Tel Aviv Diary April 15-19, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

Tel -Aviv Diary - April 15=19, 2016 - Karen Alkalay-Gut

April 15, 2016

off to boston. a bit broken and cold. but on our way.

i couldn't get my site to work yesterday - and in the evening the debate between Hillary and Ed seemed to me to have all the superficiality i hate. Everything I hate about Israel is worse here.

april 16, 2016

a bookstore in harvard square. you'd think they'd have everything there. but the books reflect the atmosphere of the times. the classics, for example, are pretty much gone. or in the basement. i suppose it's good they make shelf room for younger writers, but civilization is built on knowledge of what happened before, and the new has to add to the old. Moreover, I went first to the Grolier - the poetry shop, and the manager didn't have my books. Or Amichai's books for that matter. And she didn't care.

There was something stifling about the quantities of scribblings - books written to perpetuate an industry or a philosophy or a narrow kind of politics.

At least I was glad for all the shelves of blank books. the possibilities of new ideas, new directions, new books.

BDS Ezi said when i complained. The inertia of Ignorance I responded.

April 17, 2016

There is no help for it. I have an eye infection and can only write for a few minutes so I write the first thing that comes into my head. And it's usually not very appropriate.

The day before someone sent me a letter complaining of the treatment of poet Dareen Tatour who was arrested in October for poetry on facebook and the week and imprisoned. Her trial began only yesterday. I haven't been able to find out much - because no much is written except in Palestinian protest sites. But apparently from what I can gather from what I read, she was inciting Palestinians to rise up and murder their neighbors. I have been trying to revive the PEN here and defend mistreated writers, but i have yet to find a clear cut case to defend. Lack of information? lack of clear definitions? i don't know for sure.

April 17, 2016

The few museums I've managed to visit this time around have taught me not only about art. Artists I know as Israeli have been disguising their identity - techniques I know to be popular in Israel are presented as new and international. I suppose I should be proud the many accomplishments of Israeli artists but I would be prouder if they were not ashamed of the environment that enabled them to produce these accomplishments. One example: The Modern Art Museum in Boston has an fashion exhibit that's high tech...

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