http://michaelratner.com/blog News and Analysis from the frontlines of the progressive movement Mon, 22 Mar 2010 21:55:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en ( First published at Mondoweiss.net) If you want to know anything about what is really going on between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza or elsewhere, do not go to Lawrence Wright’s new play, “The Human Scale.” Like Wright’s New Yorker pieces, it is bookended by the plight of ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=56 We were at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. The “we” were my wife, Karen, and my two children, ages 19 and 21. We had decided to make the pilgrimage on our last day in Israel, and like so many visitors, we walked through the memorial ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=55 We were at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust in Jerusalem. The “we” were my wife, Karen, and my two children, ages 19 and 21. We had decided to make the pilgrimage on our last day in Israel, and like so many visitors, we walked through the memorial ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=54 Today we came away stunned, shocked and almost numb from our trip toEast Jerusalem with Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. And when I say we, I mean my family---my wife and two children, 19 and 21. We have spent the last 10 days trying to get ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=53 Almost a year ago, on the celebration of Martin Luther King’s birth and just as the Israeli military assault on Gaza was coming to a close, I wrote a piece titled, Israel in Gaza: A Time Comes When Silence is Betrayal.[1]   In that piece I spoke of the ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=52 At a reception I attended the other day a progressive acquaintance came up to me and said the left “must stop bashing Obama. Keep doing it and he will lose the election. We should be thankful for what we have.” I am not sure he thought that I ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=51 Michael Smith and I have been reading John Gerassi’s new book, Talking with Sartre, Conversations and Debates.[1] The book is a shortened form of three years of on and off conversations Gerassi had with Sartre in the early 1970’s.  The book is utterly remarkable. It is as if ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=50 You may recall the case. The CIA was accused of a 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan, Italy. He was rendered to Egypt where he was tortured. A courageous Italian prosecutor, Armando Spataro, had been pursuing the case since ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=49 On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora.’ ” The Resolution ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=48 For many years I have had a side interest in the recovery and the return of the cultural patrimony of peoples, tribes and nations. I have only litigated one case to recover ancient Aymara textiles for a Bolivian town, Coroma.  That story is wonderful, beautiful and moving. You can ... http://michaelratner.com/blog/?p=47