Sheldon Richman | The Libertarian Institute

No US-Israel Defense Pact!

by Sheldon Richman | Dec 10, 2019 | Blog, Foreign Policy

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...

No Comment Necessary

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 21, 2019 | Blog

Lions of Liberty Interview

by Sheldon Richman | Nov 1, 2019 | Blog

I was a guest on the Lions of Liberty podcast to talk about Coming to Palestine. You can listen to the interview here.

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

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 25, 2019 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Sheldon Richman, TGIF

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...

Word Order Matters

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 24, 2019 | Blog

What people of good will seek for Israel and Palestine is not just a peace, but a just peace.

Clinton’s Legacy

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 24, 2019 | Blog

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

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 24, 2019 | Blog

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

by Sheldon Richman | Oct 22, 2019 | Blog

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...