Zoom’s cancellation of an event with Leila Khaled illustrates tech companies’ deference to right-wing, pro-Israel demands. But there are ways to fight back.
Continue readingThis poem was first published on CounterPunch. It is part of a collection that received the Mary Merritt Henry Prize for a Group of Poems, 2020.
Describe the area where the injustice happened in figurative language.
A striated country,
strapped down with wire and polyethylene wrap,
butchered and sliced with fractal borders.
Zoom into the bloodiest slice,
a slab twenty-five miles long and four-to-seven miles wide,
like the stretch between Queens and the Central Park Zoo.
Pronounce paa-lee-eh-tha-leen. Enunciate.
Continue readingThis short story was first published in Witness Magazine. It won the Melody Clarke Teppola Creative Writing Prize in Fiction, 2020.
It started with synagogues, JCC’s, Hillel’s.
First there was a mass shooting, bombings, and arson. Then assassinations. A major academic, a high-profile novelist, a famous comedian, a handful of philanthropists.
No hitman was caught, and there was evidence that law enforcement was complicit.
It was the leviathan of anti-Semitism, resurfacing. Clearly: We needed the Golem. Continue reading
A long-form essay about how I got an exemption from the Israeli military. First published in the Fall 2018 Issue of Your Impossible Voice. Audio version and full text follow.
I found the psychiatrist via my health insurance company. The clinic was underground. Dystopian, really. A white, fluorescent light made me feel even crazier than what I had hoped for. I think he was called Dr. Hofstatter. A thin layer of silver hair encircled his bald head like a half-broken ashtray. He had circular glasses with a see-through frame. His eyes were quite close to each other, an impenetrable grayish blue. He spoke very little, but when he did, his Hebrew had a faint Russian accent.
He went through the checklist for clinical depression the same way one would go through a shopping list: Continue reading
“It really makes no odds to us if we kill someone.” — Heinrich Himmler.
A new form of demagoguery has emerged in reaction to the burgeoning antifascist movement. Enter: NIMPE (Not In My Present Era). Much like its NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) colleague, the NIMPE will not claim to be a pacifist, will oppose US imperialism, and will glorify combative anti-fascism in other eras and other countries. But as soon as any kind of disturbance will occur in their time, the NIMPE will categorically denounce any kind of self-defense, fighting, or denial of platform to contemporary fascists. In the process, the NIMPE will adopt and build on top of the argumentation of the far right. Because of the NIMPE’s left wing or liberal appeal, it will be used by the far right to claim mainstream legitimacy for its racist goals. Continue reading
In the effort of organizing my internet presence, I’ll be sporadically adding here a bunch of my articles that were published elsewhere over the past couple of months. This one, showing my sister’s anarchic politics and prison organizing, was published on The Independent a day before her release from military prison.
Continue reading
On Friday 4/21/2017 shepherds from Al Auja in the Jordan Valley, Palestine were assaulted by Israeli settlers. Five solidarity activists who accompanied them were injured. A week later (4/28/2017) hundreds swarmed the hills to protest against the settlement and its violent settler outpost. Forced to act by public outrage, the police eventually evicted the outpost, and the shepherds can now access their land safely. Following is a checkered first-person account of the successful struggle those shepherds undertook.
The night after the attack. Rotem and I stay in Auja in case of a nightly raid. Continue reading
Responding to international concerns with respect to the massive hunger strike held by Palestinian prisoners, the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs declared:
“The Palestinian prisoners are not political prisoners. They are convicted terrorists and murderers. They were brought to justice and are treated properly under international law.”
There are no less than seven misrepresentations in this statement:
לסוהרות בכלא אין שמות, כולן נקראות המפקדת. כך למדתי שכמו בכיבוש, גם כאן יחסים של דיכוי מביאים לאובדן האנושיות.
את המאמר הבא אחותי עתליה הוציאה לנו בכתב יד צפוף על כמה דפי מחברת תלושים בזמן כליאתה השנייה. היום הוא פורסם במהדורת החג של “הארץ”. אני מעלה אותו כאן לרווחת הכלל בברכת חג חירות שמח: Continue reading
dagger essays, slingshot stories, quaint recollections of many shabbes mornings. we're stuck here and it's all going to hell. read a story? might as well.
clownmonkey 