Israel & the Near East

Women in Arms

Israel's core institution is the army. And while the essential function of the army is to protect and defend the country's citizens, it also plays a crucial role in the lives of those who serve in its ranks. Not unlike an American university in this one respect, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is the establishment within which young people build character, form social bonds, and start careers.

Counting Jews

A newly-released World Jewish Population Report has been making waves. Some critics, especially in Israel, charge that the report, in claiming the existence of a non-Jewish majority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, is both slanted and unduly pessimistic. Other critics, especially in the Diaspora, complain that the report is too old-fashioned in its definition of Jewishness.

Why Rachel’s Tomb Matters

All cultures build on what came before them. But how they treat the past is a measure of cultures in the present. The treatment by Muslims of Rachel's tomb, lately much in the news, is a case in point.

What’s Left?

Usually, when Israelis speak of Left and Right, they are differentiating mainly between security hawks and peace-camp doves—not between liberals and conservatives in general, or in the American or European sense.  By this definition, Israel's left wing is in a sorry state.

Class Divide

The world's two largest Jewish communities differ in many ways. Class is one of them. That fact was made painfully clear this week as 4,000 communal professionals, activists, and donors met in New Orleans for the general assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America—at the same time that, in Israel, the National Insurance Institute (equivalent to the U.S. Social Security Administration) issued its annual report on "poverty and social gaps" in the Jewish state.

Who’s “Right” in Israel, and Who Isn’t

Last month, two dozen followers of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane marched on the Israeli Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, stronghold of the extremist Islamic Movement. They were making the point that Jews have the right to go anywhere in Israel. In the predictable mayhem that ensued, a dozen police were injured and ten Arab rioters were arrested. Sympathetic reports about the "mounting anger of Israel's Arab minority" made the world press, as did portrayals of the Kahanists as Israeli "right-wing activists" and "nationalists." But is that what they are?

Under Islam

In the two decades following the establishment of the state of Israel, approximately 850,000 Jews were forcibly driven out of Arab lands. Their expulsion marked the beginning of the end of 2,500 years of Jewish life in North Africa, the greater Middle East, and the Persian Gulf. Until recently, their story has been largely unrecognized and untold in the English-speaking world.

All in the (Economic) Family

"PM Orders Panel to Attack Economic Concentration," read the headline of a news story in the October 14 Haaretz. The high-level body, appointed by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is tasked with proposing legislation to increase competition, restrict "large-scale pyramid-type holdings in public companies," and take other steps to improve stability and efficiency in the country's economy. Some worry that the move will fail, or that the hour is already too late. And thereby hangs a tale.

The Unlovable Avigdor Lieberman

Avigdor Lieberman's September 28 speech at the UN General Assembly—delivered in English and broadcast live by Al-Jazeera—was not well received at home. Nahum Barnea, the doyen of Israeli left-wing columnists, dismissed his country's foreign minister as a "clown." The editors of Haaretz urged his prompt resignation.

Mr. Abbas, Tear Down This Wall!

While the world's headlines focus with exaggerated alarm on Israel's lifting of its ten-month building freeze within Jewish West Bank settlements, an issue of far greater moment for the prospects of peace in the Middle East goes determinedly unaddressed. This is the matter of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees—a subject on which the Obama administration, a fierce promoter of the building freeze, has been strikingly silent.