Much of the media are dismissing today’s Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas summit as an abject failure. Check out the Guardian, which uses the word “failure” no less than three times in its chronicle of the UN meetings, along with “meager results,” “inauspicious start” and other formulations to characterize negotiations that supposedly yielded nothing. I haven’t come across the […]
Arab-Israeli conflict
An Arab American moderate argues against the 1-state solution
American Jews like me who argue against the one-state solution are constantly confronted by those who claim a moral high ground and cite the small but growing number of Palestinian intellectuals who have given up on two states. They spend much of their time showing why the two-state solution is no longer feasible while spending […]
Heartening news from Gilboa and Jenin
If we are to believe the rhetoric of some in the Israel-can-do-no-right crowd, the discrimination faced by Israeli Arabs proves that the majority-Jewish state is already comparable to South Africa under apartheid, and a 2-state solution will only make the situation permanent. In Israel and the territories, though, there are Jews and Arabs who can’t […]
Boycotters? Or thought police? A new war against the “two narratives”
Realistic Dove has never addressed the controversial BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. One reason is that I keep taking one step towards it and then three steps back. It is a broad movement, and some of what some of its supporters advocate has begun to make sense to me. But much too much of it […]
Preferential treatment for settlers continues…while soup kitchens expand in Tel Aviv
Americans for Peace Now’s Ori Nir describes a new Peace Now report on the preferential treatment still being doled out to Jewish settlers in the West Bank. Lately, Israeli right-wingers and their supporters here have been insisting that “the settlements are not the problem” and are a kind of minor detail in Israeli-Arab relations. Of […]
Dan Fleshler, without his glasses, on Press TV…
Before the Iranian elections, I was interviewed for a show called “The Autograph” on Press TV, the Iranian English language network. It focused on me and is about 20 minutes long. You can find the link to the network archive here. Then click on “Autograph” and you’ll find the interview with Dan Fleshler. It was […]
What else Netanyahu needs to know about Obama
The following op-ed just went on-line and will be in Friday’s Haaretz. I’ve been waiting about 25 years to be able write something like this and actually believe it. Something else Netanyahu should know By Dan Flesher Even before President Barack Obama’s Cairo speech last week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and […]
Poll: many Israelis no longer accept a key part of the Zionist narrative
A surprising poll shows that many Israelis no longer agree with the most simplistic versions of the Zionist narrative. If the past is predictive, it will take about 5 years before it becomes respectable to air any of these opinions in much of the organized American Jewish community. But perhaps the “Diaspora lag” might not […]