Zeev Sternhell

The individual has ceased to be at the core of Israel’s democracy, with the right-wing majority aggressively pursuing legislation that turns the country’s non-Jews into second-class citizens. Anyone who allows this to happen will be complicit in the country’s fate.

Unlike Europe, where the right has significantly grown but is still not in power, in this country the racists, the extreme and clerical right is the government, with only a vacuum opposing it.

If the Labor Party doesn't supply a real alternative to the Likud ideology, which rules that poverty is natural and exploitation has a substitute, it will depart the political scene slowly but surely.

What will remain of the Jewish identity Yehoshua describes if the conjunction of religion and tribal nationalism become anachronistic?

Anyone who refuses to define himself as 'left' and to fight against poverty and the occupation, will end up on the right.

Israel went to wars it had initiated, but never once did it come up with a peace initiative out of free choice.

Latest polls prove that most Israelis are willing to end the occupation and establish a Palestinian state. So why it is not translated into political reality?

The average Likud voter knows well that the tremendous investment in the territories is at the expense of housing, roads, education and health, but believes his leaders that this is an investment in the realization of the Jewish people's historic right to the Promised Land.

Shelly Yacimovich is correct in claiming that the Labor Party, which she heads, was never a left-wing party. The occupation has eaten away at everything here that was good.

The nationalistic and messianic settlement ideology has spread like an oil spill, the dream of a liberal and open society has vanished and the rug is fast being pulled from under the feet of sane Zionism.

Netanyahu's attempt to teach his audience chapters of history, with his primitive descriptions and analogies, did not help present him in a serious light.

In the last week of the Jewish calendar year 5772, the right wing finally took off its gloves.

Is a strike on Iran worth sacrificing so many victims for the goal, in addition to generating a global outcry, outraging the United States and losing another layer of Israel's moral legitimacy?

The protest doesn't even constitute a nuisance, because it's become clear that its activists aren't capable of leading a movement.

The way the college founded there was subsequently turned into a university epitomizes the government's warped modes of thought and action.

Anyone who wants the Arabs to be integrated should first end the occupation and invest in Arab society and in infrastructure in Arab towns.

There is no doubt that the social protest movement has reached a turning point and must decide on its identity and aims.

Even if some day the right is no longer in power or Israel is forced to give in by dint of international sanctions, policy in the territories will not change substantially, because the rioters are in control.

Justice is not merely the right to decent housing for Jews, it is also the right to freedom of a nation under occupation.

The young demonstrators would do well to remember May 1968 in Europe; a protest that does not find immediate political expression is destined to disintegrate.

Indeed, the right wing considers recognition of the reality created in 1949 to be the chief enemy of Zionism. The dynamic of a conquering nationalism can never recognize that any situation created at any given time is final.

Netanyahu heads for Washington as Israel to stop Israel's collision course with all our allies, who are no longer prepared to listen to his arguments about the country's security.

Those who wish for a new start would do well to look toward the West rather than backwards. The Israeli labor movement was an ad hoc invention for the purpose of creating independence, but no more than that.

In a democracy, restrictions must be imposed on legislation, because the purpose of a liberal democratic regime is to protect human and civil rights and ensure equality. When the legislature ignores these basic duties, it undermines the very reason for democracy's existence.

The present political balance of power has created a Knesset that has become an assembly line of legislation that is dragging Israel down to the bottom of the list of civilized countries.

Rabin died as the left's leader in his struggle to end the occupation, and the murderer came from the right to squelch the chance of returning to sanity. The murderer acted in the service of the right's goals, the murder was prepared by people of the right and only benefited the right.

In the right's view, Negotiations on partitioning the land are an existential danger because they recognize the Palestinians' equal rights, and thereby undermine the Jews' unique status in Eretz Israel.

If Yuval Steinitz and Gideon Sa'ar want Israeli Zhdanovism to be attributed to them, they should continue with their indolent attitude toward Im Tirtzu.

If next elections will usher in a yet more ultra-nationalist, clerical, fanatic and anti-democratic Knesset and government, there would be one advantage: It would make clear to everyone where we stand.