Tag: Jewish people
The Israeli Quotes That the Press Got Wrong
In late November, the NPR reporter Leila Fadel interviewed the international-law scholar David Crane about a disquieting subject: potential genocide in Gaza. Crane was uniquely qualified to opine on this fraught topic, having served as the founding chief prosecutor for the UN’s Special Court for Sierra Leone, where he indicted the president of Liberia for war crimes. On air, he explained why he did not think Israel’s actions met the criteria.
“If I was charged with investigating and prosecuting genocide,”
The Decolonization Narrative Is Dangerous and False
Peace in the Israel-Palestine conflict had already been difficult to achieve before Hamas’s barbarous October 7 attack and Israel’s military response. Now it seems almost impossible, but its essence is clearer than ever: Ultimately, a negotiation to establish a safe Israel beside a safe Palestinian state.
Whatever the enormous complexities and challenges of bringing about this future, one truth should be obvious among decent people: killing 1,400 people and kidnapping more than 200, including scores of civilians, was deeply
Hamas’s Genocidal Intentions Were Never a Secret
“Not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it … But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.”
— William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
How many Israelis, or Jews, or anyone else for that matter, have read
Elon Musk’s Latest Target Hits Back
Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have lambasted a Jewish organization that many people are only vaguely aware of: the Anti-Defamation League. The #BanTheADL campaign, started by overt white nationalists and later boosted by Elon Musk himself, accuses the Jewish civil-rights group of seeking to censor the site’s users, intimidate its advertisers, and generally abrogate American freedoms in service of a sinister liberal agenda.
I’m pretty familiar with
Saving Israeli Democracy – The Atlantic
This past summer, I marked a personal milestone: 40 years since moving to Israel.
The summer of 1982 was one of the lowest points in Israeli history. All of the ambivalence over Israel that would divide the Jewish people in the coming decades began to coalesce then, when Israel was fighting a war in Lebanon that large parts of the Israeli public regarded as unnecessary and deceitful.
I had joined an Israel that was, for the first time,
10 Readers on Opposing Anti-Semitism
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked readers, “What is the best response to anti-Semitism in America?”
Yosef responded with acid observations about the type of anti-Semitism that prompts the most media coverage:
I find it ironic that those who are the most
How to Misunderstand the Israeli Palestinian Conflict
In the imagination of the Christian West, Jews have been forced to fill every role. For 2,000 years, they have been seen as the ultimate shape-shifters: craven, feeble, abject, weak, and humiliated, but also powerful, conspiratorial, and demonic. They are the prime, indeed fatal, danger to the societies in which they live: arch-capitalists and arch-revolutionaries. Jews are a symbol, a metaphor, an essence. So it should come as no surprise that the state of the Jewish people, where almost
Jeffrey Goldberg and Nancy Pelosi Q&A
Nancy Pelosi is juggling a series of looming deadlines. House Democrats must avoid a government shutdown and federal default, and they need to reach a consensus on advancing President Biden’s agenda through two different bills. This week, Pelosi announced that she would move to vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill on Thursday, even as progressives vowed not to support it unless a $3.5 trillion spending bill also passes. But despite the bind that Democrats are in, the House Speaker