Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

According to his blog, themagneszionist.blogspot.com, “Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber is the nom de plume of an orthodox Jewish studies professor who divides his time between Israel and the US.” Today “Jerry” posted the following graphic description of settler violence by David Shulman. Speaking of this account, Haber writes: “My brain screams when I read things like this….” Mine does too.

The “Gerald” Shulman refers is Gerald Cromer, the author of A War of Words: Political Violence and Public Debate in Israel. Cromer recently died of cancer.

The Magnes Zionist: David Shulman’s New Testimony, April 27, 2008

Um Zeituna, April 5, 2008

Things are heating up in the hills south of Hebron. We’re not sure why. One guess is that someone in the Civil Administration, that is, the Israeli occupation authority, has taken a deliberate decision. Or it may simply be the further, continuous entrenchment of the occupation itself, with its natural effects—the remorseless appropriation of more and more land, the consequent harassment of Palestinian civilians living on or near these lands, the expansion of the settlers-only road system, the soporific, shameful legal system that mostly serves the soldiers and the settlers. In any case, there is no doubt about what is happening on the ground. Two weeks ago Palestinian children were viciously attacked by settlers, and several wounded, as they were walking to school. The army escort that was supposed to protect them stood by passively. Over the last weeks, each time our volunteers have come down to escort shepherds to their grazing lands, they have been assaulted. Amiel and a small group near the settlement of Maon were surrounded, beaten, and nearly lynched. Meanwhile, one of the settler Rabbis has published a legal opinion setting out a calculus of human value in the occupied territories: one Jew, says the Rabbi, is worth a thousand Palestinian lives.

It’s clear we’re needed. The rains failed this year, the earth is dry, and the grazing grounds are much reduced. The cave-dwellers depend on their herds of sheep and goats for subsistence. For now, at least, there are still a few green wadis suitable for grazing, and the shepherds have to make the most of them. In theory, a rough modus vivendi was worked out with the soldiers: Palestinians can graze their flocks in the flat bed of the wadis between the settlements, but they are forbidden to let the sheep graze anywhere on the hills. Never mind that these hills have belonged since Biblical times to these same shepherds. In practice, moreover, the settlers drive the shepherds away even from the wadi bed, too, usually beating them for good measure.

We walk down the rocky slope, thick with thorns, to join Ahmad, who is grazing his herd just below the cow-barn of Maon. Ahmad is from Tuba, with its tents and caves, a kilometer or so away over the hills. Lambs bleat in the fierce sun. It is early morning. Within minutes, a discovery: small piles of parched maize are scattered over the bed of the wadi; beside them lie a few dead birds and rodents. Ahmad says he thinks they’re coated with poison—a repeat of the episode three years ago when settlers from Chavat Maon spread poison through the fields in Twaneh, just down the road. Later we hear that children from Tuba saw several young people from Maon spreading the suspicious maize last evening, the whole length of the wadi. Carefully, we collect samples, which we will have tested in Jerusalem. We mark the many sites with piles of stone, and we send word to the other shepherds to keep their sheep away from this wadi, the main access route to the village.

Tony Judt, What Have We Learned, If Anything? - The New York Review of Books, May 1, 2008

No one who has lived in Spain, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Japan, the UK, or France, not to speak of more habitually violent lands, could have failed to notice the omnipresence of terrorists— using guns, bombs, chemicals, cars, trains, planes, and much else—over the course of the twentieth century and beyond. The only thing that has changed in recent years is the unleashing in September 2001 of homicidal terrorism within the United States. Even that was not wholly unprecedented: the means were new and the carnage unexampled, but terrorism on US soil was far from unknown over the course of the twentieth century.

But what of the argument that terrorism today is different, a “clash of cultures” infused with a noxious brew of religion and authoritarian politics: “Islamofascism”? This, too, is an interpretation resting in large part on a misreading of twentieth-century history. There is a triple confusion here. The first consists of lumping together the widely varying national fascisms of interwar Europe with the very different resentments, demands, and strategies of the (equally heterogeneous) Muslim movements and insurgencies of our own time—and attaching the moral credibility of the antifascist struggles of the past to our own more dubiously motivated military adventures.

