Jonathan Ofir writes that Reza Aslan’s decision to speak out about the abuse he received trying to enter Israel after Peter Beinart made his story public reminds him of the momentum and grass roots power of the MeToo movement: “There is this element of a critical mass, where people actually start to listen. It’s no longer a lone voice here, a single story there – it becomes a movement.”
Anyone deluded enough to believe that Israel truly wants democracy to spread in the Middle East must read David D. Kirkpatrick’s outstanding first-hand account of the 2011 uprising in Egypt and its ugly aftermath, “Hands of Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East.”
Nathan Thrall’s long read in the Guardian on the origins of the BDS movement: “The nonviolent activism of the second intifada was a prelude to what would become a worldwide boycott campaign.”
There is no way for anyone in Israel to marry in a civil service. Judges and mayors do not have the power to marry you. You need your local rabbi, priest or qadi. If you want to intermarry, you have to fly to a foreign country and then hope that Israel will recognize the marriage. That’s why there’s a cottage marriage industry in nearby Cyprus. A guide to the perplexed, by Yossi Gurvitz.
Read the first English translation of the political program of the One Democratic State Campaign, a new initiative seeking to revive the idea of a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine.
In the second coming of Ronald Lauder to the NYT op-ed page in five months, the Jewish leader concedes that Israel discriminates against the LGBT community — the exact opposite of Israel’s claims. The article shows that the newspaper aims to take on Netanyahu as a threat to Israel’s future. But Netanyahu doesn’t care.
Aida Winfred explains the reason why Israel can not defend its border with Gaza — there is no border with Gaza. Gaza is not a state, it is a besieged enclave under Israeli control.
Writer Reza Aslan reports on being interrogated and threatened with imprisonment at the Israeli border 2 weeks ago. “We can make it so you don’t see your kids for a long time.” “Why do you hate Israel?” “Stop lying!” “Who did your father work for in Iran?” Aslan says Israel is becoming a classic police state, and Americans should know about it.
Col. Erran Morad, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Israeli character from his new Showtime series “Who Is America?”, is a die-hard counterterrorism expert hell-bent on sharing his tactics with conservative America. But at the same time that Baron Cohen’s latest alter-ego is revealing the wingnuttery of American politicians, he is also stirring a debate in Israel, as people there are realizing that the joke might also be on them.
The detention of Peter Beinart, an American Zionist writer, for an hour of political questioning at Israel’s main airport yesterday is causing alarm in Zionist circles about the country they love. “This is crazy,” writes a prominent neoconservative. J Street says the Beinart treatment is part of an Israeli government pattern of targeting American Jews, which is politically dangerous for Zionism. Of course Palestinians have experienced way worse for a long time.