#Ben Yehuda Press

[heroewithchutzpah]

Because Jewish kids need heroes, now more than ever. From Yitzhak Rabin to Sandy Koufax, from Hedy Lamarr to Sarah Silverman, from Regina Jonas to Jonah Salk, Heroes With Chutzpah presents 101 true tales of Jewish trailblazers, changemakers & rebels. From Ben Yehuda Press. https://www.benyehudapress.com/books/heroes-with-chutzpah/

[jacensolodjo]

Heroes with Chutzpah is out now! From leaders like Volodymyr Zelenskyy to trans activists like Abby Stein, the book explores 101 of the tribe.

Consider picking up a copy from Ben Yehuda press.

[annarellix]

The Unbalancing by R. B. Lemberg (Birdverse)

Beneath the waters by the islands of Gelle-Geu, a star sleeps restlessly. The celebrated new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri, who is preoccupied by the increasing tremors, confronts the problems left behind by her predecessor. Meanwhile, the poet Erígra Lilún, who merely wants to be left alone, is repeatedly asked by their ancestor Semberi to take over the starkeeping helm. Semberi insists upon telling Lilun mysterious tales of the deliverance of the stars by the goddess Bird. When Ranra and Lilun meet, sparks begin to fly. An unforeseen configuration of their magical deepnames illuminates the trouble under the tides. For Ranra and Lilun, their story is just beginning; for the people of Gelle-Geu, it may well be too late to save their home

Book link: https://tachyonpublications.com/product/the-unbalancing/

My Review: I fell in love with the Birdverse when I read The Four Profound Weaves as this complex, inclusive, and fascinating universe kept in thrall and made me sad when I closed the book. The Unbalancing is even better and I was happy to travel again to the Birdverse and meet the characters. There's a lot of inclusivity and the characters are realistic, fleshed out and interesting. There's nothing forced, there's no sense of things-done-because-I-had-check-a-list, everything flows and i was sad again at the end of this book. I had a bad case of book hangover but I'm happy I read it. Highly recommended. Many thanks to Tachyon Publications for this digital copy, all opinions are mine

The Author: R.B. Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe to the US. R.B.'s Birdverse novella The Four Profound Weaves (Tachyon, 2020) is a finalist for the Nebula, Ignyte, Locus, and World Fantasy awards, as well as an Otherwise Award honoree. R.B.'s poetry memoir Everything Thaws will be published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2022. Their stories and poems have appeared in Lightspeed Magazine’s Queers Destroy Science Fiction!, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, We Are Here: Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2020, Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology, and many other venues. You can find R.B. on Twitter at @rb_lemberg, on Patreon at http://patreon.com/rblemberg, and at their websites rblemberg.net and birdverse.net.

[omgellendean]

Hope you don't mind if I'll quote (some of) the thread here.

Thread by twiter user ainiladra

akka & asqalan are original canaanite (not hebrew) names for those cities preserved in the identical arabic forms

as explained here, the site of ancient eilat is under aqaba in jordan, not where palestinian umm al rashrash was located

[Tweets by Mouin Rabbani:

As with hundreds of other locations during this period Israel promptly renamed Umm al-Rashrash and called it Eilat, after the ancient city of Elath mentioned in the Bible. Elath is located beneath the present-day Jordanian resort and port city of Aqaba, located on the other side of the eponymous Gulf. Undeterred by either geography or history Yehuda Press, a member of Israel’s Committee for the Designation of Place Names, intoned that “when the real Elath [i.e. Aqaba] is finally in our hands our settlement [of Eilat] will expand and reach there”.]

jerusalem is an anglicization of that city's ancient canaanite name named for a deity (& not for "peace" as the zionist mythology goes)

[Quoted in the tweet, is the passage from the book "The ancient history of Jerusalem: from pre-history to the Roman occupation":

