A bad comparison

By Ben Sales October 14, 2010

As I said in the post I wrote about a half-hour ago, I support the right of American Jews to critique and comment on events in Israel. I do not, however, support exaggerated, disrespectful and trivializing statements like this one, which appeared in a recent column by Julie Weiner in the Jewish Week: With the…

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The Reading List: Israelis love Palestinian Beer, fear Palestinians?

By Ben Sales October 7, 2010

It’s possible: Reportedly, Israelis are making their way to the Palestinian Oktoberfest in the Christian town of Taybeh… [Forward Schmooze] And meanwhile, the Israeli government is advancing a bill requiring all Palestinian-Israelis to take a loyalty oath to the state. The shandas for the goyim never stop… [YNet] As long as we’re on the topic…

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More Buzz on BDS

By Ben Sales October 5, 2010

In case you’ve missed one of the hot topics of the Jewish media this year, Members of the Tribe have their panties in a bunch over the slowly growing BDS movement in the US and worldwide, which urges universities to divest from, boycott and sanction companies that do business in the West Bank and Gaza….

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No Surprise

By admin October 4, 2010

This is a guest post by Moriel Rothman, a senior at Middlebury College and the president of J Street U. The Israeli government did not renew the ten-month settlement freeze that ended on Sunday, so settlement construction restarted. No surprise. Netanyahu would have displayed courage and conviction by renewing the freeze, given his hawkish history…

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The Reading List: Do Israelis need peace? Do they want it?

By Ben Sales September 7, 2010

Direct talks haven’t failed yet and the two sides have even set out a schedule for negotiations, so as our cautious optimism continues to grow, here’s some insight into the importance of peace for Israelis, and some discouraging thoughts on whether they actually care about a final settlement: Hebrew U. Professor Gadi Taub says that…

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The Reading List: Sunday Brunch–Israel and Palestine, talking again?

By Ben Sales August 22, 2010

And they’re off. For the first time since the 2007 Annapolis Conference, the US is restarting direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This comes after numerous strains in the US-Israel relationship (Settlement Freeze, East Jerusalem, Flotilla, etc.), months of “proximity talks” wherein the US met separately with the Izzies and Pallies to convince them…

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Israel is Confusing

By Ben Sales August 11, 2010

This article was edited on Aug. 12 to reflect a correction: the Israel Land Authority and the Israeli Police–not the Israeli Army–were responsible for the demolition of the Bedouin village. I’m not an expert on domestic security. Unlike my Israeli friends, I’ve never served one day in combat nor toted an M-16, so I can’t…

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The New One-State Solution

By Ben Sales August 5, 2010

Those gosh-darn liberal, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, Palestinian-loving Likkudniks. In a bizarre turn of events, members of the Israeli right-wing are now endorsing an answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was once the purview of the Israeli far left and the intellectual circles of Europe and the US: the one-state solution. An article in the JTA reported today that Knesset…

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Hip-Hop in Palestine

By Carly Silver July 15, 2010

For every critic who disparages hip-hop as being all about “booty-shaking” and liquor, there’s a rapper who defies that stereotype by putting out “conscious rap.” This subcategory of the genre often deals with real life problems that the artist faces, everyday dilemmas that are problems common to the artist’s listeners. As an area with its…

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Who Speaks for the Irvine MSU?

By eweiss June 17, 2010

The college campus has always been a place for heated debates, but has it gone too far? When protesters from the UC-Irvine Muslim Student Union shouted down Ambassador Michael Oren, the school came under fire for allowing students to overstep their bounds as activists.   Freedom of speech is important but the event was a black…

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J Street U: A plea from a mabat chitzoni

By admin June 8, 2010

This post is by Moriel Rothman and originally appeared on J Street U‘s site. There exists in Israel a powerful fear. It’s a legitimate fear, the traumatic societal residue of exploded buses and falling rockets, hitting Israel against the backdrop of the Iranian threat. But this fear has grown and spread, manipulated by leaders whose…

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WTF, Helen Thomas?

By Ben Sales June 7, 2010

Unless we’re seeking an easy target for righteous indignation, we tend to ignore the mass of anti-Semitic crackpots on the internet. It’s another thing, though, when a respected journalist who’s been covering the Oval Office for half a century tells all the Jews to “get the hell out of Palestine,” as former Hearst columnist Helen Thomas…

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Evaluating exceptionalism: unfounded and counterproductive

By Harpo Jaeger May 17, 2010

Let me first thank Evan Krasner for responding to my critique of his original post.  I appreciate his choice to continue the conversation beyond a simple point-counterpoint, and I’ve learned a lot already. Evan clarifies something regarding the debate at his school that I actually didn’t understand, which I’m grateful for. The debate’s original format…

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J Street U: Jerusalem and Gaza: What Could and Should Happen

By admin May 7, 2010

by Moriel Rothman, Middlebury College George Mitchell is now traveling from Ramallah to Jerusalem as the “proximity talks” resume and President Obama, riding his health care reform wave, seems to be putting a significant amount of weight behind these efforts to get the peace process moving again. The situation remains fragile but there is a…

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Israeli Apartheid Week: Part of the Problem

By Ben Sales March 8, 2010

The Israeli occupation of the West Bank is a problem we cannot ignore. Sam Melamed agrees with me. He also says that Israel isn’t an apartheid state: on that we agree as well. Where we differ is in how we choose to approach Israeli Apartheid Week, which purports to strive to bring peace to the Palestinians…

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