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"What worries me most is the lack of a plan for the day after Hamas" | Fathom Interview: Dr Rob...

By Rob Geist Pinfold
Fathom Deputy Editors Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor talk to Dr Rob Geist Pinfold, Lecturer in Peace and... Read more > November 2023

In Defence of the Jewish People: A Christian Priest Reflects on 7 October

By Revd Ray Gaston
Revd Ray Gaston has been involved in grassroots interfaith dialogue and action as an Anglican priest throughout his... Read more > November 2023

Fathom Long Read | Lethal Journalism and the Pattern: Why the World Fell for Hamas’ Al Ahli Lie

By Richard Landes
Richard Landes is author of Can ‘The Whole World’ Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism, and Global Jihad (2022)... Read more > November 2023

‘The ISIS-ization of Hamas is a threat not only to Israel but to everyone’: Interview with IDF Lieutenant Colonel Avichay...

By Suzan Quitaz
Suzan Quitaz is a journalist at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, having worked previously at the Qatari... Read more > November 2023

Opinion | Beyond the Carnage: Credo of a democratic Zionist

By Sam Shube
A member of Kibbutz Nir Am near Gaza, and outgoing executive Director of the Hagar Association which operates... Read more > November 2023

Book Review | Amos Oz: Writer, Activist, Icon

By Liam Hoare
At the time of another episode in the Israel-Hamas conflict, Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Amos Oz opened... Read more > November 2023

Celebrating Terror – new research indicates a radicalisation of antisemitic discourse about Israel online in the wake of the Hamas...

By Matthew Bolton
Matthew Bolton, of the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at Berlin‘s Technische Universität introduces the centre’s Decoding Antisemitism... Read more > November 2023

Gaza After Hamas: How to Win the Peace

By Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is Director of Labour Friends of Israel. He argues here for an urgent international plan for... Read more > November 2023

Human Rights Watch: Destructive Agenda, Token Balance

By Gerald M. Steinberg
Gerald M. Steinberg is emeritus professor of politics at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor. The... Read more > November 2023

“I am happy Netanyahu is indecisive” | Fathom Interview: Dr Ahron Bregman

By Ahron Bregman
Fathom editors Alan Johnson and Jack Omer-Jackaman talk to Dr Ahron Bregman, Senior Teaching Fellow at King's College... Read more > October 2023

‘Daddy, Daddy, God, why am I alive?’ | A harrowing report from a journalist who watched raw footage of the...

By Suzan Quitaz
Suzan Quitaz was among the international journalists invited to watch the raw footage of the atrocities committed by... Read more > October 2023

Archive | Intellectual Incitement: The Anti-Zionist Ideology and the Anti-Zionist Subject (2015)

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – is the editor of Fathom. He published this chapter in 2015 in The... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | After the Hamas Pogrom, we can see what American Universities have become

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
Gabriel Noah Brahm is Professor of English and World Literature at Northern Michigan University and Visiting Researcher in... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | Why Don’t Israeli Women Count for ‘UN Women’?

By Hamutal Gouri
An open letter signed by dozens of women’s groups from Israel and around the world criticises the failure... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | Israeli military action to defeat Hamas is proportionate to the threat from Hamas

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – is the editor of Fathom. What is meant by ‘proportionality’ in war? Let’s... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | A ceasefire would normalise the pogrom

By Cary Nelson
Cary Nelson argues that those calling for a ceasefire ignore, are ignorant of, or are unconcerned by the... Read more > October 2023

Archive | Six Myths about Hamas (2014)

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – is the editor of Fathom. He gave this speech in 2014, after the... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | ‘A new turning point in the history of the State of Israel. Most people don’t understand that’

By Giora Eiland
In a briefing, Maj. Gen. (ret.) Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council, Strategic Planning... Read more > Article October 2023

Opinion | For the Total Defeat of Hamas, Against the ‘Total Siege’ of Gaza

By Alan Johnson & Jack Omer-Jackaman
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – and Jack Omer-Jackaman are editors of Fathom. Israel is at war. A war... Read more > October 2023

Diary from Jerusalem | Susi Doring Preston | Safe but broken

By Susi Doring Preston
In a beautifully written heartfelt diary from Jerusalem, Susi Doring Preston, a mother of four and high-tech professional,... Read more > Article October 2023

Opinion | The battle-lines are clear. Which side are you on?

By Joe Schwartz
In this impassioned piece, Joe Schwartz places the Hamas pogrom in the context of Jewish history - the... Read more > Article October 2023

Opinion | The pro-Israel case against a ground invasion of Gaza

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – is the editor of Fathom and of Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | Walking the thin (red) line

By Samuel Lebens
In a Facebook musing, Israeli-British philosopher Samuel Lebens argues that the current war with Hamas is justified, but... Read more > October 2023

‘Progressives’ and the Hamas Pogrom: An A-Z Guide

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson – @Fathom_Journal – is the editor of Fathom and editor of Mapping the New Left Antisemitism:... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | Israel was unprepared on three levels: strategically, operationally and tactically. We must now defeat, not just contain, Hamas

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Yossi Kuperwasser was chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and until recently, director general of... Read more > October 2023

Opinion | The war in Israel/Palestine

By Alliance for Workers' Liberty
The Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL), a UK radical socialist organisation, posted this statement on 8 October 2023. ... Read more > October 2023

Book Review | Challenging the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement: Twenty Years of Responding to Anti-Israel Campaigns

By Kenneth Waltzer
This collection of essays prepared by Ronnie and Lola Fraser, veteran British anti-BDS activists, assesses how friends of... Read more > Article

My peoples, our children

By Rawan Osman
In this impassioned opinion piece, Syrian-Lebanese peace activist Rawan Osman reflects on her journey from the antisemitism and... Read more > Article October 2023

The Imperative of Liberal Zionism: A Response to Anthony Julius’ essay ‘Whither Liberal Zionism?'

By Toby Greene
Toby Greene is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, and former deputy-editor of Fathom. His publications include:... Read more > September 2023

TV Review: The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

By Noga Emanuel
Noga Emanuel reviews the TV series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, a dramatic adaptation of Sarit Yishai-Levy’s bestselling... Read more > September 2023

Rewriting the History of the Corbyn Years (Part 3): Agenda Broadcasting from Al Jazeera’s The Labour Files

By John Ware
John Ware was the reporter for the 2019 BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? In Part 1 of... Read more > September 2023

The ‘Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism’: A New Stage in the Degradation of the American University

By Cary Nelson et al
The members of the Alliance for Academic Freedom Executive Committee – Cary Nelson (Chair), Susana Cavallo, David Greenberg,... Read more > September 2023

Fathom Collection Published by Routledge Press

By Fathom Editors
Mapping the New Left Antisemitism: The Fathom Essays provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary Left antisemitism. The rise of... Read more > September 2023

Fauda: How the Transformation of the Right Brought Israel to the Verge of a Constitutional and Social Crisis

By Calev Ben-Dor
Calev Ben-Dor argues four changes have transformed the Israel Right: Benjamin Netanyahu’s need for political survival overpowering his... Read more > September 2023

Rewriting the History of the Corbyn Years (Part 2): Agenda Journalism in Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism

By John Ware
John Ware was the reporter for the 2019 BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? In Part 1 of... Read more > September 2023

How NGOs Fabricate the Legal Definition of Apartheid to Attack Israel

By Salo Aizenberg
Salo Aizenberg is the author of Amnesty International’s Cruel Assault on Israel: Systematic Lies, Errors, Omissions, and Double... Read more > September 2023

‘Apartheid’: An Open Letter to Benjamin Pogrund

By Salo Aizenberg
Benjamin Pogrund was deputy editor of the Rand Daily Mail in Johannesburg, closed down because of its stand... Read more > September 2023

Jeremy Jones AM : A Tribute

By Colin Rubenstein
The Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) is utterly devastated by the passing of our widely admired and... Read more > September 2023

The Fathom Debate: Judicial Reform in Israel

By Aylana Meisel and Paul Gross
As Israelis continue to be divided by the government’s plans to change the judicial system, Fathom is pleased... Read more > September 2023

Rewriting the History of the Corbyn Years (Part 1): What Martin Forde KC Got Wrong

By John Ware
John Ware was the reporter for the 2019 BBC Panorama documentary Is Labour Antisemitic? He explains here why... Read more > September 2023

The Peculiar Afterlife of Abram Leon

By Kathleen Hayes
Kathleen Hayes argues that Abram Leon, author of The Jewish Question: A Marxist Interpretation, murdered by the Nazis... Read more > September 2023

The Oslo Accord: Three Decades Later

By Oded Haklai
Oded Haklai introduces the new issue of the journal Israel Studies Review. Thirty years since the signing of... Read more > September 2023

Opinion | Why Is a Leading Think Tank Promoting Misleading Opinion Polls About Israel?

By Alexandra Fishman and Max Samarov
Alexandra Fishman and Max Samarov take issue with what they see as ‘leading’ questions used in a recent... Read more > September 2023

A Call to Faculty Unions to Restore Civility and Respect for the Jewish People on Canadian Campuses

By Cary S. Kogan et al.
This call is authored by the Steering Committee for the Network of Engaged Canadian Academics. Inspired by the success... Read more > September 2023
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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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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:... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > June 2023
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Fathoming the Intellectual Revolution of our Times | The Disorientations of Lethal Journalism: On Western Media and the Arab-Israeli Conflict

By Richard Landes
Richard Landes is a historian who taught at Boston University. His work focuses on apocalyptic beliefs at the... Read more > May 2023

Film Review | Ha-Midrashia

By Sara Hirschhorn
Sara Hirschorn is the author of City on a Hilltop: American Jews and the Israeli Settler Movement (Harvard... Read more > May 2023

Burning Down the House - The Crisis in American Psychoanalysis: How Wokeism and Identity Politics are Destroying the Profession and...

By Jon Mills
Jon Mills is a Canadian philosopher, psychoanalyst, and psychologist. He is an honorary professor in the Department of... Read more > May 2023

Book Review | The Antisemitic Origins of Islamist Violence: A Study of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State

By Daniel Ben-Ami
Islamism is one of the least understood forms of anti-Semitism. Leave to one side those who foolishly romanticise... Read more > May 2023

The 1936 Revolt still rages today: an interview with Oren Kessler

By Oren Kessler
Oren Kessler’s new book Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict (Rowman... Read more > May 2023

The Three Best Israeli Short Stories recommended by Noga Emanuel

By Noga Emanuel
Fathom regularly invites writers to select their favourite books on a theme or subject. Here, Fathom film and... Read more > May 2023

Why Israelis are so Happy at 75

By Jonah Cohen
The following is a revised version of Jonah Cohen’s keynote speech at the Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts’s... Read more > May 2023

A Modern History of Palestinian Rejectionism

By Ben-Dror Yemini
Ben-Dror Yemini argues that media, academia, and the Israeli and global left have committed a huge deception in... Read more > May 2023

Diary | Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut in a divided Israel

By Paul Gross
British-Israeli Paul Gross reflects on his experience of two days of annual celebration and mourning in Israel amidst... Read more > May 2023

Opinion | The Meaning of Diane Abbott’s Astonishing Letter

By David Hirsh
Leading Corbynite Labour MP Diane Abbott has had the party whip withdrawn after writing in The Observer that... Read more > April 2023

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World And How You Can Change It

By Daniel Ben-Ami
Dave Rich’s book on that thorniest of subjects, anti-Semitism, has already received many plaudits including glowing testimonials from... Read more > May 2023

Opinion | Can fasting be a tool for political healing?

By Khinvraj Jangid
Rabbi David Stav, head of the Orthodox Tzohar organisation, has called for fasting as a response to the... Read more > May 2023

Iran’s drone diplomacy is a danger to the West

By Alex Grinberg
Alex Grinberg is an expert on Iran based at the Jerusalem Institute for Security and Strategy. He warns... Read more > April 2023

Patterns of Antisemitism in Mainstream Media Comment Threads. Case Studies of the UK, France and Germany

By Karolina Placzynta
Karolina Placzynta is a researcher for the Decoding Antisemitism project at the Centre for Research on Antisemitism, Technical... Read more > April 2023

The Three Best Books on Critical Theory and Antisemitism, recommended by Matthew Bolton

By Matthew Bolton
Fathom regularly invites writers to select their favourite books about a subject. Here, Matthew Bolton recommends three on... Read more > April 2023

Book Review | Sharing the Promised Land: In Pursuit of Equality Between Jewish and Arab Citizens in Israel

By Eugene Bardach
Pity the soul who has to forsake those sentimental (or rousing) Zionist songs of her youth, like Shir... Read more > April 2023

The Protest Envoy: Ehud Barak comes to London

By Jack Omer-Jackaman
Last week, on the day a general strike was called in response to the sacking of Defence Minister... Read more > April 2023

Lara Sheehi’s Joyous Rage: Antisemitic Anti-Zionism, Advocacy Academia and Jewish Students’ Nightmares at GWU

By Cary Nelson
Fathom Editor’s Introductory Note. Sometimes it is hard to know what is the more alarming: the state of... Read more > April 2023

My Israeli Music: Ittay Flescher

By Ittay Flescher
With over 20 years’ experience in formal and experiential education settings, Ittay is regularly invited to teach in... Read more > April 2023

Book Review | Israel 201: Your Next Level Guide to the Magic and Mystery and Chaos of Life in the...