ويرد اسم مدينة القدس في النصوص المصرية في عهد الأسرة الثاني عشر بصيغة (أور شالم) أي (مدينة شالم) أو (نور شالم) ونجد أن اسم شالم يندس في اسمي ولدي داود (سليمان و أبشالم) و في الأسماء الأشورية (شلمانصر) و الملك المؤابي (شلمانو) وكان اسم (العزى) و (شالم) مرتبطاً بقوة بمدينة القدس... Translated from Arabic by Google The name of the city of Jerusalem appears in the Egyptian texts during the Twelfth Dynasty in the form (Ur Shalem), meaning (the city of Shalem) or (the light of Shalem). We find that the name Shalem is inserted in the names of my two sons David (Solomon and Absalem) and in the Assyrian names (Shalmaneser) and the king. The Moabite (Shalmanu) and the names (Al-Uzza) and (Shalem) were strongly linked to the city of Jerusalem... ]

the more commonly used arabic name for jerusalem, al quds, id an ancient canaanite honorific for holy sites/people

yafa (jaffa) is an ancient canaanite name too (& "tel aviv" never existed until its founding by zionists in the late 19th century & is not mentioned in the bible) btw a palestinian town beside nazareth is called yafat-ennasary (or, jaffa of nazareth)

beersheba is a biblical name, perfectly preserved in the arabic bir es-saba' (bir=well, saba'=seven) ... but most places in the naqab ("negev") lacked any hebrew names & they had to be invented

"ben gurion had ... been struck by the fact that no hebrew names existed for geographical sites in the region. the 11 june 1949 entry for his war diary reads: '... we must give hebrew names to these places - ancient names, if there are any, & if not, new ones.'"

"kiryat shmona" is not at all a biblical name ... shmona means "eight" & it is named for 8 zionist militiamen who were killed by lebanese resistance fighters in 1920 ... khalisa, the name of the palestinian village that it was built upon, means "sincere, loyal"

while palestine exploration fund writers thought the name of the palestinian village al birwa might be a preservation of an ancient beri mentioned in the talmud, the zionist colony built on its ruins was instead named ahihud (they just picked a random name from the bible)

the palestinian village of zakariya preserved the name of the prophet zechariah (revered by all people of the book) there were many palestinian villages named for biblical/quranic prophets not an excuse for zionists to steal them

[Quoted, tweets by the OP:

from nur masalha's "the bible & zionism: invented traditions, archaeology & post-colonialism in palestine-israel" "after the conquest of parts of palestine & the creation of the state of isr*el in 1948, several muslim holy places of pilgrimage that then fell into isr*eli hands were transformed into jewish sites. the list of presumed burial sites & places of pilgrimage is long: nabi rubin, nabi judah, nabi dan, nabi benjamin, & others. ('nabi' means prohpet in arabic.) the jewish pretext was misleadingly simple: the names are biblical or jewish, so jews have a right to control them, although as benvenisti emphasizes these sites 'were not a component in jewish tradition.' the jews merely took over muslim sacred geography & appropriated the 'pantheon' of muslim saints & prophets. in an ungrateful process of erasure & the creation of a 'hebrew map', sites whose sanctity was the outcome of palestinian village heritage were turned into synagogues or to other jewish uses after 1948."]

this updated note is also wrong/argumentative/irrelevant @communitynotes ... the first five cities mentioned were established/named by canaanites (the furst sentence is imply they are originally "hebrew" when they are not)

as for the idea that palestine is a roman name for judea, simply false (judea never comprised all of palestine & palestine was used by the greeks & assyrians centuries before the romans)

[Quoted, tweet by the OP:

herodotus didn't invent the name palestine ... its mentioned as a region & people in 9th century bc assyrian inscriptions ]

do you understand why establishing this history is important? do not accept erasure justified by lies ... denial of existence is genocide

[Quoted, tweet by Valerie Zink:

I thought the policy was re: present day (which is bad enough). To pretend that a country called Palestine never existed when Israel was created is something else.]

are you not embarrassed @communitynotes to be used to disseminate ahistorical propaganda? the arab presence in palestine certainly predates islam the arabic alphabet was developed by nabataean arabs in palestine's negev

also please look up the kingdom of qedar (thought by many to be the predecessors of nabateans) & who are mentioned in assyrian inscriptions as early as the 9th century bc

Posting this separately, so that people understand more the history of the Palestinian cities' names.

Link to thread (X)

Free Palestine

[nataliesnews]

Murder of little boy religion 11.6.2023

am, Susan, Mervyn, Ronnie, Rene, Debby, Joy

>

I don't usually send this kind of thing on but when Chanah Stein sent it to me which she never does I knew it had to be special. users.comcen.com.au/~berlin/temp/balance.mp4 I have found a new group for Arabic....Palestinians and Israelis meet ....each wanting to learn the others language. It is free at the teacher's college in Ein Karem. Unlike my Arabic course, it is also a meeting place where we can get to know the other side and great fun.

