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Wherever You Go is a finely interwoven novel of three American lives and the unexpected ways they touch each other in the landscape of Israel. I recorded this interview with author Joan Leegant when she visited Boca Raton, Florida for a Jewish Book Network event at the Levis JCC.
It is rare that an author interview moves me to read a book, but Wherever You Go is that rare exception.
I am new to The Book of Life and already eager for a next podcast. My gratitude to Heidi Estrin for giving deserving Jewish authors a voice on the Web.
In a rousing speech before Congress on May 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected peace talks with the newly unified Palestinian government because it now includes — on paper at least — officials from the terrorist (or, in its own eyes, “resistance”) group Hamas. In a striking moment, Netanyahu defiantly declared, “Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by the Palestinian version of al Qaeda,” a statement greeted with resounding applause from the assembled members of Congress.
But hold on a minute. Yes, Hamas, like al Qaeda, is an Islamist group that uses terrorism as a strategic tool to achieve political aims. Yes, Hamas, like al Qaeda, rejects Israel and has opposed the peace talks that moderate Palestinians have tried to move forward. And sure, the Hamas charter uses language that parallels the worst anti-Semitism of al Qaeda, enjoining believers to fight Jews wherever they may be found and accusing Jews of numerous conspiracies against Muslims, ranging from the drug trade to creating “sabotage” groups like, apparently, violent versions of Rotary and Lions clubs.
But the differences between Hamas and al Qaeda often outweigh the similarities. And ignoring these differences underestimates Hamas’s power and influence — and risks missing opportunities to push Hamas into accepting a peace deal.
While Congress was quick to applaud Bibi’s fiery analogy, U.S. counterterrorism officials know that one of the biggest differences is that Hamas has a regional focus, while al Qaeda’s is global. Hamas bears no love for the United States, but it has not deliberately targeted Americans. Al Qaeda, of course, sees the United States as its primary enemy, and it doesn’t stop there. European countries, supposed enemies of Islam such as Russia and India, and Arab regimes of all stripes are on their hit list. Other components of the “Salafi-jihadist” movement (of which al Qaeda is a part) focus operations on killing Shiite Muslims, whom they view as apostates. Hamas, in contrast, does not call for the overthrow of Arab regimes and works with Shiite Iran and the Alawite-dominated secular regime in Damascus, pragmatically preferring weapons, money, and assistance in training to ideological consistency.
Hamas, like its parent organization, the Muslim Brotherhood, also devotes much of its attention to education, health care, and social services. Like it or not, by caring for the poor and teaching the next generation of Muslims about its view of the world, Hamas is fundamentally reshaping Palestinian society. Thus, many Palestinians who do not share Hamas’s worldview nonetheless respect it; in part because the Palestinian moderates so beloved of the West have often failed to deliver on basic government functions. The old Arab nationalist visions of the 1950s and 1960s that animated the moderate Palestinian leader Mahmood Abbas and his mentor Yasir Arafat have less appeal to Palestinians today.
One of the greatest differences today, as the Arab spring raises the hope that democracy will take seed across the Middle East, is that Hamas accepts elections (and, in fact, took power in Gaza in part because of them) while al Qaeda vehemently rejects them. For Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladin’s deputy and presumed heir-apparent, elections put man’s (and, even worse, woman’s) wishes above God’s. A democratic government could allow the sale of alcohol, cooperate militarily with the United States, permit women to dress immodestly, or a condone a host of other practices that extremists see as for
0 Comments on Calling Hamas the al Qaeda of Palestine isn’t just wrong, it’s stupid as of 1/1/1900
Today, Israel’s leadership, continuing to more or less disregard the nation’s special history, still acts in ways that are neither tragic nor heroic. Unwilling to accept the almost certain future of protracted war and terror, one deluded prime minister after another has sought to deny Israel’s special situation in the world. Hence, he or she has always been ready to embrace, unwittingly, then-currently-fashionable codifications of collective suicide.
In Washington, President Barack Obama is consciously shaping these particular codifications, not with any ill will, we may hope, but rather with all of the usual diplomatic substitutions of rhetoric for an authentic intellectual understanding. For this president, still sustained by an utterly cliched “wisdom,” peace in the Middle East is just another routine challenge for an assumed universal reasonableness and clever presidential speechwriting.
Human freedom is an ongoing theme in Judaism, but this sacred freedom can never countenance a “right” of collective disintegration. Individually and nationally, there is always a binding Jewish obligation to choose life. Faced with the “blessing and the curse,” both the solitary Jew, and the ingathered Jewish state, must always come down in favor of the former.
Today, Israel, after Ariel Sharon’s “disengagement,” Ehud Olmert’s “realignment,” Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes for “Palestinian demilitarization,” and U.S. President Barack Obama’s “New Middle East,” may await, at best, a tragic fate. At worst, resembling the stark and minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, Israel’s ultimate fate could be preposterous.
True tragedy contains calamity, but it must also reveal greatness in trying to overcome misfortune.
For the most part, Jews have always accepted the obligation to ward off disaster as best they can.
For the most part, Jews generally do understand that we humans have “free will.” Saadia Gaon included freedom of the will among the most central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that all human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”
For Israel, free will must always be oriented toward life, to the blessing, not to the curse. Israel’s binding charge must always be to strive in the obligatory direction of individual and collective self-preservation, by using intelligence, and by exercising disciplined acts of national will. In those circumstances where such striving would still be consciously rejected, the outcome, however catastrophic, can never rise to the dignifying level of tragedy.
The ancient vision of authentically “High Tragedy” has its origins in Fifth Century BCE Athens. Here, there is always clarity on one overriding point: The victim is one whom “the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies.” This wantonness, this caprice, is precisely what makes tragedy unendurable.