By Amy Weinreb
The world has reached a saturation point with Israel 101 books. We have enough options to guide readers... Read more > April 2023

Diary from Jerusalem | Calev Ben-Dor | Israel’s Rebellion

By Calev Ben-Dor
Fathom deputy editor Calev Ben Dor reflects on a tumultuous few days in Israel and tries to make... Read more > March 2023

Book Review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

By Sarah Brown
Everyday Hate’s clarity and engaging style make it an invaluable introduction to antisemitism; however, it also has plenty... Read more > March 2023

‘I am one of those liberals who got mugged by reality’: An Interview with Gadi Taub

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
When Fathom launched we promised there would likely be a piece in every issue with which you would... Read more > March 2023

For Political Compromise, and then Judicial Reform

By Donna Robinson Divine
Judicial reform is necessary, but if there is no compromise on its character the full measure of damage... Read more > March 2023

‘A lachrymose conception of 20th century North African Jewish history’: A Rejoinder to Lyn Julius

By Sam Shube
In the previous issue of Fathom we carried Sam Shube’s analysis of Israel’s ethno-political divide and a critical... Read more > March 2023

‘The Mizrahim recognised that the antisemitism fuelling the conflict between Israelis and Arabs was the same as that which they...

By Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius replies again to Sam Shube. For their earlier exchanges see here, here and here.   Sam... Read more > March 2023

Culture Wars, Ethnicity and the Future of Israel’s Democracy

By Sam Shube
‘Second Israel’ is the key to modern Israeli politics not just to Netanyahu’s victory in 2022. These Israelis,... Read more > March 2023

Fallacies about Mizrahi Jews and Israeli Politics | A Reply to Sam Shube

By Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius is the author of Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished Overnight... Read more > March 2023

Book review | Everyday Hate: How Antisemitism Is Built Into Our World and How You Can Change It

By Kathleen Hayes
  ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ – William Faulkner In the early hours of... Read more > March 2023

Opinion | Ben-Gvir is no Begin

By Jonah Naghi
Jonah Naghi is the Chair of Israel Policy Forum's IPF Atid Steering Committee in the city of Boston.... Read more > March 2023

‘This is an attempt to change the structure of Israel from a constitutional democracy to a regime where, once political...

By Amichai Cohen
With debate in Israel raging over the government’s proposed judicial reforms and with President Herzog’s compromise proposals yet... Read more > February 2023
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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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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 –... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > November 2022
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Opinion | Israel’s electoral crisis ends but the struggle for its soul goes on

By Toby Greene
Toby Greene is a former deputy editor of Fathom and author of Blair, Labour & Palestine: Conflicting Views on Middle... Read more > November 2022

Opinion | This defeat feels different. It feels fundamental. Now we must fight for the country we love

By Paul Gross
Paul Gross fears this will be the first coalition in Israeli history where a majority of its members... Read more > November 2022

Opinion | The Scapegoating of Yair Lapid

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom. ‘God’ said Mark Twain, ‘is the most popular scapegoat for our... Read more > November 2022

The Lust Libel: Sexual Antisemitism in History and Contemporary Culture

By Jonah Cohen
Antisemites have long depicted the Jews as a perverse, predatory, and pornographic people; horny vampires of the Orient. That... Read more > November 2022

Book Review | Bibi: My Story

By Anshel Pfeffer
Back in 2017, I sat with a group of Israeli colleagues in a small hotel conference room in... Read more > November 2022

Fine margins and the Israeli Election – three that will determine the result

By Calev Ben-Dor
As Israelis head to the polls for the fifth time in less than four years, and with little... Read more > October 2022

Tel Aviv or Jerusalem? The UK mulls moving its Embassy

By Richard Pater
Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss was reportedly mulling moving the British embassy to Jerusalem. Richard Pater argues... Read more > October 2022

‘Maybe he was the last of his kind’: A Conversation about Amos Oz with Nurith Gertz

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare talks to literary scholar Nurith Gertz about What Was Lost to Time (Hebrew), her biography of... Read more > October 2022

Appease or Confront? Western Policy Options and the Iranian Nuclear Bomb

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Yossi Kuperwasser served as head of the research division in the Israel Defence Force Military Intelligence division and... Read more > October 2022

A Party Transformed: How UK Labour is ripping Left Antisemitism out by its roots

By Luke Akehurst
In 2020, following Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, the UK Labour Party was found guilty by the Equalities and Human... Read more > October 2022

Why Amnesty is wrong to call Israel an ‘Apartheid State’

By Alan Johnson
[The] system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948. – Amnesty International’s Apartheid Report, 2022. ... Read more > October 2022

Jerusalem Film Festival 2022: On absences haunting films made years after their passing

By Tal Kra-Oz
Tal Kra-Oz is a writer based in Tel Aviv. His work has appeared in Tablet Magazine, The Forward... Read more > October 2022

The Rise of Itamar Ben Gvir

By Calev Ben-Dor
In the March 2020 elections Itamar Ben Gvir’s Jewish Power party was shunned by other right wingers and... Read more > September 2022

Opinion | Time for the UN to rethink Palestine

By Alex Ryvchin
Alex Ryvchin is the Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and a member of... Read more > September 2022

Diary | The inaugural conference of the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism

By Kathleen Hayes
Kathleen Hayes is the author of the Fathom articles ‘Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir’ and ‘“Punch a... Read more > September 2022

Book Review | Peace and Faith: Christian Churches and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Jonathan G. Campbell
This lengthy edited volume contains an introduction, sixteen chapters (organized into Parts I-III), appendix (on the history of... Read more > September 2022

Liz Truss’s world view and its implications for UK-Israel relations

By Toby Greene
‘Geopolitics is back’ Liz Truss has said. In what is the most thorough analysis of her world view... Read more > September 2022

Book Review | Breaking History: A White House Memoir

By Colin Shindler
Jared Kushner's account of his four years in the Trump White House produces several interesting revelations. It is... Read more > September 2022

Fathom eBook | Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020

By Fathom Editors
Fathom's new eBook, Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020, contains over 60 articles, reports and interviews. The editors believe it is the most comprehensive... Read more > September 2020
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Documentary Review | Remember Baghdad (2017)

By Lyn Julius
Remember Baghad, now showing on Netflix, is reviewed by Lyn Julius, journalist and co-founder of Harif, an association... Read more > July 2022

The Modern Language Association, Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

By Cary Nelson and Joe Lockard
 The MLA Executive Council have hit a new low by acting in secret, without notice and without membership... Read more > July 2022

Opinion | We Need to Talk About the BBC

By David Collier
In a week when it was reported that the BBC ignore 99 per cent of attacks on Israelis but... Read more > July 2022

Book Review | Israel’s Moment: International Support and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949

By John Strawson
Herf’s book forensically demolishes the myth that the West set out to create Israel to promote its interests.... Read more > July 2022

Book Review | Nine Quarters of Jerusalem

By Danny Seidemann
There are no experts on Jerusalem. The city is too complex, its history too long, too shrouded in... Read more > July 2022

Fathoming the Intellectual Revolution of our Time (1) | ‘Punch a Terf’ and ‘Smash the Zionists’: Misogyny and Antisemitism in...

By Kathleen Hayes
Series Introduction: Huge waves of intellectual change are sweeping the Western world at an astonishing speed. Liberal democratic... Read more > July 2022

Antisemitism and the University of London: Statement by David Hirsh

By David Hirsh
A debate is raging at Goldsmiths, University of London after the President of the Student Union tweeted that... Read more > July 2022

Book Review | The Wealthy: Chronicle of a Jewish Family (1763-1948)

By Liam Hoare
At the age of 40, having worked as a teacher and an official in the Israeli education ministry... Read more > July 2022

Arabs sharing government power with Jews in Israel is the new normal. It works, and there is no turning back

By Ron Gerlitz
Written shortly before the collapse of the Israeli coalition government, Ron Gerlitz, CEO of aChord – Social Psychology... Read more > June 2022

Fathom Opinion | A Left-Winger’s Lament for the Israeli Coalition

By Jack Omer-Jackaman
Written shortly before yesterday’s long anticipated break-up of the Israeli government, Jack Omer-Jackaman argues that leftists like himself... Read more > June 2022

The most important creative output in modern Hebrew literature since Agnon: Yael Halevi-Wise appreciates the life and work of A.B.Yehoshua...

By Yael Halevi-Wise
Yael Halevi-Wise marks the passing of her friend, the Israeli novelist, short story writer and playwright, A.B.Yehoshua. Author... Read more > June 2022

Looking Forward by Farming Upwards: Israeli Diplomacy in South East Asia

By Haim Shweky
Haim Shweky was the cultural attaché to the Israeli embassy in Vietnam between 2018-2019. He recounts his time... Read more > June 2022

The Boston Mapping Project: BDS and the Paranoid Style of Politics

By Richard L. Cravatts
Richard L. Cravatts is President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. The Boston ‘Mapping Project’... Read more > June 2022

‘What is your nation, if I may ask?’: Antisemitism and Zionism in James Joyce’s Ulysses

By Noga Emanuel
In 2022 book-lovers celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, which tracks the... Read more > June 2022

Understanding decision-making in the Palestinian arenas

By Michael Milshtein
BICOM Director Richard Pater speaks to Dr Michael Milshtein, a colonel (res.) in the Israel Defense Forces and... Read more > June 2022

Christians and the reconciliation route to resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict

By Cary Nelson
A few months ago, Presbyterians for Middle East Peace (PFMEP) published Peace And Faith: Christian Churches and the... Read more > June 2022

Algeria, where are your Saturday people, and where are your Sunday people?

By Lela Gilbert
Lela Gilbert is a Fellow at Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom and the author of Saturday People,... Read more > June 2022

Beyond Liberal Peacemaking: New Initiatives in Israel

By Calev Ben-Dor
With the peace process frozen, some groups – Mosaica, Shrinking the Conflict Initiative, Women Wage Peace, Shaharit, the Herbert... Read more > May 2022

How Israeli & Palestinian Peacebuilders Can Leverage Post-Pandemic Trends in Philanthropy

By Adam Basciano
Adam Basciano is the co-founder and former director of IPF Atid, Israel Policy Forum’s network of next generation... Read more > May 2022

Fathom Opinion | ‘We are suffocating among people who think that they are absolutely right’: When totalitarian speech invades the...

By Hedda Harari-Spencer
Hedda Harari-Spencer is a Senior Lecturer in Hebrew at Tufts University. All translations from French are her own.... Read more > May 2022

The Three Best Books on Understanding Evil

By Stephen de Wijze
Stephen de Wijze is senior lecturer in political philosophy at the University of Manchester and the co-editor with... Read more > May 2022

The political odyssey of Ayman Odeh

By Calev Ben-Dor
What took Ayman Odeh, the young Arab politician who rose to prominence before the 2015 elections and was... Read more > May 2022

‘Israel Is Living On Borrowed Time’: Yossi Melman on Security Threats and Social Divisions

By Yossi Melman
In early April, deputy editor Samuel Nurding sat down with Haaretz’s intelligence and security correspondent Yossi Melman and spoke about... Read more > May 2022

The Anti-Israel Politicisation of the US Academy: The Next Phase is Happening at California and Illinois

By Cary Nelson
The University of California and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign UIUC are on the verge of green-lighting... Read more > May 2022

My Israeli Music | Hen Mazzig

By Hen Mazzig
Hen Mazzig is an Israeli writer living in London. He is a Senior Fellow at The Tel Aviv... Read more > May 2022
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Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Abraham Accords have created space for a radical transformation in our thinking

By Koby Huberman
Koby Huberman argues the Abraham Accords have made possible a paradigm shift in the way we think of... Read more > April 2022

An Open Letter to Anti-Zionists from a Veteran of the Left

By Kathleen Hayes
Kathleen Hayes invites the ‘anti-Zionist’ Left to think again. For 25 years, I was a member of a... Read more > April 2022

Israel on Netflix | Maktub (2017)

By Noga Emanuel
Noga Emanuel kicks off our new irregular series looking at Israel on Netflix with her take on Maktub,... Read more > April 2022

British Christian Zionism (Part 3): Reverend William Hechler – from Hovevei Zion to Herzl and beyond

By Philip Earl Steele
Philip Earl Steele examines the contribution of Reverend William Hechler to the early Zionist movement and argues that... Read more > April 2022

Fathom Opinion | ‘Al-Aqsa is in danger’ is a dangerous lie. ‘Temple Denial’ is antisemitic historical revisionism. It’s time for...

By Richard L. Cravatts
Richard L. Cravatts is President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Last week in Jerusalem,... Read more > April 2022

Understanding the recent terror attacks in Israel

By Ely Karmon
On 4 April deputy editor Samuel Nurding spoke with Dr Ely Karmon about the recent terrorist attacks in... Read more > April 2022

Diary | Back from the ‘Other Side’: Reflections on a Visit to the West Bank and East Jerusalem

By Mike Prashker
Mike Prashker is an Israeli educator, social entrepreneur, writer and public speaker. He founded MERCHAVIM – The Institute... Read more > April 2022

My Israeli Music | Tal Kra-Oz

By Tal Kra-Oz
Tal Kra-Oz is a writer based in Tel Aviv.  Previous contributors to this series have done an excellent... Read more > April 2022

Who By Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai | An interview with Matti Friedman

By Matti Friedman
In early March, Fathom's deputy editor Calev Ben-Dor sat down with Matti Friedman to discuss his new book,... Read more > March 2022

Book Review | Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai

By Calev Ben-Dor
Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai is the latest in Matti Friedman’s wonderful array of books... Read more > March 2022

Israel Needs to Talk about the Arab Riots of May 2021

By Russell A. Shalev
In little more than a week in May 2021, Arab rioters set ablaze 10 synagogues and 112 Jewish... Read more > March 2022

Keir Starmer’s attempt to portray the Labour Party as having ‘closed the door’ on antisemitism is premature

By Euan Phillips
In 2021, after the EHRC-mandated rule changes to tackle antisemitism had been approved by his party, Sir Keir... Read more > March 2022

Fathom Opinion | The University of Toronto’s Antisemitism Problem

By Stuart Kamenetsky
Stuart Kamenetsky is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. The institution, he writes, has an... Read more > March 2022

Israel, Ukraine and the Right Side of History

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Dahlia Scheindlin, writing from Tel Aviv on 15 March, critically assesses the three reasons the Israeli government has... Read more > March 2022

Bennett, Putin and Zelensky: Between Mediation and Surrender

By Gerald M. Steinberg
Gerald M Steinberg is emeritus professor and founder of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation at Bar... Read more > March 2022

The Meaning of Shahd Abusalama

By Marc Goldberg
Marc Goldberg of the Community Security Trust, writing in a personal capacity, casts a concerned eye over some... Read more > March 2022

Amnesty International, Israel and Race-Baiting

By Cary Nelson
Cary Nelson argues that Amnesty International’s report, by reducing a complex, political, national question involving two victim peoples... Read more > March 2022

Rejecting IHRA: The Avoidable Debacle at the University of Toronto

By David Matas and Aurel Braun
David Matas is an international human rights lawyer based in Winnipeg. The author of several books, he is... Read more > February 2022

The UK-Israeli trade relationship | An interview with Ian Austin

By Ian Austin
In this BICOM episode, Richard Pater speaks to Lord Ian Austin, UK Trade envoy to Israel, about his... Read more > February 2022

On Amnesty’s car-crash interview in Israel

By Shany Mor
When the two most senior Amnesty officials presented their new report in Israel they struggled to answer the... Read more > February 2022

The Three Best Recent Books on the Yishuv during the British Mandate, recommended by Donna Robinson Divine

By Donna Robinson Divine
Fathom has been inviting exerts to select their three favourite books about their subject. See Sara Hirschhorn on... Read more > February 2022

After Soleimani, is Iran losing control of its proxies?