Machsomwatch issued two posts about the little boy, Muhammed Tamimi, who was murdered, and I use the word deliberately. The machsom notice says that we can only protest that not one politician on either side saw fit to show any remorse. I say murdered because it is not feasible that the soldier did not know who he was shooting at. There had been no shooting from  the village prior to this and also considering the highly technical rifles used by the army also not feasible that the soldier did not see that this was a father coming out of his house and putting his little boy into the car. Read the PDF by Gideon Levi which really shows up the whole establishment. Ben Gvir will probably give the soldier a medal.           The  other notice is also by Machsomwatch about the wounding of a Palestinian  press photographer. The man had a clear notice on him saying Press. Machsomwatch calls for an inquiry. As I  said open season on Palestinians. This is the notice which is  being carried at many of the protests.

....

-  This is a photo which shows what a shit Netanyahu is...birds of a feather stink together. He is here with Ben Yehuda who once accosted me when I was coming back from Balfour and who screams at us both at Sheikh Jarrah  and at the home of the soapy President telling us that we should go to Auschwitz, that we are traitors and the whores of the Paletinians.  He never changes his repertoire which is as empty as his head. He especially likes to call me and tells me to go back to the retirement home so that they can change my diaper. And by the way if you want to hear more about the IQ one of the ultra orthodox  members of Parliament says that people give little boys dolls to play with so that they will turn out gay If you went to laugh....with all the extremism that is happening here in Israel where Halacha has become more important than God and even more important than ethics. For those not Jewish 7 hours is supposed to pass before you can eat milk after meat.....and with all else Jewish in every community the amount of time differs

How ridiculous can you make religion?

Bye

--

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[jewishbookworld]

Return to the Place by Jill Hammer

Return to the Place by Jill Hammer

The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah Rabbi Jill Hammer has taken ancient Jewish mystical text and transformed it into a contemporary guide for meditative practice. In Return to the Place, Rabbi Hammer guides the reader through the story of creation as the ancient text of the Sefer Yetzirah draws readers in and invites them to become participants in the book’s vibrant…

[outskirtspress]

Amazon Featured Book of the Week

Amazon Featured Book of the Week

Now available on Amazon.com! Healing the Wounds of War: My Personal Journey by Amnon Ben-Yehuda (5 Stars – 13 Customer Reviews) Price: $17.95 Amnon Ben-Yehuda’s award winning “Healing the Wounds of War: My Personal Journey.” After joining the Haganah Underground and then the shock troop Palmach along with his childhood friends during Israel’s War Of Independence in April 1948, the Author…

[phoukanamedpookie]

Feeling Jewishly spooky? Check out my minicast, "Horror and Holiness," which explores human encounters with the divine through the horror lens. Listen on SoundCloud.

And THE RED DOOR, a dark fairytale told in poems, is now available at Ben Yehuda Press. If you're into Jewish mysticism and folklore and demons, and women being gay and terrifying and wonderful, you're missing out if you don't have your copy yet. And I'm not just saying that because I wrote it. 🤭

[eretzyisrael]

#OnThisDay Israel’s first Independence Day Parade passing between Allenby and Ben Yehuda Streets in Tel Aviv, May 4, 1949.

Source: Hans Pinn, Government Press Office— in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Humans of Judaism

[girlactionfigure]

How BDS can be Totally Ineffective and yet Extremely Dangerous

You scream, I scream, we all scream for ice cream – 1927 popular song

The decision of Ben and Jerry’s to stop selling ice cream in Judea and Samaria has galvanized diverse pro- and anti-Israel groups and individuals. The best reaction came from the Israeli lawfare group Shurat HaDin, which says that it will begin using B&J’s copyrighted trademark to sell ice cream in the areas that B&J will boycott, and invites the company to challenge it in court. The stupidest statement was made by B&J Board Chair Anuradha Mittal, who said (in reference to a disagreement with the parent company about the precise wording of the boycott announcement), “I can’t stop thinking that this is what happens when you have a board with all women and people of color who have been pushing to do the right thing.” Of course.

