Hamas’ Strategy of ‘Tactical Civilian Sacrifice’: Two Israeli Experts Explain

Tensions in the West Bank and vigilante ‘justice’

A reason for hope – health diplomacy inspired by the Australian charity Project Rozana

A startling optimistic scenario-sketch by Tom Friedman, one of President Trump’s critics.

A prescient article published in 2023, yet still relevant as background, about the need for two states and PM Netanyahu’s opposition

The Israeli government decided on Sunday to double its population on the occupied Golan Heights while saying threats from Syria remained despite the moderate tone of rebel leaders who ousted President Bashar Al-Assad.

Of all the deplorable crimes ever conceived by the human mind, one stands alone in its utter depravity, as the very epitome of evil.

Protests in Israel are nothing new, but those on the Golan Heights this June were different.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the peak national representative body of the Australian Jewish community is pleased that the Labor Party National Conference has concluded its debate on Middle East policy with no change to the Government’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and without further hostile policy pronouncements.

On Sept. 12, Israel’s Supreme Court will consider whether the judicial power grab by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is legal. Netanyahu has repeatedly refused to commit to abide by an adverse decision, so if the court rules against his coalition, Israel will be in full-blown judicial crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scared. Not, ostensibly, of the masses of citizens on the streets protesting against his moves to undermine the country’s judiciary, nor of the deep economic and security damage this has already caused, nor of his strained ties with Washington.

The constitutional earthquake that began shaking Israel in January is once again rocking the country.

Identifying starkly contrasting visions for Israel with significant consequences for immigration policy, DeMogge concludes that the decades-old conflict between Jewish and Israeli identity is “unlikely to be resolved anytime soon,” and that the Grandchild Clause—a 1970 proviso to the Law of Return granting anybody with at least one Jewish grandparent the right to Israeli citizenship—“will be at its center.”

Israel is in the midst of unprecedented political turmoil. Three alarms are sounding.

Top US lawyer, a confidant of the prime minister, also says justices must keep power to make final rulings on issues of core civil liberties

‘We recognise and respect that, being in the diaspora, we have different rights, but we are also deeply invested in Israel’s survival and the wellbeing of all Israelis and the Jewish people’

Israel’s parliamentary system produces weak governments that are increasingly liable to capture by minority parties, who have every incentive to indulge their most radical plans.

The “judicial reform” legislation, expected to change the face of Israel, has progressed rapidly and aroused widespread protests, while Israel’s enemies, from Tehran to Beirut, rejoice from afar.

Dear Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this is a plea — a last, long-shot, desperate appeal to your patriotism, to your Zionism, to your concern for your place in history, to your conscience: Stop this madness.

Israelis who work, fight in the army, and pay taxes are wary of the new government

I recently attended the annual lunch of the UK Labour Friends of Israel, whose assembled throng was made up largely of those Jews indefatigable, courageous, or plain masochistic enough to have stuck with the party of the British left[1] through the Corbyn interregnum (or who have returned since the unquiet fall of the ancien régime) and those outlier non-Jews whose leftism incorporates Zionism – foundationally so, for some of us.

This time it’s different.

I can recall how, in 1977, when Menachem Begin and the Likud came to power after three decades of Labor Party rule, there was alarm verging on panic in some circles.

I woke up on Saturday morning, read the news from Israel that at least 50,000 Israelis had just demonstrated once more against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to strip the Israeli Supreme Court of its independence and put it instead under Netanyahu’s thumb — at a time when Netanyahu himself is facing corruption charges — and I asked myself a simple question: “What does President Biden think of this?”

On Israel-interested social media, complaining about Tom Friedman’s columns in the New York Times has become something of a sport.

Imagine you woke up after the 2024 U.S. presidential election and found that Donald Trump had been re-elected and chose Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Michael Flynn for defense secretary, Steve Bannon for commerce secretary, evangelical leader James Dobson for education secretary, Proud Boys former leader Enrique Tarrio for homeland security head and Marjorie Taylor Greene for the White House spokeswoman.

“Impossible,” you would say. Well, think again.

Israel’s fifth election in four years has finally broken the deadlock, producing a decisive victory for Netanyahu and his far right and ultra-Orthodox allies.

With news that Prime Minister Yair Lapid has conceded defeat in the Israeli elections and the results clearly showing that Binyamin Netanyahu will lead the new coalition government, we congratulate Mr Netanyahu on his return to office.

Labour NEC member Luke Akehurst confirms ‘not a single CLP has submitted a motion’ on Israel and the Palestinians for debate at the Liverpool conference in contrast to the fanatical pro-Palestinian mood of the Jeremy Corbyn era.

David Barak-Gorodetsky reviews the new book Haifa Republic: A Democratic Future by Omri Boehm.

A conversation with historian Walter Russell Mead about misconceptions of Jewish power and the decidedly non-Jewish roots of support for the Jewish state

“In ten years I will not be in the Knesset.”

Mansour Abbas, leader of the Islamist Ra’am party, let that bombshell slip at the end of a lengthy conversation recently.

