Archive for January, 2011
by James M. Wall The Al Jazeera collection of secret documents from US, Israeli and Palestinian peace negotiators, paints a highly negative picture of the three participants. We will need a biblical parable to help explain how these three governments fell so far so fast. The homiletical interpretation of the parable is my own, though I […]
Filed under: Middle East, Religious Faith | 5 Comments
Filed under: Media, Middle East Politics, Politics and Elections, Religion and politics | 8 Comments
by James M. Wall When President Obama spoke in Tucson Wednesday night, he called on Americans to . . . expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together. Commenting on the speech […]
Filed under: Media, Middle East Politics | 7 Comments
by James M. Wall In Tony Judt’s final book, The Memory Chalet, he wrote as a historian looking back on his own life. Judt, who finished his final work a few months before his death, defined the task of the historian this way: of all the cliches about “History,” the one that most appealed to me was […]
Filed under: Movies | 1 Comment
by James M. Wall A Family in Gaza is a short film made and distributed by Jen Marlowe. It tells the true story of what happened to one family in Gaza, two years ago. Given its theme, it is a remarkably low-keyed film, narrated calmly by Wafaa and Kamal, the parents of the Awajah family of […]
Filed under: Middle East Politics, Movies | 5 Comments
by James M. Wall On May 17, 1977, four months after Jimmy Carter was sworn in as US president, Israeli voters elected a right wing government for the first time in modern political history. Menachen Begin, a former Israeli underground “terrorist” leader, became prime minister. It was clear to President Carter that Begin had no interest […]
Filed under: Middle East Politics | 11 Comments
