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Bad Times for Liberal Zionism?

July 18th, 2008 · 10 Comments · Politics and Policy

Haim Watzman
A recommendation: Leonard Fein’s article in the current issue of Dissent. Fein offers a good summary of the current travails of left Zionism. It’s hardly new that Zionist liberals and social democrats often feel as if they are not only out of synch, but positively rejected, by both the left at large and by [...]

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Don’t Spy For Me

April 23rd, 2008 · 7 Comments · Politics and Policy

Dear Young American Zionist,
You want to help Israel in any way possible, and you’re fired up by stories you’ve heard and movies you’ve seen about Israel’s heroic soldiers, commandos, and Mossad agents. You meet some guy with an accent who persuades you that Israel’s future depends on some classified documents you’ve got access to at [...]

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Marching up J Street, Passing Marty Peretz in a Shtreimel

April 17th, 2008 · 4 Comments · Judaism and Religion, Politics and Policy

Much as I’ve come to disagree with Marty Peretz, I admit that I hesitate viscerally before criticizing him. Marty opened the pages of the New Republic to me in the 1990s. So attacking him feels like an act of ingratitude, if not a minor violation of oedipal inhibitions toward a one-time mentor. In his own [...]

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I have but one biography to give for my country

April 11th, 2008 · 1 Comment · Politics and Policy

I don’t usually quibble with what’s written about me, but hey! I only have one biography to give for my nation.
Philip Weiss writes at Mondoweiss:
The ‘67 War galvanized… young Gershom Gorenberg to move to Israel.
At the time of the 1967 war, I was 11 years old, in 6th grade, living with my parents in [...]

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Good Arabs, Bad Arabs

March 10th, 2008 · No Comments · Uncategorized

It’s such a pain when reality proves to be too complex to fit our favorite theories. A new book, Hillel Cohen’s Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (University of California Press 2008), shows how varied the Palestinian Arab response to Zionism was, by investigating those Arabs who chose to collaborate with the Jews. [...]

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