Issue: Israel / PalestineRSS feed

I’m a co-author of the recent Alliance for Academic Freedom critique of the “Anti-Semitism Awareness Act,” and originally was the lawyer who was the lead drafter of the definition of anti-Semitism that would be codified into law should the ASAA be passed.  But I oppose the application of this definition in the proposed legislation.  This is from my 2016 […]

The following is a somewhat shortened version of an article distributed by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Trump can build trust and cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians — if he wants,” co-authored in our respective roles as president and advocacy chair of Ameinu: Given the current climate of mistrust and despair, it’s hard to believe that […]

This post would have been more timely if written last year in response to Stephen Shalom’s article, “Looking Back at the June 1967 Middle East War,” in the summer 2017 issue of New Politics; but it’s still appropriate a year later for the 51st anniversary of the Six Day War (June 5-10, 1967).  It reminds […]

Last week, The Third Narrative online community continued to discuss and debate the recent bloodshed along the Gaza/Israel border.  In part, this took the form of dueling references to articles.  It began with a link to Lisa Goldman’s moral indictment in The Forward entitled “The Racism of Blaming Palestinians for Their Own Deaths.” One response […]

The detail in Peter Beinart’s analysis of how grim things are in Gaza, and how Israel could reasonably ease up to make some things better, is of great value (“American Jews Have Abandoned Gaza — And the Truth“).  Considering what Hamas is like and much Palestinian opinion and behavior, however, it’s hard for most Israelis […]

Brendan O’Neill’s “Why Do You Hate Israel?,” published in April in the British online journal SPIKED, poses a question that has troubled both those who identify with the international left and those who do not.  Why is Israel targeted for special criticism on human rights and anti-imperialist grounds when so many other nations with worse […]

This should be entirely a good news story for lovers of Israel; sadly, it cannot be.  Two days after Israel’s Netta Barzilai’s first-place finish in the Eurovision songfest, there’s the double whammy of the worst day of carnage at the Gaza-Israel border, as oblivious Israelis and Americans celebrate the official transfer of the US embassy […]