. We are standing together to stop attempts to crumble our community, & to turn back from the path that this administration pursues, towards a path of Palestinian-Israeli peace"
וואו וואו וואו! עוד כנס מלא ביהודים ובערבים, מלא עד אפס מקום, הפעם בבאקה אל ג'ארביה. אנחנו עומדים ביחד כדי לעצור את הניסיונות לפורר את החברה שלנו ולהסית אותנו אחד נגד השני. אנחנו גם עומדים ביחד כדי להצביע על הכיוון ההפוך לזה שהממשלה דוחפת אותנו אליו, כיוון של שלום ישראלי-פלסטיני
SHAME ON
@antisemitism
FOR ATTACKING
@hamzeAwawde
, WHO HAS BEEN A VOICE OF REASON AND PEACE FOR YEARS, AND WHO HAS ASSUMED A POSITION OF LEADERSHIP OVER HTE PAST EIGHT MONTHS DESPITE GREAT PERSONAL LOSS
I am proud to know Hamze and to support him and work with him
Asked whether he takes back any of the things he said about how the religious zionists need to be reeducated, the new head of the labor party says what the religious zionists in Israel teach is "racist, extremist, violent, and dangerous to the entire Jewish people."
*asked about the polls
and then he said "People are scared! Friends of mine will whisper to me that they hate Hamas, they hate what Hamas did to us and how they made things worse, but then I'll see him posting online about how he supports them."
@JoanneLimburg
@DanielSeidemann
I find it oddly comforting that our tradition outfits us with the tokhekha language -- we have a tradition also of virulent self criticism. For as long as there have been Jews abusing their power there have been Jews yelling at them for it.
Ben Gvir just had a meeting w Netanyahu in which he repeated his warnings: if Israel doesnt go into Rafah, if the war ends, if there is a deal.... The PM listened carefully and assured Ben Gvir he had nothing to worry about. There will be no deal, there will be no end to the war
סיימתי עם ראש הממשלה פגישה לבקשתי.
הזהרתי את ראש הממשלה אם חלילה ישראל לא תיכנס לרפיח, אם חלילה נסיים את המלחמה, אם חלילה תיהיה עסקה מופקרת.
ראש הממשלה שמע את הדברים, הבטיח שישראל נכנסת לרפיח, הבטיח שלא מסיימים את המלחמה והבטיח שלא תהיה עסקה מופקרת.
אני מברך על הדברים הללו.
Smotrich literally said “the most important thing is not saving the hostages. The most important thing is winning. Those who say ‘at any price’ are wrong.”
WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT *THEM* HATING *US* MORE THAN THEY LOVE THEIR CHILDREN?
It is not a coincidence that both civilian populations have been protesting their governments, which they know do not give a shit about them, for the past several months.
A small group of Holocaust survivors and some second-generation demonstrated outside Yad Vashem this morning.
"If we loose our compassion for the Other, we have lost our Humanity" - let this be a lesson we learn from the Holocaust and its survivors.
“There are people living here in this very real place. We are not a theoretical idea. And some of us are Palestinians and Jews who are working together tirelessly to make our vision of peace and equality a reality.”
Head of Columbia Hillel just sent a message urging students to leave campus b.c he cannot ensure their safety. IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STUDENTS LEADING THE PROTESTS NOT ONLY TO DISTANCE THEMSELVES FROM, BUT TO CONDEMN THE VIOLENT ANTISEMITISM TINCTURING THEIR COMMUNITY
Anyone who gives a damn about Israel must oppose this war, anyone who gives a damn about Israel must oppose the occupation, anyone who gives a damn about Israel must say again and again and again when we treat Palestinians like they are subhuman we become inhuman ourselves