As chief historian at Yad Vashem from 2011 to 2021, and now the institution’s senior academic advisor, Dina Porat has the chops—the moral authority, if you will—to poke into dark and troubling corners of the Israeli national psyche.
Antisemitism, like Islamophobia—charges of which have been similarly made by Muslim and Arab students on a number of campuses—should be calculated by actual, violent incidents on campuses, not by unverifiable threats, or perceived feelings of being threatened.
No country could be expected to forgo retaliation for attacks on innocent citizens in its own territory. But what are the long-term goals?
We sat in stunned silence as the Holocaust-like scenario slowly spread through our unwilling consciousness, forced by the incontestable, nightmarish evidence: a paradigm change of all we had depended on and believed about our security.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only a clash of two nationalisms with overlapping claims to territory—it is also a clash of histories, whose wounds resist healing.
“How can Jewish and Israeli students feel safe on campus when it’s considered acceptable to justify or even celebrate the death of Jewish children? “
The PA has barely cooperated with Israel in recent years, but with the prospect of a seaport, an operable airport, and huge financial aid from Saudi Arabia, UAE, the EU, and others, Fatah might well say “yes.”
In southern Israel as in Eastern Europe, jubilant killers went from house to house, making sure no Jew remained alive. The people justifying Hamas’s “war of liberation” are the scum of the earth.
Some of Israel’s Supreme Court justices are terrified of the situation.
If you’re in a room full of mainstream Jews who hew to the uncritical AIPAC line about Israel, you undoubtedly know that “apartheid,” “racist” and “fascist” are three words you can’t say about the Jewish state without risking denunciation, cancellation or total excommunication from the tribe.
If Israel wants to discriminate against Palestinian Americans, that is its prerogative. But the United States can’t allow special rules for some U.S. citizens and not others.
