Gadi Taub

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 [...]

The future of the state of Israel is once again a topic of heated public debate. For good reasons: The possibility of a nuclear threat from a hostile Iran is one; deadlock in the peace process in the region, and the chance of a gradual shift into chronic civil war between Israelis and Palestinians, is [...]

The idea of a non-Jewish Israel has been circulating for a while. It is generally assumed that Israel would be more democratic if it stops being Jewish. But in order to renounce its Jewish character Israel would have to stop being democratic. It would also become far less hospitable to minorities. Because Israel is Jewish [...]

Here’s a sneak preview of the upcoming Peace Now report on settlement activity in Judea and Samaria (courtesy of Yariv Oppenheimer, head of the organization):      According to the Ministry of Interior by the end of 2006 there were 268,000 settlers in the West Bank, a 5% increase compared to 2005. According to the Central Bureau [...]

Since the idea of a UN mandate in Gaza (see below, May 29th) seems to be defunct after the Hamas take over, the West Bank may serve as a model. Martin Indyk, one of the most sober commentators on the conflict, thinks a UN force in the West Bank is the way out of the [...]

Richard Rorty’s philosophical career is not easy to sum up. Many admired him, many others saw his advocacy of philosophical “light-mindedness” as a corruption of what they held dear. But many who never read him, and many others who didn’t know his name, were actually Rortians. In fact, most of those Americans who see themselves [...]