By Danny Citrinowicz
The recent Houthi attack on strategic targets in the UAE has once again raised the issue of Iranian... Read more > February 2022

Mothers Against Violence: Viewing settlers’ violence under a ‘powerful womanly lens’

By Hamutal Gouri
Hamutal Gouri participated in the response of Mothers Against Violence to settler violence in the Palestinian village of... Read more > February 2022

The Arab citizens of Israel | An interview with Dr Arik Rudnitzky

By Arik Rudnitzky
In this BICOM Podcast, Richard Pater speaks to Dr Arik Rudnitzky, a researcher in  the ‘Arab Society in... Read more > February 2022

Book Review | The European Left and the Jewish Question 1848-1993: Between Zionism and Antisemitism

By Colin Shindler
While many look to the rise of both Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany to understand the Left's evolution... Read more > February 2022

The Middle East in 2022

By BICOM
BICOM’s seventh annual forecast is a guide for policy makers and opinion formers to issues and events that... Read more > January 2022

Israel is sliding into a one-state reality

By Emanuel Shahaf
Emanuel Shahaf is Co-Chair of the Federation Movement which proposes a federal citizen state in Eretz-Israel/Palestine, excluding the... Read more > January 2022

My Israeli Music | Jonathan Spyer

By Jonathan Spyer
Jonathan Spyer is an Israeli analyst, writer, and journalist of Middle Eastern affairs. He emigrated to Israel from London... Read more > January 2022

The Israel Question and the Left: A Review Essay

By Barry Finger
Barry Finger is a frequent contributor to US socialist journals, a former shop steward and activist with the Public... Read more > January 2022

Britain should do less in the Middle East, but do it better | An Interview with Michael Stephens and Christopher...

By Michael Stephens and Christopher Phillips
What Next For Britain in the Middle East: Security, Trade and Foreign Policy after Brexit (I.B Tauris, 2021),... Read more > January 2022

Is Israel a 'Settler-Colonial' State? A debate between Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh

By Alan Johnson
On 17 December Peter Beinart hosted an online discussion entitled, 'Professors Alan Johnson and Leila Farsakh on whether... Read more > January 2022

Rereading | The Idea of the Jewish State by Ben Halpern

By Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine is Morningstar Family Professor of Jewish Studies and Emirita Professor of Government at Smith College.... Read more > January 2022

My Israeli Music | Yossi Kuperwasser

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser was chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and until recently,... Read more > January 2022
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A filmmaker, a feminist, an Israeli, a Bedouin, a Palestinian. A conversation with Rana Abu Fraiha

By Calev Ben-Dor
Rana Abu Fraiha was born in the Bedouin town of Tel Sheva before leaving with her family at... Read more > December 2021

The Afghanistan retreat: We may soon be recalling why we went there in the first place.

By Tzvi Fleischer
Tzvi Fleischer argues the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal does not mark the end of the global conflict launched on... Read more > December 2021

Thomas Mann’s Philo-Semitism and Colm Toibin’s Thomas Mann

By Shalom Goldman
In January 1934, the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior revoked the novelist Thomas Mann’s German citizenship, in... Read more > December 2021

A reply to David Davidi-Brown on the Israeli government's designation of six Palestinian NGOs

By Gerald M. Steinberg
Gerald M. Steinberg is the Director of NGO Monitor. Fathom published his supportive response to the Israel government’s... Read more > December 2021

Book Review | The Passport as Home: Comfort in Rootlessness

By Philip Spencer
The subtitle of this interesting memoir is ‘comfort in rootlessness’. This formulation is, as the author suggests, a... Read more > December 2021

It’s too soon to write the obituary of the anti-Iran alliance in the Middle East

By Jonathan Spyer
The claim that the pro-Western alliance in the region has collapsed in the wake of a US withdrawal... Read more > November 2021

The jibe ‘Progressive except for Palestine (PEP)’ is a cynical political strategy to exclude moderate progressives from debates on resolving...

By Philip Mendes
In this essay, Philip Mendes argues that the new buzzword for Palestinian nationalists, 'Progressive except for Palestine,' aimed... Read more > November 2021

Palestinian NGO Terror Links: Assessing the Implications of Israel's Designations (2)

By David Davidi-Brown
Fathom invited responses to the Israeli government’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs as prohibited terrorist fronts from... Read more > November 2021

‘Can’t You See He’s Fooled You All?’: An Open Letter to Peter Gabriel et al explaining why Israel is not...

By Alan Johnson
100 artists including Ken Loach, Mark Rylance and Susan Sarandon have signed an open letter indicting Israel as... Read more > November 2021

Book Review | War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East

By Efraim Halevy
Gershom Gorenberg, a historian and journalist, has spent years researching and writing this account of dramatic events in... Read more > November 2021

UK-Israel 2021 | Ambivalent Allies? Zionism, Israel and the Conservative Party from Balfour to Boris

By James Vaughan
James Vaughan is Lecturer in International History at the University of Aberystwyth. His current research focuses upon the... Read more > November 2021

Palestinian NGO Terror Links: Assessing the Implications of Israel’s Designations (1)

By Gerald M. Steinberg
Fathom invited responses to the Israeli government’s decision to designate six Palestinian NGOs as prohibited terrorist fronts from... Read more > November 2021

The Fourth Window, or the Wounds of Amos Oz

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare says The Fourth Window, a new documentary about Amos Oz by the Israeli filmmaker Yair Qedar,... Read more > November 2021

My Israeli Music | Lusil Blek

By Lusil Blek
Lusil Blek is an Israeli graphic designer. Her mother constantly reminds her that she started singing when she... Read more > November 2021

Book Review | Growing up Jewish in India: Synagogues, Customs and Communities from the Bene Israel to the Art of...

By Khinvraj Jangid
Growing up Jewish in India is a book about the Jews of India told from a variety of... Read more > October 2021

Arab-Jewish Relations in Israel After the May 2021 Unrest: A Survey by Sammy Smooha

By Sammy Smooha
In May 2021, for the first time in Israel, Arabs and Jews in the mixed cities of Haifa,... Read more > October 2021

Combatting gang crime and violence in Arab communities

By Michael Milshtein
Dr Michael Milshtein is head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern... Read more > October 2021

Rasmea Odeh: How an unrepentant Palestinian terrorist became a political hero of the anti-Zionist left

By Cary Nelson
Cary Nelson reviews Steven Lubet’s The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship.... Read more > October 2021

Book Review | Hidden Heroes: One Woman's Story of Resistance and Rescue in The Soviet Union

By Yisrael Medad
From 1962, when Matzot for Russia’s Jews for the upcoming Passover holiday were dumped on the pavement in... Read more > October 2021

The Abraham Accords One Year On | An interview with Dr Moran Zaga

By Moran Zaga
Dr Moran Zaga is a research fellow at the University of Haifa focused on the geopolitics of the Gulf.... Read more > October 2021

How Best to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism on the Left: An Exchange between Kathleen Hayes and Michael Walzer

By Kathleen Hayes Michael Walzer
Mosaic magazine ran four pieces in July 2021 focusing on the respective merits of the IHRA Definition of... Read more > October 2021

Opinion | Labour Party Conference 2021: 'Significant progress has been made on tackling antisemitism, but there is still a mountain...

By Luke Akehurst
I’ve spent most of the last week at the Labour Party’s Annual Conference, in my capacity as an... Read more > October 2021

Opinion | ‘Labour’s stance on Israel-Palestine is shifting back to the balanced, mature and constructive approach of the Blair-Brown years’:...

By Michael Rubin
Michael Rubin is the Director of Labour Friends of Israel. Six years ago, at his first conference as... Read more > Article

My Israeli Music: Keith Kahn-Harris on Israeli Metal, Punk and Noise

By Keith Kahn-Harris
Keith Kahn-Harris is the author of Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge, and Strange Hate: Antisemitism,... Read more > October 2021

What does the withdrawal from Afghanistan mean for the US role in the Middle East?

By Jonathan Rynhold
Professor Jonathan Rynhold, the Deputy Head of the department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, spoke to Fathom-BICOM... Read more > September 2021

Amazon Prime's Human Factor: American negotiators and the failure of the Oslo Peace Process

By Calev Ben-Dor
Calev Ben-Dor praises The Human Factor as a great piece of documentary making but argues it is ultimately... Read more > September 2021

We Shall Be as A City on A Hill: Trump, ‘Progressive’ Antisemitism, and the Loss of American Jewish Exceptionalism

By Shalom Lappin
Shalom Lappin argues that American Jews are caught between a white supremacist threat from the far right and... Read more > September 2021

My Israeli Music: Aaron Kalman

By Aaron Kalman
Prior to joining Lightricks, a Jerusalem-based hightech unicorn developing apps to unleash creativity, Aaron Kalman was a senior... Read more > September 2021

Jean Améry as a Critic of the Anti-Israel Left

By Alvin Rosenfeld
Jean Améry is best known as the author of At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on... Read more > September 2021

Book Review | More Than I Love My Life

By Liam Hoare
In October 1951, Rade Panić—who had fought for Josip Broz Tito’s partisans during the Second World War—committed suicide... Read more > September 2021

My Israeli Music: DJ Antithesis

By DJ Antithesis
Samuel Green, aka DJ Antithesis, produces the longest-running Israeli music podcast: Kol Cambridge. Also known as The Zionist... Read more > September 2021
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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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > June 2021
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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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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,... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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,... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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... Read more > 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,... Read more > 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... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election Special | Eight Israelis explain their vote

By Fathom Editors
Next Tuesday, 23 March, Israelis will go to the polls for the fourth time in two years. Slowly emerging... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for the Likud'

By Fleur Hassan-Nahoum
The main reason I am voting Likud in this election is because two years ago after years of... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for Yesh Atid'

By Terry Newman
The big ideological battle of the day is Centrism vs the rest. Centrism not as the middle point... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for the Labour Party'

By Peter Lerner
Avoda, Israel's Labour Party, is the party that established the State of Israel. In November 2020, the ideology... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for Yamina'

By Shraga Alweiss
The Israeli public approaches these elections battered and bruised. Quite simply, there have been too many failed attempts... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for New Hope'

By Emmanuel Navon
The fact that Israel has experienced four snap elections within two years is not the outcome of a... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am (reluctantly) voting for Meretz'

By Ittay Flescher
As an Israeli with progressive values who believes in seeing equality for all people who live in this... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for Yisrael Beytenu'

By Oded Forer
These elections are about the future of the State of Israel. Not just some theoretical conceptualisation of where... Read more > March 2021

Israel Election 2021 | 'Why I am voting for the Joint List'

By Guli Dolev-Hashiloni
At first glance, it may seem like these elections – like the previous three – concern one topic:... Read more > March 2021

Book Review | Jews Don’t Count

By Sarah Brown
The premise of Jews Don’t Count is that antisemitism is too often glossed over – blanked out –... Read more > March 2021

Trump and Netanyahu: The Disagreements Beneath The Surface

By Ofer Zalzberg
In this insightful essay Ofer Zalzberg, Director of the Middle East Program at the Herbert C. Kelman Institute... Read more > March 2021

Fathom Long Read | The Meaning of David Miller

By David Hirsh
According to Bristol University Professor David Miller, ‘Britain is in the grip of an assault on its public... Read more > March 2021

Book Review | Judaism Straight Up, Why Real Religion Endures

By Daniel Goldman
Professor Moshe Koppel is the founder and executive chairman of Forum Kohelet, an influential think tank instrumental in... Read more > March 2021

Book Review | The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions

By Kyle Orton
A little over a year ago, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the order to kill Qassem Soleimani, the... Read more > March 2021

Book Review | Matzpen: A History of Israeli Dissidence

By Colin Shindler
Lutz Fiedler's highly informative book about the far Left group, Matzpen, is a welcome addition to the recording... Read more > March 2021
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What should Biden do next on Israeli-Palestinian Peace and Iran? A review essay by Yair Hirschfeld

By Yair Hirschfeld
Professor Yair Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords in 1993. In this review essay he assesses the policy... Read more > February 2021

Castles in the Air? The American Return to the UN Human Rights Council

By Gerald M. Steinberg
The Biden administration has decided to return to the UN Human Rights Council in order to reform it... Read more > February 2021

Why you should read the two Israeli novels on the New York Times list of 100 notable books of 2020

By Liam Hoare
Two Israeli novels — The Memory Monster by Yishai Sarid and The Tunnel by A.B. Yehoshua — made... Read more > February 2021

Fathom eBook | In Defence of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism

By Fathom Editors
Fathom has published a new eBook about the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism, which you can DOWNLOAD HERE. In... Read more > February 2021

Why the 2010 Equality Act does not make the IHRA definition of antisemitism redundant

By Lesley Klaff and Derek Spitz
David Feldman and others have argued against the adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism by universities on... Read more > February 2021

UK-Israel 2021 | How Israel military tech (and doctrine) will make the UK better at fighting the hybrid warfare of...

