A Stroll Through Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill
In late April, Sophia Jani, a young composer from Germany, traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to hear the local symphony perform her composition “Flare.” Before the performance, Jani explained that it was based on a poem by Mary Oliver and that she hoped it might bring some “sweetness” into a troubled world which, at least for […]
Stubborn Facts on Supporting Israel and Combating Antisemitism
Two days before the 2024 elections and Americans find themselves in a revel of name-calling. The American media, acting as campaign surrogates, edit and spin the candidates’ remarks to support the epithets. “Facts are stubborn things,” said our second president John Adams, “and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our […]
Israel and the World After October 7 – An Interview with Bernard-Henri Lévy
ParisThere are few men who feel the pain of distant upheavals as acutely as Bernard-Henri Lévy, 75, a French philosopher, filmmaker and public intellectual. Born to a wealthy Sephardic family in French Algeria, he cut his teeth as an international activist in his support for the war of secession against Pakistan by the erstwhile East […]
How the War in Gaza Plays Out in Chile’s Domestic Politics
Several left-leaning Latin American governments have criticized Israel for its response to the October 7 attack, including Mexico, Colombia, and Brazi. But Chile’s young president, Gabriel Boric, stands out for consistent harshness, which extends to his view of Chile’s Jewish community. Ethnic Politics in Chile Chile hosts Latin America’s largest Palestinian community, an estimated 400,000 […]
An Exchange of Views on Progressives and the Link between Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
Dear Nadav, We first met when you were President Shimon Peres’s foreign policy advisor and I have long admired you as one of Israel’s most skilled diplomats. J Street also recognized this in appointing you to be its Executive Director in Israel. I believe you are a particularly good role model at this time – a […]
Anti-Israel Activism in American Universities II <br>Middle Eastern Studies and Israel Studies
>> Read part I: The Advent of Anti-Israel Sentiment on Campus In Part I, I described the rise of anti-Israel activism on college campuses, which paralleled the political discourse in American society. Here I delve into the roles of Middle Eastern Studies and Israel Studies. For half a century, one-sided Arab views of Middle Eastern Studies […]
Anti-Israel Activism in American Universities I <br>The Advent of Anti-Israel Sentiment on Campus
Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh.[ “All Israel is bound one to the other,” Jewish legal principle of the Talmud.] Introduction What hit Israelis with such ferocity and sudden force in the villages and kibbutzim on the Gaza border on October 7 was unprecedented, a disastrous tsunami of indiscriminate violence in which Hamas took 1300 lives and […]
China’s Turn Toward Antisemitism
“The United States as a nation has been severely kidnapped by political and other forces derived from Jewish capital,” thus said Dong Manyuan, the former Vice president of CIIS, the Chinese foreign ministry’s think tank, in a TV interview on November 1, in response to the interviewer claim that Jews “manipulate and control” 70% of […]
Three European Views of the Gaza War
Public Opinion Swings Against IsraelHugh Pope In a recent broadcast, the presenters of The Rest is Politics – a bipartisan British podcast listened to by five million people a month – demonstrated a trend in Europe away from unconditional support for Israel to more sympathy for the Palestinians. Hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart noted […]
