Why don’t we defend ourselves?
Originally Posted in Abu Yehuda.
Great swaths of land in the Negev desert near the Gaza strip, agricultural land and nature preserves formerly the habitats of numerous endangered plant and animal species, ha...
Israel’s media problem
Published in Abu Yehuda
If endemic irrational hatred of Israel is viewed as a disease, then its primary vector is the Western mainstream media. Although social media have been gaining in importance recently,...
The Devil is in the Implementation
Yossi Klein Halevi is a wonderful writer. I recommend his book Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation to anyone who wants to appreciate the nuances of I...
No, it isn’t Kent State on the Mediterranean*
I talked to an American friend yesterday. She is well-educated and interested in current events, and she was concerned about what was going on at the border with Gaza. She read me an AP news account that was in...
Must all our residents be citizens?
Someone asked me a question on Facebook. Social media demands that all answers be given while standing on one foot, and since I’m not Hillel, I’m going to present my answer here, using both feet.
So here is ...
The Narrative
Maybe arguments are not important. Maybe, as Jonathan Haidt (video, 1 hr. 32 m.) says, logical arguments are window dressing used to justify conclusions forced upon us by deep-seated emotional motivations. Mayb...
The Death Factory
Israel and the Jewish people have no enemy more vile than the PLO and its dominant faction, Fatah.
The PLO was founded in 1964 by the Arab league as a “Palestinian” organization whose goal was the “liberatio...
One reason Americans are often wrong about Jews and Israel
In 2014, the media watchdog organization CAMERA put up a billboard on Times Square accusing the NY Times of “slanting the news.”
Nothing has changed; in fact, today the Times is listing so severely to port t...
Will Israel keep the draft?
The conflict over drafting Haredim has given birth to a coalition crisis that may yet bring about new elections. A good account of the political twists and turns can be found here, if you really want to know th...
Israel’s right of self-defense
When I was in elementary school, I was disciplined for hitting another pupil after he hit me. That I remember the details of the incident clearly 60-odd years later is an indication of how strongly I perceived ...