By Seth Frantzman
Technology is radically transforming the battlefield, revolutionising doctrines of warfighting and counter-terrorism. ‘Hybrid warfare’ is the new reality.... Read more > January 2021

Existential conflicts cannot be solved: a new framework for resolving the Israeli–Palestinian dispute

By Bren Carlill
'The Challenges of Resolving the Israeli–Palestinian Dispute: An Impossible Peace?' is published this month by Palgrave Macmillan. In... Read more > January 2021

It was the new phenomenon of Israel-focused antisemitism that required the new definition. David Hirsh responds to a recent ‘call...

By David Hirsh
40 UK-based Israeli academics, broadly from the anti-Zionist left, have issued a ‘call to reject’ the IHRA Working... Read more > January 2021

BICOM Forecast Paper: The Middle East in 2021

By BICOM
BICOM’s sixth annual forecast is a guide for policy makers and opinion formers to issues and events that will... Read more > January 2021

UK-Israel 2021 | An interview with UK Ambassador to Israel Neil Wigan  

By Neil Wigan OBE
BICOM’s Director Richard Pater spoke to UK Ambassador Neil Wigan shortly before the turn of the year about... Read more > January 2021

The IHRA: A Reply to the Guardian Letter signed by Sir Stephen Sedley et al.

By Dave Rich
On 7 January 2021 The Guardian published a letter from eight lawyers who claimed that the IHRA definition... Read more > January 2021

Rereadings | Yisrael Medad on the poetry of Uri Tzvi Greenberg

By Yisrael Medad
Yisrael Medad spent many hours with the poet and Revisionist Zionist Uri Tzvi Greenberg (1896-1981) at Greenberg’s Ramat... Read more > January 2021

The Three Best Books on Settlements, recommended by Sara Hirschhorn

By Sara Hirschhorn
Welcome to a new Fathom series in which experts select their three favourite books about a subject. To... Read more > January 2021
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The IHRA Definition, Institutional Antisemitism, and Wittgenstein

By Eve Garrard
In the wake of the EHRC report on antisemitism in the UK Labour Party, a variety of complaints... Read more > December 2020

Book Review | Head of the Mossad: In Pursuit of a Safe and Secure Israel

By Paul Gross
The Director of the Mossad has to think geopolitically. He (and so far it has always been a... Read more > December 2020

Israel Without Sharon’s Coma: A Counterfactual History

By Calev Ben-Dor
How might the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have looked had Ariel Sharon not suffered two strokes that left him incapacitated?... Read more > December 2020

‘The bride is beautiful, but she is married to another man.’ The tenacity of an anti-Zionist fable

By Shai Afsai
Some authors are unwilling to dispense with unsubstantiated stories, opting instead to put scholarly standards aside in their... Read more > December 2020

Fathom Long Read | Adorno and Iran: Critical Theory and Islamic Antisemitism

By Stephan Grigat
‘After Auschwitz’, said the German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno, we should embrace a new categorical imperative:... Read more > December 2020

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020): A Tribute

By Michael Wegier
Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was a good friend to this journal, meeting with its editor when it was... Read more > December 2020

Opinion | Jews are asking for protection from their universities from antisemitism. David Feldman’s ‘All Lives Matter’ response is not...

By David Hirsh
This is a response to an article by David Feldman, ‘The government should not impose a faulty definition... Read more > December 2020

Fathom Podcast | Will Saudi Arabia make peace with Israel?

By Sir John Jenkins
In this podcast, Fathom's Deputy Editor Samuel Nurding speaks with Sir John Jenkins, a senior fellow at Policy... Read more > December 2020

Book Review | Since 1948: Israeli Literature in the Making

By Liam Hoare
In 2013, the New York-based Israeli novelist Rudy Namdar published The Ruined House. Both upon its initial Hebrew... Read more > December 2020

Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People | An interview with Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy

By Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy
Fathom Deputy Editor Samuel Nurding spoke with Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy about Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and... Read more > November 2020

The Unique Voice of Ruth Gavison (1945-2020)

By Alexander Yakobson
Alexander Yakobson is co-author with Amnon Rubinstein of Israel and the Family of Nations: The Jewish Nation-State and... Read more > November 2020

What Corbyn’s favourite sociologists Greg Philo and Mike Berry get wrong about contemporary antisemitism

By Matthew Bolton
Matthew Bolton is the co-author with Frederick Harry Pitts of Corbynism: A Critical Approach, praised by Professor Paul... Read more > November 2020

Symposium: Biden and Israel | ‘Biden will not reprise the acrimony of Barack Obama’s dealings with Israel. He may prove...

By Joshua Muravchik
A Biden administration carries the promise of restoring bipartisanship to support for the Jewish state, says Joshua Muravchik.... Read more > November 2020

Symposium: Biden and Israel | Don't expect to see the Obama/Kerry paradigm

By Robert Satloff
Robert Satloff, the Executive Director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, argues that whilst the Middle... Read more > November 2020

Symposium: Biden and Israel | ‘There is simply too much damage to repair around the world. The Israelis and the...

By Jo-Ann Mort
A Biden/Harris administration will seek to return foreign policy to the Obama track, but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will... Read more > November 2020

Symposium: Biden and Israel | ‘The biggest challenge for US-Israeli relations will be Iran. The Biden team has been vague,...

By Jonathan Rynhold
While the theatrics of Biden and Netanyahu’s personal relationship may engage the attention of media pundits, policymakers will... Read more > November 2020

Symposium: Biden and Israel | The Abraham Accords shattered a policy paralysis and a cycle of failed mediation and negotiations...

By Alex Ryvchin
Trump’s decision to upend the failed foreign policy establishment orthodoxy about the Middle East Peace Process is being... Read more > November 2020

Diary from Ramat Gan | ‘The humanities classroom is one of the great achievements of Western civilisation’

By William Kolbrener
William Kolbrener is professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University. He has written widely on the literature, politics... Read more > November 2020

Corbyn is one man. Left-Wing Antisemitism is a Tradition

By Alan Johnson
Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom and author of our 2019 Report Institutionally Antisemitic Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the... Read more > October 2020

Fathom Report | Institutionally Antisemitic: Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party

By Alan Johnson
This major Fathom report finds the Labour Party is now ‘institutionally antisemitic’ as the term is defined in... Read more > March 2019

Rabin’s 1989 Peace Initiative – When The Security Hawk First Displayed His Dovish Peace Policy

By Joel Singer
Joel Singer is the former Legal Adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry under the Yitzhak Rabin-Shimon Peres Government. He... Read more > October 2020

The Poverty of 'Anti-Zionism' and the Renewal of Zionism

By Alex Ryvchin
‘Anti-Zionism’ writes Alex Ryvchin, ‘has spawned White Papers that locked Jews in a Europe intent on killing them,... Read more > October 2020

Diary from Tel Aviv | Thinking in Quarantine

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Dahlia Scheindlin is a leading international public opinion analyst, a political consultant and a policy fellow at the Century Foundation; she... Read more > October 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS: Fathoming UK-Israel2021

By Fathom Editors
In 2021 Fathom will publish a set of articles about the UK-Israel relationship, to be collected into an eBook, and perhaps a... Read more > October 2020

Images of Israel in India

By Khinvraj Jangid
Dr Khinvraj Jangid is Director of the Centre for Israel Studies at Jindal School of International Affairs, OP... Read more > October 2020

Rereadings | The Arthur Hertzberg / Hugh Trevor-Roper Controversy about Antisemitism

By Bernard Harrison
Fathom is continuing its series of Rereadings, in which writers revisit classic texts, with Philosopher Bernard Harrison on... Read more > October 2020

Diary from Tel Aviv | Among the Furious Tribes in Lockdown Israel

By Calev Ben-Dor
Fathom is introducing a new kind of voice to our readers. From time to time we will publish... Read more > October 2020

Peter Beinart’s Grotesque Utopia

By Shany Mor
Peter Beinart’s essay ‘Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine’ saw him give up in the two-state... Read more > October 2020

Fathom eBook | Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020

By Fathom Editors
Fathom's new eBook, Rescuing Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Fathom Essays 2016-2020, contains over 60 articles, reports and interviews. The editors believe it is the most comprehensive... Read more > September 2020

The UAE-Israel Deal: Like a Bridge Over Troubled Sands

By Koby Huberman
Koby Huberman is co-founder of the Israeli Regional Initiative Group, which advocates a regional approach for a two-state... Read more > September 2020

Communists for the Jewish State: British Communists and the Daily Worker in 1948

By John Strawson
'The British Mandate in Palestine is now ended and the Jewish State of Israel has been proclaimed …... Read more > September 2020

Opinions | What Bibi learned from Arik. And why it might still not be enough.

By Calev Ben-Dor
The prime minister is using Ariel Sharon’s old playbook to manage multiple crises: keep your hands on the... Read more > September 2020

Fathom Book Reviews

By Fathom Editors
The Fathom editorial team are seeking reviewers. If you would like to review one of the books below for Fathom,... Read more > Article
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Fathom eBook | Essays on the British Mandate in Palestine, 1920-1948

By Fathom Editors
Fathom has published a new eBook to mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the British Mandate,... Read more > August 2020

‘Balancing the liberal and the national was the genetic code of the movement Jabotinsky and Begin founded’: Dan Meridor on...

By Dan Meridor
Dan Meridor served at various times as the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Minister of Justice... Read more > July 2020

Israel and Diaspora Jewry: Is the Coronavirus Crisis an opportunity to redesign the relationship?

By Shira Ruderman
Shira Ruderman argues that the coronavirus virus has presented Israel, the Nation State of the Jewish people, with... Read more > July 2020

Opinions | And the Walls Came Tumblin’ Down?

By Shaul Judelman
Rabbi Shaul Judelman is the Israeli co-Director for the NGO Roots, a unique network of local Palestinians and Israelis... Read more > July 2020

Mandate100 | The ‘Antisemite Ernest Bevin’ and the day Britain recognised the State of Israel

By Ronnie Fraser
Ronnie Fraser was working in the Israel State archives when he came across a lengthy and confidential document... Read more > July 2020

Mandate100 | Palestinians and the Partition Plan

By Mustafa Kabha
The editors thank Bloomsbury Academic (US), an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Inc., for permission to reprint this chapter, a... Read more > July 2020

Opinions | The Wisdom of Peter Beinart’s Grandmother

By Lyn Julius
Lyn Julius is the author of Uprooted: How 3000 Years of Jewish Civilization in the Arab World Vanished... Read more > July 2020

Opinions | How Not To Quote Ze’ev Jabotinsky: A Reply to Peter Beinart

By Yisrael Medad
Yisrael Medad argues that Peter Beinart’s quoting of Ze’ev Jabotinsky in his recent essay, as in his earlier... Read more > July 2020

'The unilateral application of Israeli sovereignty is necessary to move the peace process forward’: An Open Letter to Boris Johnson...

By Yossi Kuperwasser
On 1 July the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote an op-ed in the Israeli press, titled ‘As... Read more > July 2020

Dore Gold, Amos Gilead and Ghaith al-Omari: Three views on annexation / applying Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank

By Fathom Editors
BICOM-Fathom Webinar with Maj.-Gen. (Res.) Amos Gilead on implications of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank and Israel's... Read more > July 2020

Mandate100 | ‘A dangerous people to quarrel with’: Lloyd George’s Secret Testimony to the Peel Commission Revealed

By Oren Kessler
Oren Kessler reveals the secret 1937 testimony given by David Lloyd George to the Palestine Royal Commission. Lloyd... Read more > July 2020

Opinions | What John McDonnell Still Does Not Understand

By Eve Garrard
For John McDonnell to pretend that Rebecca Long-Bailey lost her shadow cabinet job because she criticised Israel is... Read more > July 2020

The Lie That Will Not Die: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

By Dave Rich
This is Dave Rich's introduction to the forthcoming second edition of The Lie That Wouldn’t Die: The Protocols of the... Read more > July 2020

Book Review | Palestinian Refugees After 1948

By Simon Waldman
The Palestinian refugee problem has attracted the attention of many scholars from a variety of disciplines. When a... Read more > July 2020

Israel’s Annexation Policy – Why Now and What Next?

By Calev Ben-Dor
Deputy Fathom Editor Calev Ben-Dor offers Fathom readers a comprehensive review of the Israeli debate about, and likely... Read more > June 2020

Zeev Sternhell (1935-2020)

By Alan Johnson
Fathom Editor Alan Johnson reflects on the life and work of Zeev Sternhell who died this week. Obituary notices... Read more > June 2020

Mandate100 | The Year 1939: Why did Britain Abandon the Two-State Solution on the Eve of World War Two?

By Yaakov Lappin
Using documents in the National Archive, including German documents photographed and sent to Whitehall by an American spy,... Read more > June 2020

Rereading Past Continuous: Revisiting Yaakov Shabtai’s ‘Revolution’ in Hebrew Prose

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare launches a new Fathom series in which our writers re-read classic texts. Past Continuous, Yaakov Shabtai’s... Read more > June 2020

Book Review | The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace

By Alex Ryvchin
There is perhaps no aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is subject to greater distortion than the so-called... Read more > June 2020

Why Memmi Matters

By Susie Linfield
Albert Memmi, who died recently, was a Jew, an Arab, a Zionist, an anti-colonialist, a secularist, a socialist,... Read more > June 2020

The Yom Kippur War and British Politics

By Robert Philpot
Thousands of posters of Golda Meir appeared in the windows of Jewish homes; money poured in to fundraising... Read more > June 2020

The Soldiers are Still Talking

By Tal Kra-Oz
Soldiers' Talk: Protective Edge (2019) is a set of interviews with those who served in Gaza in 2014.... Read more > June 2020

Book Review | Arafat and Abbas: Portraits of Leadership in a State Postponed

By Khinvraj Jangid
The Palestinian national movement has been in disarray for a long time. The failings of its political leadership... Read more > June 2020

From Gil Troy to Susie Linfeld: Fathom writers share their favourite films and books about Israel (Week 8)

By Fathom Editors
Each fortnight Fathom writers have been recommending Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the lockdown. This... Read more > June 2020

Intersectionality and Antisemitism – A New Approach

By Karin Stögner
Karin Stögner is Professor of Sociology at the University of Passau, Germany and co-ordinator of the Research Network... Read more > May 2020

Mandate 100 | ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’: S. Yizhar's and Amos Oz’s Stories of Jewish Struggle in the British...

