Haifa
Stanley Kauffmann on Films: Inheritances
The Other Son Dangerous Liaisons Barrymore THE MONTAGUE-CAPULET pattern has been used a lot lately, fitting easily the Middle East situation. The girl is Israeli, the boy Arab, or vice versa. Now, in The Other Son, it is altered. Two young men, seemingly Israeli and Arab, are discovered to be brothers, victims of a mistake in a hospital, a Jewish one. Once again racial difference roars. READ MORE >>
One Year Later: The Failure of the Arab Spring
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The Liar as Hero
The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian Dynasty: The Husaynis, 1700-1948 By Ilan Pappe (University of California Press, 399 pp., $29.95) Out of the Frame: The Struggle for Academic Freedom in Israel By Ilan Pappe (Pluto Press, 246 pp., $22) The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine By Ilan Pappe (Oneworld, 313 pp., $14.95) I. READ MORE >>
Most Jewish Israelis Want To Live Separately From Their Ultra-Orthodox Brethren. And The Haredim Don’t Want To Live With Modern Jews Either.
Of course, the issue of residential segregation in Israel comes up mostly between Arabs and Jews. And the fact is that it is the pattern but not the law. Arabs are a communal group with tight bonds among the generations. These bonds are often frayed—and often more than frayed—by what are sometimes multi-generational feuds. READ MORE >>
Overstated
Rinse, Wash, Repeat
Rinse, Wash, Repeat
I don’t think anyone would mistake me for a big fan of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the main (as they put it) “pro-Israel” lobby in Washington. The only organization of that kind that I’ve ever given money to is Americans for Peace Now in Israel. And I have defended critics of AIPAC, including Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the authors of The Israel Lobby, from charges of anti-Semitism. READ MORE >>
Weimar, the Bauhaus, and Auschwitz
Tel Aviv’s distinctive architectural style is that of the Bauhaus. Many exemplars of that school of design dot Haifa and; here and there in Jerusalem, you will also find its presence. There’s a Bauhaus Museum on Bialik Street in what’s called the White City, mostly in recognition of the Jewish escapees, architects, and designers from the Nazi regime which swallowed up Bauhaus. Some place at home, I even have a book, based on an exhibition, called Social Utopias of the Twenties: Bauhaus, Kibbutz and the Dream of Man. READ MORE >>
Derisionist History
Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations By Avi Shlaim (Verso, 392 pp., $34.95) READ MORE >>
