I am a self-hating Jew. Sometimes, that is. Sometimes I hate myself after losing my temper at my daughter or wife, or envying a friend’s success, or not comforting someone who needed comforting. Sometimes I hate myself for being too hard on myself. Today, I am a self-hating Jew because I realize I’ve never taken […]
Hamas
Arguing with B’Tselem about body counts misses the point
B’Tselem, the Israeli human riights group, has released a report on civilian casualties during “”Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s military venture in the Gaza Strip. Predictably, the Israeli military and various NGOs have different body counts, according to Yediot Achronot. Pay attention to the numbers here, because they lead to a larger point: A new report […]
The Middle East telephone game
Anyone who has played the game of “telephone” knows that our perceptions of what other people say are often distorted and inaccurate. In that game, people form a circle, and one person whispers something into the ear of his neighbor, who whispers what she thought she heard to her neighbor, and the whispers continue until […]
Americans for Peace Now breaks ranks again, thoughtfully
Americans for Peace Now has not gotten much attention for its recent, carefully reasoned call for a smarter U.S. policy towards Hamas. While condemning Hamas for “heinous attacks on civilians” and for denying Israel’s right to exist, it states a fact that is willfully denied by those who want to keep punishing and pummelling the […]
The inconvenient truth of two narratives
On Huffington Post, David Young offers a dialogue between an Israeli and a Palestinian, both of them composites (hat tip to Tom Mitchell). It’s a very useful summary of the current state of the two narratives. An excerpt: Avi:…We hated uprooting Gaza’s 8000 Jewish settlers; they spit on our own soldiers and called them Nazis. […]
Israeli experts to U.S.: Come up with a regional plan, ASAP
It’s conventional wisdom that due to the divided Palestinian polity and the lack of bold Israeli leadership and political will, not much can be done to advance a two-state solution, at least not in the foreseeable future. A panel of Israelis organized by Israel Policy Forum begs to differ. In a new policy paper, they […]
Sympathy is not a zero sum game
Compared to Realistic Dove, Charles Lenchner’s blog, Peace in the Middle East, tends to attract a higher percentage of far left ideologues. That is because it is housed on the Change.org web site, which wants to be a haven for progressive activists. What follows is a slightly edited post by Lenchner from Jan. 31st, during […]
Why Albert Einstein can’t help the orphans of Gaza
Over at MondoWeiss, Adam Horowitz gives us a “Zeitgeist Alert” and proclaims that “The two-state solution is dead.” He quotes a piece by Sandy Tolan in the Christian Science Monitor that presents all-too-familiar arguments for why it is too late, there is no hope, the Palestinians have been deprived of a state of their own, […]
“We were used like cows…”
He couldn’t take it any more. He was a nationally-known American rabbi who had publicly supported the Israeli government, despite his doubts about the wisdom or morality of its policies. He had backed its initial military response to attacks by non-state actors on Israeli citizens. But as time wore on, he could not find a […]
Ignoring reality in the Gaza Strip is the problem, not the “mainstream media”
No doubt Ethan Bronner will be attacked by both the Israel-can-do-no-right crowd and their ideological adversaries for his wonderful piece in today’s NY Times, which conveys the impossibility of covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without offending someone. No doubt the attacks on him will prove his point: Trying to tell the story so that both sides […]