08 May
Latest

Prof. Dajani Opens Up to Moment

On May 8, Moment Magazine Editor-in-Chief Nadine Epstein and Senior Editor Dina Gold sat down with Mohammed S. Dajani, the political science professor who made waves by taking the first-ever field trip to Auschwitz with a group of Palestinian students last month. Prof. Dajani told them a story that hasn't been in the press. For years, he has run workshops with the theme "Big Dream/Small Hope," he said. In the workshops, he asks Israelis and Palestinians for their “big dream” and “small hope.” Israelis’ big dream is they will wake up and there will be no Palestinians in the West Bank, while Palestinians’ big dream is to wake up in the morning to find no Jewish-Israelis. Neither dream can ever come true. So he asks them for their “small hope.” Both say: two states for two people...

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27 Mar
2007 April-May, Issues

Nathan Guttman: Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Why is America’s strongest faith-based bloc that opposes the war—the Jewish community—sitting this conflict out? From the front lines of the civil-rights movement through the Vietnam War protests and up to the campaign to stop genocide in Darfur, American Jews have never been shy about forming opinions, fighting for them, and even being arrested and harassed for voicing them in protest. So why were there so few placards representing Jewish groups floating above the thousands of antiwar protesters who marched on the Pentagon in March to mark the fourth anniversary of the Iraq War? And why were Jewish groups also absent a month earlier, when tens of thousands gathered on the National Mall to call for an immediate pullout from Iraq? It might seem natural for any religious or ethnic group to sit out the Iraq debate,...

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22 Nov
Culture, History

Walking Over to the Other Side of the Pro-Peace Debate

By Scott Fox Soon after I sat down at my table at a fundraiser sponsored by the local Justice in Palestine chapter, the elderly woman sitting next to me said, “I see you crossed over to the other side.” What she meant was that I had crossed over to the St. Olaf side of town for the event. Northfield, Minn., has two liberal arts colleges, Carleton and St. Olaf. Carleton is on the east side; St. Olaf is on the west. Even though the two institutions are only a 20-minute walk from one another, it is not too often that students from each school interact. I could not help but see a parallel between Carleton and St. Olaf and the difference between my beliefs and those of Justice in Palestine. In other words, I could see where they...

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03 Jun
Uncategorized

Back to the Future: Obama's Peace Plan

by Amanda Walgrove In 1967, the 25th amendment to the constitution was ratified, the U.S. was in the thick of the Vietnam War, Benjamin Netanyahu first joined the Israeli army and the Six-Day war ended with a U.N.-mediate ceasefire established between Syria and Israel. The year 1967 brought the release of The Doors' self-titled debut album, Elvis Presley's marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, the inaugural Superbowl game on network television, and the birth of Julia Roberts. What a different world it was. Tweeting was still something that only birds could do and revolutions were not started on Facebook, because back then a facebook was a company photo album. In late May, President Obama delivered a speech that sparked a wealth of controversy and a barrage of criticism after he insisted that Israel and Palestine return to their 1967...

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03 Jun
Uncategorized

Back to the Future: Obama’s Peace Plan

by Amanda Walgrove In 1967, the 25th amendment to the constitution was ratified, the U.S. was in the thick of the Vietnam War, Benjamin Netanyahu first joined the Israeli army and the Six-Day war ended with a U.N.-mediate ceasefire established between Syria and Israel. The year 1967 brought the release of The Doors' self-titled debut album, Elvis Presley's marriage to Priscilla Beaulieu, the inaugural Superbowl game on network television, and the birth of Julia Roberts. What a different world it was. Tweeting was still something that only birds could do and revolutions were not started on Facebook, because back then a facebook was a company photo album. In late May, President Obama delivered a speech that sparked a wealth of controversy and a barrage of criticism after he insisted that Israel and Palestine return to their 1967...

