Israel/Palestine
The emphasis of this post is the upcoming talk by Nurit Peled-Elhanan (see below). All I know about the talk and speaker is what you see below. To be clear, what the speaker will likely talk about is common in how national histories are conveyed. All who feel they’re part of a dominant culture or ideology have their blind spots. For instance, Native Americans did not factor favorably into the official narrative of American History, and still don’t…. I encourage you to join this webcast. I will be enrolling myself. I’ll probably reflect, personally, on the indigenous, settler history in ND and Minnesota. There is a lot of very uncomfortable history.
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Recently I was at a meeting at a local Middle School, and around the cafeteria were many national flags. I’m not sure of the back story, but my guess is they relate to the international flavor of the school – persons of many nationalities are students. Two or three miles away is the international headquarters of 3M. We’re part of a global community, and that’s a good thing – albeit not always easy.
World Flags at Woodbury Middle School MN March 2024
A few days ago came two announcements of current international interest – in both cases, specifically related to Israel and Gaza.
Molly sent a note March 14: Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) gave an amazing and very powerful speech in the US Senate today. It is about 45 minutes.
I did watch it in full, and it is very worthwhile. Certainly, as he was well aware himself, there is something for anybody and everybody to agree and disagree with. That’s part of its power.
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Nancy sent a notice on March 16, which I’ll definitely participate in:
Where: Zoom (register at link below)
Cost: FREE and open to the public
Register in advance here (scroll down to the specific program):
Nurit Peled-Elhanan
Guest Speaker: Nurit Peled-Elhanan is an Israeli philologist, professor of language and education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, translator, and activist. She is a 2001 co-laureate of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament. Her book, Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education, was released in the U.K. in April 2012. She states that the only representation of Arabs in Israeli books is as “refugees, primitive farmers and terrorists,” claiming that in “hundreds and hundreds” of books, not one photograph depicted an Arab as a “normal person”.
Description: Professor Nurit Peled analyzes the presentation of images, maps, layouts and use of language in History, Geography and Civic Studies textbooks, and reveals how the Israeli books might be seen to marginalize Palestinians, legitimize Israeli military action and reinforce Jewish-Israeli territorial identity. Nurit Peled provides a fresh scholarly contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian debate, relevant to the fields of Middle East Studies and Politics more widely.
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A FINAL THOUGHT, March 17: This weeks church newsletter at Basilica featured a column by Fr. Joe Gillespie, which included this paragraph: “As we get closer to Jerusalem on our Lenten journey, we can dare to dream of a better world to come. However, the raging wars in the Ukraine and Gaza sap our strength and ratchet our fears of ever achieving peace in the Kingdom. Searching for heroes or heroines to lead us on a journey of hope, we must resurrect the images the likes of Oscar Romero, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Alexei Navalny to remind us of Jesus’ statement: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
This is the second to last paragraph of the excellent column, “Who Was That Masked Man”, shared in entirety here: Fr. Joe Gillespie March 17 2024