In honor of October's Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Met Council (Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty) is campaigning for the Jewish community to take a stand and combat DV in the Jewish community. To learn more, visit www.metcouncil.org.

"My name is Rachel, I am now 39 years old, turning 40 in just a few months- this is my story about my life. I came to the United States at the age of 24 with my family. When I first arrived, I took classes to learn computer skills, word processing, and typing, and landed a job in the jewelry district where I was soon promoted to work with large accounts. As a single Jewish woman in the city, I was able to spend time socializing and dating.

At the age of 32 I met my husband-to-be. Our dating felt perfect--though looking back it wasn't--but for the 8 months we dated it was good. I hoped to have a large family and raise my children with him. I remember once while were discussing how hard things were for his divorced sister, he said "no man should beat his wife" and pledged to always care for his wife and children.

Our wedding was beautiful--people are still talking about it. We had two singers and an outside chuppah adorned with flowers.

I woke up the next morning- the morning after my wedding night- and the cycle of abuse began. It first started with just words and attitude- he would question my every move.

The day after we married he asked, "Why don't you go to work?" When I answered that, as we planned, I was going to take a vacation in honor of the wedding, he forced me to stay home for three weeks. He had me be dishonest with my workplace and basically ruined my career. When I returned to work, he kept me home late in the morning, causing me to be late, and called throughout the day disturbing my office. He also started to criticize how I dressed, and said things like I wore too much make-up and then not enough make-up.

Around two months after the wedding he started to physically abuse me and would deny it to my face, even though I had bruises. A year later, I got pregnant hoping that this would help our marriage. He still didn't care; when I was sick and asked him to take me to the doctor, he was too busy out with friends.

When I was five months pregnant, he beat me up. When we went to the hospital, my husband denied the abuse to the doctor, even though I had bruises. At the hospital he started to verbally abuse me, and luckily the doctor put this in my medical records.

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Reacting to the sentencing of more than twenty gang members convicted for the kidnapping, torture and murder of her 23 year-old son, Ilan, Ruth Halimi declared herself to be “frightened” at the relatively lenient terms received by all the defendants other than the ringleader. The trial of Ilan’s murderers was not public, she noted, because two of the defendants were minors when the crime was committed. As a result, French society was denied a vital insight into the violent, delinquent antisemitism which festers in its banlieues. Had the horrific details of Ilan’s ordeal been recounted in the public eye, these prison terms, one as light as six months suspended, would have been much tougher.

As of this afternoon, the French Justice Minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, apparently agrees with Ruth Halimi. Fourteen members of the gang, known as “The Barbarians,” now face a retrial, on the grounds that their original sentences were too lenient.

Mme. Alliot-Marie has done the right thing. Her decision should be welcomed by anyone who understands the depths to which human beings can sink when they are poisoned by racism.

Every so often, you come across a hate crime possessed of the most breathtaking depravity. Just recently, there was the murder of Egyptian immigrant Marwa El Sherbini in a German courtroom, at the moment that she was giving evidence against a man who had verbally abused her for the offense of being a Muslim. Three months pregnant, she was stabbed 18 times by the very man whom she was testifying against, while her three year-old son watched helplessly. Her husband, who tried to intervene, was himself shot by the court security guards.

Or remember the case of Matthew Shepard. In October 1998, Shepard, a young gay man, accepted the offer of a lift home from two men he met in a bar near Laramie, Wyoming. Eighteen hours later, he was found, barely alive, tied to a fence in a remote rural area, having been pistol-whipped and tortured. The man who discovered Shepard initially thought he’d come across a scarecrow.

Ilan Halimi belongs in that category of hate crime victims whose stories leave you wrecked by anger and sorrow. Like Matthew Shepard, Halimi was alive - just - when his body was discovered. And like Shepard, Halimi died a few hours later, having suffered more than three weeks of the most gruesome torture at the hands of the gang that kidnapped him. Suffering, moreover, that was rooted in one simple, immutable fact. Ilan Halimi was a Jew.

The facts of what happened bear recalling. On the evening of 20 January 2006, Halimi met up with an attractive girl in her late teens, known as “Yalda,” who’d first approached him in the cellular phone shop where he worked. She lured him into the clutches of The Barbarians, who kidnapped and imprisoned him. The following day, Halimi’s family received a note demanding a ransom of more than half a million dollars.

