A Writer's Meditation on Time and Her Work

Even During Burning Times

I have lived in many worlds, and I was privileged to have done so when time moved more slowly, when there was so much more of it for me and for everyone else. Or so it seemed. For those of us who, like me, are now in their eighth decade of life on earth, time has speeded up; it is now at warp speed; days become months, months swiftly become years, and few of us can keep up.

Perhaps one's experience of time--or perhaps time itself--is now hurtling along on some accelerated track to the future; perhaps younger people still experience time as I once did. I may have less time left in which to do my work. Time has become more precious; it can no longer be taken for granted; one must use it while one still has it.

Yes, I know: The masked demons are burning their diplomas at Columbia. The entire world is engaged in a jihad-like media onslaught against Israel. It has gotten worse. I saw what was coming a long time ago...while I would never desert the battle, I do not want to spend my time jumping on every headline and repeating myself.

I often feel that I have exhausted all my subjects, that my work is now honorably part of the historical record, and that others are now on the job. I've had my pioneering say on madness, divorce, custody, motherhood, legalized surrogacy, female psychology, male psychology, feminist legacies, a woman's right to self-defense, the politically correct mania that has now engulfed us, the trans issue--as well as my work on Israel, antisemitism, Islamist Jihad, Islamic gender and religious apartheid, femicide (honor killing), FGM--and on the existential danger in which Western Civilization now finds itself, etc.

At least in terms of the Israel-related work, others have preceded me; many have also shared the honor and the burden with me on this subject; currently, still others, younger, have joined us on the front-line issues of cognitive warfare, propaganda, the Western curriculum, and on the extraordinary, astounding, unacceptable, and accelerating hatred of the Jewish people and the Jewish state.

I have trolled the mainstream media for many years, both in Europe and in North America, and all I can say is that the hatred has only gotten worse; the Big Lies have gotten bigger--but also, that some new groups have begun to acknowledge and try to address these problems.

To repeat myself: The New York Times demonizes Israel every single day. The articles always begin on the front page and continue within, often for two to three full pages, every single day. The international organizations and European countries sanction only Israel (not Russia, not Iran, not Hamas), as often as they can. Even as--or especially because--Israel is making incredible progress in its latest war of self-defense, and at the highest cost possible, the Big Lies, the street demonstrations, the campus interruptions/invasions, the marching hordes have accelerated in the West.

In my last article posted here, I did not include what the consequences have been of the last sixty-five years of vast Muslim migration into Europe, which has led to a dangerous, radical Islamism, one which now threatens to bring Europe down, and further, which has also threatened North America in terms of our education, media, legal systems, and foreign policy. This is the ninth war that Israel is simultaneously fighting.

Yesterday, Germany's leading feminist, Alice Schwartzer, came to visit and interview me. She is the founder of Emma magazine, and the one who wrote the introduction to my first book, Women and Madness, in German. She was both glad and saddened that we two Second Wave "icons" agree on what faux-feminism is and on what is going on globally.

I told her that while all the young women on American campuses are busy face-veiling themselves as a way of supporting radical, terrorist Islamism, and insisting that it is an anti-racist or pro-free speech for fascism kinda statement--that our very best feminist ideals are now quite alive in many Muslim countries, among dissidents and feminists, and among Muslim and ex-Muslim dissidents and feminists in the West. I told her that I've also discovered that my work on honor killing has been cited many hundreds of times in academic journals published in central Asia and in the Middle East.

So: Am I done? Not by a long shot. I have just finished a sixth and final draft of a new book titled: Talking to the Dead. I plan to work on editing my diaries (1958-1978) next as well as getting as many of my titles back in print and into as many foreign languages as possible. My diaries embarrass me; they are almost like Anais Nin's diaries. Will I have the courage to reveal my shamelessness, all my mistakes?

Yes, of course, I will continue to weigh in on Israel and the Jews--how can I ever give up this fight? But I may not need to do so quite as often. Perhaps I'll publish more reviews of operas, films, novels, classics, and historical works (often with Jewish themes), and I'll study and, from time to time, publish some more Torah interpretations.

Any other burning requests from my most valued readers?