BETTER HUMANITY

BRUCE LERRO—My father never liked the kids I played ball with. He grew up very poor. His mother raised seven kids and they were “on the dole”. He was an artist who rose out of poverty to become a commercial artist. We lived in a middle class neighborhood (one square block) and he was afraid my baseball friends would be a bad influence on me. He was always trying to get me to play for church teams as an alternative. I never gave up my friends but I did play on one church team in grammar school.

CARA MARI ANNA—The refugee camps resemble densely crowded urban ghettos, the streets are a confusing maze. I had no idea which way to turn. “Alrowwad?” I asked a group of Arab men standing at a street corner. They pointed up the street to my left. I wandered in that direction and through a large gate, shaped like a keyhole with a monumental key balanced on top. I was awash in symbols of Palestinian resistance—the key, a symbol of return—and didn’t yet know it. I stopped frequently to take pictures.

Two blocks farther on I approached another group of Arab men. They were standing around a van that appeared not to have moved in a very long time. 

“Alrowwad?” I asked. 

They also pointed left and I pulled my suitcase down another street, wandering deeper into the camp. And then, as if all along I’d know precisely where I was and where I wanted to be, I saw a sign to my right: Alrowwad Cultural and Arts Society. 

EDITORS—Daniel Bromley was visiting the Great Victoria desert in the Australian outback when he found a little spinifex hopping mouse motionless in a trench on the side of the road. Daniel knew just what to do to save the little mouse from predators and the harsh desert climate.

INDRAJIT—So much of what I am—my fundamental tender-heartedness—comes from my grandparents. The political beliefs in my family are wildly different (and seem to skip generations) but the practical motivation is the same. Politics is an adaptation to different material realities, but the spiritual chain is, I think, unbroken. I must say that I’m worse than my grandparents—I have much more but I don’t do that much—but I want to be more like Achchi, I do. God knows we had less of her for years and now we have none at all.

EDITORS—Activists Vanessa Beeley and David Miller discuss the roots of Zionism in Britain and the Israeli lobby influencing politics, culture and legislation in the UK, while accusing anyone denouncing their activities as guilty of “anti-semitism”.  The Zionist movement recently scored a big victory by helping to elect Keir Starmer, Labour’s fake leftist, while a few years ago marginilising Jeremy Corbyn for his pro-Palestinian position.