With “disengagement,” with “realignment,” with “Palestinian demilitarization,” with both Oslo, and the Road Map, Israel’s corollary misfortunes remain largely self-inflicted. The continuing drama of a Middle East Peace Process is, at best, a surreal page torn from Ionesco, or even from Kafka. Here, there is nary a hint of tragedy; not even a satisfyingly cathartic element that might have been drawn from Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. At worst, and this is the more plausible characterization, Israel’s unhappy fate has been ripped directly from the utterly demeaning pages of irony and farce.
Under former Prime
0 Comments on A Sisyphean fate for Israel (part 2) as of 1/1/1900
Israel after Obama: a subject of tragedy, or mere object of pathos?
Israel, after President Barack Obama’s May 2011 speech on “Palestinian self-determination” and regional “democracy,” awaits a potentially tragic fate. Nonetheless, to the extent that Prime Minister Netanyahu should become complicit in the expected territorial dismemberments, this already doleful fate could quickly turn from genuine tragedy to pathos and abject farce.
“The executioner’s face,” sang Bob Dylan, “is always well-hidden.” In the particular case of Israel, however, the actual sources of existential danger have always been perfectly obvious. From 1948 until the present, virtually all of Israel’s prime ministers, facing periodic wars for survival, have routinely preferred assorted forms of denial, and asymmetrical forms of compromise. Instead of accepting the plainly exterminatory intent of both enemy states and terrorist organizations, these leaders have opted for incremental territorial surrenders.
Of course, this is not the whole story. During its very short contemporary life, Israel has certainly accomplished extraordinary feats in science, medicine, agriculture, education and industry. It’s military institutions, far exceeding all reasonable expectations, have fought, endlessly and heroically, to avoid any new spasms of post-Holocaust genocide.
Still, almost from the beginning, the indispensable Israeli fight has not been premised on what should have remained as an unequivocal central truth of the now-reconstituted Jewish commonwealth. Although unrecognized by Barack Obama, all of the disputed lands controlled by Israel do have proper Israeli legal title. It follows that any diplomatic negotiations resting upon alternative philosophic or jurisprudential premises must necessarily be misconceived.
Had Israel, from the start, fixedly sustained its own birthright narrative of Jewish sovereignty, without submitting to periodic and enervating forfeitures of both land and dignity, its future, although problematic, would at least have been tragic. But by choosing instead to fight in ways that ultimately transformed its stunning victories on the battlefield to abject surrenders at the conference table, this future may ultimately be written as more demeaning genre.
In real life, as well as in literature and poetry, the tragic hero is always an object of veneration, not a pitiable creature of humiliation. From Aristotle to Shakespeare to Camus, tragedy always reveals the very best in human understanding and purposeful action. Aware that whole nations, like the individual human beings who comprise them, are never forever, the truly tragic hero nevertheless does everything possible to simply stay alive.
For Israel, and also for every other imperiled nation on earth, the only alternative to tragic heroism is humiliating pathos. By their incessant unwillingness to decline any semblance of a Palestinian state as intolerable (because acceptance of “Palestine” in any form would be ruthlessly carved out of the living body of Israel), Israel’s leaders have created a genuinely schizophrenic Jewish reality in the “new” Middle East. This is a Jewish state that is, simultaneously, unimaginably successful and incomparably vulnerable. Not surprisingly, over time, the result will be an increasingly palpable national sense of madness.
Perhaps, more than any other region on earth, the Jihadi Middle East and North Africa is “governed” by unreason. Oddly, this very reasonable observation is reinforced rather than contradicted by the prevailing patterns of “democratic re
0 Comments on A Sisyphean fate for Israel (part 1) as of 1/1/1900
Author Lesley Simpson offered to interview herself, and I couldn't pass that up! She talks about Yuvi's Candy Tree (Kar-Ben, 2011), a picture book on Ethiopian Jews fleeing to Israel based on the true story of Yuvi Tashome. With its strong Exodus themes, it makes a great tie-in to Passover; it's also a universal immigration story and a good illustration of the diversity of the Jewish family.
April 11, 1961 marked the beginning of the trial against Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. In the course of the trial, the world came face to face with the reality of the Holocaust or what the Nazis called the “final solution of the Jewish problem” – the killing of 6 million people. Newspapers around the world published thousands of articles about Eichmann and his role in the Holocaust. But what none of the international journalists touched upon was probably the most intriguing aspect of Eichmann’s story: the way in which he, the bureaucrat of the Holocaust, managed to escape justice soon after the war and flee to Argentina.
The prominent philosopher Hannah Arendt, who closely followed the trial in Israel, was one of those who wondered why Eichmann’s escape never attracted more international attention. In her famous book Eichmann in Jerusalem she wrote “the trial authorities, for various reasons, had decided not to admit any testimony covering the time after the close of the war.” It seems that there was a conscious effort to restrict the dissemination of information on how Eichmann managed to escape to Argentina. This part of his story was to remain largely a secret, which took historians more than fifty years to uncover.
We now know what the Israeli authorities kept hidden during the Eichmann trial: the involvement of Vatican circles, Western intelligence services, various governments and the International Committee of the Red Cross in the escape of Eichmann and thousands of other Nazis, war criminals, and Holocaust perpetrators. A picture has emerged that raises many uncomfortable questions. It is clear that the agencies involved knew exactly what they were doing, but were able to justify the decisions they made and the actions they took with the Cold War. After all, as the Third Reich lay in ruins, the only enemy left for the Western Powers was the communist Soviet Union. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, communism was a ‘godless, deadly enemy’, even worse than Nazism.
