Noam Sheizaf

Noam Sheizaf is an independent journalist and editor. He was the founding executive director and editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine. Prior to joining +972, he worked for Tel Aviv’s Ha-ir local paper, Ynet, and the Maariv daily, where his last position was deputy editor of the weekend magazine. He is currently working on a number of documentary films.

Recent Articles

International activists confront an Israeli skunk canon during a protest in Bil'in, West Bank. (Ahmad al-Bazz/Activestills.org)

Jewish-Arab alliances are our best shot against segregation

Israel is already a binational state based on ethnic segregation. The struggle to turn it into an inclusive one must be fought by Jews and Palestinians — together. A response to Rami Younis and Orly Noy. In their article, “Let’s stop talking about a false ‘Jewish-Arab partnership,’” +972 writers Orly Noy and Rami Younis criticize calls for…

By Noam Sheizaf April 17, 2019

African asylum seekers protest the suspension of an agreement between Israel and the UN to resettle 16,000 asylum seekers rather than deport them to third countries, south Tel Aviv, April 3, 2018. (Activestills.org)

Netanyahu’s gift to anti-deportation activists

Netanyahu inadvertently told the entire country that there is a better alternative to his policies. Now that the alternative is within reach, the work of anti-deportation activists will become easier. The terrible thing about Netanyahu’s UN deal, and its subsequent cancellation on Tuesday, is that behind the political flip-flopping are people — thousands of families…

By Noam Sheizaf April 3, 2018

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a cabinet meeting, January 21, 2018. (Alex Kolomoisky/POOL)

As corruption cases close in, Netanyahu will move further right to survive

Netanyahu is already painting the police recommendation to indict him as a political witch hunt. That will have significant consequences on how the attorney general proceeds, and what Israel’s second-longest serving prime minister does to survive. The Israeli police on Tuesday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in two corruption cases, referred to as Case…

By Noam Sheizaf February 14, 2018

President Donald Trump with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the end of Trump's visit to Israel, May 23, 2017. (Kobi Gideon/GPO)

On Jerusalem, Trump is proving that the Israeli right was right all along

By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital the U.S. president is boosting the settlers’ argument that in the long run, ‘facts on the ground’ are more important than diplomacy, and that Israel will eventually win legitimacy for its actions — even unilateral annexation. Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan is said to have hesitated before ordering the…

By Noam Sheizaf December 6, 2017

Illustrative photo of Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man in the Dheisheh Refugee Camp near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. (Nati Shohat/Flash90)

No institution is safe from the corrupting power of occupation

The persecution of Breaking the Silence’s spokesperson is further proof that the state’s investigative bodies are not only deeply politicized, they are simply uninterested in doing their job. Between the years 2013 and 2016, Israeli anti-occupation group Yesh Din tracked the police’s response to 289 cases of “ideological crimes” against Palestinians in the West Bank. In each of those…

By Noam Sheizaf November 20, 2017

Hundreds of Catalan independence supporters rally against a visit by King Felipe VI to Girona, Catalonia, June 26, 2014. (Ariet/CC BY-NC 2.0)

No, Catalonia isn’t Palestine

Some in Israel are drawing parallels between the Catalonian demand for national self-determination and Palestinian independence. The two situations are nothing alike. The referendum over Catalonian secession underway in Spain is turning into a serious political crisis, which threatens to become a European crisis that could dwarf even Brexit. The European Union has succeeded at tampering…

By Noam Sheizaf October 1, 2017

Israeli police fire tear gas at protesting Palestinian youths in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, October 6, 2015. (Flash90)

Everything you think you know about Israeli-Palestinian peace is wrong

Israelis and Palestinians have grown the furthest apart during periods of quiet; it is in times of violence that the two nations have suddenly become flexible in their positions. That defies everything we tell ourselves about prospects for peace, and everything the world has told Palestinians they must do to achieve it. A review of…

By Noam Sheizaf September 20, 2017

A settler stands and prays on top of her home roof during the demolition and evacuation of 10 structures in the Ma'ale Rehavam outpost, West Bank, May 14, 2014. (Nati Shohat/Flash 90)

There is no right-wing one-state solution

Seven years after publishing a feature on Israeli settlers who support equal rights for Israelis and Palestinians, it’s time to revisit the idea. There is nothing the Israel Right loves more than adopting the criticism of its rivals on the Left in order to justify its rule. Strangely, this criticism has turned into a main…

By Noam Sheizaf September 11, 2017

Border police officer stands in front of Palestinian as they wait to cross from Qalandiya checkpoint outside Ramallah, West Bank, into Jerusalem to attend the Ramadan Friday Prayer in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, July 26, 2013. Photo by: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org

Israel’s problem isn’t Palestinian nationalism — it’s Palestinians themselves

Most of the circumstances that made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ripe for resolution — or at least made the peace process attractive to both parties — have all but disappeared over the past decade. Many Israelis were likely happy to read The New Yorker article titled “The End of This Road: The Decline of the Palestinian National Movement” earlier…

By Noam Sheizaf August 20, 2017

(Left to Right) PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the start of peace talks at the White House, September 1, 2010. (GPO)

Decades of failed peace talks: How Israel negotiates with itself

For 50 years Israel has maintained full control over the entire land, economy, borders, movement and natural resources between the river and the sea. The only thing Palestinians have to offer Israel in peace talks is international legitimacy. But Israel doesn’t need peace to gain legitimacy — it needs an endless peace process.

By Noam Sheizaf June 28, 2017