Category: politika
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Undressing Israel.
A set of giant concrete blocks that serve as guard posts at the checkpoint near my house now has a fancy sign on it: עמדה 2 Things here have always felt concrete – heavy, burdensome, temporary but permanent – but they’re getting more and more more concrete over time and experience and murder and terror […]
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Bleak.
Some make a habit of exaggerating the bleakness of our civil future here in Israel, many many more make a habit of not relating to it enough. The reckoning is creeping even slower than you’d imagine; bursting those bubbles is harder than you think. So tonight was the second in a series of motzei shabbat […]
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Twenty Years
Political Violence (part 1) It took place in an off-the-beaten path classroom, not a modern lecture hall. We were maybe 30 students, and the few times we had met before – maybe it was two? Three? – we had already covered some ‘basics’: what peacebuilding is, Rwanda, a bit of Bosnia. When I registered for […]
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The national condition of feeling stuck
Everything feels stuck. Every post on my feeds is “hoping for the best, but…” “I didn’t know what to do, so I just…” “well, nothing’s going to make a difference, so…” I sense the stuckness in the street, I sense the stuckness at work, I am pounded over the head with the stuckness over social […]
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5 ways to combat the blues… and white and too many letters.
Deep down, didn’t we all know the outcome? Why is anyone surprised that on a country-wide level, the collective of citizens of the modern state of Israel are becoming more torn apart, more magnetized by extremes, more confused, more upset? Why should it be any different than what so many other countries are going through? […]
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What if we don’t wanna be the toy? A Eurovision post.
It can be so hard to be Israeli. It’s can be so hard to get shit all the time, from every direction. To never be able to ‘choose’ a side because the game is always changing and anyway, there is no side to choose; you’re at the center of it by existing where and when […]
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Homeland insecurity: An expat on the labor of love and land
An expat is neither here nor there, not completely. An expat has their heart in two places. An expat has passports updated, ready. An expat’s fomo is just another part of the gig. United States of America: I don’t know if it’s an apology I owe. It’s an acknowledgment, at least. Over the last five years […]
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One last thing: Consider why your mothers, sisters, daughters wear the veil
The first time today I was able to really consider it all – how to verbalize the anger and frustration and loss – was after I passed a couple male colleagues in the hall, after a joke was cracked, and I lashed back that this was not the time to speak to me about elections. […]
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‘I’m sorry.’
Before I share this: I’m a classic American millennial unregistered independent. I’m also an expat. My dog in this fight is a different shade than an American resident’s. That said, I did have opinions, I did have a worldly view, I did have a dog nonetheless. Federal elections are my SuperBowl. This one was a […]
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Now I’m Mother Goose and Knesset MK Rachel Azaria gets it.
Recently, I made a conscious decision to give up. It was a few weeks into my return from maternity leave, talking with younger mothers at work who were looking to me for answers. I didn’t really have many. I gave some tips, some words of advice. I thought, maybe I could just be the Mother […]
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On rocks, Arabs, talking it out, conflict, and more rocks.
This, an hour after listening to the recent This American Life podcast on the way home from work; the one titled, #570: The Night in Question, the one about the Rabin assassination and associated conspiracy theories. “Listen, I want to talk to you about some stuff. Do your friends talk about Arabs in school?” “[My […]
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It takes people to conflict.
In a total understatement, there’s been a lot going on in Israel lately. People say it’s the start of the third intifada (again), while other people call for the third intifada. Stabbings, shootings, stonings, molotov cocktails. Lynch mobs. And the beat plays on: the same media headlines, the same talkbacks, the same Facebook statuses. The […]