Israel/Palestine

A RACE OR A RELIGION?:

The assassination that changed Israel forever (Yossi Melman, 2 November 2025, The Spectator)

After the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, right-wing circles – especially among Jewish settlers – launched a public campaign that grew increasingly aggressive. What began as verbal incitement soon escalated into physical violence and criminal acts.

Itamar Ben-Gvir – today Israel’s minister of national security – was then a young disciple of the extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, who preached Jewish supremacy. Ben-Gvir infamously tore the Cadillac emblem off Rabin’s car and declared before television cameras: ‘We got to the symbol – and we’ll get to him too.’ At several demonstrations, protesters came dangerously close to physically attacking Rabin.

Riding that wave of incitement were senior opposition figures from the Likud party, led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu was among the most prominent voices fanning the flames. He marched at the head of a demonstration where protesters carried a coffin bearing Rabin’s name.

At a major rally in Jerusalem’s Zion Square, weeks before the assassination, Likud leaders stood on a balcony – among them Netanyahu, who delivered a fiery speech; Ariel Sharon, and others. When posters depicting Rabin in an SS uniform began circulating in the crowd, some Likud leaders, including future prime minister Ehud Olmert, realised the rally was spiraling out of control and left the scene. Netanyahu stayed.

After the assassination, Ami Ayalon was appointed head of the Shin Bet, replacing the failed Carmi Gillon. Ayalon told me last week bluntly that the politicians on the balcony may not have intended Rabin’s death, but their presence – without condemning the sights and chants of the rally – granted legitimacy to extremists. ‘It’s always the minority that acts,’ he observed.

The justice system also failed to act. Although 340 cases of incitement and violence were opened, prosecutors and judges dragged their feet – even after Rabin himself appealed to Supreme Court President Aharon Barak to intervene. ‘Our approach,’ admitted then–Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair, ‘was to show tolerance toward free speech and the right to protest. In retrospect, that was a mistake.’

Ironically, there was a brief time when they could have escaped their spiral out of the West, when Sharon was in power and realized Israel was best served by Palestinian statehood. His stroke was the real disaster.

A RACE OR A RELIGION?:

The origins of today’s conflict between American Jews over Israel: In the early years, American Jewish support for Israel was a fraught issue. The turning point was the six-­day war of 1967, which solidified a strength of feeling that has only recently begun to fracture (Mark Mazower, 25 Sep 2025, The Guardian)

Of the few figures who stood out against the tide, perhaps the most notable was William Zukerman, a journalist who had been reporting on international Jewish affairs since the 1920s. Arguing that since 1948 the terms ­anti-­Zionist and Zionist had lost their meanings, Zukerman described himself as “pro-Israel” but “anti-nationalist”. He criticised what he called “the wave of Messianic nationalism which the Hitler Holocaust has released” among American Jews. In embracing the ethnic chauvinism that had swept over the world since the late 1930s, he argued that the Jews risked adopting a cruelty that was already changing “the entire character of the people”. Israel had turned Jews into “conquerors” whose indifference to the plight of the Arab refugees betrayed Judaism’s tradition of sympathy for the oppressed. For Zukerman, the Israeli leadership’s deliberate efforts to identify the country with Jews abroad served merely to increase the danger of antisemitism faced by the latter since it introduced “new diplomatic and political reasons in addition to the old social, economic and psychological ones”.

Zukerman’s articles were much discussed by American Jews at the time and are attracting new interest today. Nor was he alone: other Jewish leaders expressed similar concerns. But such a stance carried costs, and he was denounced as a “self-hating Jew” and an antisemite. What he termed a “perverted chauvinistic reasoning” meant that his opinions were treated “as almost the equivalent of treason”. He wrote: “To criticise any policy of Israel, whether it is the rendering homeless of a million native Arabs, the treatment of the Arab minority as­ second-class citizens or the transformation of the new state into a racial theocracy, is denounced not only as anti-­Israel but as ­antisemitic.”

One senses the shock he felt at the term being applied in this way to someone like him, who had done as much as anyone to chart the rise of antisemitism in interwar Europe. We are here at the very beginning of what one might call a kind of Zionist usage of the term that was only conceivable once Israel itself had come into existence. Recent research has revealed that Israeli diplomats were concerned enough about Zukerman’s influence to mount a ­behind-­the-scenes campaign against him, enlisting American Zionist organisations and eventually pressuring the proprietors of Jewish newspapers to drop him. As a result, his articles ceased to be widely available and when he died in 1961 his Jewish ­Newsletter, which he had kept going for 14 years, folded.

