I'll Make This One Short
This is an abbreviated newsletter, composed of odds and ends. For our Zoom call for paid subscribers this Friday at Noon ET, we’ll be joined by two terrific thinkers, Sam Bahour and Bernard Avishai, who have come together to promote the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian confederation. Here’s the essay they wrote laying out the idea in The New York Times.
In lieu of a full newsletter, here are some things you might find of interest:
Last week, I published an essay in Jewish Currents (to which you should subscribe) asking why—amidst the constant American debate about what is and is not anti-Semitism—there is no concept called “anti-Palestinianism.” My answer: Anti-Palestinian bigotry is largely invisible not because it is rare but because it’s ubiquitous.
One of the key shifts in US media coverage of Israel-Palestine in recent months has been a growing (and overdue) willingness to give Palestinians a platform to speak for themselves. This New York Times video from Gaza is an example of how powerful such efforts can be.
In The Third Narrative, Todd Gitlin and Ralph Seliger offer a critical, liberal Zionist response to the Friday Zoom call we recently held with Omar Barghouti.
An intimate, funny and moving essay by my CUNY colleague Salma Abdelnour Gilman entitled, “How my Arab/Jewish marriage survives Israel’s Gaza wreckage.”
A powerful critique of US media coverage of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
I’ve long thought Norman Finklestein would be a great character in a novel. Watch this documentary and I bet you’ll agree.
If you like Hamilton and you like Adon Olam, you’ll love this.
No one writes resignation letters like Cornel West.
See you Friday,
Peter
Ralph Seliger and Todd Gitlin could at least be open about the fact that they do not share the 3 declared goals of the BDS movement.
Seliger decries Barghouti's lack of "consistency" in saying that "diaspora Palestinians would have to be included in any Palestinian referendum on peace", but "Jews don’t exist as a nation or people internationally." Palestinians are DEFINED as people who come from within the borders of what was called Palestine under the British Mandate. Since that is the exact territory under dispute, of course Palestinians who have been forcibly prevented from living in it should be allowed a say over its future. There's no reason why Jews who are not Israeli citizens and have never lived in Palestine should have any say over it.