Various Authors

Reality of Annexation (From Today’s “Haaretz”)

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The eyes of the world are on Gaza, where the war between Israel and Hamas has now dragged on for over 600 days, with no end in sight. Another attempt by the U.S. to pressure Hamas into accepting the terms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a temporary cease-fire appears to have failed. And, despite growing international pressure to end the war, the situation on the ground remains as hopeless as it is dire.

Meanwhile, just a few dozen kilometers east of Gaza, in the hills of the West Bank, another significant development is quietly taking shape. There, the Netanyahu government has accelerated a de facto annexation process – one that began before the October 7 attacks, continued under the guise of war and gained even more momentum following President Trump’s victory last November.

Short of a formal annexation declaration, the government is doing everything possible to signal that it intends to absorb this territory – home to more than two million Palestinians – into the State of Israel.

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Free Alon-Lee Green!

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Standing Together’s weekly demonstration last Sunday in Union Square was shadowed by unfolding horrors and the arrest of the organization’s co-director. I can’t pretend I began to see the light as the group upheld the possibility that Jewish Israelis and Arabs (in Israel and the occupied territories) might come together to “refuse fascism everywhere.” There weren’t enough Arabs in the square to make the most hopeful chants seem less than utopian. Still, I added my goyish voice to the chorus: “Israel And Palestine/Our Futures Are Entwined!” Not all the slogans were so nice. “He Has Lost His Fucking Mind/Netanyahu Must Resign!” My wife left out the F-word but I belted it out. 

What follows is an email appeal from Standing Together…B.D. 

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Beto & The Lotos-Eaters (a movement of mind prompted by the late Benjamin DeMott’s protest against the “let us alone” legacy of a “tonal” prophet)

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Tim Miller joked that he wanted “therapy” so he brought Beto to The Bulwark podcast, but Miller reflexively resisted Beto’s relentless positivity. He was always cordial, but he seemed like a frenemy when he jabbed his guest by citing James Carville who ‘d once rubbed it in after Beto dropped out of the 2020 presidential race. (Carville wacked Beto as a guy who could hit the hell out of a double A fastball, but couldn’t handle a major league change-up.) Perhaps Carville’s right. It could be that Beto lacks talent. Or maybe his meld of Lincoln (“Public sentiment is everything.”) and punk (“Joe Strummer said, ‘without people you’re nothing.'”) could still change the game.

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50501 Demos

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Dennis Myers was First‘s eye on the street on April 5th. (More photos by him after the jump.)

This series of protest signs won Micah Sifry’s prize for best in show on April 19.

(Sifry regrets not getting a photo of “Have You No Beer?”/Brett Kavanaugh.)

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Double or Nothing

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Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (“proud American, native Gazan”) and Dahlia Scheindlin get real about Gaza, Hamas and history of social movements in their commentaries below. Their positions aren’t perfectly aligned, but I’m with him and her…B.D.

 

Why Don’t Gazans Rise Up and Oust Hamas? Dismantling a Deeply Dishonest Claim

By Dahlia Scheindlin

Originally published on March 20 in Haaretz…

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Railroad Earth

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Norah Jones’ duets with Alynda Segarra on YouTube prompted this comment…

Alynda played a major role in changing my entire life for the better. I was an overworked railroader driving freight trains up and down California when I met her and her band “The Dead Man Street Orchestra” at the time. I had just brought my train into Roseville from Oakland, summer of 2005 I believe. I saw her and 5 bandmates playing their instruments under an old oak tree in a dusty field adjacent to the tracks. Once I got off the train I drove my car back to that field and introduced myself. They were a lovely bunch of folks. We ate together and drank “fancy beers” as they called them. The following morning they were aiming to hop a boxcar heading north and they invited me to ride with them.

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Hurray for the Riff Raff!!!

