We must be as clear as possible about what is anti-Semitism and what it is not, so that real political differences are not transformed into existential confrontations. This is not always easy to do, but it is necessary nonetheless. Photo: “Taken in Hyde Park at one of London’s largest protests in many years as tens of thousands walked along Piccadilly and then across Hype Park towards the Israeli …
On October 24th, participants in the Democracy Seminar met for our monthly get together. These virtual meetings are informal gatherings, without an agenda. We usually catch up with each other and discuss developments in our different locations around the world, in recent months: the apparently never-ending dangers of Trump and Trumpism in the USA, the victory of Lula in Brazil, the twists and turns of authoritarian rule in …
Voices of sanity are in danger of being drowned out by the rhetoricians of all-out war When violence answers violence in a growing frenzy that makes the simple language of reason impossible, the role of the intellectual cannot be … to excuse from a distance one of the violences and condemn the other … that role is clarify definitions in order to disintoxicate minds and to calm fanaticisms, …
On May 30th, in Warsaw, the Polish Sejm deputy Grzegorz Braun interrupted a lecture by Professor Jan Grabowski, a historian reporting on the state of research about the World War II extinction of Polish Jews. Braun climbed onto the rostrum, threatening Grabowski, and trashed the microphone and speakers – as if not only physically, but also symbolically taking away the lecturer’s voice. Since there are no longer any …
In Bakhmut, medics’ vehicles wait hidden under thick layers of earth and concrete. Artillery fire almost never ceases and every bit of the city is within its reach. They come by minibus. A piece of paper with the number “300” stuck to the window means that they are transporting the wounded. They stop. The two medics do not get out. Fear and confusion are painted on their …
War seen in person looks less terrible than on television. However, when I notice that I am becoming less sensitive and danger stops arousing fear in me, I know that it is time to go home and decompress. MAREK KĘSKRAWIEC: In your texts about the war in Ukraine, you rarely share your own thoughts, you don’t make yourself the star, you give voice to the protagonists. This …
The writer, a supporter of Gandhi and his idea of “nonviolent resistance”, volunteered for the army in February 2022. This is one of many such checkpoints where you stop, show your documents, and then hope that you will pass quickly and without unnecessary formalities or problems. Holding such a rather thankless post is one of the tasks of Artyom Chapeye, a writer, translator, journalist, and, since the end …
After months of fighting for the city, the few inhabitants of Bakhmut are struggling to survive—without water, electricity or gas, and with winter temperatures. The street is dead. Its landscape is made up of concrete apartment blocks, rubble from hit buildings, broken glass and remnants of rockets. And the corpse of a dog covered with frozen snow, from under which you can see a dead eye, a …
Military medics rescue wounded soldiers at the front every day. The lives of the wounded depend on how quickly it is possible to provide first aid and transport them to a hospital in the rear. The light from the country house does not break through to the street, which is plunged into darkness of night. Tightly covered windows do not allow sight of what is inside the …
MAJA HORELKINA, 39 years old, IT specialist, Przemyśl (Poland) If the war ended today, I would go to Kyiv. My family and friends are there. I would hug them all. I wouldn’t be afraid to let my daughter, Yevheniya, go there either, who, despite the war, has not given up her dream of opening a café in Kyiv. A backpack has been accompanying Maja since 2014. That’s when …
