Newsletter
Newsletter Support JNS

Evelyn Gordon

Because Israelis don’t need the non-Orthodox movements to maintain a Jewish identity, they often fail to understand why these movements are genuinely important for American Jews. And because American Jews do need those movements, they often fail to understand why many Israelis dismiss them as unimportant.
A few unelected individuals have been given the power—or even worse, in the case of countries that didn’t join the court, have seized it—to criminalize decisions made by democratically elected national governments.
A court that’s biased against one country can’t be trusted to eschew bias against others.
The message of adding “equality” to the law would be that Israel’s Jewish and democratic identities aren’t equal; rather, its democratic identity has primacy over its Jewish one. That’s the very situation the nation-state law was meant to correct.
Military men are good at solving militarily problems, but they’re no better than anyone else, and often worse, at understanding political problems. Yet their facade of expertise often cows politicians into deferring to them.
Arabs didn’t come to the protest in Tel Aviv as proud Israelis who felt that Israel was betraying its best values; they came because they oppose the very existence of a Jewish state, up to and including its most innocuous symbol.
The new law isn’t meant to be read in isolation, but in concert with other Basic Laws enshrining Israel’s democratic system and fundamental human rights.
If everyone is considered a refugee, then in the end, nobody will be. If they’re an infinite class of people, then ultimately, the world will shut its gates to them all. Some countries are already doing just that.
Settlement construction during most of Netanyahu’s last nine years in office was lower than under any of his predecessors, including leftists like Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
Delegitimizing BDS is far from mission impossible.
Jewish tradition acknowledges “realpolitik” national concerns as morally valid even as it warns of the dangers of ignoring individual morality.
Recognizing the capital of the Jewish state—and considering the possible move of international embassies there—is now openly being debated in regions of the globe where Israel has faced considerable hostility in recent years.