
Trumpistas Stumping for White Privilege? In Israel They’re Called Leftists
Who thinks the country has slipped out of the hands of its rightful owners and political correctness has run amok? The American right – and the Israeli left.
Gershom Gorenberg is the author of The Unmaking of Israel and The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. Follow him on Twitter: @GershomG
Who thinks the country has slipped out of the hands of its rightful owners and political correctness has run amok? The American right – and the Israeli left.
The Zionist Union's fantasy of a vote on the two-state solution is a foolish bid to win an election without showing leadership.
Trump has cast himself as the rugged loner, the self-made outlaw, even though he's more a city rich boy and con-man. Welcome to 2016's American political theater.
The Supreme Court has just given state rabbis carte blanche to keep gorging on their monopoly over Israel’s kosher certification industry, at everyone’s expense.
Marginalizing religion, asserting you can't be part of mainstream society without being secular, pushes both alienated Muslims in Europe and Jews in Israel towards isolation and extremism.
Denying children the ability to make a living or think independently is abuse, and the government is culpable.
It’s time for an Israeli leader of the opposition who actually understands that people voted for Labor to get rid of Netanyahu and all he stands for – not to mimic his policies nor crawl into bed with his coalition.
Netanyahu's public bickering over U.S. defense assistance is embarrassing, and its timing is disastrous.
Supporters of Israel’s state rabbinate claim it protects the unity of the Jewish people. In fact, the rabbinate is engaged in a fanatic, unstinting quest to divide Jew from Jew.
It might be comforting for secular Zionists to pin all the blame on religious, messianic theocrats for the failure to divide the land into two states, a view recently voiced by Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken. But that's evading responsibility, both for the past and the present.
Former Israeli Interior Minister Arye Dery was jailed for taking bribes and is now returning to the exact same government ministry where he committed his felony. It’s kosher – but it stinks.
Mainstream Israelis far from the West Bank hilltops watching the "hate wedding" clip celebrating of the Dewabsheh family’s murder shouldn’t be sitting comfortably. Secular Israel and its representatives funded and produced that video.
Israeli social media has erupted over a housing company's anti-Mizrahi ad presenting a fair-haired Ashkenazi family as model clients: the clip expressed everyday racism just that bit too explicitly.
Is there any meaning at all to 'Jewish' in 'Jewish state' when Israel refuses sanctuary?
Right-wing ideas permeate Israeli schools, and an educator who disagrees risks a witch-hunt.
For Rabin, Iran was a reason to solve Israel's other problems. For Netanyahu, it's been an excuse to ignore them.
Has Israeli history up to now been the story of colonialism or democracy? The next chapter determines its meaning.
It would be nice to say Israel has learned its lesson, but it is part of the problem. It's time for developed countries to read the writing on the wall at Yad Vashem and grant refuge.
The proposals for overseas voting are part of a package to keep the prime minister in power by any means necessary.
New evidence shows government's adviser on international law said in 1968 that demolishing terror suspects' homes violates Geneva Convention.
For all that it sees itself as strutting in pride and glory, the Israeli right does not understand what it means to be here – physically, culturally or morally.
The Israeli prime minister sees the Green Line as the border between where Arabs can't vote and where they shouldn't.
The strategy of terror is aimed at escalating conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims. Defending the right to be Muslim in a Western society is a necessary response.
Raising the electoral threshold is another ill-considered change in election rules. Fiddling with the machinery of democracy rarely has the intended effect.
The left must get organized if it wants to overthrow Netanyahu. Otherwise, it risks repeating the mistake of Shimon Peres' 1996 campaign.
Don't believe the polls or what reporters say - in Israel, elections don't work like in other countries.
The left’s contempt for the complexities of Jerusalem - stubbornly religious, ethnically jumbled, unEuropean - shows why they have failed to connect to more Israelis in opposing the occupation.
In the eyes of Israel’s right, led by Ayelet Shaked, the Supreme Court is an arena of wild-eyed radicals. But the judges are Israel’s last defense against the supremacy of territorial control over human rights.
The Holocaust taught Jews the right to safe haven overrides that of nations to seal their borders. Has Netanyahu forgotten this cardinal obligation from the period of Jewish history he references quite so often?
Israel’s government lied to the U.S. 47 years ago when it set up Gush Etzion’s first settlement. Will the U.S. response to a massive new land takeover remain as ineffectual as back then?