fbpx
Larry Derfner

Larry Derfner

The wrong Zionist response to refugees

If Israel goes ahead and sends 1,000 southern Sudanese refugees back to live under the Pharaoh, after what they went through in Sudan, then once and for all we Jews ought to get off our high horse about how \”the world stood silent\” when we needed help.

Bibi Netanyahu ranks high … as racist demagogue

Imagine if any non-Jewish government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country\’s founding institution raise money to help poor non-Jewish families but not poor Jewish families.

The big con about Iran

There is no military option in Iran. If we didn\’t learn this from the Americans\’ ongoing experience in Iraq, we should have learned it from Israel\’s recent experience in Lebanon.

Israel Tames but Doesn’t Halt Torture

Last November, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), while campaigning to ban the U.S. government from using torture, told the \”Today\” show: \”The Israeli Supreme Court outlawed torture, outlawed cruel and inhumane treatment. And I have talked to Israeli officials, and they say they do very fine without it.\”

Olmert’s Conversion From Pol to Leader

You have to judge politicians, especially those running for prime minister, without sentiment. And if they\’ve changed direction, you have to give more weight to what they\’ve done lately than what they did before. Unless the candidate is a truly malevolent character, you have to judge him or her on two things: leadership ability and political direction. And on that basis, I think Olmert is better suited to be prime minister than anybody else around.

A Solution to Israel’s Demographic Peril

When Israeli Arabs protest that talk of the \”demographic threat\” is racist, can Israeli Jews blame them? If non-Jewish professors and politicians anywhere on earth spoke of a Jewish demographic threat to their countries, what would Jews call it? What, for that matter, would decent non-Jews call it?

Raising the specter of the Arab demographic threat to Israel is, in fact, racist — if you believe that Zionism is racism, that a Jewish state is a racist state.

I don\’t believe that (even while I know there is no shortage of Jews whose Zionism doesn\’t amount to anything more than racism). Although the Jewish state by definition \”belongs\” to the Jews more than it does to its non-Jewish citizens, I don\’t consider it a force for racism, but the opposite: Whatever racism exists in Israel, the Jewish state came into being as an answer to racism of a rather larger magnitude — the habit of anti-Semitic oppression.

Hope for At-Risk Youth at Yemin Orde

One of the notorious ways that overwrought Israeli parents get unruly kids into line is by threatening to send them to a pnimia — a boarding school.

[authorpage]

More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.