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I’ve lost my feeling for rock ‘n’ roll plenty of times since, say, Love You Live or The River or Combat Rock — albums by beloveds that seemed like stiffs in the moment. But rock-is-over raps have never deflated me for long. I’ve learned to trust there’s always something coming in the American night. Mathew Borushko steered me to The Past is Still Alive late last year. It’s my favorite CD from 2024. The opener, “Alibi,” got me open but it’s “Hawkmoon” that made me look up and lock in. There’s the melody as well as a signature line: “I’m becoming the kind of girl they warned me about.” Anyone can tell Alynda Segarra is tuned to what it means to do Americana when the country, which you’ve always been ambivalent about, is headed for a fall. But I had no clue about Alive‘s depths until Matthew B. read me into the songs’ back pages. (Bless him and Alynda for hinting sweet Will was the o-riginal rock and roller…

No motion has she now, no force;
…She neither hears nor sees;
…Roll’d round in earth’s diurnal course,
…With rocks, and stones, and trees.)

Segarra — that Nuyorican devil in a red dress below — has mucho charm. They’re worthy of their home borough (“New York’s most heterogeneous and alive”), the Bronx. Segarra’s range seems pretty astounding (until I recall how many renaissance cats named Richie Torres roam my city). Segarra has rambled from Rican beach to NOLA and all the good aural country in and around. (They like “Heroes” too.) FWIW, the Motherland guitar at the top of the following pre-The Past is Alive Tiny Desk concert is nice as are Van-the-Man strings that kick in in the middle (where this clip starts)…

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American Shame: Brooks & Auden (& Elon)

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(ICYMI), Brooks confesses to feeling “moral shame” as he watched the beatdown in the oval office. His revulsion seemed up to the moment…

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

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Atlantic Alliance

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David Aaronovitch ended his Saturday post — an elegant miscellany that took in audience tittering at a London performance of Richard III, MAGA world’s pro-fascist cosplay, the Trumpite Christers’ takeover of the Kennedy Center — with a note on the latest coup by the Center’s new director and a dive into the depths of the Friday afternoon massacre…


Grenell & The Tates

The Kennedy Center’s new director Ric Grenell wears many hats, none of them remotely artistic. Several involve being a fixer for Donald Trump’s exotic sidelines. So it was that Grenell went to the Munich security Conference alongside J.D. Vance, and while he was there took the opportunity to pressure the Romanian Foreign Minister into releasing the Tate brothers. The Tates were awaiting trial on charges of sex with a minor, rape and sex trafficking, but even if they hadn’t been are two of the most notorious and immoral misogynists in the Western world.

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Willie B. Wazir Peacock (We Will Remember You)

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There’s one poem credited to Bob Moses in the grand online archive of Civil Rights Movement poetry here. Moses put his own spin on an Odetta spiritual as he bowed to one of the Mississippians, Willie B. Wazir Peacock (1937-2016), at the core of the Movement in the early 60s. Moses’s song calls out in all CAPS to his Brother Willie who went under the hill with scarcely anyone outside Black ‘Sippi knowing what he gave them and this fuct country…

IT WAS WILLIE
WHAT GOT FREEDOM
IN THE DEEP BLACK ‘SIPPI

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Doing Our High School Teachers Proud? 

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A surprise turn into rooms at MoMA PS1 presenting Sohrab Hura’s oeuvre—far from art-wank—electrified our old friends’ winter break reunion trip to the museum.

The day was too good: arepas in Jackson Heights, Central Park night walk, a warm, free crib at the apartment where Dash was dog-sitting.

Now, we’ve come back together to mull over how Sohrab Hura’s work affected us that day and how he might get you going too…

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Voices from the Diaspora (Haaretz Podcast)

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Click on the Haaretz podcast below and you’ll find that all the speakers are worth a listen. If your time is tight, though, cut directly to Masha Gessen (at 14:20) who upholds a primary truth that’s often evaded by those who rightly condemn soft-headed, hard-hearted Israel-is-Over triumphalism (especially in the wake of October 7th). Gessen puts the cruelty of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians on the West Bank first.

What Was It Like Being Jewish Outside Israel in 2024: Franklin Foer, Masha Gessen, Tony Kushner and More – Podcasts – Haaretz.com