Haim Watzman “If we had soldiers read the poetry their enemies write, we could prevent war,” declared Haim Gouri , an old poet and an old soldier, at Jerusalem’s literary café Tmol Shilshom last night. Sasson Somekh, whose new memoir was the subject of the evening, smiled. While he was polite enough not to contradict [...]

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Haim Watzman Back in the 1980s, when I was still a relatively new reader of Hebrew, I picked up an anthology of short stories that had been published in Iton 77, a literary magazine that had commenced publication a year before my arrival in 1978. The journal had a good reputation and this book, I [...]

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Haim Watzman Yisrael and Shalom, In response to your comments on my post “Mahmoud Darwish, Zionist Poet,” if you read more carefully, you’ll see that: a) I don’t put down the Jew, but rather express my admiration for Greenberg’s poetry; b) I except myself from Darwish’s politics, while expressing admiration for his poetry; c) I [...]

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Haim Watzman What’s a Zionist to make of Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet whose funeral today in Ramallah will be a celebration of both Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian culture? Darwish was a refugee. His family came from the village of Birwa, near Acre, and fled to Lebanon in the wake of Israel’s War of [...]

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