A second confusion comes from conflating a handful of religiously motivated stateless assassins with the threat posed in the twentieth century by wealthy, modern states in the hands of totalitarian political parties committed to foreign aggression and mass extermination. Nazism was a threat to our very existence and the Soviet Union occupied half of Europe. But al-Qaeda? The comparison insults the intelligence—not to speak of the memory of those who fought the dictators. Even those who assert these similarities don’t appear to believe them. After all, if Osama bin Laden were truly comparable to Hitler or Stalin, would we really have responded to September 11 by invading…Baghdad?

But the most serious mistake consists of taking the form for the content: defining all the various terrorists and terrorisms of our time, with their contrasting and sometimes conflicting objectives, by their actions alone. It would be rather as though one were to lump together the Italian Red Brigades, the German Baader-Meinhof gang, the Provisional IRA, the Basque ETA, Switzerland’s Jura Separatists, and the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica; dismiss their differences as insignificant; label the resulting amalgam of ideological kneecappers, bomb throwers, and political murderers “European Extremism” (or “Christo-fascism,” perhaps?)…and then declare uncompromising, open-ended armed warfare against it.

This abstracting of foes and threats from their context—this ease with which we have talked ourselves into believing that we are at war with “Islamofascists,” “extremists” from a strange culture, who dwell in some distant “Islamistan,” who hate us for who we are and seek to destroy “our way of life”—is a sure sign that we have forgotten the lesson of the twentieth century: the ease with which war and fear and dogma can bring us to demonize others, deny them a common humanity or the protection of our laws, and do unspeakable things to them.

Hood Fitting

Ms. Ruth personally sews one robe a day. She works 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week. She has 1 to 3 helpers at times. The person to be fitted measures themselves, fills out the tailoring chart, and mails in the order. It takes 4 to 6 weeks for delivery. Here she puts the final touches on a red Klan hood.

Child Wears Klan Robe

A young child wears a new white Klan robe made by Ms. Ruth.

MoJo Photo Blog: Aryan Outfitters, April 9, 2008
Aryan Outfitters
Meet the Ku Klux Klan’s seamstress of hate couture.
Photos and text by Anthony Karen
Audio produced by Peter Meredith and Gary Moskowitz

Coming from five generations of Mississippi Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old “Ms. Ruth” sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it’s done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, “Lilbit,” who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

The following is a photo essay about Ms. Ruth by New York photojournalist Anthony Karen, a former Marine who has spent several years photographing members of the Ku Klux Klan. The essay includes audio of interviews with Karen and Ms. Ruth.

The prophetic anger of MLK - Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2008

After 1965, the civil rights leader grew angrier over America’s unwillingness to change.
By Michael Eric Dyson

ON THE 40TH ANNIVERSARY of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, few truths ring louder than this: Barack Obama and Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. express in part the fallen leader’s split mind on race, a division marked by chronology and color.

Before 1965, King was upbeat and bright, his belief in white America’s ability to change by moral suasion resilient and durable. That is the leader we have come to know during annual King commemorations. After 1965, King was darker and angrier; he grew more skeptical about the willingness of America to change without great social coercion.

King’s skepticism and anger were often muted when he spoke to white America, but they routinely resonated in black sanctuaries and meeting halls across the land. Nothing highlights that split — or white America’s ignorance of it and the prophetic black church King inspired — more than recalling King’s post-1965 odyssey, as he grappled bravely with poverty, war and entrenched racism. That is the King who emerges as we recall the meaning of his death. After the grand victories of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, King turned his attention to poverty, economic injustice and class inequality. King argued that those “legislative and judicial victories did very little to improve” Northern ghettos or to “penetrate the lower depths of Negro deprivation.” In a frank assessment of the civil rights movement, King said the changes that came about from 1955 to 1965 “were at best surface changes” that were “limited mainly to the Negro middle class.” In seeking to end black poverty, King told his staff in 1966 that blacks “are now making demands that will cost the nation something. … You’re really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are messing with folk then.”

