Saturday was the 1,196th day in captivity for the soldier Gilad Shalit. A prisoner of war must not be left in captivity. A wounded soldier must not be left in the field. The state signs an unwritten contract with every person who joins the army, and most...
Call for Universal National Service Raises Uncomfortable Questions in Israel
Demands from Israel's chief commander this month that all Israeli citizens should be required to perform national service has turned the spotlight on a rarely discussed group of soldiers: members of Israel's Palestinian minority. Though no official statistics are...
Palestinians and Israelis Follow Thoreau, but Is Anyone Watching?
Sometime in 1846, Henry David Thoreau spent a night in jail because he refused to pay his taxes. This was his way of opposing the Mexican-American War as well as the institution of slavery. A few years later he published the essay "Civil Disobedience," which...
Israeli Peace Group Targets Settlements’ Charitable Status in US
Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Gush Shalom, a small peace...
Unrest Brewing Beneath Gaza Calm
GAZA CITY - The mile-long stretch that divides Israel's Erez border crossing into northern Gaza from the Hamas police border post is eerily quiet. But the mountains of rubble, twisted metal, and craters which remain following Israel's intensive bombing campaign in...
Business Seeks Ways Past Israeli-Palestinian Political Impasse
RAMALLAH - Business between the Palestinian Authority and Israel is growing despite the political impasse over Israel's refusal to cease illegal settlement-building in East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank. Trade between Israel and the Palestinian Authority...
Split ‘View of Zion’ in East Jerusalem
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM - In the early morning sunlight, the smoky window of the plush new apartment reflects back a golden tinge from the Dome of the Rock that stands at the heart of Islam's third holiest shrine. Down across the valley from the walled Old City,...
The Boycott Revisited
The people of Sodom, the Bible tells us, were very wicked indeed. They had a nasty habit of putting every passing stranger into one particular bed. If the stranger was too tall, his legs were shortened. If he was too short, his body was stretched to the required...
Against the Israel Boycott
How much did the boycott of South Africa actually contribute to the fall of the racist regime? This week I talked with Desmond Tutu about this question, which has been on my mind for a long time. No one is better qualified to answer this question than he. Tutu, the...
Israeli-Swedish Row Heats Up
JERUSALEM - It's not so much the proverbial making a mountain out of a molehill, but Israel finds itself climbing out of a stinky dung heap and onto a slippery diplomatic minefield. The new story began with a story by all accounts a false, libelous, and...


