Gaza and the Question of Culpability
Hamas did not force Palestinians to march to the fence. Gaza's desperate situation did.
Read MoreTag Archives: Hamas
Is Ignatz Mouse Jewish? (Is Mickey Palestinian?)
by Marty Roth But the person to really pity (if really pity you must) is Ignatz. Poor villain! All his malevolence turns to beneficence at contact with Krazy’s head. —e e cummings IS IGNATZ MOUSE, the nemesis of Krazy Kat in George Herriman’s classic comic strip, Jewish? And what difference could it make to […]
Read MoreQuick Takes: On Jerusalem, Trump Plays to His Base . . .
WHILE THREATENING PEACE AND UNDERMINING ZIONISM by Ralph Seliger THE PRESIDENT’S DECISION to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is a typical Trump move, pleasing his strongest supporters while doing nothing concretely positive. He’s winning kudos from Evangelical Christians and hard-right Zionists, including, most importantly, Sheldon Adelson, who backed his presidential campaign to the tune […]
Read MoreNir Baram’s Search for an Israeli-Palestinian Solution
by Bennett Muraskin Discussed in this essay: A Land Without Borders: My Journey Around East Jerusalem and the West Bank, by Nir Baram, translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. Text Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, 2017, 284 pages. FOR DECADES, Jewish Currents and others on the left have beat the drum for a two-state solution to the […]
Read MoreProtocols of the Elders of Zion
Znamya (“Banner”), a Russian publication launched by Pavel Krushevan, a far-right, antisemitic journalist, began publishing the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in serial form on this date in 1903, according to Mitchell A. Levin’s website, This Day in Jewish History. A fabrication about an international Jewish plan to weaken the will of gentiles through […]
Read MoreFifty Years, and No End in Sight
HAS ISRAEL EVER TRULY INTENDED TO WITHDRAW FROM THE WEST BANK? by Ron Skolnik From the Summer 2017 issue of Jewish Currents ON THE EVENING of November 4, 1995, I walked home happily to my small Tel Aviv apartment, having just been part of the massive crowd that had come out in support of Prime […]
Read MoreFebruary 12: Ehud Barak
Ehud Barak, Israel’s 10th prime minister (1999-2001) and most highly decorated combat soldier in Israeli history, was born on Kibbutz Mishmar HaSharon on this date in 1942. He was trained in physics, mathematics, and engineering at Hebrew University and Stanford. Barak joined Israel’s armed forces in 1959 and served for thirty-five years, rising to the […]
Read MoreJanuary 14: This Suicide Bomber Was a Mommy
Reem Riyashi, 21, mother of a three-year-old son and eighteen-month-old daughter, became the first woman used by Hamas as a suicide bomber when she blew herself up at Gaza’s Erez crossing, a border checkpoint, on this date in 2004, killing four Israelis and wounding seven others as well as four Palestinians. The IDF reported that […]
Read MoreWhen Does Resistance Become Terrorism?
A PROVOCATIVE CONVERSATION ON PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE by Ron Skolnik from the Summer 2016 issue of Jewish Currents I WAS RECENTLY REMINDED of a conversation I had more than three decades ago, in 1984 or ’85, while doing my annual Israeli army reserve duty. I was stationed in the Lebanese village of Maaroub, with a unit […]
Read MoreJuly 22: The Targeted Assassination
Israel bombed the Gaza City house of Salah Shehade, who led the military wing of Hamas, on this date in 2002, killing Shehade as well as fourteen other people. The attack with a 2,200-lb. bomb wounded more than fifty others and destroyed two houses while partially destroying nine others and damaging twenty more. Shehade, 49, […]
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