Issue: Liberal ZionismRSS feed

Before returning home to an American Jewish community reeling from the mass murder in Pittsburgh, the General Assembly of Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) — known as the GA and usually held in the United States — met for three days in Tel Aviv.  The Times of Israel article, “Diaspora activists protest at GA to […]

The initial Oslo agreement was famously signed on the White House Lawn 25 years ago, on Sept. 13, 1993.  Originally, I was intending to write about a conference I attended at New York University on March 25th (“Oslo: 25 Years Later“), but was waiting until this September’s anniversary (forgive my tardiness). An alternative title for this post could be […]

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 […]

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. […]