According to Poetry Foundation, Jorie Graham is "one of the most celebrated poets of the American post-war generation." She was born in 1950, so I think "post-war generation" means "born after WW II," but not by too much: I can imagine a younger poet, finding something to criticize in her poetry, tossing an "OK Boomer" her way. She's won all the prizes—MacArthur Fellowship, Pulitzer Prize, Wallace Stevens Award, &c. But she is known to me for her Twitter feed, which combines literary topics with political commentary. Like a lot of people in the arts, Graham is a lefty. A week ago, she tweeted out the above video of a 10-year-old Palestinian girl speaking to a reporter while standing in the rubble of Gaza, with a comment—the first line of dialog reproduced below—that a defender of Israel replied to, sparking a Twitter conversation:
Jorie Graham: This is the work of Israel. Our "ally." Do we really need to be allied with (& massively support w/ absurd financial assistance) such a state? If they were any state other than Israel we would consider them terrorists.
Lee Kaplan: Does Hamas and its action of launching thousands of missiles (some of which land on Palestinians) at civilian populations bear any blame?
Graham: Of course they do. They are a ruthless terrorist organization. Do we really believe Israel's only way to respond is in kind?
Kaplan: They are dealing with an adversary which hides & launches weapons from civilian areas, uses civilian population as human shields & has a charter that calls for the complete destruction of their country. How should they respond to thousands of missiles launched at their citizens?
Graham: All true. A tragedy. From start. Now esp bad bc nightmare Netanyahu's using this to grip power. But why not at least stop just killing & try to talk? What wld their ancestors exterminated in ghettos & camps think seeing their actions now? They're in hell and they're inflicting hell.
Kaplan: As soon as the Hamas missiles stop being launched the conflict will end.
This seems to me a useful encapsulation of the two sides. Graham allowed Kaplan to have the last word. I think I'd have replied something like:
The "conflict" will "end" in the sense that the missiles will stop flying and there will be less death. Israel will then resume its implacable strategy of extending the settlements farther into disputed lands, making life miserable for Palestinians, limiting their human rights, imposing travel restrictions and inflicting indignities at the checkpoints, annexing more territory, changing conditions on the ground in the pursuit of a "Greater Israel" encompassing all the area God is said to have promised them in their sacred texts. The Palestinians must knuckle under.
Kind of long for a tweet! I don't know what Mr Kaplan would say in response. Regarding Graham's point favoring talks over missiles, Israel has frequently asserted that there is no "partner for peace" on the other side—no one to negotiate with. To the degree it's true, the obverse is as well, which goes some distance toward accounting for why the conflict seems eternal. The broad contours of two possible resolutions are visible. One, the two-state solution, is unacceptable to the ruling conservative faction in Israel, because it would mean giving the Palestinians land for a Palestinian state—no realization of the promise of Greater Israel. Another, in which there is one state, multicultural, Jews and Arabs enjoying equal political rights under a secular government, is likewise unacceptable, because such a state would lose its Jewish identity. In the universe of possible settlements, nothing is acceptable to Netanyahu, his party, and Israeli voters who support them at the polls. Therefore, instead of seeking a resolution, they pursue on the ground cruel policies intended to achieve, incrementally, what would never be agreed to in a good-faith negotiation.
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