Joel Schalit

Armor Piercing

All they could talk about was Obama. How naive he is. How he would be appeasing the Arabs. How, inevitably, he’d not only sell Israel short, but the Jewish people, too.

“We are the defenders of the West, the only barrier between Islam and democracy, and this young man still puts them first, as though Abdullah ever came before Netanyahu.”

The words were those of an aging general, long since retired from the IDF. “We defend this country for them, for you,” he said, looking at me, assuming that because of my American accent, I was an outsider.

I listened for as long as I could, trying to keep my cool, despite the infuriating assumptions that were being made. When I finally did speak up, I really spoke my mind. Everyone was surprised.

“You aren’t taking into account why the Americans would begin to express complex feelings towards us, towards the Middle East, and start contemplating such things as negotiations and withdrawal,” I replied.

I thought back to this conversation yesterday as I drove by this memorial, at the mouth of San Francisco Bay. There was something particularly moving about it, that caused me to stop, to think and remember.

Don’t get me wrong. I still loathe cliched displays like this. But sometimes, under certain circumstances, they’ll punch through the armor of the most jaded of skeptics.

The presence of a Veterans Administration hospital right behind it certainly helped.

America Versus Israel

Sidewalk market newsstand. San Francisco, June 2009.

Supermarket newsstand. Netanya, May 2009.

Shopping With Joel

You can’t find every book in San Francisco. Sometimes its necessary to go to Berkeley and scour the stores near campus that I would frequent as a graduate student. On the hunt for copies of Giorgio Agamben‘s The Coming Community and State of Exception, this big red hardcover, at Moe’s Books, stood out.

What’s curious about the jacket design is the decision to use the initial B, which stands for Benzion. What could be the reasoning? Surely the author’s last name, and its association with the historian’s son, Benjamin, can’t hurt. I’d be stunned if Bibi hadn’t sold more books in his time than his ninety-nine year old father.

I have yet to read an essay on the work of Bryn Jones, AKA Muslimgauze, that fully captures the significance of his music. I commissioned a short piece in Tikkun several years ago, by Ron Nachmann, that came the closest. There was also a decent essay in Bidoun a year later, by DJ/Rupture, that made many similar points.

When Courtney found this CD across the street from Moe’s, at the original Amoeba Music store, I couldn’t help but think that the definitive statement on the late British artist is still forthcoming. Especially considering how much Muslimgauze’s Mideast-focused politics foreshadows much of today’s less reflexive left.

Home Schooling

San Francisco’s best used bookstore is fifteen minutes away. In the kitchen, July 23rd.

Work in Progress

In a matter of weeks, Zeek will cease publishing at Jewcy. As many of you already know, the periodical is moving to a brand new home, hosted by The Forward, America’s oldest Jewish newspaper. In the final stages of a redesign, we’ll be debuting a brand new site too, put together by Jennifer (who created the wireframes) and Richard Winchell, a terrific visual designer. It’s going to be a wonderful publishing platform, if only because of the people who pieced it together. Hopefully we’ll provide it with content of equal quality.

I’ve been working as Zeek’s online editor for the last three months, though I’ve been supplying the same amount of content since February. Following the completion of the book, I’ve had the opportunity to step up my day-to-day work at the mag. So far, its been extremely gratifying, and a nice change of pace. I’ve often worked as an editor in order to give myself a break from writing. Even though I’m supposed to be writing a column (and will be doing more of that) its nice to worry about other folks grammar for a change.

Despite the fact that we had not planned on returning to the US this summer, it turned out, obviously, to be an ideal time. I could not imagine doing this level of editorial work and planning at such a distance. This way, when we return in the Fall, everything will be built, and we can get to work, wherever we are. I’m enjoying the idea of editing Zeek in Milano. The Italian tie-in seems so distant from what English-language Jewish publishing is about here, with its division of coverage always split between the US and Israel.

You Must Be Kidding

During the time I took off to finish the research for Israel vs Utopia – January 2007 to January 2008 – I only assumed one freelance assignment. Normally spread too thin, I had to keep my non-IvU activities to a bare minimum. The gig? Editing a book about the anarchist ideological heritage of Israel’s kibbutz movement.

Originally a favor to the publisher, who explained that even though he had picked the title up, he couldn’t direct such an Israel-specific project, I was delighted to give him a helping hand. Not only would it be good for the book’s author to have an editor with my specific set of interests. I knew I’d learn something too.

