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Jerold S. Auerbach

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Jul 7, 2018, 9:43 PM

Unsettled by Settlements

Wajahat Ali, a self-identified “brown dude living in America as a Muslim,” is a rising star of politically correct journalism. His recent article in The Atlantic, entitled “A Muslim Among Israeli Settlers,” explores “what happens when a Pakistani American...

Jun 5, 2018, 10:44 PM

Yossi Klein Halevi’s moral dilemma

'Letters to my Palestinian Neighbor' proposes a model of compassion that leads to the end of the Jewish state

May 26, 2018, 8:47 PM

Victimization as Victory

Another Naqba Day, commemorating the catastrophic displacement of Palestinians from their homes in the 1948 war launched by Arab states to annihilate Israel, has passed. Like so much of the Palestinian narrative, it relies upon Jewish and Zionist history...

May 19, 2018, 6:17 AM

The fallacy of moral equivalence

Rarely does the photo, four columns wide, of a dead baby appear on Page 1 of The New York Times (May 17). The sorrowful death of Layla Ghandour became, for the Times, “fodder for competing narratives.” But the dead...

May 18, 2018, 7:13 PM

Moralizer-in-Chief at The New York Times

When David Brooks became the designated conservative columnist for The New York Times in 2003, the editorial page editor explained that he was “the kind of conservative that wouldn’t make our readers shriek and throw the paper out the...

May 16, 2018, 6:21 PM

Israel’s 70th in The New York Times

Anticipating the answer, I nonetheless wondered how The New York Times would respond to the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, nearly two millennia after its destruction by Roman conquerors. My expectation was guided by the decades of Times discomfort...

May 15, 2018, 6:45 PM

Menachem Zivotovsky’s Dream Fulfilled

Amid the deservedly joyous celebration of the long overdue recognition by President Donald Trump of Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol, and relocation of the American Embassy there, my thoughts have repeatedly returned to Menachem Zivotofsky. Menachem was born in Jerusalem in...

May 2, 2018, 4:19 PM

Israel’s Self-Hating Critics

It is a sad commentary on Jewish intellectual life in the diaspora that Israel’s approaching 70th anniversary of independence on May 14 should be the target of excoriation by incensed Jewish critics. Self-exiled Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has been aptly...

May 1, 2018, 11:30 PM

Israel’s Self-Hating Critics

It is a sad commentary on Jewish intellectual life in the diaspora that Israel’s approaching 70th anniversary of independence on May 14 should be the target of excoriation by incensed Jewish critics. Self-exiled Israeli historian Ilan Pappe has been aptly...

Apr 12, 2018, 2:18 PM

Brothers at war

Israel’s 70th anniversary of independence will be a time for joyous celebration. But a dark shadow of sorrowful memory will hover nearby. Barely a month after Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion proudly read the Proclamation of Independence, restoring Jewish national...

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About Me

Jerold S. Auerbach is Professor Emeritus of History at Wellesley College.