One day Mahmoud Abbas, who suppresses his own people to protect Israelis, will also pass away. That's when the Palestinian pressure cooker will explode. Arabs and Jews in Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world at large, I promise you that next time Shimon Peres dies, Joint List head Ayman Odeh and the rest of the Joint List will attend the funeral. Okay? Next. But until then, let's shed some light on the man who actually attended the funeral, the man who will, sometime soon, pass away himself. Let's talk about Mahmoud Abbas, who came to pay his final respects, grieved with…

If the Nobel committee sought to move the needle on Colombian peace by honoring one of its auteurs, they might do well to remember a similar experiment that is all-too-familiar to observers in the Middle East. This year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which went to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring [Colombia’s] more than 50-year-long civil war to an end,” is being portrayed by some as a potential counterbalance to the October 2 referendum in which Colombians narrowly voted down a peace deal between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. [tmwinpost]…

Israelis emigrating — or considering emigration — for political reasons are inadvertently adopting the spirit of the boycott movement in the sense that they, too, have given up on the idea of change coming from within. Everywhere I turn these days, many of my peers have left Israel, are leaving Israel, are planning to leave, or are talking about leaving Israel. My family and I included. The reasons for leaving are always personal, and it’s hard to point to a specific political trend. But the discourse around leaving is indicative of a real crisis in the Israeli Left regarding the inability to…

For years, liberal American publications have been generally sympathetic to Israel, even when they are criticizing its governments' policies. Now, in light of an unprecedented New York Times editorial, that attitude might be about to change. The New York Times editorial board has realized, about a decade too late, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not care what the Obama administration — or any U.S. administration, for that matter — thinks about his policies regarding the Palestinians. [tmwinpost] According to the editorial published Friday, October 7, headlined At the Boiling Point With Israel, the catalyst for this realization was Netanyahu's decision to approve the…

Only once Western democracies have committed their resources to ending the atrocities in Syria can they turn inward to rid their societies of the hate and bigotry that plagues them. By Ilan Manor Words matter. Words help us understand the world we inhabit and shape our response to events far and near. Some refer to the events unfolding in Syria with the words "civil war." These words, carefully selected by policymakers and politicians aim to prevent us from crying out against the atrocities in Aleppo and Homs. [tmwinpost] Civil wars are internal matters. So why should the UK or the U.S. or France intervene in…

As long as Washington views ending the occupation as an Israeli problem instead of a Palestinian problem, it will never even consider using its leverage to do so. The United States issued an unusually sharp rebuke on Wednesday to news that Israel is building a brand new settlement in the West Bank. The State Department sounded mad. The White House sounded mad. Nobody is going to do anything about it. [tmwinpost] It’s not that the United States is powerless in the face of an Israeli government that for nearly four decades has refused to heed Washington’s and the entire international…

Instead of condemning Arab MKs for boycotting Peres' funeral, Zionist Left parties should ask themselves why Palestinian citizens don't trust them. Why are so many Jews in Israel disappointed and angered by the Joint List's decision to not attend Shimon Peres' funeral? What is the source of the endless bitterness and incitement on the Internet? How dare military correspondent Roni Daniel condescendingly reprimand Joint List head Ayman Odeh, accusing him of missing an opportunity "to be a human being," as if he were God's emissary on earth. After all if Odeh and the Joint List had attended the funeral, no one would…

'Erased from Space and Consciousness' is the product of years of meticulous research to raise awareness of the hundreds of villages Israel destroyed during and following the 1948 war. But is awareness enough to remedy the injustices of the past? By Tom Pessah Kadman, Noga: Erased From Space and Consciousness – Israel and the Depopulated Palestinian Villages of 1948. 2015. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 256 pp. Noga Kadman’s Erased from Space and Consciousness is one of those rare books that profoundly re-shapes your perspective. Growing up inside the Zionist education system meant that even when I did eventually hear about the…