No matter that the Halimis were a family who lived modestly, on a small income, alongside other working class Jewish and Muslim families in their suburban Paris neighborhood. The Barbarians kidnapped a Jew because, they were certain, all Jews are rich. Youssef Fofana, an Ivorian Muslim in his late 20s and the gang’s leader, told Halimi’s family that if they couldn’t afford the ransom, they should “go and get it from the synagogue.”

Out of all the defendants, Fofana is the only one to have received the maximum sentence under French law: life, with no prospect of parole for 22 years. That is a fitting sentence for a man who directed and participated in the beating of Halimi, who burned him with cigarettes and acid, who photographed him, his face and hands bound with masking tape, in a Daniel Pearl pose, and who dumped him after twenty-four days outside a Parisian train station with - said the police - 80 per cent of his body butchered.

But what about those who played an enabling role, like “Yalda,” aka Sorour Arbabzadeh, who received nine years for her role as honey-trap? What about the acquittal of two of Fofana’s accomplices? There is good cause to believe, as Minister Alliot-Marie says, that these verdicts are too lenient. France’s legal system must now define what punishment, in a case as grotesque and as disturbing as this one, actually means.

The French courts also now have an opportunity to right another wrong: the refusal, despite persistent pleas from Ruth Halimi, to hold the trial in public. There are difficult, painful questions to be asked about, for example, the relationship between the tropes of antisemitism and the furious, bestial cruelty they unleashed in this case; about the prevalence of casual antisemitism among young people in France, many of them - but, like the Barbarians themselves, by no means all - Muslims; about the way in which Fofana portrayed his irredeemably reactionary crime as an act of resistance, in language that conjures up the image of a clenched fist (”Mon nom, c’est ARABS, Africain révolte armée barbare salafiste;”) about much else besides. And they should be asked in public.

Above all, those on the left and the right who insist that Israel’s actions are responsible for today’s antisemitic outrages would do well to reflect that Ilan Halimi - the victim of toxic notions about Jews which predate the existence of a Jewish state - is finally at peace in the country where, had he lived there, he would now still be alive. One day soon, perhaps, Ilan’s relatives will be able to recite Kaddish for him in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul cemetery in the knowledge that justice has at last been served.

The news of the shooting at the United States Holocaust Museum yesterday reached me as I was en route to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York to rehearse for that evening's program -- Freedom Songs -- a celebration of the shared African-American and Jewish musical heritage.

I was honored to be sharing the bill with Joshua Nelson, an African-American Jew known as the Jewish Prince of Gospel Music. As my own musical journey had recently led me to a collaboration with the soulful Green Pastures Baptist Choir, led by Reverend Roger Hambrick, I have been humbled by the magic that unfolds each time we perform in public, the combined richness of both spiritual traditions finding a perfect home in the music composed by my late father, the great Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

Though I knew that a Jewish site had been targeted by a racist murderer, I was still startled to find a squadron of police cars camped outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage at the scenic tip of Manhattan, overlooking the Statue of Liberty. Vigilant police officers stood outside their vehicles and a Fox News truck was parked nearby...to capture any additional violence by local lunatics, I thought grimly.

Once inside, I learned from museum personnel that a number of school groups had cancelled their trips that day and that the concert might also have cancellations. Shrugging, the arriving musicians began unpacking, setting up and starting to rehearse.  The image of the police cars outside did not leave my eyes, no matter how many times I wished it away. Standing backstage as the auditorium filled up, I heard the news that Stephen Tyrone Johns had died in the line of duty, guarding the United States Holocaust Museum.

Shortly thereafter, I found myself on stage, performing with the talented Joshua Nelson, singing my heart and soul out with the beautiful singers of the Green Pastures Baptist Choir, this group of African-Americans who believe in the music of my father and its power to unite humankind.

"Return again," we sang last night. "Return again. Return to the land of your soul."

Yesterday afternoon, an African-American man died protecting a museum in Washington, DC. built as a monument against racism. Standing on the auditorium stage of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City last night -- side by side with my African-American brothers and sisters -- I looked beyond the footlights and saw an auditorium filled with men, women and children of all colors and faiths whose combined voices wove a bulletproof vest against hatred.

