Hillel Schenker : Presidential Election 2008
The media was enthused, but ordinary Israelis, cynical about their own political leaders, gave Obama a muted reception. The refrain here is "No, they can't," not "Yes, he can."
Phyllis Bennis : Middle East
Palestinians lament the Israeli-built wall and life under occupation, and fear permanent restricted access to the holy city of Jerusalem.
Nadia Hijab : Presidential Election 2008
Why is Barack Obama courting right-wing groups like AIPAC and steering clear of the American Jewish left and center?
Mohamad Bazzi : Middle East
By conflating Al Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, the President displays his ignorance--and could be laying the groundwork for attacks by Israel on Hamas and Hezbollah.
Akiva Eldar : Middle East
On the sixtieth anniversary of Israel's founding, one of the country's leading journalists reflects on history, the occupation and the duties of conscience.
Neve Gordon
Despite conflict and contradictions, what is precious and beautiful about Israel is its ongoing struggle for social justice.
Saree Makdisi : Occupation & Occupied Territories
The breach in the wall at Rafah dramatized the fact that an imprisoned population is at the point of starvation.
Ben Lynfield : Migration & Immigration
Abandoning Israel's longstanding commitment to those fleeing persecution, the Olmert government is deporting refugees back to Sudan, where they may face torture and death.
To those who follow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict closely, the prospects for a two-state solution have never seemed dimmer. So why does veteran peacenik Uri Avnery remain so hopeful?
Moral mudslinging has stifled debate over the Israel lobby.
Stephen Glain : Alternative & Independent Media
A spirited daily paper is the last remaining defender of Israel's tradition of dissent.
Their numbers are dwindling, they're low on money and face potential violence and certain prosecution. But Israeli anarchists continue to stand with embattled Palestinians.
Naomi Klein : War on Terrorism
Gaza is in chaos, but Israel's economy is booming as high-tech entrepreneurs scramble to meet the post-9/11 world's hunger for spy tools and containment walls.
Eyal Press : Student Movements
What happens when a student magazine committed to fostering dialogue opens its pages to critical views on Israel?
Azmi Bishara, a member of the Knesset, has been charged with treason for speaking out against injustices committed by Israel.
Jen Marlowe : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Dante's circles of hell provide an apt metaphor for the Palestinian experience in Gaza. And it can only get worse.
Alexander Cockburn : Jimmy Carter
The Israel lobby retains its grip inside the Beltway, but it's starting to lose its hold on the broader public debate.
The flap over Jimmy Carter's new book underscores that the Israel lobby in the United States exists to serve only the interests of the Israeli right wing.
Many Israelis and their American allies are sleeping through the rise of the virulently anti-Arab Avigdor Lieberman.
Ben Lynfield : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Many Israelis and their US supporters are sleeping through the rise of the virulently anti-Arab Avigdor Lieberman, seen as a threat to democracy itself.
Alexander Cockburn : Occupation & Occupied Territories
There's no political risk for US media to sound off over genocide in
Darfur, but challenging Israel's shameful seige of Gaza is quite a
different story.
Michael F. Brown : Democratic Party
Jimmy Carter's bold new book on the plight of Palestinians has piqued Congressional Democrats who tailor their views to the Israel lobby.
If Israel is to fulfill the Zionist vision of being a state like any
other, it must take responsibility for the ever-more explosive Middle
East.
The Human Rights Watch reports that were sharply critical of Israel's killing of
civilians in Lebanon represent the latest battle for Jewish hearts
and minds in the ideological war over the Middle East.
Alexander Cockburn : Media Analysis
The Israeli press has criticized the Lebanon disaster from all
political angles. The American press chooses to cheerlead instead,
while liberal Jewry remains silent.
The UN cease-fire in Lebanon demands the impossible: a Lebanese state capable of both disarming Hezbollah and protecting the south from renewed Israeli attacks.
Israel's war with Hezbollah may have strengthened the hand of the
Israeli right, which has forgotten that peace comes only by negotiating
with those you do not trust.
As a tentative ceasefire takes hold between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the world--and the United States in particular--should ponder lessons learned and the price we will pay for our role in the conflict.
Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Toni Morrison and other luminaries call to resist Israel's undeclared political aim: the liquidation of the Palestinian state.
After thirty-one days of war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and more than 1,000 dead, the United Nations has finally passed a cease-fire. Now what?
: Lebanon
The inactivity of the Bush Administration on the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is armchair warfare against the interests of all. For peace, we must press for an immediate cease-fire.
Rapture-ready Christian Zionists have hired their first full-time Washington lobbyist. He's experienced, connected--and, oy vey, he's Jewish.
According to the Western media, most Israelis, including leading peace advocates, support the ongoing war in Lebanon. But Israeli doves are beginning to speak out. Will it make a difference?
Norman Birnbaum : US Foreign Policy
An American Jewish identity that centers on unconditional defense of Israel is not healthy--for either American Jews or Israel.
The Congressional reaction to Hezbollah's attack on Israel and Israel's bombing of Lebanon provide the latest example of the lobby's grip on US foreign policy.
The wounds of the country's long civil war and Israeli occupation were gradually healing. That fragile recovery now lies buried under the rubble of renewed fighting.
The Jewish state's diehard supporters in the White House, Congress and the media seem unable to understand Israel can't bomb its way to security.
Rashid I. Khalidi : Middle East
At best, war in Gaza and Lebanon will weaken pro-American regimes without destroying Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran or Syria. At worst, it will plunge the region into catastrophe.
