Status Updates From The Slopes Of Lebanon: Essa...

There are already elements of near intimacy in the hostile relations between us and them, including similarities that are peculiar, frightening, and sometimes almost ridiculous.

Contrary to the sentimental, romantic cliché, poets do not handle words as a lover handles bouquets. They treat words the way a bacteriologist treats germs. As a result of their work and their intimate, microscopic contact with language and its implications, they are sometimes able to detect disease or the threat of an epidemic before others do.

Tell me to whom you look for moral endorsement, and I will tell you who you are.

How can we live and not die? If we can compromise, we will live, but if we behave like fanatics, we will die. All the rest is commentary. Go and learn.

It will always be easier for the Israel Defense Forces to break the backbone of the tiny Palestinian state than to break the backbone of an eight-year-old Palestinian stone thrower.

(This is his angry, shouting at the right phase)

Sometimes it seems that Israel is willing to suffer a deep internal rift that may destroy the willingness of half its citizenry to fight, rather than tolerate a two-state solution.

Self-determination is not a prize awarded for good behavior.

This is a war between Israel and the Arab world (which includes the Palestinians).


This is from 1988, it's interesting to me that this opinion was still mainstream then. I guess it makes sense- the Yom Kippur War had only been 15 years before and Israel had only normalized relations with Egypt a few years before. Crazy how fast things have shifted.

It is almost certain that one day Palestine and Trans-Jordan will be a single nation whose territory will be five or six times greater than Israel. If, in the meantime, Palestine feels crowded, let it present some territorial demands to the kingdom of Jordan, where two-thirds of the population is Palestinian and there is plenty of empty land.


This book is a time capsule sometimes.

It is always fascinating to see how people set out on a journey through space when, in fact, they want to journey through time- or the opposite: They travel through time when they really ache for other places.

But the root of the controversy has remained with us from those past days down to the present, and will into the future: Is a nation surrounded by enemies permitted to engage in anything, including acts conventionally defined as war crimes, in order to overcome its enemies? Do despicable, criminal methods of warfare employed by the enemy justify the use of despicable, criminal methods of warfare by us in return?

An underground, any underground, is a challenge to the law. However, its challenge is not a manifestation of anarchism, but is made on the basis of another law.

The secular Zionist public which is ready to separate peacefully from the Palestinians should not be frightened by the idea of establishing one or two ultra-Orthodox Jewish "Vatican Cities", not by the autonomy of Gush Emunim settlers within a zone of Palestinian autonomy.

Bored of the two-state solution? Try the infinite state solution!

The tragedy of history is not the perpetual hopeless clash between saintly individuals and diabolical establishments. It is, rather, the perpetual clash between the relatively decent societies and the bloody ones. To be more precise, it is the perpetual cowardice of relatively decent societies whenever they confront the ruthlessness of oppressive ones.



Really didn't expect this opinion. Very uncontemporary-left

Both sides apparently need the intoxicating drug of being a handful of besieged heroes, the "last defenders on the walls." Both sides try to avoid sorting, grading, and differentiating when speaking of their "worst enemies."

This was about internal politics in Israel in the 80s, but it seems incredibly similar to how some Americans see each other.

When viewing the stranger as faceless, one comes to see oneself as a beleaguered minority surrounded by enemies.


(He's not talking about the Palestinians here, but about how many middle/upper class Ashkenazi viewed the Haredi and the lower class Mizrahi. It's similar to how I think people in the US are viewing each other right now)

And meanwhile, day by day, before our very eyes, the famous "sociological pyramid" of Jewish existence is turning upside down, and the state that was born of the desire to transform the Jew from a social class into a nation is reducing us from a nation back to a social class.

I have a long quote that's really interesting to me:

Begin and his associates knew exactly what they were doing in recent months when they began their intensive effort to rewrite history, when they tried to conjure up the ghosts of the Israeli bombing of Irbid (1970), the destruction of the Egyptian Suez-Canal cities in the battle of attrition (1969-70), even the Christian and Syrian massacre of...

Once a victim, always a victim, and victimhood entitles its owners to a moral exemption.

(This is sarcastic)

Once a victim, always a victim,and victimhood entitled its owners to a

That which you have done- whether it be only once in your life, in one moment of stupidity or in an outburst of anger- that which you are capable of doing- even if you have forgotten, or have chosen to forget, how and why you did it- that which you have done and regretted bitterly, you may never do again. But you are capable of doing it. You may do it. It is curled up inside you.

We will have to grit our teeth and admit that this war was a war of the people. The people wanted it and the people (most of them) supported it, took pleasure in it, and hated the handful who were opposed. At least that is how it was until the war got "bogged down"; at that point, this good people simply forgot about the war and its dead.

This book is reminding me that I need to read more nonfiction and I also want to give this collection of essays form a chance because I have been loving it so far. Definitely promising especially if I manage to graduate next year because the thought of not studying scares me but this is a good way to learn!

This book is reminding me that I need to read more nonfiction and I also want to give this collection of essays form a chance because I have been loving it so far. Definitely promising especially if I manage to graduate next year because the thought of not studying scares me but this is a good way to learn!

But the past is also a stagnating force…