After laying low in Germany for several years, in 1950 Adolf Eichmann decided to immigrate to Argentina. He used a tried route through Italy, where he acquired a new identity as Riccardo Klement, a South Tyrolean from Bolzano, and a travel document from the Red Cross. In Italy he was helped by the Vatican Aid Commission for Refugees, in cooperation with a small group of catholic priests, former SS comrades and some Argentinean officials. The ease with which he reached Argentina was also the result of Western intelligence services, such as the CIA and the German BND, turning a blind eye to where Eichmann was hiding. Research suggests that they knew of his new identity as Riccardo Klement, but ignored the information. But why would the Israeli government be so careful not to reveal any of this during Eichmann’s trial? The true reasons are unclear, but it is possible that Israelis simply did not want to embarrass governments and institutions who were now their allies.
Riccardo Klement’s life on the run came to an abrupt end in May 1960, when he was kidnapped by Israeli government agents just outside of his home in Buenos Aires and taken to Jerusalem: “I, the undersigned, Adolf Eichmann, hereby declare out of my own free will that since now my true identity has been revealed, I see clearly that it is useless to try and escape judgment any longer.” Eichmann had to stand trial and in the process the world came to know the horrible details about the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, from their forced emigration to centrally- planned industrialized genocide. But the world had to wait 50 years longer to finally learn the truth about how some of the worst Holocaust perpetrators fled justice and who were the institutions helping them do it.
Celebrity Cruises altered the itinerary for my cruise in October. Alexandria, Egypt was cancelled. I suspect not because of the peaceful overthrow of the government, but the cancellation occurred after the religious conflict between Christians and Muslims broke out.
No one from the cruise line announced that was the reason, it's my own supposition about the timing of the cancellation, and of course there is the unrest in the Middle East as a whole.
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. The Pyramids are still on my bucket list. The closest I've come is reading Elizabeth Peters' books and that just made the desire that much greater. Her descriptions are so vivid that you're right there along with Amelia Peabody and her celebrated spouse Emerson solving a mystery, amidst the archeological digs.
I cancelled the Celebrity cruise and went back to my old stand-by Royal Caribbean. Ashdod (Jerusalem) and Haifa, Israel are still part of the itinerary but now I'll also visit Kusadasi, Turkey, as well as Rhodes and Crete, Greece.
Egypt has been postponed until 2012. I sincerely hope that a solid democratic government will flourish, since that is what the general populace wanted when they peacefully toppled the old regime.
One can only hope for a peaceful resolution however tenuous the thread.
Till next time. Margot Justes www.mjustes.com A Hotel in Paris
3 Comments on Traveling by Margot Justes, last added: 3/19/2011
Only Egypt was cancelled, and I'm very sorry about that, not only because I really wanted to visit Cairo but because of the reason for the cancellation.
The Wikileaks trove of diplomatic documents confirms what many have known for a long time: Israel is not the only Middle Eastern country that fears a nuclear armed Iran and wants Washington to do something about it.
If Tehran was listening, the truth of this fear was apparent last month in Bahrain, where the International Institute for Strategic Studies organized a large meeting of Gulf Arab ministers, King Abdullah of Jordan, Iran’s foreign minister Mottaki, and top officials from outside powers including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The convocation was polite: no one said it was time to “cut off the head of the snake,” as Saudi Arabia’s King was reported, in one of the Wikileaks cables, to have urged in regard to Iran. But Arab anxiety about Iran’s power, and how it could be augmented by nuclear power, was palpable.
As one might also expect, the closer Arab capitals are to Iran, apart from Baghdad, the more fervently their rulers implore Washington to take vigorous action – up to and including military action – against Iranian nuclear facilities. Some, like Saudi Arabia, have offered to make up for Iran’s lost oil production in the event of war to limit the adverse effect of higher prices on a weak US economy. In those countries closest to Iran, moreover, the Arab street shares regimes’ worries. In a poll last year in Saudi Arabia, 40 % of respondents in three large cities said that the US should bomb Iran, while one out of four said that it would be OK with them if even Israel did the job. The governments of countries farther away but within range of Iran’s Shahab 3 missiles – such as Egypt – are also nervous. In an act of not-so-subtle messaging, Egypt has agreed to let nuclear capable Israeli warships through the Suez Canal, so that the Israeli Navy can get to the Persian Gulf quickly. These ships would not be going there for a port visit and shopping at the Sharjah souk.
It should be said that Wikileaks’ reckless disclosures threaten to box in both Washington and its allies in damaging ways. The purpose of secret diplomacy, as opposed to public throat clearing, is to allow governments to express views freely, experiment with positions, and bargain without creating pressures for rash action or causing paralysis. The problem with Wikileaks’ irresponsible revelations is that they complicate diplomatic coordination in matters, literally, of war and peace.
Yet, despite the muddle, there is no reason for Washington to change its basic course. A military option against nuclear facilities will not be ruled out in any event; yet the purpose of US policy should be to forestall the moment when the US must choose whether to disarm Iran or settle for a strategy of containment. The relative weakness of of America’s current position dictates this approach. The United States still has large numbers of troops committed to two wars, faces the possibility of conflict in Korea, and remains mired in the unemployment emergency created by the financial crash and Great Recession. European, American and Russian cohesion on Iran policy is still fragile. In the fullness of time, these debilities can be overcome.
Bestselling Arab novelist Alaa Al Aswany has objected to a Hebrew translation of his novel, The Yacoubian Building.
According to the AFP, a volunteer translated the novel despite the author’s disapproval. The Israel/Palestine Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI) emailed the Hebrew translation to readers with the goal of “expand[ing] cultural awareness and understanding in the region.”
The New York Times offered this quote: “Dr. Al Aswany told Agence France-Presse, ‘What the center and the translator did is piracy and theft, and I will be complaining to the International Publishers’ Association.’ He added: ‘My position has not changed regarding normalization with Israel. I reject it completely.’”
