Book Review | Kreisky, Israel, and Jewish Identity
By Liam Hoare
On 28 September 1973, two Palestinian terrorists from the Syrian Ba’athist faction As-Sa'iqa hijacked a train near Marchegg...
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February 2023
Book Review | British Trade Unions, the Labour Party, and Israel’s Histadrut
By Luke Akehurst
Ronnie Fraser has been bravely fighting a sometimes lonely battle against antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the British trade...
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February 2023
Opinion | Western Democracies Face Two Threats: The Tyranny of the Majority and The Tyranny of the Minority
By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom, He writes here in a personal capacity. Against the Tyranny...
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February 2023
‘A gamechanger in Israel’s relationship with Egypt and cooperation with the EU’: The geopolitics of Israel’s natural gas fields
By Calev Ben-Dor
Israel has discovered enough natural gas to become a regional energy exporter. As Europe wrestles with its energy...
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February 2023
‘For peace, a political agreement between politicians is not enough’ | An interview with Noor A’wad, Palestinian activist with Roots
By Joshua A. Brook
Noor A’wad joined Roots, a Palestinian-Jewish peacebuilding organisation, in 2016 after meeting Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and Ali Abu...
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February 2023
Book Review| Israel: A History in 100 Cartoons
By Keith Kahn-Harris
In 2006, the Iranian newspaper Hamshahri announced an ‘International Holocaust Cartoon Contest’ as an outraged riposte to the...
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February 2023
Book Review | Victorious
By Liam Hoare
‘Unlike others, I am no longer slaughtering sacred cows,’ Amos Oz told Niva Lanir in a 2012 interview...
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February 2023
Open letter to The George Washington University regarding allegations of antisemitism
By Daniel Burston et al.
Hundreds of academics have signed an open letter to George Washington University expressing their deep concern about its...
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February 2023
Small Vote, Great Power: Rabbi Tau, Avi Maoz, the Noam Party and the Threat to Equal Rights in Israel
By Daniel Goldman
About a half a million Israelis voted for the ‘Religious Zionist’ slate which made the three parties that...
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January 2023
Opinion | Judicial Reform is needed to preserve the legitimacy of Israeli democracy
By Adi Schwartz
Adi Schwartz is a former staff writer at Haaretz and is co-author with Einat Wilf of The War...
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January 2023
Archive | Menachem Begin on Law and Democracy
By Fathom Editors
In the increasingly fiery debate over the role of Israel’s judiciary, former Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin seems...
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January 2023
When Discourse about Israel Becomes Antisemitic: A Guide for the Perplexed
By Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger
Cary Nelson and Michael Saenger argue for understanding antisemitic anti-Zionism as ‘a prejudice with definable characteristics’ and of...
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January 2023
‘If these ideas get implemented, it will be a major shift. Israel will become a different country’: An Interview with...
By Calev Ben-Dor
Former Likud Justice Minister Dan Meridor discusses what he sees as the erosion of liberal values within the...
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January 2023
A World War and a Jewish War: Derek Penslar reviews Dan Diner
By Derek Penslar
Derek Penslar reviews Dan Diner’s, Ein anderer Krieg: Das jüdische Palästina und der Zweite Weltkrieg - 1935 –...
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January 2023
Book Review | Ten Years Hard Labour
By Marc Goldberg
Chris Williamson was a Labour Member of Parliament representing the constituency of Derby North. He served as Shadow...
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January 2023
Defending Israel’s Legitimacy: Proposals for a reborn Ministry of Strategic Affairs
By Jacob Dallal
Jacob Dallal reflects on his five-years working at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs from 2016 to 2021 to...
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January 2023
Book Review | Bibi, My Story
By Yisrael Medad
The memoirs of politicians and public figures, it has been claimed, are among the most popular form of...
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December 2022
The Annual Fathom Lecture 2022 | Why we should all be Zionists if we want peace
By Einat Wilf
On 7 December 2022, in celebration of its 10th birthday, Fathom invited Einat Wilf to deliver the inaugural...
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December 2022
The Progressive Friend of Israel in the era of Ben Gvir: Prospects and Tasks
By Jack Omer-Jackaman
Jack Omer-Jackaman argues that this is a perfect opportunity to prove the truth of what progressive friends of...
