THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Bob McKeown
"Only recently . . . have the
Israelis begun to discover
the value of the Beat
Generation . ."
Friday, March 1, 1985
15
out and suffer the pains of existence
rather than rob him of the possibility
of slowly turning around and having to
live with Jews. That would have been
much more appropriate retribution.
Instead they created a hell — moral
absoluteness based upon the notion of
an absolute power of a Jehovah.
"Nathan Zack said I ought to come
to Israel now and I told him I was af-
raid to because I differed so much with
the Zionist policy toward the Palesti-
nians — from a distance, and I didn't
know my rights and wrongs. I wasn't
on the spot, so I shouldn't talk, but it
seemed to me that the method Israel is
using is somewhat racist, and their
associations with racist and repressive
governments was not building a good
international karma, and that the
Palestinians do have a right to be rec-
ognized. I was afraid of going there and
saying that.
"And he (Zack) said, (No, it has to
be said there.' He told me there are a
great many Israelis who believe (what
Ginsberg believes), and do not believe
the official government policy. They
rebel against it and have mass meet-
ings. There's also censorship in the
press and there's a big fight about that.
So the more the merrier who come and
say stuff like that because it's not
anti-Israel to say things that criticize
Israel and Israeli policies. He gave me
a whole different view of Israel be-
cause from the American press you get
this monolithic view.that everybody in
Israel agrees with the government pol-
icy, while he's saying it's like America
during the Vietnam War where
maybe the majority doesn't ever agree
(with their government)."
Ginsberg hopes the poetry festival
and reading series will take place at
Safed this summer.
And he also had some further
Comments on Israeli-Palestinian rela-
tions: The United Nations' Zionism/
racism equation is both true and not
true. It's used against Israel in an ex-
treme way without taking into consid-
eration all the Israelis who are not ra-
cist and who do want some kind of bet-
ter deal, and it also doesn't take into
account the suffering of Israel and the
suffering of the Jews in Europe (under
the Nazis). It sort of obliterates that
and anesthetizes the cause of Jewish
anxiety.
"Until the Arabs approach the
cause of Jewish anxiety," adds
Ginsberg, "and until the Jews ap 7
proach the cause of Palestinian anx:
iety, they'll never even get to the root
of the problem. The people who do ap-
proach that problem — intelligent
Jews, intelligent Arabs, — by using
common sense can show the others the
only possible way to prevent a
holocaust.
"It seems to me that Israel is
building up to its self-fulfilling
prophecy of another holocaust. What
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