Gadi Taub

The Settlers and the Struggle Over the Meaning of Zionism, by Gadi Taub is now out with Yale University Press. “Anyone who has been concerned or angered by the debate over the future of liberal Zionism… should hurry to read The Settlers.”  Adam Kirsch, Tablet. (Read more…) </p>

The Israeli press, as well as the Israeli public, are not impressed by the opening of direct negotiations slated for next week. It hardly makes any headlines here. And rightly so. The left tells us Netanyahu will refuse any reasonable peace deal, which is true. The right tells us the Palestinians will refuse any reasonable […]

A people that has already achieved self-determination, that lives in a state which expresses its identity, finds it difficult sometimes to remember what it is like to live without such a privilege. It finds it hard to remember how relevant this right, which is essentially collective, is to private life. Here is a reminder, from […]

There once was a very successful campaign in Israel for road safety. Its slogan was, “On the road, don’t be right, be smart.” The day after the flotilla raid last week, more than one pundit in the Israeli press brought up the slogan. We’re right, they said, but why can’t we also be smart? The […]

“The “one state” under discussion would be a state with a solid Arab-Muslim majority (which would quickly be created by taking advantage of the right of return) in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. To believe that this state would really be binational you have to assume that the Arab-Palestinian people would agree, over the […]

When David Ben-Gurion declared, 61 years ago, that “This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State,” the vast majority of those who viewed themselves as enlightened, progressive, peace-seeking, and committed to human rights wholeheartedly agreed with him. […]

A (short of perfect) translation into English of the piece “War Crimes and Propaganda” can be found here. Written by Ma’ariv’s Ben-Dror Yemini, it made quite a splash in Israel.  Update, April 29, 2009: You may want take a look at this analysis of the numbers of casualties conducted by the IDC, and based exlusively on Palestinian […]

If the rockets aren’t stopped, there would be no way to move out of the West Bank. We had better get used to thinking about the conflict in new terms: Palestinian reluctance has been thwarting partition for a decade and a half, and when this campaign is over, unilateralism may again be the order of […]

To Israelis, right or left, it is clear that a constant barrage of rockets, aimed at Israel’s civilian population cannot be tolerated. This is not a matter of political opinion, nor is it unique to Israel. It is just that Israelis were actually slow to come to that conclusion.  Imagine 12,000 rockets coming down on […]

Recently the content of the British UCU list-serve have been made public, exposing the tactics and arguments of the pro-boycott crowd. Since an outsider can’t participate (the list administrator has in fact silenced some of the anti-boycotters within the union by denying them access to the list), I couldn’t get these comments in, but they […]