Four out of every five Jews in the world live in the United States and Israel; 6.3 million in Israel, 6.7 million in the US. According to Pew Research Center Studies, 7 in 10 American Jews feel attached or very attached to Israel.
Whether you hate or love President Trump, don’t let it blind you from the meaning of the words he utters, or the tweets he sends. Regardless of your emotions or strong political leanings, his words are decisively important; he is President of the United States.
In two books written sixty years apart, When Prophecy Fails, 1957 (Festinger, Riecken and Schachter) and The Influential Mind, 2017 (Sharot, an Israeli neuroscientist), the conclusions were the same.
Rabbis who attended the AIPAC-sponsored National Rabbinic Symposium Association meeting in Washington at the end of August sat in my sessions on Zionism with common interests.
Scrutiny and planning prove essential when selecting college courses.
In teaching history, the most difficult task remains creating context:catapulting students back into a different time frame and having them disregard their contemporary historical perspective. The goal is to witness history as it unfolded, not as it concluded.
For the last several years, I have heard and witnessed personal stories about Israel (dis)engagement. Everyone asks how to stem distancing from Israel.
Placing Jewish destiny into Jewish hands was why Zionism emerged at the end of the 19th century. Acquiring political power to promote Jewish security is how a Jewish state was created.
Published by JESNA, Jewish Education Service of North America ISSUE #18 WINTER 2004 Israel Education and the College Campus, “Awake ye from ye slumber, the call that is heard, oh my people.” Agenda: Jewish Education,…
Coming up, fifty years after the June 1967 War. How many times have I taught the causes and effects, or written about the War? Hundreds of times in forty years.
In the aftermath of UNSC Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlement construction, Secretary of State John Kerry publicly blamed Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank for being the major barrier to a two-state solution to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For almost 100 years, the Declaration has represented, for the Palestinians, the political beginning of Palestine falling out of their influence and into the control of the budding Zionist movement.
The report, clearly a snap shot, conveys a picture of anti-Semitic activities on US campuses. A strong correlation is found between the occurrence of BDS activity and the occurrence of anti-Semitic expression where incidents were reported.
In 2008 and again in 2012, President Barack Obama made lofty promises and gallant assessments about Iran and the Middle East respectively. His remarks to the annual AIPAC conference four years ago about Israel and Iran have proved to be out and out fictions. Who will hold the 45th President accountable for promises made but not kept?
Candidates that speak forcefully about a strong US-Israeli relationship and a need to provide Israel with a qualitative military advantage over any array of adversaries, secure the attention of American Jewish voters who put Israel at the top of their list in determining who should receive their vote in congressional and presidential election contests.
In the interest of securing any deal rather than the right deal – politics over principle – the president and the diplomats he sent to negotiate seem to have forgotten or perhaps never learned why Iran must not get a nuclear weapon.
At Seattle’s Temple de Hirsch Congregation a week ago, the audience audibly gasped when I told them that the next day I would be giving a noon talk at Evergreen State College.
Alliances of convenience alongside alliances of conviction: when do the first become the second? Who is telling the story that we read?
Just as al-Qaeda seeks the total destruction of western democracies, Hamas seeks Israel’s total demise. Since its inception in 1988, Hamas has been crystal clear about its opposition to Zionism and Israel.
As it has in the past Hamas may accept a tahdi’a or calming down of tensions, or even a temporary truce or hudna, negotiated by a third party, but for it to accept Israel as a reality is totally contrary to its ideological outlook.
Hamas has opposed all agreements and cooperation which either the PLO or the Palestinian Authority have signed with Israel. “Hamas will never recognize Israel. This is a red line that cannot be crossed.
Many recollections remain from the Egyptian-Syrian surprise attack on Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973. The war set in motion a diplomatic process that eventually culminated in the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty.
Lessons from the overthrow of the Morsi government in Egypt, the restart of Palestinian-Israeli talks, and the civil war in Syria remind us how difficult it is to judge whether American engagement is good or bad in the long run.
Preliminary negotiations and changing political realities have catalyzed the opening of new talks, but even a two-state agreement would not guarantee an imminent end to the conflict.