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24 May
Uncategorized

Moment Magazine Launches Tweets4Peace Contest

Moment Magazine is thrilled to announce the Tweets4Peace contest.  Lengthy tomes have been written about the Middle East conflict, which ranks among the world’s most intractable.  Amid the mountains of scholarship, research, and analysis, Moment seeks new ideas in the shortest, simplest form possible: Twitter updates. Through June 30, the Rabins, Sadats, Gandis and Kings of the world are invited to submit their solutions to Middle East peace via Twitter using the hashtag #Tweets4Peace.  At a time in which peace appears distant, the contest represents an opportunity for fresh thinking and new ideas.  Aside from the obvious reward of bringing peace to the Middle East, the contest winner will receive a 1-year subscription to Moment in addition to a special peace prize (look out, Nobel), to be announced. Moment Magazine, an award-winning bimonthly with a flagship print...

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28 Feb
Uncategorized

At J Street, Attempting to Redefine “Pro-Israel”

By Niv Elis In its second-ever conference in Washington, DC this week, the self-described “Pro-Peace, Pro-Israel” lobby group J Street drew some 2,000 left-leaning Israel supporters. By its very existence J Street, has sparked a conflicted and sometimes angry debate within the Jewish community as to what it means to be “pro-Israel.”  Before J Street, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held a virtual monopoly in Washington on the term pro-Israel.  For AIPAC, it meant supporting a “strong U.S.-Israel relationship” by keeping disagreements out of the public spotlight and, more broadly, supporting the policies of the democratically elected government in Israel, regardless of who was in power.  But critics, including many J Street supporters, accuse AIPAC of being more sympathetic to the conservative Likud party and promoting its hard-line policies. J Street has its own critics, who...

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28 Feb
Uncategorized

Israel Next on Arab Revolutionary Agendas

By Gabriel Weinstein, Scripps Howard Foundation Wire On January 1, no one would have predicted protesters in Tahrir Square would oust Hosni Mubarak and Moammar Gadhafi’s iron grip over Libya would start slipping away. Could an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement be the next game-changing event in the Middle East? According to Professor Yoram Peri of the University of Maryland and former Democratic Congressman Robert Wexler, the revolutionary fervor sweeping the Middle East could present an ideal opportunity to finally settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Peri said that, although the uprisings in Arab world focused on domestic issues, it is only a matter of time before the lingering Israeli-Palestinian conflict becomes the focus of the greater Arab world. “If things will continue it won’t take much—weeks—that the Israeli-Palestinian issue will become the focus,” Peri said at a forum sponsored by the...

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16 Feb
Uncategorized

Let My People Vote!

By Steven Philp Egypt may lack a president, but it is not bereft of direction. Meeting two primary demands of pro-democracy protestors, Egyptian military leaders have dissolved the parliament, suspended the constitution and set a schedule for drafting a new one ahead of September elections. As the Washington Post details, this is one of the first steps towards civilian rule following the resignation of authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak. The ruling council has communicated that these changes will remain in effect for six months until presidential and parliamentary elections can occur. In the meantime a committee is being formed to amend the constitution, and provide a vehicle for popular referendum to approve these changes. What is remarkable about these changes is their genesis within the citizens of Egypt. As noted by columnist and author Thomas L. Friedman, one...

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28 Jan
Uncategorized

Cairo is Burning; Is Egyptian-Israeli Peace Next?

By Niv Elis As the world watches the unprecedented protests in Cairo unfold live on Al Jazeera, America and Israel face an intractable dilemma over who to support.  To  lovers of democracy and human rights, the Egyptian people’s uprising is a phenomenon to be encouraged; the Egyptian regime is a police state (though milder than, say, Iran or Saudi Arabia), which for nearly 60 years has held an iron grip on the country’s political institutions, limiting the media and sweeping aside opposition rights.  Like all people, Egyptians deserve better, and it seems incomprehensible that Western governments would fail to support them. Yet for decades, Egypt’s autocracy has contributed a modicum of geopolitical stability to the region. Having established itself as the leader of the Arab world during the Cold War, Egypt made waves when it broke from...

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