Editor-in-chief: David Suissa
March 22, 2021
This week, Israelis will once again head out to vote. Based on recent polls, Netanyahu has a chance to build an entirely right-wing coalition.
We have a historic opportunity to form a strong and stable right-wing government that will serve all Israelis and lead Israel into an economic leap in the aftermath of the pandemic. This is a choice between a stable right-wing government or a dysfunctional rotation government under Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid who will only take Israel back.
The right-wing dream government that Netanyahu is marketing to his voters would be the nightmare of any liberal, be they secular, traditional or religious, and of anyone who isn’t a nationalist extremist who believes in Jewish supremacy. Such a government would be a true hell for Arabs, asylum seekers and the LGBTQ community.
It took a while, but the right-wing bloc can now garner 61 Knesset seats on Election Day. On one hand, this is good news for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as it bolsters the right-wing camp’s confidence that what could not be achieved in the last three elections can become reality.
The tragic shooting rampage in Atlanta, which claimed the lives of eight individuals, has shone a national spotlight on the unique experiences and challenges faced by Asian women in America.
In Asia, massage is legal, normal and necessary. In America, it’s stained by sexism, imperialism and sex trafficking… It is low-paying, grueling work done mostly by immigrant women, often middle-aged, who, in my experience, have never exhibited an inclination to play the temptress.
The way their race intersects with their gender makes Asian and Asian American women uniquely vulnerable to violence, said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the non-profit advocacy group National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum.
To live through this period as an Asian-American is to feel defenseless against a virus as well as a virulent strain of scapegoating. It is to feel trapped in an American tragedy while being denied the legitimacy of being an American.
A new survey reveals that as many as half of all Republican men don’t want the coronavirus vaccine. More at The Guardian.
They don’t trust the federal government — and they trust it even less since Joe Biden came to the White House. They don’t trust scientists, and they especially don’t trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor.
The share of adults surveyed who are vaccinated or are willing to be vaccinated has grown from 72 percent to 77 percent from January through the end of February, a rise that reflects the increased availability of vaccines. However, the share of unvaccinated adults who are hesitant to get a vaccine has remained constant, at around 23 percent.
Fox, from its location at the center of the conservative media universe, is playing a vital role in promoting fear about coronavirus vaccines, and they’re getting lots of help. While many of the preoccupations of the conservative culture war are just ridiculous — nobody is going to be hurt by the 500th segment about Dr. Seuss and “cancel culture” — this one could have real life-or-death consequences.
Countless women put themselves in harms way to resist Nazi rule during World War II. Their stories can be found in “The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos” by Judy Batalion.
In 2007, when I was living in London and grappling with my Jewish identity, I decided to write about strong Jewish women… I was stunned. I was raised in a community of Holocaust survivors and had earned a doctorate in women’s history. Why had I never heard these stories?
These missions sound like they were dreamed up by a screenwriter, but they’re all true. Zivia, Renia, and Vitka — and many other women — regularly risked their lives to help fellow Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland. They performed open-air surgery in forests, infiltrated the Gestapo in Grodno, smuggled guns in teddy bears, and assassinated Nazis.
Beyond Batalion’s talents for form and style lies her enormous achievement as a researcher. Any reader who has conducted research themselves will understand what it means for her to have waded through thousands of pages of archival material in different languages and in different countries. That she has been able to accomplish all of this without burdening the reader with that same feeling of toil is simply stunning.
In a world where cancel culture dominates the headlines, are Americans becoming too afraid to speak?
Passover an ideal time to double and triple down on our most fundamental freedom of expression? Because the holiday commemorates the liberation of the ancient Jews from the most fundamental bondage of slavery. What good is freedom from slavery without freedom of expression? What good is freedom itself when you are terrified of saying the wrong thing?
Most sensible liberals I talk to — in politics, news, entertainment or academia — understand this. But there’s a palpable fear of getting on the wrong side of the woke mob, and it doesn’t seem worth the risk.
They tell me it’s just a moment of pent-up rage. They tell me it’ll pass.
We have an empathy deficit… We’ve collectively lost the ability to open our minds to the perspectives and experiences of others. Instead, we are filling the air with tension, afraid to speak up for fear of saying the wrong thing, making a mistake, or offending someone.
A new Harvard study reveals that most conversations last longer than we want them to. What does this mean about the way we socialize?
I’ve always felt that Jean-Paul Sartre narrowly missed the target. Hell is not necessarily other people. More precisely, hell is small talk.
One reason people end up with the conversational equivalent of liverwurst is that it’s difficult to simultaneously do three things: end an interaction, be honest, and be considered polite.
Conversations may seem simple, but they’re actually incredibly skillful affairs. They involve our navigation between thousands of cues, often responding instantly and appropriately to the subtlest of hints.