The tribe lost some of its street cred this week, as pioneering sports handicapper and mobbed-out casino manager Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal died Monday of a heart attack at his home in Miami Beach. Rosenthal's life and career were the basis of the character Sam "Ace" Rothstein portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the 1995 Martin Scorsese film, Casino. Referred to by Casino screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi as "one of the originals," Rosenthal was actually a late addition to a long line of Jewish badasses, dating back to Hannukah hero Judah Maccabee, who counted the armies of Seleucia, Syria and Rome as his sparring partners during the second century B.C. Rothstein served the various criminal enterprises who controlled Vegas in the 70's and 80's, mostly through his business savvy, but also through the lead-pipe cruelty of his connected cohorts.Frank "Lefty" Rosenthal pleads the fifth

The most recognizable Jewish figures of organized crime, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, almost single-handedly built Vegas from the ground up and transformed an arid dessert into the Mecca of Vice that Rosenthal would control decades later.

Born to Ukranian and Russian immigrants, respectively, Siegel and Lansky were involved in the formation and development in the notorious American crime body, The Commission, as well as it's assassination branch, Murder, Inc., which was responsible for hundreds of mafia-related killings. The characters Hyman Roth and Moe Green from The Godfather films were based on Lansky and Siegel, whose real lives were well chronicled in Rich Cohen's 1999 book, Tough Jews.

On the other side of the law, depending on one's perspective, are the Mossad agents who carried out Operation Wrath of God following the 1972 Munich Massacre, in which 11 Israeli Olympians were taken hostage and murdered by the Palestinian terrorist organization, Black September. The subject of Steven Spielberg's 2005 film, Munich, Operation Wrath of God was commissioned by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, and led to the assassinations of dozens of suspected Palestinian terrorists. In a similar vein of cultural self-defense, Ze'ev Jabotinsky could be considered the Jewish Malcom X, using his experience in the British military to train Jews in weaponry and fighting skills. 

Jews have also shown a fondness for brutal violence in the name of organized sport over the past century, with champion boxers including Benny Leonard, Barney Ross and Maxie Rosenbloom representing Jews. More recently, Rory Singer has made a name for himself on the Ultimate Fighting circuit, combining the traditional Jewish institutions of no-holds barred, hand-to-hand combat and a degree in biological engineering

Rosenthal may have been one of the "originals," but it is unlikely that the badass Jew will die out with him. The Chosen People have shown a remarkable tendency for being as savagely violent as any other race or ethnicity of homo sapiens.

From: Arnon
To: Adam
Re: Knuckle Sandwich

Adam,

I had to smile when you were describing the reasons for crafting your own jacket copy.When my novel Silent Extras was published in the US, my agent advised me to hire an outside publicist who sent me to a media trainer to get me prepared for exactly the kind of radio interview you were speaking about. The media trainer was great, as a source of inspiration. I didn't end up doing much radio, alas.

Only a few years later a different publisher for a different book organized for me this thing that fifteen different radio stations would call me within ten days. I'm not eager to describe something as a nightmare. But this experience came close to it. Angry men would shout at me at 6:30 AM (for some reasons these radio stations love to call authors at 6 AM or 6:30 AM): "I called you two minutes ago, you were not there. Now I don't have time for you." Others hung op on me mid-sentence. One interrupted me with the words: "You have to stop, I can no longer torment my listeners with your accent."

I think as an author you should get ready to be humiliated any time of the day. It's a small sacrifice for which authors get many things back.

Your definition of satire is interesting, and broad also. Based on what you wrote I would say that even Madame Bovary could be called a satire. I haven't read Absurdistan nor A Confederacy of Dunces. I'll put them on my list. That's not to say that I would deny that The Jewish Messiah is part of a tradition. I think this tradition goes back to Rabelais, but also to Don Quixote. And of course a novel can be part of a tradition, and "speak" with books the author has not read.

