“All sides have reasons to cling to the Two-State illusion”
All sides have reasons to cling to this illusion. The Palestinian Authority needs its...
Category Archives: Israel
Biblical Events “might indeed offer some guidance for the future”
Do the foregoing events bear any lessons for modern Israel? In one sense they...
“…lesson Scripture offers modern Israel: Realism in foreign policy, moderation in religious policy, openness in economic policy and equality in social policy may be the best path for the Jewish state as it confronts its uncertain future”
This gallery contains 0 photos.
Perhaps that is the true lesson Scripture offers modern Israel. Realism in foreign policy,...“…there is ample room for both people to live next to each other, with each other, in peace”
Shavit makes it sounds like Palestine was a small home that was taken, that...
“After decades in which Israeli and Diaspora Jews were raised on the belief that the refugees left of their own volition, Shavit models a different narrative tack”
This gallery contains 0 photos.
Shavit offers new insight into the motivations of Israeli soldiers and officers involved in...How one reads Shavit’s chapter on Lydda is a Rorschach test of one’s Israel politics
This gallery contains 0 photos.
One chapter has garnered more attention than others. It is the one serialized in...
Zionism was a matter that Orthodox rabbis sermonized in the 1920s and 1930s
This gallery contains 0 photos.
In one area especially, Judaic beliefs and contemporary events intersected—Zionism. Nearly every Orthodox rabbi...“When the enemy is nested in homes and apartments and no one wears a uniform but everyone has a cellphone camera, you have a real strategic and moral challenge”
You don’t want to be in these wars. This is not your grandfather’s battlefield. When the enemy is nested in homes and apartments and no one wears a uniform but everyone has a cellphone camera, you have a real strategic and moral challenge — as the U.S. has discovered with its own drone wars. It’s hard to defeat this enemy without killing a lot of civilians. It’s no accident that every Israeli brigade now has a legal adviser.
Thomas L. Friedman, “A Wonderful Country”, The New York Times (2 February 2014), SR11.
“Brand Israel has attempted to re-image Israel based upon its accomplishments” which “left the door wide open for BDS to seize upon the conflict and spin it their own way”
Brand Israel has attempted to re-image Israel based upon its accomplishments. Technology. The Start-Up Nation. Wine. Women. Gays. Medical research. Its strategy has been to side-step the conflict. But the conflict appears on the front pages and in the news multiple times a week. It is what people care about. The conflict makes them fear for the safety of the world and their own lives. That left the door wide open for BDS to seize upon the conflict and spin it their own way.
Gary Wexler, “Where Can I Sign Up for a BDS Marketing Course?”, The Jewish Journal (7 – 13 February 2014), 10.
Gil Troy on the ASA Boycott being sloppy and imprecise
This boycott continues the anti-Zionist war on academia. Most academics seek intellectual precision — yet calling Israel an apartheid state sloppily makes apartheid mean “apartness,” separation, sanitizing its ugly racial distinctions while falsely making the national conflict between Israelis and Palestinians seem racial. Most scholars recognize the world’s complexity — yet regarding Israel, simplistic sloganeering and one-sided finger pointing prevail. Most intellectuals defend ideas’ permeability — yet boycotts impose harsh borders in what should be a seamless cerebral world. Most teachers applaud diversity, yet boycotts shut down debate. And most professors aspire toward scholarly objectivity, yet targeting Israel — especially given Palestinian terrorism, extremism, and authoritarianism, along with so many other countries’ crimes — reeks of bias and a particular, historic prejudice, anti-Semitism.
I hate making this argument. But how else can we explain this disproportionate, one-sided, pile-on against this one country that is also the world’s only Jewish state?
The boycott call is also politically counter-productive. It emboldens Palestinian rejectionists, enrages the Israeli right, demoralizes the center, and undermines the left. Compromise cannot occur in the lynch mob atmosphere the ASA endorsed.
Gil Troy, “Why I’m Boycotting the American Studies Association”, The Jewish Week (27 December 2013), 20.