Lo and behold, much to mine and the author’s surprise (James Horrox and I exchanged emails last week trying to confirm its publication status), A Living Revolution was released by AK Press on July 14. Turned in this time last year, according to James, the book had some final additions made to it, and received a formal copy edit.

James Horrox has much to be proud of. A combination of intellectual history, social theory and investigative journalism, A Living Revolution is being published precisely at a time when immense efforts are being made to demonstrate that Israel has always been an inherently rightist project. Not so, according to Horrox.

To get a teaser, check out the marvellous piece James wrote for Zeek in October 2007, Rebuilding Israel’s Utopia. It is based on the book’s research. Sweetening the deal is an absolutely terrific forward by Uri Gordon, a lecturer at the Arava Institute, and the author of the extremely well-regarded Anarchy Alive.

More publishing news forthcoming.

Father, Son and Holy Ghost

It could have been a Crass cover. Bologna gift shop, May 2009.

Wartime Imaginary

In the Fall of 2007, I started to document numerous instances of the Middle East in San Francisco. Signs of the city’s burgeoning Palestinian and Israeli immigrant populations, the local Jewish community’s longstanding activism around the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the War on Terror, everything seemed to come to a visual head here during the final year of the Bush administration.

Imagine my surprise when, the day after returning from Milan, Jennifer and I encounter the image above. An archetypal ‘milk carton kid’ (for those unfamiliar, in the US, milk cartons used to carry pictures of missing children) the picture was taken on Valencia Street, in a spot normally covered with smarty-pants political posters. Notice, of course, the fact that this missing child is in fact Osama Bin Laden.

The following day, twelve blocks away, I found this image inserted inside a weekly newspaper bin. The cover of another American icon – a Chick comic – this one features obvious caricatures of terrorists. Judging from the execution, jihadis, in traditional garb, disingenuously posing as ‘friends’ while still flying the flag of Islam. Notice the sinister-looking guy holding up the flag. Its hilarious, albeit lame.

Chick publications, a hipster fetish (because of their obvious extremity) are too easy to pick apart. Rightist Christian pamphlets designed to deliver political information in the form of a religious comic book, the contrast of such publications with the imposition of Bin Laden’s likeness on an all-American beverage is a good way of summarizing the mental space the Mideast continues to take up here.

October Surprise

This week, the final proofs of my book were approved and sent to the printer. The culmination of six years of research and hundreds of pages of draft writing, Israel vs. Utopia is finally done. Forthcoming this October in the US, (and November in the UK), my publisher, Akashic Books, is now in the process of piecing together an American tour to support the book’s publication.

I can’t even begin to explain how gratified I am by all of this. From proofing the final draft to reviewing the book’s packaging, the entire process has been immensely rewarding. My second full-length book (not including the three collections I’ve both edited and co-edited), it comes the closest to approximating what I always wanted to write in book-length form. And it also, despite how exhausted I am, allows me to think about moving on to related subjects I’ve been increasingly interested in exploring as of late.

Being in Europe this past year has been immensely rewarding in this regard. It allowed me to conclude the writing I did about Israel’s relationship with Britain and France in IvU, as well as consider possibilities for future research. Living in immigrant neighborhoods such as Brixton, in south London, and the Piazza Loreto/Via Padova area in Milan has only served to clarify such interests. I’m not quite ready to talk about where I intend to go from here, except to say that it will be a natural consequence of what I’ve been witnessing.

In the interim, if you’re interested in learning more about Israel vs. Utopia, Akashic has put up a promo page announcing its October release. Amazon UK and Powells (for US readers) are already offering preorders, too.

Same As It Always Is

Clearly its going to take more time. Two and a half weeks back in San Francisco, and Europe has never felt closer. By the time we leave, we’ll probably have come to realize that we are indeed here, not in London or Milan. One thing is certain. The amount of moving we’ve done these last ten months has had the curious consequence of making things seem more similar, wherever we are, than it makes them feel different.

For example, this picture, shot in London’s Pimlico tube station in March, has an explicitly American feel to it. Perhaps its because I had never seen such examples of poverty until I began running into homeless persons living in New York’s subways in the early ’80s. Fresh off the boat from the United Kingdom, it was an entirely foreign sight to twelve-year-old me, one that immediately clinched the distinctions between the two countries.