Which brings me to your question about the self-consciousness of characters in a novel. I would argue that too much self-consciousness is bad for the character. The Pow! Right in the Kisser: When literary criticism becomes personalfact that the author knows more and sees more than his characters does not mean that he belittles them. The distance allows you to see more than your characters. As in reality, it’s easier to give advice to a stranger than to yourself. Of course, when I'm listening to a host of a radio show shouting at me, I'm at least partly in on the joke. But as soon as I get a knuckle sandwich or my character gets a knuckle sandwich the joke is over.

Even if you look at Chaplin the violence is often part of the joke, but its impact is never really denied. And for this reason—at least for one person involved—it's the end of the joke, temporarily. It's very well possible to laugh afterwards, but it takes time to recover and certain people never recover completely. Parents often pass their wounds to their children. What children do with these wounds differs from case to case. As you’ve already pointed out. And one more word about the self-consciousness of characters. Blindness is a survival technique. And as most survival techniques, this one can be counterproductive.

The idea that you are a character in a novel is a luxury, it's tempting to think this way but at the end it is a misunderstanding. Sometimes I hear people talk and I think: These people talk as if they are on a television show. Of course this observation is hardly new. But whenever I see real people behaving and talking like bad actors I wonder if this is the result of too much or too little self-consciousness.

The process of translation is utterly dependent on the translator.

Mein Kampf did by the way get translated into Yiddish. You raised the question earlier: How can you show the farce that reality often is?

Yours,
Arnon

Imagination is No Escape: integrates facts into the gameThink a Nintendo game is a good way to teach kids about the Holocaust? A 21-year-old British video game developer does, and the company producing his latest creation hopes to have it ready for distribution in Europe by the end of the year. Luc Bernard's game, Imagination Is the Only Escape, is based on the ways that the Nazis tortured children, and won’t be distributed in the US.

Reactions have been as condemnatory as you’d expect. However, Bernard maintains that he’s not trying to make light of the suffering of children. He promises that there won’t be any on-screen violence, and though Alten8--the company producing the game--originally asked him to remove all swastikas from the game, it subsequently backed off. Bernard says he’s trying to make a game that will be educational and appropriate for young children, and points out that his mother is Jewish and members of his family took care of Jewish orphans after World War II.

So far, the most interesting response has come from the Anti-Defamation League. Instead of lashing out against Bernard and Alten8, Myrna Shinbaum, a spokeswoman for the ADL, is quoted as saying, “We certainly believe that we have to find new ways of teaching lessons of the Holocaust as new technologies are being developed.”

Related: Holocaust Remembrance Project for French Kids Sparks Ire

Today we read about two strange phenomena in foreign travel – “slum tourism” andThe men of Munich: Would they make good tour guides? “counter-terrorism tourism.” Slum tourism, as it’s called in the Times, gives do-gooders and adventure-minded tourists the chance to visit impoverished neighborhoods in places like Brazil and India, offering them a more “real” perspective on life in other countries. "Counter-terrorism tours," however, as described by Slate, are aimed at police officers who come to Israel to see the country’s strategies for fighting terrorists firsthand.

While both of these travel trends raise ethical questions, they also evoke a reluctant sense of admiration at the business brains behind the tours, and their ability to capitalize on taboo subjects with a “when life gives you lemons” mentality. There’s something about the counter-terrorism tours that seems uniquely Israeli: Who else would see the business potential in even the grimmest circumstances? From a detached perspective, it’s difficult to deny the marketing genius behind these tours. As the article in Slate succinctly notes, “What can a country do when its tourist industry is eclipsed by terrorism? The answer, it seems, is to market terrorism to tourists.”

But the ethical questions still remain, shedding light on the issues at the core of both tours. They share the same basic premise: Outsiders viewing frightening situations in a brief and controlled way, then returning to their safe, comfortable lives. While slum tourism at least claims to offer some kind of improvement or humanitarian aid in exchange for its presence in the neighborhoods, counter-terrorism tours exploit a culture of violence without asking any of the obvious questions. How successful are Israel’s counter-terrorism efforts, really? What are the consequences of prolonged violence? What does this mean for people like the citizens of Sderot, for whom violence is an ever-present aspect of their lives? Ultimately, ignoring these questions trivializes the plights of those affected by terrorism and war, and turns their suffering into a commodity.

