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

The real lesson of 9/11 isn’t a story about Islamophobia

One of the strangest aspects of post-9/11 America has been the compulsion of so many to change the narrative about the attacks that took place 20 years ago. Read more

In addressing antisemitism, honesty matters

A couple of years ago after giving a speech, I was confronted with what struck me as a bizarre query during the question-and-answer period. Read more

Why the Crown Heights pogrom still matters

Three decades have passed since the Crown Heights pogrom, and any assessment of the memory of that tragic event must start with an acknowledgment that New York City is a very different place than it was in August 1991. Read more

Has Biden anything to offer Bennett but more trouble?

In theory, the planned meeting this week between Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Joe Biden ought to be exactly what both men need. Read more

Two cranky old Jews symbolize everything that’s wrong with our political culture

Apparently, two elderly, wealthy Jewish men aren’t speaking to each other anymore. Who cares? In theory, no one ought to. But when the pair in question are television comedy star Larry David and former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, and a chance meeting between them results in a public scene involving screaming occurs in a popular spot on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s exactly the sort of thing that does get treated as a very big deal indeed. Read more

Can the West be honest about the Islamist threat?

It was only two months ago that the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, boasted on Twitter about flying a gay pride flag to signal its support for “supporting civil rights of minorities including LGBT persons,” and added the hashtags #Pride 2021 and #PrideMonth. Read more

The bombing of Sbarro’s and why Oslo failed

Next month, Americans will mark the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

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No easy fix for Israel’s gold-medal civil marriage dilemma

It was an epic Olympic Games for Israel. Read more

Will Lapid’s charm offensive work better than Netanyahu’s realpolitik?

Like all new governments determined to show that it is an improvement over its predecessor, the unlikely coalition cobbled together by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid—though formally led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett—is determined to show that it will succeed where former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed. Read more

Ben & Jerry’s distasteful BDS problem

To those who followed the saga of Ben & Jerry’s social-media silence, the outcome was never going to be sweet. Read more

Why is support for ‘freedom of worship for Jews’ on the Temple Mount so controversial?

Maybe it was just the product of the ongoing civil war between the different political parties on the Israeli right. Or maybe it was just time that an Israeli prime minister said something that, in a saner world, wouldn’t be considered controversial. Read more

A year with too much to mourn

It may have been discouraging, but the dismal turnout for a national rally in the U.S. that was supposed to bring Jews together against antisemitism was also an appropriate reminder of the greatest challenge facing them. Read more

The cost of Israel’s partisan games on security

Like so much of what happens in the Knesset, the aftermath of a recent vote on a law that would prevent a possible flood of Palestinian immigrants into Israel was not a very edifying spectacle. Read more

In the face of disaster, the priority is help and prayer, not politics

It has become a trope of American culture that the idea of sending “thoughts and prayers” in response to a catastrophic event has become a term of derision. Read more

Who really cares about the Palestinians?

In the last several weeks, there has been a surge of interest in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Read more

Recovery from Netanyahu withdrawal won’t be easy

If the tone of discourse in the Knesset during the session in which Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and his “government of change” were legally confirmed seemed intemperate and unnecessarily hysterical, it’s hardly surprising. Read more

Will you defend the right of your opponent to denounce you?

It turns out that there is at least one person in Israel who actually believes in freedom of speech. Read more

What can a sceptical world expect from Naftali Bennett?

This isn’t the way he planned on becoming prime minister of Israel. Read more

The growing cost of anti-Israel media bias

For one of The New York Times’ most devoted readers, the front-page spread published on May 28 essentially accusing Israel of murdering Palestinian children was the final straw. Read more

The tragedy of Benjamin Netanyahu

It didn’t have to end this way. In what may be only a matter of days, Benjamin Netanyahu’s unprecedented 12-year-run as prime minister of Israel looks to be coming to an end. Read more

On Emily Wilder, and why no one believes the media

What befell Emily Wilder could not have happened to earlier generations of journalists. Read more

You can’t be ‘even-handed’ about condemning those who hate Israel and Jews

On Thursday, both Democratic and Republican congressional leaders joined with the Anti-Defamation League and the major Jewish religious denominations to hold a Zoom rally against antisemitism. Read more

Left-wing hatred for Israel can’t be detached from antisemitism

Michelle Goldberg is worried. The New York Times columnist has watched as some in the Jewish community and elsewhere have connected the dots between anti-Jewish ideological incitement and antisemitic violence. Read more

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