Israel’s Gaza pullout plan: even Israel’s defense minister calls the Israeli settlements in Gaza a “historic mistake.” But the Likud party last week voted 60-40 against the plan. This Saturday night Peace Now takes to the streets in Tel Aviv to demand “Remove the Settlements.” What’s next for Ariel Sharon? AMY WILENTZ, former Jerusalem correspondent for the New Yorker, has comment and analysis; she wrote the novel Martyr’s Crossing about Israelis and Palestinians.
Plus: the strange story of a 1913 murder of a 13-year-old girl in Atlanta — and the lynching of the man accused of the murder — not a black man, but a Jew, Leo Frank. How and why an all-white jury convicted Frank largely on the testimony of a black man: STEVE ONEY tells that story: his book is The Dead Shall Rise: The Lynching of Leo Frank.
Also: May 17 is the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court declared that segregated schools were “Inherently unequal.” Historian ERIC FONER co-edited a special issue of The Nation arguing that the promise of equality in education, and the rest of American life, remains unfulfilled.
Web extra: The Zogby Poll predicts Kerry will win in November.