Israel

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/16/2023
  

  Israel's Judicial Struggle is Tectonic

  by Michael Oren

  The former Israeli ambassador to the United States writes that massive protests against Netanyahu's judicial reforms will determine whether there is a future for democracy in Israel. 

• 
• SOURCE: Forward
  3/10/2023
  

  I Resigned from the Carter Center over "Apartheid" Charge; I was Wrong

  by Steve Berman

  American supporters of Israel have blamed the former president as a messenger about the consequences of the occupation; it's time to consider the message. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/7/2023
  

  Will the Right Wing Israeli Government Break American Jews' Relationship with Israel?

  Shaul Magid, Distinguished Fellow of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth, argues that the new government's agenda will force American Jews to recognize that Israel has become an illiberal country, while historian Hasia Diner says it has long been so. 

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• 3/5/2023
  

  Youth Failed by Their Leaders: How the Palestinians Lost Their Way

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  Four generations of Palestinian leadership have failed their youth through intransigence and a failure to distinguish between Israel and the occupation. 

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• 2/22/2023
  

  How Israel Lost its Way

  by Alon Ben-Meir

  After Israel has raised several generations as warriors and occupiers, has the nation lost sight of the toll on its own youth and the consequences for peace? 

• 
• SOURCE: Substack
  2/20/2023
  

  Beinart: Some of Carter's Critics Should Apologize While they Can

  by Peter Beinart

  Peter Beinart says that Jimmy Carter's 2007 book "Peace Not Apartheid" had flaws, but many of its harshest critics ignored whether its claims about the Israeli occupation were factual and leaped to insinuation and outright accusation that Carter was motivated by antisemitism. 

• 
• SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
  2/7/2023
  

  Is a Third Intifada Imminent?

  by Daniel Byman

  The second intifada, between 2000 and 2005, ended not with negotiated peace but with an overwhelming application of force by Israel on Gaza and the West Bank. As Israeli politics tilts rightward and abandons the idea of a negotiated settlement, it is unclear what will prevent a new escalation of violence. 

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• SOURCE: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
  1/22/2023
  

  Eric Alterman on the Shifting Debate over Israel-Palestine in America

  The writer discusses his conclusions about the evolution of the debate among American Jews about the nature of their relationship to Israel and the moral status of American policy. 

• 
• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/15/2023
  

  Will the US Build an Embassy on Palestinian Land in Jerusalem?

  by Rashid Khalidi

  As the new ultra-right wing Israeli government prepares to escalate the dispossession of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the United States should not allow the siting of its embassy to give cover to this project. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  1/9/2023
  

  The Demographic Shift Behind Israel's Ascendant Religious Zionists

  by Michael Brenner

  Demographics are pushing Orthodox religious nationalists, who are led by West Bank settlers, to political power that is forcing confrontations over both secularism and the occupation. This bloc is growing rapidly less friendly to compromise with secularists, Arabs, or LGBTQ Israelis.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  1/7/2023
  

  Israel's Ruling Coalition Turns Toward Theocracy

  by Bernard Avishai

  Netanyahu has engineered an alliance among three disparate strains of religious parties and secular Israelis favoring an aggressive nationalism and occupation policy. But the religious parties have broader goals of undermining secular society in Israel. 

• 
• 1/8/2022
  

  Two Unlikely Champions of Fundamentalist Parties Show it's More about Power than Faith

  by Donne Levy

  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power after embracing religious fundamentalist parties in a coalition. Like his friend Donald Trump, he seems an unlikely leader for a faith-based constituency to embrace. 

• 
• SOURCE: Jerusalem Post
  1/4/2023
  

  Can Religious Zionists Reject the Religious Zionist Party?

  by Gil Troy

  Can religious Zionism survive being hijacked by a party of anti-democratic and anti-humanist zealots? One historian of Zionism says he's not on board with the Israeli far right.  

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  1/5/2022
  

  Is Israel Criticism the Reason Harvard Refused "Godfather" of Human Rights

  by Michael Massing

  Kenneth Roth retired from Human Rights Watch after nearly three decades, and expected to move to a fellowship at the Kennedy School. Dean Douglas Elmendorf told him his fellowship was rejected because HRW exhibited "anti-Israel bias." Is the school insufficiently independent of the American foreign policy establishment and its donors? 

• 
• SOURCE: The Nation
  12/21/2022
  

  Will MAGA Be the Last Straw for Conservative Jews' Partnership with the Christian Right?

  by Eric Alterman

  Since the 1970s, an alliance between Christian and Jewish conservatives has been brokered over mutual support for Israel's occupation and settlement of the West Bank. Are changing attitudes toward the occupation among American Jews and the naked antisemitism of the MAGA right breaking the alliance? 

• 
• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/20/2022
  

  Israel's Religious Right Pushes for Restrictive Changes to Law of Return

  As Jews around the world are considering Israel as a refuge from antisemitism, that country's religious fundamentalist parties have the political leverage to decide that many fewer people are Jewish enough to qualify for immigration and citizenship. American Reform Jews are particularly affected.

• 
• SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
  10/13/2022
  

  The Women Who Secured the Balfour Declaration

  by Natalie Livingstone

  Women in the Rothschild family were instrumental in creating support among wealthy British Jews for Zionism, which they had previously rejected out of perceived self-interest and disdain for the Jewish masses.

• 
• SOURCE: National Interest
  9/5/2022
  

  Walter Russell Mead's Contrary View of the Roots of the US-Israel Alliance

  In Mead's account, American Christians, with an affinity for viewing the Old Testament as part of the nation's heritage, not the machinations of modern Jewish organizations, brought American policy to support a Jewish state. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  8/9/2022
  

  Walter Russell Mead: Non-Jewish Interest Groups, not "Israel Lobby" Drive Hawkish US Mideast Policy

  Rejecting the idea of a Jewish-led "Israel Lobby" Mead emphasizes the historical influence of American Christian zionists and militarists in tilting America's mideast policy toward the goals of the Israeli right. 

• 
• SOURCE: Tablet
  6/6/2022
  

  Two Books on Israeli Nationalism Show a Growing Divide on Zionism in America

  by Ari Hoffman

  Books by Omri Boehm and Yossi Shain take diametrically opposed positions on the historical and contemporary merits of Zionism as institutionalized in the Israeli state, and signal the growth of a polarization in the American Jewish community.