Things are so complicated now, it feels like everything has come to a halt. Today I was reading an article about the British academic, Jacqueline Rose. It's from an old issue of the New Yorker, but spoke to today.
Here's the paragraph that grabbed my attention:
Rose describes herself not as an anti-Zionist, but as a critic of Zionism, a reader of Zionism, focusing on the nationalist movement's insistence on its own innocence. She warns against letting victimhood - best understood as an event - something that befalls a person - become an identity. "We need to be endlessly vigilant in not allowing victimhood to become who we are."
The statement brought swift censure. She was called "an ashamed Jew." "I lost friends" she said.
This brave woman sounds like someone we should all read and think about. Not only in the Middle East, do we deal with so many one-sided ideas that are fueled if not created by emotion, not thought-through or given due reflection. If the world is to be repaired we must do better. Thanks for this, Joan.
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