While it will be a long wait for a safe consensus about this issue to emerge in Israel or in America, we need to treat the prospect of the end of the two-state solution as the five-alarm fire that it is. The question is whether the American administration has the political will to engage in muscular diplomacy. By Ken Winikur and Ben Avishai Addressing young Israelis in Jerusalem on March 21, 2013, President Obama discussed the imperative to reach a just peace with the Palestinians. Speaking like a community organizer, Obama laid out the challenge: “Political leaders will never take…

NEW YORK -- After more than a week of controversy, including an editorial in the New York Times and a statement from Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn College hosted a discussion of BDS with Judith Butler and Omar Barghouti and nothing happened. That fact alone seems worthy of a story these days. In a post for +972, Mairav Zonszein wrote eloquently about the outrageous attempts to intimidate the college into canceling the event. Alan Dershowitz started the whole controversy, but New York City public officials were quick to follow, with several threatening to cut the college's funding. The New York Times published…

After Alan Dershowitz started a campaign against a BDS panel at Brooklyn College, the institution's funding was threatened by 'pro-Israel' officials. The college stuck to its guns, but the entire fiasco is an excellent example of the double standard ailing the debate on Israel in the U.S. Israel is once again at the center of a heated debate in the U.S., pitting the so-called "pro-Israel" types against the so-called "anti-Israel" types. This time it's not Obama, it's not Chuck Hagel – it's Brooklyn College. An event scheduled to take place at the institution tomorrow (Thursday) will feature UC Berkeley professor and Jewish Voice…

While happy to harp on U.S. President Obama at every opportunity if he veers from their demand for unconditional support for Israel, when it comes to U.S. elections, prominent "pro-Israel" American Jews prefer him to Romney because when it comes to everything else, Obama is more in line with their liberal ideals. With the U.S. election only 3 days away, a variety of high-profile American Jewish "pro-Israel" figures who have previously lambasted President Obama decided to come out publicly in support of his candidacy for a second term. Last week, former New York Mayor Ed Koch officially backed President Obama for…

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowtiz has made a name for himself by hunting down those Jews he believes are beyond the pale of what is admissible in discourse about Israel and trying to 'excommunicate' them. His latest target: MJ Rosenberg of Media Matters. By Jeremiah Haber Theater J, which operates out of the DC Jewish Community Center, is currently producing David Ives’ play,  New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza. This is a reimagining and dramatization of Spinoza’s interrogation for which there are no records. Over four hundred years later, we still don’t know why Spinoza was “excommunicated,” or to be…

by Eyal Clyne | Translation: Hava Oz Earlier this year, Harvard's Professor Alan Dershowitz  received an honorory doctorate from Tel-Aviv University. Dershowitz, who is a staunch defender of civil rights in the US, shows a bit more flexibility when it comes to Palestinian rights. In his book, "The Case for Israel", he recycles the claims that the 'world is against us', that criticism of Israel is based on false myths, that antisemitism is the root of such criticism, rather than Israeli state policy. He describes Israel as an exemplary democracy, and a safe-haven for the Jews. What about the occupation?…