IS JUDAISM A RACE OR A RELIGION?:

Poised to Strike: Israel prepares for a final push into Gaza—but will it be stymied by criticism from abroad and discontent at home? (Benny Morris, 24 May 2025 , Quillette)

This week, the Israel Air Force (IAF) continued to hunt, bomb, and rocket the Hamas terrorist squads hiding among Gaza’s civilians, killing more women and children in the process—so far, according to Hamas figures, some 30,000 Palestinian women and children have died since October 2023. Meanwhile, Israel’s international position dramatically worsened. EU member states and Canada have imposed minor sanctions against the Jewish state and threaten worse. Observers in Jerusalem have warned that Israel faces an international relations “tsunami.” In Washington, Israel’s staunchest ally, President Donald Trump’s aides, speaking anonymously, told The Washington Post that a break with Israel is likely if it does not end its war-making in the Gaza Strip. But Trump himself has remained mum—though he previously voiced his agreement with Benjamin Netanyahu that the war must end with Hamas’s destruction. According to recent reports, Trump’s new Arabian Gulf allies—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates—are pressing Washington to end the Gaza War.

Palestinian suffering—and Muslim pressures within Western societies and from the Arab capitals—are now beginning to have an impact beyond America’s Ivy League campuses. Western public opinion and European governments are driven by daily TV clips from Gaza showing dead and dying women and children—though never dead and dying combat-age males. They are also influenced by worsening humanitarian conditions on the ground—Trump has even spoken hyperbolically of “a lot of people starving.” And finally they are alarmed at the prospect of a massive new push against Hamas by Israeli ground forces, designed, Netanyahu announced on 21 May, to end in open-ended Israeli rule over the whole Strip, together with the “voluntary” transfer of at least some of its population out of Gaza, as Trump proposed a few weeks ago.

SUICIDE BOMBING:

What has the IDF done to Gaza — and to itself? (John Ware, 1/15/25, The Article)

15 months later, his ex-defence minister Moshe Ya’alon, also once IDF Chief of Staff, said that Israel no longer had “the most moral army in the world.” Claiming to speak “on behalf of commanders who serve in northern Gaza” Ya’alon said: “War crimes are being committed here.”

The IDF denied this. What the IDF has, however acknowledged is that from the start of the war, it changed its rules of engagement.

As a consequence, one of the deadliest wars for children in the history of modern warfare was unleashed.

A recent New York Times investigation says that in the war’s first seven weeks, the IDF fired 30,000 munitions into Gaza. At 1 p.m. on Oct. 7, standard rules minimising civilian deaths were loosened.

By 30 November the Gaza Media Office said some 6150 children had been killed. The GMO is, of course, Hamas run. Even so, that estimate may turn out to have been conservative.

Based on a sample of 8119 deaths over five months which the UN claims to have independently audited, 44% were found to be children, with those aged 5 to 9 representing the single biggest age category. By that metric, it’s possible that some 6600 children were killed in the first seven weeks.

Amongst soldiers and officials quoted by the New York Times were those involved in the targeting. They told the paper that loosening the IDF’s rules to minimise collateral deaths meant a doubling of the allowable civilian to target death ratio: from a maximum of ten civilian deaths per target, to 20; for high value targets, up to 100 civilian deaths per strike. Even then, the paper said, the method to calculate the risks were “simplistic.”

IDF critics argue a target ratio of 100 to 1 would never have been contemplated by NATO forces in the 9/11 wars.

EXPECTATION BIGOTRY:

Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism: If you insist that the Jewish state is the only one that should not be allowed to defend itself against terrorist attacks, you are probably an antisemite. (David Benatar, 30 Jul 2024, Quillette)

The fact that anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are not necessarily antisemitic does not mean that they are never antisemitic. Similarly, the fact that anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are sometimes antisemitic, does not imply that they always are. Determining when anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel are antisemitism requires argument. There will be cases in which the answer is clear, and other cases in which there is scope for reasonable disagreement. In what follows, I will try to unpick the most important factors at stake in determining this.

The first step is to clarify what we mean by “anti-Zionism” and “antisemitism.” […]

I propose the following definition:

Antisemitism is wrongful discrimination against Jews as Jews.
This definition parallels similar definitions of racism and sexism:

Racism is wrongful discrimination against (or in favour of) some people as members of a particular racial group.

Sexism is wrongful discrimination against (or in favour of) some people as members of a particular sex.
These are not uncontroversial definitions. For example, there are those who think that we need to add the condition that the discrimination is systematic. I reject that addition, for reasons I have explained elsewhere—but in any case, antisemitism has deep historical roots and is often systematic. My proposed definition encompasses attitudinal and systemic, intentional and unwitting antisemitism. My proposed definition makes no reference to Jewish institutions or collectives, because by implication, one way of being antisemitic is to wrongfully discriminate against Jews by targeting their institutions or collectives on account of their being Jewish.

