Abe Silberstein is the Associate Director, North America, of The Abraham Initiatives, an Israel-based NGO working to achieve equality between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel. He tweets @abesilbe. His views and opinions do not reflect those of his employer.
Abe Silberstein
By Abe Silberstein
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Opinion My Dani Dayan problem
Dani Dayan has been making the virtual rounds the past few weeks as part of an elaborate goodbye tour. After four years of service as Israel’s consul general to New York, it is clear Ambassador Dayan will be dearly missed by the mostly liberal Jewish leadership in the tristate area. It was not supposed to…
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Opinion The Democratic Party platform on Israel is totally worthless
As with all Pyrrhic victories, those in the Jewish community celebrating the rather conservative Democratic Party draft platform position on Israel do not appreciate the broader trends that are inexorably moving against them. By pushing back against the use of the very word “occupation” to describe the status quo in the West Bank and East…
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Opinion Eliot Engel’s loss is good for the Jews
Ballots are still being counted in the Bronx primary fight between longtime incumbent Rep. Eliot Engel and political newcomer and public school educator Jamaal Bowman. But as of this writing, Bowman is not just ahead; he’s ahead by a comfortable margin of more than 20 points, which is unlikely to be overturned by absentee ballots….
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Opinion It’s not Black Lives Matter’s job to make you feel comfortable about Israel
Four years ago, the Movement for Black Lives, the umbrella group that Black Lives Matter is a part of, endorsed a boycott of Israel on the ground that it was committing “genocide” against the Palestinians. It led to a crisis for many Jews anxious to be part of the movement yet distraught by the anti-Israel…
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Opinion It’s time for the Conference of Presidents to kick out Mort Klein
Louis Brandeis, the first Jew to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, embodied the image of the liberal moderate so famously taken to task in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” On race, Justice Brandeis usually sided with progress but was not particularly outspoken in favor of racial justice and equality….
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Opinion Netanyahu’s defense is a preview of Trump’s
On Sunday, Benjamin Netanyahu became the first sitting Israeli prime minister to stand trial for alleged crimes committed in office. The charges read to him at the Jerusalem District Courthouse were for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The indictments originated in cases involving gifts from wealthy friends in exchange for favors and two harebrained…
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Life How my grandfather prepared me to lose him
On May 21, my beloved grandfather, Morris Silberstein, passed away at 100. His favorite activities included carpentry, listening to the opera, and periodically informing the German government he was still alive and that his bank account deposit information was up to date. As far as I know, he was not infected with the coronavirus that…
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Opinion Pompeo just saved Netanyahu’s tuchus on annexation
There is much speculation about why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chose to visit Israel this week amidst a worldwide pandemic. Management of relations with an ally – especially with one of the few countries that has benefited from having Trump in office, as opposed to a more traditional or normal administration – did not…
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