there's little that can be said about the range of emotions i feel when reading about some past or recent atrocity in Palestine-Israel.

there is always shame. the knowledge, as a Jew, that centuries of persecution have resulted not in understanding but in violent, reflexive counter-attack is too terrible to comprehend. i've written about this incessantly and i cannot...i cannot come to grips with it; that the blood of my relatives, senselessly and unimaginably spilled, has been replaced by something worse

at the same time, there is the pain of knowing the depth of the terror that drives people to desperation..to this utter loss of humanity

this is all a weight...a pull on my heart. i can imagine that for Ari Shavit of the New Yorker, writing "Lydda, 1948" not just as a Jew, but as an Israeli--an Israeli, moreover, who keeps this tragedy at the forefront--the weight is infinitely greater...