What people of good will seek for Israel and Palestine is not just a peace, but a just peace.
Word Order Matters
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Clinton’s Legacy
It's bad enough that we are living with H. Clinton's foreign-policy legacy. What's worse is that many people are dying with it.
The Double Essentialism of Zionism
Zionism, the Jewish nationalist philosophy that underlies the state of Israel, entails two kinds of essentialism: Jewishness for Jews and anti-Semitism for gentiles. In other words, no matter how hard they try, Jews cannot stop being Jewish and gentiles cannot stop being anti-Semites. (But see Shlomo Sand's How I Stopped Being a Jew.)
Rights of Return Compared
Israel's defenders often ask how third-generation Palestinians can possibly be recognized as refugees with a right of return to the properties from which the Zionists drove their grandparents in 1947-48. But didn't those Zionists, most of whom had arrived ony three years earlier, claim to be 80th-generation refugees with a right of return to Palestine? (In the latter case, it could not be a real return because their ancient ancestors had not been exiled by the Romans and thus were not a diaspora. Most Jews today are likely the descendants of converts, of which there were many far and wide in...
TGIF: Let’s Make Sure the Nazis Killed in Vain
I don’t know how many times I've heard that if we don’t stand by Israel, the victims of the Nazi Judeocide will have died in vain. I knew something was wrong with that claim, but for the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on it. Now I think I can. The claim is peculiar right off the bat. How would backing an Israeli regime that systematically and indiscriminately oppresses an entire non-European population in the 21st century possibly honor the victims of the Nazis, who were in power in Germany from 1933 to 1945? It makes no sense. But that’s not all. To die in vain means to die in the...
Palestinians’ Living Standard? Don’t Change the Subject!
Opposing Palestinian self-determination because West Bank Arabs have a higher living standard than other Arabs is like opposing the abolition of slavery because, unlike white factory workers, slaves have job security.
What Is Judaism?
From Rabbi Elmer Berger's A Partisan History of Judaism: The Jewish Case against Zionism (1951): Judaism evolved from a primitive tribalism to as noble a spiritual and universal vision as man has ever attained. This fact attests, even without detailed proof, to the truth that "unity" and segregation may have had their partisans but that there must also have been undiscourageable partisans of another kind through the long history of Jews and Judaism. For change and evolution rarely, if ever, are born from uniformity. Uniformity is imposed, as our modern world knows, in order to suffocate...
Is the Bible a Title Deed?
I was asked on Facebook, "What is your response to many Jews and Christians who believe the Bible makes it clear that the land belongs to the Jews?" Here's is my (slightly edited) response: The Bible isn't a history book, and archaeology has not been kind to it. See Spinoza's and Paine's critiques, and more recent work by Rabbi Elmer Berger and Shlomo Sand. If it is, Joshua committed genocide, which can't be grounds for legitimate title. If it is, God threw the Jews out. Where's the Messiah? Most Jews are the descendants of converts who never set foot there. Judaism, which proselytized...
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