Between Germany and France
Last minute shopping, before takeoff. Schönefeld airport bookstore, June 11.
Archived entries for Israel
Forecast is Cloudy
A crisis foretold, again and again. My second collaboration with Keith Kahn-Harris, in Thursday’s openDemocracy.
Flotilla Midrash
On Tuesday, Italian daily Il Riformista ran an opinion sampling-piece on the Gaza flotilla fiasco. The talking heads were myself, speaking for the left, and Efraim Inbar, of Bar Ilan University, representing the right. Download the PDF.
Worst Case Scenario
It had to be said. Published Wednesday, in The Guardian. My first collaboration with my friend and colleague, Keith Kahn-Harris. Here’s to many more.
Kibbutz Pasolini
Discourse about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Italy is highly unique. It’s complicated, on the one hand by Italy’s own recent colonial history in the Middle East (Libya), and its burgeoning Arab population on the other.
I’m working on a series of essays trying to tackle the subject, in non-traditional ways. One avenue I’m working on is film. This is a screen shot from Pasolini’s brilliant Sopralluoghi in Palestina, shot in Israel in the early 1960s.
About half way through the documentary, the legendary director says something to the effect of “It’s not Biblical enough here.”
The Virtue of Flexibility
My review of Shlomo Sand’s controversial The Invention of the Jewish People is finally out. Check it out, in this week’s Forward.
Focus Group
This was a nice surprise to wake up to today. I’m equally thrilled to be sandwiched between both books. Listing courtesy of Bookforum.
Out of the Ghetto
The February edition of Pagine Ebraiche is now out. Pictured above is an author interview, centered around the publication of Israel vs. Utopia. The title is “From the Venice Ghetto to Rishon Le Zion”, in reference to my family’s greater path of migration to Ottoman Palestine. It’s the first of two pieces of Italian press on the book, the second of which is forthcoming next month.
There are a couple of errors in the profile, but they’ve since been corrected. It’s an otherwise terrific piece, which, most importantly, gave a certain member of my family, extremely self-conscious of our Italian heritage, an enormous amount of pleasure to read. Granted, his Italian is about as rotten as mine, but still good enough to get the gist of an 850 + word newspaper article.