Joel Schalit
By Joel Schalit
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News When the ‘Man From Damascus’ Appeared in My Brussels Doorstep
He said he was from Damascus. Camped out two flights below, speaking a mix of French and Arabic, he wasn’t hard to understand. I caught a glimpse of him in late August, on my way to the laundromat. Sitting on top of a pile of blankets, covered by a sleeping bag, the immigrant from Syria…
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Culture Who are the Palestinians?
The Forgotten Palestinians By Ilan Pappé Yale University Press, 336 pages, $30 Hamas and Civil Society in Gaza By Sara Roy Princeton University Press, 319 pages, $35 In Your Eyes a Sandstorm: Ways of Being Palestinian By Arthur Neslen University of California Press, 328 pages, $34.95 ‘I can’t believe Bibi [Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu],…
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Culture The Optimism of the Will
The Letters of Rosa Luxemburg Edited by Georg Adler, Peter Hudis and Annelies Laschitza Translated by George Shriver Verso Books, 512 pages, 39.95 ‘It’s located on Rosa Luxemburg Straße,” she said, “Two blocks from Alexanderplatz. Just take the train, and I’ll meet you there.” Savoring the combination of literary brand names wrapped into that sentence,…
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Books Is Buchenwald Survivor’s Israel Criticism ‘Abnormal’?
According to the Israeli government, the 93-year-old Buchenwald survivor is a liar. Decried by French embassy spokesperson Yaron Gamburg for spreading falsehoods about the Jewish state, Stéphane Hessel’s criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians apparently does not correspond with reality. “It is a literary fad which will have no affect on the real world,…
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Culture The Egyptian Plumber and My ‘Eurabia’ Problem
The toilet in my Milan apartment hadn’t worked for weeks. Standing outside the entrance to the bathroom, I listened to the sounds of the plumber applying his tools, speaking in hushed Arabic to his assistant. My wife had let them in while I’d been out walking our dogs. Always indexing the languages spoken in our…
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Culture We Are All Simon Schama: The Threat of an Undefined Jew
The Invention of the Jewish People By Shlomo Sand, translated by Yael Lotan Verso, 344 pages, $34.95 It was the year’s biggest helping of humble pie. Less than a month after a heated takedown of Shlomo Sand’s “The Invention of the Jewish People” in the Financial Times, the very same reviewer, writing in Italy’s respected…
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Culture Two Minority Reports From 1948
1948: A Soldier’s Tale — The Bloody Road to Jerusalem By Uri Avnery, translated by Christopher Costello Oneworld Press, 400 pages, $19.95. The First Tithe By Israel Eldad, translated by Zev Golan Gefen, 420 pages, $24.95. For better or for worse, the shadows of 1948 still hang over half the world as reminders of what…
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