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December 2022
Lessons from Germany’s Social Democrats for the Israeli Labor Party
By Kira Lewis
Kira Lewis believes the Israeli Labor Party can learn some lessons from a historic social democratic party that...
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December 2022
Fathom at 10: Celebrating our first decade
By Fathom Editors
Fathom was created by BICOM in 2012 for the long haul. We were created not to chase the...
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December 2022
Opinion | Navigating China’s Security Presence in the Middle East and North Africa
By Grant Rumley and Carol Silber
Grant Rumley is the Goldberger Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Glazer Program on Great...
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December 2022
Judicial Reform is Not Dangerous for Israeli Democracy – it is Essential
By Russell A. Shalev
Suzie Navot of the Israel Democracy Institute argued in Fathom that the judicial reforms being considered by the...
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December 2022
Yet again, the Courts find for John Ware and his BBC Panorama documentary 'Is Labour Antisemitic?'
By John Ware
Documentary maker John Ware explains why he has brought three successful court cases against those who he believed...
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December 2022
Book Review | Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews
By Kathleen Hayes
This is a very important book. Over the last decade or so, a sweeping ideology that looks much...
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November 2022
The Three Best Books by Israeli Writers (Not Called Oz, Grossman, or Yehoshua), recommended by Liam Hoare
By Liam Hoare
Fathom is inviting experts to select their three favourite books on a theme or subject. The series began...
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December 2022
The Iranian Uprising and the Nuclear Threat: How Should the West Respond
By Matthias Kuntzel
Matthias Küntzel is the author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. This talk was given at...
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November 2022
Judicial Reform and the Implications for Israeli Democracy
By Suzie Navot
In this edited transcript of her conversation with BICOM Director Richard Pater, Vice-President of Research at the Israel...
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November 2022
'Politically homeless': Yamina voters tell their story
By Calev Ben-Dor
Calev Ben-Dor talks to former Yamina supporters to understand their views on the Bennett-Lapid government and voting considerations...
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November 2022
‘The Jews Are Guilty’: Christian Antisemitism in Contemporary America
By Alvin Rosenfeld
Alvin Rosenfeld holds the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies at Indiana University and is the Director...
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November 2022
Book Review | Bibi: My Story
By Colin Shindler
When he was asked by a student in 2018, what is the most important subject to study for...
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November 2022
The Democratic Socialists of America just endorsed ethnic murder
By Ari Allyn-Feuer
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is the largest left-wing organisation in the United States and a prominent...
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July 2023
Democratic Socialism, Israel and the Jews: An Interview with Michael Harrington (1975), with new preface by Mitchell Cohen (2020)
By Mitchell Cohen and Michael Harrington
The interview reproduced below, with Michael Harrington (1928-1989), the leading US democratic socialist of the second half of...
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March 2020
Towards Israel-Saudi Normalisation?
By BICOM
In comments this week, President Joe Biden discussed the possibility of normalisation between Israel and Saudi Arabia. While...
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July 2023
Book Review | Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation
By Marc Goldberg
Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation is perhaps the...
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July 2023
An Open Letter from Jewish Scholars about Today’s Intellectual Environment
By David Bernstein et al.
A group of over 230 Jewish scholars has signed an open letter expressing concern 'about the current ideological...
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July 2023
The 1948 Arab war against Israel: An aftershock of World War II?
By Matthias Kuntzel
Matthias Küntzel’s new book, Nazis, Islamic Antisemitism and the Middle East, explores the still under-analysed impact of Nazi...
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June 2023
Israel and the Haredim – Between integration and separatism: A Review Essay
By Daniel Goldman
Daniel Goldman is a businessman, social activist and a former chair of the Coalition for Haredi Employment, Gesher...
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June 2023
13 Ways for Israel to securely create a better status quo
By Justin Feldman
Justin Feldman argues that any solution to the conflict must first bring both peoples closer together in better...
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June 2023
Fathom eBook: Birthing Zionism – Studies of 19th-century British Christian Zionists: George Eliot, Laurence Oliphant and Rev. William Hechler
By Philip Earl Steele
This Fathom eBook collects three essays by Philip Earl Steele published in Fathom Journal between 2019 and 2022:...
