[Peace-discuss] Two Comments on Susan Nathan talk and book

[David Green]

2b. Re: on the excellent Susan Nathan talk in Chicago 
Posted by: "steve kowit" skowit at aabol.com 

Mon Nov 13, 2006 8:10 pm (PST) 

I want to second Neal's suggestion about Susan
Nathan's The Other Side of Israel. If you want to
know, from the inside, how Israel's laws, even when
they have no explicitly "racist" language, are
explicitly designed to make life intolerable for
Palestinian citizens of Israel (we're not talking
about the refugees, but Palestinian- Israeli
citizens), this is the book. It is also a fine, human,
personable, warm book of a Jewish woman's life in an
entirely Palestinian town (in which community she was
immediately accepted as a trusted neighbor & friend.)
No other book I know gives the reader the kind of
insight she gives into the real racist underpinnings
of Israeli society and Israeli law & the extraordinary
level of denial (& ignorance) of the well-meaning
Israeli left-progressives, those liberal colonialists
who imagine themselves filled with dreams of equality
& social justice --or rather, what they imagine would
be "social justice" while maintaining their utter
privilege & power in an Apartheid culture. It's a
terrifically good read & an important study of a
thoroughly racist society that few Israeli Jews, let
alone American Zionists, have any understanding of!
Please read it!! ....Steve 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: nealbetty at aol. com 
To: NIMNBulletinBoard@ yahoogroups. com 
Sent: Sunday, November 12, 2006 7:18 PM
Subject: [NIMNBulletinBoard] on the excellent Susan
Nathan talk in Chicago

I want to encourage everyone to take a look at Susan
Nathan. Her presentation yesterday in Chicago on the
extreme segregation and oppression of the Palestinians
who live in Israel was detailed and moving. 

I have started to read her book, The Other Side of
Israel, on her move to become perhaps the only Jew to
live in an Arab town in Israel, a well written,
detailed, and moving book. It reads like a novel,
keeps you going....

Actually, the main political point I want to focus on
is that she did not blame Hezbollah or whine about the
Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel and very near to
where she lives, unlike JVP, US Campaign Against the
Occupation, and others. Instead, she blamed Israel
(and the U.S.) for provoking the national resistance
force in Lebanon and not engaging in diplomacy rather
than war. My first impression of her is that she is a
politically sharp and wise woman. --

Neal Resnikoff



 
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