Book Review: The Thinking Heart: Essays on Israel and Palestine

(Bought at Barnes and Noble) Israeli author David Grossman's slim volume of 11 essays and speeches grabbed my eye from one of the tables at Barnes and Noble. I wanted to understand more about the tragic situation in Gaza and the West Bank as well as Israel's fight for its very existence. Grossman addresses the seemingly unresolvable conflict, acknowledging Israel's inhumane occupation and how the right-wing policies of the Netanyahu government will never result in peace, but perpetual struggle. At the same time, he mourns the fact that Israel is the only country on Earth whose very existence is called in question. He calls for compassion on both sides. The title refers to a passage in a diary written by a Jewish Dutch woman in the concentration camps (not Anne Frank). Etty Hillesum wrote how her fellow prisoners had lost all hope and feeling and she wanted to be the thinking heart for all of them. For this situation to end successfully, we'll need more than one thinking heart. 

As soon as I finished the book, we went to see the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land which chronicles the destruction of century-old West Bank villages by the Israeli army. The cruelty of the army and the settlers is devastating. The film focuses on a Palestinian political activist and an Israeli journalist documenting the oppression via video and social media. At one point the Palestinian points out the Jews were once an crushed minority just like the Palestinians are now. He hopes they will remember that and stop treating them like vermin.

Shocker: Biden Eats Ice Cream!

Joe Biden eats ice cream. How dare he!

At brunch today with a group of friends in Queens, we were discussing Biden's precarious position with Israel. The waitress was taking our orders as the confab began and she said she was concerned that Biden was eating ice cream while discussing the Gaza situation. She expressed dissatisfaction with his seemingly casual attitude while holding forth on matters of international concern. I immediately leapt in with "So you'd rather have Trump? A man who was found liable of sexually assaulting a woman and then lying about it, fomenting an insurrection, trying to overthrow our democracy, committing business fraud, screwing up the government's response to the COVID pandemic, paying off a porn star, etc. etc." The waitress said she wasn't thinking about that, she just wanted to criticize Biden (not in those words, but she didn't even appear to consider Trump's many flaws in comparison with Biden's minor ones.)

I said, "This is the choice--Biden or Trump. That's it. I would rather have a 1 Biden eating ice cream, than 1,000 Donald Trumps eating hamburgers and throwing them against the wall." I could see I was getting nowhere and cut the talk with her short. I did leave a nice tip.

There were also shrieks of despair from Dems over the "Uncommitted" protest votes in the Michigan primary from voters unhappy with Biden's stance on aiding Israel and not pushing hard enough for a ceasefire. Yes, Michigan has a large Moslem-American population and they are unhappy about Biden's apparently unconditional support of Netanyahu. But will they really vote for Trump in November--or just as bad, stay home on election day? Trump's even more pro-Israel than Biden. Will they forget about his Moslem ban? 

Biden's in am impossible position. If he doesn't push for a ceasefire the left will dessert him. If stops aide to Israel, the Jews will be furious. Hopefully he can force Netanyahu to commit to a ceasefire. Unfortunately, Netanyahu will probably not concede to a two-state solution which looks like the only way to solve this situation in the long term. 

My Trip to Israel and Jordan

At Petra in Jordan

I thought Israel would be all cobblestone streets, tiny shops, shouting vendors, stern soldiers with weapons at the ready, and constant danger. That’s the image Americans get from news broadcasts. But on a ten-day sojourn to the embattled Jewish state, what we saw was safe and modern. Of course, we didn’t visit the West Bank or the Gaza Strip. We stayed in the apartment of a friend in a residential section of Jerusalem. When the only images you get of a place are filled with violence, you get a distorted picture. Some relatives still think I lead of life of constance chaos because I’m a New Yorker. 

My images of Jerusalem came from the Old City, made of centuries-old structures and surrounded by a massive wall erected by the Ottoman Empire. The first full day we took a walking tour of this section including the Wailing Wall. Several young boys were being Bar Mitzvahed as their families danced from the gates to this epicenter of Jewish faith, surrounded by bearded men in dark coats and hats. One family had hired a band and huge balloon rabbi like a float in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Thousands of scraps of paper were stuffed into the cracks and the women peaked over the partitions as their sons became men.