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Jewishness Is Not a Nationality

On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that implicity defines Jewishness as a racial or national catetory and not as just a religious category. The order further reinforces the Department of Education's power to sanction colleges that receive federal tax dollars if they permit Palestinian solidarity activities. The Obama administration took a similar approach, which raises the question why Trump signed the order at all. The New York Times first reported the story, but it was quickly criticized for misstating the nature of the order. However, the Times was correct in reporting...

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No US-Israel Defense Pact!

One of the most harebrained ideas to come down the pike in recent years is the proposed U.S.-Israel defense pact. The Jerusalem Post reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo "made progress" on finalizing the pact while meeting in Lisbon recently. This is an idea that has absolutely nothing to recommend it. At a time when the U.S. government should be ending its "collective defense arrangements" -- NATO and the other six --  such an arrangement with Israel is an especially bad idea. But it would be just as bad were it the only such...

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TGIF: To Be or Not to Be a Jewish State: That Is the Question

TGIF: To Be or Not to Be a Jewish State: That Is the Question

Israel’s champions owe us an explanation. First, they insist that Israel is and always must be a Jewish state, by which most of them mean not religiously Jewish but of the “Jewish People” everywhere, including Jews who are citizens of other states and not looking for a new country. To be Jewish, according to the prevailing view, it is enough to have a Jewish mother (or to have been converted by an approved Orthodox rabbi). Belief in one supreme creator of the universe, in the Torah as the word of God, and in Jewish ritual need have nothing whatever to do with Jewishness. (We ignore here the...

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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.)

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