Militants sever the ties that connect the region to the world—and history
by Amy E. Schwartz
In 2010, Bonnie Burnham, president of the World Monuments Fund, paid a...
Should Israelis befriend moderate Sunnis such as the Saudis, or the region’s outcasts?
by Gabriel Scheinmann
At the United Nations in early fall, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
Even today, many Jewish women leaders are afraid to speak out with self-assurance.
by Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Sometimes, words speak louder than actions.
Women have proliferated lately in...
Netanyahu and Israel are stuck in the status quo as the Palestinians go in another direction.
by Nahum Barnea
We’re living in a period of dramatic change, but...
Not so long ago, American Jewish children learned from their parents to love the State of Israel. Even secular, assimilated American Jews gave their kids charity boxes to collect nickels and dimes to plant trees there, as the parents do in Woody Allen’s 1987 film Radio Days. But that was a time when Jews remembered the tragedy of the ship St. Louis, with its hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazis and not a single country willing to take them in.
Rachel Fraenkel, mother of Naftali Fraenkel, one of the three Israeli teens whose kidnapping and murder started the current crisis, recently gave her first lengthy interview to Yediot Daily. It was clear that she is an impressive woman, wise, calm and sober, and that her tragedy has catapulted her into a yet-to-be-defined leadership position. But what people all around me are still talking about is the way this interview ended.
Carl von Clausewitz, the imposing German general whose theories about war remain influential nearly 200 years after his death, observed that “public opinion is won through great victories and the occupation of the enemy’s capital.” Not anymore.
Naomi Ragen
Fear of ostracism—not lack of conviction—prevents some haredi men from enlisting.
A day before the haredi “million man march” called to protest the new drafting...
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
As usual, the thought police are trying to silence diversity of opinion about Israel.
I’m not usually prone to hysteria or hyperbole, but lately...