After Gaza: The Road Ahead

IN THE aftermath of this year’s conflict in Gaza, many worry that the prospects of a two-state solution are dwindling. “Perhaps we need to think about a three-state solution,” Michael Walzer wrote in March, “with only two of those states-Israel and the PA’s West Bank-preparing themselves for peaceful co-existence.” Walzer spoke with Richard Wolin on February 24 at CUNY’s Graduate Center.

Listen to their conversation

Photo: Gaza, Janua... More

In the Aftermath of War: Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir

AS AMBITIOUS as it is macabre, Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir introduces a new kind of film: an animated documentary. Based on Folman’s own experiences as a young soldier during Israel’s 1982 campaign in Lebanon—in particular, in the days leading up to the Sabra and Shatila massacres—the film focuses on the confusion, guilt, and trauma that stay with soldiers long after they come home from war.

The film, which was Israel’s submission to the foreign film category at this year’s Oscars, takes its name from a scene in which one of the young men in Folman’s unit, half mad with fe... More

Is the Two-State Solution Viable after Gaza?

NO ONE can say with any certainty that the two-state solution was viable before the war in Gaza. I can imagine arguments that the war made it more viable and also that it made it less viable. But, really, its viability doesn’t have a lot to do with the immediate strategic/political situation. There isn’t any other solution; this one is unique. People keep coming back to it because there’s no other way to go. It survives, therefore, I guess, it’s viable.

But it isn’t in great shape right now, even though everyone knows what each side would have to do to realize this solution. The Pal... More

Hamas Rising

I HAVE just returned from a visit to the Middle East and witnessed what the American media has downplayed since the beginning of the conflict: The degree to which Israel’s assault on Gaza radicalized mainstream Muslim opinion. Shown endlessly on Arab and Muslim television stations, the massive killing of civilians has fueled rage against Israel.

Many professionals, both Christian and Muslim Arabs, previously critical of Hamas, are bitter about what they call Israel’s “barbaric conduct” against Palestinian noncombatants, particularly women and children. No one... More

The Gaza War and Proportionality

LET’S TALK about proportionality—or, more important, about its negative form. “Disproportionate” is the favorite critical term in current discussions of the morality of war. But most of the people who use it don’t know what it means in international law or in just war theory. Curiously, they don’t realize that it has been used far more often to justify than to criticize what we might think of as excessive violence. It is a dangerous idea.
Proportionality doesn’t mean “tit for tat,” as in the family feud. The Hatfields kill three McCoys, so the McCoys must kill three Hatfields.... More

Will Obama Go for the Game Changer--the Arab-Israeli Peace Plan?

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Although now we know the leading players of Barack Obama’s national security team, we still do not know his foreign policy priorities. By opting for a team whose character is, for the most part, right of center, the president-elect sends multiple messages at home and abroad. With establishment figures in charge of national security—Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, James Jones—there will likely be no radical experimentation or paradigm shift in U.S. foreign policy.

America will reclaim the realist compass that guided its international relation... More

Talking to Enemies

The announcement that Israel and Syria are negotiating with one another through Turkish mediators was called “a slap in the face” by an American diplomat who spoke anonymously to the New York Times (May 22, 2008). The Bush administration is against talking to enemies, although it has made an important exception with regard to the North Koreans. I think, by contrast, that talking to enemies is always a good idea.

First, it helps us understand what the leaders of the enemy state are thinking and possibly also what they are doing; it is a source of information. A diplomat is a k... More

Israel at Sixty: An Interview with Mitchell Cohen

Daniel Buarque: You point out in your article, “Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn” (Dissent, Winter 2008), that Israel’s legitimacy is often questioned in the world because of conflicts in the Middle East and because of Israel’s relationship to the Palestinians. Should the rest of the world celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of Israeli independence? Why?

Mitchell Cohen: One of the points I tried to make is that Israel is subjected to double standards, especially on the left. Saying tha... More

The Turin Book Fair Controversy: A Debate

Uproar broke out after Turin’s International Book Fair announced plans to honor the state of Israel on its sixtieth anniversary. Several European and Arab intellectuals threatened to boycott the event while others, including Dissent co-editor Mitchell Cohen, argued that the call to boycott represented a larger “campaign across borders to de-legitimize one state and apply standards to this one state that are applied to nobody else.”

