Archive: Issue 2
Dispatches
So, who is Yair Lapid and why did his party, Yesh Atid, win big on January 22? Born in Tel Aviv in 1963, he began his career in journalism as a military correspondent for the IDF’s weekly magazine, BaMachane (In the Camp), continuing as a correspondent for Maariv. In 1988 he was appointed editor of…
In Israel’s national elections, the victor is usually defined as belonging to the left or right. This time, however, the winner belonged to the centre. Yair Lapid – now the leader of Israel’s second largest party Yesh Atid (There is a Future) – positioned himself as the choice of those who could not choose between…
This election was a failure for the sitting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his young guard in the Likud, especially Education Minister Gideon Saar and Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, both of whom took leading roles in the campaign. It was an astounding success for former journalist Yair Lapid and his centrist Yesh Atid party, and…
What should be obvious is that the majority of the public identified with the Prime Minister’s ability to present Israel’s legitimate case before the world. They supported his moves in Jerusalem and tolerated, to a large extent, Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria. In poll after poll over the last two decades, we see a…
Policy & Politics
Israel operates an open economy that is highly dependent on global trade in goods and services, as well as inward investment flows. The next Prime Minister will find an in-tray overflowing with economic issues requiring urgent attention. Reforming the banks Israel’s economy may have survived the ‘great panic’ of 2007-2009 better than most Western democracies,…
As the Obama administration gears up for its second term, it faces an exceptionally difficult impasse in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Indeed, many who once had hopes for a two-state solution are now throwing up their hands in despair. But this is a luxury the United States cannot afford. For almost a decade there has…
Conventional wisdom says that time is running out on a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The opposite is more nearly correct. While a two-state solution remains, and will remain for the foreseeable future the only feasible solution, the conflict is not yet soluble. The imaginable terms of a settlement were embodied in the 2000…
The massive turmoil in the Middle East since the beginning of the so-called Arab Spring has forced Hamas to make significant strategic changes in order to adapt to the new security and political environment. One of the most important effects on Hamas has been the group’s realignment away from Syria towards Egypt. With the rise…
Predictions are always difficult, especially when they are about the future, said the great Yogi Berra. But we know this: the next decade will see an incredible new urban age. Mckinsey project that half of economic growth between now and 2025 is set to be powered by just 440 cities, 242 of them in China.…
Many media outlets refer to the slaughter in Syria as “the Syrian tragedy”. But this is no Greek drama. What we are witnessing daily is not an affliction sent by the gods to punish human beings for their sins. The reason for the deaths of thousands of civilians is plain: where there are no ballots,…
Voting in Arab Society (2012), a study released by The Abraham Fund Initiatives points to a widespread desire among Arabs in Israel to take part in the decision-making process. However, to borrow terms from the business world, the Arab minority wants to be part of the board of directors, rather than a silent stakeholder. As long…
Almost twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the time has come for a new paradigm if one thinks seriously of moving ahead in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel’s upcoming election may now further this need for thinking outside the box, as practically all contending parties…
The Syrian civil war has claimed upwards of 40,000 lives, and shows no signs of ending any time soon. However, the stalemate that has prevailed since August, 2012 has been broken. The regime of President Bashar Assad is clearly in retreat – a large swathe of northern Syria has effectively been ceded to the disparate…
In Marx’s essay On the Jewish Question, written in 1844, there are two contrasting sets of themes vis-à-vis the Jews. In Part II of the essay Marx deploys some well-known negative stereotypes, according to which: the mundane basis of Judaism is self-interest, egoism, or, as Marx also calls it, ‘an anti-social element’; the worldly religion…
Conversations
Professor Alan Johnson, BICOM Senior Research Fellow and Editor of Fathom, gives a lecture at the Australian Institute of International Affairs on re-starting the Middle East Peace Process.
Ghaida Rinawie-Zoabi is the co-founder and general director of an Israeli NGO, Injaz Center for Professional Arab Local Governance, a post she has held since 2008. In 2011, she was the only Arab women to be selected as one of the 100 most influential persons in Israel, by the Hebrew economic magazine, The Marker. Previously,…
Eli Degibri is an Israeli Jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is the co-Artistic Director of the Red Sea Jazz festival, held annually in Eilat, Israel. He spoke to Ruth Fisher about his music, the Israeli Jazz scene and the potential of art to build bridges of understanding between peoples. Listen to the Eli Degibri…
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. His most recent book, The Pasdaran: Inside Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was released in September 2011. Ottolenghi spoke to Fathom Books Reviews Editor Jules Robinson about the Pasdaran – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the paramilitary organization responsible for the…
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel, a current affairs website based in Jerusalem that launched in February 2012. He was formerly the Editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. One of Israel’s most astute journalists and commentators, he spoke to Fathom about how Israel can start to win the war for global…
Israeli policy makers across the political spectrum agree that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a major strategic setback for Israel. However, the question of how Israel should approach the Iranian nuclear programme sharply divides Israel’s policy elite. Should Israel be prepared to take unilateral military action? Was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu right…
Amos Oz has lived through every one of Israel’s wars and fought in two of them. He has seen hope in the peace process replaced by disappointment, compromises almost but never quite reached. Now at the age of 73, despite rockets whizzing over the border from Gaza, the threat of nuclear proliferation in Iran and…
Reviews & Culture
Dror Moreh is the director of the Academy Award nominated Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers, a rare insight into the Shin Bet (Israel’s domestic secret service agency). For the first time ever, six former heads of the Shin Bet agreed to share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions. Intimately interviewed, they shed…
The Israeli documentary The Law in these Parts won the Sundance 2012 World Cinema Grand Jury Documentary Prize and awarded Best Documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival. It explores the operation of the Israeli military legal system in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1967 War through the testimonies of the military legal…
Israeli animation graduate Liat Har-Gil from Rosh Ha’ayen won the 2012 Faith Shorts, the global film competition of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Deathbed the Musical was the first claymation film the competition has ever received and the first Israeli film to win. It features the last conversation between a dying man and his nurse…
The last fifteen years have seen a stream of brilliant Israeli documentaries on topics such as the rift between secular and ultra-orthodox communities (Black Bus), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (Nine Star Hotel), the Holocaust (A Film Unfinished) and gay rights (Paper Dolls). Even so, 2012 was a landmark year, with The Law in These Parts and…
In 1934, David Ben-Gurion and Zeev Jabotinsky, respectively the charismatic leaders of the Labour Zionist and the Revisionist wings of the Zionist movement, met in a London hotel room and then in a Golders Green flat. The hope was that by talking they could resolve their differences and agree on the character of the future…
This is an excellent account of Israeli casualty aversion by one of Israel’s leading military sociologists. At the heart of the book lies the question, how do liberal democracies in general, and Israel in particular, manage to encourage individuals to sacrifice their lives in an era when individualism often displaces a commitment to serve one’s…
The book is a brief for the claim that Israeli practices in the territories amount to ‘a crime against humanity.’ It is at once extensively researched and unabashedly partisan – a deeply flawed mix of false analogies, partial histories and political polemic. The book is edited by Virginia Tilley of the University of the South…
Occasionally in the history of nations a character emerges who seems to personify the nation itself, not so much by being the mirror image of its people but by embodying a certain exemplary image of itself. Such characters often emerge in crises and create a myth of themselves, subtly acknowledging their status as myth. In…
The cultural theorist Judith Butler has written what she intends as a critique of Zionism derived from Jewish sources. Her argument: the diasporic experience was Good and Jewish, while sovereignty in Palestine has been Bad and Non-Jewish. Her political conclusion: Jews! Back to the diasporic! In practical terms, put an end to Jewish sovereignty by…
