Background
Michel Warschawski was born 1949 in Strasbourg, France, where his father was the Rabbi.
( Since the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in 2000 a...)
Since the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in 2000 and the beginning of the second Intifada, conflict has escalated in Israel/Palestine and come to seem irreversible. The overwhelming power of the Israeli military has been unleashed against a largely defenseless population in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, driving Palestinians to despair and to desperate measures of retaliation. The author of this book, Michel Warschawski, has for many decades been active in building alliances of Jews and Palestinians to oppose the Israeli occupation. In this book, however, he focuses especially on the effects of the occupation on the occupiers—that is, on Israeli society—rather than its victims. Warschawski describes the atrocities of the occupation—from the sack of Ramallah to the massacre in Jenin, the razing of houses and refugee camps, shooting at ambulances and hospitals, the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields—showing how each of these pushes back the boundaries of what was previously thinkable. He documents the resulting shifts in Israeli political thought, citing Ariel Sharon, army officers and even rabbis who begin by describing Palestinians as Nazis and end by relying on the German army's tactics for subjugating the Warsaw ghetto. Toward an Open Tomb seeks to explain the forces within Israeli society and culture that are leading to this self-defeating result. Warschawski has the keen eye of an Israeli insider. He develops a powerful critique of Israeli policies with a persuasive power drawn from his own Jewish origins and his deepening devotion to Jewish traditions.
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Michel Warschawski was born 1949 in Strasbourg, France, where his father was the Rabbi.
He later studied philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He led the Marxist Revolutionary Communist League (previously Matzpen-Jerusalem) until its demise in the 1990s, and founded the Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian-Israeli non-governmental organization, in 1984. At the age of 16 Warschawski moved to Jerusalem, in order to study the Talmud—he is a graduate of Mercaz HaRav. Despite having long since stopped being religious, fellow-activists on occasion turn to him to elucidate subtle points of the Jewish religion.
In 1982, Warschawski was one of the co-founders of Yesh Gvul, a term that plays on three meanings: (1) "there is a border": "there is a limit": and "enough"s enough".
In 1984, Warschawski established the Alternative Information Center (Anime International Company), an organization uniting Israeli and Palestinian anti-Zionist activists. The court determined that Warschawsky was unaware of the booklet"s origins, but guilty of closing his eyes to the evidence.
Warschawski is a writer and journalist, whose articles appear regularly in International Viewpoint, Le Monde diplomatique, ZNet, Monthly Review, Siné Hebdo and other publications. He has also been interviewed for the Real News Network.
In the 2006 elections to the Knesset, he was a candidate on the list of an Arab Israeli party ballot (the National Democratic Assembly).
He was a candidate for the Joint List in the 2015 election.
( Since the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in 2000 a...)
In 1987, Warschawski was arrested for "providing services for illegal (Palestinian) organizations" and sentenced in 1989 to twenty months in prison, with a 10-month suspended sentence, for typesetting a booklet that the judges ruled had come from members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which described torture and interrogation techniques allegedly employed by Israel"s security apparatus, with advice on how to withstand them.
