David Ben Gurion

Rabbi Meir Kahane. (Moshe Shai/Flash90)

Are voters about to send Kahanists back to the Knesset?

If the polls are accurate, more than 140,000 voters will vote the Kahanists back into the Knesset in next week’s election. Yet the desire for a pure Jewish state long ago moved from the margins of Israeli society to the mainstream. By Ron Cahlili One week before Israel’s national election, nearly every major poll shows the Kahanist party Otzma…

By +972 Magazine September 11, 2019

David Ben Gurion seen in the Knesset, February 11, 1961. (Fritz Cohen/GPO)

When Zionism imagined Jewish nationalism without supremacy

In his recent book, Dr. Dmitry Shumsky shows that, contrary to popular belief, the forefathers of Zionism did not envision a state based on Jewish supremacy. And yet Zionism, he says, inevitably involves the oppression of Palestinians. By Meron Rapoport No one was surprised when the authors of the Jewish Nation-State Law decided to write, in its opening clauses, that “The…

By +972 Magazine July 21, 2019

US President Donald Trump with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prior to Trump departure to Rome at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on May 23, 2017. (Kobi Gideon / GPO)

Trump cannot simply erase the Palestinian right of return

The American president’s decision to defund the Palestinian refugee agency is an attempt to accomplish something Israeli leaders have been trying for the better part of a century. By James Zogby First, the Trump Administration “took Jerusalem off the table.” Now, in an especially dangerous display of recklessness, it has announced its intention to do…

By +972 Magazine September 5, 2018

Latest

Palestinian and Israeli peace activists march in central Jerusalem on October 17, 2015. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)

Why the Israeli Left can’t reconcile with the most Zionist law

For seven decades, those on the Zionist Left have been reluctant to grapple with Israel’s history of discrimination against its Palestinian minority. With the Jewish Nation-State Law, they have no choice — and that’s what really hurts. By Meron Rapoport It is difficult, if not impossible, to find Palestinians who support Israel’s new Jewish Nation-State Law.…

By +972 Magazine August 2, 2018

An Israeli soldier stands guard at the Qalandia checkpoint on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Ramallah as Palestinian muslim worshippers wait to cross the checkpoint to head to Al-Aqsa compound in Jerusalem's Old City to attend the first Friday prayers of Ramadan. July 4, 2014. (Miriam Alster/ Flash90)

Forget negotiations, Israelis and Palestinians need an intervention

When both sides aren’t ready to make concessions, when one side gets to decide who sits at the table and who sits in jail, negotiations are bound to fail. It is time for the international community to mediate. By Mossi Raz A man is standing in a dangerous place, beside him is a wall, and…

By +972 Magazine May 27, 2017

Palestinians participate in a rally marking the 69th anniversary of the Nakba, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, May 15, 2017. (Flash90)

Israel is still unable to deal with the catastrophe of 1948

The fact that Israel is unable to swallow or get rid of the territories it occupied in 1967, makes it far more difficult for the state to recognize the catastrophe that befell the Palestinians during the 1948 War. By Oren Barak Why does the State of Israel, which just celebrated 69 years of independence, struggle to deal with…

By +972 Magazine May 16, 2017

Israeli soldiers in battle with the Arab village of Sassa in the upper Galilee, October 1, 1948. (GPO)

Using education to normalize horrific acts of violence

This is how the Israeli education system makes it possible for generation after generation of Israelis to accept the most brutal forms of state violence. By Gil Gertel October provides Israelis a number of opportunities for self examination, one of which happened just a week ago, on October 14. On that night in 1953, 600 Israeli soldiers — half…

By +972 Magazine October 23, 2016

Screenshot from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs hasbara video.

For Israelis, Palestinian refugees are a constant, lurking threat

A new government public relations clip shows Israeli Jews as the perpetual victims of history. But once upon a time Israeli leaders were able to consider the pain of others, too. The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs managed to out-do itself on Thursday when it released its latest hasbara (state-sponsored PR) video of Jews as…

By Edo Konrad October 7, 2016

A pro-Israel rally, Washington D.C, July 18, 2014 (photo: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Fight anti-Palestinianism as we would anti-Semitism

While anti-Semitism is considered a serious moral failing in Western society today, anti-Palestinianism is not even recognized as a phenomenon worthy of being studied. By Jeremiah Haber By “anti-Palestinianism” I understand prejudice against Palestinian Arabs based on perceived negative qualities of Palestinian cultural or natural identity. Views such as “Palestinian Arab culture is a culture…

By +972 Magazine April 16, 2016

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks out at the Negev desert in Sde Boker, November 18, 2015. (Photo by Kobi Gideon / GPO)

There is no ‘day after’ Netanyahu

Short of allowing Palestinians to establish an independent state, there is nothing Netanyahu won’t do to ensure his political survival. Liberal Israeli columnist and Channel 10’s top political commentator Raviv Drucker published a piece in Haaretz Sunday, in which he waxes optimistic about the “day after Netanyahu” and who could possibly take over and bring…

By Edo Konrad January 11, 2016

Jewish immigrants from Yemen at a camp near Rosh Ha’ayin. (Photo: GPO)

The roots of anti-Mizrahi racism in Israel

The founders of the state, Jews of Ashkenazi origin raised on European ideas, viewed ‘Oriental Jews’ as backward and primitive from the moment they began arriving en masse on Israel’s shores. “An Ashkenazi gangster, thief, pimp or murderer will not gain the sympathy of the Ashkenazi community (if there is such a thing), nor will he expect…

By Edo Konrad December 1, 2015

A man from the Zanoun family sits on the ruins of his house a few hours after it was demolished by the Israeli Land Administration, in the unrecognized Bedouin village of Wadi Al Na'am, Negev Desert, May 18, 2014. The family of seven people was living in the house demolished for being illegaly built. Wadi Al-Na’am is the largest unrecognized village in Israel, with about 13,000 inhabitants, most of its inhabitants are internally displaced. The village is not connected to electricity and its inhabitants are subjected to Israel's house demolition policy. (Keren Manor/Activestills)

New Jewish settlements planned ‘on top of’ Bedouin villages

The Israeli government approves a plan for five new settlements in the Negev/Naqab. Rights group says the plan, like Israel’s overall policy regarding its Bedouin citizens, is discriminatory. The Israeli government on Sunday approved a plan for five new Jewish settlements to be built in the Negev (Naqab) in the south of Israel. The plan,…

By Natasha Roth-Rowland November 23, 2015

Sanda Abulkian sits outside her demolished house in the unrecognized village of Atir on July 12, 2013. The Abulkian house has demolished four times already, three of them during 2013. (Photo: Keren Manor/Activestills.org)

A living legacy of displacement

The impulses that drove the dispossession of the 1948 war are still acted on today, on both sides of the borders it forged. “Did you know I’m afraid of sleeping? … I’m scared of sleeping and waking to find myself in a strange land whose language I can’t speak. I’m scared I won’t wake up.” —Elias…

By Natasha Roth-Rowland June 19, 2015