By Liam Hoare
S. Yizhar is often called the founding father of Israeli literature and Amos Oz was for many the... Read more > May 2020

‘Seventy years we’ve been told we’re brothers in arms! Why not brothers in the economy, brothers in life?’ The Druze...

By Daniel Klein
Recent angry protests by Israel’s Druze citizens are about much more than shekels, argues Daniel Klein. Druze MK... Read more > May 2020

From Matti Friedman to Einat Wilf: Fathom writers share their favourite films and books about Israel (Week 7)

By Fathom Editors
Each fortnight Fathom writers have been recommending Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the lockdown. This... Read more > May 2020

Book Review | Your Sons Are at Your Service: Tunisia's Missionaries of Jihad

By Kyle Orton
Early in his new book, Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad, The Washington Institute’s... Read more > May 2020

Mandate 100 | ‘Negating the Diaspora’? Theory and Practice in Yishuv-Diaspora Relations during the Mandate

By Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine was the President of the Association for Israel Studies. In this careful and empathic account of... Read more > May 2020

Yair Lapid is now the leader of Israel’s ‘democracy camp’

By Paul Gross
Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid’s recent 6,000-word essay set out a centrist vision of Israel’s future and warned... Read more > May 2020

Let us be Social Democrats. There is a way back for the Israeli Labour Party.

By Tal Harris
Tal Harris is a member of the central committee of the Israeli Labour Party and was among the... Read more > May 2020

Book Review | Paradigm Lost: From Two-State Solution to One-State Reality

By Yisrael Medad
This slim volume traces Ian Lustick's thinking on why the two-state solution, which he terms the TSS, has... Read more > May 2020

BICOM Staffers Book and Film Lockdown Recommendations (Week 6)

By BICOM
Each week Fathom writers have been recommending Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the lockdown. This... Read more > May 2020
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Mandate100 | Perfidious Albion or Strategic Realpolitik? Reassessing Britain’s 1939 White Paper

By Ben Crome
As part of Fathom’s series of essays marking the 100th anniversary of the British Mandate, Ben Crome examines... Read more > April 2020

Book Review | MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman

By Paul Iddon
Ben Hubbard’s new book is a biography of Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, popularly referred... Read more > April 2020

From John Strawson to Lyn Julius: Fathom writers share their favourite books and films (Week 5)

By Fathom Editors
Each week five Fathom writers will recommend Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the lockdown. This... Read more > April 2020

Why the world needs to worry about the expiration of the Iran arms embargo in October 2020

By Ezra Friedman
Ezra Friedman warns that the expiration of the Iran arms embargo in October 2020 will allow Iran not... Read more > April 2020

Book Review | A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion

By Azriel Bermant
In a recent interview with Fathom, Tom Segev, the distinguished journalist and historian and author of A State... Read more > April 2020

From Eve Garrard to Dave Rich: Fathom writers share their favourite books and films about Israel (Week 4)

By Fathom Editors
Each week Fathom writers will recommend five Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the... Read more > April 2020

A Pandemic of Anti-Zionist Signification: Exploiting Gaza for Ideological Gain

By Cary Nelson
‘Close and unprecedented’ was how the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied... Read more > April 2020

Mandate100 | ‘Neither a Jewish State nor an Arab State’: How Zionist Bi-Nationalism Tried and Failed to Change the Face...

By Ben Reiff
In a penetrating study that draws on extensive archival research Ben Reiff asks why the small but vociferous... Read more > April 2020

Remembering Robert Fine

By Philip Spencer
The late writings of Robert Fine, who died in 2018, can help us understand the manifold connections between... Read more > April 2020

Book Review | The Making of the Israeli Far-Right: Abba Ahimeir and Zionist Ideology

By Donna Robinson Divine
It is hard to imagine a more fitting time for a study of Abba Ahimeir, not only because... Read more > April 2020

From Stephen De Wijze to Matthew Levitt, Fathom writers share their favourite books and films (Week 3)

By Fathom Editors
Each week Fathom writers will recommend five Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the... Read more > April 2020

Fighting Back Against COVID-19 in Israel’s Bedouin Community

By Ruth Ebenstein
Ruth Ebenstein examines the vulnerability of Israel’s Bedouin community during the pandemic and explores both the self-help measures... Read more > April 2020

Mandate100| 1920: A Pivotal Year Reexamined

By Yisrael Medad
Fathom is marking the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the British Mandate with a series of essays.... Read more > Article

Book Review | Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East

By Michael Wegier
Yadgar’s book was born out of a difficulty he found while teaching at Berkeley of recommending reading that... Read more > April 2020

From Jo-Ann Mort to Donna Robinson Divine: Fathom writers share their favourite books and films (Week 2)

By Fathom Editors
Each week Fathom writers will recommend five Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the... Read more > April 2020

Keir Starmer is UK Labour’s new leader. Will he set a new course on Israel and Antisemitism?

By Luke Akehurst
Sir Keir Starmer has been elected as the British Labour Party’s new Leader. Luke Akehurst, a former member... Read more > April 2020

Mandate100 | ‘A Clean Cut’ for Palestine: The Peel Commission Reexamined

By Oren Kessler
In this fascinating dive into the archives Oren Kessler reveals the dramatic exchanges that shaped Lord Peel’s 1936... Read more > March 2020

COVID-19: Blaming the Jews for the Plague, Again

By Lev Topor
From state television to the dark web, antisemitic conspiracy theories are being used by Islamists and white supremacists... Read more > March 2020

Book Review | Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel’s Most Important Leaders Shaped Its Destiny

By David Rodman
Israel faces a fateful decision. What should be the final status of the West Bank (Judea and Samaria... Read more > March 2020

From Hamutal Gouri to Andrei Markovits: Fathom writers share their favourite books and films about Israel (Week 1)

By Fathom Editors
Each week Fathom writers will recommend five Israel-related books, films or podcasts to help our readers through the... Read more > March 2020

Mandate100: A Fathom Special Issue

By Fathom Editors
Over the next several months Fathom will publish articles, interviews and book reviews to mark the 100th anniversary of... Read more > March 2020

Mandate100 | ‘People say I am a post-Zionist, but I am a non-ideological person, committed to storytelling’: Tom Segev on...

By Tom Segev
The Israeli historian Tom Segev’s books One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate (2000) and... Read more > March 2020

Book Review | The Decline of the Left Wing in Israel: Yossi Beilin and the Politics of the Peace Process

By Colin Shindler
In an epoch of reaction, racism and populism, many ask how did Israel lose its way? Why did... Read more > March 2020
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Zionist Responses to the Trump Peace Plan (1): The Failure of the Old Paradigm

By Yossi Kuperwasser
According to Brig.-Gen (Res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, the real paradigm change in the Trump plan is that 'it deprives... Read more > March 2020

Zionist Responses to the Trump Peace Plan (2): Trump’s plan is mad, bad and dangerous to all

By Jack Omer-Jackaman
Jack Omer-Jackaman is the author of Caught Somewhere Between Zion and Galut: Israel, Zionism and Anglo-Jewish identity 1948-1982... Read more > Article March 2020

Book Review | Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East

By Simon Waldman
Soner Cagaptay is the director of the Turkish Research Programme at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy... Read more > March 2020

Fraternal Enemies: Israel and the Gulf Monarchies | An interview with Clive Jones

By Clive Jones
Fraternal Enemies: Israel and the Gulf Monarchies by Clive Jones and Yoel Guzansky is a revealing history of the complex and... Read more > March 2020

Arab Council Takes Aim at Arab Laws Banning Contact with Israeli Citizens: an interview with Mostafa El-Dessouki

By Mostafa El-Dessouki
At a watershed event in London last November, 32 prominent civil society figures from 15 Arab countries publicly... Read more > March 2020

Book Review | Antisemitism and the Labour Party

By Sarah Brown
Antisemitism and the Labour Party is an anthology of reissued articles and essays which sets out to provide... Read more > March 2020

Third Time Lucky, the Crown Still Belongs to King Bibi

By Jack Omer-Jackaman
Those disappointed by the seeming victory of the Likud leader in the 2 March 2020 elections should take... Read more > March 2020

Israel and the Soleimani assassination

By Yossi Alpher
In 1979, as the Mossad’s chief Iran analyst, Yossi Alpher discussed with the head of Mossad a request... Read more > March 2020

The ‘Anti-Deutsche’ and Israel: A Reply to Ha’aretz

By Stefan Frank
On 23 January Haaretz published an article by Ofri Ilany titled ‘Germany's pro-Israel Left Has a New Target... Read more > March 2020

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... Read more > March 2020

Red Sea Spies: The True Story of Mossad's Fake Diving Resort: an interview with Raffi Berg

By Raffi Berg
One of Mossad's most daring operations was the creation of a diving resort to rescue thousands of Ethiopian... Read more > February 2020

Four things I learned talking to the world’s diplomats about Israel

By Jeremy Havardi
Jeremy Havardi is the Director of the B’nai B’rith UK’s Bureau of International Affairs (BBLBIA). In this candid... Read more > February 2020

Al-Wasatia: Reviving the Palestinian Peace Camp | an interview with Professor Mohammed Dajani Daoudi

By Mohammed Dajani Daoudi
The great grandfather was the custodian of David’s Tomb and Daoudi, in reference to King David, was added... Read more > February 2020

Book Review | The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts

By Paul Iddon
Following the infamous, and seemingly unstoppable, rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and its bloody takeover of large... Read more > February 2020

Feminism in Israel | Feminism and Israeli-Palestinian Peace: an interview with Sarai Aharoni

By Sarai Aharoni
Sarai Aharoni is Assistant Professor at the Gender Studies Programme, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and one of... Read more > February 2018

The Last Dove: an interview with Ehud Olmert

By Tal Kra-Oz
Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was one of Ariel Sharon’s closest political allies; in 2005 the two... Read more > February 2020

IsraelVotes2019 | Understanding the blocs

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin is a public opinion expert who has advised five national campaigns in Israel and in... Read more > August 2019

The genesis of the Trump plan lies in the Israeli Left | An interview with Efraim Inbar

By Efraim Inbar
Professor Efraim Inbar tells Fathom deputy editor Neri Zilber about the delusions of the Oslo Peace Process, the... Read more > February 2020

Fathom Book Reviews

By Fathom Editors
The Fathom editorial team are seeking reviewers. If you would like to review one of the books below for Fathom,... Read more > Article

Israel70 | Schooling for Peace: an interview with Dr Nava Sonnenschein

By Ruth Ebenstein
Dr Nava Sonnenschein is one of the founding members of the binational egalitarian community, Neve Shalom – Wahat... Read more > May 2018

Three views on the Trump Plan: (1) Palestinians choose ‘the cause’ over statehood

By Alex Ryvchin
Alex Ryvchin, co-Chief Executive Officer of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), argues that the Trump Plan... Read more > February 2020

Three Views on the Trump Plan: (2) A deal that drains the two-state solution and the very idea of peace...

By John Lyndon
John Lyndon is Executive Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP). He argues that the Trump... Read more > February 2020

Three Views of the Trump Plan: (3) Building a Better Trump Plan

By Michael Koplow
Michael J. Koplow is Israel Policy Forum’s Policy Director, based in Washington, DC. He argues that Instead of... Read more > February 2020

In Defence of the IHRA Definition

By Bernard Harrison and Lesley Klaff
Correction: In an earlier version of this article, the authors claimed that Sir Stephen Sedley, writing in the... Read more > January 2020

British Christian Zionism (Part 2): the work of Laurence Oliphant

By Philip Earl Steele
The literary, diplomatic and direct organisational efforts of the British Christian Zionist Laurence Oliphant were central to the... Read more > January 2020

Book Review | We Stand Divided: The Rift Between American Jews and Israel

By William Kolbrener
Daniel Gordis’s We Stand Divided is the latest book on the growing rift between American Jews and Israelis.... Read more > January 2020

The Old Left is Dead. Israel Needs a New One.

By Etan N. Nechin
When Israel goes to the polls for a third time in a year, the Labor party might well... Read more > January 2020

Emily Landau (1960-2020): A Tribute

By Azriel Bermant
Azriel Bermant pays tribute to Fathom advisory editor Emily Landau who died 6 January 2020. It was with... Read more > January 2020
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Thucydides Goes to Washington: an interview with Michael Doran about US Grand Strategy in the Middle East

By Michael Doran
Michael Doran is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC. specialising in Middle East security... Read more > November 2019

The UK Election 2019 | Corbyn’s legacy is that political antisemitism has re-entered the British mainstream

By David Hirsh
David Hirsh, author of Contemporary Left Antisemitism argues that Corbyn’s movement has left behind many thousands of people... Read more > December 2019

The UK Election 2019 | In Stoke North, Labour voters saw Corbyn as a wrong ‘un

By Jane Ashworth
Jane Ashworth is a Labour councillor in Stoke and the co-founder of Engage, the anti-racist campaign against left... Read more > December 2019

The UK Election 2019 | The roots of left antisemitism go deeper than Corbynism. They lie in the fatal partnership...

By Peter Mason
Peter Mason is the National Secretary of the Jewish Labour Movement, and a Labour Councillor in the London... Read more > December 2019

The UK Election 2019 | Antisemitism is not the preserve of the left. This right-wing victory carries its own dangers...

