Is there a way back from a broken political culture?

Many Americans are anticipating a return to normalcy once the votes have been counted and the presidential election determined. Read more

A conformist media is no friend to freedom

He’s exactly the sort of person conservatives and some of Israel’s most ardent supporters despised. Yet today he’s being lionized by supporters of the most pro-Israel president in history and attacked by left-wingers who once idolized him. Read more

Will Trump’s pro-Israel moves stand the test of time?

For President Donald Trump’s Jewish supporters, these last moves are just the icing on the cake. Read more

When journalists become cheerleaders, it usually ends badly

According to The Times of Israel, I misrepresented Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s feelings about Israel. Read more

Trump’s inappropriate question still requires an answer

It was one of those moments that summed up so much of both the good and the bad of the Donald Trump presidency. Read more

Can one criticize George Soros without being an anti-Semite?

It happened again last weekend. Someone said the word “Soros” and triggered an avalanche of criticism from much of the Jewish world about encouraging antisemitism. But is it fair to claim that every such mention is proof of Jew-hatred? Read more

Why Israel chose to aid an ailing enemy

It’s the kind of story that drives a lot of friends of Israel nuts. One of its chief opponents, Palestinian Liberation Organization senior leader Saeb Erekat recently fell ill with COVID-19. Read more

Dumbing down the ‘Jewish Nobel Prize’

Did the Jewish people really need their own Nobel Prize? To the three wealthy Russian Jewish business “oligarchs” who endowed the Genesis Prize with $50 million in contributions, the answer was “yes.” Read more

Two different Jewish tribes choose different candidates

Among the least surprising poll numbers to be published recently were the results of the Pew Research Center survey that reports a sizable 70% of American Jews say they are voting for former Vice President Joe Biden, while 27% are planning to cast their ballots to re-elect President Donald Trump. Read more

Ban Holocaust denial? Yes. Political censorship? No.

The applause was nearly universal. After a determined campaign on the part of the Anti-Defamation League and a broad coalition of Jewish groups and other organizations, Facebook has agreed to ban posts that contain Holocaust denial on its ubiquitous site. Read more

The woke world goes to war against ‘Wonder Woman’

I’m not sure the world needed another movie about Cleopatra. And the career arc of Israeli actress Gal Gadot, who became an international superstar with her “Wonder Woman” films, isn’t something that matters all that much in the general scheme of things. Read more

It wouldn’t have happened without Trump

The gala signing of the normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain was a bitter pill for the diplomatic establishment to swallow. Read more

Get out your crystal ball!

A year ago, Jews looked back on 5779 and wondered, after the Pittsburgh and Poway synagogue shootings and a resurgence of antisemitism on the right as well as the left, how things in the United States could get any worse. Read more

Where do you draw the line with anti-Semites?

What do you think would happen if President Donald Trump decided to meet with the family of a shooting victim, and it turned out his father was a neo-Nazi?

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Who should Jews fear most during an ‘uprising’?

It was a summer of discontent as the coronavirus pandemic raged on. The death of George Floyd, which set off a season of protests about police brutality and racial discrimination, further added to the nation’s woes as many of the demonstrations turned into riots along with acts of intimidation, violence and looting. Read more

Why they scrawl ‘Free Palestine’ on synagogues

It could have been a lot worse. With dozens of buildings in Kenosha, Wis., burned during the riots that followed the shooting of Jacob Blake, one of the town’s synagogues was tagged with graffiti. Read more

How to help a failed state?

Last week’s disaster in Beirut epitomizes everything that is wrong with Lebanon. But we didn’t have to wait for an investigation into the explosion at the Beirut port that left more than 150 people dead to know what is wrong with that country. Read more

How Iran illustrates the fallacy of social-media censorship

Israeli human-rights attorney and Zionist advocate Australian-Israeli Arsen Ostrovsky hit the nail on the head during a recent Knesset committee hearing about social media. Read more

The perils of COVID incumbency create a summer of woe

Only a few months ago, the coronavirus pandemic seemed to illustrate the vast differences in management skills between President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Read more

Camp David 20 years later: Still holding onto the Oslo delusion

It’s one anniversary that no one is celebrating. Twenty years ago this month, President Bill Clinton welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to a peace summit at Camp David. Read more

Will the Democrats’ generational shift turn the tide against Israel?

For pro-Israel Democrats, the only thing that matters about 2020 is that former Vice President Joe Biden is at the top of the ticket. Read more

A Jewish opera legend’s family is divided by cancel culture

Few things are sadder than when a family is divided by politics. But when it happens because of outside pressure and false accusations that threaten to destroy the legacy of a beloved father, what happens is not just a personal tragedy but also a cautionary tale about the perils of cancel culture. Read more

Don’t accept the myth of ‘Jewish privilege’

For one day at least, Twitter became a forum for some honesty, as opposed to the usual orgy of nastiness and pointless memes. After seeing the hashtag #Jewishprivilege used to spread antisemitic smears, a Jewish activist responded—and the result was a tidal wave of tweets testifying to the fact that the phrase has generally meant that Jews have been singled out for persecution. Read more

Jews aren’t indigenous to Israel? According to whom?

There are a lot of things wrong with woke culture. While the impulse to demonstrate solidarity with the oppressed and opposition to bad things like racism is, in principle, praiseworthy, the virtue signalling is insufferable. Read more

Understanding the collapse of liberal Zionism

There’s a reason why most Israelis find it difficult to listen patiently to lectures from liberal American Jews. Read more

Why should we give a pass to those who tweet antisemitism?

Ours is a time when antisemitism is surging, and the popularity of intersectional politics has given new credibility to radical groups that are keen to link the war on Israel to the culture wars being waged in the United States. Read more

Will Israel’s West Bank move torpedo normalization with the Arab world?

Finally, someone has come up with a coherent argument against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to extend Israeli law to West Bank settlements. Read more

Outrage over the murder of George Floyd doesn’t justify intersectional myths

The outrageous murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, by local police is a crime that cannot be tolerated or excused. Read more

Who checks Twitter’s Trump fact-checkers?

Many cheered this week when they saw that Twitter had added a warning label to two of President Donald Trump’s tweets. Read more

The Abbas comedy and the ongoing Palestinian tragedy

If you think you’ve seen this movie before, you’re right. Read more

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