יום שבת, י״ט תמוז תשפ״וSaturday, July 4, 2026
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Evelyn Gordon has worked as a journalist and commentator in Israel since 1990. She writes frequently for Commentary magazine’s blog.
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Its twin coronavirus and budget crises are problems caused by—and only fixable by—political leaders, not bureaucratic maneuvering.
The deal involved changes to Basic Laws that may have been necessary in these political circumstances. But any country tinkers with longstanding constitutional arrangements at its own peril.
Visceral hatred of Israel is common even in countries with which it has peace treaties. Not only does this hinder peacemaking, but it creates a real risk that treaties won’t survive an autocrat’s fall.
There’s a straight line connecting leftists’ rejection of the settlements’ legality with rightists’ rejection of the indictments against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
{Reposted to the author's eponymous website} U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest Mideast decisions cast Israeli airstrikes in Syria and (reportedly) Iraq in a different light. Previously, these airstrikes seemed to be aimed solely at preventing Iran from establishing military infrastructure in both countries that could threaten Israel. But it now turns out they were also […]
Jewish tradition links the Jews’ continued presence in their land with their moral conduct. But nowhere does it require national suicide.
The center-right’s support plunged between April and September partly because Benjamin Netanyahu, for the first time, adopted undemocratic tactics. Treating all Israeli Arabs as enemies also didn’t help.
It’s time for the world to choose: Either admit that the Palestinians aren’t actually refugees or finally start treating them as real refugees by granting them the basic right of resettlement.
Letting U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar enter would have sent the opposite message—that their desire to erase Israel isn’t beyond the pale, but merely a legitimate political disagreement. That’s why Israel had to bar them.
On the fundamental issue that has preserved the Jewish people for millennia—the binding nature of “halachah”—the Conservatives are formally on the Orthodox side of the divide. In a world where personal autonomy increasingly reigns supreme, that’s no small thing.
Democracy can’t turn human beings into angels, and all democracies fall short of their highest ideals. But they remain much better than non-democracies at creating mechanisms to counter the harm done by our worst impulses, and thereby, over time, to improve society as a whole.
Palestinians’ rights matter when targeted by Israel, but not when targeted by the Palestinian Authority. And Israeli rights never matter, except when violated by Israel.
In other words, the Palestinian state-to-be, which has already been recognized as an actual state by more than two-thirds of the world, insists it has no responsibility whatsoever for a whopping 40 percent of its population. This, to put it mildly, is not how you behave if you seek to become a functioning state.
For now, liberal American Jews still feel as if they can support the left without having to repudiate their Zionism or their Judaism – something that’s increasingly no longer possible overseas.
Expecting other countries to go from having never even considered moving their embassies to actually doing so in just 12 months was fatuous. But they have gone from a situation in which recognizing Jerusalem was unthinkable to one in which it’s being actively debated.
When words have no meaning, there is nothing Left--and that's who you can 'thank'
Many Israelis are willing to tolerate a racist party in the Knesset because they fear that the alternative is a government that will make life-threatening territorial concessions. And when voters think human life is at stake, telling them to “just say no” won’t work.
Netanyahu, as two Israeli leftists recently admitted, is far more moderate than his hardline image. But by portraying him as an extremist, the left has tarnished Israel among both American Jews and the Democratic Party.
Not so long ago, of course, the peace process was Israel’s top voting issue, almost its only one. But in a poll published last month, self-identified centrists and rightists both ranked the peace process dead last among six suggested issues of concern. Even self-identified leftists ranked it only third, below corruption and closing socioeconomic gaps.
An EU ban on Hezbollah would put a serious crimp in its operations. UNIFIL, by contrast, hasn’t put the slightest crimp in them.
The ICC has betrayed its own mission. Instead of prosecuting the world’s worst atrocities, it has wasted five years on a minor incident simply to satisfy its judges’ anti-Israel prejudice.
With the option of reoccupying Gaza unavailable, the two main options left are both short-term fixes: a smaller-scale military operation or a long-term ceasefire
being a democracy isn’t Israel’s raison d’être; Israel’s raison d’être is that it’s the world’s only Jewish state
Israel would be foolish not to take advantage of the Trump administration’s apparent desire to close UNRWA, even at the price of war with Hamas.
Israeli flags were much in evidence at the Druze community’s protest against the nation-state law the previous week. Those demonstrators, Druze and Jews alike, considered themselves proud Israelis. By banning Israeli flags, the Arab community’s protest sent the opposite message.
If everyone is considered a refugee, then in the end, nobody will be. If refugees are a limited class of people, there’s some hope that other countries can be persuaded to take them in.
once you remove the straw man of anti-Semitism, you’re left with the double standard in all its glory: Israel alone has no right to host authoritarian leaders important to its interests, even as other Western democracies routinely host worse leaders with less justification
Netanyahu never cared much about settlements, but he needed U.S. support to convince a pro-settler cabinet that restraint paid.