On the other hand: If you insist that the Jewish state is the only one that should be allowed to treat certain citizens differently on the basis of Identity, you are probably an antisemite.

NOT YOUR FATHER’S ZIONISM:

The perversion of religious Zionism (AMOTZ ASA-EL, JUNE 7, 2024, Jerusalem Post)

The pair’s endgame is a restoration of Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip, a mad idea by any yardstick – national, international, or military – but a perfectly sound one in terms of their messianic theology, which is to plant Jewish settlements in every reachable corner of the biblical Land of Israel, regardless of who is there and what that entails. While even they understand this cannot happen immediately, they focus on what can happen: Israeli military rule across the Gaza Strip.

A ceasefire is anathema to them because it might generate an Arab regime in Gaza designed by Arab governments at peace with Israel, and also Saudi Arabia. To Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, such a scenario is a nightmare, not militarily or strategically, as they claim, but theologically as they do not openly admit.

RELIGIOUS ZIONISM and ultra-Orthodoxy have been at odds for more than a century. Their controversy was about the Jews’ role in shaping their future. Religious Zionists, like their secular allies, thought the Jews must fight for their freedom or they would be abused indefinitely. Ultra-Orthodoxy thought the Jews’ redemption was God’s task, and the Jews’ task was to pray that God would soon fulfill His task.

The Zionist goal, then, was Jewish liberation through Jewish sovereignty in the Jewish land. The Jews were the aim, and their land was the means. This view was shared by Religious Zionism’s politicians who in 1947 backed wholeheartedly the partition plan that created the Jewish state, and in 1967 backed with equal conviction the idea of land for peace, as did the greatest Modern Orthodox theologian, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903-1993).

Now the party that calls itself Religious Zionism not only doesn’t think of land for peace, it thinks of land for war. The hostages, in its view, are expendable for the hallucination of Jewish settlements in Gaza. The people, originally the aim, and the land, originally the means, have reversed roles. It’s a biblical tragedy.

WELL OUT OF IT:

The Implications of the Gaza-Israel War for U.S.-Jordanian Ties (Abdulaziz Kilani, June 6, 2024, New Lines Institute)

Prior to the war, Jordan had already been dealing with various challenges, including the smuggling of drugs and weapons over its border with Syria. The kingdom’s economy also continues to struggle, and continued U.S. assistance has played a role in maintaining its stability. Since the war began, those challenges have deepened, with economic impacts on tourism immediately after Oct. 7 and on trade coming from the Red Sea escalations.

The kingdom “has been walking a high wire” with Washington since the Oct. 7 attack, Jawad Anani, former chief of the Royal Hashemite Court, told the author. “Jordan still believes the U.S. has the upper hand in bringing the parties together,” Anani said, adding that diminished U.S. prestige in the region could have consequences for the kingdom. A November 2023 University of Jordan poll showed 99% dissatisfaction among Jordanians with the U.S. stance on the conflict.

The war also has increased Hamas’ popularity in Jordan, leading some to again call on the government to restore ties with the militant group. Such a move is unlikely; it would anger several of Jordan’s partners, including the U.S., and in April, officials and observers in Jordan accused the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas of inciting protests to destabilize the kingdom.

The violence has caused concerns over refugees. Although the focus currently is on Gaza, Amman is also worried that the West Bank might be the next point of escalation, bringing with it a possible new influx of refugees and a host of political, economic, security, and demographic obstacles. In 2020, Abdullah warned of “massive conflict” with Israel if it proceeded with its plans to annex large parts of the West Bank.

Amman has been clear that it will not accept more refugees, seeing the crisis as an Israeli attempt to settle the Palestinian conflict at the expense of Jordan. Washington understands the kingdom’s position, and some U.S. officials have privately acknowledged that countries such as Jordan have valid concerns.

Jordan’s ability to see to the needs of Palestinian refugees was dealt a further blow when the U.S. and several other countries suspended funding for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) after Israel accused 12 of the agency’s employees in Gaza of participating in the Oct. 7 attack. While some nations eventually reinstated funding, the U.S. has not reversed its decision. The UNRWA took charge of all refugee expenses, including those for education and health care; the suspension leaves Jordan struggling to find alternative means to make up the deficit.

The war has also increased Israeli-Iranian tensions. On April 13, Iran launched more than 300 drones and missiles toward Israel in response to its strike on Tehran’s consulate in Syria earlier in the month. Jordan intercepted missiles and drones that entered its airspace during the attack, a move some social media activists interpreted as defending Israel. However, officials in Jordan insisted the move was in the context of self-defence and protection of the kingdom’s sovereignty. Abdullah made it clear that the kingdom “will not be a battlefield for any party.”

The Kingdom has to liberalize next.