If this boycott is actually carried out, it will have absolutely zero effect on Israel’s economy. The present manufacturer of B&J’s ice cream in Israel, Avi Singer, refused to honor the boycott and will have his license terminated in a year and a half; he will have to scramble to rebrand and reformulate his products, which are made a few miles down the road from here in Beer Tuvia, within the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel by Jewish and Arab employees. It will cost him something, but Israelis have responded by buying a lot of ice cream from him and the company will survive.

But the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions movement is not really an attempt to wage economic warfare. Rather, it is another weapon in the cognitive war that is being pressed against Israel by her enemies worldwide. And in the cognitive theater of operations it is having a great deal of success.

The function of the BDS movement is to frame the antisemitic worldwide Arab/Muslim/European/Leftist campaign to erase the Jewish state (and for some, the Jewish people) as a struggle for human rights for an endangered minority, the “Palestinians.” It is to change a large-scale ongoing pogrom into a cause that right-thinking, moral, caring people can get behind, with their money and their votes. The Palestinian Arabs, the point of the spear aimed at the Jewish state, are transformed by BDS into a plucky band of “natives” who are oppressed and even mass-murdered by technologically advanced (but morally deficient) Zionists.

The BDS movement takes the false Palestinian narrative as a given, muvan m’eilav, and moves on to motivating its adherents to take action on their behalf. The debates on college campuses and corporate boards do not deal with the question of who has aboriginal rights to Eretz Yisrael or whether Jewish communities east of the Green Line are legal under international law, or whether the land is actually “occupied” by Israel. Nobody asks about the Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria from 1948-1967. Everybody knows, it is implied, the answers to these questions.

This is a trick known to every good car salesman, who wants his customer to argue over the size of the monthly payments rather than the total amount he will end up paying.

There is also what I call “the argument from South Africa:” apartheid South Africa was guilty of crimes against an oppressed group which were inseparable from the regime; only replacing the regime by one dominated by the oppressed group could fix it. This was accelerated by international pressure (combined with terrorism, but never mind). The boycotters are calling for the same kind of pressure against Israel, and so therefore Israel must be as evil as apartheid South Africa – and the same remedy applied. I don’t think I need to explain why this argument is fallacious!

Once it’s established that “Palestine” is a good cause, then the more that a person aspires to moral goodness, the more anti-Israel they become. It doesn’t hurt that preexisting antisemitic conditioning, subliminally present in both non-Jews and Jews, makes it easy to see Israel as evil.

Every time there is such a debate, the basic premises are restated, and never challenged. And that, in my opinion, is the raison d’être of the BDS movement: its actions themselves are of little consequence; it’s the injection of the false narrative into the collective consciousness that is significant.

This implies that the passage of various anti-BDS laws, with the debates and court fights that are entailed by them, is actually counterproductive. And there will be more legal battles coming. BDSnik Lara Friedman, of the misnamed Foundation for Middle East Peace, says that court tests of these laws so far have been resolved on technical issues, and their constitutionality hasn’t been decided.

This also implies that the proper strategy to fight BDS is not to challenge it on the enemy’s terms, that is, not to argue that boycotts are illegal, or that BDS hurts Arabs as much as Jews. Rather, we should attack the premises that it rests on: the supposed aboriginal rights of the Palestinian Arabs, the denial of Jewish sovereignty on either side of the Green Line (the Palestinian Narrative denies the legitimacy of a Jewish state of any size anywhere in Eretz Yisrael), and the allegations of oppression, apartheid, and other crimes.

Finally, we should expose the moral failings of the Palestinian culture, its misogyny, homophobia, and obsessive violence. We should draw attention to the viciousness of Palestinian terrorism. We should note that where Palestinian Arabs govern themselves, there is endemic corruption and oppression of the population. And of course we should point out that the accusations of Israeli atrocities and war crimes are mostly false, exaggerated, or lacking relevant context.

So, although I applaud the legal action of Shurat HaDin to create overwhelmingly negative consequences for the boycotters, this isn’t the solution to BDS. The real answer is for the State of Israel to very publicly make the case for the sovereign right of the Jewish state to all of Eretz Yisrael,including a direct refutation of the poisonous Palestinian Narrative.

