Israel – Excerpted

“Yom Yerushalayim often gets the short end of the stick, often overlooked even by those who profess to celebrate it”

2 June 20192 June 2019 Drew KaplanIsrael

Yom Yerushalayim often gets the short end of the stick, often overlooked even by those who profess to celebrate it. This can be understood in light of the complex nature of the day. For many[…]

“After years of fragmentation, Israeli society seems to be consolidating anew – fusing Jewishness and nationalism, and decidedly on the right”

28 May 2019 Drew KaplanIsrael

After years of fragmentation, Israeli society seems to be consolidating anew – fusing Jewishness and nationalism, and decidedly on the right. Since the 1970s the meta-story of Israel has been the steady crack-up of Labor,[…]

Bibi “has no true ideological home, so he has made his home the Prime Minister’s Office”

18 April 2019 Drew KaplanIsrael

It’s a mistake to put Netanyahu in the same category as the strongmen riding Europe’s rightist wave. But it is not a mistake to say he learned their language and cultivated ties with them, some[…]

“You can certainly keep people out of your country if you believe they are undermining it; you are playing with fire if you keep people out who disagree with you”

14 March 201914 March 2019 Drew KaplanIsrael

I sincerely doubt the Prime Minister of Israel is directing anyone to interrogate Peter Beinart or Reza Aslan; but I do believe that the government of Israel’s insistence on collapsing the distinction between BDS and[…]

“There are really important arenas…where the comparisons between these two countries need to be interrogated, and where deep work has to take place in order to ensure that the two societies are not reinforcing each others’ weaknesses”

25 February 2019 Drew KaplanAmerica

There are really important arenas – ideological trends like the rise of nationalism and shifts in how democracy is valued and understood, and political alliances like the dangerous dalliance between Trump and Netanyahu – where[…]

“With the erosion of ethnic boundaries in Israel, and the mixing of different traditions to form a more general ‘Israeliness’, traditionalism has become mainstream”

29 July 2018 Drew KaplanIsrael

The roots of traditionalism lie in Mizrachi Judaism. In the Orient, instead of the dichotomy between religiosity and secularism, there arose a worldview that saw the loose, non-halachic practice of Judaism as a legitimate option.[…]

“You say you don’t want to connect to Israel for x, y, and z reasons, but – tell me something: do you care about a conversation about Jews in power?”

11 June 2018 Drew KaplanIsrael

You say you don’t want to connect to Israel for x, y, and z reasons, but – tell me something: do you care about a conversation about Jews in power? Do you care about the[…]

“Debates about Israel seem to be the precise place where “existential anxiety” stopped referring to philosophical angst and started referring to the fear your nation could be destroyed”

17 April 201812 April 2018 Drew KaplanIsrael

Our current use of “existential” is about as far removed from artsy-philosophical realms as you can imagine: It’s originally the province of defense analysts and foreign-policy think tanks, national-security types and people who write editorials[…]

“The phenomenon of a minority people arising out of the ashes of Auschwitz to reframe not only their world but to also profoundly impact the broader culture may best summarize this century of Jewish influence”

10 April 20188 April 2018 Drew KaplanJews

…out of the trauma and tragedy of the earlier decades of the 20th century, Jews redefined their image and reconstructed their roles in the post-World War II period. This represented a point in time when[…]

“The ‘most moral army in the world’ talking point is both substantively and tactically foolish, it convinces nobody…”

8 April 2018 Drew KaplanIDF

The IDF is not the most moral army in the world, because there is no most moral army in the world. I know this because the words “moral” and “army” are generally at odds, and[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Tag: Israel

“Yom Yerushalayim often gets the short end of the stick, often overlooked even by those who profess to celebrate it”

“After years of fragmentation, Israeli society seems to be consolidating anew – fusing Jewishness and nationalism, and decidedly on the right”

Bibi “has no true ideological home, so he has made his home the Prime Minister’s Office”

“You can certainly keep people out of your country if you believe they are undermining it; you are playing with fire if you keep people out who disagree with you”

“There are really important arenas…where the comparisons between these two countries need to be interrogated, and where deep work has to take place in order to ensure that the two societies are not reinforcing each others’ weaknesses”

“With the erosion of ethnic boundaries in Israel, and the mixing of different traditions to form a more general ‘Israeliness’, traditionalism has become mainstream”

“You say you don’t want to connect to Israel for x, y, and z reasons, but – tell me something: do you care about a conversation about Jews in power?”

“Debates about Israel seem to be the precise place where “existential anxiety” stopped referring to philosophical angst and started referring to the fear your nation could be destroyed”

“The phenomenon of a minority people arising out of the ashes of Auschwitz to reframe not only their world but to also profoundly impact the broader culture may best summarize this century of Jewish influence”

“The ‘most moral army in the world’ talking point is both substantively and tactically foolish, it convinces nobody…”