The Magnes Zionist: When Clerics Say Outrageous and Offensive Things, April 4, 2008

What do Pastor Reverend James Wright, Rabbi Mordecai Eliyahu, and Imam Sheik Yunus al-Astal share in common? Well, among other things, a penchant for making outrageous and offensive comments. Here is Chief Rabbi Eliyahu’s latest pearl :

“Even when we seek revenge, it is important to make one thing clear – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs.

“The Talmud states that if gentiles rob Israel of silver they will pay it back in gold, and all that is taken will be paid back in folds, but in cases like these there is nothing to pay back, since as I said – the life of one yeshiva boy is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs,” added Rabbi Eliyahu.

And Sheikh Yunis al-Astal, from Steven Erlanger’s piece on Hamas’s anti-Judaism in the Times .

“The reason for the punishment of burning is that it is fitting retribution for what [the Jews] have done,” Mr. Astal wrote on March 13. “But the urgent question is, is it possible that they will have the punishment of burning in this world, before the great punishment” of hell? Many religious leaders believe so, he said, adding, “Therefore we are sure that the holocaust is still to come upon the Jews.”

And as for the Reverend Wright…well, I don’t have to cite his statements, do I?

The reactions to these statements range from enthusiastic support to unrelenting condemnation of the statement and the speaker, including calls for silencing him in some way. Somewhere in the middle, trying to juggle conflicting values and conflicting loyalties, thinking people may be found. How should they react to hatred and to offensive statements?

As somebody who defines himself as liberal and orthodox (hence, a fundamentalist), here are some of my thoughts:

1. Don’t assume that the speaker is articulating a well-thought-out and consistent ideology. Religious folks, like everybody else, hold inconsistent beliefs. That is because they are generally not that sophisticated and because their sources speak with many voices. The Talmud teaches “Righteous gentiles merit a place in the World-to-come” as well as “Kill the best of gentiles.” What you hear depends on what best serves the immediate interests of the speaker.

2. Religious rhetoric is particularly inflammatory — but don’t assume that the cleric buys into the implications what he is saying, even when he says it. “Rabin is an informer”; “The Arabs are Amalek”; “The Jews are apes and pigs,” etc., are not harmless statements; they can lead others to kill. But they are said all too often in the way reserved for unthinking people (or politicians.)

3. Try to find out about the context of the remarks. There is a big difference between a Palestinian making an anti-Semitic remark during the Second Intifada and a German making the same one during the Holocaust. Both are to be condemned, but the second is to be condemned more. It is one thing for Eliyahu to stand up at a funeral service and make an anti-Arab racist slur. That is bad — but it could be worse were he not to make it at a time of stress, but at a time of relative peace and coexistence. I am not saying that anti-Semitism is hating Jews more than is strictly necessary (the bon mot attributed to Isaiah Berlin). But I do believe that what is particularly invidious about German anti-Semitism, besides its racism, is that in no way could the Jews be objectively viewed as responsible for the troubles of the Germans.

4. Avoid the human tendency to self-righteousness and smugness. Haaretz used to regularly feature on Sunday mornings some of the outrageous pearls of former Chief Rabbi Ovadyah Yosef in his public lecture the night before. Such statements reaffirmed the moral values and Jewish identity of the secularists, but were counter-productive in trying to engage his community in dialogue.

Henry Siegman: Grab more hills, expand the territory, LRB, April 10, 2008

Lords of the Land and The Accidental Empire reveal the massive scale of Israel’s theft of Palestinian lands and the involvement of every part of Israeli society in advancing the settlement enterprise in clear and deliberate violation not only of international law but of Israel’s own laws. Gorenberg reports that when asked by the foreign minister, Abba Eban, in 1967 about the legality of settlements, Theodor Meron, the foreign ministry’s legal counsel, responded: ‘Civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.’ The prohibition, he stressed, is ‘categorical and is not conditioned on the motives or purposes of the transfer, and is aimed at preventing colonisation of conquered territory by citizens of the conquering state’.

