• AN ISRAELI SOLDIER KEEPS GUARD NEAR A PALESTINIAN WOMAN STANDING NEXT TO STAR OF DAVID GRAFFITI SPRAYED BY ISRAELI SETTLERS AT AN ARMY CHECKPOINT IN THE CENTER OF HEBRON, MAY 18, 2009. (PHOTO: MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

    The Zionist assault on Judaism

    Zionism has not yet murdered Judaism but it has undermined its moral and historical integrity. By intentionally fanning antisemitism, Israel is a major contributor to Jewish insecurity.

  • The Tent Protests in Israel: Can They Break Out of the (Zionist) Box?

    6 August 2011 The demonstrations currently roiling Israel constitute a grassroots challenge to Israel’s neo-liberal regime.  Beginning as an uprising of the middle classes — especially young people who have trouble finding affordable housing — it has spread to the working class, the poor, and the Arab communities as well, though not the religious as […]

  • The Palestinian Authority’s Historic Mistake — and Opportunity

    No one knows the precise plans of the Palestinian Authority vis-a-vis September: will Mahmoud Abbas declare a Palestinian state within recognized borders and ask that it be admitted as a full member of the UN — or not?  Perhaps Abbas himself does not know.  Now political leaders often make decisions alone or in consultation with […]

  • Mobilizing for September?

    The reconvening of the UN in late September and the possible recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders may be a crucial political moment in the struggle for Palestinian liberation — or not.  Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has characterized it as a looming “diplomatic tsunami” for Israel; Ali Abunimah, a prominent Palestinian-American […]

  • Palestine 2011

    Struggling as I have for the past decades to grasp the dynamics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and find ways to get out of this interminable and absolutely superfluous conflict, I have been two-thirds successful.  After many years of activism and analysis, I think I have put my finger on the first third of the equation: […]

  • Israel: The Global Pacification Industry

      Jeff Halper: We’re one of the leading — I would say, modestly — peace and human rights organizations in Israel.  We started about thirteen years ago.  I’ve been involved for forty years in the Israeli peace movement.  During the Oslo peace process, during the 90s, the Israeli peace movement also, like other Israelis, invested […]

  • The Second Battle of Gaza: Israel’s Undermining of International Law

    The Israeli attack on Gaza in December 2008/January 2009 was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population, impoverished and the victim of occupation and besiegement these past 42 years.  It was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR […]

  • Breaking the Vessels

    OK, so the Palestinian Authority will not unilaterally declare an independent Palestinian state.  In fact, the whole issue seems a misunderstanding.  Concerned that the US has backtracked on a two state solution based on the 1967 borders and that Israel was getting the world used to the “fact” that the settlements and the Wall, rather […]

  • No Partner for Peace: Our American Problem

    It was as if some official, perhaps one of President Obama’s “czars,” like the Czar for Demolishing American Credibility, had orchestrated a systematic campaign to isolate the US from the rest of the world, make it a political laughingstock and, finally, render it a second-rate power capable of throwing around tremendous military weight but absolutely […]

  • Netanyahu Chooses Warehousing

    Would Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu say the magic words “two states” after his meeting with President Obama?  All Israel held its breath.  (He didn’t).  The gap between the two is wider than those words could ever have bridged, however.  Obama, I believe, sincerely — perhaps urgently — seeks a resolution of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, a […]

  • An Israeli Jew in Gaza

    In another few days, I will sail on one of the Free Gaza movement boats from Cyprus to Gaza.  The mission is to break the Israeli siege, an absolutely illegal siege which has plunged a million and a half Palestinians into wretched conditions: imprisoned in their own homes, exposed to extreme military violence, deprived of […]

  • Rethinking Israel after Sixty Years

    Israeli Independence Day 2008, marking the sixtieth anniversary of the rise of the Jewish State on the ruins of Palestinian society, should be cause more for sober reflection and reevaluation than for celebration.  True, Israeli Jews have much to celebrate.  Only a few weeks ago the shekel joined the fifteen strongest currencies in the world, […]

  • Power to the (Palestinian) People!

    The people of Palestine have done it again, taking their own fate in their hands after being let down by their own “moderate” political leadership and, indeed, the entire international community in their struggle for freedom.  Early this morning they simply blew up the wall separating Gaza from Egypt, breaking a siege imposed on them […]