Israel 
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SOURCE: CNN
1/12/2021
Israeli Rights Group: Nation Isn't a Democracy but an "Apartheid Regime"
B'Tselem declared that "the traditional view of Israel as a democracy operating side-by-side with a temporary Israeli occupation in the territories 'imposed on some five million Palestinian subjects ... has grown divorced from reality'." The Israeli embassy in London dismissed the finding.
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12/20/2020
Peace is Good. But are More Peace Deals Necessarily Better?
by Catherine Baylin Duryea
The recent normalization of relations between Israel and Morocco extends longstanding covert cooperation between the two nations, but troublingly reflects Mideast politics that are increasingly aimed at isolating Iran. It also includes concessions that contribute to the marginalization of the people of Western Sahara.
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SOURCE: New York Times
12/12/2020
An Epic Israeli TV Drama Exposes War Wounds Old and New
A new Israeli television series represents one of the nation's few high-profile examinations of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and examines the toll of trauma on veterans.
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SOURCE: New York Times
11/28/2020
Israel’s Pick to Head Holocaust Memorial Stirs International Uproar
“You don’t play politics with the Shoah, and this is playing politics with the Shoah,” Professor [Deborah] Lipstadt said. She is one of 750 historians, Jewish studies experts and cultural figures who signed a petition protesting the appointment of Effie Eitam to head Israel's national Holocaust memorial.
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SOURCE: National Security Archive
11/24/2020
Jonathan Pollard: Revisiting a Still Sensitive Case
The National Security Archive is republishing its trove of declassified documents related to Jonathan Pollard, a US Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel in the 1980s. Pollard's parole recently ended.
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SOURCE: Discover
11/29/2020
The Complicated History of Religion and Archaeology
Modern archaeology has largely succeeded in instituting professionalization and historical rigor to the study of sites of theological significance, but the discipline has a long and continuing historical entanglement with efforts to find proof of religious doctrines.
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SOURCE: Forward
11/19/2020
Effi Eitam Leading Yad Vashem Disgraces the Memory of the 6 Million
by Derek Penslar and Susannah Heschel
"The politicization and radicalization of the institution will rob it of its legitimacy. Yad Vashem cannot fulfill its responsibilities with Effi Eitam at its helm."
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SOURCE: Jerusalem Post
11/15/2020
Dozens Of Academics Oppose New Controversial Yad Vashem Chair
Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt is among the academics criticizing the appointment of a right-wing politician to head the Israeli Holocaust memorial and educational center, arguing that his remarks toward Palestinians and Arab Israelis are disqualifying.
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SOURCE: Haaretz
11/8/2020
Revered Polish Jew, Holocaust Survivor Joins Protests Over Top Appointment at Yad Vashem
A prominent Polish Holocaust survivor has objected to the appointment of Effi Eitam, an Israeli politician and former military commander, to chair the directorate of the Holocaust memorial because of inflammatory statements calling for the deportation of Palestinans from the West Bank and calling Arab Israelis a "fifth column."
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11/1/2020
Mythologies Without End: The U.S., Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1917-2020
by Jerome Slater
The author of a new history of the Israel-Palestine conflict argues that a myth of national innocence crafted by Israel and embraced by the United States impedes pragmatic compromise and costs lives through ongoing violence.
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SOURCE: New York Times
8/24/2020
1,100-Year-Old Treasure Is Unearthed by Teenagers in Israel
The discovery offers clues to the relations between different empires that controlled the region centuries ago.
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SOURCE: Salon
8/17/2020
Trump's Dodgy Israel-UAE "Peace Deal" Smells like the Work of Henry Kissinger
by Jim Sleeper
Is the Israel-UAE agreement to open diplomatic relations an effort to marginalize the Palestinian Authority? Jim Sleeper argues it's the sort of thing Henry Kissinger would do.
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7/3/2020
New Novel "The Collaborator" Explores the Moral Ambiguities of a Holocaust Rescuer
by Diane Armstrong
Do we have the right to judge the actions of people in life and death situations? Are we honour-bound to keep promises, no matter to whom they were made, and in what situations? Can a man be a hero and a collaborator?
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SOURCE: The New Yorker
6/29/2020
In Search of King David’s Lost Empire
The evidence of David’s life is sparse. Was he an emperor? A local king? Or, as Biblical archaeologist Israel Finkelstein claims, a Bedouin sheikh?
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7/5/2020
Annexation Will Be the (Formal) Beginning of Apartheid and the End of Zionism
by Andrew Seth Meyer
An American historian and lifelong liberal Zionist concludes that Israel's planned annexation of West Bank territory will force people of conscience to choose between liberal ideals and a form of Zionism harnessed to ethnic nationalism.
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SOURCE: France 24
6/21/2020
Israeli Historian Zeev Sternhell, Advocate for Palestinian Rights, Dies at 85
Hebrew University president Asher Cohen hailed Sternhell, a professor emeritus there who was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for political science in 2008, as "among the most important researchers" to emerge from the institution.
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SOURCE: Haaretz
6/16/2020
Why Israelis Backed the Civil Rights Movement but Fear Black Lives Matter
by Chemi Shalev
After more than 40 years of right-wing rule, Israelis identify and are identified more with ruling whites than with oppressed Blacks.
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6/14/2020
Israel and the Palestinians: Architects of Their Own Destruction
by Alon Ben-Meir
The political positions of Israeli and Palestinian leadership set the region on a path toward more bloodshed.
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5/31/2020
The Decline and Fall of Socialist Zionism (Review)
by Ralph Seliger
A new book examines the diminished influence of left and labor parties in Israeli politics.
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SOURCE: New York Times
5/7/2020
Daniel Pipes Argues Annexing the West Bank Would Hurt Israel
Daniel Pipes, prominent conservative American commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, gives six reasons to believe that taking over Palestinian territory would harm both U.S.-Israel relations and Israel’s status as the Jewish state.
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