Distorting Ben-Gurion

By ignoring millions of declassified documents from the period of the British Mandate (1920-48) and Israel’s early days that show the claim of premeditated dispossession of the Palestinian Arabs to be completely unfounded, “revisionist” journalist Tom Segev’s rewrites David Ben-Gurion’s personal story, and, by extension, the story of Israel’s creation, in an image of his own making in which aggressors are transformed into hapless victims and vice versa.

The Fight for Israel’s Open Spaces

Last week’s murderous terrorist attack reflects the ongoing struggle between Jews and Arabs for territorial control, in which Palestinians have a clearer grasp of their goal: reducing the Jewish physical presence in the state of Israel and the West Bank to a small, ghettoized, urban “villa in the jungle.”

Zionism and the Wedge Between US and Israeli Jews

A troubling side effect of the Zionist enterprise is that 70 years after the State of Israel came into being, a wedge has grown between Israelis and the Diaspora, driven by guilt and presumptions of moral superiority. The root of the problem is that too many American Jews are uncomfortable with power.

The Hysteria over the Polish Law

The essence of Zionism as a national liberation movement is the Jewish People’s return to history as a sovereign actor – a nation among the nations. Insofar as the Holocaust is not the justification for its sovereign existence, Israel’s response to the Polish law forbidding Poles from being accused of involvement in Nazi crimes must take into account pragmatic considerations in the changing political arena.