Abu Yehuda

[rivqa]

The art of strange fire

The art of strange fire

I’m pleased to announce that “Love Thy Neighbour”, my cheeky Eve + Adam + Lilith Torah fanfic short story is forthcoming in Ben Yehuda Press’ Strange Fire: Jewish Voices from the Pandemic anthology, edited by TS Mendola and out later this month. The paperback is available for preorder now, and the ebook should be available soon. Warning: my story is in the SEX section (yes, there’s a sex…

[atalantapendrag]

You’ve seen him on @hanukcat , you’ve seen him on @boston-and-slartibartfast, now my handsome guy is a model in this year’s Jewish Cat Calendar from Ben Yehuda Press! The other months are adorabe too but I’m biased.

[aletdownsquid]

We Want the Wilderness Intro: Works Cited

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Bolland, Brian. “On Batman: Brian Bolland Recalls The Killing Joke.” DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore, by Alan Moore. DC Comics, 2006. p. 247.

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production, edited by Randall Johnson, Columbia UP, 1993.

---. The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, translated by Susan Emanuel, Stanford UP, 1995.

Breznican, Anthony. “Rogue One: Alternate Ending Revealed: A Lifesaving Escape.” Entertainment Weekly, 20 Mar. 2017, ew.com/movies/2017/03/20/rogue-one-alternate-ending-revealed/.

Brooks, Dan. “SWCE 2016: 15 Things We Learned from the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story Panel.” Star Wars, 15 Jul. 2016, www.starwars.com/news/swce-2016-15-things-we-learned-from-the-rogue-one-a-star-wars-story-panel.

Buckley, Cara. “When ‘Captain Marvel’ Became a Target, the Rules Changed.” The New York Times.com, 13 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/13/movies/captain-marvel-brie-larson-rotten-tomatoes.html?login=email&auth=login-email.

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Cranswick, Amie. “Kevin Feige Names Black Panther As the Best Movie that Marvel Has Made.” The Flickering Myth, 11  Jun. 2018, www.flickeringmyth.com/2018/06/kevin-feige-names-black-panther-as-the-best-movie-that-marvel-has-made/.

Dockterman, Eliana. “Here’s a Complete List of All the Upcoming Marvel Movies.” Time.com, 17 Apr. 2018, time.com/5167535/upcoming-marvel-movies/.

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Ebiri, Bilge. “Ten Years Later, ‘The Dark Knight’ and It Vision of Guilt Still Resonate.” The Village Voice.com, 18 July 2018, www.villagevoice.com/2018/07/18/10-years-later-the-dark-knight-and-its-vision-of-guilt-still-resonate/.

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Ford, Rebecca. “Director Gareth Edwards Reveals ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ Centers on Death Star Heist.” The Hollywood Reporter, 19 Apr. 2015, www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/director-gareth-edwards-reveals-star-789951.

Gray, Jonathan, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington. Introduction: Why Study Fans? Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, New York UP, 2007. pp.1-16.

Hills, Matt. “Absent Epic, Implied Story Arcs, and Variation on a Narrative: Doctor Who (2005-8) as Cult/Mainstream Television.” Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, edited by Pat Harrington and Noah Wardrip-Fruin. MIT Press, 2009, pp. 333-42.

Hood, Cooper. “Kevin Feige Says Black Panther is the MCU’s Best Movie to Date.” Screenrant, 17 Feb. 2018, https://screenrant.com/black-panther-best-mcu-movie-kevin-feige/.

Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Televisions Fans and Participatory Culture. Routledge, 2003.

Jones, Craig Owen. “Life in the Hiatus: New Doctor Who Fans, 1989-2005. Fan Phenomena: Doctor Who, edited by Paul Booth, University of Chicago Press, 2013, pp. 36-43.

Karim, Anhar. “How the Spider-Man Trailer May Hurt ‘Avengers: Endgame.’” Forbes.com, 20 Jan. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/anharkarim/2019/01/20/how-the-spider-man-trailer-may-hurt-avengers-endgame/#25a0d5ad5056.

McMillan, Graeme. “‘Captain Marvel’ Targeted by Negative Online Reviews Prerelease,” 19 Feb. 2019, www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/captain-marvel-targeted-by-negative-online-reviews-pre-release-1188109?fbclid=IwAR1xyzXBkHMA53aM-BpvEh8xR8WzmTnnYFt8RuebMR6htoZdn9VpCXuBKnw.

---. “What Happens When ‘Star Wars’ Is Just a War Film?” The Hollywood Reporter, 20 Apr. 2015,  www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/what-happens-star-wars-is-790216.

