Archive for July, 2007

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 […]

Petition campaign against Knesset’s JNF bill

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

Blogger Richard Silverstein of “Tikun Olam” has initiated an on-line campaign to protest the Knesset’s preliminary approval of a bill that would bar Israel’s Arabs from leasing JNF-owned lands that are managed by the Israel Lands Authority.
I’ve made a fuss about this bill in two previous posts. So has the increasingly intriguing Magnes Zionist. […]

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, […]

The Magnes Zionist on “moral” vs. “immoral” Zionism

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

I have found a rare commodity: a kindred spirit in the blogosphere. “Jerry Haber” is the nom de plume of an Israeli professor whose provocative blog, “The Magnes Zionist,” wrestles bravely with the same issues I am trying to address. Both of us were recently plugged by Mobius in his indispensable “JewSchool.”
Judah Magnes, as […]

New Senate resolution: will “one-staters” sit on their hands?

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

There is a good chance that there is no hope. It may well be impossible to unravel the Gordian knot of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But there will certainly be no hope unless the U.S. gets more actively engaged and takes a more balanced approach. That is a no-brainer, isn’t it?
Americans for Peace […]

Peace Now: Remove most, but not all, checkpoints

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

I took a deep breath and opened up a can of worms by discussing checkpoints and the wall in my previous post. The dilemma that confronts ordinary Israelis and Palestinians who won’t want to rely on glib rhetoric or simplistic solutions is how to reconcile two moral imperatives: the imperative of ending the occupation and […]

Checkpoints, the wall and an unexpected message

Wednesday, July 4th, 2007

I think of Hannah often these days, now that I have begun to wade into the difficult task of conversing with the left on Israel. She is from Australia, in her late 50s, and has lived in Israel since the early ’70s. Hannah (not her real name) is one of the brave, tireless, […]