An Israeli Novel Delves into Revenge, Child Abuse, and the Memory of the Holocaust

Feb. 17 2015

Elinor, the protagonist and narrator of Gail Hareven’s newly translated novel, Lies: First Person, leads a quiet life in Jerusalem, keeping the memory of her unhappy childhood and neglectful parents at a safe distance. Her tranquility is shattered when of a male relative who brutally abused her sister resurfaces. Much of what makes the novel compelling, writes Adam Kirsch, is that the abuser, Aaron Gotthilf, is also a controversial writer:

If this story were being told by an American novelist, it might remain on the level of a psychological case study. But Hareven guides Lies, First Person onto the plane of allegory, by giving it a specifically Jewish symbolic dimension. Aaron Gotthilf, it turns out, is not just a villain in Elinor’s eyes. He is a figure of loathing in the broader Jewish community because of a book he wrote—the very book he was working on during that summer in the family hotel.

This book, Hitler, First Person, was a literary attempt to fathom the secret of Hitler’s evil by entering into his imaginative life—by using him as a narrator. Such an attempt brought down on Gotthilf a firestorm of criticism, and one Holocaust survivor even tried to throw acid in his face. When Elinor herself reads the book, she is left speechless with horror: the evil that Aaron tried to conjure in print seems all too consonant with the evil he did in real life.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Arts & Culture, Forgiveness, Holocaust, Israeli literature, Jewish literature, Literature

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula