Carlo Strenger

By deciding not to attend the Israeli Presidential Conference, one of the world's leading scientists is singling out Israel and denying it has been under existential threat for most of its existence.

The Finance Minister's refusal to kowtow to ultra-Orthodox political demands doesn't show a hatred of Haredim, but it does show that the winds of change are blowing.

Whatever the final truth about the Boston bombing will turn out to be, it is time to realize a simple, and terrible truth about terrorism: It is here to stay.

The U.S. secretary of state's first attempt to forge negotiations has been rejected by Israel. It may be because he overestimates the issue of territory and underestimates existential fear.

I am just as pessimistic as Rashid Khalidi about the prospects for peace. But I had a hard time reading his new book, since it showed, once again, how catastrophic the settlement policy has been not only for Palestinians, but also for Israel.

Israel’s current government might be able to take some steps towards easing the Orthodox stranglehold on personal and public matters. This will be neither easy nor will it go far enough.

Because of his provocativeness, it's easy to miss Yeshayahu Leibowitz’s profound moral seriousness and the great relevance of his thought today.

By equating criticism leveled at Israeli settlements to efforts to delegitimize Israel, Netanyahu is resorting to cheap political trickery unbefitting of a Western democracy.

The American president should take into account that most Israelis are more open and flexible than their PM to the message that there are ways to move toward compromise with the Palestinians without harming Israel’s security.

Israel's political discourse is largely based on the mistaken assumption that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unlikely to change.

A large proportion of Israelis are more similar to the liberal Jews who informed Obama's formative years than to Benjamin Netanyahu. Remembering this is key.

The Prime Minister's Office has said that Israel's leader has not seen the Oscar-nominated documentary, nor does he plan to. This is a shame, not just for Israel, but also for Netanyahu's own legacy.

The free world leaders should listen to the new voice of the new Israel. If they will bring fresh thinking to the table, a brighter horizon could rise.

The Oscar-nominated film 'The Gatekeepers' is stirring and soul-shaking. It's also a testimony to the thriving democracy we could one day become.

Every ethnic, religious and political group fears that if it will not dominate all others, it will itself be wiped out.

The coming Knesset will have a sizable center-left bloc, and it is to be hoped that its leaders will understand that it is part of their civic and political duty to oppose any legislation that undermines the pillars of the liberal order.

Israel’s progressives represent one of the deepest values of Jewish history: the value of dissent. For millennia, Jews flourished without having a politburo that told us how to think – and we will not let either Netanyahu and Lieberman or Rabbis Ovadia Yosef and Dov Lior dictate to us what to think, speak, or write.

Netanyahu is likely to be in a comfortable position of having his job assured, but his choice in coalition structure could lead Israel into a historic catastrophe.

The Hamas leader's speech was good for Netanyahu, because he could, once again, present Israel as the innocent victim that is never understood by the international community and diffuse attention from his own actions that aggravate the international community.

In attempting to make a case for a specifically Jewish critique of Israeli state violence, Berkeley professor Judith Butler argues that even at its most liberal, Zionism is profoundly un-Jewish.

If Labor and Yesh Atid join Livni and stay out of the government, there will be a sizeable opposition that cannot be laughed off and delegitimized as 'extreme left.'

Netanyahu keeps behaving in a way that profoundly contradicts the values of the club of the Free World, of which he wants to be a valued member: His disregard for international law and individual human rights of Palestinians simply doesn’t square with the standards of the Free World.

Let me begin with a much-needed clarification. The two-state solution, with all its downsides, is a solution. One state west of the Jordan is likely to be a catastrophe. Let me therefore call it ‘The one-state reality’ as opposed to the ‘two-state solution’.

This conflict has now come to an end. It is now an extreme right-wing party with strong racist undertones.

Netanyahu and Barak's worst mistake in the current confrontation was to let Hamas dictate the terms of the game, paving the way for Hamas to claim another symbolic victory.

If Obama wants to go beyond crisis management of the Israel-Palestine conflict, he should not turn to Abbas but to the peace initiative, which offers Israel recognition, full diplomatic relations and normalization with all members of the Arab League in return for a full retreat to the 1967 borders.

Carlo Strenger replies to Akiva Eldar's farewell letter, asserting that the two- state solution is in fact dead.

A recent Haaretz poll shows profoundly upsetting erosion in Jewish Israelis’ belief in universal human rights. Most Jewish Israelis acquiesce in discrimination against Arabs on the ground of ethnicity and or religion. If true, this points to a moral and political decline of frightening proportions.

The majority of Israelis nowadays define their identities in religious, ethnic or nationalistic terms, and their adherence to liberal democratic values is often weak or nonexistent.

What would have happened if Olmert had not been forced to resign?

If we don't forcefully defend liberal values, including the separation of religion and state, now, we will soon lose the right to voice them at all.

The problem is that religious fundamentalists try everything to shield their children from global perspectives, fearing that it will undermine their separatist agenda.

We will feel a lot better when we no longer have to explain to totalitarian minds why liberty is important. What a relief!

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.

The weaker strata are deprived of the barest necessities. And the middle classes are deprived of the most basic demand from a decent society: to achieve a respectable life in return for long-term investment in education and hard work.

All the symptoms that Israel's citizens are protesting are the expression of one fundamental illness: the relationship between government and citizenry.

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.

Netanyahu's real positions are basically analogous to the three Arab No's of the infamous 1967 Khartoum declaration, issued in the wake of the Six-Day War: He says no to a viable Palestinian state; he doesn't want an agreement with them; and, ultimately, he doesn't really want negotiations with them.

Israeli children need to know about the Palestinian tragedy in the same way that Australian children need to know about the tragedy of the Aborigines.

Israel's problem is that an ever-increasing proportion of U.S. Jews feel they are being forced to choose between universal human rights and equality, and their involvement with Israel.

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.

Only moving toward peace with the Palestinians and engaging with the Arab League Peace initiative can save Israeli society from falling apart completely.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 IRA and move from terror tactics to becoming a legitimate player in the political arena.

Liberal Zionism celebrates the most authentic traits of the Jewish tradition: the willingness for incisive debate and the refusal to bow to authoritarianism.

Israel's pragmatic right is committed to the following principle: Israel has occupied the territories for more than two thirds of its history. So far it's worked, so why give up on this winning horse?

Our universities are still doing well, but this will change irremediably if drastic measures are not taken.