The settlements were carefully investigated in 2005 by a commission headed by Talia Sasson, who was cynically appointed by Ariel Sharon to uncover the illegal activities that he himself had orchestrated. Sasson found that the settlements – illegal according to Israel’s own laws – were established with the secret support of virtually every government ministry, the IDF and Shin Bet. Feigning shock when Sasson presented her findings, Sharon and his ministers promptly buried the report.

Zertal and Eldar make clear that the settlers lord it not only over the Occupied Territories and their subject population but over the state of Israel as well. It is important to remember that the majority of Israel’s settlers are driven not by ideology but by economic and quality-of-life considerations, and are attracted by the heavy subsidies the government supplies to the settlements. Some of these ‘non-ideological’ settlers are secular Israelis, while others are members of ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities that are deeply ambivalent if not opposed to the Zionist national enterprise. But the driving force behind the settlements is a small religious-nationalist group, whose members are widely considered the most savvy, well connected and effective political operators in Israel. Their ideology combines an intense form of religious messianism with an extreme nationalism that has far more in common with the religious and ethnocentric nationalism of the Serbian Orthodox militias of Mladic and Karadzic than with any Jewish values I am familiar with. That Sharon and some of his settler friends were virtually the only politicians in the West (other than Serbia’s Slavic supporters) who opposed military measures to prevent Serbian ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo was not an accident.

The religious-nationalist leadership now seems to have lost much of its authority with the far more radical younger generation born and bred in the settlements. This new generation draws inspiration from the ‘hilltop youth’, young people who responded to Sharon in October 1998 when, as foreign minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, he called on settlers to ‘grab’ hilltops in the parts of the West Bank from which he and Netanyahu had agreed to withdraw, as stipulated by the Oslo Accords. ‘Grab more hills, expand the territory,’ Sharon urged on Israel Radio. ‘Everything that’s grabbed will be in our hands. Everything we don’t grab will be in their hands.’

The ‘hilltop youth’ reject the authority of the Jewish state and its institutions. They run around in what they imagine to be biblical dress, assaulting Palestinians, stealing and destroying their homes, crops and orchards, occasionally beating them and every so often killing them. Occasionally the IDF intervenes, but their efficacy is undermined by their belief that their main job is to protect the settlers, not the population under occupation.

الحياة - اشتباكات متقطعة في البصر April 4, 2008

اشتباكات متقطعة في البصرة والجيش الأميركي يقصف مواقع بالطيران … المالكي يهدد الخارجين عن القانون بـ«صولات فرسان» والصدر يدعو الى تظاهرة مليونية في ذكرى سقوط بغداد

اعتبر رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي مواجهات البصرة مع «جيش المهدي» التابع لرجل الدين الشيعي مقتدى الصدر «بداية المنازلة ضد الخارجين عن القانون»،

الى ذلك، جدد قياديون في تيار الصدر رفضهم تسليم سلاح «جيش المهدي»، فيما دعا الصدر أنصاره الى الاعتصام اليوم بعد صلاة الجمعة للمطالبة بـ «فك الحصار عن مدن شيعية»، وتنظيم تظاهرة «مليونية» في النجف لمناسبة الذكرى الخامسة لسقوط بغداد في قبضة الاحتلال الأميركي، في 9 نيسان ابريل عام 2003.

في غضون ذلك، استمرت الاشتباكات متقطعة بين القوات الحكومية والميليشيا الشيعية في البصرة، وشن الجيش الأميركي غارات جوية على مواقع في المدينة وفي الحلة قُتل خلالها مسلحون وعدد من المدنيين. وأكدت مصادر الشرطة ان قتالاً نشب خلال دخول جنود اميركيين يرتدون ملابس مدنية منطقة الجمعية وسط الحلة، حيث خاضوا اشتباكات مع مجهولين واستدعوا طائرة هيليكوبتر لمساندتهم.