In President Obama’s speech last December when he received the Nobel Prize, he observed that, “War, in one form or another, appeared with the first man. At the dawn of history, its morality was not questioned; it was simply a fact, like drought or disease—the manner in which tribes and then civilizations sought power and settled their differences.” This comment almost seems to need no supporting evidence; it’s just common knowledge and common sense. And, for the most part, it’s true. That point, though, about war being the way that ancient civilizations “settled their differences”—that isn’t in fact the whole story. Ancient kings could, and did, send their armies into battle against one another. But some of them also talked to one another, wrote letters, sent ambassadors back and forth between their capitals, and drew up peace treaties. Sometimes, as a result, they avoided war and benefited from peaceful alliances, often for decades at a time.
Recently, as is so often the case, the focus of American diplomatic efforts has been on the Middle East. In a recent meeting, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reaffirmed the relationship between the US and Israel, then President Obama telephoned Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to voice his support for Abbas as well. Just days before that, Vice President Biden had met with Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq. It might surprise some modern political observers to learn that the invention of diplomacy probably took place in the Middle East over 4,300 years ago and that diplomatic interactions flourished there throughout the centuries of ancient Mesopotamian civilization, long before the era even of the Greeks and Romans. Affirmations of alliance and friendship similar to those spoken by President Obama and his allies in the Middle East can be found in ancient cuneiform documents between the kings of Egypt and Mittani (now Syria) and between the kings of Hatti (now Turkey) and Babylonia (now Iraq). And just as, today, President Obama relies on his envoy George Mitchell or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to set the groundwork for agreements among Middle Eastern countries and the United States, so ancient leaders depended on their envoys for exactly the same reason.
Like modern envoys, these ancient ambassadors traveled to foreign lands, accompanied by translators and assistants. Like Mitchell or Clinton, the ancient officials often found themselves walking the line between assertiveness and compromise, between representing their government and taking a measure of control in negotiations, between accepting formal gestures of friendship and not wanting to be seen as favoring one ally over another. Fortunately for us, they left copious records of their diplomatic encounters.
For example, 3,350 years ago, a man named Keliya represented the king of the Mittanian Empire, in ancient Syria, traveling regularly to the court of the powerful Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III. Prior to his time, Egypt had been an enemy of Mittani for almost a century, starting around 1500 BCE. Egyptian kings had invaded Mittani, looted cities and taken back prisoners and booty. Mittani, in turn, was no vulnerable victim. It too had been expanding aggressively into neighboring lands. But around 1420 BCE the two lands made peace and instigated an era of extensive diplomatic contact. Other former enemies of Mittani—Hatti in what is now Turkey, and Babylonia in what is now Iraq—joined in as well. The great kings saw themselves as “brothers,” or equals, and they relied on their ambassadors, like Keliya, to keep communication open between them. Thanks to such men, what ha
0 Comments on Special Envoys in the Middle East, Thousands of Years Ago as of 1/1/1900
Nicholas Sarkozy, the president of France, has condemned as “disproportionate” Israel’s response to the flotilla bringing cargo to Gaza. Gaza today is controlled by Hamas, a terrorist organization which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and which has repeatedly launched attacks on Israel and its civilian population. Israel had told the flotilla’s organizers to bring their goods to the Israeli port of Ashdod for inspection, with all civilian goods to be trucked subsequently from Ashdod to Gaza. The Israeli offer was rejected.
Mr. Sarkozy’s criticism of Israel raises an interesting analogy: Suppose that Monaco were controlled by a violent terrorist organization like Hamas, committed to the destruction of France. This terrorist organization, when it has the means, routinely lobs missiles at French civilians over the French-Monaco border. Would France passively accept this situation? Not likely.
Most probably, France would invade Monaco to destroy the threat to its civilian population. Alternatively, France would blockade Monaco by land and by sea, making sure that weapons and other supplies with military uses do not enter Monaco.
Suppose further that a flotilla were organized to break the French blockade of Monaco. France, concerned about military supplies being part of the cargo, would order its navy to intercept this flotilla. France would perhaps tell the organizers of the flotilla to bring their supplies to Marseille where these supplies could be inspected so that, after such inspection, civilian goods could be transported into Monaco.
Suppose that the organizers of the flotilla rejected this offer and instead proceeded to Monaco. Is there any doubt what, under these circumstances, the French response would be?
Finally, suppose that the President of Israel condemned this French response as “disproportionate.” Mr. Sarkozy’s likely retort: France has the moral and legal right to protect its citizens and its territory. Any violence which results is the responsibility of the flotilla’s organizers who rejected the French offer of inspection and transportation for civilian goods.
I met up with author Anna Levine last year at the 2009 Association of Jewish Libraries convention in Chicago, IL, where she was a guest presenter and an award-winner! During a late night gathering of book lovers, I pulled her aside to discuss her YA novel Freefalland her picture book Jodie's Hanukkah Dig, both set in Israel. Both books received recognition from the Association of Jewish Libraries in 2009, Freefall as a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, and Jodie's Hanukkah Dig as a Notable Book.
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Passing By by Yona Tepper, illustrated by Gil-Ly Alon Curiel
Yael likes to watch the street outside her house from her balcony. She can see dogs walk by, a cat hiding in the flowerbed, a car driving past and honking its horn, a man riding a bike, a tractor with a trailer filled with brush, and a bird. Best of all, she sees her father coming!
The book has a nice rhythm and repetition both before each thing on the street appears and after it leaves Yael’s sight. Tepper’s prose has a quiet feel that really allows readers to feel a sense of ease and leisure that is inherent in the book. The art depicts life in Israel which is both similar to a street in America and yet has quite a different feel. Curiel’s art is simple and very child-friendly. The book has a nice mix of close-up images and panoramas of the area of Yael’s home.
Ideal for toddlers who will enjoy the repetition of the book and identifying the sounds and animals. Appropriate for ages 2-5.
Remember back in November 2009 when I posted my interview with author Simone Elkeles and kidlit expert June Cummins, talking about the "kvetchfessional" style of YA chicklit? Simone has now produced a very fun book trailer video for her newest title in the "How to Ruin" series, How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation. Enjoy!