McVey, Ciara. “Ryan Coogler Explains Why ‘Black Panther’ Is a Political Film.” The Hollywood Reporter, 18 Dec. 2018, www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ryan-coogler-explains-why-black-panther-is-a-political-film-watch-1170585.

Perryman, Neil. “Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in ‘Transmedia Storytelling.’” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, Vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 21–39.

Polo, Susana. “The Batman Comics That Inspired The Dark Knight’s Hyper-realism.” Polygon, 17 Jul. 2018, www.polygon.com/comics/2018/7/17/17564454/batman-comics-that-inspired-christopher-nolan-dark-knight.

Rahmanan, Anna Ben Yehuda. “Rotten Tomatoes Looking to Change Audience Reviews Process to Fight Trolls.” Forbes.com, 15 Mar. 2019, www.forbes.com/sites/annabenyehudarahmanan/2019/03/15/rotten-tomatoes-looking-to-change-audience-reviews-process-to-fight-trolls/#6fada91668de.

Raftery, Brian. “Trolls Are Tanking Captain Marvel’s Rotten Tomatoes Reviews. But They Can’t Stop Its Box Office Haul.” Fortune.com, 9 Mar. 2019, fortune.com/2019/03/08/captain-marvel-rotten-tomatoes-review/fortune.com/2019/03/08/captain-marvel-rotten-tomatoes-review/.

Romano, Aja. “The Archive of Our Own is Now a Hugo Nominee. That’s Huge for Fanfiction.” Vox, 11 April 2019, www.vox.com/2019/4/11/18292419/archive-of-our-own-hugo-award-nomination-related-work.

Sandvoss, Cornel. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. Polity Press, 2005.  

---, Johnathan Gray, and C. Lee Harrington. Introduction: Why Still Study Fans? Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, edited by Johnathan Gray, Cornel Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 2nd ed. New York UP, 2017. pp.1-26.

Schick, Michal. “Archive of Our Own’s Hugo Nomination is a Win for Marginalized Fandom.” Hypeable, 4 April 2019, www.hypable.com/archive-of-our-own-hugo-awards-fandom/.

Serwer, Adam. " The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger." The Atlantic.com, 28 Feb. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/black-panther-erik-killmonger/553805/.

Sims, David. “A Change for Rotten Tomatoes Ahead of Captain Marvel.” The Atlantic.com, 4 Mar. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/03/rotten-tomatoes-captain-marvel-review-ratings-system-online-trolls/584032/.

---. “The Complicated Legacy of Batman Begins.” The Atlantic.com, 10 Jun 2015, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/06/the-complicated-legacy-of-batman-begins/395477/.

Torgersen, Brad R. “Sad Puppies 3: The Unraveling of an Unreliable Field.” Brad R. Torgersen: Blue Collar Speculative Fiction, 4 Feb. 2015, bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/.  

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VanDerWerff, Todd. “Avengers: Infinity War’s ending is incredibly bold. And maybe a little cheap.” Vox, 27 Apr. 2018, www.vox.com/summer-movies/2018/4/27/17281060/avengers-infinity-war-spoilers-ending-who-dies.

Wilbur, Brock. “Alan Moore Has A Lot To Say About ‘The Killing Joke.” Inverse, 28 Apr. 2016, www.inverse.com/article/14967-alan-moore-now-believes-the-killing-joke-was-melodramatic-not-interesting.

[paoloxl]

Palestine Chronicle Di Ramzy Baroud (Da Zeitun.info). La partita è in corso. Israele, che ci si creda o no, sta chiedendo che sette Paesi arabi e l’Iran paghino 250 miliardi di dollari come risarcimento per ciò che sostiene essere stata l’espulsione forzata di ebrei dai Paesi arabi alla fine degli anni ’40. Gli eventi citati da Israele sarebbero avvenuti nel periodo in cui le milizie ebree sioniste stavano espellendo attivamente circa un milione di arabi palestinesi e distruggendo sistematicamente le loro case, villaggi e città in tutta la Palestina.

L’annuncio di Israele, che avrebbe fatto seguito a “18 mesi di indagini segrete” condotte dal ministro per l’Uguaglianza Sociale, non deve essere registrato nel dossier in continua espansione delle vergognose falsificazioni israeliane della storia. In realtà fa parte di un calcolato tentativo da parte del governo israeliano, in particolare della ministra (per l’Uguaglianza Sociale) Gila Gamliel, di creare una narrazione alternativa alla legittima richiesta di applicazione del diritto al ritorno dei rifugiati palestinesi che subirono una pulizia etnica da parte delle milizie ebraiche tra il 1947 e il 1948.

