Last fall, a small group of young Israeli activists began gathering on Fridays in Sheikh Jarrah to stop the eviction of Palestinian families from this East Jerusalem neighborhood. Three of those families, spawned by (once-and-future?) Palestinian refugees who had lived in West Jerusalem before 1948, have now been thrown out of their homes to make … Read more

My first time in Afghanistan was late winter 1968/69, making the Overland Trail fast as possible through howling cold of Central Asian steppes. Minibus from Mashhad to Heart, arriving at the border crossing: dark, dusty, cold and bleak (Later I was to discover that somehow Afghan border-crossings were always dark dusty cold bleak, even on … Read more

Fr. Rick Frechette is a Passionist priest-doctor (and FIRST contributor) who has been working in Haiti for a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port-au-Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. One of the two hospitals he directs was destroyed by the earthquake. (Two medical volunteers … Read more

Nat Finkelstein, who died earlier this month, contributed photographs and prose to “First.” He’s best known for his 60s pictures of Warhol’s Factory (such as the one above), but his life was bigger than his images. This piece, “Kandahar, 1971”, about his time in Afghanistan is from his memoir, “The 14 Ounce Pound.” (You can … Read more

Uri Avnery, the “grandfather” of Israel’s peace movement, published these reflections in Israel last month during Passover week. Passover Week is a time for outings. News programs on radio and television start with words like: “The masses of the House of Israel spent the day in the national parks…” It is also a feast of … Read more

This was originally published in First of the Month in 2004. I first sailed to Tangiers in 1964, aboard a Kaiser-built concrete poured WW2 Liberty ship operated by the Yugolinia line. From New York at 99 dollars for the passage: The Beatnik Express. My lady friend and I rented a terraced apartment overlooking the northern … Read more

A defender of Israel’s Gaza incursion emailed anti-Islamists the following excerpt from a front page story, “Fighter Sees His Paradise in Gaza’s Pain,” in the January 9 New York Times: 21 year old militant with Islamic Jihad awaits treatment for shrapnel wounds: “Hurry, I must get back so I can keep fighting…We are fighting the … Read more