The other day, a thoughtful acquaintance, who is to my right politically, asked me a question. He asked what I’d advise Israel to do when faced with thousands of Palestinians, some likely bent on violence, who are trying to storm the fence that separates the Gaza Strip from the rest of Israel. (I say “rest of Israel” because I believe Gaza still remains under Israeli occupation). ...
For more than a century, Palestinians have tried to convince the world (wrongly, in my view) that Zionism is inherently racist. Now they have a powerful new ally: Donald Trump. …
After 9/11, a colleague turned to me and said, “We’re all Israelis now.” Listening to Donald Trump announce that the United States will brazenly violate its commitments under the Iran nuclear deal, I had a similar thought. In the outlooks of their governments, Israel and the United States are now one. Ideologically, it no longer makes sense to speak about “The West.” …
“In our time,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” British colonialism, the Soviet gulag and America’s dropping of an atomic bomb, he argued, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” So how do people defend the indefensible? Through “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” By obscuring the ...
Chuck Schumer is worried about young people. In his speech on Monday at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, he warned that “too many of the younger Americans don’t know the history” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “and as a result they tend to say, well, both sides are to blame.” And so — after a joke about a Mrs. Goldfarb who is sentenced to one ...
Jared Kushner is in the news again. This week, The New York Times reported that, in his role as a White House adviser, he met with financiers who went on to invest in the family real estate business, in which he retains a large stake. Not to be outdone, The Washington Post reported that foreign officials have discussed using Kushner’s financial entanglements, and ignorance of public policy, to win ...
Last week, Isabel Kershner, The New York Times’ estimable Israel correspondent, wrote an article about the Netanyahu government’s decision to either expel Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to third countries or indefinitely lock them up. The article ran under the headline, “Israel Moves to Expel Africans. Critics Say That’s Not Jewish.” …
Since the 1990s, American presidents have provided Israel the military capacity and diplomatic immunity to control millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights. Yet, at the same time, American presidents have insisted that Palestinians deserve those basic rights — that, in the words of George W. Bush, “it is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation.” …
To varying degrees, most of us live in a state of willful blindness. We see horror all around us: people lying half-clothed, unconscious, on the sidewalk; football players who sustain brain damage for our enjoyment; news reports about children dying of hunger. We see these things the way we see the passing landscape. We see them and we go about our day. Then there are ...
On its face, Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday announcing that America would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital seemed entirely reasonable. “Today,” he declared, “We finally acknowledge the obvious. That Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality.” …