On Gaza

by Pierre Joris · January 20, 2009

Here some links to articles on Gaza, via Juan Cole’s Informed Comment site:

John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago presents absolutely the clearest and most concise account of the Gaza atrocity in The American Conservative.

Mearsheimer argues that diminishing Hamas or stopping the rockets are subsidiary goals for Olmert to the more central one of controlling all of historical Palestine via an Iron Wall policy that permanently subjugates the Palestinian population and ensures Israeli control of Palestinian land, air and water.

Mearsheimer points out that this goal cannot be achieved, and certainly not by the brutal method of a total war on the Palestinian population. The likely outcome even in the case of relative Israeli success is a permanent Apartheid, which itself will doom Israel.

Also, Jonathan Shainin argues that there will be no real ceasefire without a political settlement and a Palestinian state.

And, M.J. Rosenberg Encourages Obama to buck the Israel lobbies and press full steam ahead for a resolution, underlining that other presidents have succeeded in charting an independent course when they were at the height of their popularity.

Also interesting to meditate on plus ça change… is Albert Einstein’s 1948 letter to the New York Times, (co-signed by the likes of Hanah Arendt, Stefan Wolfe and others) on the occasion of the visit of the New Palestine Party’s Menachim Begin. You can read it here.

And here is the letter a former Greek Foreign Minister addressed to the Israeli Embassy, returning 3 bottles of wine he had been sent for the New Year (from his personal site):

Dear Mr. Ambassador,
Thank you for the 3 bottles of wine that you sent me as season’s greetings. I wish to you, your family and everybody in the Embassy a happy new year. Good health and progress to you all.
Unhappily I noticed that the wine you have sent me has been produced in the Golan Heights. I have been taught since I was very young not to steel and not to accept products of theft. So I can not possibly accept this gift and I must return it back to you.
As you know, your country occupies illegally the Golan Heights who belong to Syria, according to the International Law and numerous decisions of the International Community.
I take the opportunity to express my hope that Israel will find security into its internationally recognized borders and the terrorist activities against Israel territory by Hamas or anybody else will be contained and made impossible, but I also hope that your government will cease practicing the policy of collective punishment which was applied on a mass scale by Hitler and his armies.
Actions such as those of these days of the Israel military in Gaza remind the greek people holocausts such as in Kalavrita or Doxato or Distomo and certainly in the ghetto of Warsaw.
With these thoughts allow me to express to you my best wishes for you, the Israeli people and all the people of our region of the world.

http://www.pangalos.gr/

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.