C’è una ragione dietro l’urgenza di Israele di rivelare una simile discutibile indagine: l’incessante tentativo di Stati Uniti ed Israele negli ultimi due anni di liquidare i diritti dei rifugiati palestinesi, di mettere in discussione il loro numero ridefinendo chi essi siano o meno e di rendere marginali le loro denunce. Fa tutto parte del pacchetto del disegno in atto camuffato da “Accordo del secolo”, col chiaro scopo di rimuovere tutte le importanti questioni che sono al centro della lotta palestinese per la libertà.

“È venuto il momento di correggere la storica ingiustizia dei pogrom (contro gli ebrei) in sette Paesi arabi e in Iran, e di restituire alle centinaia di migliaia di ebrei che persero le loro proprietà ciò che legittimamente gli appartiene”, ha detto Gamliel.

La frase “…correggere la storica ingiustizia” non è diversa da quella usata dai palestinesi che da oltre 70 anni chiedono la restituzione dei loro diritti in base alla Risoluzione 194 dell’ONU. La voluta sovrapposizione della narrazione palestinese e di quella sionista ha lo scopo di creare paralleli, nella speranza che un futuro accordo politico si concluda con rivendicazioni che si annullino a vicenda.

Tuttavia, contrariamente a quanto vogliono farci credere gli storici israeliani, non vi fu un esodo di massa forzato di ebrei dai Paesi arabi e dall’Iran. Ciò che avvenne fu una massiccia campagna organizzata all’epoca dai capi sionisti per sostituire la popolazione araba indigena in Palestina con immigrati ebrei da tutto il mondo. Le modalità con cui venne portata a termine questa operazione spesso implicarono azioni violente dei sionisti, soprattutto in Iraq.

Di fatto, l’appello agli ebrei a confluire in Israele da tutti gli angoli del mondo resta il grido di battaglia dei leader israeliani e dei loro sostenitori cristiano-evangelici. I primi vogliono assicurare una maggioranza ebraica nello Stato, mentre i secondi cercano di adempiere ad un requisito biblico per le loro a lungo attese Apocalisse e Ascensione in cielo. Attribuire ad arabi e iraniani la responsabilità di questo strano ed irresponsabile comportamento è una violazione della vera narrazione storica alla quale né Gamliel né il suo ministero sono interessati.

Dall’altro lato, e diversamente da quanto gli storici militari israeliani spesso sostengono, l’espulsione dei palestinesi dalla Palestina nel 1947-48 (e le successive epurazioni della popolazione nativa che seguirono alla guerra del 1967) fu un’azione premeditata di pulizia etnica e genocidio. Fu (ed è ancora) parte di una annosa e attentamente progettata campagna che, fin dal suo inizio, ha costituito la principale strategia al centro della “visione” del movimento sionista riguardo al popolo palestinese.

“Dobbiamo espellere gli arabi e prendere il loro posto”, scrisse il fondatore di Israele, comandante militare e primo capo del governo, David Ben Gurion, in una lettera a suo figlio Amos nell’ottobre del 1937. Era più di 10 anni prima che fosse messo in atto il Piano D (per Dalet) – che ha visto la distruzione della patria palestinese per mano delle milizie di Ben Gurion e dei gruppi terroristi sionisti.

“La Palestina ha un grande potenziale per la colonizzazione”, scrisse inoltre Ben Gurion, “di cui gli arabi non hanno bisogno né sono in grado di sfruttare.” Questa esplicita dichiarazione di un progetto coloniale in Palestina, espressa con lo stesso tipo di inconfondibile linguaggio e insinuazioni razziste che hanno accompagnato tutte le altre esperienze coloniali occidentali per molti secoli, non apparteneva solo a Ben Gurion. Era una mera parafrasi di ciò che allora si percepiva essere la sostanza dell’impresa sionista in Palestina in quel momento.

