Advertisements For many Jews on the left, particularly the moderate or liberal left, there is a preoccupation—some might even say an obsession—with finding the so-called “line” between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, between legitimate, even if harsh, criticism of Israel and an attack on the Jewish people as a whole. Given JewishContinue Reading
Advertisements Published today at Responsible Statecraft is my review of Prof Jerome Slater’s new book, Mythologies Without End: The U.S., Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020. Slater goes through a huge list of myths that make up so much of the mass understanding of the conflict over Palestine and Israel. JustContinue Reading
It has never been clearer that the issue is equal rights. Are Palestinians entitled to equal rights? Are both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, through the vehicles of their individual nationalist movements—which are not going to disappear in the foreseeable future and so must be dealt with by both sides as permanent realities—entitled to self-determination? Can those paths be reconciled with cooperation, which is the only way out of conflict and away from bloodshed? Answer those questions affirmatively and all the other issues—Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, water, borders or the absence of them—become far easier to work out. The process begins with ceasing to hold the Herzogs of the world to a lower standard than racist Fox News pundits.Continue Reading
As Zogby concludes in his 2018 preface, “If we seek to build a secure and peaceful future for both peoples, it is imperative that we recognize that an injustice occurred and that it continues today. To challenge the narrative that denied Palestinian humanity is not anti-Semitic. It is blindness to injustice.” Acknowledging that uncomfortable history—a history that is uncomfortable not only for Israel, but for Britain, the United States, the Arab world, and others—is the only way to start on that path.Continue Reading
Much about the Israel-Palestine conflict is unprecedented, and the depth of ethnocracy and oppression that Israel has sunk to is beyond anything in the history of this conflict. Maybe it still hasn’t hit bottom. But maybe one day Netanyahu’s scorched-earth policy will unwittingly produce the fertile ground that both Zionists and Palestinians who believe in both their own national existences and the sharing of the land can cultivate and grow into a better future.Continue Reading
