Gadi Taub

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 […]

The Lebanon war taught Israelis the harsh lesson which Hamas, and a loose constellation of guerilla groups in Gaza, are now reinforcing: that unilateral withdrawal does not ensure peace unless there is some stable sovereign power to which authority can be transferred. But the Lebanon war also pointed the road to a solution. (Read more…) […]

Israel’s friends are not doing it much good by justifying Israel’s settlements in the West Bank. By so doing they are only helping their opponents in identifying Zionism with settlements, and from there the road to delegitimising the right of Jews to self-determination is short: the occupation cannot, and should not, be justified, and if […]

The second installment of Ben-Dror Yemini‘s series on the misrepresentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the world press has appeared. No English translation that I know of yet. But I’ll update if and when. (You can find the Hebrew version here.) This time Yemini has compiled numbers and compared treatment of refugee problems globally, and […]

The dramatic decline in support for Hamas among Palestinians is taken as a good sign by Israel’s government and the American administration. It is, indeed, a good sign, given the fact that the Hamas ideology, is not only violent, but also offers apocalyptic hopes in lieu of political plans But both the Israeli and the […]

On the Jewish New Year’s Eve, Ma’ariv’s senior journalist Ben-Dror Yemini, published the first installment of a three part series about media representation of the Arab-Israeli conflict worldwide. The piece was entitled And the World is Silent. Yemini, a long time leftist, and supporter of Palestinian independence, has nevertheless been outraged, quite rightly, by the […]