Thomas Mitchell, in a guest column pasted below, asserts that the U.S. and the EU should place a higher priority on peace talks with Syria. I have spoken to two people engaged in Track 2 diplomacy who have been exploring this option for the last 18 months (trust me on that one). They have met […]
Israel
If doing nothing is insane, what, then, must be done?
Pundits everywhere are calling for a rethinking of America’s Middle East policies, assuming that the current tack will yield nothing productive. One of the most controversial calls was made by Thomas Friedman, in which he suggested the U.S. should pull the plug on its current diplomatic efforts, give the Israelis and Palestinians the White House […]
The Israelis never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Thursday that he might not run for re-election in January, although it’s not clear if the announcement should be taken seriously, as it might be a ploy to pressure the U.S. and Israel. It’s useful to remember that, like this blog, Abbas has been assailed by extremists from […]
What did the Jewish terrorist’s neighbors know?
Nahum Barnea, the dean of Israeli columnists, offers the following on Yaacov Teitel, the American immigrant who was arrested for murdering at least two Palestinians and the attempted murder of several Israeli Jews, whom he chose because of their sexual orientation, political orientation or religious beliefs. It’s a translation from Yediot Aharonoth (source: Israel News […]
MondoWeiss assails Jewish identity politics, again
Several recent posts on MondoWeiss decry the fact that the overwhelming majority of attendees at the recent J Street conference were (horror of horrors!) Jews, or that they looked at the conflict through a distinctly (gasp!) Jewish prism and dared to discuss (how appalling!) Jewish values. Lynn Gottleib asks “do we really need another Jewish […]
The kids are alright at J Street
It was Palestinian suffering that got me engaged with Israel and concerned about its future. I had attended Habonim camp and had grown up in an ardently Labor Zionist household. But when I was in my twenties, I didn’t have much to do with Israel until the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla […]
The pro-Israel peace camp cares about America, too
As it prepares for its first national conference this weekend, J Street, the political arm of pro-peace, pro-Israel American Jews, is being assailed by those who don’t want it to take positions independent of the Israeli government. Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli National Security advisor, castigates the J Streeters’ “presumptuousness” and claims they think they […]
The myth that “Israel has no partner” for peace
The claim that “Israel has no partner for peace” is often trotted out by Israeli and American Jews. Sometimes it is backed up by the argument that the Palestinians are in political disarray, and that relatively moderate Palestinians don’t have the power to stop violent extremists from wrecking any agreement. That argument deserves to be […]
How to prevent another conflagration in Jerusalem
At long last, I’ve found some sensible sentiments on the scary, sad situation in Jerusalem. They come from Americans For Peace Now’s Lara Friedman and Daniel Seidemann of Ir Amin, who have a piece in Haaretz. They note a few other times when battles over Jerusalem’s holy places threatened to turn a nationalist conflict into […]
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 […]