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Analysis

For the Biden Administration, There Are No Red Lines On Israel

At the J Street Conference this past weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a speech fit for AIPAC.

Peter Beinart
Review
The Prophet with Eyes
In Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, based on the real life of a self-proclaimed Jewish messiah in 18th-century Poland, theological energy competes with the liberal novel’s finely wrought machinery.
Raphael Magarik
Newsletter
Black Hebrew Israelites in the Spotlight
The journalist Sam Kestenbaum on the history of the religious tradition embraced by Kyrie Irving and Kanye West.
Mari Cohen
Fiction
Nectarines
“When we asked my grandfather what had happened, he spat out that the person we’d just met was not Andrea Perlitzer. Not his Andrea Perlitzer.”
Joseph Eichner
Art
Under the Hood
A sanitized Philip Guston retrospective tries so hard not to offend that it skirts around the most interesting aspect of Guston’s work: his meditations on the American Jewish relationship to anti-Black violence.
Zoé Samudzi
Art Reportage
Faces of Flight
Ukrainian refugees in Israel cannot be reduced to any single narrative.
Anna Lukashevsky
Analysis
Israel’s Ascendant Far Right Can’t Be Understood by Analogy
Peter Beinart
Essay
Point of No Return
Palestinians cannot turn back the hands of time. But we might still imagine a world beyond exile.
Dylan Saba
Essay
Understanding Apartheid
Embracing a radical critique of Israeli apartheid is a precondition for bringing it to a just end.
Noura Erakat and John Reynolds
Poetry
Hinotama
“The women were coyotes / in the early hours of night // blood already forming / on their teeth”
Brandon Shimoda
Review
Attention Must Be Paid
Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt expects us to shed fresh tears at a worn out conclusion.
Alisa Solomon
From the Newsletter
What the FBI’s Investigation of Shireen Abu Akleh’s Killing Won’t Resolve
The probe is the first by a US agency into the death of the Palestinian American journalist.
Alex Kane
“Twitter Has Been a Lifeline”
Elon Musk’s takeover of the site could destroy a valuable avenue for Palestinian activism.
Mari Cohen
AIPAC Spent Big to Defeat Progressives This Election Cycle
The lobbying group’s $28.5 million blitz could make Democrats think twice about criticizing Israel.
Alex Kane
Four Takeaways From the 2022 Midterms
What do election results mean for Israel/Palestine policy, youth politics, policing, and reproductive justice?
Alex Kane, Matthew Miles Goodrich, Akela Lacy, and Amy Littlefield
Current Issue Summer 2022
Table of Contents Buy
Editor’s Picks
  1. 1
    Playing Jewish
  2. 2
    More Life
  3. 3
    Bela’s Pilgrim
  4. 4
    Terms of Entry
  5. 5
    Deborah Lipstadt vs. “The Oldest Hatred”
  6. 6
    Revisiting Recitatif
  7. 7
    The Passion of 964 Park Place
  8. 8
    World War II Revisionism at the Jewish Museum
  9. 9
    The Many Oblivions of Babi Yar
  10. 10
    Eric Adams’s Moral Panics
Responsa
Beyond Grievance
Though it may be a potent political tool, grievance can also maintain our investment in our own oppression.
Arielle Angel
Justice You Shall Pursue
The religious tenor of public mourning for RBG reveals a conflation of Jewishness with American liberalism, which forecloses the possibility of reckoning with either.
The Editors
How Not to Fight Antisemitism
By appropriating the right’s strategy on antisemitism, the Jewish left has trapped itself in an empty discourse—and a counterproductive pose of victimhood.
The Editors
Podcast / On The Nose
On the Nose, A Jewish Currents Podcast
On the Nose is our biweekly podcast. The editorial staff discusses the politics, culture, and questions that animate today’s Jewish left.
Listen Now
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Report
Activestills
Family of Palestinian Lawyer Imprisoned by Israel Brace for His Deportation to France
Photographer:

Oren Ziv/Activestills
Denise Guidoux (left), the mother of French Palestinian lawyer Salah Hammouri, gives a press conference with Hammouri’s attorney, Leah Tsemel, in Jerusalem on December 2nd. The previous day, Israel's interior minister announced that Hamouri, who has been detained without charge... more
Report
The Political Unconscious
Is psychoanalysis in Israel/Palestine doomed to reinforce the dynamics of the occupation?
Eta Demby
Analysis
Progressive Groups Need a New Approach to Fighting AIPAC
Peter Beinart

Letters from Our Readers

On “In Internal Memo, American Jewish Committee Blasts Op-Ed on ‘Jewish-Free Zones’ at Berkeley Law”
Your article about the University of California Berkeley School of Law erroneously states that Kenneth Marcus “pioneered” the “strategy” of filing civil rights complaints using Title VI of the Civil... more
Susan B. Tuchman
New York, New York
On “The Mapping Project” Podcast
The June 30th podcast episode raised concerns about The Mapping Project—an anonymous activist effort aiming to document, in their words, "local [Massachusetts] institutional support for the colonization of Palestine and... more
Brendan O'Connor
Northampton, Massachusetts
Essay

An Open Letter to American-Jewish Intellectuals

In an unpublished 1989 letter, Palestinian American scholar Edward Said calls on his Jewish counterparts to take a stance against Israel’s abuses of Palestinians.

Edward W. Said Introduced by Nubar Hovsepian and Peter Beinart