The Promise of Israel

Why Its Seemingly Greatest Weakness Is Actually Its Greatest Strength

Makes the surprising—and surprisingly compelling—argument that Israel is the model that many other nations should follow

 

What Israel's critics in the West really object to about the Jewish State, Daniel Gordis asserts, is the fact that Israel is a country consciously devoted to the future of the Jewish people.  In a world where differences between cultures, religions and national traditions are either denied or papered over, Israel’s critics insist that no country devoted to a single religion or culture can stay democratic and prosperous. They're wrong.  Rather than relentlessly assailing Israel, Gordis argues, the international community should see Israel’s ...

Neshama Carlebach, daughter of the revered Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, issued a noteworthy message this week: “Two weeks ago, The Forward honored me with a request to perform their new version of our timeless and beautiful ‘Hatikva,’ the Jewish national anthem. My intention was not to make a political statement of any kind but to speak to the hearts of people from all faiths and backgrounds with love.” But then Carlebach had this to say: “To those who have misunderstood my intentions, I ask you not to dishonor yourselves by comparing my performance of ‘Hatikva’ to the acts of the worst persecutors of the Jewish People.”Now, I’ve no idea what sort of responses Carlebach received that elicited her ...

Imagine it’s January 1946. Imagine, too, that you are exactly who you are now: thoughtful, educated, worldly, rational. And then, someone says to you, “Tell me about the future of the Jews.” So you survey the world in January 1946. It’s a year after the liberation of Auschwitz, and just months since the war has ended. You cast your eyes toward Eastern Europe, which not much earlier had been the world’s center of Jewish life, learning, literature and culture. Eastern European Jewry is gone.  Though we commonly say that Hitler annihilated one third of the world’s Jews, that number is technically correct but misses the point. The number that really matters is that after Hitler, ...

Peter Beinart is right. The relationship between American Jews and the Jewish state is indeed in crisis. Beinart and his title are just wrong about what the crisis is. What we face, as his book accidentally demonstrates, is not The Crisis of Zionism, but a crisis of American Judaism. The Crisis of Zionism is, as countless reviewers have already noted, an Israel-bashing-fest. The second intifada was Israel’s fault: It “erupted because while many Israelis genuinely believed that [Ehud] Barak was trying to end the occupation, Palestinians felt it was closing in on them.” Israel attacks terrorists “nestled amid a stateless and thus largely defenseless Palestinian population,” as if the terrorists’ decision to lodge there were Israel’s ...

International exasperation with Israel’s role in its conflict with the Palestinians has created an atmosphere so poisoned that, in the name of “fairness,” even proposals that could lead to the destruction of the Jewish state are now given serious hearing. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran has repeatedly said that the Jewish state must be destroyed. The weapon he now seeks would enable him to carry out his threat. Is “nuclear nonproliferation,” a euphemism for denuding Israel of its defensive capacity, really the way to respond? If Iran is a rational actor, the only factor preventing its attacking Israel is Israel’s second-strike capacity. And if it is not rational, all the more reason Israel should not bear sole ...

It’s Purim in Jerusalem today, a day of masks, of identities hidden, of a topsyturvy imaginary world. In this region, though, the absurdities we create for Purim can sometimes pale in comparison with the painful realities that will endure long after the holiday. Each year, I interview a few candidates for a college in the US. Typically, they are either American students in Israel for a gap year or Israelis just out of the army who want to attend an American school. It was thus without too much curiosity that I opened this year’s email with the names and addresses of the two students I was being asked to interview. But then I saw that one ...

There is, it seems, a bit of an occupational hazard to this column-writing business. It probably holds for all sorts of topics, but it’s undoubtedly true when thinking aloud about Israel. Here’s the choice: You can either plant yourself firmly on one side of the political divide, being predictably “right wing” or “left wing,” or you can, depending on the issue, say what you think but appear a bit less consistent. The advantages of the first option are clear. Once you are tagged as a “right winger” or “left winger,” people assume that they know what you’re going to say. If you’re “on their side,” they read and nod approvingly, feeling ever so validated by yet ...

When he passed away on November 8 in Jerusalem, the American- born Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel was widely credited with having transformed the Mir Yeshiva into the world’s largest. Some 100,000 people flocked to his funeral. The procession began at the Mir in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood, and continued afoot to the Har Hamenuhot cemetery. For those neighborhoods of Jerusalem and for the population that lives there, time stood still. Businesses were closed and study was suspended even at other institutions. His death was considered a loss of a once-in-a-generation leader. Amazingly, though, outside that community, almost no one noticed. Most Israelis could not name him and were unaware that he had died. Even those American Jews ...

Mr. Prime Minister, Before the Shalit deal fades entirely from view, many of us are hoping that you have noticed what you unwittingly unleashed.  I don’t mean the next wave of terror or the terrible decisions that Israel must make before the next kidnapping.  We knew about those even before last week.  But last Tuesday, all of us – those opposed as well as those in favor (and there were persuasive arguments on both sides) – rediscovered something magnificent about this country.  It would be tragic if we returned to business as usual without pausing to take note. In addition to Gilad Shalit, we got one more thing in return that few of us could have ...

As delegates gather in New York for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly next week, the U.S. was seeking a last-minute compromise to delay a U.N. vote supporting Palestinian statehood. Turkey and Egypt have lent support to such a resolution, and American negotiators in the Middle East were in talks aimed at averting the U.N. vote. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel seemed intent on blocking it, and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority appeared equally determined to see it proceed. Is there a case to be made that Israel's very survival depends on the creation of a stable and viable Palestinian state? A brief column with a few other "debaters" on the ...