Paul Mirbach

(PEM)

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Dec 5, 2024, 10:23 PM

This Is What a Tyranny of the Majority Looks Like

In a democracy, the responsibility of the elected government is to serve all the country’s citizens, not only those who voted for them. In a democracy, the people have a voice and the government is attentive to the needs...

Nov 29, 2024, 3:44 PM

The ceasefire and my new hanukkyia

Day three of the ceasefire and I can breathe. Only now I realize that since the last Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah, I have been holding my breath for three months, taking in air, but slowly suffocating. I have been...

Oct 17, 2024, 4:09 PM

“It’s in Your Kishkes”!

This just fell from the sky, in Tuval, not far from where my house is. Yesterday, I had a sort of an epiphany. It was just after the report on the radio about the underground garrison in Lebanon only meters...

Oct 6, 2024, 5:29 PM

A New Year? The Last One’s Not Ended!

Turn back the clock! Let’s try that again, Last year’s not resolved, we must make amends. Bring them back home, let’s make this right, Out of the darkness and into the light. Another new year, another new moon, I’m not yet ready, it’s come...

Jun 12, 2024, 9:12 PM

Shavuot: The Festival of Jews by Choice. A Salute.

Shavuot is my favorite chag. Every year I am amazed how viscerally I connect to the magic of it all. I am reminded of the Children of Israel from biblical times, who for seven weeks toiled arduously, in a...

Apr 28, 2024, 12:07 AM

I am Proud to be a Zionist. It is Historically and Fundamentally Just

In light of the anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests on the campus of Columbia University and other campuses, the depiction of Zionism as an inherently evil enterprise and protest leader Khymani James’s assertion that “Zionists don’t deserve to live”, this has...

Mar 30, 2024, 10:31 PM

Reminiscences of Pesach and the Empty Chair

When I was growing up in Bulawayo, Pesach seders were large extended family affairs. Many of the Jews in Rhodesia at the time lost the majority of their families in the Holocaust. I know mine did. My grandparent’s home...

Mar 3, 2024, 5:44 PM

To the Progressive Left: The Questions You Never Ask

Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. The Occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s settlements – and the concomitant oppression of the civilian Palestinian population employed to protect the settlers from terrorist attacks, has given the Palestinian claim...

Dec 24, 2023, 6:18 PM

On Peace with Palestinians, a Ceasefire and a Rude Awakening

Not since my brother’s suicide have I felt so adrift. I feel like a boat floating on the ocean without oars or an anchor, buffeted by the waves. Unmoored. The realization that everything has changed, and that we can...

Nov 12, 2023, 4:25 PM

‘Like termites coming out of the woodwork’

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew...

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About Me

Paul Mirbach (PEM), made Aliya from South Africa to kibbutz Tuval in 1982 with a garin of Habonim members. Together they built a new kibbutz, transforming rocks and mud into a green oasis in the Gallilee. Paul still lives on Tuval. He calls it his little corner of Paradise.