0 Comments on Kvetchfessional: The Movie as of 2/2/2010 3:21:00 PM
In his recent editorial, The Tel Aviv Cluster, David Brooks of the New York Times cites Start-Up Nation: The Story of the Israel's Economic Miracle when he describes the innovation cluster of technology that has developed in Israel. Having just finished reading Start-Up Nation, I'm not surprised to read about it in the New York Times. Like the other books released by Hatchette Book Group's Twelve, Start-Up Nation stays with you long after closed its covers.
The blurb: Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel - a country of 7.1 million people, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies, in a constant state of war since its founding, with no natural resources - produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom? Drawing on examples from the country's foremost inventors and investors, geopolitical experts Dan Senior and Saul Singer describe how Israel's adversity-driven culture fosters a unique combination of innovative and entrepreneurial intensity.
As the authors argue, Israel is not just a country but a comprehensive state of mind. Whereas Americans emphasize decorum and exhaustive preparation, Israelis put chutzpah first. "When an Israeli entrepreneur has a business idea, he will start it that week," one analyst put it. At the geopolitical level, Senor and Singer dig in deeper to show why Israel's policies on immigration, R&D, and military service have been key factors in teh country's rise - providing insight into why Israel has more companies on the NASDAQ than those from all of Europe, Korea, Singapore, China, and India combined.
So much has been written about the Middle East, but surprisingly little is understood about the story and strategy behind Israel's economic growth. As Start-Up Nation shows, there are lessons in Israel's example that apply not only to other nations, but also to individuals seeking to build a thriving organization. As the U.S. economy seeks to reboot its can-do spirit, there's never been a better time to look at this remarkable and resilient nation for some impressing, surprising clues.
Review: Dan Senor and Saul Singer's Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle is well researched and a fascinating read. The book is divided into four main parts:
The Little Nation That Could
Seeding a Culture of Innovation
Beginnings
Country with a Motive
In The Little Nation That Could Senor we read PayPal's Scott Thompson's first impressions of a young Shvat Shaked, whose young company. Fraud Sciences, developed the most up-to-date solution to the problem of online payment scams, credit card fraud, and electronic identity theft. As we read about Fraud Sciences, its founders Shvat Shaked and Saar Wilf, their approach to problem solving and the impressions of the top executives of PayPal, Ebay and Benchmark Capital, it becomes clear that the story of technological innovations and start-up ventures in Israel is deep and unique.
I was struck by story after story that traced technological and scientific innovations to Israeli dedication, chutzpah, a culture of debate/argument a
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1. Come to Africa - Designed by Gerard van de Voort - c1975
How about virtual tour around the world to start off the week? I dug up a handful of travel related posters from 1950s -1970s for all the desk jockeys that are itching to get out of town. Enjoy!
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2. Argentina c1950 -Poster artist - Cesareo 3.Beierenc1960- Designed by Herman Verbaere 4. Paris-Orlyfor Air France c1962- Design & Illustration by Jaques Nathan Garamond5. Air Afrique c1965- Designed and illustrated by Jacques Auriac6. Finland print for Finnair c1958 - Design by Erik Bruun 7. Rainbow poster for EL AL Israel Airlines - Design by Dan Reisinger8. Switzerland c1967- Design by Herbert Leupin 9. Turku Abo - Tourist poster for the Finnish town of Turku c1966?- Design by Marti Mykkanen 10. Hunting in Poland c1961 - Design by Wiktor Gorka 11. Switzerland poster for EL AL Israel Airlines - Design by Dan Reisinger 12. Poster for Belgian Railways c1966 - Design by Wictor Langer 13. Wengen Switzerland poster c1965 - Design by Martin Lauterburg + Fritz Lauener 14. Austria poster for Pan Am Airlines c1971 - Design by Chermayeff & Geismar 15/16. Israel: The land of the Bible produced for the State of Israel Tourist Centre - Design by Jean David17. Travel Royal Blue c195? - Design & illustration by Daphne Padden18. Great Canadian North -Pacific Western Airlines - Anonymous c1960
SHOW NOTES:The final installment of interviews with publishers and authors from the show floor at Book Expo America 2009. This episode highlights Jewish books for kids and teens.
...and just because they got mentioned so often by so many people, The PJ Library
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I am pleased to announce that content from The Book of Life has been included in the new Jewish Book Search tool created by the Jewish Publication Society!
Here's their description of the tool: "JPS has put together a list of the highest quality websites with Jewish Book content. This search engine queries those sites and those alone. This will allow you to be sure that your search will only be related to Jewish Books. No more sifting through tons of content for what you are looking for. Search for any and all Jewish Books, articles about Jewish Books, blogs about Jewish Books, and anything about the Jewish Book world. Search by title, author, keyword, or area of interest!"
Go ahead and try it out! If you'd like to embed the tool on your own site, visit JPS.
We were all excited to hear that Michael Oren, an OUP author, was appointed to be Israel’s Ambassador to the United States. To celebrate we are posting two tasty tidbits for you. The first is an anecdote of Niko Pfund’s, OUP’s academic and trade Publisher, about Oren’s book Six Days of War. The second is a short excerpt from the book about the effect of the Six Day War on the Middle East. Enjoy!
Niko Pfund
Upon hearing the news of Michael Oren’s appointment to be Israel’s Ambassador to the United States I was immediately reminded of the following episode that happened one day on my way to lunch with the editor of Oren’s Six Days of War, Peter Ginna. We were walking down 35th Street together. I’d been reading the book and was finding it just an excellent read, and so was talking to Peter about it. Specifically, we were discussing the debate in the Israeli government as to whether to wait for the attack that they presumed was coming and thus be at a disadvantage militarily (but then be viewed as the victim of aggression in the court of world opinion) or whether to preemptively attack and gain the upper hand militarily (while likely being vilified in some circles as the aggressor).
