Palestine
Obama's Big Israel Breakthrough
Thursday's speech may have singlehandedly repaired a rocky relationship
Barack Obama came to Jerusalem to win over the Israeli people, and with a single speech he did. It happened when he addressed an audience of several thousand young people in Jerusalem and delivered what may have been the most passionate Zionist speech ever given by an American president.
"It's Just a Matter of Time"
A conversation with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert about the two-state solution
A conversation with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert about the two-state solution.
The (Very) Quiet Peace Talks Between Israel and Hamas
The Middle East's storm clouds have a silver lining
The Middle East's storm clouds have a silver lining.
George W. Bush's started a secret war on Hamas. Is Obama continuing it?
The fence along Israel's border with Syria will help to protect Israel. What could go wrong with that?
Chill Out, John Kerry
Advice for the new secretary of state about Israeli-Palestinian relations
Advice for the new secretary of state on Israeli-Palestinian relations. For instance: It's not a race.
Nobility Eclipsed
Sanctuary in the Wilderness: A Critical Introduction to American Hebrew PoetryBy Alan Mintz (Stanford University Press, 520 pp., $65) I. ON DECEMBER 17, 2007, on the storied stage of the Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York, the Hebrew language—its essence, its structure, its metaphysic— entered American discourse in so urgent a manner as to renew, if not to inflame, an ancient argument. The occasion was a public conversation between Marilynne Robinson and Robert Alter: a not uncommon match of novelist with literary scholar.
Danger Zone
Newt Gingrich has dumbly stirred a ruckus in saying that the Arabs of Palestine are an “invented people.” It did not increase his chances of winning the Republican presidential nomination: How many Jews actually vote in Republican primaries? (And many Christian Zionists are already for him on altogether non-Zionist grounds.) But it should not have caused such a furor in the first place.
High Crimes: How Israel Is Experiencing Its Own Watergate Affair
Jerusalem—The Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that, on December 7, the country will lose a little bit more of its innocence. For the first time in its history, the nation will witness a former president—Moshe Katsav—entering the gates of a prison, where he will begin serving a seven-year sentence for multiple counts of rape and sexual misconduct.
Kol Nidre, Israel, and American Jews
Kol Nidre is the most haunting prayer in the Jewish liturgy. I would gauge that more Jews attend synagogue at this moment than at any other time in the year. (You’ve already missed it if you wanted to go.) For some it may be an act of desperation, a stance between belief and non-belief, hovering somewhere between trust and trembling. In any case, it is my or your—if you had decided to try—last chance to settle accounts with God, in the heavens or with the god of your imagination.
