Gershom Gorenberg I’ve been asked whether the Gaza War was deliberately timed to take advantage of the American interregnum, with the aim of avoiding U.S. diplomatic involvement. Since it will be 40 years before the archives open and we can read the minutes of the cabinet meetings, I can’t answer that question with any certainty [...]

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Haim Watzman Howard Schweber’s analysis of the Gaza war in light of just war theory (in full at The Huffingon Post and in two parts, here and here on Jewcy) is thought-provoking and worthy of a longer response than I have time for before Shabbat on this short winter Friday. But I’d like to point [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My blogging has been sparse of late due to the cast on my right hand. In the meantime, though, the new international news site, GlobalPost, is marking its launch with a series on Barack Obama’s inauguration as seen from around the world.  Here’s my contribution: The photograph of Barack Obama covered the entire [...]

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Haim Watzman If it weren’t the fact that the fracas at yesterday’s meeting of Israel’s Central Election Committee was theater rather than serious deliberation, I might be more upset about the decision to bar from contesting the coming election two of the three Arab slates represented in the current Knesset. Everyone there, both the right-wingers [...]

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Haim Watzman Plastic tubs have rules, Ronit Matalon told us last night at a reading at Tmol Shilshom, Jerusalem’s leading literary café. There’s the tub that’s used to soak the semolina and the tub that’s used for baths and many other tubs, and they are not interchangeable. Her new novel, The Sound of Our Footsteps, [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new article on the war in Gaza is now up at The American Prospect (may it speedily be outdated by a ceasefire): The morning after the invasion began, I ran into a friend at a café. It was a quiet day in Jerusalem, cold and sunny. He’d received a text message, from [...]

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Haim Watzman One series of questions posed to Israeli soldiers in discussions of war ethics goes something like this: If you were ordered to blow up a house where a terrorist commander was hiding, and you had reason to believe that enemy civilians were in the house, should the order be refused? If you were [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Hussein Agha and Robert Malley have joined the ranks of the delay-sayers. Agha and Malley are among the most astute analysts of the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic process. Their essay on what went wrong at the Camp David summit in 2000 sparked intense criticism – most notably from Ehud Barak, who preferred to deny [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg At the moment, the temptation is to look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a zoom lens that shows the battles in Gaza up-close, in detail. But a zoom lens flattens the picture you see, and entirely leaves out the panoramic view. In the panoramic view, Israel’s strategic problem remains ending its rule over [...]

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We’re pleased that “Waltz With Bashir” has been named top film of the year by the National Society of Film Critics and would like to refer South Jerusalem’s readers to our posts on this important movie: Ari Folman’s “Waltz with Bashir” (1) – A National Nightmare on Film Ari Folman’s “Waltz with Bashir” (2) — [...]

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Haim Watzman “Why so somber?” laughed my eldest son, as he settled onto the couch. But his face fell when I shook my head sadly. We were sitting in the spacious living room of the Jerusalem apartment that I had purchased when times were better, before the crash. I remember when I first brought my [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Dear SoJo I am a secular Jew who has a profound respect for Jewish tradition and will be making aliyah shortly. I do not believe in an intervening god, nor do I consider the Torah an accurate historical record or an exemplary moral treatise (not necessarily an abominable one either). I do, however, [...]

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