“My family needs me. I left them at a very delicate time.”

The latest round of fighting in Gaza came to an end Sunday evening with Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) agreeing to abide by an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire.

US-Israeli relations are “bone deep”, President Joe Biden said upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport on Wednesday at the beginning of a high-profile trip to the Middle East.

Having long prepared for the job, Yair Lapid quickly took on the role of Israel’s prime minister.

Australia has criticised the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for its one-sided obsession with Israel.

Though the memory is a fading one, the Democratic Party was once Israel’s central pillar of political support in the United States, if not in the entire world.

Early on the morning of Saturday, March 5, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett travelled in a motorcade from his home in Ra’anana, a sleepy town north of Tel Aviv, to Ben Gurion airport.

Traditional Independence Day celebrations at the President’s Residence hosted for the first time by President Herzog and First Lady Michal Herzog and feature Israeli artists, military ensembles and the IDF Orchestra

In his speech on April 27, at the opening ceremony of Israel’s Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett departed from his predecessor’s approach in one very significant way: he made no mention of Iran.

Within the first week of Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine, Israel gave the clearest possible signal about its emerging policy of total ambiguity. First, Israel declined to support the US effort to condemn Russia at the United Nations Security Council.

When the two most senior Amnesty officials presented their new report in Israel they struggled to answer the most basic questions. Their responses, writes Shany Mor, were ‘a mix of exasperation, ignorance, self-contradiction, and conspiratorial magical thinking’.

The head of the first Arab party to join an Israeli governing coalition answers questions about the country’s domestic and foreign policies, including its approach to Palestinian issues and diplomacy with Arab states.

A new poll of Arab residents of Jerusalem by a Palestinian media outlet found that 93% of them prefer to remain under Israeli rule and would not give up their Israeli identity card.

A Jew. An Arab. An African. A nationalist. An internationalist. A secularist. A socialist. An anti-colonialist. A Zionist. Few people combine the identities, both inherited and chosen, of Albert Memmi.

In this BICOM Podcast, Richard Pater speaks to Dr Arik Rudnitzky, a researcher in the ‘Arab Society in Israel Programme’ at the Israel Democracy Institute.

I am grateful for the excellent comments by Eugene Kontorovich and Yonatan Green to the final installment of my seven-part series on Israel’s declaration of independence.

The relentless demonising and delegitimising of Israel continues apace.

Israel is perceived as a powerful cyber nation worldwide. Technology companies like Check Point, Argus, Verint, and NSO, to name just a few, promote Israeli technologies as well the narrative of a nation able to translate its prowess at the military field into marketable assets.

The political landscape in Washington has changed. Israel’s outreach to the Democrats is vital— including to some progressives.

Is Mansour Abbas changing the system or selling out the Palestinian cause?

Meretz decries ‘unilateral steps’ in West Bank, says they undermine government; Labor says it was left out of key decisions

Anchored in traditional texts, Judaism offers its own timeless political counsel against what ancient Greek tragedians referred to as hubris—excessive pride or arrogance that leads to nemesis, a reversal of fortunes and an eventual downfall.

As the new Jewish state was taking root in 1948, an estimated 850,000 Jews living in Arab countries were being expelled or fled their homes in those countries

As an ongoing political crisis in Israel precluded formation of a coalition and a government, the Arab vote became increasingly legitimate in the eyes of most Jewish parties, from both the right and the center-left.

Bennett says move will encourage ultra-Orthodox employment as government agrees on proposal after years of political clashes over the issue

On Jewish New Year’s Eve, a critical component in IDF prowess is that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East American concern over Israel-China ties is one of the many challenges Jerusalem is facing

Robbie Sabel, The Campaign to Delegitimize Israel with the False Charge of Apartheid, 27 August 2009

Yair Lapid’s (now Israeli Foreign Minister) speech in Germany from the train station where the first Jews were sent to Auschwitz, 26 August 2014

How one-sided can you get? It is interesting that since 2015, at the UN General Assembly, there have been 112 resolutions against Israel, 4 on Iran, North Korea 6, Syria 8, zero on China, Venezuela, Libya, etc

Israel Labour Leader Merav Michaeli, now the Minister of Transport and Road Safety; her moving, first speech in the Israeli parliament, The Knesset, in March 2013

The Barak Peace Plan Article about the lost opportunity for peace in 2000, told from the perspective of the last Israeli Labor Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak

See also Dr Einat Wilf’s perceptive article, The Placard Strategy, 1 July 2021

See her critique of the UNRWA: Why UNRWA is an obstacle to two states for two peoples: interview with Dr Einat Wilf | Fathom | October 2018

Dr. Einat Wilf, the webpage of the former Israeli Labour MK, an acute observer of local and regional politics

Analysis of Israeli government sworn in June 2021: From Labour Friends of Israel, A New Government for Israel, 15 June 2021

Yair, Rosenberg, Israel’s New Government Explained, 4 June 2021

Profile of the former Israeli Labor Leader, now President of Israel, The Guardian, 2 June 2021