By Sacha Ismail
Sacha Ismail is a supporter of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, a small radical socialist group which has... Read more > December 2019

The UK Election 2019 | Britain has escaped political paralysis. To do the same, Israel must dislodge Netanyahu

By Toby Greene
In 2019 both the UK and Israel have been politically paralysed. Like or loathe Boris Johnson, Thursday’s election... Read more > December 2019

The BDS Faith: Judaism without Zion

By William Kolbrener
Jews don’t know what antisemitism is because they don’t have the right definition of Judaism. Such is the... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | After ISIS: America, Iran and the Struggle for the Middle East

By Brandon Marlon
We’ve encountered the toponyms repeatedly in the headlines: Sinjar. Raqqa. Kirkuk. Kobane. Baghuz. But we’ve done so from... Read more > December 2019

‘If we insist on 100 per cent of the land, we will end up like Lebanon: it will be an...

By Ephraim Sneh
Ephraim Sneh is a former Deputy Defence Minister of Israel. He was a member of the Knesset for... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Social Justice and Israel/Palestine

By Donna Robinson Divine
In the introduction to Social Justice and Israel/Palestine, Aaron J. Hahn Tapper and Mira Sucharov reflect on their... Read more > December 2019

Gas and foreign policy: how Israel is leveraging energy to stabilise the region and advance geostrategic objectives

By Ezra Friedman
Ezra Friedman writes that the discovery of gas fields in the eastern Mediterranean has given Israel, long perceived... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the Israeli Peace Movements

By John Lyndon
Plays tend to have three acts. In his excellent and very timely ‘Doves Among Hawks: Struggles of the... Read more > December 2019

Book Review | Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State

By Eve Garrard
This is a horrifying book. Not because it's a bad book – on the contrary, Cary Nelson has... Read more > November 2019

Obama, Trump and the collapse of the American position in the Middle East

By Kyle Orton
The disastrous foreign policies of two presidents are bringing about the collapse of America’s position in the Middle... Read more > November 2019

Zeruya Shalev: On ‘Pain’ And Her Role As Israel’s Literary Therapist

By Liam Hoare
The translation of Zeruya Shalev’s 2015 novel Pain should be the moment she assumes ‘her rightful place in... Read more > November 2019

The case for a Minority Government to end the deadlock in Israel

By Assaf Shapira
Assaf Shapira of the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI) argues that if the choice is between a minority government... Read more > November 2019

The ‘Martyrdom’ of Saint Philoumenos: the anatomy of a modern antisemitic ritual murder libel

By David Gurevich
During the medieval epoch, Christian antisemitism spread the libel that Jews engaged in the ritual murder of non-Jews,... Read more > November 2019

Book Review | The Impact of Zionism and Israel on Anglo-Jewry’s Identity 1948-1982: Caught Somewhere Between Zion and Galut

By Azriel Bermant
Jack Omer-Jackaman’s book could not be more timely given the challenge facing Diaspora Jewry today, with heightened concerns... Read more > November 2019

With Sovereignty Comes Responsibility: East Jerusalem and Liberal-National Values

By Noa Lazimi
Noa Lazimi, former research coordinator at the Institute for Zionist Strategies (IZS) proposes a new approach to tackling... Read more > November 2019

Book Review | Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, The Party & Public Belief

By Sarah Brown
Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, The Party & Public Belief sets out to reveal ‘the reality behind the... Read more > November 2019

UK Labour and Israel: the little-noticed shift in party policy

By Luke Akehurst
While the four-year long controversy over antisemitism in UK Labour has monopolised media attention, the 2019 UK Labour... Read more > October 2019

Can new leaders salvage the EU-Israel Relationship?

By Margaux Nijkerk
With leadership changes on the horizon in both Brussels and Jerusalem, both Israelis and Europeans will have the... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Legacy of Empire: Britain, Zionism and the Creation of Israel

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
A better title for this book would have been Original Sin: Britain’s Embrace of the Zionist Movement. In... Read more > October 2019

The Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar Affair - what we learned about the Democratic Party

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Regardless of whether Israel’s policy was wise, the most important aspect of the affair was what it revealed... Read more > October 2019

The BDS mindset is a challenge to liberal democracy here, as well as in Israel. Centrists must defend a precious...

By William Kolbrener
William Kolbrener is professor of English Literature at Bar Ilan University and the author of several books including Milton’s Warring... Read more > October 2019

Book review | Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey

By Michael Sercan Daventry
When the US announced that it was pulling out of northeast Syria and Turkish forces began pouring in,... Read more > October 2019

Understanding Online Antisemitism: Towards a New Qualitative Approach

By Matthias J. Becker
Matthias Becker is a research fellow at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at TU Berlin and the... Read more > October 2019

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism

By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is editor emeritus of the democratic left magazine Dissent and an advisory editor of Fathom. He... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Behind the Mask: The Antisemitic Nature of BDS Exposed

By Cary Nelson
‘The world would be soooo much better without jews man.’ This post from a social media account appears... Read more > October 2019

Special Offer from The Jewish Review of Books

By Fathom Editors
A special offer for our friends at Fathom: Get a digital subscription for 70% off of the list... Read more > Article

Jerusalem: the contours of a possible agreement

By Meir Kraus
Meir Kraus was the head of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research between 2009-2016 and is currently a... Read more > October 2019

Why Israel’s year of elections has left a foreign policy hangover

By Joshua Krasna
Joshua Krasna is a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Programme on the Middle East and a... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief

By Stan Crooke
This review first appeared in the British socialist newspaper Solidarity. In February of this year, Chris Williamson, Labour... Read more > October 2019

Primo Levi and Israel

By Alvin Rosenfeld
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and the Irving M. Glazer... Read more > October 2019

Book Review | A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

By Izabella Tabarovsky
One of the best-known antisemitic slogans of the August 2017 ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally in Charlottesville,... Read more > October 2019

To fix the Israel-Diaspora relationship, make our communal organisations genuinely representative

By Jay Ruderman
Jay Ruderman is the President of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which focuses on the inclusion of people with... Read more > October 2019

Revital Amiran and Yisrael Medad: A Final Exchange on the Israeli Left

By Revital Amiran Yisrael Medad
The following exchange brings to a close the dispute between Revital Amiran and Yisrael Medad on the standing... Read more > October 2019

The Special Relationship: Shoring Up Declining Sympathy for Israel among Democrats

By Jonathan Rynhold
Jonathan Rynhold relates that while Democrats overwhelmingly hold a favourable view of Israel, the special relationship increasingly rests... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Israel elections: ‘With Lieberman you can never know for sure what he will do next.’ Analysis from...

By Lahav Harkov
Over the last few elections Israelis have gotten used to the idea that the Likud and the Right... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Israel elections: ‘Benjamin Netanyahu may be down but he’s certainly not out.’ Analysis by Shalom Lipner

By Shalom Lipner
Last week’s election results dealt Benjamin Netanyahu a major blow, but although he may be down, he’s certainly... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Third Elections are Israel's No Deal Brexit

By Eylon Aslan-Levy
Israelis who are completely certain there will not be a third election after just holding a second vote... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | ‘People say he who wields the dagger rarely sits on the throne. Lieberman sees things differently’ |...

By Anshel Pfeffer
Anshel Pfeffer is a leading Israeli journalist and the author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | What should be the priorities for the new government?

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Yossi Kuperwasser argues that whoever forms the next government should adopt a ‘Yes, but’ response to the expected... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | The Knesset and the Court: is this Israel's override election?

By Yohanan Plesner
Yohanan Plesner is President of the Israel Democracy Institute. From 2007 to 2013, he served as a Member... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Caught between delegitimisation and non-participation in government: the dilemmas of the Arab voter seeking influence in Israel

By Afif Abu Much
Influenced by Netanyahu’s delegitimisation campaign, the Centre-left is making a critical mistake in not reaching out to the... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Arab Voters and the 2019 Elections

By Eihab Kadah
Eihab Kadah, Director of Research in Arab society at Midgam Consulting and Research, assesses how Arab voters have... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | The Robbed Cossack and the Imaginary Reality of the Right: a rejoinder to Yisrael Medad

By Revital Amiran
A sharp rejoinder from Revital Amiran to Yisrael Medad’s critique of her Fathom article ‘The Zionist Left is... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | ‘The Likud understand that they will have to approach Gantz’: an interview with Tal Schneider

By Tal Schneider
Tal Schneider is diplomatic and political correspondent for Globes in Israel and is a former DC correspondent for... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Israelonomics: an interview with Avi Weiss

By Avi Weiss
Professor Avi Weiss is the former Chief Economist and Deputy Director of the Israel Antitrust Authority and now... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Another Israel is possible. But not until Israelis wake up.

By Hamutal Gouri
Hamutal Gouri is the former executive director of the Dafna Fund and the founder of consult4good, a feminist... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | 'The Left is finished in Israel.' A reply to Revital Amiran

By Yisrael Medad
Yisrael Medad writes a weekly media column for the Jerusalem Post and serves as a foreign press spokesperson for... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Netanyahu isn’t just a Prime Minister; he represents a paradigm that is here to stay

By Doron Matza
While some analysts believe Israel is approaching a ‘post-Netanyahu era’, Doron Matza argues that regardless of Netanyahu’s personal... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Ayman Odeh has made Jewish-Arab political partnership possible. The centre left should seize the opportunity to win...

By Ron Gerlitz
Ron Gerlitz, the Co-Executive Director of Sikkuy, The Association for Civic Equality in Israel, argues that only a... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | To renew itself, the Left must give up the two-state solution and embrace civil rights and economic...

By Emanuel Shahaf
Emanuel Shahaf is Co-Chair of the Federation Movement which proposes a federal citizen state in Eretz-Israel/Palestine, excluding the... Read more > September 2019

Poisonous Pedagogy: Israel Hatred and the Collapse of Liberal Education

By William Kolbrener
Professor William Kolbrener reflects on the corrupting and ideologised pedagogy in higher education that is creating ‘a moral... Read more > September 2019

Fathoming the 2019 Israeli Election: The Sequel

By Fathom Editors
When, back in April, the Fathom editors produced a 130 page eBook Fathoming the 2019 Israeli Election, we... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Nitzan Horowitz: The New Leader of the Israeli Left

By Liam Hoare
When Meretz, Ehud Barak’s Israel Democratic Party, and Labor’s Stav Shaffir created the Democratic Union, Nitzan Horowitz became... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | The Zionist Left Is Renewing Itself

By Revital Amiran
‘If the public leans left, how come it keeps turning its back on the left at election time?’... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Understanding the blocs

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin is a public opinion expert who has advised five national campaigns in Israel and in... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Whatever happened to electoral reform in Israel?

By Professor David Newman
As Israel goes to the polls for the second time in six months, it is time to revisit... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The Accidental Wisdom of Israel’s Maligned Electoral System, Revisited

By Shany Mor
In late 2013 Shany Mor was commissioned to write an article about Israel’s much-criticised proportional electoral system for... Read more > August 2019
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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... Read more > Winter 2017

‘The Zionist Left needs to understand that change is impossible without us’: an interview with MK Ayman Odeh

By Ayman Odeh
21 per cent of Israel’s citizens are Arab-Palestinians. Since 2015 the leader of the Joint List – an... Read more > Autumn 2017

Israel70 | ‘Leadership is telling your own people things that are difficult to hear’: an interview with Yair Lapid

By Yair Lapid
According to the latest polls, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is Israel's most liked politician after the Prime Minister.... Read more > May 2018

As economic crisis worsens, Iran threatens to reactivate nuclear programme

By Yaakov Lappin
In this essay, military and strategic affairs analyst Yaakov Lappin analyses the rationale behind the US ‘maximum pressure’ campaign,... Read more > June 2019

UK Strategy in the Middle East (1) | Alistair Burt on the UK’s regional role: is policy fit for purpose?

By Alistair Burt MP
On 2 July 2019 the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) organised a one-day conference to explore UK strategy... Read more > July 2019

UK Strategy in the Middle East (2) | Toby Greene on why populisms of left and right will prevent the...

