Author Archives: Victor Rosenthal

Playing Chicken with the Jewish State

What’s really going on in Israel? What are the massive demonstrations and disruptions in the streets, the revolt of the reserve pilots and the countless testimonials and petitions in Israel and the U.S. about? They aren’t just about changing the … Continue reading

Posted in Israeli Politics, Israeli Society | 2 Comments

The Forward Brings Back the Massacre That Never Happened

Like the proverbial old soldiers, anti-Jewish lies never die. But they don’t fade away, either. No matter how often they are proven false, they come back to incite hatred and motivate murder. Blood libels against Jews can be found before … Continue reading

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Media, Terrorism, War | 4 Comments

The Survival Imperative

It has been this way since our ancestors started walking upright, maybe before that. Two tribes struggle over a piece of land. One will prevail and the other will be defeated. One will remain in the land and the other … Continue reading

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, The Jewish people | 4 Comments

Israel’s Democracy Is Endangered – But Not for the Reason You Think

Israel’s new government is being hammered by an unprecedented political and media blitz, focusing on its intention to restore checks and balances between the judiciary and the Knesset. “If this government does not fall,” says opposition leader Yair Lapid, “Israel … Continue reading

Posted in Israeli Politics | 7 Comments

The Palestinian Weaponization of Language

One of the frustrations of “peace processing,” as it has been practiced by various Israeli governments and American administrations, is that there are systematic ambiguities in the way important concepts are understood by the two sides. The Palestinian ideology, like … Continue reading

Posted in 'Peace' Process, Israel and Palestinian Arabs, US-Israel Relations | 2 Comments

Palestinianism: an Ideology and an Identity

Palestinianism is more than a collection of political beliefs. It is a closed system of memes including a historical narrative, a Cause to which its believers aspire, and an idiosyncratic language in which familiar words have special meanings. In those … Continue reading

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs | 2 Comments

Managing the Unmanageable

In their ongoing struggle to escape reality, Israeli politicians and opinion leaders have settled on a new approach to our never-ending war with the Arabs of Eretz Yisrael: not ending the conflict, but managing it. After almost thirty years of … Continue reading

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Politics, Terrorism, War | 5 Comments

Facing Reality

Sometimes reality can be difficult, even painful. But resist it as you will, it remains reality. Let me quote Nehemia Shtrasler, a left-wing journalist writing in the left-wing newspaper Ha’aretz: Humans are tribal creatures by nature. Hundreds of thousands of … Continue reading

Posted in Israel and Palestinian Arabs, Israeli Arabs, Terrorism, The Future, War | 4 Comments