Student Union members at a large college outside Tel Aviv make a grotesquely racist film, and they don't understand what they did wrong.    I wish I could say that the young Israelis who made this film and the "thousands" who immediately gave "positive reactions" to it were marginal in this society - that they were "hilltop youth" in the West Bank, or slum-dwellers growing up amid severe poverty, ignorance, violence and crime. But they're not. They're college students in their early twenties from the heart of the country, from the College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon Lezion, outside…

A truly rebuilt Jerusalem is a place where freedom and justice can flourish, a place where Jews and Palestinians can live alongside one another without checkpoints and walls, without the fears and realities of a hyper-militarized society, a place devoid of settlements and separation. By Oren Kroll-Zeldin Every spring Jews around the world gather around a seder table to commemorate the Jewish exodus from Egypt. At the conclusion of the Passover seder we utter the eternally hopeful words, “Next year in Jerusalem.” Through two thousand years of exile, Jewish people longed to return to Eretz Tzion, Yerushalayim - to Zion,…

The controversial Venezuelan leader, who died Tuesday, did more good than bad - and the good he did was extraordinary.     Any political leader who buddies up conspicuously with Ahmadinejad and Assad, showing indifference to their victims and freedom-seeking opponents at home, loses his shot at dying a hero, at least with me. So, like most left-liberals, I have mixed feelings about the legacy of Hugo Chavez. His alliance with the Iranian and Syrian regimes were the worst things that could be said against him, so I'll deal with them first: They are black marks on his record, but…

People who see Netanyahu as the great Jewish avenger should know how low he's willing to go in exploiting the memory of Jewish suffering.   I can never get over the shamelessness with which Israeli nationalist power freaks will exploit people's memories of anti-Semitic persecution for their own low purposes. Nobody's better at it than Netanyahu; he can barely make a speech without waving around a document or two from some Holocaust-era archive. And he's always got that furious expression on his face, as if to warn his audience not to even dare think that he's faking it, that he's…

Over-compensated nationalism and the fear of 'the other' all contribute to untenable racist attitudes among Israelis toward Palestinians. But racism doesn't develop in a vacuum and in the context of the current reality, it is entirely unsurprising. By Maya Schkolne Standing in the cold and dark by the checkpoint on Highway 60, the soldier appeared genuinely taken aback. He had called us off the bus after spotting my friend’s Israeli passport. Since we were in Area C, we were legally permitted to be there. But what were two young Jewish women – one Israeli and one South African-Israeli – doing on…

In the controversy over Obama's candidate for the next U.S. Secretary of Defense, the right-wing American Jewish elite has once again asserted that the term 'pro-Israel' is a code word in Washington for, among other things, a belligerent foreign policy on Iran and enabling Israeli occupation.  The sheer volume of articles that have appeared in American media over the last few weeks surrounding Obama’s potential appointment of former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as next U.S. Secretary of Defense is astonishing. Everywhere you turn, there are reports, op-eds, features and blogs about Hagel. It almost feels like the issue is making more noise…

The Bund was a Jewish socialist, revolutionary party in Eastern Europe dedicated to class struggle. It is all but forgotten in modern day Israel, but a few members are still around to tell the story.  By Alon Aviram A piano played and a middle-aged woman stood in the middle of the room singing classical Yiddish songs to an attentive, seated audience of 30 or so old men and women. Every so often the music was interrupted by a hoarse laugh or some remark blurted out in Yiddish by a member of the audience. Heavy red velvet curtains blocked out the…

Although it has been accused of anti-Semitism in the past, the Svoboda nationalist party's newfound success has more to do with a growing number of people who are disillusioned by mainstream politics and disappointed by a sluggish economy, than with people harboring genuine hatred of Jews.  KIEV, UKRAINE - On Sunday, millions of Ukrainians cast their ballots in thousands of polling stations across the country in the parliamentary elections. Some did so in Eastern Ukraine, where a love for the Russian language and (often) a longing for them-good-ole-Soviet days still prevails. There, particularly in densely populated cities and towns, the ruling "Party…

Greta Berlin's anti-Semitic tweet was but one in a series of comments she has made, enabling many of her critics to discredit the entire Free Gaza Movement. As activists, it is our job to make sure one bigotry can never be used to justify another. By Tom Pessah An Iranian American acquaintance once explained to me the predicament she’s in. She’s a committed feminist who wants to expose and critique any examples of male domination in Iran. Yet whenever she does so, her critique is immediately seized upon by those wishing to justify the next war, which could harm her…

After being accused of promoting a video which places the blame for the Holocaust on the Zionists, Greta Berlin tells her side of the story.      I just finished about a 20-minute phone interview with Free Gaza Movement spokeswoman Greta Berlin, who spoke from Los Angeles. I exchanged some e-mails with her, I asked her several questions, I read quite a bit of the criticism and condemnations of her from left and right, and the bottom line is that I find her defense to be completely credible. She is not, to my mind, any kind of anti-Semite or wacko.…

The real demographic balance that should worry liberal, humanist, open and progressive people is the number of xenophobes in our society, rather than the number of people with beards, skullcaps or hijabs. By Dubi Kanengisser When I lived in Toronto, I used to jokingly exclaim "man, I hate those immigrants." Like all jokes, this had a grain of truth in it. It is easy to latch onto the obvious differences of "visible minorities" and extrapolate from one member to the entire group. We all have a little racist inside that we must overcome. But there are Israelis living abroad whose xenophobia…

The right-wing watchdog group thinks that leftwing Jewish groups are not allowed to join coalitions with non-Jewish groups that criticize Israel's existence as a Jewish state, or allowed to take certain actions against Israeli policies because they are Jewish. This is a direct targeting of leftwing Jews as Jews. By Jeremiah Haber It's perfectly kosher for a rightwing Jewish organization like NGO Monitor to disagree vigorously with a leftwing organization like Jewish Voice for Peace. But in a recent op-ed in the New York Jewish Week,  Yiktzak Santis and Gerald Steinberg use the trademark tools of their organization --lies, half-truths, and insinuations -- to smear an organization…

A report by a University of California advisory council threatens to limit free speech on its campuses by determining that dissent of Israel can amount to an attack on one's personal identification with the state.  By Tom Pessah In February of this year three members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were jailed after they performed a song in a Moscow cathedral, calling on the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out.” The performance was condemned by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who felt he was “under attack by persecutors” and called the song “blasphemy.” Charged with “hooliganism…