For young men, a key driver of terror attacks was the knowledge that they would be lionized by their own society. “The suicide bomber does not act out of suffering or inferior economic status, but rather out of a desire to win social recognition.”
Israel’s critics treated Ghandour’s death as proof of Israel’s evil. In other words, they effectively declared that Israel had no right to defend its border by any means whatsoever–
Today, many American Jewish children are that feeling any special responsibility toward their fellow Jews is Nazi-like behavior, and only if they eschew such feelings can they be good Jews who have internalized the Holocaust’s lessons.
The only people bothered by this are European, UN, and NGO officials sitting in their comfortable offices in Brussels and New York.
Results from a survey in 23 countries showed the strangest results when it came to Israel.
If the U.S. president doesn’t do anything more than declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel and move the embassy, the Israelis would deem it sufficient.
The embassy issue shared an important structural similarity with the Iran deal: The president must sign periodic waivers to keep either deal alive. Consequently, moving the embassy to Jerusalem turned out to be the perfect issue to show that Trump really would defy the world and nix the Iran deal
By treating one of Lebanon's claima as legitimate, the State Department is not only encouraging aggression but proving, once again, that international guarantees to Israel are worthless.
While most Israelis find this conduct repulsive, it’s a price many are willing to pay as long as they feel that Netanyahu is generally doing well by the country, which he is: Even his enemies admit that he has presided over a booming economy, low levels of terrorism and burgeoning relationships with countries around the world.
It’s not just in Arab capitals that Iran is now more widely loathed and feared than Israel, but also on the Arab street, to the point that Arabs are even willing to openly back Israel in a clash with Iran.
Several decades of “protecting” Lebanon have only strengthened Hezbollah, and it’s folly to think more of the same will produce different results. Thus, it’s long past time to acknowledge that Lebanon is a fully-owned Iranian subsidiary--and to treat it accordingly
To emphasize that the ayatollahs’ regime is incompatible with Iran's economic well-being, America must counteract the effect of the nuclear deal by imposing stiff new sanctions on Iran’s ballistic missiles, support for terror and military aggression – together with Europe if possible, but alone if necessary
Leading media outlet (i.e. New York Times) have asserted that Jews never cared about Jerusalem until a few decades ago.
The laws of war were never meant to be a suicide pact; they do not require countries to let their own civilians be slaughtered in order to avoid harming enemy civilians. But in the ICRC’s version, they do.
Effectively, many liberal American Jews declared that Israel had no right to make its views heard in America if doing so discomfited them.
The Druze consider themselves to be and act as loyal Israelis in every respect, so Jewish Israelis consider themselves bound to show equal loyalty to the Druze.
The primary reason Hamas agreed to the reconciliation deal with the PA was its desire to shed responsibility for Gaza’s civilian needs so it could resume focusing on its military wing.
Previously, a Jewish organization spouting anti-Israel canards or advocating Israel boycotts would have been as toxic among US Jews as it was among Israelis. Today’s NIF instead has broad support among US Jewry, revealing the great divide between US and Israeli Jews
Ironically, all three Hamas-Israel wars of the past decade might have been averted had the international community not tried so hard to “protect” Gaza’s civilian population.
In reality, the implications of this case are broad, because if even swearing allegiance to a foreign government on behalf of a terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction isn’t enough to make a Palestinian lose his Israeli residency and its attendant benefits, what on earth would be?
Perhaps Palestinians keep saying no simply because doing so has proven effective in securing more concessions. And if that’s the case, then reversing this perverse set of incentives by telling them they stand to lose from intransigence rather than gain by it could actually be effective.
Far-right anti-Semitism is, of course, real. But so are left-wing and Islamic anti-Semitism. And by pretending the latter two don’t exist, the German government has made it impossible to combat those types of anti-Semitism effectively.
Since the primary electorate consisted solely of Labor Party members, one would have expected the candidates to veer left both candidates considered several ideas popular among left-wing journalists and activists toxic
Targeting people for being Jewish is no longer anti-Semitic, but targeting people for being progressive activists is. Thus instead of being a shield to protect Jews, charges of anti-Semitism have become a shield to protect leftists.
Since the Kotel was a rare issue on which Israel could afford to give American Jews something they wanted, it should have seized the opportunity.
If Israel is to fight the BDS movement effectively, anti-Israel activists must be called out as publicly as possible instead of being allowed to pose as objective researchers and should be denied entry to Israel
American Jews are no longer a bastion of support for Israel. And if they still believe they have a familial relationship with Israelis, it increasingly feels like an abusive one
Worst of all, however, if jailing and killing activists provoke no more outrage than imposing financial reporting requirements on NGOs, brutal dictatorships have no reason not to go straight to the torturing and killing.
No government will be more pro-Israel than Israel’s own, so if even Netanyahu doesn’t really want Jerusalem to be treated as Israel’s capital, what foreign government would?
