Marching to Jerusalem

Protests, marches, sit-ins, boycotts—all these nonviolent techniques have been employed in support of the Palestinian cause, but violence has remained at the core of the enterprise. For decades, well-meaning people have suggested that a wholehearted embrace of nonviolence would do more for the Palestinians than their continuing resort to terrorism.

The Global March to Jerusalem  Ehud Rosen,  Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.  A history of the eddying anti-Israel currents that gave birth to the March.  SAVE

The Truth About the Global March  CiF Watch.  You can't tell the players without a program: a complete guide to the March and its organizers, funding, and tactics.  SAVE

Hunger Games  Elliot Jager,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Another nonviolent tactic: the hunger strike of Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan, to which Israel recently capitulated.  SAVE

BDS Secrets  Ran Baratz,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Those Palestinian NGOs from which Western anti-Israel activities take their cues: What are they? Who do they represent?  SAVE

No Springtime for Palestinians?  Sol Stern,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Don't the Palestinians, at least as much as any of the other peoples of the Middle East, need a new beginning of consensual government?  SAVE

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Martyr in Waiting

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative Khader Adnan, currently under administrative detention in Israel, has announced the end of his 66-day hunger strike in exchange for a commitment by Israeli authorities to set him free on April 17. His pending release raises a moral dilemma.

New in the Palestinian Arsenal  Mustafa Barghouti,  New York Times.  The op-ed writer hails Adnan's approach as a breakthrough in the 64-year-long struggle to destroy the Zionist enterprise.  SAVE

Hunger Strike as Blackmail  Samanth Subramanian,  National.  A case in India prompts complaints that "fasting unto death" can be deeply coercive, a kind of moral blackmail.  SAVE

Democracies and Administrative Detention  Yaakov Lappin,  Jerusalem Post.  Ticking bombs, protecting sensitive sources, and buying investigative time—these are the reasons why democracies temporarily imprison suspected terrorists without trial.  SAVE

What is Islamic Jihad?  Alden Oreck,  Jewish Virtual Library.  PIJ was formed in 1979 by a fundamentalist who found the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and its successor, Hamas, too restrained.  SAVE

Power and Constraint  Jack Goldsmith,  W.W. Norton.  The constitutional scholar explains the process by which many Bush administration policies, including those on preventive detention, became Obama policies.  SAVE

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Cyrus Cylinder postage stamp (Iran).

Cyrus, Ahmadinejad, and the Politics of Purim

At this week's pre-Purim meeting in Washington between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss Iran's nuclear threat to Israel, Netanyahu gave Obama a present: the book (or m'gilah, scroll) of Esther, which tells how the Jewish heroine foiled Haman's plot to kill the Jews of ancient Persia.

The Cyrus Cylinder  British Museum.  An illustrated introduction to a prize object in the British Museum; as the English translation shows, the king addresses himself to his own accomplishments, not the rights of his subjects.  SAVE

2600 Years of History in One Object  Neil MacGregor,  TED.  The director of the British Museum is among those touting the Cyrus Cylinder's inscription as one of the "great declarations of a human aspiration." (Video)  SAVE

Ghosts of Purim Past  Jeffrey Goldberg,  New York Times.  A report on a 2003 visit to Iran and on close encounters with Islamic anti-Semitism.  SAVE

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A Convenient Hatred

With some 1,000 books currently in print on the subject, does the world desperately need another tome on anti-Semitism? What difference will it make, when anti-Israelism provides only the latest justification for Europe's persistent prejudice against Jews and anti-Semitic views are shared by 15 percent of Americans and 90 percent of Muslims worldwide?

The British Strain  Anthony Julius,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The author of the magnum opus Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England speaks with Elliot Jager.  SAVE

Back to the Future  Robert Wistrich,  Jerusalem Post.  Can rational refutations of false arguments play an effective role in combating "apocalyptic anti-Semitism?" Interview by Ruthie Blum. (PDF)  SAVE

The New Anti-Semitism  Josef Joffe,  Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism.  Post-Holocaust, anti-Semitism is taboo—which means that people repress and conceal it even from themselves. (PDF)  SAVE

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English translation (1934).

Evil Genius

Very little anti-Semitic literature is new; most of its tropes seem ageless, continually recombined and updated by haters reacting only dimly to their actual circumstances. Few anti-Semitic works exhibit literary or lesser, sociological gifts. The one exception is The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Myth of the Jewish Menace  Lucien Wolf,  Macmillan.  As early as 1921, English journalist and historian Lucien Wolf tried to debunk the forged Protocols.  SAVE

The Protocols in Arabia  Middle East Media Research Institute.  Collected reports on the appearance of the Protocols in Islamic media today.  SAVE

Among the Truthers  James Kirchick,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  With the democratization of the media, conspiracy theories are becoming more prevalent. And while not all conspiracy theorists are anti-Semitic, all conspiracy movements attract anti-Semites.  SAVE

Treacherous Texts  Benjamin Balint,  Haaretz.  The amazing and enduring power of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion has little to do with the mind of its forgers and everything to do with the avidity of its consumers.  SAVE

Back to the Future  Ruthie Blum,  Jerusalem Post.  In a 2007 interview, Robert Wistrich describes the return of apocalyptic anti-Semitism, its perpetrators, its enablers and fellow-travelers, and its global implications. (PDF)  SAVE

Eco Chamber  Paula Marantz Cohen,  Smart Set.  With The Prague Cemetery's virulently anti-Semitic protagonist, Umberto Eco may have joined those famous authors whose "editors grew afraid to edit them even as reviewers grew unwilling to pan them."  SAVE

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