Anti-Semitism
Among the LiteratiThursday, January 12, 2012 by Erika Dreifus | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Some days, I can't help thinking back 25 years to my high-school French course, which is where I first encountered the concept of the juste milieu—the happy medium—and the difficulty of achieving it. Why is the happy medium so elusive? Why do I more often feel caught betwixt and between or, even among my fellow Jewish-American writers, alone?
Two Palestines, CompleteWednesday, January 11, 2012 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Some saw history in the making. With jubilation and fanfare Fatah and Hamas agreed last spring in Cairo to form an interim technocratic administration, hold parliamentary and presidential elections by May 2012 and, ultimately, to establish a national unity government.
The Mughrabi Bridge to NowhereTuesday, January 3, 2012 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
From the southern end of the plaza in front of Jerusalem's Western Wall, a temporary wooden bridge ascends eastward to the Mughrabi Gate, the only one of the 11 gates into the Temple Mount area that is accessible to non-Muslims.
Highlights of 2011:Part II
Friday, December 30, 2011 | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
Part II of our round-up of the past year's most popular features on Jewish Ideas Daily. (Part I is here.)
The Trouble with HitchensFriday, December 16, 2011 by Benjamin Kerstein | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
When Christopher Hitchens passed away yesterday at the age of 62, the encomia started pouring in almost immediately. Most of this praise is deserved, as the acumen of Hitchens's muscular criticism and the wit of his ripostes will be with us for a long time to come.
Newt and the PalestiniansTuesday, December 13, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
It was almost inevitable: Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has lobbed a grenade into the Republican nomination race, and the subject is Israel.
Terror Out of ZionTuesday, December 6, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
There is no love lost between the British Foreign Office and Israel. In a report to parliament last month, Foreign Minister William Hague condemned Israel for building in Jerusalem, being in the West Bank, and treating the present Gaza regime like the enemy it is.
From Bucharest to JerusalemFriday, December 2, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The cabinet of Romania headed by Prime Minister Emil Boc came to Jerusalem on November 24 to hold a joint session with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government. Boc spoke eloquently of the two countries' common security concerns and shared views on peace and security.
In November, the Arabs Said “No”Monday, November 21, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
There are no uneventful months in the tortured history of the Arab-Israel conflict. November is no exception. It was on November 2, 1917 that British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour sent Lord Rothschild a letter—the Balfour Declaration.
Israeli Intransigence? Try Palestinian RejectionismThursday, November 17, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features
The conventional wisdom in diplomatic and media circles concerning the Israeli-Arab conflict is that Israeli intransigence—especially on the building of West Bank settlements—is the dead weight that prevents the achievement of a two-state solution.
Editors' Picks
Yasir Arafat Poisoned? Juliane von Mittelstaedt, Volkhard Windfuhr, Spiegel. Eight years after Arafat’s mysterious death in Paris, the French have begun a criminal investigation. Who poisoned him? The Israelis? Or, with outside help, his Palestinian comrades?
Poland’s Casualties of War Suzanne Rozdeba, Tablet. In Nazi-occupied Poland, Wladyslaw Gugla risked death as a Jew and a teacher of Slavic children. Protected by villagers, he survived—only to die from habits formed in hiding.
Ignore Anti-Semitism: Bernstein’s Rules David Bernstein, Forward. Has a fringe group announced an anti-Israel demonstration on campus? Odds are that it’s Israeli and Jewish sources who will give them the publicity they want.
Huis Clos Michel Gurfinkiel, PJ Media. Far from bringing anti-Semitism to a halt, France has witnessed an upsurge in attacks on Jews since the Toulouse massacre.
Admitting France’s Crimes François Hollande, New York Review of Books. “The challenge is to fight tirelessly against all forms of falsification of history: not only the insult of Holocaust denial, but also the temptation of relativism.”
The Jew of Jobbik Pablo Gorondi, Associated Press. Hungary’s far-Right Jobbik party has ostracized a prominent anti-Semitic political figure after discovering his Jewish roots—and Chabad has taken him in.
Accounting for Anti-Zionism Efraim Karsh, Israel Affairs. The equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism is often dismissed as “Zionist propaganda.” But the claim challenges one of the fundamental tenets of Zionism.
Praying for a Posek ha-Dor Nathan Lopes Cardozo, Jewish Ideas and Ideals. “To be a posek means to be a person of unprecedented courage. A person willing to initiate a spiritual storm which will shake up the whole of the Jewish community.”
Who is an Arab Jew? Albert Memmi, Israel Academic Committee on the Middle East. “The much vaunted idyllic life of the Jews in Arab lands is a myth! The truth, since I am obliged to return to it, is that from the outset we were a minority in a hostile environment.” (1975)
The Hate That Dare Not Speak Its Name Norman Podhoretz, Commentary. When Gore Vidal came more or less fully out of the anti-Semitic closet, he still thought it the better part of prudence to protect himself by posing as the spokesman for a minority which was being persecuted by the Jews. (1986)