Secular liberals are hated as the ruling elite, even though the right has been in power for the latter half of Israel’s history. Meanwhile, as opposed to religious-nationalists and the ultra-orthodox, we do not have any minority rights.
12 comments
Israel, Syria, and the double standards of the Free World
While the Assad regime's massacre of Syrian civilians does not justify Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Israel's critics must acknowledge the rough neighborhood it lives in.
28 comments
Israel's humanists should declare themselves a religious minority
Netanyahu must stop misusing the Holocaust
Anti-Semitism must be condemned, exposed, and persecuted – but to keep warning that the next holocaust is around the corner is intellectually dishonest, morally problematic, and politically unwise.
16 comments
Netanyahu, Louis XIV and Israel’s 'greatest enemies'
If Netanyahu did say that Haaretz and the New York Times are Israel's greatest enemies, then he would be somebody who would prefer that there be no media that criticize him.
13 comments
Israel must understand that Europe is indeed relevant
Europe needs to make its voice heard clearly, to speak to the Israeli people and differentiate clearly between friendship for Israel and its condemnation of the Netanyahu government’s policies.
28 comments
Do Israeli liberals need a State of Tel Aviv?
There are moments when I feel that Israel’s democracy is truly threatened; but there are also moments where I take a wider perspective.
16 comments
What Israel can learn from Steve Jobs and the culture of creativity
Steve Jobs’ life and achievement was made possible by an environment that created a space in which a variety of cultural traditions could coexist, compete and interact.
3 comments
2011: The year the two state solution died
Netanyahu can now take partial credit for having killed the two state solution. The other half goes to the Palestinians.
63 comments
Israel's illiberalism will kill innovation
If Netanyahu’s coalition gets its way and continues its steamrolling tactics of turning Israel into an illiberal society, Israel’s economy will lose its vitality.
1 comments
Christopher Hitchens, great Iconoclast and Moralist, is dead
In Christopher Hitchens we have lost a great untamed public intellectual, unique in combining his literary qualities with an almost old-fashioned moralism.
4 comments
Mideast can accept Israel if Netanyahu will let it
Coming back from a conference in Qatar, Israel seems far less at the focus of Mideast discussions than we were led to think.
16 comments
Israel’s farewell to the West
One cannot help coming to the conclusion that the Netanyahu government has decided that Israel’s identity as a Western state is no longer relevant.
17 comments
New anti-Semitism directed at Israel’s liberals
It is quite fascinating to see the parallels between the anti-Semitic stereotype and the way the ‘small, pathetic group’ of Tel Aviv residents is portrayed by Israel's right.
8 comments
Israel's parliamentarians are tearing the Jewish people apart
The majority of Diaspora Jews have learned from the tragedies of Jewish history that human rights must be respected anytime and anywhere; the anti-liberal law proposals goes against these convictions.
22 comments
Jews must defend human rights, not attack them
Given the tragedies of Jewish history, I find it offensive both as a human being and as a Jew that Israeli parliamentarians attack human rights organizations.
23 comments
Can Israel live with the Iranian bomb?
It may well be that Israel will have to get used to the idea of a nuclear Iran, and its public, raised on the notion that the IDF can solve anything, will need to undergo a profound change.
40 comments
Mahmoud Abbas' crucial message to Israel
Two crucial statements by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas mark a sea change in the Palestinian narrative of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
9 comments
The missed opportunity to free Marwan Barghouti
For Netanyahu, the greatest danger is a strong Palestinian leader who unifies the Palestinian people behind the two-state solution.
52 comments
Open letter to Mahmoud Abbas for Yom Kippur
The two-state solution is running out of oxygen, if it is not implemented soon, it will die; it is time for Abbas to take the step Anwar Sadat took by coming to the Knesset, recognizing Israel as the Jewish people’s homeland.
118 comments
Rosh Hashanah 5772: Hope and the Social Justice Movement
While right-wing politicians are rolling back democratic rights in Israel, a new generation of protesters is demanding more powers for the people.
14 comments
Europe must save the two-state solution
Obama is incapable of assuming leadership in the Middle East because of his weak standing in the U.S., so Europe needs to take charge.
19 comments
Israel’s international standing is being eroded
The day when global public opinion will consider Israel as another South Africa and push for sanctions against the country is drawing ever closer.
17 comments
Wanted: Pragmatic Israeli policies instead of ideology
The Netanyahu government is not governed by pragmatism; it continues to be guided by the myths of Masada and Bar Kochba rather than by realistic assessment of international reality.
14 comments
The Free World must not use fear and rage to fight terrorism
Terrorist groups aim to cloud our minds in order to subvert our values: we must not give into their ploy, and instead remain cool-headed in the face of this danger.
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September may bring the death of the two-state solution - and the Jewish state
What happens when the Palestinians realize come September that UN recognition doesn't change their lives, that the settlements continue to expand, and the occupation continues?
19 comments
A different Israel, born in the summer of 2011
The protest movement’s achievements must no longer be measured by how many demonstrators it brings to the streets; enthusiasm must now be fused with pragmatic action.
2 comments
Can Netanyahu still engage with Palestinians' UN bid?
Israel could condition that the resolution explicitly states the Palestinian state will exist alongside Israel, thereby reaffirming Israel’s legitimacy.
40 comments
Social justice, not nationalism, is what best unites Israel
No amount of propaganda can cover up that the social protests have created more unity through the demand that Israel become a decent society for all its citizens than nationalist rhetoric and legislation.
22 comments
How (not) to think about the Arab Spring
Both Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman made up their minds about the Arab world long ago, and no facts will confuse them.
28 comments
Israel's version of the French Revolution: Liberty, fraternity, creativity
Israel’s creative class has had enough. The nation-wide protest against a political system run by parasites that disenfranchises the productive classes is only gaining momentum.
32 comments
Sushi, social justice and self-respect
This uprising is about social justice. And yes, it is driven by the middle class. And it’s time to say something about the middle class’s right to a decent life without being apologetic.
23 comments
Civil uprisings demand a constitution
The system is rotten, and Israel’s infrastructures are in the pits. Only a radical cure will do, and only one goal will be a success worthy of Israel’s popular uprising.
22 comments
Israelis demand dignity
The protest of the middle class, no longer willing to be milked and abused, may be a first step to cleaning up the mess of Israeli politics.
36 comments
Netanyahu’s March of Folly
The Netanyahu government has succeeded in getting Israelis used to anti-democratic measures and the PM's policies are pushing Israel into further isolation.
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The glue holding Netanyahu’s coalition: hatred for liberal values
Commentators both in Israel and around the world have pointed out that the movement toward the right is endangering Israel’s liberal democracy. But maybe it’s time to see what stands behind this flood of anti-liberal legislation.
16 comments
The boycott law and bullshit
Bullshitting, to a certain extent, is an unavoidable facet of political life. But once it goes beyond a certain limit, it endangers open society and liberal democracy.
41 comments
Israel’s McCarthy coalition is on a dangerous power trip
The slew of anti-democratic laws introduced by the current Knesset constitutes one of the darkest chapters in Israeli history.
38 comments
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the media circus and the Roman arena
As the fact emerge about the questionable validity of the DSK sexual assault case, important questions arise about the media's explicit coverage of the former IMF chief's alleged indiscretions as well as other scandals.
12 comments
Zionists, relax, Israel is not on the brink of destruction
Rational thinking is highly unpopular in the Netanyahu government, which seems caught in the belief that catastrophe is on the way.
18 comments
Israel is tearing apart the Jewish people
Israel has never had a government that so blatantly violates the core values of liberal democracy, which dismisses identities of 85% of the world's Jewry.
32 comments
Netanyahu and the Mystics of Safed
The government’s disconnection from the world has much in common with the psychology of religious sects that, having become so convinced of their own truth, no longer care about the world at large.
