Bibi “has no true ideological home, so he has made his home the Prime Minister’s Office”
It’s a mistake to put Netanyahu in the same category as the strongmen riding Europe’s rightist wave. But it is not a […]
Tag: Israel
“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”
I sincerely doubt the Prime Minister of Israel is directing anyone to interrogate Peter Beinart or Reza Aslan; but I do believe […]
“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”
There are really important arenas – ideological trends like the rise of nationalism and shifts in how democracy is valued and understood, […]
“With the erosion of ethnic boundaries in Israel, and the mixing of different traditions to form a more general ‘Israeliness’, traditionalism has become mainstream”
The roots of traditionalism lie in Mizrachi Judaism. In the Orient, instead of the dichotomy between religiosity and secularism, there arose a […]
“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?”
You say you don’t want to connect to Israel for x, y, and z reasons, but – tell me something: do you […]
“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”
Our current use of “existential” is about as far removed from artsy-philosophical realms as you can imagine: It’s originally the province of […]
“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”
…out of the trauma and tragedy of the earlier decades of the 20th century, Jews redefined their image and reconstructed their roles […]
“The ‘most moral army in the world’ talking point is both substantively and tactically foolish, it convinces nobody…”
The IDF is not the most moral army in the world, because there is no most moral army in the world. I […]
When Michael Oren shifted the definition of “existential”
In 2009, Michael B. Oren, soon to become Israel’s ambassador to the United States, wrote an essay for Commentary examining seven “existential” […]
“There was a more immediate motive for the timing of the Balfour Declaration”
There was a more immediate motive for the timing of the Declaration. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had declared his intention to join […]
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Tagged Bibi Netanyahu, Israel, Israel politics, Israeli Politics