Blog / Justice for Palestine

Holocaust Remembrance and the Ethics of Comparison

January 26, 2024 - By Michael Rothberg

This International Holocaust Remembrance Day will not be like any other. As we mark the seventy-ninth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27 and commemorate the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust alongside the Nazis’ many non-Jewish victims, the commemoration will take place against the backdrop of extraordinary events: in the midst of more than three months of catastrophic violence in Israel and Palestine and just one day after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provisionally ruled on charges of genocide brought against Israel by South Africa. One hopes that Israel will comply with the “provisional measures” ordered by the ICJ, but even if it doesn’t, the ruling will certainly intensify scrutiny of the human costs of Israel...

Kaddish for the Soul of Judaism: Genocide in Palestine

January 19, 2024 - By Amanda Gelender

Originially published on Amanda Gelender's Medium Blog.

As I write this, the wheels of genocide are turning. As I write this, I am preparing for Shabbat.

When I see Gaza, I see my own people languishing in concentration camps. I see a world that has turned its back on us, letting us be slaughtered en masse because we aren’t quite human enough.

Reading for Refaat

January 15, 2024 - By Shailja Patel

Today, January 15, 2024, marks forty days since Israel assassinated Refaat Alareer, internationally renowned and beloved Palestinian poet, scholar, and professor of English literature at the Islamic University in Gaza. Refaat taught and mentored a generation of young Palestinians in Gaza to tell their stories to the world in English. Publishers for Palestine has declared this day a...

The Jews

December 15, 2023 - By Natalia Ginzburg

Translated from Italian by Jenny McPhee

The day after the events in Munich, the Catholic Press Association called me to say it was conducting an inquiry regarding the massacre and asked if I would express my opinion. I refused to respond. I told them that I never respond to inquiries.[*]

Pronouncing a few sentences over the telephone seemed both stupid and useless. But later, I wanted to respond to those journalists at length and in detail. I didn’t have only one opinion to express, I had many. Above all, I wanted to collect my thoughts on the subject, thoughts scattered within me.

When a tragedy happens in the world, we find ourselves considering how we would have acted if we...

Staatsraison: Dispatch From Germany

November 29, 2023 - By Prof. Dr. Sabine Broeck

Dear friend,

Thank you for inviting me to speak on the panel you are hosting. I am writing to you because it  enables me to find words better than speaking into a Zoom group.

I write from Bremen, Germany, as a retired white professor who is no longer in any political or academic collective, and thus bereft of a forum for articulating mourning, grief, anger, and resistance. This loneliness, however, is not just the loss of immediate connection to meetings, discussions on the floors or in the cafeteria, and afterwork gatherings. It is also the fact that I am surrounded by an enveloping silence vis-à-vis the ongoing annihilation of Palestine’s people and their future/s.

Part of this silence stems from the obvious wish to stand still in sadness with the...