By Toby Greene
On 2 July 2019 the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in collaboration with the Britain Israel Communications and... Read more > July 2019

The UK in the Middle East (3) | Emman al-Badawy on UK strategy and the region’s youth quake

By Dr Emman El-Badawy
On 2 July 2019 the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) organised a one-day conference to explore UK strategy... Read more > Article July 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (6) | A personal reflection by John Strawson

By John Strawson
John Strawson was a contributor to the Word Crimes issue of Israel Studies Journal. He also taught in... Read more > July 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (1) | Cary Nelson Reviews Word Crimes

By Cary Nelson
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > May 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (2) | Gershon Shafir responds to Cary Nelson

By Gershon Shafir
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > July 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (3) | Cary Nelson and Paula A. Treichler: A rejoinder to Gershon Shafir

By Paula A. Treichler and Cary Nelson
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > July 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (4) | Ilan Troen responds to Gershon Shafir

By Ilan Troen
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > July 2019

The Word Crimes Controversy (5) | Donna Robinson Divine replies to Gershon Shafir

By Donna Robinson Divine
Editorial Introduction: The controversy sparked by the publication of Word Crimes: Reclaiming The Language of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the... Read more > July 2019

Explaining Failure: How Palestinian economic potential was denied during Oslo

By Mohammed Samhouri
Dr. Mohammed Samhouri is a former senior economic advisor in the Palestinian Authority, and a former senior research... Read more > July 2019

Israel and the Left: Three Studies of the Crisis: (1) IfNotNow and The Dyke March Controversy

By Daniel Kalick
IfNotNow’s support for barring the Jewish Pride flag from the Dyke March was another example of its failure... Read more > Article July 2019

Israel and the Left: Three Studies of the Crisis: (2) Jewish Voice for Peace’s antisemitic Deadly Exchange campaign

By Miriam F. Elman
The Deadly Exchange campaign falsely blames Israel and its Jewish American supporters for fueling discriminatory policing practices against... Read more > June 2019

Israel and the Left: Three Studies of the Crisis: (3) Israel Denial and the University

By Cary Nelson
A system is now in place to grant inaccurate and exaggerated ‘anti-Zionist’ claims credibility by giving them a... Read more > July 2019

Book Review | West Germany and Israel: Foreign Relations, Domestic Politics, and the Cold War, 1965-1974

By Norman J.W. Goda
Acknowledging German guilt for the Holocaust, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer helped initiate in the early 1950s a relationship with... Read more > July 2019

Israel and the ‘Crisis of the Arabs’ | an interview with Asher Susser

By Asher Susser
Professor Asher Susser spoke with Fathom Deputy Editor Samuel Nurding on the eve of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty... Read more > June 2019

Book Review | The Great Betrayal: How America abandoned the Kurds and lost the Middle East

By Paul Iddon
The thesis of David E. Philips’ book The Great Betrayal: How America Abandoned The Kurds And Lost The... Read more > June 2019

Reflections on Jabotinsky’s 1906 pamphlet ‘The Bund and Zionism’

By Yisrael Medad
Yisrael Medad is deputy editor of the forthcoming critical English-language edition of the writings of the revisionist Zionist... Read more > June 2019

British Christian Zionism (Part 1): George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda

By Philip Earl Steele
The impact of George Eliot’s 1876 novel Daniel Deronda was central to the coalescence of the first Zionist... Read more > June 2019

Book Review | Understanding Israel: political, societal and security challenges

By Jacob Eriksson
Israel represents a collection of seeming contradictions. Though Theodor Herzl’s vision was a thoroughly secular one and the... Read more > June 2019

Zionism and the Left: an interview with Susie Linfield

By Susie Linfield
Susie Linfield is the author of The Lions' Den. Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam... Read more > June 2019

Albert Memmi: Zionism as National Liberation

By Susie Linfield
With kind permission from Yale University Press, Fathom brings you an extract from 'The Lions' Den: Zionism and the... Read more > June 2019

‘The Jewish State is a must. Democracy is a must’ | An interview with Elyakim Rubinstein

By Elyakim Rubinstein
Elyakim Rubinstein is the former Attorney General of Israel and served as the Vice President of Israel’s Supreme... Read more > June 2019

Ten ways the Palestinians failed to move toward a state during Oslo: Yair Hirschfeld's critique of Seth Anziska's Preventing Palestine

By Yair Hirschfeld
Yair Hirschfeld was one of the two original architects of the Oslo accords. In this extended critical review... Read more > June 2019

Not so reluctant: Menachem Begin and the Israel-Egypt peace negotiations

By Ziv Rubinovitz and Gerald Steinberg
Gerald M. Steinberg, Bar Ilan University and Ziv Rubinovitz, Sonoma State University are the authors of Menachem Begin... Read more > June 2019

The Cultural Revolution at the National Library of Israel

By Ruth Ebenstein
There are signs of a revolution at the National Library of Israel. One is an 8 x 7... Read more > June 2019

The Re-emergence of the Jewish Question

By Shalom Lappin
The Jewish communities of Europe and the US increasingly find themselves caught between the rising forces of the... Read more > May 2019

Removing certain kinds of Jews from anti-racist protection is wrong

By Keith Kahn-Harris
Keith Kahn-Harris’s book Strange Hate: Antisemitism, Racism and the Limits of Diversity is published in June 2019 by... Read more > May 2019

Radical Social Theory and the ‘Jewish Question’: The Priceless Legacy of Robert Fine (1945-2018)

By Dan Davison
Dan Davison writes a fitting tribute to the radical social theorist and political activist Robert Fine, who died in 2018.... Read more > May 2019

Book Review | Marxist Perspectives on Palestine/Israel

By Stan Crooke
‘A totalising perspective that can grasp the [Israeli] violence as an expression of the capitalist world... an analysis... Read more > April 2019 Article

How Israel Misread Palestinian Intentions

By Evan Gottesman
Last weekend’s brief and bloody spat between Hamas and Islamic Jihad and Israel obscured another simmering crisis in... Read more > May 2019

We are paralysed by the failed search for a final peace. For now, let’s reduce the experience of occupation without...

By Micah Goodman
Discussing his best selling book 'Catch 67', Micah Goodman tracks the evolution of the debate within Israel over... Read more > May 2019

The US has always had a blind spot about the Palestinians. Now it is worse | An interview with Khaled...

By Khaled Elgindy
American academic Khaled Elgindy is a non-resident fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.... Read more > May 2019

The Peace Process is Stuck. Israel Must Take the Unilateral Option | An interview with Asher Susser

By Asher Susser
Asher Susser believes that while the status quo is not sustainable, a final status agreement is currently unattainable:... Read more > May 2019

Soviet Anti-Zionism and Contemporary Left Antisemitism

By Izabella Tabarovsky
For many decades, virulently antisemitic forms of ‘anti-Zionism’ were central to the cold war propaganda of the Communist... Read more > May 2019

In His Novels, And His Columns, Sayed Kashua Examines His Divided Self

By Liam Hoare
‘I wanted to say to my wife that this is really the end, it’s finished,’ the Arab-Israeli writer... Read more > May 2019
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Fathom Report | Institutionally Antisemitic: Contemporary Left Antisemitism and the Crisis in the British Labour Party

By Alan Johnson
This major Fathom report finds the Labour Party is now ‘institutionally antisemitic’ as the term is defined in... Read more > March 2019

How the BDS movement is poisoning academic discourse: a case study of Henry Maitles and Critical and Radical Social Work

By Philip Mendes
The academic Left, influenced by the Boycott, Divestment and Sections (BDS) movement, is abandoning core academic standards when... Read more > February 2019

Leon Trotsky’s Long War Against Antisemitism

By Alan Johnson
All his life Trotsky was a consistent fighter against antisemitism. – Joseph Nedava, Trotsky and the Jews, 1971.... Read more > March 2019

Two states may be the only plausible solution but is it still feasible?

By Tony Klug
In January 1973 the Fabian Society published a pamphlet by a young British student, Tony Klug, titled ‘Middle... Read more > April 2019

Critical Reflections on the Trump Peace Plan | A conversation with Dennis Ross and David Makovsky

By Dennis Ross and David Makovsky
In late February, David Makovsky and Dennis Ross spoke at a BICOM/RUSI event in London about their upcoming... Read more > April 2019

Israeli Elections: What next for the likely Netanyahu coalition?

By Calev Ben-Dor
Calev Ben-Dor writes that the good news for Netanyahu is that his ability to form a coalition with... Read more > April 2019 Article

Book Review | Temperature Rising: Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Wars in the Middle East

By Paul Iddon
Nader Uskowi opens his first book, a concise but definitive account of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC)... Read more > April 2019

Fathom eBook | Fathoming the Israeli Elections 2019

By Fathom Editors
Election special 2019 FINALFathom has published a new eBook on the 2019 Israeli elections. This pamphlet brings together... Read more > April 2019

Israeli Elections: Three Takeaways and One Prediction

By Michael Koplow
Michael Koplow argues that Netanyahu’s indictments are preventing the establishment of a national unity government and believes that... Read more > April 2019 Article

Israeli Elections: Five Takeaways

By Hugh Lovatt
Hugh Lovatt believes that had the Joint List stuck together it may have potentially blocked Netanyahu’s path towards... Read more > April 2019 Article

IsraelVotes2019 | What should be the priorities for the new government?

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Yossi Kuperwasser argues that whoever forms the next government should adopt a 'Yes, but' response to the expected... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Why I’m voting Likud

By Rachel Broyde
Rachel Broyde credits Netanyahu's leadership with Israel's strong economic, military and diplomatic situation and argues that as a... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Why I'm voting Blue and White

By Yair Zivan
Yair Zivan believes Israelis have a choice between a Prime Minister indicted in three criminal cases and an... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Why I'm voting Labor

By Tal Harris
Tal Harris argues that while Benny Gantz can replace Netanyahu and remove his Kahanist allies from the public... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Israel’s Arab citizens and the election

By Eihab Kadah
In a conversation with Fathom, Eihab Kadah, director of research in Arab society in Midgam Consulting and Research... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 (2) | Netanyahu isn’t just a Prime Minister; he represents a paradigm that is here to stay

By Doron Matza
While some analysts believe Israel is approaching a ‘post-Netanyahu era’, Doron Matza argues that regardless of Netanyahu’s personal... Read more > September 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The National-Religious Camp: No Direction Home?

By Sara Hirschhorn
In some ways, the national religious community face the 2019 election without a traditional ideological home. Nevertheless, argues... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The Elections and the Territories

By Yisrael Medad
With only one week to go until election day, the fate of the territories has barely been mentioned.... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Yashar: a new grassroots Israeli political movement

By Eran Etzion
Eran Etzion is the former Deputy head of the National Security Council and Head of the Policy Planning... Read more > April 2019 Article

Book Review | Israel's Long War with Hezbollah: Military Innovation and Adaption Under Fire

By Rob Geist Pinfold
The old adage that ‘generals are always prepared to fight the last war’ encapsulates the on-going exchange of... Read more > April 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Israeli-Palestinian relations and the 2019 Election

By Jonathan Rynhold
Israeli Jews are deeply sceptical, even incredulous, about the peace process, and are instead focused on maintaining security,... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Forget Left and Right. 'Declaration of Independence' or 'Nation-State Law' is now the real divide in Israeli politics

By Paul Gross
Paul Gross argues that the most fundamental difference between the main parties in the upcoming elections is not... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Understanding the blocs

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Dr. Dahlia Scheindlin is a public opinion expert who has advised five national campaigns in Israel and in... Read more > August 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | ‘We are at the end of the Netanyahu era': A Fathom Forum with Anshel Pfeffer

By Anshel Pfeffer
In this Fathom Forum, journalist and writer Anshel Pfeffer, author of The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The need for political partnership

By Ron Gerlitz
Ron Gerlitz, the Co-Executive Director of Sikkuy, The Association for Civic Equality in Israel, argues that only a... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Towards a consensus on National Security issues?

By Jonathan Spyer
To what extent is the current Israeli election campaign dominated by national security issues, as has historically been... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Why the Israeli Labor party is dying

By Eric Lee
Why has the Israeli Labor Party failed to return to power for over 20 years? Eric Lee points... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The country where the centre can hold

By Pinchas Landau
Pinchas Landau argues that the emergence of the new centrist party ‘Blue and White’ as the main rival... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The Far Right in Israeli Politics

By Colin Shindler
Professor Colin Shindler argues that pragmatism by a Right wing government has often led to an ideological schism... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The growing power of the 'independent' ultra-Orthodox voter

By Gilad Malach
Dr. Gilad Malach is head of the ultra-Orthodox program at the Israel Democracy Institute in Jerusalem. In a... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | With Gantz, has Israel’s centre found its feet?

By Toby Greene
Toby Greene argues that the merger between the Israel Resilience Party and Yesh Atid represents the third phase... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | It’s basic math. To win, the Israeli Centre-Left needs the Arab citizens of Israel

By Joel Braunold
Two-thirds of the Arab public want to see their representatives sitting in government. If the Israeli Centre-Left is... Read more > March 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | Fathoming the Israeli elections: an interview with Nahum Barnea

By Nahum Barnea
Nahum Barnea is a veteran Israeli commentator for Yediot Ahronoth who has covered Israeli domestic and foreign affairs... Read more > February 2019

'Telling Israel’s story in the 21st century will have a lot less to do with the Warsaw Ghetto than it...

By Matti Friedman
Journalist and author Matti Friedman talks to Fathom Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor about his acclaimed recent book, Spies... Read more > February 2019

IsraelVotes2019 | The Accidental Wisdom of Israel’s Maligned Electoral System, Revisited

By Shany Mor
In late 2013 Shany Mor was commissioned to write an article about Israel’s much-criticised proportional electoral system for... Read more > August 2019

Thriving in Adversity: the past and future of Kurdistan in Iraq

By Gary Kent
Combining clear-eyed political analysis with moving reportage, Gary Kent offers a comprehensive survey of both the multiple crises... Read more > February 2019

Anziska's 'Preventing Palestine': An Exchange (1) Joel Singer's Review

By Joel Singer
Joel Singer, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator, critically reviews Seth Anziska’s book, Preventing Palestine: A Political History from... Read more > February 2019

Anziska's 'Preventing Palestine': An Exchange (2) Seth Anziska Replies to Singer

By Seth Anziska
Seth Anziska replies to Oslo negotiator Joel Singers’s critical review of his book Preventing Palestine: A Political History... Read more > February 2019

The Era of Responsibility is over | an interview with Nadav Eyal on the Revolt against Globalisation

By Nadav Eyal
Nadav Eyal is the International Correspondent for Israel's Reshet News, Op-Ed contributor for Yedioth Ahronoth, and author of... Read more > February 2019

Fathom 22 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Welcome to Fathom 22. 2018 was a year of strong growth for the journal. Site visits increased sharply... Read more > Article January 2019

‘There is a window of opportunity to resolve our conflict with the Palestinians’: an interview with former Mossad Director-General Shabtai...

