The Magnes Zionist

Most academics share a loyalty to the cherished ideals of their profession, including the ideals of  academic freedom and opposition to acad...

When I was growing up in the late fifties and  early sixties, my best friend’s mother was an outspoken Jewish liberal who embraced every pro...

“Even if one grants that the University of Illinois acted wrongly in the case of Stephen Salaita, the tweets themselves should be considere...

Since Corey Robin has done such a fine job of reporting and commenting on the Steven Salaita affair (Prof. Salaita’s job offer was revoked ...

Do you think that Hamas celebrates death, intends to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible, deliberately fires rockets from populated a...

We are Romans, mourning for the destruction of the Temple. We are Romans, born of a great civilization with a noble destiny. We rain havo...

Classical Zionism argued that the loss of political sovereignty involved the loss of Jewish political power, and hence the loss of Jewish po...

As the extent of the brutal and inhuman bombing of Gaza becomes known, it is hard for Jews who consider themselves relatively decent not to ...

I was sent today a blog post by a self-described “progressive” rabbi entitled, “ I’m Done Apologizing for Israel .” After repeating the stan...

The beginning of the current round of hostilities should be dated from Israeli actions in a Gaza tunnel that resulted in the deaths of six H...

The nightmare returns. It starts with Israelis killing Palestinians, Palestinians killing Israelis, whomever.  Israel decides that it “has t...

Moral chauvinism is the view that a certain people is morally superior to another. It’s hard to find peoples or nations that aren’t afflicte...

In the preceding post I spoke about Israeli religious Zionism today. I did not mean to say that all religious Zionists in Israel adopt the m...

[Update: This post, written out of the pain I felt last week, gave the impression that all religious Zionists range from enlightened colonia...

There is a rule in movement politics: Your greatest rival is the one closest to you ideologically. Supporters of the global BDS movement, t...

Dear Shahar and Ruth, Thank you for answering my call to respond. We clearly disagree over principles and tactics. On principles, I have m...

With summer break upon us, I hope to post more.  At the end of my previous post, criticizing supporters of J Street U at U Wash for voting ...

Liberal Zionists have always been caught between the rock of criticizing Zionist injustice towards the native Palestinians and the hard plac...

Some of the initial comments on the post below, in which I envisioned a two-state solution compatible with the three calls of the global BDS...

What is the genius of the three calls of the global BDS movement, endorsed in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations? Very simple: the...

It started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Or as the Turks used to say (and Israelis still say), “The mountain gave birth to a mouse.”...