“It’s clear that there is no life without freedom of movement. And when there’s no life, there is nothing to be lost. Despair and lack of hope can lead more and more Palestinians into terror — thus there will be no security for us either.” So said Hannah Barag, one of the leaders of Machsom […]
Israeli occupation
“No thanks. We’d rather sit in the dark.”
There are enemies of everything Israeli who are like the storied Jewish mamas who prefer to suffer in darkness because suffering is more comfortable, suffering –and anger about the past—is what they are used to. That’s the simile that comes to mind as, gasp, good news rears its unexpected head in the West Bank and […]
American Jews at Meretz USA say to Israelis: “The settlements are our business, too!”
A potentially explosive new campaign by Meretz USA has just been launched. It calls upon American Jews to urge Israel’s Housing Minister to stop building settlements, and says they have the right and the obligation to do so because they are AMERICAN CITIZENS, as well as Jews with ties to Israel. It’s the part about […]
Philip Weiss attacks J Street. Why he’s wrong.
Philip Weiss and I have been communicating after he attacked J Street on MondoWeiss. A good many issues were broached, but one of his arguments is that J Street ought to be appealing to a much broader constituency than American Jews who feel some attachment to Israel. Some of his acolytes, true to form, said […]
Ameinu forces us to confront the realities of occupation
Ameinu is showing clips from a video documentary that got a lot of attention in Israel in 2005 and deserves to get even more attention now. For two years, Haim Yavin, the venerable Israeli anchor for the government-run Channel 1 TV, roamed the territories with a simple video camera, talked to Jewish settlers, soldiers, Palestinians, […]
Will the next generation figure out how to deal with the “Right of Return?”
Last Monday evening, I decided not to give up hope for peace in the Middle East. Every honest person involved in this issue needs to consciously make that decision from time to time, even when there is almost no rational basis for hope. The Italian communist, Antonio Gramsci, famously wrote of “pessimism of the spirit; […]
Revisiting a checkpoint, and an unexpected message
The Jerusalem Post notes that Ala Abu Dhaim, the gunman who shot up the Merkaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem: …did not meet the typical profile of Palestinian attackers, police said. “He is not known to the security forces,” Jerusalem Police Chief Cmdr. Aharon Franco told Channel 2. “He was a normal man … who was […]
Aaron David Miller: The pro-Israel community has won, so stop “geshraying” already
Aaron David Miller has a stirring piece in the LA Times that deserves to be quoted in full. A note on my headline:”geshray” is Yiddish for “wail.” Other than that, believe it or not (is everyone sitting down? Get ready…), I have nothing to add! Nothing more needs to be said, as far as I’m […]
One man’s fantasies about “unruly Palestinians”
Epraim Inbar of Bar-Ilan University has published a piece that disproves the notion that everything that can be said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has already said. He harbors the fantasy that somehow the chaos in Gaza and the disarray in the West Bank will turn out well for Israel because….eventually Egypt and Jordan will share […]
AB Yehoshua wants U.S. pressure and denounces the Israel lobby: Anything new here?
Richard Silverstein’s Tikun Olam notes that Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua called for removing the U.S. ambassador to Israel and attacked America’s Israel lobby. But he missed a few nuances. I might be the only one in the universe who cares about these nuances, as they touch upon some of the work I’ve tried to do […]