More Than 1,000 in Iraq’s Forces Quit Basra Fight - New York Times, April 4, 2008

BAGHDAD — More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces. The White House has conditioned further withdrawals of American troops on the readiness of the Iraqi military and police.The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs.

A British military official said that Mr. Maliki had brought 6,600 reinforcements to Basra to join the 30,000 security personnel already stationed there, and a senior American military official said that he understood that 1,000 to 1,500 Iraqi forces had deserted or underperformed.

Calm in Iraqi Cities After Cleric Calls for Truce - New York Times, March 31, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraqis returned to the streets of Baghdad after a curfew was lifted, and the southern port city of Basra appeared quiet on Monday, a day after the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr called for his followers to stop fighting and in turn demanded concessions from Iraq’s government.

Mr. Sadr’s statement on Sunday afternoon was released at the end of six days in which his Mahdi Army militia had held off an American-supported Iraqi assault on Basra.No serious clashes were reported in Basra on Monday morning. In Baghdad, which had been virtually brought to a standstill by protests and violence over the past week, life appeared to return to normal with the streets filling with traffic. A succession of mortar shells rocked the Green Zone. But in most neighborhoods, people went back to work and shopped for supplies that they were unable to buy during the curfew.

The strict curfew imposed by the government on Thursday was lifted at 6 a.m., but remained in effect for vehicles in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Sadr City, where fighting between militiamen and Iraqi and American forces had continued through the day on Sunday, and in some other Shiite neighborhoods of the capital.

The substance of Mr. Sadr’s statement was hammered out in elaborate negotiations over the preceding days with senior Iraqi officials, some of whom traveled to Iran to meet with Mr. Sadr, according to several officials involved in the discussions.

The negotiations with Mr. Sadr were seen as a serious blow for Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who had vowed that he would see the Basra campaign through to a military victory. He has been harshly criticized even within his own coalition for the stalled assault.

Tikun Olam-תקון עולם. March 29, 2008: Make the World a Better Place » Evangelicals: ‘Killing’ Jews With Christian Kindness

A group called World Evangelical Alliance bought a full-page N.Y. Times ad (at least $120,000) this week. A bigger waste of money I’d have a hard time conceiving. Nearest I can tell, the basic message is: “Jews, we love you. But we don’t love you enough to stop proselytizing you or converting you. In fact, we really don’t care what you think of that, since it’s more important to us to keep doing this than it is to respect your wishes that we not do so.” And the real kicker was the evangelical signatories who insisted that converted Jews like Jews for Jesus and messianic Jews are still authentic Jews who despite becoming Christian have a right to call themselves Jews for the purpose of insinuating themselves into the lives of unsuspecting Jews they seek to convert.

The ad is quite a performance. Full of fake love and respect attempting to conceal presumptuousness and condescension toward Jews. The odd thing is that the ad pretends it is directed as a friendly communique to Jews. I actually took it as a declaration of war. So if it was supposed to say anything positive toward Jews it failed miserably on that score. In truth, I think it was meant more for an evangelical audience to reconfirm their certainty that they are right in their efforts to convert the Jews.

The ad begins well enough:

As evangelical Christians, we want to express our genuine friendship and love for the Jewish people. We sadly acknowledge that church history has been marred with anti-Semitic words and deeds; and that at times when the Jewish people were in great peril, the church did far less than it should have.

We pledge our commitment to be loving friends and to stand against such injustice in our generation.

But it quickly goes downhill:

• At the same time, we want to be transparent in affirming that we believe the most loving and Scriptural expression of our friendship toward Jewish people, and to anyone we call friend, is to forthrightly share the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
• We believe that it is only through Jesus that all people can receive eternal life. If Jesus is not the Messiah of the Jewish people, He cannot be the Savior of the World (Acts 4:12).

