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Political Thought


Is Israel’s Labor Party Finished? Is Israel’s Labor Party Finished?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

What has become of Israel's left-wing Labor Party some five months after its leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, abruptly defected to establish his breakaway Atzmaut (Independence) Knesset faction?
Anti-Semitism and Man at Yale Anti-Semitism and Man at Yale
Monday, June 13, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The modern university is no longer made up simply of departments and regular professors teaching students. Ancillary centers, programs, and initiatives proliferate, undertaking research on every conceivable topic. The fates of such entities rarely make the New York Post. But anti-Semitism is not a normal subject.
Jews and Capitalism Jews and Capitalism
Friday, June 3, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Why are so many Jews discomfited by capitalism—and not merely by the caricature of capitalism as rapacious speculation and exploitative profiteering but by the very idea of organizing an economy along free-market lines?
The Anthropology of AIPAC The Anthropology of AIPAC
Tuesday, May 31, 2011 by Alex Joffe | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Few events in contemporary American Jewish life generate as much passion as the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), held in Washington this year on May 22-24. The best way to view the over 10,000 conference participants may be in terms of a tribe or small society.
No Springtime for Palestinians? No Springtime for Palestinians?
Wednesday, May 25, 2011 by Sol Stern | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

In his May 19 speech celebrating the Arab Spring, President Obama expressed enthusiasm for the "movements for change" that have been unseating tyrants previously supported or tolerated by the United States. In language echoing that of his despised rival George W. Bush, he adopted as his own the idea of promoting democracy in the Middle East.
Israel and Western Guilt Israel and Western Guilt
Friday, May 20, 2011 by Aryeh Tepper | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

"Confront Your Privilege." So reads a "subtly coercive" sign on display at tony American liberal-arts colleges. Why coercive? Because, as Wilfred McClay explains in an illuminating recent essay in First Things, what such signs are really telling the students is, "Feel Guilty."
What Would Ben-Gurion Do? What Would Ben-Gurion Do?
Thursday, May 19, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

How would David Ben-Gurion handle himself if he were the one scheduled to meet Barack Obama on May 20 and address a joint session of the U.S. Congress a few days later? That hypothetical question has been aired frequently by Israelis in the run-up to Benjamin Netanyahu's pending appointments in Washington.
Beyond “Religious” and “Secular” Beyond “Religious” and “Secular”
Wednesday, May 11, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

What should be the place of the Jewish religion in a Jewish state? There are many putative answers to this question, and the answers have changed over time. When Zionism was still an aspiration, a great blank yet to be filled in, the terms of debate were set by a self-confidently secular dispensation preoccupied with state- and institution-building. In the first few decades of statehood, religion, though state-established, was clearly subservient.
How the Likud Came to Be How the Likud Came to Be
Friday, April 22, 2011 by Elliot Jager | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

Benjamin Netanyahu no doubt took comfort from a recent survey showing that 76 percent of Likud members opposed annexing all of Judea and Samaria. Yet he would also have known that 10,000 party recruits had been newly signed up by uncompromising settler leaders. How to keep the Likud ("Union") together and in the center of Israel's political mainstream?
Messianic Temptations Messianic Temptations
Thursday, April 7, 2011 by Yehudah Mirsky | Jewish Ideas Daily » Daily Features

The downfall of Moshe Katsav, the former president of Israel recently convicted and sentenced on a rape charge, is a many-sided episode—involving his crimes, the media circus around the judicial proceedings against him, and the private and public meanings of his disgrace.
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Editors' Picks
A Vast Right-Wing Jewish Conspiracy? Rafael Medoff, Jerusalem Post. Hearing a prominent Jewish historian claim that criticism of FDR's inaction during the Holocaust is the handiwork of disgruntled Likudniks, a leftist blogger took it upon himself to prove her wrong.
The Book That Drove Them Crazy Andrew Ferguson, Weekly Standard. Twenty-five years ago, a studious manuscript called Souls Without Longing was given a more commercial title and a print run of 10,000 copies.  It soon was selling 25,000 copies a week, and its author was the most famous professor in the Western world.
How the Left Turned against the Jews Nick Cohen, Standpoint. As Communism gave way to anti-colonialism, Israel remained a target for special rage on the Left, even though Zionism was both a settler movement and an anti-colonial movement.
Beinart and Bad Faith Bret Stephens, Tablet. The Crisis of Zionism is not a work of political analysis. It is an act of moral solipsism. It shows no understanding that the essence of statesmanship is the weighing of various unpalatable alternatives.     
Teach Your Tongue to Say “I Don't Know” David Wolpe, Jewish Journal. When a nation struggles with the threat of being vaporized in a nuclear conflict, to call its policies on the West Bank and Gaza "the great question of the age" is myopic at best.
Arendt in Jerusalem Sol Stern, City Journal. With their monumental errors of political and moral judgment, Hannah Arendt's writings on Zionism, Israel, and the Holocaust have metastasized into a destructive legacy.
The Perils of Self-Deception Colin Rubenstein, Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. To imagine that anti-Semitism would evaporate if Israel signed a peace deal with the Palestinians is sheer fantasy.  So why do pundits and policymakers regularly make this claim?      
Incitement and Enlightenment Yitzhak Laor, Haaretz. Even the fact that ultra-Orthodox women work in professions while the men are increasingly cooking and taking care of the children isn't enough. The Left demands a single set of standards for everyone: its own.
Japan's Inner Israel Glenn Newman, Japan Times. Both Japan and Israel rose from deprivation to prosperity in, historically speaking, the blink of an eye. But now Israel is punching far above its economic weight, while Japan can't seem to get off the mat. What happened?
The Great Assimilator Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic. Martin Amis vividly remembered something Saul Bellow had once said to him, which is that if you are born in the ghetto, the very conditions compel you to look skyward, and thus to hunger for the universal. (2007)