I’ve never been a big fan of the OnFaith series that Newsweek does because the commentaries usually seem a bit obvious to me, but while I was in Dublin I was pointed to this inflammatory piece by Arun Gadhi, Mohandas’s grandson, now president and co-founder of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, at the University of Rochester in New York.
Arun Gandhi: no more Mr. Nice Guy

Arun Gandhi wrote:

Jewish Identity Can't Depend on Violence

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends. The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful. But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs. In Tel Aviv in 2004 I had the opportunity to speak to some Members of Parliament and Peace activists all of whom argued that the wall and the military build-up was necessary to protect the nation and the people. In other words, I asked, you believe that you can create a snake pit -- with many deadly snakes in it -- and expect to live in the pit secure and alive? What do you mean? they countered. Well, with your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?

Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

Wanna guess how many comments there are on that post? Well over 400. And no, most of them aren’t full of joy and good tidings, if you know what I mean.

Gandhi and Arafit Sittin' in a Tree: H-A-T-I-N-G O-N I-S-R-A-E-L
So, Gandhi obviously wrote a lame little retraction:

My Apology for My Poorly Worded Post

I am writing to correct some regrettable mis-impressions I have given in my comments on my blog this week. While I stand behind my criticisms of the use of violence by recent Israeli governments -- and I have criticized the governments of the U.S., India and China in much the same way -- I want to correct statements that I made with insufficient care, and that have inflicted unnecessary hurt and caused anger.

I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.

I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and the loss of support from those who would be friends. But as I have noted in previous writings, the suffering of the Jewish people, particularly in the Holocaust, was historic in its proportions. While we must strive for a future of peace that rejects violence, it is also important not to forget the past, lest we fail to learn from it. Having learned from it, we can then find the path to peace and rejection of violence through forgiveness.

When I was in Israel for my junior year abroad I wrote a paper about Mohandas Gandhi’s general distaste for Israel. He was trying to make nice with Pakistan, which meant making nice with Islam, which meant he couldn’t be buddy-buddy with Israel. I have a certain level of respect for that, and I believed the writers and biographers who claimed that Gandhi sympathized with the Jews on an ideological level, but I have to say if that’s true he did a lousy job of making sure that message came through in his family and teachings.

Or maybe his grandson is just kind of a moron. Either way, I’m so sick if the confusion between “Israel” and “the Jews” that I could spit.

A couple of years ago I had the occasion of meeting a Reconstructionist Rabbi. As we were discussing my philosophy thesis -- which was on Nietzsche and an Indian-Muslim philosopher named Muhammad Iqbal -- the Rabbi shocked me when he said that not only did he know who Iqbal was, but that he was actively studying his works.

I can understand how the Rabbi became aware of Muhammad Iqbal – not only was Iqbal a friend of Bertrand Russell, Alfred Whitehead and Bergson and thus part of early 20th century philosophy – but he wrote a book called “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam” which describes the religious experience as one that is lived and evolving; an experience that contains movement and change; an experience that borrows from the tradition but is not limited by it. These are principles at the heart of Jewish reconstructionism as well. In light of the fact that I was the only one the Rabbi had ever met who was thoroughly conversant in Iqbal, while the Rabbi was the only non-Muslim I had met who knew Iqbal well, one would imagine that we would spend the entire night talking about the book.

We did talk the whole night, but not about the book. Our conversation became waylayed by violence – not between us, but the reality of terrorism, suicide bombings, and to some extent, honor killings. That conversation, in itself, was quite interesting. I insisted that the violence was problematic per se, that it had no excuses, and to some extent no causes other than the fact that the texts made themselves amenable to such readings. He insisted that Western foreign policy had something to do with Muslim violence.

Yet, now that I think about it, I find it so saddening and depressing that we didn’t get to talk about Iqbal’s book. I get especially melancholy when I think what Iqbal would feel if he found out that eighty years on from his Islam-shaking book, a reconstructionist Rabbi and a reformist Muslim law student, opted to talk about cave-dwelling psychopaths, barbarous patriarchal fathers, and deranged anarchists, instead of talking about the Islamic legal tradition, about “the spirit of movement in Islam,” or, about “the spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.”

