Israeli Arabs

An obscene bill would make Arabic a “secondary” language in Israel

Monday, May 19th, 2008

Last Friday, I spent the morning at a planning session with the most courageous, inspiring and sensible Israelis I have ever met: the leaders of Givat Haviva, which has been fighting the battle for coexistence and equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel for decades.
At a time when the social and economic gaps […]

What does Wallace Stevens have to do with Zionism?

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

I am quite certain that the following post will be the first discussion of the Jewish National Fund and Zionism to invoke the poet Wallace Stevens. People who appreciate Stevens tend to be amateur philosophers and a bit nerdy (yeah, I appreciate him), but if neither of those apply to you, please have patience […]

Give Israel’s Education Ministry credit: new text acknowledges Palestinian narrative

Sunday, July 22nd, 2007

Yuli Tamir, Israel’s Education Minister, gets it. She and her staff have taken a tiny step towards a goal that has never been a priority for either Israel or the Palestinian Authority/PLO: acknowledging that there are two very different narratives at work here, two different ways of looking at the same set of events. […]

Postscript on the JNF law: A matter of official Israeli policy, not private whim

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

Ken Bob, President of Ameinu, is a self-taught expert on the morass of official and semi-official Israeli institutions. For that alone, he deserves a medal. In an email, he cleared up an issue raised in the previous comment thread by “Chris,” who insisted that the JNF is a “private organization:”
[The term] “JNF” […]

Time to throw out the little blue JNF box?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

My new friend Jerry Haber, “The Magnes Zionist” tipped me off to a shameful story about the Jewish National Fund and proposed Knesset legislation. Here is the Ha’aretz report:

Bill allocating JNF land to Jews only passes preliminary reading
By Yoav Stern and Shahar Ilan
The Knesset plenum approved a bill Wednesday, in its preliminary reading, […]

“Jerusalem Day” and the fiction of “unification”

Wednesday, May 16th, 2007

Today is “Yom Yerushalayim,” or “Jerusalem day.” Haaretz has
a very powerful editorial about the plight of Palestinian Arabs in East Jerusalem and the Israeli policies that are largely responsible for that plight.
What do the advocates of the one-state solution say about Jerusalem? For decades, it has been two cities, not one. […]

Near the Dead Sea, a canary in a coal mine

Thursday, May 10th, 2007

There was a very disturbing, very sad story in Maariv yesterday. It describes a situation that is indefensable and ought to be condemned in the strongest possible terms:
(Translation courtesy of Israel News Today).

SEPARATE BATHING;
IDF BANS PALESTINIAN FROM DEAD SEA
by Felix Frisch
IDF soldiers in the Jordan Valley this week received an order […]