34 comments
Israel's rightists are living in a colonial past
Israel needs to realize that the Palestinian political reality of today has undergone a significant upheaval - and must tailor its policies accordingly.
34 comments
Israelis must brace for dark times
The imminent recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN puts Israel on a collision course with the rest of the world. And there is but one way which this could be made less catastrophic.
16 comments
The Israeli right's refusal to accept other versions of Zionism
Israel’s right is not confident enough to accept the truth of the country's history, and instead propagates stories that no historian on earth would support.
19 comments
Netanyahu’s win is Israel’s loss
Once the dust of the media storm settles down, the citizens of Israel will be faced with the stark truth: The specter of Israel’s ever-growing isolation and of increasing international pressure looms large.
28 comments
Netanyahu has nothing to fear but hope
We can expect Netanyahu to do everything but what he should during his visit to Washington, attempting to torpedo the recognition of Palestine and doing nothing to bring about acceptable Israeli borders.
12 comments
Israel has only one option when it comes to Iran
Israel's right entertains the myth that the country can solve every problem by resorting to force, rather than diplomacy. If Israel were to establish win-win interactions with its neighbors, its decision makers would have to totally change that mentality.
29 comments
Palestinian reconciliation is a cause for cautious optimism
If Hamas does make the historic move of accepting Israel’s existence, chances for Israel-Palestine peace will increase dramatically, writes Carlo Strenger.
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From the slavery of falsehood to the freedom of truth
UNRWA teaches children in the schools of Gaza about the Holocaust; Israeli schools need to teach about the Palestinian Nakba. Passover should teach us to live with the truth.
34 comments
Hamas is missing the train of history
The gruesome murder of Italian peace activist by an extremist Islamist group in Gaza show, more than ever, that Hamas is running into insoluble problems.
7 comments
Goldstone retreat proves how different Israel and Hamas really are
While it is legitimate to criticize Israeli policies, Hamas’ systematic targeting of Israeli civilians and Israel’s attempt to neutralize Hamas’ military infrastructure simply belong to different moral universes.
67 comments
As Israel perpetuates occupation, its youth sees little value in peace and freedom
Israeli youth grows up seeing a parliament that passes nationalist, often outright racist laws, hears a Prime Minister who keeps fanning fear of Israel’s imminent demise by Iranian attack, and is told the world hates Israel no matter what it does.
59 comments
Israel’s problem is the settlements, not J Street
It needs to be made clear that the choice is not between a safe Israel that occupies the territories and an unsafe Israel alongside a Palestinian state.
66 comments
Tel Aviv is up there with Harvard, MIT and Princeton - for now.
Although Tel Aviv University is off the charts in the caliber of its research, its professor to student ratio is abysmal, with not enough faculty members on staff due to serious lack of funds.
17 comments
Netanyahu’s boringly predictable fear-mongering
If Netanyahu had any of the Churchill daring that he likes to fantasize he has, he would see that a future UN recognition of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders would be an historical victory for Israel.
42 comments
Decline and fall of Israel’s Messianic politics
Ultimately, Israel’s sane majority that wants peace and democracy rather than war and theocracy will wake up and break the destructive stranglehold of those who wish to make the country a theocracy.
34 comments
Either Democracy – or Hebron
Liberal Zionists do not think that Israel’s raison d’être hinges on Hebron, but being recognized by internationally law and giving millions of people, most of them, but certainly not all, Jewish, the home in which they can live and realize their potential.
30 comments
The internet and the revolution of Homo Globalis
Are we indeed in an era in which the internet and social media revolutionize politics?
2 comments
Faith in a democratic Egypt is Israel's modern-day Exodus
If Egypt succeeds in its transition towards viable democracy, Israel will get the courage to relate to the Palestinians from a position of mutuality rather than the posture of dominance it inherited from the West’s colonial past.
30 comments
A big leap for the Israeli psyche
One of the most persistent images in the Israeli psyche is that of Arabs as an existential threat, as people who are primitive, filled with hate for Israel and want to destroy it.