Iqbal’s time in the world was an interesting one. It appeared that in reaction against the colonial powers, Muslims had come together, and for the most part, were actively engaged in reconciling republicanism with religion, and liberalism with Islam. They were integrating their minorities; and basing the citizenship of their nations, not on religiosity or perceived piety, but on their shared nation-hood. Iqbal discuses almost all of these ideas in this essay from the Reconstruction, suggesting that Muslims ought to consider making a "League of Muslim nations" which is less concerned with Caliphates and more concerned with their internal well-beings. Yet, today, just a few decades later, various hardline organizations, like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jamaat e Islami, and the Hizb ut Tahrir, all along with the Wahhabi machine, have created the conditions for a complete breakdown in Islam. Emanating from the fringes of these organizations came the terrorists and anarchists. Today, Iqbal’s vision, which presupposed the perpetuity of stability and peace, has now been replaced by entropy and chaos -- no one knows what will happen. The Sunni Islam of Iqbal's era -- which could give rise to nation-states -- seems to be teetering. The things that people who take interest in Islam talk about are, deplorably shameful, both in their content and quality. Suicide? Collateral Damage? Noncombatant immunity? Iqbal thought that none of these would ever be issues, so that when you read him, eighty years ago, he neither addresses them, nor conceives of their possibility.

Therefore, in that sense, Islamic “reform” appears to have gone backwards. Right?

But here is my conundrum, the more that I think about it, the less I can blame the reformists. It is not as if Islam ceased to produced liberal reformists of Iqbal’s ilk. There was Fazlur Rahman, and Muhammad Shahrour, and Amin Ahsan Islahi, and Abullahi an-Naim, and today Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, and a vast collection of second tier reformers, situated in hundreds of universities all across the world, all of whom have been emphasizing and re-emphasizing the themes that Iqbal set forth. Why has the influence of these people waned? Why isn’t Iqbal’s monumental poetic compendium -- he is also considered the greatest of two Indian poets of the 20th century -- on the lips of Muslims today like it was one hundred years ago?

Many people like to ask the question “what went wrong with Islam” and look back to colonialism or all the way back to the Mongol invasion. My submission is quite simple: sometime in the early third of the 20th century Islam was going to be OK; but something went wrong between 1935 and 2001. Why, today, when we should be talking about how Muslim states can better organize their systems, are we talking about non-state people, lone suicidal wolves, mercenary killers, and thugs? Western foreign policy clearly has something to do with the problem. It isn't the sole cause though, because as I've pointed out numerous times, fanatics pre-dated 20th century Western political hegemony (this time its American rather than British), and would post-date it even if the US were to remove all of our military bases. Still, when I see articles like this one (see the one on Iran), and consider the fact that even I, an extreme skeptic towards reformist successes, can't always blame reformists for not doing enough, I have to take a step back. Why are liberals, and conservatives, who care about Islamic reform, so unwilling to accept blame for our policies? If it is reasonable to expect that Chomsky speak out against Islamic radicals, I think it is extremely reasonable to expect that hawks, liberals, and conservatives stop creating a world which feeds, breeds, perpetuates violence.

There's a fascinating article in The New York Times about postwar pornographic pulp in 1960s Israel called Stalags. The focus of these S&M stories, which captivated a generation of Israeli males: Nazis and prisoners of war.

The books told perverse tales of captured American or British pilots being abused by sadistic female SS officers outfitted with whips and boots. The plot usually ended with the male protagonists taking revenge, by raping and killing their tormentors.

After decades in dusty back rooms and closets, the Stalags, a peculiar Hebrew concoction of Nazism, sex and violence, are re-emerging in the public eye. And with them comes a rekindled debate on the cultural representation here of Nazism and the Holocaust, and whether they have been unduly mixed in with a kind of sexual perversion and voyeurism that has permeated even the school curriculum.

The article focuses on a new documentary, "Stalags: Holocaust and Pornography in Israel,” premiering at the Jerusalem Film Festival. It doesn't mention the similar genre in American pulp of the 50s, 60s and 70s -- books like Men's Adventure (in the US, of course, we added sadistic Japanese to the iconography of WWII fiends). In the Israeli versions, the fascination with sexual violence and the fear of emasculation offer some uncomfortable insights, to say the least, into Israeli society. The following excerpt from the documentary would make a nice supplement to any Introduction to Modern Israel class.