Haredim

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Palestinian newspaper Amad reports that tens of thousands of Israelis took part on Saturday evening in demonstrations in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa protesting the new Israeli government, headed by Binyamin Netanyahu. The Hebrew press reported a massive police presence at these sites. The Israeli center-right is finding out […]

Featured

Rabbi Close to Religious Extremists in Israeli Gov’t says Gay Speaker “Diseased,” attracting “Evil” on People

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Al-Hadath reports that 300 former Israeli soldiers have written a letter to their new government pleading with it not to inflict harm on the LGBTQ community. At the same time, two prominent rabbis close to the new government launched an attack on the Knesset members who voted in Amir Ohana, […]

Featured

2023 Prediction: The 2 Major Headaches for U.S. Foreign Policy, aside from Russia, will be Israeli and Iranian Fundamentalism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Despite the desire of all recent presidents to pivot away from the Middle East, Israel, fundamentalism and Iran have made it difficult to do so. In 2023, I believe that the Biden administration will have to spend far more time on Iran and Israel-Palestine than it had imagined, despite the […]

Featured

Israelis react to Extremist new Government: “They have come to Destroy,” A Gov’t “Based on Hatred,” and “the End of Liberal Israeli Democracy”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The new government in Israel has formally been voted in, with a 63-vote majority in the 120-seat Knesset or parliament. While the far right in Israel is ecstatic, even those a little closer to the center than the new extremists are full of trepidation. A former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, […]

Far Right

New Israeli Gov’t to un-ban Violent Racists from Parliament, and allow Discrimination against Women, Gays

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The new Israeli government, formed in the nick of time by incoming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, is so morally compromised that even the country’s right wing is visibly uncomfortable with the agreements made by Netanyahu to allow him to come back to power. Iconic among those concessions was Netanyahu’s acquiescence […]

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Israel: Netanyahu puts Homophobic Fundamentalist who doesn’t think most American Jews are Jewish in Charge of Office of Jewish Identity

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – So Noam is a far right Jewish fundamentalist party in Israel that has a connection to the Har Hamor seminary in Jerusalem. One of its leaders is Rabbi Zvi Tau, who seems to have a conspiracy theory that LGBTQ groups have prevented Israelis from implementing Jewish law, the Halakha. He […]

Displaced and Refugees

The Rise of Israeli Fascism as the Swing Vote in Parliament, and the Project of Ethnic Cleansing

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Despite Israeli propaganda about being a democracy that shares values with the liberal West, the country has for some time gone down a much darker path. Exit polling done by the major Israeli television channels in Tuesday’s election suggests that Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, in a joint slate with […]

Featured

Israel’s Crisis in Parliament is a Crisis for its Apartheid in the Palestinian West Bank

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Monday evening, the government of Naftali Bennett in Israel failed to pass a crucial law in parliament, according to the Israeli newspaper Arab 48. The failure, which strikes at the foundations of Bennett’s far right vision of an expanding Greater Israel that forever forestalls any Palestinian state, exposed the […]

Haredim

Constantly on the verge of Collapse: How Palestinians became the Linchpin of Israeli Politics

Ramzy Baroud

( Middle East Monitor) – Israel’s coalition government of right-wing Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, is on the verge of collapse, which is unsurprising. Israeli politics, after all, is among the most fractious in the world, and this particular coalition was born out of the obsessive desire to dethrone Israel’s former leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. While Netanyahu […]