Israel obviously opted for the latter and as a result destroyed a large part of the Egyptian air force before it ever left the ground.
Peter and I were discussing the ways in which the Egyptian military commanders, when asked by Nasser how things were going, responded very positively, even triumphantly, that they were making excellent progress and expected to report a stunning victory shortly, in a desperate attempt to buy themselves time, since they knew that their air force had been crushed and that Nasser’s wrath would be fearsome as a result.
Just as we were talking about their dilemma, I was suddenly confronted by a man in a FedEx uniform, angrily jabbing his fingers at me and saying, in heavily accented English, “Egyptians are not a stupid people, my friend, no, no! Egyptians, we are not a stupid people!!”
Naturally, I was taken aback but also dismayed that our conversation was being misinterpreted and so tried to calm the man down and explain that we were in no way mocking the Egyptian military, much less Egyptians on the whole, but simply marveling that they were in such dire straits that they felt their only recourse was to lie outright to the president as a means of buying some time. We stood there on the street talking for a
bit, in increasingly temperate and friendly tones, and by the end of the conversation we had agreed that:
–Egyptians are not a stupid people.
–Egyptians are in fact a wonderful people.
–America is a terrific place–yes, a land of opportunity–even with its
challenges and problems it poses for immigrants.
–We both love New York City.
After a hearty handshake, much smiling, and patting on the back, we went our own separate ways.
Excerpt From Six Days of War
Even from the perspective of thirty-five years, the answer to the question, “Did six days of war truly change the Middle East?” remains equivocal. Events in the region that previously converged only toward conflict could also, post-1967, surge in the direction of peace. Diplomatic breakthroughs once deemed inconceivable became almost commonplace in the following years, facilitated by special mediators and leaders of both courage and vision. Violence, nevertheless, continued to plague the lives of millions throughout the Middle East, and to threaten to pitch not only the region, but the entire world, into war.
Along with opportunities for peace, the Six-Day or June War opened the door to even deadlier conflagrations. Basic truths persisted: for all its military conquests, Israel was still incapable of imposing the peace it craved. Though roundly defeated, the Arabs could still mount a formidable military campaign. The status of territories could be negotiated but the essential issues—Israel’s right to exist, the demand for Palestinian repatriation and statehood—remained. If the war was indeed a storm that altered the region’s landscape, it also exposed the underlying nature of the Arab-Israel conflict—its bedrock. The modern Middle East created in 1967 was therefore a hybrid: a region of incipient promise but also of imminent dangers, a mixture of old contexts and new.
At the time of this writing, the Middle East is once more in the grip of turmoil. The Palestinians have taken up arms, Israel has retaliated, and the peace process has run aground. Familiar patterns of terror and counterstrike, incursion and retribution, have resurfaced. Nor has the bloodshed been confined to the Arab-Israeli arena, but has burst beyond in the form of massive terrorist attacks against the United States and America’s reprisals against Islamic extremists.
Today, Arab demonstrators, many bearing posters of Nasser, are demanding a showdown with the West and with Israel. The Israelis wait, meanwhile, and weigh the risks of preemption. The war that never quite ended for statesmen, soldiers, and historians, is liable to erupt again.
0 Comments on A Look at Michael Oren as of 5/6/2009 3:17:00 PM
When the Arab leaders gathered for their annual summit meeting in Doha, Quatar, they had plenty of major topics to discuss, but they did find common ground on one issue. The group rallied together in support of Sudan’s President, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for charges war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges are based on the ICC’s belief that al-Bashir organized and led the killings in Darfur.
While the ICC has placed a warrant out for al-Bashir’s arrest, he was warmly welcomed to Quatar by the emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani. The massive support of the Arab leaders is in sharp contrast to the opinion of the ICC, the West, and several human rights organizations. The leaders argue that by indicting al-Bashir, the ICC is compromising Sudan’s sovereignty and displaying a double standard in their treatment of Arabs. They believe that is unfair for al-Bashir to be punished after so many crimes went unpunished during Israel’s attack in Gaza.
While both sides maintain a strong stance on the situation, it makes one wonder what’s really going on. There has been speculation that the support of al-Bashir by Arab leaders is based on a sense of self-preservation rather than conviction. Some believe that the leaders support al-Bashir because they fear that his indictment may lead to the investigation of their less-than-perfect pasts.
The news surrounding the warrant for al-Bashir and its validity seems to based on plenty of speculation, but what is the truth? It seems it all comes down to the involvement of the West and the pull of power between the Arab leaders and outside involvement. The Arab nations feel that the ICC is blindly trying to control a situation they know little about, yet the ICC and it’s supporters believe they are working towards establishing order and peace. While only time will show who will win this power struggle, it is clearly an issue that will not be resolved easily.
0 Comments on Africa’s Arab Leaders Unite as of 4/7/2009 11:17:00 AM
Dan Reisinger was born in Yugoslavia in 1934 to a family of painters. His early life was filled with adversity including losing most of his family to the Holocaust. In the 1940s he moved to Israel where he eventually joined the Air Force. It was here that he met his mentor and friend Abram Games. In the 1960s he set up a design studio in Tel Aviv where he helped to design the Israeli Pavilion at Expo’67 as well as create a body of work for El Al Airlines.
I’m not going to get into this at any length, but I had to say that the best thing I’ve read on the conflict in Gaza is from KidsPost. It clearly lays out the history, the issues, and the conflict in a way that doesn’t make me feel like an idiot for not knowing everything.
Actually, the connection to reading children’s books just came to me. I think I’m spoiled by reading good children’s nonfiction, which explains things plainly and without preconceived notions of what the reader should already know.
Or maybe being submerged in children’s literature has reduced my reading level, thus making me unable to comprehend articles in The Washington Post intended for adults.
