In an Israeli TV interview, the hosts posed some tough questions to Tzipi Hotovely, Israel's deputy foreign minister. The background to the interview was that she'd been invited to speak at Princeton University Hillel last month. After Jewish students on campus protested her appearance as part of a Brand Israel propaganda campaign, the Hillel determined … [Read more...]
Reform Jews Ape Settler Rhetoric in Kotel Protest
In spite of my muted sympathy for Women of the Wall and the non-Orthodox religious movements in Israel who seek to bring egalitarian prayer to the Kotel, their current campaign to generate sympathy among Israelis is wildly inappropriate. They've begun a promotional blitz to raise awareness of the issue via a billboard along a major Israeli highway. It … [Read more...]
Western Wall: Nexus for Gender and Religious-Nationalist Conflict
This week, Israel's far-right government acceded to its ultra-Orthodox coalition partners and torpedoed a compromise years in the making, which had been intended to offer Israeli women a means of worshipping at the Western Wall in an egalitarian manner. Women of the Wall have long protested the segregation and second-class status of women who choose to pray … [Read more...]
Al Jazeera: Jordan, Not Israel, Was Original Intelligence Source for ISIS Bomb Plot
Boy, what a difference a day makes. On Monday, I published an article in Middle East Eye in which I speculated that Jordan was the likely source of the intelligence which Donald Trump relayed to the Russians about an ISIS airplane bomb plot. I wrote then: None of the media stories reveal the name of the foreign nation whose operation Trump exposed. … [Read more...]