Haim Watzman Israelis often wail that the country lacks unity. But when most Israelis say “We need more unity,” what they really mean is “More people should agree with me.” Dissent can be a pain, but it’s essential—as is recognized by the Sages of the Talmud in the Horayot Tractate (4b). The Beit Midrash run [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Ha’aretz, as of 1:47 a.m. Israel time: Army Radio reported that a separate Iranian ship, carrying 60 Iranian activists, was being prepared to sail to Gaza via the Caspian Sea. Ynet (Yediot Aharonot) is also hot on the story: However, other Iranian figures are not ready to give up. Iranian Member of Parliament [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Prof. Stanley Fish has a regular online column in the New York Times on education and society. His latest post is intended as a critique of right-wing efforts to treat universities as businesses, and specifically of of a proposed “reform” (“deform” would be a better term) of the Texas A&M college system. Criticizing [...]

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Haim Watzman On Monday, January 29, 1945, by swerve of shore and bend of bay, the SS Rizwani sailed into Alexandria and Tally Clerk Elias David Levy went ashore. The photo on his leave pass shows a dark youth with intense eyes, broad shoulders, and oiled hair, carefully parted on the left. He’s wearing a [...]

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Haim Watzman Once again I’ve been called on to review a book about an American who served in the Israeli army. This time it’s stand-up comedian Joel Chasnoff’s The 188th Crybaby Brigade, in The Jerusalem Report. (Four years ago I reviewed Jeffrey Goldberg’s Prisoners in The Washington Post.) The American-in-the-Israeli-Army book has become an annual [...]

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On Being Shocked, Shocked to Learn That Israel Is Not a Liberal Utopia Gershom Gorenberg My new column is up at the American Prospect: Meyer Landsman lives in the Hotel Zamenhof. Landsman is the hero of Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, in which the Jews lost the 1948 war in Palestine and have taken [...]

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Haim Watzman Half a year ago, Amnesty International published a report on Palestinian access to water called ”Thirsting for Justice,” in which it largely blamed Israel for the Palestinians’ water woes. Now Alon Tal, one of Israel’s leading environmentalists, has come out with a reasoned but impassioned critique of Amnesty’s victimization narrative, along with sober [...]

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A guest post from my father, a former Washington correspondent by Sanford Watzman I didn’t know Sarah Palin then but I did know Helen Thomas and, believe me, Helen was a Sarah. I’m going back some 45 years when, as a correspondent for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I would sometimes attend a White House news [...]

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Haim Watzman It’s not the headline that’s remarkable, it’s the picture. The website of the great science journal that I occasionally do news pieces for, Nature, has a headline today that is already somewhat ho-hum. Jews Worldwide Share Genetic Ties! We’ve seen this before, in reports of studies of mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited only [...]

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Reading Shaul Magid, Kevin Jon Heller, MJ Rosenberg, Leon Wieseltier, Daniel Gordis Gershom Gorenberg An older journalistic colleague of mine, now retired, studied law in his youth. He regularly quoted the advice of one of his professors: “When you have the facts on your side, pound on the facts. When the law is on your [...]

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Haim Watzman I misstated the director’s name in the original version of this post. My apologies. In this friendless week for Israel it’s refreshing and instructive to get away to Sapir College’s annual Film Festival of the South and be reminded that loneliness is sometimes a fact to be lived with, and that history gives [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg What was the real mistake in the Gaza flotilla fiasco? The answer depends on how far back you want to go, as I explain in my new piece at the American Prospect: At first, reports of the number of dead fluctuated by the hour. After Israeli naval commandos landed on a Turkish ferry [...]

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