Come ha concluso il professore palestinese Nur Masalha nel suo libro, Expulsion of the Palestinians [‘Espulsione dei palestinesi’], l’idea del “trasferimento” – il termine sionista per pulizia etnica – del popolo palestinese era e resta fondamentale per la realizzazione delle ambizioni sioniste in Palestina. “I villaggi arabi palestinesi all’interno dello Stato ebraico che resistono ‘devono essere distrutti…e i loro abitanti espulsi al di là dei confini dello Stato ebraico’”, ha scritto Masalha, citando la “History of the Haganah”  [‘Storia dell’Haganah’] di Yehuda Slutsky. L’Haganah era la principale milizia sionista che sarebbe diventata l’esercito israeliano (IDF, Israel Defence Force), insieme a ciò che rimaneva dei gruppi terroristici Irgun e Banda Stern.

Ciò che questo significava nella pratica, come descritto dallo storico palestinese Walid Khalidi, fu che le varie milizie ebraiche presero congiuntamente di mira tutti i centri abitati in Palestina, in modo sistematico e senza eccezioni. “Alla fine di aprile del 1948 l’offensiva congiunta di Haganah e Irgun aveva circondato completamente la città palestinese di Giaffa, costringendo la maggior parte dei civili rimasti alla fuga per mare verso Gaza o l’Egitto; molti annegarono nel tragitto”, ha scritto Khalidi in “Before Their Diaspora” [Prima della loro diaspora’].

Questa tragedia arrivò a colpire tutti i palestinesi dovunque all’interno dei confini della loro patria storica. Decine di migliaia di rifugiati si unirono ad altre centinaia di migliaia in tanti sentieri polverosi in tutto il Paese, crescendo di numero man mano che procedevano, prima di piantare finalmente le loro tende in zone che dovevano essere provvisori campi per rifugiati. Ahimè, rimangono campi per rifugiati palestinesi ancor oggi, disseminati nella Cisgiordania occupata e nella Striscia di Gaza, in Giordania, Siria e Libano.

Nulla di ciò fu accidentale. La determinazione dei primi sionisti a stabilire un “focolare nazionale” per gli ebrei a spese della popolazione araba palestinese del Paese fu comunicata apertamente, chiaramente e ripetutamente attraverso la formazione del primo pensiero sionista e la trasformazione di quelle ben articolate idee in realtà.

Sono passati 70 anni dalla Nakba – la catastrofe del 1948 – e Israele non si è mai assunto la responsabilità delle proprie azioni né i rifugiati palestinesi hanno ricevuto alcuna misura di giustizia, per quanto piccola o simbolica. Perciò, per Israele chiedere delle compensazioni dai Paesi arabi e dall’Iran è una parodia morale, specialmente dato che i rifugiati palestinesi continuano a sopravvivere in campi profughi in tutta la Palestina e il Medio Oriente.

Sì, certamente “è arrivato il momento di correggere l’ingiustizia storica”, ma non per quelli che Israele ora sostiene essere stati “pogrom” condotti da arabi e iraniani. La vera ingiustizia storica è la continua e terribile distruzione della Palestina e del suo popolo.

Ramzy Baroud è giornalista, scrittore e redattore di Palestine Chronicle. Il suo prossimo libro è The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story [L’ultima terra: una storia palestinese] (Pluto Press, Londra). Baroud ha un dottorato di ricerca in Studi Palestinesi presso l’Università di Exeter ed è ricercatore non residente presso il Centro Orfalea di Studi Globali e Internazionali, Università della California a Santa Barbara.

Traduzione per Zeitun.info di Cristiana Cavagna

[jewishbookworld]

Monologues from the Makom; Editors Rivka Cohen, Sara Rozner Lawrence, Sarah J. Ricklan

Monologues from the Makom; Editors Rivka Cohen, Sara Rozner Lawrence, Sarah J. Ricklan

Intertwined Narratives of Sexuality, Gender, Body Image, and Jewish Identity Foreword by Rabbanit Dasi FruchterIntroduction by Sara Rozner Lawrence A collection of first-person poetry and prose designed to break the observant Jewish community’s taboo against open discussion of female sexuality 

[phoukanamedpookie]

Great news for Femslash February (Celebrates Black Women)!

My debut poetry collection, The Red Door, is available for pre-order by popular demand at Ben Yehuda Press.

It's a dark fairytale told in story-poems about a woman who has a life-changing encounter with a monster in the mystical city of Tzfat.

Pre-order your copy if you like...

woman-centered narratives,

Black female protagonists,

sapphic content,

Jewish mysticism,

monsters, and/or

nerdy English major stuff.