A new and insidious myth in now emerging in some of the coverage of the re-launch of direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians: that Israelis are indifferent to peace. Probably the most widely-circulated version of the tale was “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace,” the cover story by Karl Vick in Time magazine on September
To hear some tell it, the resumption of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians means the dawn of hope in the Middle East. Others, including much of the Israeli media, discount any chance of success. The truth appears to lie somewhere in the middle.Why the talks might fail: A peace accord will entail
Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent trip to Greece, reciprocating the visit of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to Israel last month, should have caused some rethinking in Ankara. Even if we take at face value the Israeli and Greek assertions that the meetings were not directed against Turkey, closer strategic cooperation between Israel and Greece will necessarily
We appear to be on the cusp of direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. Years ago, a moment like this would have seemed pregnant with hope and excitement. Today, responses to the news coverage vary between gray and blasé. At this moment it may be worthwhile to recall something of the spirit of
Over the last two weeks a parliamentary drama has been playing out in Israel. MK David Rotem tried to push a law through the Knesset reshaping the way Israel handles conversion to Judaism. Israel Beitenu, his secular, right-wing party, draws support largely from immigrants from the FSU, and, naturally, seeks to further their interests. Among
Even as last week’s Netanyahu-Obama meeting drew international attention, the top story in Israel was the newfound fighting spirit of the family of Gilad Shalit, the soldier who has been held in captivity by Hamas since his kidnapping in 2006. The family led a two-week march across Israel—extensively reported by the media—that ended in front
This week Israel plays a game. Sixty-eight municipalities are joining military and civilian agencies for a massive exercise, a “war game” designed to train the Israeli home front to respond effectively to an attack by hundreds of missiles landing across the country. Israel recently held a conventional military exercise in the North, but this Home
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) voted unanimously last week to invite Israel to join the group, along with Estonia and Slovenia. At a May 27 ceremony the three countries will formally become members of the international economic agency that more or less defines the developed world. To understand the meaning of this
While in the U.S. last week for AJC’s stirring annual meeting in Washington and a series of speaking engagements at AJC offices along the eastern seaboard, I read an eye-opening book, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop with Robert G. Cushing. Bishop is a journalist
Some observers close to the Israeli government are expressing concern over reports of a meeting of former U.S. national security advisors with President Obama at which there was said to have been discussion of a new peace process strategy if Israeli-Palestinian negotiations—still blocked by Ramallah—fail to produce results. Although the Administration has subsequently and repeatedly denied
The U.S. Army gave us the acronym “snafu.” As the Oxford Dictionary explains: “situation normal—all … fouled up,” meaning “a confused or chaotic state; a mess.” The U.S.-Israel relationship appears to be settling dangerously into a semi-permanent snafu. There is open, if officially unacknowledged speculation that Obama seeks to unseat Netanyahu, which would theoretically produce a government
To visit the offices of the Hotline for Migrant Workers is to encounter the enormous vitality of Israeli civil society. HMW, a grassroots organization, was created in 1998 to prevent abuse of migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers in Israel. Entering a nondescript building on Nahalat Binyamin Street in downtown Tel Aviv, you climb the stairs
Media frenzies often divert attention away from substance. So it was last week when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His well-publicized mission was to raise confidence between the parties and launch proximity talks, but the PA and Israel have urgent preoccupations elsewhere. The PA, facing fierce competition from Hamas,
Wars often begin because leaders misread the situation. For example, the First Gulf War, prompted by Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and the Second Lebanon War, sparked by Hezbollah attacks against northern Israel, were launched by authoritarian leaders who miscalculated the response to their aggression, with results that were even more disastrous for their own
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is, at heart, a battle of identities. We are not just two nations competing for land, but, more significantly, two competing narratives of national liberation. That is what makes compromise so excruciating and explains the zero-sum view that so many advocates worldwide take. It also helps explain why this relatively diminutive standoff,
