More in ‘settlements’

Anyone who has been concerned or angered by the debate over the future of liberal Zionism, sparked by Peter Beinart’s much-discussed article in the New York Review of Books, should hurry to read The Settlers (Yale University Press), the new book by the Israeli journalist and professor Gadi Taub. At the center of Taub’s short, ...

Bags in tow and running late after a flight from Detroit, Barbara Harvey moved briskly through midtown Manhattan toward TIAA-CREF’s pristine headquarters on Third Avenue. She was there to join other activists from Jewish Voice for Peace in calling on the financial services giant to divest from five companies—Caterpillar, Elbit, Motorola, Northrup Grumman, and Veolia ...

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I. The Accused
The safest place in Yosef Espinoza’s two-story, red-tile-roofed house in Shvut Rachel, a tiny Orthodox Jewish settlement in Samaria in the West Bank, is a windowless computer room that doubles as a fallout shelter with a 5-inch reinforced steel door. The room is airtight and has a ventilation system, ...

The New York Times has a nearly 5,000-word article sure to provoke conversation amid Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meeting at the White House today. It reports that in the past decade U.S. law has allowed the tax-exempt donation of $200 million to further Jewish settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem—which the U.S. government opposes. ...

Today in Tablet Magazine, we have an article whose opening quote is, “I would only date women who loved herring”—do you dare not read on? Rachel Shabi reports that weekly protests in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood against continued Israeli building in East Jerusalem have done the additional work of catalyzing the Israeli left. Poetry critic ...

What would the Jews look like had they not been exiled to the four corners of the earth, had they gone untainted—but also unenriched—by the cultures in which they tarried? Imagine Jews who retained their fierce attachment to the Torah and the faith of their fathers, but without the rabbinic response to displacement. No Talmud, ...

• Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Virginia), whose Richmond campaign office was shot at earlier this week, said he has received threats because he is Jewish. [Haaretz]
• President Obama won’t approve the end-of-Passover prayer, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” until both sides agree on the exact wording. These things are complicated. [Frum Follies]
• A columnist faults Prime Minister ...

• Last decade, thousands of Palestinians were stripped of Jordanian citizenship. Jordan’s government wants to maximize the Palestinians’ numbers to improve their bargaining position vis-à-vis Israel. [NYT]
• U.S. officials continued to criticize Israeli building in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized again for the construction announcement’s timing while maintaining support for the settlements. My 10 ...

Where does Israel’s announcement of 1,600 new Israeli homes in East Jerusalem leave the United States? Where does it leave American Jews? America put immense pressure on both sides to agree to “proximity talks”—which center around its envoy, George Mitchell—even though neither side’s preconditions had been met; and soon after the U.S. vice president arrives ...

• A look at Purim as the holiday that “includes all others” and distills the fundamental choice all Jews face: whether to wait for God to act or to take matters into your own hands. [BeliefNet]
• Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a favorite of centrists on the Israeli side, vows that Palestinians will not be ...