Bush's Mideast strategy of inaction is a dangerous failure. He must act diplomatically to achieve a cease-fire, prisoner exchange and Israeli withdrawal from Arab lands.
To some observers, the attacks orchestrated by Sheik Sayed Hassan Nasrallah that detonated Israel's ruthless assault on Lebanon look like a death wish--but it's almost impossible to defeat someone who has no fear of death.
The United Nations can be a useful tool in settling the current crisis in Lebanon and Gaza, but only with US support. It is up to President Bush to get on the phone to Ehud Olmert and tell him to stop.
Robert Scheer : George W. Bush
Bush's boorish comments at the G-8 summit revealed more than his ignorance of the Mideast: His policies have made the US a helpless bystander as the entire region burns.
As Lebanon braces for a descent into an all-too-familiar chaos, fear, anger and the quest for comfort have sent Beirutis to the streets in search of bread and someone to blame for destroying their hope for a sane future.
: Lebanon
The spreading violence in Lebanon and Gaza demonstrate that the collective punishment of the Palestinian and Lebanese people is not only inhumane and should be condemned but also leads to more radicalization and to more chaos.
As the founding father of the Zionist right, Vladimir Jabotinsky rejected Diaspora existence. Yet in his 1935 novel The Five he tenderly evoked it, offering a glimpse of something darker.
Israel's plans for a series of farms and wineries designed to draw tourists to the Negev Desert is the latest insult to its marginalized Bedouin population.
Philip Weiss : US Foreign Policy
Criticisms of the Israel lobby have circulated for years, but it took two professors and the Iraq War to inject realist ideas into the debate.
Hasdai Westbrook : Protestantism & Protestants
Traditional bonds between Jews and mainline Christians are strained as
a concern for Palestinian rights spurs churches to consider divesting from
Israeli companies.
Eric Alterman : US Foreign Policy
Analytical weaknesses in a controversial academic paper on the impact of the "Israel lobby" on US Mideast policy hinder its authors' attempt to pierce the wall of ignorance and intimidation erected around the debate.
The recent furor over a scholarly article suggesting that the "Israel lobby" drives US Mideast policy presents an opportunity for vigorous open debate on a volatile subject.
If Israel's Kadima Party prevails at the polls as expected, its
policies will effectively take Israelis several steps backward.
My Name Is Rachel Corrie was a big hit in London, but the New York Theatre Workshop backed off from producing the play. Why is it so hard for Americans to have a healthy debate about Palestinian human rights?
What if the West responded to Hamas's victory not with sanctions but with a commitment to resume negotiations from where they left off in 2000?
Richard Falk : Nuclear Arms & Proliferation
The confrontation with Iran is a wakeup call to states that possess nuclear weapons: In a world of nuclear apartheid, multilateral disarmament is the only course of action that can succeed.
Hillel Schenker : Ariel Sharon
Suddenly, the Sharon era is over. And Sharon's centrist Kadima Party may emerge as the dominant force after the March 28 elections.
Munich is a first-rate spy thriller featuring an assassin who reveals his soul. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain gives two extraordinary actors time and space to develop a rare emotional interplay. Match Point puzzles with a dirty-minded energy. And Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong is true to the Depression-era original.
Hillel Schenker : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
Ordinary Israelis have run out of tears for the former settlers of Gaza and an outbreak of political sanity may be at hand.
Moshe Neeman : Israeli/Palestinian Conflict
The new Ten Commandments for Israel's national policies.
Robert Dreyfuss : US Foreign Policy
Did Ariel Sharon run a covert program to influence the Bush Administration's decision to go to war in Iraq?
Robert Scheer : George W. Bush Administration
With friends like these, Israel doesn't need enemies.
Palestinians are organizing a grassroots, nonviolent resistance to Israel's separation barrier.
Daniel Barenboim : Middle East
Is there any sense in the independence of one people at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other?
This is no time for petty feuds over doctrinal purity, but for organized resistance to the Occupation.
Hillel Schenker : Occupation & Occupied Territories
With the specter of an international boycott looming, Sharon has begun to waver.
Reflections on anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism and the importance of making distinctions.
Jonathan Shainin : Middle East
The Israeli government has long preferred to sweep incidents of refusal under the rug.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin : Judaism & Jews
It is Israel's compensatory response to the truth of Jewish experience.
The more the US sinks into a morass in Iraq, the more the Bush Administration leaps to do Sharon's bidding, the more fierce and wide-ranging the debate is likely to grow.
Arthur Miller : Judaism & Jews
Without it, no state can endure as a representative of the Jewish
nature.
Unwittingly, supporters of the academic boycott against Israeli universities are aiding Likud's attack on academic freedom.
A refusenik explains why he'd rather do hard time than serve in the occupied territories.
Twenty years ago, Lebanese Phalangist militiamen, under the watchful tutelage of the Israeli army, massacred some 1,000-3,000 Palestinians in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila.
Michael Lerner : Judaism & Jews
Some American Jews today feel betrayed by Israeli policies.
Charmaine Seitz : Human Rights
Human rights groups are saying that the evidence they've gathered demands an international hearing.
Christopher Hitchens : Ariel Sharon
It's now a race to see whether Saddam saves Sharon, or Sharon saves Saddam.
Wole Soyinka : Occupation & Occupied Territories
Like the Cyclops in the tale of Ulysses, Israel is striking at its enemy in blind fury.
The Israeli government has chosen its course; it is now up to the public to resist.
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