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June 2023
A good principle misapplied: the case for thinking again about the Jamie Driscoll decision
By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson, writing in a personal capacity, asks if the UK Labour Party has misapplied the principle of...
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June 2023
The Zionist Case for a Divided Jerusalem
By Blake Flayton and Samuel J. Hyde
Blake Flayton is a columnist for the Jewish Journal and Samuel J. Hyde is a writer and political...
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June 2023
Bar Kochba and Us: The Israeli Debate during Tisha Be’Av
By Calev Ben-Dor
Calev Ben-Dor argues that the fight raging today between Israeli politicians about how to interpret the meaning of...
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July 2021
Fathom Long Read | The Progressive Saviour Complex: Quakers, American Jews and Israel
By Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky
Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky are senior non-resident scholars at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and co-authors...
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July 2021
Iran under President Raisi: What should the region and the West expect? | An interview with Henry Rome
By Henry Rome
On 13 July, Fathom’s deputy editor Samuel Nurding sat down with the Eurasia Group’s Henry Rome to discuss...
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July 2021
Rereadings | The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership by Yehuda Avner
By Liam Hoare
‘The ultimate insider’s account’ wrote George Gruen on the release of Yehuda Avner’s book The Prime Ministers in...
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July 2021
Criticism of Israel is not Antisemitic. But ‘Anti-Zionism’ is. This is why
By Russell A. Shalev
Russell Shalev argues that human rights movements cannot adequately address anti-Jewish discrimination, harassment or violence without recognising the...
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July 2021
Anshel Pfeffer and Antisemitism: A Reply by Ben Cohen
By Ben Cohen
Ben Cohen is the author of Some Of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism. He...
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July 2021
‘Choosing comrades’: Solidarity in the Middle East and Labour’s foreign policy
By Gary Kent
In this essay, Gary Kent argues that the British Labour Party should seek to amplify the voices of...
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July 2021
Opinion | Liberal Zionists fight for liberalism in Israel, and Zionism abroad
By Paul Gross
Before immigrating to Israel from the UK in 2007 Paul Gross worked for the British government on religious...
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July 2021
The erasure from historical memory of Israeli statehood offers and Palestinian rejections is badly distorting today’s debate about Middle East...
By Salo Aizenberg
The erasure from our historical memory of Israeli attempts to achieve peace by agreeing to Palestinian statehood, and...
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July 2021
Fathom Long Read | Valentina Azarova: A Controversy Assessed
By Cary Nelson
Debate rages about the possible appointment of Valentina Azarova to the position of Director of the Toronto Law...
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July 2021
UK-Israel 2021 | Mandate: The Palestine Crucible 1919-1939
By Colin Shindler
Three years ago, a retired British army officer, Ian Westerman, wrote an article in Ha'aretz, entitled 'What did...
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July 2021
Incoming! Watch out, Peter Beinart is Fighting the Good Fight (again)
By Joshua A. Brook
Peter Beinart backed the US invasion of Iraq. He called it ‘the Good Fight’ and wrote a 2006...
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July 2021
UK-Israel 2021 | The Flourishing of UK-Israel Academic Networks
By John Levy
John Levy, Director of the Academic Study Group on Israel and the Middle East (ASG) explains how his...
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July 2021
Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir
By Kathleen Hayes
'I swam in a sea of antisemitism for years and didn’t notice the water was filthy,’ writes Kathleen...
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July 2021
Book Review | Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machines, Artificial Intelligence, and the Battle for the Future
By Justin Bronk
Drone Wars is an ambitious attempt to provide a narrative framework for the development, combat usage and future...
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July 2021
Against Solutionism, Against Nowism: For ‘the Longer, Shorter Path’ | An interview with Moshe Ya'alon
By Moshe Ya'alon
Former Israeli Minister of Defence Lieutenant General (Ret.) Moshe ‘Bogie’ Ya'alon was born in Kiryat Haim in 1950...
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June 2021
Opinion | Iran now controls three borders with Israel. Hamas’s missile war was a foretaste of what Tehran intends next
By Kyle Orton
Israel has been thwarting Iran’s global terrorist operations but has been less successful closer to home. The IRGC...
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June 2021
‘The Monash Soviet’ and Israel: A case study of how the Australian campus far left lost its way after the...
By Philip Mendes
For a half century, for good and for ill, Western universities have been incubating world views which go...
