My op-ed on the campaign against the “anti-delegitimization” of Israel was just posted on the New York Jewish Week web site. The far left won’t like it. The far right won’t like it. I don’t know what the centrists will think… Here it is: Not All Criticism Of Israel Is The Same In an article […]
Apartheid
Ehud Barak finally uses the A-word
Ehud Barak has now joined an illustrious throng of Israelis who are coming to terms with the fact that unless there are dramatic changes in the status quo, Israel will become an apartheid state. When I read about that, I wondered how many demonstrators would have stalked him had he done a book tour and […]
Guest Column: A new “grand bargain” in the Middle East
What follows is a column by Thomas Mitchell, lightly edited. We often read and hear comparisons between Israel and South Africa under apartheid. Mitchell finds lessons to be learned from South Africa, but not the most familiar ones. Instead, he focuses on diplomatic efforts to end South Africa’s occupation of Namibia and its confrontation with […]
Carter was, and is, “Good for the Jews”
Before his controversial book used the “A-word” (apartheid), I never understood the reflexive, visceral hostility harbored for Jimmy Carter in the mainstream American Jewish community. He made a good many political mistakes early in his admnistration, using code words like “Palestinian homeland” and almost casually intimating that the U.S. and Israel should deal with the […]
Is Israel a settler colony like South Africa?: A guest column
This blog is fortunate to get regular contributions from Tom Mitchell, a scholar who has carefully analyzed the similarities and differences between Israel, South Africa and Northern Ireland. He sent me a summary of a longer article. I thought I would publish it, as people on the far left often claim that there is little […]
Time to throw out the little blue JNF box?
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 […]
Checkpoints, the wall and an unexpected message
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, often rather […]
Near the Dead Sea, a canary in a coal mine
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 […]