You know, one or the other.
4 Comments on Israel and Hamas, last added: 1/14/2009
No, you're not an idiot. I agree that sometimes kids books are the best choice. When I worked in a bookstore I would occasionally have an adult who just wanted a basic overview of some scientific or historical issue. They didn't want to be an expert, just the equivalent of a well-written magazine article. If I thought it wouldn't bruise their ego, I'd take them to kids nonfiction and they were usually happy with a DK or Joy Hakim book or the like. Those are great books and it's easier to find the time to read one of them than a so-called adult book.
I am almost always disappointed with books for grown-ups. It seems to me that writers of adult literature are too be busy trying to prove how smart they are to write interesting paragraphs.
Kids' books keep me from becoming totally disillusioned about reading.
I thought that was a very nice article. It made the issues clear, without talking down to anyone. I'm all for reading from whatever source happens to give the clearest picture of something.
That was a fantastic article-- my third grader was asking me the other day (while NPR was on in the kitchen) what the whole ordeal was about, so thanks for posting this very timely article. He read it before dinner tonight, and we chatted a bit-- gotta love the Post!
Marc Aronson is an editor, a publisher, and an author of historical nonfiction for young people. He writes the "Nonfiction Matters" column in School Library Journal, and also hosts the Nonfiction Matters blog on the SLJ website. I met up with Marc at the 2008 School Library Journal Leadership Summit in Hollywood, Florida to talk about his latest and perhaps most controversial book, Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel. We had such an interesting conversation that I hardly edited the recording at all. I hope you'll find meeting Marc as fascinating as I did. Please feel free to join our conversation by posting comments here on The Book of Life website.
As an added bonus, scroll down to see a video created by Amy Bowllan of School Library Journal's Bowllan's Blog, showing highlights of Marc Aronson's visit to her own school to discuss his books.
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Thank you Heidi for this. I met Marc several years ago and am even more impressed with him now. Thank you for bringing this very important conversation to the forefront with your blog. He has truly created a way to open an honest discussion about a subject that is painful and difficult for everyone. I especially loved your questions...they were right on target..and his answers were very poignant. I especially loved his last answer with Obama's race speech and how a love letter or love speech tells the truth.
Best regards, Rita
Robin Winning said, on 1/6/2009 7:04:00 PM
Hi Heidi,
I want to compliment you on your most recent podcast, the interview with Marc Aronson. It was really interesting and thought-provoking. I appreciate you taking on a somewhat controversial topic: the idea that questioning the actions of Israel is tantamount to being anti-Semitic. That notion has always driven me crazy, but it's very prevalent in the circles in which I travel as a member of a Conservative congregation. I feel like you gave Mr. Aronson a fair and balanced interview.
I've listened to the Book of Life from the start. I have subscribed to and then unsubscribed from more Jewish-themed podcasts than you can shake a stick at, but the Book of Life continues to hold my interest.
That was so interesting! I liked everything Marc Aronson said, especially his loving attitude toward Israel (but couldn't live there), and I especially like his feeling that kids can think these issues through, as well as adults. I would imagine that high school kids would really appreciate the opportunity to listen to this. Thanks, Heidi! Good work!
Jean Marzollo
Steven Bernstein said, on 1/13/2009 1:59:00 PM
Marc Aronson made a comparison between the United States and Israel with regard to their both being nations founded on ideals. Where they contrast, he said, is in America's ability to engage with sordid moments in its history and Israel's inability to do so. I would argue that as much as they share in common, the United States and Israel are quite disparate. While the legitimacy of the United States' right to exist as a sovereign nation is an unquestioned given, Israel's right to exist is constantly challenged through allegations of human rights abuses and other such propoganda. Engagement of the type that Marc Aaronson has described is a luxury that cannot be enjoyed in Israel, which must devote itself to "wrestling" with its foreign attackers before it begins to "wrestle" with self-criticism.
Steven Bernstein said, on 1/13/2009 2:49:00 PM
Using the example of Barack Obama, Marc Aronson asks the question of whether Israelis would ever be able to picture an Arab--Muslim or Christian--as Prime Minister of the State of Israel. That the answer to this question is a resounding "no" seems to bother him. This illustrates another example of how Marc Aronson does not understand the fundamental differences between the State of Israel and the United States of America. Americans are--for the most part--quite comfortable with a person of any background assuming the role of their President because this land is--as Woodie Guthrie put it--"your land, this land is my land". While the nation was founded BY Protestants, it wasn't founded FOR Protestants alone. Israel was founded under quite a different model. It was founded as a national sanctuary BY AND FOR Jews. The Jewish character of the State of Israel is an indespensible part of its reason for being. While being a Jewish State does not exclude the rights of non-Jews to live in Israel, it most likely excludes their practical right in the eys of Israeli Jews to assume positions as high as Prime Minister.
Responding to a point that Mr. Aronson made earlier in the intervew with regard to the United States and Israel both being nations founded on ideals and not because some king or royal family happened to be here 700 years ago. His analysis is a bit off. Israel has its roots in a regal dynasty that began thousands of years ago. While today it is a democratic nation founded on ideals, it was originally founded as a monarchy.
Apologies. What follows are not sensational revelations about Israel’s secret involvement in torture worldwide (though there have been some reports to that effect). I am referring to a possibly less exciting phenomenon, which is all in the public domain. To me, however, it is no less worrying: Israel has produced a surprising yield of academics who support torture and seek its legitimization, if not legalisation. Publishing widely, including in the most prestigious journals and publishing houses, they advocate the use of interrogational torture in the “war on terror”.
