Issue: Liberal ZionismRSS feed

In discussing the new Jewish Nation-State Law, Third Narrative participants have generally expressed strong sympathy for 180 prominent Israeli artists, writers and intellectuals who have signed a letter calling for the cancellation of the recently passed basic law.  (Novelists David Grossman and Amos Oz, pictured above, are among them.)  In a substantive sense, the law […]

The following is excerpted and condensed from a feisty opinion piece in The Forward, “The Loneliness of the Liberal Zionist,” by Jarrod Tanny, an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington: . . .  To be a liberal Zionist usually means supporting a two-state solution based on the Oslo Accords, so that […]

Seventy years after Israel’s founding, the Knesset has just narrowly passed a new basic law (having constitutional authority) outlining in symbolic terms how Israel is the “Nation State of the Jewish People.”  Arab Members of Knesset loudly proclaimed their outrage.   Liberal-minded defenders of Israel have long referred to this section of its 1948 Declaration of […]

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 […]

This statement by the executive committee of the Alliance for Academic Freedom (an affiliate of The Third Narrative) protests the decision of Israel’s Science & Technology Minister Ofir Akunis to block the appointment of a top brain researcher, Dr. Yael Amitai, to an international scientific committee because she once signed a petition supporting the right of […]

Ameinu and 13 other liberal American-Jewish organizations* have addressed the following letter to Isaac Herzog, the outgoing Leader of the Opposition in the Knesset, soon to become the new chairperson of the Jewish Agency for Israel: We write to express our strong concerns about the Nation-State Bill, which would enshrine discrimination into Israel’s basic laws. […]

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 […]