With the book fair a month away, Cohen and fellow political theorist Andrew Arato debate the issues surrounding the Turin Contro... More

Turin Controversy: Attacking the Left is Pure Evasion

This is not the right time to make Israel the guest of honor at a book fair, unless Israeli Jewish and Arab writers were put into the center of attention. With that said, the boycott is stupid.

Why boycott precisely the writers who are critical of government policies? Yes, let us support the Israel’s right to exist. But a state is a people, a territory, and a coercive organization. There is no question about the identity of the coercive organization, and we should accept it as such.

But should we all accept every Jew (by the very uncertain standards of the law of retur... More

Turin Controversy: Missing the Point

My friend Andrew Arato charges me with “pure evasion,” but he misses the point, indeed, several points. He grants Israel’s right to exist, which is good of him, but asks: “which territorial entity” should be recognized? That, however, is not the issue for Tariq Ramadan, Tariq Ali and (most) of the black-listers. Their issue is the existence of the Jewish state regardless of borders. My criticisms are of the “left that doesn’t learn” in explicit contrast to “the fair and opened minded left.” (See “Anti-Semitism and the ... More

Turin Controversy: Ethnocentrism and Israel

“States exist in history” is just about as ridiculous and ambiguous truism we can say about them. Of course they do, but what constitutes them as states? As far as history is concerned it is radically a matter of interpretation, and to a lot of people, not Mitchell Cohen, Judea and Samaria are historically parts of the State of Israel. It so happens Israel occupies these places.

It does not matter whose fault it is that it came to be so. As far as I now see it, the 1967 War was an aggressive Israeli war. But the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank in 1948, and its subsequent Israe... More

Turin Controversy: Against Integral Cosmopolitanism

I delayed responding to Andy Arato in the hope that Tariq Ramadan and Tariq Ali might clarify some issues by demanding a boycott of the Olympics to protest the killings in Tibet, a poor land occupied brutally since 1951. Alas, I cannot report that Ramadan has called on members of the Arab League or Iran to act against Beijing, which is also a chief patron of Sudan’s genocidal government. Ali does not seem to be urging intellectuals to action on China comparable to his (and Ramadan’s) campaign to deny Israel honors at European book fairs. Perhaps sport must just go on as it did the Olympics ... More

Turin Controversy: Missing the Point

My friend Andrew Arato charges me with “pure evasion,” but he misses the point, indeed, several points. He grants Israel’s right to exist, which is good of him, but asks: “which territorial entity” should be recognized? That, however, is not the issue for Tariq Ramadan, Tariq Ali and (most) of the black-listers. Their issue is the existence of the Jewish state regardless of borders. My criticisms are of the “left that doesn’t learn” in explicit contrast to “the fair and opened minded left.” (See “Anti-Semitism and the ... More

Anti-Semitism and the Left that Doesn’t Learn

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A DETERMINED offensive is underway. Its target is in the Middle East, and it is an old target: the legitimacy of Israel. Hezbollah and Hamas are not the protagonists, the contested terrains are not the Galilee and southern Lebanon or southern Israel and Gaza. The means are not military. The offensive comes from within parts of the liberal and left intelligentsia in the United States and Europe. It has nothing to do with this or that negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, and it has nothing to do with any particular Israeli policy. After all, this or that Israeli policy m... More

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Thick and Thin: An Interview with Avishai Margalit

Memory can be a complicated matter. Sometimes, the ethical imperative to remember is quite clear while in other situations forgetfulness is the first step toward reconciliation.  Giancarlo Bosetti talks with Avishai Margalit, author of The Ethics of Memory, about the important ethical and political facets of memory.

Giancarlo Bosetti: You make a distinction between ethics and morality, the near and the far. What is the premise of your ethics o... More

Bridging the Divide

Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh is no stranger to the difficulties of achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians. He notes in his recent memoir Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life: “Putting moral theory into practice—never very easy—is a daunting task in a war zone.” A long-time advocate of a two-state solution, he was the PLO’s chief representative in Jerusalem in 2001 and 2002 and is now president of Jerusalem-based al-Quds University.  Dissent contributor Jon Wiener (“The Weatherman Temptation,” Spring 2007) caught up with N... More