Vivvo CMS 4.1 http://www.pri.org/ ©2010 Spoonlabs d.o.o. http://www.pri.org/files.php?file=rss_682409203.gif http://www.pri.org/ http://www.pri.org/stories/arts-entertainment/books/george-orwell-s-animal-farm-resonates-with-ukrainian-refugees-9281.html Books Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:40:00 -0500 After World War II, millions of Ukrainians became refugees when the Soviet Union began ethnic cleansing. George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm" became popular among Ukrainian refugees, as it reminded them of the hardships they endured under Stalinist rule. http://I guess that I'll put myself out on a limb and sggseut that professor Jacqueline Rose's response to the war in Gaza represents, to me, the most insightful commentary that I'veread. If her overarching moral understanding were universally ado Books Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:57:36 -0500 I guess that I'll put myself out on a limb and sggseut that professor Jacqueline Rose's response to the war in Gaza represents, to me, the most insightful commentary that I'veread. If her overarching moral understanding were universally adopted there would be no conflict in the middle east"The only abiding law for Israel in this onslaught seems to be the ethics of self-defence, and yet Israel’s defence cannot be secured by such a path and there are, it would seem, no ethics. How can such unrestrained and indiscriminate violence – a hundred, and more, dead for every Israeli, including hundreds of children – be justified? ‘We are very violent,’ the commander of the Yahalom unit observed, according to Ha’aretz. ‘We do not balk at any means to protect the lives of our soldiers.’ Another senior IDF officer was reported as commenting on the offensive so far, ‘It’s not the movie, it’s only the coming attractions,’ with a knowing smile.If it sometimes seems as if a new limit has been breached, we need to trace this language back to the creation of Israel and before, to the founding belief that Israel would be the redemption for the historic suffering, and passivity, of the Jews, a belief given new urgency by the genocide in Europe and which would lay the grounds for the ruthless dispossession of the Palestinians. At a rally in support of Israel’s war in Gaza in Trafalgar Square, one banner read: ‘We will not be victims again.’ As the rally dispersed, those of us protesting as Jews against Israel’s actions were spat at and met with cries of ‘Kapos’. The Holocaust is still the felt justification, in the midst of this new war. Israel is the fourth most powerful military nation in the world, yet it lives in a permanent state of fear, always fighting the last war.So while everyone is asking ‘Who is the aggressor?’, another equally important question is going unasked. Who claims the monopoly of suffering? Whose suffering is felt to warrant a form of state power that is above the law? Already we are being told that there will be no legal reckoning. Faced with war crimes allegations in the past, Israel has blocked all attempts by the UN to investigate its conduct and it is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court.To say this is in no way to diminish the traumatic impact of the Holocaust but to register it all the more powerfully. The effect of trauma is precisely to freeze people in time. There is a psychological dimension to this conflict that seems almost impossibly difficult to shift. In its own eyes, Israel is never the originator and agent of its own violence, and to that extent its violence is always justified. The Palestinians do not count. Even when the worst of what has been done to them is registered inside Israel, it is still the Israeli who suffers more.We are all waiting to see what Barack Obama will do. My hope is that he is ring-fencing his new appointees (Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton and, it seems, Dennis Ross) so he can intervene more forcefully to change the US’s unconditional support for Israel. But even if he were to do so early on, a single breach of any agreement by Hamas – even if, as most likely, provoked by Israel – might be enough for him to adopt Israel’s language of state security as the justification of all means. ‘As soon as anyone mentions security,’ Miri Weingarten of Physicians for Human Rights commented on a visit last year to Britain, ‘everyone stands up straight and stops thinking.’ PRI: Public Radio International