Archive for May, 2007

The challenge of talking candidly about Israel

Thursday, May 31st, 2007

There do seem to be more and more people checking this out every day, and I hope they are not disappointed by the sporadic posts. Very sorry. I need to work for a living. If someone could figure out a way to change that circumstance, I would post every day, several times a day. Within […]

Political horizons and the challenge of Hamas

Friday, May 25th, 2007

Various peace plans or proposals are floating around out there, and some of them have found there way to this blog. Peter H points to the idea of a 5-year “hudna,” which, he says, would provide Hamas with “greater freedom & space to explore ways of resolving the conflict with Israel in a lasting […]

Realistic hope…or magical thinking?

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

I keep thinking, “it can’t get any worse.” Then it gets worse. And then it gets even worse. And then it gets even…
If one focuses on the Hamas rockets exploding in Sderot, the return to targeted assasinations by the Israelis, the Fatah-Hamas warfare,..then harboring any hope or even considering the possibility of progress can […]

A choice between the unlikely and the impossible

Sunday, May 20th, 2007

Apparently this little way station of relatively calm conversation has helped to spark another blog, which will be part of John Sigler’s “For One Democratic/Secular State in Israel-Palestine.”
John, who maintains a bibliography project focusing on the one-state solution, has been a welcome contributor here. But apparently he was frustrated by some limitations, indicating that […]

“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 […]

What can American Jews learn from the Winograd Commission?

Friday, May 4th, 2007

I am starting to get private and public criticism about this blog from people who believe I am betraying Israel, people who believe I am justifying Israeli war crimes, people who don’t want Israel to exist, people who think the U.S. should provide knee-jerk support for every Israeli decision, and people who believe the U.S. […]

More conversations about one state vs. two states

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

All right, let’s say you believe everything about Israel is worthy of contempt and insult, and the Jews should never have set foot in Palestine, and the whole Zionist enterprise must be halted.
So what do you want to do? Short of throwing out millions of Israeli Jews by force (which, of course, is an […]