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June 2021
My Israeli Music: Hamutal Gouri
By Hamutal Gouri
Hamutal Gouri is the former executive director of the Dafna Fund, a feminist fund working to promote women's organisations in Israel. She...
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June 2021
The Three Best Books on Antisemitism, recommended by Dave Rich
By Dave Rich
Fathom is inviting experts to select their three favourite books about a subject. The series began with Sara...
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June 2021
Book Review | Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities
By Eve Garrard
Academic freedom is the liberty which academics have, within the confines of the law, to question and test...
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June 2021
Gazan Futures | After Operation Guardians of the Wall
By Amos Yadlin
Amos Yadlin discusses the recent asymmetric conflict between Israel and Hamas, providing five insights about the operation and...
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June 2021
Gazan Futures | Five ways to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and facilitate its return to Gaza
By Celine Touboul
Celine Touboul is the co-Executive Director of the Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF), an Israeli policy-planning think-tank. Celine leads...
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June 2021
Gazan Futures | Prospects of a long-term armistice or hudna with Hamas
By Ehud Yaari
Ehud Yaari is an expert on Middle Eastern affairs. He is the author of eight books on the...
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June 2021
Naftali Bennett and Israel’s (divided) National Religious Community: A Guide for the Perplexed
By Calev Ben-Dor
The new Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is a ‘religious-Zionist’. But what does that mean and why has...
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June 2021
My Israeli Music: Michael Wegier
By Michael Wegier
In a new Fathom series, we invite guests to select their favourite Israeli music and tell us a little about...
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June 2021
Opinion | The UK and EU should recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel — and Palestine
By Liam Hoare
In April 1949, what was then the New Statesman and Nation — at the time aligned with the...
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June 2021
Britain and Israel in 1948: A note in response to Ronnie Fraser
By Natan Aridan
In March 2021 Fathom published ‘The Rockiest of Starts: Anglo-Israeli Relations 1948-1950’ by Natan Aridan, editor of Israel...
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June 2021
2017 Fathom Interview with Naftali Bennett
By Naftali Bennett
‘Forming a Palestinian state along the lines that many readers of Fathom believe is the way forward would...
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Winter 2017
Peter Beinart and Palestinian Refugee ‘Return’: A Critique
By Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf
Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf are the authors of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the...
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June 2021
The Danger of Greater Israel
By Michael Walzer
In this urgent essay, written before the new Israeli coalition government was agreed, but with great relevance to...
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June 2021
Opinion | A desire to remove Netanyahu has created a coalition stretching from Naftali Bennett to Mansor Abbas. Can it...
By Calev Ben-Dor
The (four-time) failure of the right wing and ultra-Orthodox parties to garner 61 seats, the steady erosion of...
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June 2021
How to Defeat Hamas
By Toby Greene
Toby Greene argues that military tools are not enough. What’s needed is a long-term vision for sustainable political...
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June 2021
Book Review| The CIA War in Kurdistan: The Untold Story of the Northern Front in the Iraq War
By Paul Iddon
Sam Faddis's recent account of his time as a CIA operations officer in Iraq in the run-up to...
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June 2021
Still Standing, but Shaky: Jordan at 100
By Asher Susser
Asher Susser is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern History at Tel Aviv University (TAU). On the occasion of Jordan’s...
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May 2021
‘Calling a truce with left-wing antisemitism’: The Case Against the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism
By John Hyman and Anthony Julius
University College London’s governing Council voted in November 2019 to adopt the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) Working...
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May 2021
UK-Israel 2021 | When Britain almost declared war on Israel
By Ronnie Fraser
At the beginning of January 1949, eight months after Britain had withdrawn from Palestine, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin...
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May 2021
I hope that UCL faculty and staff will defend IHRA, as I would do were I with them
By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and editor emeritus...
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May 2021
Fathom Long Read | Antisemitism and the IHRA at University College London
By Cary Nelson
For twenty years Cary Nelson was part of the elected leadership of the American Association of University Professors,...
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May 2021
Read it again. Read better. Dave Rich on Derek Penslar’s serial misrepresentations of the IHRA
By Dave Rich
Dave Rich is Head of Policy at the Community Security Trust. He argues that Derek Penslar’s criticisms of...
