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Thomas G. Mitchell is an independent scholar with a doctorate in international relations from the University of Southern California and an undergraduate degree from Hebrew University.  He has published a number of articles and books comparing the politics of “military politicians” and (where relevant) the peace processes in Northern Ireland, South Africa and Israel/Palestine.  (He […]

As a perk for signing up for at least one session of this year’s PPI Digital Israel Symposium, I watched “The Tinderbox“ by an English-Jewish filmmaker named Gillian Mosely.  She tried to show “both sides” of the conflict, but what she really did was to mostly present hardline Israeli views alongside understandable grievances from a number of […]

Todd Gitlin and Ralph Seliger share their reflections on Peter Beinart’s July 9th Zoom interview with Omar Barghouti, founder of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel.  First, here’s an expanded version of how Seliger initiated the discussion: Barghouti is more rigid in his extreme pronouncements than I thought he’d be, and Beinart barely […]

Nathan Thrall (pictured) is a gifted writer who, unfortunately, embraces extremist views. While his NY Review of Books article “A Day in the Life of Abed Salama,” provides a window into Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights, his baseless allegations against liberal Zionism must not go unanswered. To begin with, a couple of problematic quotes […]

Third Narrative colleague, Prof. Steven Lubet of Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, has shared the following with us: Jonathan Zasloff and I have an essay at Haaretz.com explaining why the “settler colonial” trope is tendentious and wrong, even though it has become routine in academia and has increasingly shown up in the mainstream media. You […]

What follows is condensed from a review article in the British online journal Fathom of Cary Nelson’s “Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities”:  . . . .  The book opens with an account of violent attacks on two senior academics in different Palestinian universities. One of these academics took some students to […]

I always wince at Israel’s response to attacks from Gaza, but it’s important to note that the hostilities were initiated by Hamas [photo of dueling rockets and missiles — Anas Baba/AFP].  Israel did make some effort to limit civilian casualties (calling people to get out of targeted buildings), yet I wish that Israel would have […]