Event Tonight, Plus Pre-Orders
A Quick Note
This was originally intended to go out last week, but then, like many people in the Jewish and Palestinian diasporas, my energy was entirely consumed by reading as much as I could about what happened in Israel, and what's still happening in Gaza.
I've compiled a list of articles that I think provide valuable context and perspectives: I put it at the end, so it's easy to skip if you are, understandably, burnt out on this already. Everything else in the newsletter is pretty much unchanged from what I wrote two weeks ago.
Events!
I was lucky enough to read an early copy of Ariel Kaplan's Jewish fantasy The Pomegranate Gate, and it's wonderful. Very excited to discuss it tonight. The event is virtual and free!
And also:
October 26-29, Kansas City, MO: World Fantasy Convention
Kalyna the Cutthroat Available for Pre-Order!
Kalyna the Cutthroat is more than a year off, but did you know that you can already pre-order it? And, well, would it hurt you to just do it now? Get it out of the way!
Pre-Order Kalyna the Cutthroat
Bookishly Jewish Interview
Earlier this summer, Bookishly Jewish—an almost parodically perfect outlet for me—ran a rave review of Soothsayer. More recently, I was lucky enough to talk to them as part of a yearly interview series highlighting indie and small press authors!
Author Interview: Elijah Kinch Spector
To me, someone reading my fiction actually feels more revealing than someone reading, say, an autobiographical essay. Autobiography tells you my version of events in my life; fiction tells you how I think and what I prioritize. (This may be doubly true for a writer who creates an entirely new world to set their story in.) That vulnerability is part of what’s intoxicating about putting art out into the world, and it’s also absolutely fucking terrifying.
I also got to talk about an old Yiddish King Arthur story, which acknowledges neither England nor Christianity.
Nails
I had a great time out at Fantasycon in Birmingham (the one in England)! Met a lot of cool people, both there and afterward in London, and bought too many books.
Unfortunately, I didn't get many pictures while I was there, but I did go into it with a manicure that would stand out. Is that branding?
What I've Been Reading
As mentioned above, I've pretty much just been reading about Israel and Gaza lately. So here's a list of interesting writing on the subject, as compiled by me: a leftist Jew who literally wrote a whole-ass book about why ethno-nationalism is bad.
Jewish Currents: The Hamas Attacks and Israeli Response: An Explainer
Very good roundup of information that's still being updated from (in my opinion) the standard-bearing publication of the U.S. Jewish left.
Breaking the Silence Israel Statement
An organization of former Israeli soldiers on how things got to this point.
The question Israelis are all asking is - where were the soldiers yesterday? Why was the IDF seemingly absent while hundreds of Israelis were slaughtered in their homes and on the streets? The unfortunate truth is that they were "preoccupied". In the West Bank. We send soldiers to secure settler incursions into the Palestinian city of Nablus, to chase Palestinian children in Hebron, to protect settlers as they carry out pogroms.
Slate: Interview with Peter Beinart
I understand the tremendous sense of fear and rage that would make many Israelis want their government to go into Gaza. There are parallels to the way many Americans felt after Sept. 11. But those emotions did not serve America well. Israel has been blockading Gaza for many, many years now and has bombarded Gaza many, many times. If that were an effective strategy, then what happened this weekend would not have happened.
Tareq Baconi in New York Review: Gaza Without Pretenses
Fascinating, and depressing, background from maybe the world's premier scholar of Hamas.
Israel has long portrayed Hamas as a nothing more than a terrorist organization, and yet since 2007 it has enabled its role as a governing authority in Gaza, facilitating a dynamic that can best be described as a violent equilibrium.
Raja Shehadeh in New York Review: Causes for Despair
Will Israel win? Wars are usually harbingers of change. Yet this region’s previous wars have achieved no fundamental progress toward peace.
Raz Segal in Jewish Currents: A Textbook Case of Genocide
A professor of Holocaust and genocide studies weighs in.
Indeed, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza is quite explicit, open, and unashamed. Perpetrators of genocide usually do not express their intentions so clearly.
Fintan O'Toole in New York Review: Eyeless in Gaza
In Northern Ireland, a successful peace process was built by drawing Sinn Féin, the political wing of the extremely violent IRA, into democratic politics. The US, having strongly encouraged this process in Ireland, adopted the opposite strategy with Hamas.
Africa is a Country: Free Palestine
A South African perspective on Palestine and decolonization.
Many are favorably citing Frantz Fanon’s theory of political violence, on how it can be a cathartic and dignifying exercise for the oppressed. But Fanon was clear to distinguish between revolutionary violence, which was a conscious and strategic act aimed at dismantling the repressive apparatus of the colonial system, and reactive or spontaneous violence, which was a more immediate and emotional response to the oppressor, governed by the logic of vengeance.