JERUSALEM – Three recent events demonstrate heightened challenges to the European Union: President Obama’s declaration that sanctions against Iran will be tightened “within weeks”; Iran’s unveiling of the newly developed Simorgh missile, a “satellite launch vehicle” that experts say can be turned into an ICBM; and President Obama’s decision not to attend the EU-U.S. summit
JERUSALEM — In the current controversy over the New Israel Fund, no side comes out looking good. Perhaps, then, we should begin our discussion with a play of the theater-of-the-absurd genre. In 1959 Eugène Ionesco published Rhinoceros, a study of the anti-democratic power of conformity. The plot follows a town whose residents are transformed, one after
JERUSALEM – The Federation of American Scientists is an organization concerned with the ethical responsibility of scientists to inform and help shape national discussions of science, technology and government policy. It is endorsed by 84 Nobel Prize laureates. Founded by Manhattan Project researchers after World War II, it runs a program opposing the abuse of
In the midst of so much heartbreaking news out of Haiti, there is modest consolation for Israelis in reports about their country’s relief efforts. The army sent a field hospital. Civil society—including the IsrAID coalition, to which AJC has given $110,000 to date—sent rescue and medical teams. Through this assistance, babies were safely born (one
On January 12, George Baghdadi reported on CBS News: “Syria on Tuesday summoned the highest-ranking American diplomat in Damascus and protested Washington’s ‘unfriendly procedures’ on Syrians wishing to travel to the States, warning it would take reciprocal measures if the move was not annulled.” Think of the apocryphal murderer who kills his parents and asks
Road 443 is an east-west highway that connects Israel’s coastal “Center” with its largest city and capital, Jerusalem. For about thirty kilometers, 443 cuts through a section of the West Bank northwest of Jerusalem, connecting the major town of Modi’in, and also major Palestinian population centers Ramallah and El Bira, to the national highway grid.
The 10th of Tevet: Taking the Long ViewGoing over old clippings of news items from the beginning of the decade, I found a pessimistic evaluation by someone who was a government minister at the time. It claimed that Arafat had a “strategic advantage” in that he did not need to “win” the terror war launched
For some Israeli analysts, new strains in U.S.-Israel relations in 2009 shook confidence in the longstanding alliance. They point to the cumulative effect of several factors: missteps by the adamantly pro-Israel Bush Administration that had the effect of strengthening Hamas and, with the Iraqi decapitation, the Islamic Republic of Iran; the economic crisis with its
In January 2007, Israeli historian Benny Morris published a vision of Iranian nuclear potential that is every Israeli’s nightmare: One bright morning, in five or ten years …the orders will go out and the … missiles will take off for Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military sites, including Israel’s half-dozen air
When we see images of a soldier from something called the “master race” shooting a baby and his buddy killing a helpless young girl, we assume they portray events from the Nazi years, perhaps the Warsaw Ghetto. But the soldiers in the drama shown last week on Turkish state-owned television are Israelis, and the victims
Misunderstandings often reveal more about a society than premeditated public statements. A good example was a Jerusalem Post headline last week that inadvertently cast a spotlight on the profound dilemmas that face Israeli human-rights NGOs.AJC has warm ties with Israel’s watchdog civil-society groups. We are in regular touch with organizations like B’tselem and the Israel Religious Action
In his biting poem “Pink Eyeglasses,” the great Hebrew poet Natan Alterman wrote of the power of illusion to distort even the most honest analysis: “The lens gives the color and the heart follows.” During the Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, all of us—and especially our leaders—need to look through
What a week it was! For the first time in Israel’s history a former prime minister was indicted. Two former ministers began serving prison sentences. And the trial of former president Moshe Katzav finally began. Who can blame the Israeli media for paying most of their attention to the visit of pop megastar Madonna?Israeli newspapers
Dr. Moshe Itzhaki, an old friend, is a soft-spoken former kibbutznik, a farmer and paratrooper who began his university studies in his thirties and is today a respected professor of Hebrew literature. Moisheleh, as he is universally known, is also a poet who makes the Hebrew language sing—lyrically, boisterously, with a delicious earthy complexity that
The popular Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet recently published a pseudo-exposé without factual basis alleging that the IDF killed Palestinians and stole their organs for sale. As I write, the libel still festers, threatening Israeli-Swedish relations.The incident is notable in two respects: the distortion of thinking involved, and its impact on the credibility of Europe, since Sweden currently heads
