Drawing the wrong conclusions from a Western Wall outrage

If anyone was looking to create an incident whose principal aim was to help alienate more Jews from Israel, the attack on bar mitzvah ceremonies being held at the egalitarian prayer area at Jerusalem’s Western Wall (Kotel) certainly fit the bill. Read more

Biden will do everything he can to help Lapid

The latest developments in Israeli politics provided President Joe Biden with a good excuse to postpone his visit to Israel next month. Read more

The UN’s antisemitism problem won’t be solved by ignoring it

For decades, supporters of Israel have debated what to do about the United Nations. Read more

Prioritise the defense of living Jews while honouring the six million

As Jews around the world commemorate the Holocaust at annual Yom Hashoah ceremonies, the topic on the minds of many of those present will be the dwindling number of survivors present. Read more

Freedom isn’t possible without a nation

It’s the most popular Jewish holiday of the year. Though the fastest-growing and perhaps soon to be the largest sector of American Jewry is the one demographers call “Jews of no religion,” Passover is still the one holiday that is widely observed. Read more

Don’t reward Palestinians for a new wave of terror

After a week of terror attacks that took the lives of 11 people, Israelis are wondering whether they are on the brink of a third intifada. Read more

Must Bennett wave the white flag on a new Iran deal?

As far as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is concerned, there’s no point in getting into a fight you can’t win. Read more

Why does the world care what Israel does about Ukraine?

It has long been axiomatic that Israel—a tiny country whose people comprise a tenth of a percent of the world’s population and whose landmass is an exponentially smaller fraction of a percent of the planet’s landmass—gets the sort of media attention that would be appropriate for one of the largest nations. Read more

Why we should care about the fate of Ukraine

It’s difficult to know where exactly the crisis over a potential Russian invasion of Ukraine will end. Read more

The ‘genocide Olympics’ gives the lie to human-rights rhetoric

On his Facebook page last week, Elisha Wiesel—the son of the late Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel—had a poignant accusation for the world, and especially for those who revered the lessons his father tried to impart about the importance of speaking up against atrocities and totalitarian regimes. Read more

Why the Amnesty ‘apartheid’ smear of Israel can’t be ignored

Say this for Amnesty International, its outrageous report alleging that Israel is an “apartheid state” has brought nearly all of the Jewish world together to condemn the organization. Read more

The Holocaust Remembrance Day rule that proves everyone loves dead Jews

It was a great day for Israeli diplomacy. For the first time, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution sponsored by the Jewish state and it received nearly universal support. Read more

Plea bargains should not be for prime ministers

It’s the sort of story that makes you wonder about who is doing the leaking and why. Read more

Politics and combating antisemitism don’t mix

At a time when antisemitism is on the rise around the globe, the office of the U.S. State Department’s Special Envoy for Combating and Monitoring Antisemitism ought to be filled. Read more

Harry Potter and the search for fake antisemitism

Jon Stewart tells us he was just kidding. The former star of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” who now has a popular podcast, is involved in entertainment projects as well as supporting various philanthropic causes. Read more

Archbishop Tutu and the disturbing power of intersectionality

Desmond Tutu will primarily be remembered by posterity for his role as a leader in the struggle against South African apartheid. Read more

The non-Orthodox get another lesson in Israeli electoral maths

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid may have put together a coalition without any ultra-Orthodox religious parties earlier this year, but they still fear the power of the haredim and their allies. Read more

Why the double standard on West Bank violence?

To the casual observer of news from the Middle East, it would appear that the biggest story coming out of Israel lately is what some outlets are describing as a surge in settler violence against Palestinians. Read more

Iran: A test of Biden’s strategic vision and character

For Biden administration officials, their inability to achieve their top foreign-policy priority is both frustrating and puzzling. Read more

Biden gives a clinic on how not to negotiate with Iran

It’s hard not to sympathize a bit with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his coalition partner Foreign Minister Yair Lapid. Read more

Hypocritical Israeli coalition politics get ugly

For some observers of the Israeli political scene, there’s only one thing that matters. Read more

The point of a case that helped start a war is to ensure unending conflict

On the 104th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, four Palestinian families, acting under pressure from both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, reminded us why the conflict between Jews and Arabs has never been resolved in all these years. Read more

Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between Biden and Israel?

As far as Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid are concerned, this week has brought a perfect storm of circumstances that threaten to complicate their hopes for a better relationship with the United States. Read more

The ‘human rights’ scam at the heart of the NGO controversy

To listen to the U.S. State Department and many in the international human-rights community, Israel has done it again. Read more

Biden Palestinian consulate move will be Bennett’s toughest test

Over the course of its first nine months in office, the Biden administration has had a lot of trouble getting out of its own way on just about every conceivable issue, be it domestic or foreign. Yet one of the few areas in which President Joe Biden hasn’t so far either screwed things up and/or appreciably worsened the situation is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Read more

Israel can’t ignore China’s threat to the free world

Any time Israel has reason to doubt the reliability of America’s friendship, some in the Jewish state start thinking about the need to re-evaluate its attitude towards the world. Read more

BDS proves once again that it’s all about the antisemitism

Irish novelist Sally Rooney thinks that she’s an advocate for human rights, and that prejudice and hate have nothing to do with her work or her various political stands. Read more

Is it ever OK to praise the ‘truth’ of an antisemitic blood libel?

Does it matter if politicians let lies told by people they meet publicly go unanswered? That’s the question that many in the Jewish community are asking this week in the wake of an incident this week involving Vice President Kamala Harris. Read more

A cautionary tale about Arab-Israeli normalization

Those picking up The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 24 got some good news about the cause of peace in the Middle East. Read more

The triumph and tragedy of Jewish self-liberation

When the leading scholar of Jewish literature of our time chooses to write a memoir of her career, it is hardly a surprise that its pages are filled with the names of the great writers she has encountered and studied. Ruth Wisse is currently a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund, but prior to that, she helped found the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University in Montreal and then became Professor of Yiddish and Comparative Literature at Harvard University. Read more

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