MAY 9, 2025
Jeremiah (Jerry) Haber is the nom de plume of Charles H. Manekin, an orthodox Jewish studies and philosophy professor, who divides his time between Israel and the US.
Liberal Zionists don’t like the global BDS movement, but they also think that the Obama administration should get tough with the Netanyahu government. Josh Ruebner, the Policy Director of the US Campaign to End the Occupation, wrote a good piece in The Hill which shows some of the concrete steps the Obama administration can take if it is serious about is reassessment. Continue Reading...
Israel is a Right Wing Nation. What is “center” in Israel is right in the rest of the world. What is “right” is extreme right is, well, you fill in that one. Even had Herzog evened the score with Netanyahu he would not have been able to create an alternative government. That has been clear from the beginning. Continue Reading...
It has been my custom to reproduce this “Selling Purim to Progressives” post occasionally on Purim, with some modifications. The last time was in 2012. But when I read yesterday what I wrote then, I realized that little had changed in the last three years. There was Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu with his annual Purim message: Present-day Iran is Persia, its leader is the wicked Haman, they want to destroy us; if the US doesn’t come through, Continue Reading...
What is the genius of the three calls of the global BDS movement, endorsed in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations? Very simple: their moderation and eminent reasonableness. Continue Reading...
Several years ago, when Richard Joel was the president of Hillel International, the goal of Hillel was formulated as “maximizing the number of Jews doing things Jewish with other Jews.” It was the notion of “doing things Jewish” that I liked, because that could be interpreted in many ways, religiously, socially, politically, recreationally, etc. Of course, playing basketball is not just a Jewish activity, and maybe it’s not a Jewish activity Continue Reading...
I am a tribalist at heart. I really care about my tribe, or, I should say, the various tribes of which I am a member. I care about them in ways that I don’t care about other tribes. Kant forgive me, but it’s true – there are other tribes that I really couldn’t care less about. When I sense that I am becoming heartless and apathetic to the sufferings of others unconnected to my tribe, I try to work on my “human” side, or my “living being” Continue Reading...
The beginning of the current round of hostilities should be dated from Israeli actions in a Gaza tunnel that resulted in the deaths of six Hamas militants. Although Israel denied responsibility, it admitted that it had carried out operations in the area that plausibly led to the incident. This was Monday night, and Hamas retaliated with rockets. A time line can be found here; thus started the current round of hostilities. Continue Reading...
