Rabbi Brian Lurie, who recently replaced Naomi Chazan as president of the New Israel Fund, has spent most of his professional life at the heart of the American Jewish establishment. Nonetheless, he is a rebel, a nonconformist, a Jewish communal leader “on the cutting edge,” as former Forward editor J.J. Goldberg puts it, especially in…
Considerable attention has been focused these last several weeks on the report of Israel’s Levy Commission. No great surprise: The three-person commission, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to render an advisory opinion regarding Jewish settlement in the West Bank, determined that there is no barrier to such settlement and, indeed, that the legality of…
The American Jewish Committee, a centrist pillar of America’s organized Jewish community, is breaking with the long-standing establishment consensus that settlements on the Israeli-occupied West Bank pose no impediment to peace. The committee, in a press release issued on July 12, affirmed the legality of settlements throughout the West Bank and rejected the notion that…
A friend wrote in last week to dispute my critique of Israeli judge Edmond Levy’s settlements report. Levy claimed the West Bank isn’t “occupied” under international law, and therefore settlements aren’t illegal. I wrote that while his interpretation squares with the language of the relevant treaties, not one nation in the world accepts it, so…
Abigail Disney, a descendant of one of the Disney Company founders, has announced that she is disclaiming her share of the family’s investment in the Israeli cosmetics company Ahava, due to the fact that it is located in the West Bank and is engaged in the “exploitation of occupied natural resources.” Disney announced Monday that…
One year after Israel’s social protest movement was born, activists are battling over its soul. Throughout June, protestors once again started to flow into the streets of Tel Aviv on Saturday nights. They all claimed to be reviving the demonstrations held weekly last summer, when tent cities proliferated all over the country. But it quickly…
Benjamin Netanyahu has a bad habit of pretending he’s Houdini — sticking his head in a noose, scaring everyone half to death, then wiggling free at the last minute. The difference is that Houdini’s viewers got to watch from their seats, while Netanyahu’s audience is stuck inside the noose with him. And the noose gets…
Israeli President Shimon Peres called West Bank settlements a threat to Israel. The remarks, made Tuesday at the annual ceremony in memory of Zionism founder Theodor Herzl, appeared to address a report released Sunday that said “Israel does not meet the criteria of ‘military occupation’ as defined under international law” in the West Bank, and…
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