الحياة - المالكي يعتبر أن «من يقاتل الحكومة أسوأ من القاعدة» … الصدر يأمر أتباعه بعدم تسليم السلاح ووحدات عسكرية عراقية لا تريد القتال
مع تواصل المواجهات بين القوات العراقية و»جيش المهدي»، امس، لليوم الخامس في أنحاء مختلفة في العراق، جدد رئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي اصرار حكومته على المضي في معركة البصرة ضد المسلحين الى النهاية، معتبراً ان «من يقاتل الحكومة اسوأ من القاعدة». ونقل عن الزعيم الشيعي الشاب مقتدى الصدر انه طلب من اتباعه عدم القاء سلاحهم، فيما رفضت وحدات في الجيش العراقي في مدينة الصدر مقاتلة «جيش المهدي» في سابقة لا يعرف بعد مدى تأثيرها وامتدادها على المواجهات بين الطرفين.

رجال شرطة يسلمون أمس أسلحتهم إلى رجل دين من أنصار الصدر في مدينة الصدر. ا ف ب

وبعد الغارات الجوية الأميركية لمواقع المسلحين في مدينة الصدر والبصرة تدخلت القوات البريطانية في المدينة الجنوبية، فقصفت بالمدافع مواقع للمسلحين في شمالها دعماً للقوات العراقية، فيما ارتفعت حصيلة المواجهات الى اكثر من 275 قتيلاً و500 جريح، بحسب مصادر رسمية.

A plea for peace from a bereaved Palestinian father by Bassam Aramin - Common Ground News Service, Feb. 15, 2007

ANATA, West Bank – I fought with my daughter on the day she was shot.

On her way out the door to school, Abir announced, in that way children have of doing, that she would be playing with a friend that afternoon rather than coming straight home to study for an exam scheduled for the next day. She was 10 years old, smart, dedicated to her schoolwork and still a little girl.

She wanted to play. I told her to not even think about it.

If I could tell her anything now, it would be: Go. Do whatever you want. Play.

Because now, she never will. She will never laugh again, never hear her friends calling her name, never feel the love of her family wrapped around her at night like a warm blanket.

Abir, the third of my six children, was shot in the head as she left school January 16, caught in an altercation between Israel Border Guard troops and older kids who may or may not have been throwing rocks. She died two days later.

I am Bassam Aramin by Rami Elhanan - Common Ground News Service

JERUSALEM—Last Thursday evening, my family was invited to dinner at the home of Bassam Aramin, in Anata.

Anata is a twenty minute ride from Motza, twenty light years away from Jerusalem.

We ate a mountain of maqloube with almonds and yogurt. Bassam told us about his meeting with the actor Shlomo Wizcinski who is slated to play Bassam in a new play. And my wife gave his wife, Salwa, a gift: a silver pendant with the name of her daughter Abir, may she rest in peace, made by a Jerusalem silversmith.

We laughed. It was fun. It was emotional.

And then, on the television screen, we saw the images of the attack on the Jerusalem Merkaz Harav school.

And again a cold hand seizes your heart, and again the blood freezes in your veins, again that sword twists inside you, knowing again there will be no rest until that blood is avenged. On the side of the screen, a news ticker of stark updates from Gaza: eight dead in one hour.

And beside the television, Salwa is bitter with tears for the mothers of the dead.

It was hard. Truly hard.

“Alright,” said Bassam when we parted. “At least we’ll see each other in Warsaw on Sunday…”

The two of use were invited by Warsaw television and HBO for the premier of a new documentary about the Israeli-Palestinian bereaved families organization, Parents Circle-Families Forum. I was glad. I knew that together we would be able to pass on a message of hope to people who, for the most part, had not the faintest idea about the conflict. I knew that by virtue of our shared grief people would listen to us—and perhaps even talk about peace.

