Archive by Author: Ralph Seliger

Susie Linfield (as she is known professionally as well as personally) is a professor of journalism at New York University and a leftwinger who’s on the board of Dissent magazine.  Her past writings on this subject include being the affirmative voice in a 2015 debate published in Dissent entitled “Is a Left Zionism Possible?” and […]

This is being posted on the eve of Israel’s Independence Day.  Most of the following was in a piece rejected by Jewish Currents, for which I had been a frequent contributor until the new anti-Zionist editorial direction began last year.  Please forgive some overlap with an earlier piece posted here, but also rejected by Jewish […]

The only surprise regarding Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)—a group that fully supports BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) against Israel—finally “coming out” as anti-Zionist, on January 14th, is that it took so long. As a longtime left-Zionist who views the Trumpification of Israel with trepidation and horror, I can understand the JVP up to a point, […]

NY Times opinion editor and writer, Bari Weiss, has a heart of gold who hits the right notes for most liberal defenders of Israel and Jews — but not necessarily with the right emphasis.  Speaking from the stage of the ornate sanctuary of New York’s Temple Emanu-El, in an event organized by the Streicker Center, its […]

This is my reflection on three recent British books about antisemitism and the Left, which I was originally commissioned to review for Jewish Currents.  But I dawdled until the editorial regime suddenly changed at Jewish Currents, and the new editor was not receptive.  The following is drawn from the publishers’ blurbs: Robert Fine and Philip […]

Dr. Micah Goodman, a liberal Orthodox scholar of Jewish thought (i.e., a believer in religious pluralism), has ventured into Israeli politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with his latest book, Catch-’67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War.  He is also a Research Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, under whose […]

Tel Aviv University emeritus professor of history, Shlomo Sand, mostly specializing in French and intellectual history.  He’s engaged in a virtual second career promoting the notion that Jews are not a historic people and that the current crop of Jews are not substantially descended from the ancient Hebrews of the Biblical era or the Judeans […]