There are variations, of course. One favours torture to be authorized by a “public committee” – a variant of Alan Dershowitz’ “torture warrants” idea. Others propose allowing “only” methods that are “short of torture,” including one who attempts to show Americans how some forms of “coercive interrogation” would accord with their Constitution. However, the methods that the “torture lite” academics recommend, such as sleep and sensory deprivation, become by all accounts - legal, “common sensical” and factual - full torture, at least over time. No - guidance on how interrogators would know when to stop are not attached. Nor are any examples of how such methods were used without becoming torture. This is because no such examples exist.
But perhaps the speciality of pro-torture Israeli academics is devising schemes which would, they say, enable an absolute legal prohibition on torture to co-exist with allowing its use in “ticking bomb situations” – a “relativized” absolute prohibition, as one of them (seriously) quipped. Some have proposed that while torture should be prohibited by law absolutely, if a leader orders torture in extreme situations, his act would later undergo “ex post-facto ratification”. Others propose a modification of deontological morality so as to allow torture in extreme situations, as long as it is not “officialized”.
However heavily endowed with academic titles the writers are, however extensive and thorough their research is, and however rich their essays and books are with references, cases and footnotes, the results are invariably absurd, as the very combination they seek is self-contradictory. In my book I analyse several of these “have-your-cake-and-eat-it” solutions. Actually, perhaps a more apt – and updated -description would be the “yeah-but-no-but” approaches to torture. They ultimately make as much sense as Little Britain’s Vicky Pollard.
All this could all have been quite amusing were it not for the fact that such scholars – and other, non- Israeli ones, of course - are advocating that our officials be allowed, through one moral or legal scheme or another, to inflict excruciating pain on helpless prisoners, demolishing in the process an international legal and moral consensus it took humanity hundreds of years to achieve. And were it not for the fact that a “yeah-but-no-but” torture system, which most of the Israeli academics are in effect modelling their proposals on, is actually in operation – you guessed it – in Israel.
In 1999 Israel’s Supreme Court prohibited issuing the General Security Service (GSS) with instructions on how to inflict what was euphemistically called “moderate physical pressure” on Palestinian detainees, as had been the custom until then, and ruled that GSS agents cannot be authorized to inflict such “pressure”. The Court cited the absolute prohibition on torture in international law. So far so good. However, when it comes to “ticking-time bomb” situations, the Court ruled that the case of a GSS interrogator who tortures (the Court too preferred a euphemism: “applied physical interrogation methods”) would then be considered by the Attorney-General, and if need be by the courts, where “his potential criminal liability shall be examined in the context of the ‘necessity’ defence” – a criminal law defence which, as currently held in Israeli law, justifies actions in extreme situations if they produce the “lesser evil”.
The result has been predictable. Within a couple of years the GSS itself was admitting it was torturing – oops! – euphemism time again: using “exceptional interrogation measures” – in dozens of cases annually. All were cases of “ticking bombs”, of course. Figures from human rights NGOs, such as the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, have been much higher. Number of GSS interrogators convicted of torturing (or any other offence)? Zero. Prosecutions? Zero. Criminal investigations? Zero. Once introduced as a means of legitimizing torture, the “ticking bomb” and its legal corollary, the “necessity defence”, have overwhelmed the system.
Israel is not the focus of my book, but of the four “models of legalized torture” described and analysed there, two have, unfortunately, been in operation in Israel, in one form or another. Then there is the “torture warrants” model. The fourth is, of course, the US model.
But what about the big questions? Is ‘waterboarding’ or (perhaps more importantly) other, less blatant interrogation techniques considered torture under international law? Does international law allow the use of painful techniques falling short of torture, or the use of the “necessity defence” to exonerate torturers? What happens to a state, morally and practically, once it allows anti-terrorist torture? And – maybe the biggest question - would it not be morally justifiable to torture terrorists in order to save many innocent lives in “ticking bomb situations”? In other words – Why Not Torture Terrorists?
Psyche, Science, and Society » The epidemic of Is said, on 9/19/2008 4:48:00 PM
[…] Ginbar writes of the epidemic of Israeli academics rationalizing “to torture torture,” thus providing […]
Abe Bird said, on 9/21/2008 11:02:00 AM
Israel doesn’t torture Arab terrorists as a whole, but only in critical situation of “ticking bomb” as said when there is close and sure terror attack on process. And even in these kind of cases it’s not a real torture but as described as “moderate physical pressure” which it is really moderate in any category. Arab Muslims agencies and European agencies act more cruelly then the General Security Service.
Arab murderous terrorists have the best prison conditions one can aspire. They live in their own groups, eat fresh food, pray, play, watching Arabic TV and even study in the Israeli open university for BA, MA and Doctorate. Just Hilton!
GT said, on 9/22/2008 3:55:00 AM
Oh, that’s right “Hilton”. That’s why many Palestinian prisoners died in Israel prisons - oops, could not handle the excitement, enjoyment and luxury life! This explains it, because most of them are children and women.
Gibnar, thanks - you are reminding us of the fact that cruel, non-humanized full of hate, people still exist. Worst when their actions are justified by academics who are supposed to be our educators on how to be civilized and human!
Absalom said, on 9/22/2008 5:24:00 AM
So, we’re told by Abe Bird that some Arab states torture worse than the Israelis? Great, and Arabs in turn can say that North Korea is even worse, and the North Koreans can say that Stalin was worse - so as long as you don’t torture like the Nazis you’re fine?
The human rights declarations and treaties came, to a large extent, as a response to the atrocities of WWII. “Never again” - they all said. Now Israeli interrogators, judges and academics seek a modification: “Never again - unless there’s a ticking bomb.” I’m sure some terrorist would be happy to adopt this formula, or at least its underlying morality - that atrocities may be justified if the situation is extreme enough.
Bestselling Arab novelist 
is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the 
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It is rare that an author interview moves me to read a book, but Wherever You Go is that rare exception.
I am new to The Book of Life and already eager for a next podcast. My gratitude to Heidi Estrin for giving deserving Jewish authors a voice on the Web.