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Bella Rubinstein, Passover 1995. Photo: Courtesy.

Our German-made Passover seder plates

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Storytelling is a central feature of the Passover holiday. The imperative for Jews to retell our history assures that our children will never forget it. During the Holocaust, traditional Passover seder texts were handwritten in...
Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng addresses the Judicial Officers Association of South Africa's annual general meeting held at Kopanong Conference Hotel in Benoni. Credit: GCIS/Government of South Africa/Flickr.

South Africa’s chief justice confronts the apartheid analogy

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As of this writing, South Africa’s Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng was on day seven of a 10-day deadline to publicly apologize for a speech he made last year in which he offered a full-throated...

Moral Purity In An Overly Pure World

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When we say that something or someone is pure, we are saying that within a certain category of being, they are consistently of one nature and have no other added components, elements or aspects. ...
The Palestinian leadership is supplying SNL’s Michael Che with unexpected material for his Covid-19 vaccine punchlines. The Palestinian Authority, which administers limited public services in Israel’s territories, is now accused by its own people of distributing Covid-19 vaccines to the privileged at the expense of needy Palestinians. Such an allegation should make one wonder how the Palestinians will govern their own independent state. For a long time, I have been skeptical of the much-lauded two-state solution because the Palestinians have failed to provide reliable leadership. In so doing they might neglect equitable services for the average Palestinian and jeopardize Israeli security. If the new accusations are true, the leadership’s performance foreshadows what we can look forward to if a Palestinian state is ever established. Based on the authority’s track record, it should not surprise anyone that these complaints are now being aired. “There’s absolutely no justification for giving the very small number of vaccines we have to other people close to power at the expense of those who most need them,” said Hasan Ayoub, the chairman of the political science department at An Najah University in Nablus, according to The New York Times. The Times, attributing new revelations to three anonymous sources associated with the leadership, reported last Friday that the authority “has officially prioritized its senior administrative leadership and frontline health workers, as well as people who come into regular contact with the authority’s president and prime minister.” The Times article continues, “In secret, the authority has diverted some of the thousands of vaccines it has received to some senior members of the ruling party in the West Bank who have no formal role in government, according to two senior officials and a senior official from the party, Fatah. “Vaccines have also been secretly given to top figures at major news outlets run by the authority, according to one of the senior Palestinian officials and two employees at those outlets. Family members of certain government officials and Fatah leaders were also given the vaccines, the senior official and a former government official said.” These accusations come after Israel was battered by charges that it withheld its vaccines from the Palestinians, which prompted Che to quip on Saturday Night Live nearly three weeks ago: “Israel is reporting that they vaccinated half of their population, and I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.” In the more than quarter-century since Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization launched their peace process, how an independent Palestinian state would operate has not been addressed. How will the leadership ensure that it will serve all citizens equally? How will it guarantee Israeli security? If a future Palestine cannot develop a working democracy, what could be the alternative? A few ideas come to mind, and I am fully aware that they are very difficult to achieve, if not impossible. Proposals include confederations with Egypt and Jordan; Turkey annexing Gaza; and, much to anticipated chagrin, Israeli control of its territories. Palestinians might have acquired their own state now except that in summer 2000 then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat rejected an Israeli proposal for 93 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza and east Jerusalem. At the very least, I suspect that Arafat expected that his more extremist citizens would never accept it and even attempt to assassinate Arafat. Possibly they wanted unlimited right of return into all of Israel, which would disrupt the demographic balance. Negotiations were revived and broke down again. Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu suggested a plan that would offer the Palestinians a state with less land in the West Bank than proposed by Netanyahu’s predecessor in 2000, Ehud Barak. Why would the Palestinians accept less land after already rebuffing the more generous proposal? The most sensible prospect would be two sets of confederations – Jordan and the West Bank, and Egypt and Gaza. After all, the Palestinians share far more cultural and religious traditions with Jordan and Egypt, with Jordan located adjacent to the West Bank and Egypt next to Gaza. The size of these confederations would provide military protection, economic opportunity and diplomatic support for the West Bank and Gaza. If Gaza and the West Bank formed their own state, they would be at the mercy of larger nations that could box them in. Israel is already accused of doing that with Gaza, and Egypt has torn up part of Rafah, a city that straddles the border between Gaza and Egypt, to eliminate tunnels. An attempt to connect Jordan with the West Bank failed long ago, and the 1979 peace pact between Israel and Egypt meant returning the Sinai to Egypt, but Israel kept Gaza. I recognize that any deal for any confederation is doubtful, to risk understatement, but this proposal appears to be the most workable. Another proposal could be aptly named the Put-Erdogan’s-money-where-his-mouth-is plan. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has spent years behaving like the champion of the Palestinians and repeatedly blamed Israel for the miseries suffered by them. Why doesn’t he annex Gaza, now controlled by Hamas, and govern it? Of course, he would need to take responsibility for the Gazans’ needs and be accountable for any attacks originating from Gaza. A very unwelcome possibility: Israel annexes Gaza and the West Bank and governs these lands without allowing Palestinians in the territories to vote in national elections. As many Israelis fear, a Palestinian majority could vote in Arab rule of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. It will be a pleasant surprise if Israel and the PLO seriously negotiate a two-state solution, though at the present rate it looks as if we will be stuck with the status quo for a long time.

With New COVID Critique, How Would Palestinian Leaders Govern Their Own State?

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The Palestinian leadership is supplying SNL’s Michael Che with unexpected material for his Covid-19 vaccine punchlines. The Palestinian Authority, which administers limited public services in Israel’s territories, is now accused by its own people of...
U.S. Capitol at dusk as seen from the eastern side, Washington, D.C., 2013. Credit: Martin Falbisoner via Wikimeda Commons.

Is bipartisanship on Iran a lost cause?

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On its face, it seems like very good news. A pair of gestures—a letter from members of the House of Representatives and a resolution introduced in the chamber—aimed at restoring a vestige of bipartisanship...

Proof that China is using Covid-19 to overtake the US

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What is the source of the coronavirus that has wreaked havoc on the world? Most people today would agree that the source was China. But controversy exists and will continue to exist about how...
A billboard displaying Iranian Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini and Ali Khamenei. Credit: Erdalislakphotography/Shutterstock.

The plague of the Middle East in 2021 remains Iran

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The United Nations, the setting for my five-year service as Israel’s 17th Permanent Representative, has traditionally been an unwelcome and problematic arena for the State of Israel. Year after year, Israel has withstood many...
Sheets of newly printed ballots seen at the Palphot printing house in Karnei Shomron in preparation for Israel's upcoming general elections, March 9, 2021. Photo by Yossi Zeliger/Flash90.

Can left and right unite to topple a forever prime minister?

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As Israel heads to the polls for the fourth time in the course of two years later this month, interest in the voting among American Jews is not great. After more than a year...
David Bernstein. Credit: Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

Can liberalism be saved from cancel culture?

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David Bernstein is a self-described “man of the left.” He’s spent his adult life working in the institutions that embody the ethos of modern Jewish liberalism. That culminated in a five-year term as president...
WikiImages / Pixabay

Controlling Nuclear Risks: A Basic Obligation of U.S, Law and Policy

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Abstract: In principle, especially during a rare historical moment of extra-terrestrial exploration and immunological control, our species ought to render itself capable of managing nuclear threats. Prima facie, after all, the difficulties of transporting complex instrumentation...