14 comments
Betting on Egypt democracy is Israel’s only choice
Nobody can be certain that cold peace between Israel and Egypt will survive Mubarak's fall and the emergence of a new political system.
34 comments
Al Jazeera leaks: Who are the winners and losers?
Does the common wisdom that Al Jazeera is close to Hamas and wanted to undermine Abbas really hold true?
9 comments
Israel's first step to Mideast peace: Opening the door, Obama style
Only moving toward peace with the Palestinians and engaging with the Arab League Peace initiative can save Israeli society from falling apart completely.
56 comments
Israel’s right have eyes but do not see, have ears but do not hear
Israel’s right-wing politicians are trying to divert blame for its isolation onto the country’s liberal critics.
48 comments
Israel is trapped in paranoid vicious circles
As Netanyahu continues to explain criticism of Israel's settlement policy as a conspiracy to delegitimatize the Jewish state, hatred turns on a real or imagined enemy - Israeli Arabs.
22 comments
How did Israel go from Albert Einstein to Moshe Katsav?
Those who voted for Katsav as president should ask themselves: What did I know about this man? Did I really think he was suited for what is formally Israel’s highest office? Was I capable of thinking beyond petty party politics and personal gain when I cast my vote?
50 comments
The Palestinians must not repeat their mistake of 1947
There are two choices in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the two-state solution, or descent of the region into chaos that will make earlier rounds of bloodletting look tame.
74 comments
A Palestinian state born in South America
The real reason for insisting on the two-state solution is that we want this state to have a Jewish character. And by Jewish we don't mean that it should be a theocracy, or that it should give Jews more rights than Arabs.
38 comments
Israel’s post-traumatic isolation
Israel suffered truly existential threats until 1973, and then severe blows when it gave peace a chance; now many Israelis are deeply angry at anybody who tries to talk them into doing it again.
56 comments
Israel must choose between Enlightenment and Romanticism
Israel's right wing, to an ever growing extent, tends toward the position that Israel should not approve the language of individual human rights accepted today in international politics.
32 comments
Academic objectivity rises above assaults by Europe's left and Israel's right
After endless boycott attempts accusing Israel's universities of cooperating with the occupation, now Israel's right is waging a totalitarian campaign against what they term 'anti-Zionism.'
22 comments
Nicole Krauss protests against the duty of loyalty to Jewish history
In her long-awaited third novel, Nicole Krauss makes no attempts at a grand statement. Yet this work does make clear that the task of tying together and preserving the memory of all Jewish generations robs the present of vitality
12 comments
Three cheers for Israel's right
Because the right has been so phenomenally successful in its wise strategies, we can be pretty sure that it will continue to aggravate the world even further.
120 comments
Mr. Netanyahu, you are not Rabin’s partner in peace
An open letter to the prime minister following his address at a memorial service marking 15 years since Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
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Loyalty oath is not about Arabs, it’s about hatred of liberal values
Isaac Herzog is wrong when he says that fascism lurks at the fringes of Israeli society. It is now in the mainstream.
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Strenger than Fiction / Political learnings for make benefit of understanding glorious nation of Israel
Israel after years of dedicated experimentation has developed the Glorious New Method of Government by Chaos.
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Strenger than Fiction / Ahmadinejad’s lesson for the Free World
The Iranian president’s conspiracy theories about 9/11 and his Holocaust denial shows how critical it is that the Free World protect truth from ideology.
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Strenger than Fiction / How (not) to defend Israel
Never lower yourself to the level of Israel’s worst detractors. Don’t ever lie, and don’t twist the facts. Don’t use hollow propaganda phrases; you’ll lose your credibility the moment you do so.
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Strenger than Fiction / David Grossman - A Guide for the Perplexed
David Grossman’s To the End of the Land is an indispensable guide for those who want to contain in their souls both the triumph and the tragedy that is Israel.
