On Israel & Gaza

‘The Slow Bleeding Out of a Country’

Israel’s assault on Lebanon threatens to render the very conditions of life impossible and hasten the country’s disintegration.

November 2, 2024

North Gaza: Between Death and Displacement

As it escalates its attacks on north Gaza, the Israeli army has ordered the entire civilian population to evacuate—and cut off food aid to all who remain. 

October 17, 2024

The Path to Regional War

For more than nine months, Israel and the Iran-led axis of resistance maintained a precarious balance of mutual deterrence. Now that balance has collapsed.

October 11, 2024

Lebanon: Memories of War

Israel’s attacks on Lebanon are striking not just individual Hezbollah members but my family’s entire social world.

September 23, 2024

Torture in Israel’s Prisons

Recent reports on the conditions in Israeli detention facilities describe them as sites of systematic abuse.

October 17, 2024 issue

Living the Nakba

Two recent memoirs tell the story of generations of Palestinian grief and struggle.

October 3, 2024 issue

An ‘Unlawful Presence’

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal, yet this will do little to reduce the settlers’ savage violence against Palestinians or force Israelis to become conscious of it.

September 19, 2024 issue

Killing Their Way to Peace

Israel’s targeted assassinations have never succeeded at dismantling Palestinian resistance movements. Now they threaten to set off a regional war.

August 15, 2024

A ‘Moral, Strategic, and Diplomatic Abyss’

In the latest round of disputes within Israel’s ruling coalition, the eliminationist, messianic far right seems poised to triumph. 

July 2, 2024

Crimes of War in Gaza

Civilians in Gaza are in grave danger from Israel’s disregard for international law.

July 18, 2024 issue

Acts of Language

Amid the actual violence of Israel’s assault on Gaza, why have so many writers treated pro-Palestine speech as a threat?

June 13, 2024

Israel’s Universities: The Crackdown

Last October, Palestinian students and academic staff in Israel faced unprecedented penalties for their speech. Now the repression persists. 

June 5, 2024

Is Israel Committing Genocide?

I have been engaged for six decades in the human rights movement, which has endeavored to restore peace by enforcing International Humanitarian Law. Can the law bring a measure of justice to the victims of Israel’s and Hamas’s violence?

June 6, 2024 issue

A View from Cairo

The Egyptian government’s repression of its citizens and the Israeli government’s occupation of Palestine are inextricably linked.

May 12, 2024

Migrant Workers in Their Own Land

After closing its borders to Palestinians employed in critical sectors, Israel’s government has faced a labor shortage—which is being met by Indian migrant workers.

April 21, 2024

In Gaza’s Hospitals

It’s not easy to work under continuous military attack, to wake up and close your eyes to injuries and corpses, to feel helpless to stop it all.

April 19, 2024

Israel: The Way Out

If Israel is to survive, physically and spiritually, it needs to undergo, collectively, a sea change in its vision of reality and face some unpleasant though obvious facts.

May 9, 2024 issue

The Road to Famine in Gaza

Hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are at the brink of famine—a human-made disaster with roots in Israel’s history of using food as a weapon. 

March 30, 2024

Unilateral Actions

The impending invasion of Rafah—where over 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped—shows how far Israel has pushed its ambitions in Gaza.

March 2, 2024

The American Jewish Left in Exile

Those of us whose Jewishness isn’t tethered to Israel find ourselves increasingly at the margins of American Jewish life. Do we need our own institutions?

January 28, 2024

Gaza: Two Rights of Return

Most Palestinians in Gaza are now displaced at least twice over. They have a right to choose where to return.

January 27, 2024

‘The Eye of the Beholder’

Administrators at Columbia and other US universities have been cracking down on student protest against the war in Gaza—even as right-wing politicians demand they go further.

December 24, 2023

The Long War on Gaza

Over fifty-six years, Israel has transformed Gaza from a functional economy to a dysfunctional one, from a productive society to an impoverished one.

December 19, 2023

Letter from Mount Lebanon

“The demise of ancient antagonisms should be a reason for hope in this hopeless land, but it isn’t. Ehden’s tranquility does not hide the fact that peace is precarious here.”

December 10, 2023

An Exchange on Holocaust Memory

Is the history of Nazism and the Holocaust a useful point of comparison for Hamas’s crimes, or a false analogy?

December 8, 2023

A Bitter Season in the West Bank

The war in Gaza has provided Israeli settlers fresh opportunity and impunity. I see entire villages fleeing in panic.

December 21, 2023 issue

Combatants for Peace

We are a group of former Israeli soldiers and formerly imprisoned Palestinians. Our work is a model for the nonviolent way forward.

November 23, 2023

An Open Letter on the Misuse of Holocaust Memory

Appealing to the memory of the Holocaust obscures our understanding of the antisemitism Jews face today and dangerously misrepresents the causes of violence in Israel-Palestine.

November 20, 2023

Jordan’s Balancing Act

In Amman, the regime is trying both to channel popular outrage over the bombardment of Gaza and to keep it in check.

November 16, 2023

Biden’s Selective Outrage

The rhetorical choice to pair Israel and Ukraine has not created a common moral cause. It has exposed a double standard.

November 14, 2023

Israel: The Left in Peril

Since October 7, Israel’s left has encountered unprecedented repression. Could its ideas nonetheless point the way forward?

November 12, 2023

‘Let Us Not Hurry to Our Doom’

The first Lebanon War helped lay the groundwork for Israel’s escalations of violence in Gaza. Who will heed its warnings?

November 9, 2023

Germany on Edge

In recent weeks, Germany’s reflexive defenses of Israel and suppression of its critics have assumed a fevered pitch. 

November 3, 2023

No Endgame in Gaza

After weeks of bombardment and thousands of deaths, what are Netanyahu’s political and ethical limits?

December 7, 2023 issue

Gaza’s Blocked Relief

By restricting aid into Gaza, Israel is reducing food and fuel supplies to far below the “humanitarian minimum” its own officials set years ago.

October 30, 2023

The Many and the Few

Israel’s own pre-statehood history illustrates the dangers of distinguishing between “civilized” and “barbarous” peoples.

October 21, 2023

Gaza: The Cost of Escalation

The consequences of the US’s vengeful reaction to September 11 should remind us of the risks of responding to violence with greater violence. 

October 18, 2023

An Open Letter from Participants in the Palestine Festival of Literature

We call for the international community to commit to ending the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza and to finally pursuing a comprehensive and just political solution in Palestine.

October 14, 2023

Nowhere to Go in Gaza

Today’s evacuation order from the Israeli military directed over a million Gazan civilians to abandon their homes with no safe passage.

October 13, 2023

Inhumane Times

Israel’s current war seems to be as much a brutal insistence on the collective punishment of the Palestinian people as an offensive against Hamas.

November 23, 2023 issue

Déjà Vu in Israel

The conceptual system that has dominated Israeli thinking and policy for decades has been exposed, repeatedly, as dangerous and delusional.

October 11, 2023

Gaza Without Pretenses

For years Israel and Hamas maintained an unstable equilibrium that kept the Gaza Strip contained. But it was always likely to be temporary.  

October 11, 2023

Eyeless in Gaza

What lessons do people actually learn from the cruelties they applaud and the ones they suffer in return?

October 10, 2023

Causes for Despair

The human suffering that the people of Gaza have endured in the past three weeks is beyond comprehension.

November 23, 2023 issue