israel/palestine

As Jewish institutional support of pro-Israel positions is showing signs of breaking down, it’s an opportunity to take a critical look at a widely-made claim that Jews have a “historical right” to the land of Israel.

What happens in the Middle East isn’t always about us.

I know it sounds strange but it’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. After all these years in the closet there’s hope that the Beinartians and the Lernerites have begun a critical dialogue for Jewish Americans.

And reaction to it.

Links and video.

Operation Pillar of Cloud.

There is no “Jewish vote.” Jews vote. A small number of them vote for Republicans. Most of them vote for Democrats. Every cycle the Republicans try to improve on their last performance, but Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. So Republicans try to draw them in by talking about Israel, an issue very few of them vote on, but an issue that has the added benefit of helping Republicans shore up their evangelical base.

A Republican, not just a Mormon, problem.

A new memoir by Israeli peace activist Miko Peled, the son an honored general, details a far different history from the one most Americans are familiar (or comfortable) with.

Parting Ways is Butler’s attempt to construct a Jewish narrative that coheres with her philosophical and political sensibilities as well as her allegiance to her Jewish heritage and lineage. As a Jew for whom religious practice and the Jewish textual tradition do not constitute her Jewish core, hers is a secular narrative of Jewishness outside the orbit of Zionism. Butler’s concern for Israel is that she believes its present construction is “Jewishly” indefensible (in the terms she develops in her book) and the muscularity with which Zionism is proffered squashes any alternative narrative of diasporic Jewish identity.