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Strenger than Fiction / Advice to Netanyahu: Forget Churchill, try de Gaulle
Prime Minister Netanyahu likes to model himself along the lines of great statesmen.
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Strenger than Fiction / To a Martian, Zionism could be confusing
Imagine an anthropologist from Mars sent to earth to compile a report on Israeli political culture, and to understand the distinction between Zionism and anti-Zionism.
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Strenger than Fiction / Peace talks are sure to fail, but what will be the consequences?
Netanyahu probably assumes that the Palestinians will walk out, and he will be justified in maintaining the status quo. But is he prepared for what comes next?
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Strenger than Fiction / Tony Judt's Jewish identity
Despite accusations to the contrary, Tony Judt represents an important tradition of Jewishness.
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The evolving relationship between psychoanalysis and Jewish thought
A look at a timely and welcome collection of essays by Jewish psychoanalysts exemplifying the whole range of Jewish denominations including ultra-Orthodoxy.
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Strenger than Fiction / Why Israel keeps moving right
Israelis at this point prefer international isolation, painful as it is, to reliance on Arab peace partners for its own security.
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Strenger than Fiction / Thinking outside of the box about Hamas
Talking to Hamas makes sense for Israel if there are good reasons to believe that, in the long run, the organization will take the course of the ANC and the IRA and move from terror tactics to becoming legitimate players in the political arena.
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Strenger than Fiction / Is Israel alienating the Jews of the world?
Israel's lawmakers and politicians are blissfully unaware of what goes on outside their narrow fishpond, and they have no clue about the effect of their actions on the wider world.
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Strenger Than Fiction / Israel must admit its mistakes
Like Abbas admitted that the second intifada was one of the worst Palestinian mistakes, Israel needs to admit to its worst mistake: the settlement enterprise.
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Strenger than Fiction / Ya'alon's style of nationalism is driving Israel further into the bunker
Vice Premier Ya'alon believes liberals have a 'distorted' vision of Zionism, but his own form is inflicting harm on Israel and pushing it into deeper isolation.
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Strenger than Fiction / Israel should consider a one-state solution
Israel would do well to become a truly liberal, secular state without ethnic dominance in which subgroups no longer impose their way of life on each other.
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Strenger than Fiction / Just holding on
It seems that the ideal of a liberal society in the Mideast is gradually slipping away; that the forces of nationalism, religious fundamentalism and sheer rage and fear are engulfing us.
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Strenger than Fiction / Israel's bunker mentality
Israel is stuck in the belief that it is right, and everybody else is wrong and hence incapable of admitting that its policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians has been disastrous.
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Angry Liberal Zionism can inspire a new generation of Israelis
The ideology of Herzl can give young Israelis a way to express their Jewish identity and without being stifled by right-wing totalitarianism.
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Strenger than Fiction / In order to change its image, Israel must change its policy
Saying Israel is progressive and creative doesn't work when its politicians focus on victimhood and aggression.
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Strenger than Fiction / Israel is encouraging academic boycott by denying entry to Chomsky
If Israel feels it cannot survive free speech, then it is one step closer to flirting with totalitarianism.
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Strenger than Fiction / A triumph of academic freedom at Tel Aviv University
Behind the scenes a drama unfolded last week which could have done enormous damage to Tel Aviv University, Israel’s higher education system and to Israel as a country.
1 comments
Strenger than Fiction / The Dershowitz-J Street-JCall debate: Israel supporters needn't speak with one voice
It is important to differentiate between those who delegitimize Israel and those liberal critics who know that Israel is not solely responsible for the absence of peace.
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Strenger than Fiction / Jewish liberals from all nations, unite
Diaspora Jews around the world are realizing the time has come to reject the right’s dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do.
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Israel's leaders have forgotten Herzl's dream
Israel must choose between either holy places and East Jerusalem, or peace and democracy.
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Can Obama stop the slaying of Isaac and Ishmael?
A U.S. peace initiative is needed to break the tradition of filial sacrifice associated with Jerusalem.
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