After 20 years of dealing with Islamic terrorism, you’d think western intellectuals might be thoughtful about its causes in western actions. Instead, too many in our midst are blaming Islam itself.
Jo Roberts, author of Contested Land, Contested Memory: “I don’t see a viable future for Israelis or Palestinians that doesn’t involve some kind of reworking of collective memory for each people, one that allows for – not a common narrative, but a space that can hold both people’s histories, that gives room for both peoples to live in the land.”
Eric Fingerhut, head of Hillel Int’l, says the group Open Hillel is operating deceptively, with the aim of turning Hillel chapters into sites of “anti-Israel agitation,” and citing a biblical lesson of God’s vengeance against a rebel, he says this is beyond the pale.
A controversy, if you can call it that, has broken over Naftali Bennett’s operational role as an officer during a 1996 attack in Lebanon that killed 102 civilians, including four U.N. officials.
A journalist’s loving shot of children in Gaza — “Selfie with the greatest threat to Israel” — has gone viral, with 16,000 retweets and counting. Dan Cohen tells the story behind the photo, the haunting devastation of the prison population of Gaza.
There have been signs in recent days that the Israel lobby is solidifying inside the Republican Party, opening the possibility that the Democratic Party will begin to have a freer debate over the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel. It’s too early to say the Israel lobby will abandon the Democratic Party, Haim Saban, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Chuck Schumer will see to that, but the hard-core lobby is solidifying inside the GOP. And if the Israeli elections crown Netanyahu, we’re going to see more and more Crisis Zionists at the heart of the Democratic Party– J Street and Peter Beinart, which will leave room for non-Zionists to emerge.
Alan Dershowitz says in defending himself from sexual abuse claims he is defending the values he’s always stood up for– seemingly including Israel.
Reporters pressed State Dep’t’s Jen Psaki over a “double standard” — her threat to assistance to Palestine over its decision to take international legal steps even as the U.S. has never threatened aid to Israel over its neverending construction of settlements in occupied territories
Dennis Ross revives his career as Israel’s lawyer in the NYT, saying that Palestinians, rooted in “grievance,” have three times rejected fair deals to create a state
Religious-ethnic background as the basis of national identity is an anachronism in the 21st century. All states must protect individual rights from all communities. So goodbye to the era of self-determination, when the self is ethnicity.