LIESL SCHILLINGER reviews Tobias Wolff - Book Review - New York Times, March 30, 2008

To read a Tobias Wolff story is to sink into the soft seat of your grandfather’s strong, modest old Buick and let yourself be carried through an America of small towns, small joys, small struggles and small despairs — a landscape so familiar as to be invisible, the landscape of homeland. As each tale proceeds, unhurried, unjudging, the car slows, the turn signal makes its reassuring clicks, and the car glides without resistance into the drive, delivering you, consoled yet strangely disquieted, to the place you came from — a place you thought you’d left behind.

The well-chosen title of Wolff’s latest collection, “Our Story Begins,” is also the name of one of his early works of short fiction, published in 1985 in “Back in the World.” That story (not included here), set in San Francisco on the “10th straight day” of heavy fog, forecast the writer’s long, seemingly preordained career. In it, a busboy named Charlie who wants to be a writer sits at a coffeehouse, eavesdropping on two men and a woman whose conversation dances around their true subject: two of these people have betrayed the third. As they finish their first round of drinks, one of the men begins a new anecdote, saying grandly, “Our story begins.” Wolff shows the lie from the start: their story precedes them. Leaving the cafe, musing on the nested tales he’s overheard, Charlie hears a foghorn in the night. Exhilarated, he imagines himself on a boat on the water, disregarding the sound of the “solemn warning,” angling toward the harbor in the dark, “too watchful to be afraid … eyes wide open, ready to call out in this shifting fog where at any moment anything might be revealed.”…

Here you’ll find the unforgettable “Hunters in the Snow,” in which three men, Tub, Frank and Kenny — friends of the bruise-leaving-shoulder-punch variety — go deer hunting on a miserably cold winter day, setting out in a truck with a broken window. The simplicity of the language and the brutishness of the men’s interactions resonate as disturbingly in 2008 as they did in 1980, the year the story appeared. A farm dog creates lasting, disturbing mental images: as the men tromp through the snow, they pass a barn, and “a large black hound with a grizzled snout ran out and barked at them. Every time he barked he slid backward a bit, like a cannon recoiling. Kenny got down on all fours and snarled and barked back at him, and the dog slunk away into the barn, looking over his shoulder and peeing a little as he went.”

In “Down to Bone,” a grown son sits by his dying mother’s bedside. Flipping through a photo album, seeing his mother at her first communion, the son recognizes “the very image of his own young daughter. The resemblance made him homesick; it was that close.” He knows his mother’s father was a bad man, a troubling, violent parent. But in her last confused moments, transported by memory to her earliest, most trusting childhood emotions, she grasps her son’s hand and asks for “Daddy.” “It’s all right,” the son says by reflex. “I’m here.” Realizing that “he no longer knew how to be a son, but he still knew how to be a father,” he tells her: “Everything’s fine, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine.” Soothed, she whispers, “Daddy. … You’re here.”

Tomgram: Mark Danner, Generals Bin Laden and Bush, March 25, 2008

To contemplate a prewar map of Baghdad — as I do the one before me, with sectarian neighborhoods traced out in blue and red and yellow — is to look back on a lost Baghdad, a Baghdad of our dreams. My map of 2003 is colored mostly a rather neutral yellow, indicating the “mixed” neighborhoods of the city, predominant just five years ago. To take up a contemporary map after this is to be confronted by a riot of bright color: Shia blue has moved in irrevocably from the East of the Tigris; Sunni red has fled before it, as Shia militias pushed the Sunnis inexorably west toward Abu Ghraib and Anbar province, and nearly out of the capital itself. And everywhere, it seems, the pale yellow of those mixed neighborhoods is gone, obliterated in the months and years of sectarian war.

I start with those maps out of a lust for something concrete, as I grope about in the abstract, struggling to quantify the unquantifiable. How indeed to “take stock” of the War on Terror? Such a strange beast it is, like one of those mythological creatures that is part goat, part lion, part man. Let us take a moment and identify each of these parts.