Haim Watzman It’s the end of the day and I don’t have time to write what I planned, but I’d like to flag two worthwhile articles in the March 19 issue of Nature (a publication I’ve written for in the past). As a sometime writer about science, I was discouraged to read in Science journalism: [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg If Palestinians adopted a Gandhian nonviolent strategy, could they reshape the entire conflict with Israel and finally realize a two-state solution? If so, why haven’t they done so? Or perhaps they really have at certain times and places, and Israel has broken that form of resistance as well? Those questions have been asked [...]

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Haim Watzman Have Israeli soldiers’ values—and the moral choices they make in combat—changed? Do the soldiers’ testimonies from the Rabin pre-military academy show that the IDF and its soldiers have adopted values different from those of earlier decades and earlier wars? I’m not convinced. They might, and the charges made in the testimonies certainly need [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My take on the soldiers’ testimony from Gaza comes in my new article at the American Prospect: The soldier had served as a squad commander during the Israeli army’s invasion of the Gaza Strip last winter. His unit was assigned to advance into Gaza City. His initial orders, he recalled, were that after [...]

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Haim Watzman An astounding metamorphosis lies at the center of Nisim Aloni’s play The American Princess—now on stage in a truly amazing production at the Khan Theater in South Jerusalem. A son turns his father into a character in a film, receives him back as an actor who plays his father, and then kills—but is [...]

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A guest post from Elliott Horowitz On a chilly morning in March I boarded a bus in Jerusalem that had been chartered by a group called Shovrim Shtikah (“Breaking the Silence”) which, among its other activities, provides weekly guided tours (in English and Hebrew) to Hebron and its environs in order to show those who [...]

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Haim Watzman One of our regular readers, Alon, comments (ungermanely) on my previous post: i would like to know is how do you feel on the day that the testimonies of soldiers on the killing of civilians and vandalism in gaza — after saying in your “Bad War, Good Soldiers” post that you were “happy [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg I suppose it’s just coincidence that Slate ran a piece on narcissistic personality disorder, especially among leaders, just a few days after Moshe Katsav’s latest bit of surrealistic theater, and just as Ehud Barak had agreed to sell what’s left of the Labor Party to Bibi Netanyahu. Nonetheless, it was a useful coincidence. [...]

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Haim Watzman I’m not partial to faith healing and miracle stories. I like to keep my feet on the ground when talking about God. And so does my good friend Anne Hodges-Copple, who serves as rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina. So I was a little surprised when she sent me [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg My new article on whether Israel needs a constitution is up at the Hadassah magazine site. The short version of my answer: In principle, yes, we need one. In practice, enacting one could be more dangerous than going without. The longer version: As Israel’s justice minister, Daniel Friedmann made virtually no progress in [...]

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I’ll be speaking tomorrow, Monday March 16, at 8 pm. at Evan Fallenberg‘s writers’ studio in Bitan Aharon, near Netanya. I’ll be discussing the dos and don’ts of memoir and travel writing. Tickets are NIS 60 at the door, NIS 50 a piece if you bring a spouse. Reserve seats by writing to evanfallenberg@gmail.com. Directions [...]

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Haim Watzman The dissemination of knowledge—high-quality knowledge—is essential to a democratic society. So I’d like to point out an interesting juxtaposition of articles from my Shabbat reading that, taken together, have something important to say about the importance of getting good knowledge to the public. Danielle Allen’s review of Josiah Ober’s book Democracy and Knowledge: [...]

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