Gaza's power shortage is creating a worse humanitarian crisis than Israel’s partial blockade ever did, yet neither Amnesty nor Human Rights Watch has published a single press release about the electricity crisis
This confidence to play hardball with the West undoubtedly stems in part from Israel’s growing diplomatic strength outside the West, as highlighted most recently by Netanyahu’s address to the recent summit of the ECOWAS
. If the world behaved differently, the Palestinians might eventually conclude that a deal was in their interests.
The testimony of these Gazan refugees in Greece provides a rare opportunity to hear what Palestinians say when they’re out of reach of their own repressive governments and can speak freely
American Jews, following American liberalism, have abandoned belief in the nation-state, non-voluntary communities, and religion in the public square
Arab leaders–unlike Trump–understand that Israeli-Palestinian peace is nowhere on the horizon. It’s clear from the proposal itself which asks Israel to leave the status quo essentially unchanged, not concessions on any final-status issue
Israel's tolerance exists not despite but because of Israel’s Jewish identity: Israeli Jews want to maintain their own unique religion and culture rather than dissolving into generic Western cosmopolitanism, and therefore support Arabs’ desire to preserve their distinctiveness
The sudden increase in anti-Semitic acts in the US was, in fact, connected to Trump’s election–not because of anything Trump did or didn’t do, but because of media’s hysterical reaction to it.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about Trump’s plan to slash funding for the State Department, so I’d like to offer my own modest proposal in that direction: Kill the State dept’s human rights bureau
Within 1 day of the most high-profile civilian casualty incident of the 2009 Gaza war, Israel had exculpatory evidence on its responsibility for that death. Why wait 8 years to make it public?
US military aid to Israel is a win-win situation: Israel gets help in buying the arms it needs to defend itself and America gets an ally that doesn’t need or want its military protection.
The UN resolution, followed by Kerry’s speech on the peace process, made the PA realize it no longer had to worry about incitement: The good old days when the world blamed ONLY Israel, were back.
From the start Eisenkot and Ya’alon created the appearance of injustice by routinely speaking out against Azaria when they should simply have kept silent and let the military justice system do its job
There’s really only one suitable Zionist response to last week’s UN Security Council resolution on the settlements: massive settlement construction.
Overturning government decisions on the basis of its own radically expansive interpretation of human rights is not the only tool through which the court has usurped political power
The “anti-normalization” campaign–a euphemism for refusing to talk to Israelis and intimidating others into doing the same–has produced boycotts of Israeli cultural figures, businessmen, NGOs and more
The heart of the reason why the two-state solution has repeatedly failed: Not only have the Palestinians never suffered any consequences for intransigence, but they have actually been rewarded for it
After years of ranting about nonexistent threats to democracy like the Shaked proposal, the Israeli Left has destroyed their credibility.
Nothing casts more doubt on the wisdom of the West’s drive for Palestinian statehood now than the PA’s treatment of the refugee camps over its 22 years of existence.
On September 25, King Hussein took the extraordinary step of meeting with Israel’s prime minister, despite the countries’ lack of formal diplomatic ties, to warn that Syria and Egypt would soon attack
The 'burkini ban' was enacted in response to Islamist terror attacks in France and concerns about the integration of France’s Muslim minority, France’s highest court just deemed it unconstitutional
Neither Israeli-Palestinian peace nor a better life for Palestinians will ever be achievable as long as this culture of death continues to dominate mainstream Palestinian politics.
Outrageously the Joint List took the unprecedented step of publicly condemning a leading Arab state for forging warmer relations with its own country, the one in whose parliament it serves.
Guinea resuming ties with Israel almost half a century after severing them is a nontrivial piece of good news. It proves Israel's shift in foreign policy is bearing fruit.
Younger Haredim, while remaining passionately committed to Orthodox Judaism, are increasingly rejecting their rabbinic leadership’s hardline positions on numerous issues
An organization that gets most of its funding from a foreign government isn’t a “nongovernmental” organization at all, but an instrument of that government’s foreign policy and the EU knows that
Israel tax transfers to the PA aren’t gifts; they’re Palestinian taxes Israel collects on the PA’s behalf. By transferring this money, Israel is complicit in incentivizing murder of its own citizens.
By rewarding Palestinian rejectionism and hate education, the EU has encouraged Palestinian terror and distanced peace. Britain is well out of it.
Contrary to conventional 'wisdom,' Israel’s “occupation” does NOT spur Palestinian terror; irrefutably, terror increases when Palestinians gain control of land, drops when Israel reasserts control
The drop in settlement construction and an increase in efforts on behalf of Israeli Arabs don’t exactly fit the narrative of a government and public mired in right-wing extremism
In contrast to the Bus 300 affair , barring some unexpected development, the Hebron shooter almost certainly will stand trial for manslaughter.
The rise of ISIS over the last few years has coincided with an upsurge in anti-Israel activity by European governments
Based on the Bibi parallel, Americans needn't worry about how Cruz would do if he won the White House
July 3, 2026 
