Over the years, a recurring hasbara trope has accused Arab states of ethnically cleansing their entire Jewish populations in the years between 1948-1956. They marshal vivid maps displaying the numbers of Jews originally in these countries and how many are left currently. Phrases like “expulsion,” “refugee,” “Jewish Nakba,” and “pogroms” are bandied about as if […]
Meron Disaster and the Dangers of Theocracy
Let’s begin at the beginning: Israel is a theocracy. Not a democracy. To be more precise, it is an ethno-theocracy, in which a single religion enjoys supremacy over others; and that religion controls dominant levers of social and political state power. This may seem somewhat afield from the post title, but bear with me. Every […]
How Hitler Killed Half the Jewish Diaspora and Zionism Projects Death of the Rest
I recently participated in an online panel that accompanied the screening of the film documentary, Yiddish: the Mama Loshn, for the Boulder Jewish Film Festival. I was not invited to the panel as a Yiddishist or professor of Yiddish or Jewish history (the three other panel members were). Instead, director Pierre Sauvage asked me to […]
Conflating Judaism and Zionism: Bad for the Jews
DONATE: As 2020 comes to an end, you may be in the spirit of the season and seeking to support projects which make a difference in the world–in your world. Tikun Olam stands alone as a source of knowledge about Israel you won’t find anywhere else. Secrets you won’t learn and analysis you won’t read […]