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May 2021
Cultivating Israel Hatred in the University: The role of the T-Group Classroom
By Channa Newman and Thomas Mullane
The Basic Skills Training Group, or simply ‘T-group', was popularised in the 1950s as a humanistic therapeutic approach...
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May 2021
UK-Israel2021 | The Roots of the ‘Al Aqsa is in Danger’ Myth: Alfred Mond and a Speech Distorted
By Yisrael Medad
In 1921 British politician Alfred Mond, visiting Palestine, said ‘our sanctuary, our Temple, we will construct as an...
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May 2021
The UK and US can help build an International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace. The time is now.
By John Lyndon
This journal has long argued that people-to-people peacemaking programmes on a grand scale are essential to advance the...
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April 2021
Once Again on the Jerusalem Declaration: A Rejoinder to Derek Penslar and Michael Walzer
By Cary Nelson
Cary Nelson’s responds to replies by Derek Penslar and Michael Walzer to his Fathom article ‘Accommodating the New...
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April 2021
IHRA and JDA: Examining Definitions of Antisemitism in 2021
By Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland College Park. His latest book, Israel’s...
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April 2021
‘A Remarkably Aggressive Naïveté’: A Response to Derek Penslar and Michael Walzer
By Richard Landes
Richard Landes argues that the claim made by the signatories of the Jerusalem Declaration that – in the...
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April 2021
The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism may inadvertently give cover to antisemites
By Gerald Izenberg
Gerald N. Izenberg is Prof. Emeritus of History at Washington University in St. Louis. He argues that the...
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April 2021
Diary from London | Adam Ognall, Chief Executive, New Israel Fund UK
By Adam Ognall
After ten years in post, Adam Ognall is stepping down as CEO of the New Israel Fund UK...
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April 2021
Palestinian Elections: As In 2006, A Dangerous Idea
By Elliott Abrams
Elliott Abrams is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was Deputy...
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April 2021
Why I Signed the Jerusalem Declaration: A Response to Cary Nelson
By Derek Penslar
Derek Penslar is William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History at Harvard University and Resident Faculty at the...
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April 2021
The Jerusalem Declaration: A Response to Cary Nelson
By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is Professor Emeritus of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University. For many...
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April 2021
Book Review | The Star and the Scepter: A Diplomatic History of Israel
By David Rodman
The State of Israel has existed for a little over 70 years. A medium power by global standards,...
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April 2021
President Biden's Middle East Policy
By Yossi Kuperwasser
Yossi Kuperwasser argues that President Biden's Middle East policy reflects the tension between his understanding that the region...
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April 2021
Fathom Long Read | Accommodating the New Antisemitism: a Critique of ‘The Jerusalem Declaration’
By Cary Nelson
Download and print a PDF version here. In this comprehensive critique Cary Nelson argues that the recent ‘Jerusalem...
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April 2021
Book Review | Stories from Palestine: Narratives of Resilience
By Zeina M. Barakat
To be entrusted with someone’s narrative is a privilege. To grant such access … is an act of...
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April 2021
Three best books on Zionism, recommended by Gil Troy
By Gil Troy
Fathom is inviting experts to select their three favourite books about a subject. The series began with Sara...
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April 2021
Mansour Abbas: Islamist Kingmaker of Israeli politics
By Calev Ben-Dor
Arab political parties have become central players in Israeli politics. But how has a young dentist turned politician...
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March 2021
Opinion | Israel voted for change, but that’s only the beginning of the story
By Toby Greene
During Benjamin Netanyahu’s first premiership in the late 1990s, his crisis-driven leadership style led British Ambassador David Manning...
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March 2021
UK-Israel2021 | The Rockiest of Starts: Anglo-Israeli Relations 1948-1950
By Natan Aridan
Natan Aridan is Lecturer in Israel Studies and researcher at the Ben-Gurion Research Institute for the Study of...
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March 2021
Book Review | The Wondering Jew
By Robin Moss
In the spring and summer of 2017, Micah Goodman caused something of a publishing sensation with Milkud 67,...
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March 2021
Israel's political system is broken. Here is how to fix it.
By Yohanan Plesner
As Israelis head to the polls for the fourth time in two years, Yohanan Plesner, President of the...
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March 2021
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