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…

After signing Tzipi Livni onto his coalition, Netanyahu doesn't need Yair Lapid anymore - he can have the haredim and Naftali Bennett while pacifying Obama.    Give the devil his due: Bibi pulled off a masterstroke yesterday by signing Tzipi Livni's Hatnuah party to his coalition. Now he's got clear sailing to his ideal government - one made up of the right wing and ultra-Orthodox, his base, but one that also keeps Obama and the Europeans off his back by giving the appearance - completely hollow - that he intends to try to move toward peace with the Palestinians. That's…

Rabbi Dov Lipman is soft-spoken and not even 41 years old, but has seen his share of action on the battleground of Israeli society. He's taken verbal beatings and sustained physical injury. He's won praise and publicity, and drawn fire too, for his tireless struggle against religious extremists literally next door. Lipman is a Haredi-ordained educator (Haredi = ultra-Orthodox), and a religious Zionist with a liberal bent – a rare bird in these parts. His main political arena is his home, the city of Beit Shemesh not far from Jerusalem, with its growing Haredi population. This year, Beit Shemesh became…

 A review of the year of social protests - just hours before the demonstration planned against the government's budget - yields bad news: The government has offered shallow solutions and deepened the roots of economic inequality.  Last year's social paradox During last summer's social protests, outsiders and curious journalists repeatedly asked me how to explain that Israel has such excellent economic indicators, but so much discontent. Not being much of an economist, but knowing something about public opinion, I looked at how people experienced their lives here – micro versus macroeconomics. Despite apparently excellent macro indicators, most individual families weren't…

If Judaism and democracy clash, which do you think Israelis would chose? And why is asking “where is the Palestinian Gandhi” the wrong question? You may be surprised The settlements in the West Bank have been called a “ticking bomb” more than once. And rightfully so: They’ve been growing year after year, without anyone doing a thing to stop it, and have actually “exploded” the two-state solution into oblivion. Yet Israels have another ticking bomb they have failed to dismantle over the years. A ticking bomb that could make all the diplomacy efforts of peace activists, politicians and nations seems…

Behind the rhetorical condemnations of women's exclusion, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz are at least partially responsible for women's exclusion.  Discrimination and marginalization of women in the public sphere has been fermenting for years as a direct result of Israeli policies - or lack thereof. By Gil Gan Mor Israel's political leaders are concerned – and justifiably so – with the  recent incidents of exclusion and humiliation of women in the name of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. For example the incident of a women who refused to move after Haredi passengers demanded that she sit at the back…

This post was written by Dahlia Scheindlin, Ami Kaufman, and Yossi Gurvitz About 4,000 people demonstrated in Beit Shemesh on Tuesday evening, including a parade of politicians from a spectrum of left and right parties, both secular and religious, to protest what is perceived as the “Haredization,” of the city, a takeover by the ultra-orthodox. The immediate events sparking the protests were a series of incidents highlighting gender discrimination – a group of Haredim spitting on an eight-year old religious girl, and the struggle over gender-segregated (women in the back) buses in Jerusalem; and more broadly, the exclusion of women…

Since this news report last Friday, about a little girl from Beit Shemesh, secular-religious relations seem to be the only thing Israelis are talking about Naama Margolis, an 8-year-old from Bet Shemesh, is the most famous girl in Israel today. In fact, nobody can stop talking about her. And why is that? Well, on Friday evening, Naama told her story on the most watched news show in the country. Interviewed by Channel 2’s Shai Gal, Naama told how she was afraid to go to school, just a few hundred meters from her house in Bet Shemesh, because Haredim cursed and…