By Shabtai Shavit
Since 2013, Professor Cohen-Almagor has been conducting a comprehensive research project whose aim is to provide a detailed... Read more > January 2019

One More Dunam, One More Goat: Re-learning How Real Change Happens in Israel and Palestine

By John Lyndon
‘In Israel, the group which has sketched out its bold vision of the future most clearly, invested resources... Read more > January 2019

Book Review | Sinjar: 14 Days that Saved the Yazidis from Islamic State

By Paul Iddon
Download a PDF version here. Susan Shand’s book is a moving account of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) genocide... Read more > January 2019

Four strategic threats on Israel’s radar | a special briefing by former IDF intelligence head Amos Yadlin

By Amos Yadlin
Speaking at a private forum in late 2018, Director of the Institute for National Security Studies, Maj. Gen.... Read more > January 2019

Amos Oz (1939-2018): Writer, Reader, Dreamer

By Liam Hoare
Liam Hoare writes in praise of Amos Oz, the Israeli novelist and public intellectual who died 28 December.... Read more > January 2019

‘City of Oranges. An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa': an interview with Adam LeBor

By Adam LeBor
The acclaimed book City of Oranges: An Intimate History of Arabs and Jews in Jaffa has been published... Read more > January 2019
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In praise of compromise: Simon Round interviews Amos Oz

By Simon Round
Amos Oz has lived through every one of Israel’s wars and fought in two of them. He has... Read more > Spring 2013

1967 | Natan Alterman or Amos Oz? The Six-Day War and Israeli Literature

By Liam Hoare
Israeli writers were split by the Six-Day War. On one side was the poet Natan Alterman, whose Movement... Read more > Spring 2017

Israel70 | Amos Oz’s Israel

By Liam Hoare
While Amos Oz’s novels are often read reductively as political allegories, Liam Hoare suggests that Oz’s special subject... Read more > June 2018

Israel’s land policy (1) | What's in a War Crime? Khan al Ahmar, Land Policy, and International Law

By Naomi Kahn
Naomi Linder Kahn is Director of the International Division at Regavim, an NGO dedicated to the ‘preservation of... Read more > December 2018

Israel's land policy (2) | Khan al-Ahmar and 'state land' allocations in the West Bank

By Hagit Ofran
Hagit Ofran is co-director of Settlement Watch, a project of the Israeli peace movement, Peace Now. In this article... Read more > December 2018

Ending the 'Universalisation' of the Holocaust and the Wars Against Israel: The GDR People's Chamber Declaration of 12 April 1990

By Martin Jander
To ‘universalise’ the Nazi crimes is to deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust and the murder of the... Read more > December 2018

Pop Islam: How Germany is tackling the new Islamic antisemitism

By Daniel Rickenbacher
In 2018 Germany appointed the diplomat Dr. Felix Klein to the newly created post of Federal Government Commissioner... Read more > December 2018

The Long Read | Israel’s Jewish and Democratic Balance: A historian reflects on the Nation-State Law

By Arie Dubnov
Arie M. Dubnov is the Max Ticktin Chair of Israel Studies at George Washington University. In this long read... Read more > December 2018

Book Review | Self-Determination, Statehood and the Law of Negotiation: The Case of Palestine

By John Strawson
Robert Barnidge’s important book seeks to persuade us to view the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the prism of what... Read more > December 2018

How Israel is turning its high-tech into global political power

By David Rosenberg
Israel's innovative ability and technological prowess is a source of its global political power that was unimaginable a... Read more > November 2018

Book Review | Israel’s Technology Economy, Origins and Impact

By Alex Brummer
The image of Israel as a nation of high-tech genius was framed by Den Senor and Saul Singer... Read more > Article

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
In July 2018, the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently asked’ in light of... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Simon Gordon

By Simon Gordon
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Tamara Berens

By Tamara Berens
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Mick Davis

By Sir Mick Davis
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner

By Laura Janner Klausner
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Keith Kahn-Harris

By Keith Kahn-Harris
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Toby Greene

By Toby Greene
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Hannah Weisfeld and Maya Ilany

By Hannah Weisfeld and Maya Ilany
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Robin Moss

By Robin Moss
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

British Jews and Israel – how is the relationship evolving? A Symposium | Jonathan Hunter

By Jonathan Hunter
In July 2018, an opinion piece in the Jewish Chronicle identified ‘fundamental questions which must now be urgently... Read more > November 2018

Reading Hannah Arendt’s 'On Violence' in Israel

By Sarit Larry
In this thought-provoking essay, Sarit Larry examines Israel's discourse of 'security' through the prism of Hannah Arendt’s seminal essay... Read more > November 2018

‘I had planned to own a farm but I ended up in the Israeli political zoo’: an interview with MK...

By Sharren Haskel
From combat soldier to veterinary nurse to the youngest MK in the Knesset, Sharren Haskel has had an... Read more > November 2018

‘With every day that passes, we seem to be going further away from the values on which this country is...

By Alona Vinograd
Alona Vinograd is Director of the Center for Democratic Values and Institutions at the Israel Democracy Institute. Deputy... Read more > October 2018

Moving toward a new paradigm together? An Israeli responds to Hussein Agha

By Edward Rettig
In this cautiously hopeful response to Hussein Agha’s Fathom interview, Israeli Edward Rettig argues that his analysis of... Read more > October 2018

‘Israel needs social cohesion as well as nanotechnology’: an interview with Mike Prashker

By Mike Prashker
While Israel was never the harmonious campfire of legend, it is now an extremely crowded, contested and combustible... Read more > October 2018

This is a conflict over narratives. Israel needs to tell ours to Palestinians.

By Yossi Klein Halevi
Yossi Klein Halevi is senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of the recent New York... Read more > october 2018

David Grossman, the journalist

By Liam Hoare
Prizes have rained down on Israeli novelist David Grossman in recent years; the Israel Prize for literature in... Read more > october 2018

‘Ars Poetica was the explosion of me writing poetry’: an interview with Adi Keissar

By Adi Keissar
Haaretz called Adi Keissar the most influential poet working in Israel today. Her first book of poetry, Black... Read more > october 2018

Minding the gaps, connecting the dots: Seven steps towards a feminist funding eco-system in Israel

By Hamutal Gouri
Feminism aims to understand the root causes of gender inequality and its intersection with the other dimensions of... Read more > october 2018

‘The War Between Wars’: Israel vs Iran in Syria

By Yaakov Lappin
Yaakov Lappin is a Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, and a military correspondent. In... Read more > october 2018

‘Understanding the Jews of the Middle East and North Africa is the key to understanding the whole Middle East conflict’:...

By Lyn Julius
Earlier this year Fathom’s Grant Goldberg interviewed Lyn Julius about her new book, Uprooted, which documents 3,000 years... Read more > october 2018

Trump’s cuts are dangerous for Israelis and Palestinians: an interview with Dave Harden

By Dave Harden
Dave Harden is managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group. He has led USAID programmes in Yemen, Syria,... Read more > october 2018

Why UNRWA is an obstacle to two states for two peoples: an interview with Einat Wilf

By Einat Wilf
Einat Wilf is the co-author of The War of Return (with former Haaretz journalist Adi Schwartz). She talked to Fathom... Read more > october 2018

Israel’s Nation-State Law and the three circles of solidarity: a round table with Ruth Gavison

By Ruth Gavison
Ruth Gavison is Professor Emerita of Human Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an Israel Prize... Read more > September 2018

‘A liberal society and respect for human rights are critically important for the well-being of the individual’: an interview with...

By Michael Sfard
Leading Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard talked to Fathom about his new book, The Wall and the Gate:... Read more > September 2018

What is Left antisemitism?

By Sean Matgamna
Contemporary left-wing antisemitism is first and foremost a denial of Israel’s right to exist and, as a result, a comprehensive hostility... Read more > September 2018

The Zionist Ideas: an interview with Gil Troy

By Gil Troy
Professor Gil Troy’s The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland―Then, Now, Tomorrow is a compilation of over... Read more > September 2018

The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland — Then, Now, Tomorrow

By Gil Troy
Reproduced from The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, and Tomorrow, edited by Gil Troy by... Read more > September 2018

Oslo25 | Israel and the Middle East after Oslo: Hope or despair?

By Yair Hirschfeld
Yair Hirschfeld was one of two Israeli academics (alongside the late Ron Pundak) who began unofficial and secret... Read more > September 2018

Oslo25 | Why are negotiations still stuck?

By Orna Mizrahi
Orna Mizrahi is the former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser for foreign policy and a steering committee member... Read more > September 2018

Oslo25 | Twenty five years since Oslo: an insider’s account

By Joel Singer
Joel Singer was the Israeli delegation’s legal adviser to the Oslo talks. A confidant of Prime Minister Yitzhak... Read more > August 2018

Oslo25 | ‘We must liberate our thinking from the Oslo straitjacket’: An interview with Hussein Agha

By Hussein Agha
Hussein Agha has been involved in Palestinian peace negotiations for three decades. A senior associate member of St.... Read more > August 2018

Fathom 21 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Oslo25 When the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 the optimists hoped for peace and, in time, a... Read more > August 2018

Denial: Norman Finkelstein and the New Antisemitism

By Alan Johnson
In recent days the US polemicist Norman Finkelstein has injected a crude claim into the debate about antisemitism... Read more > August 2018
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Israel70 | Democracy against all odds, or at odds with democracy?

By Yohanan Plesner
Yochanan Plesner, President of the Israel Democracy Institute, argues that in order for Israel to secure a democratic... Read more > March 2018

Israel70 | ‘Israel is divided over what destination to put into our national GPS’: an interview with Tzipi Livni

By Tzipi Livni
Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former Foreign Minister and a leading peace negotiator, argues that Israel faces a hard choice:... Read more > March 2018

Why the Nazi Analogy and Holocaust Inversion are Antisemitic

By Alan Johnson
The following is an excerpt from ‘Antisemitism in the Guise of Anti-Nazism: Holocaust Inversion in the United Kingdom... Read more > August 2018

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... Read more > Winter 2017

Israel70 | Young Voices: time for the decision of the century in the West Bank

By Rob Geist Pinfold
Rob Pinfold is a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Diaspora70: Reflections of an Old Zionist

By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is one of America's foremost political thinkers. To mark Israel’s 70th birthday he urges the embrace... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Innovation: Africa

By Sivan Ya'ari
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has visited African three times in the last 18 months, with the continent... Read more > July 2018

Israel70 | ‘Leadership is telling your own people things that are difficult to hear’: an interview with Yair Lapid

By Yair Lapid
According to the latest polls, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid is Israel's most liked politician after the Prime Minister.... Read more > May 2018

‘To understand what makes Israel tick today you must understand who Netanyahu is and how he became the man he...

By Anshel Pfeffer
Anshel Pfeffer is the author of a major new biography of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In this... Read more > May 2018

Israel70 | Schooling for Peace: an interview with Dr Nava Sonnenschein

By Ruth Ebenstein
Dr Nava Sonnenschein is one of the founding members of the binational egalitarian community, Neve Shalom – Wahat... Read more > May 2018

Israel70 | A Light Unto The Nations Once More? The renaissance in Israel’s international development assistance programme

By Aliza Inbal and Ophelie Namiech
Israel was once a world leader in development assistance and a model for African states to follow. There... Read more > July 2018

Israel70 | Just don’t do it: The ramifications of a termination of the Oslo Accords

By Gilead Sher
Gilead Sher is a former Israeli senior peace negotiator and former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Ehud... Read more > May 2018

From ‘intersectionality’ to the exclusion of Jewish students: BDS makes a worrying turn on US campuses

By Kenneth Waltzer
Kenneth Waltzer is the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, a national US faculty organisation committed to... Read more > July 2018

Israel70 | Amos Oz’s Israel

By Liam Hoare
While Amos Oz’s novels are often read reductively as political allegories, Liam Hoare suggests that Oz’s special subject... Read more > June 2018

Where next for the Iran nuclear deal? A view from Israel

By Michael Herzog
Since the US withdrew from the JCPOA nuclear agreement in May, the other signatories have embarked on intensive negotiations... Read more > July 2018

Israel70 | The Global Enigma

By Sammy Smooha
In this careful mapping of the state of a country and a people at 70 the sociologist and... Read more > July 2018

Book Review | Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

By Kyle Orton
Carter Malkasian sets out in Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State... Read more > July 2018

Book Review | Enemies and Neighbours; Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917-2017

By Asher Susser
Ian Black has written a very well-researched, comprehensive and insightful survey of a century of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, from... Read more > Article

Israel70 | Towards a new model for religion and state in Israel

By Ruth Calderon
Dr Ruth Calderon is the former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and MK for the Yesh Atid party.... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: The Israeli centre must seize the future

By Yair Zivan
Yair Zivan is Foreign Affairs Advisor to Yesh Atid Chairperson Yair Lapid. He argues that to answer the... Read more > June 2018

Israel 70 | Young Voices: Can Jerusalem become a capital of tolerance?

By Michal Shilor
Michal Shilor believes Jerusalem should be known as ‘the tolerance capital of the world.’ She works at the... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Pipeline diplomacy and the emerging East-Med Region: a huge opportunity for Israel

By Elai Rettig
Elai Rettig is a PhD candidate at the School of Political Science in the University of Haifa, a... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Reading Herzl’s Altneuland in 2018

By Asaf Yusufov
Asaf Yusufov is a former counsellor and manager at Tel Aviv’s Barnoar (an LGBTQ Youth Club) and is... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Involving Arabs in political decision-making is right in principle and vital for Israel’s social cohesion

By Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya
Nasreen Hadad Haj-Yahya is Director of the Israel Democracy Institute’s Arab-Jewish Relations Programme. She argues that as the... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: We must heal our divisions to redeem the world

By Daniel HaLevi
Daniel HaLevi is the director of a pre-military academy. He suggests that a guide to Israel’s best future... Read more > June 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Zionism is now obligated to build bridges in culture, education and faith

By Yaniv Yitshak
Yaniv Yitshak lives with his wife Hadassah and their two children in the community of Yerucham where he... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | In Search of Israel: The history of an idea

By Colin Shindler
The renowned sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, a refugee from the anti-Semitic campaign in Communist Poland during the 1960s and... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | Days of the Fall: A Reporter's Journey in the Syria and Iraq Wars

By Michael Stephens
An eye witness to some of the most violent episodes in the history of both Iraq and Syria,... Read more > June 2018

Book Review | Being Kurdish in a Hostile World

By Paul Iddon
Ayub Nuri was born in the wrong place, or so he likes to quip. He comes from Halabja... Read more > June 2018

Burning money: the urgent need to rethink UNRWA

By Simon Waldman
Dr Simon A. Waldman is the author of Anglo-American Diplomacy and the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1948-1951. In this opinion piece he... Read more > Article

Bernard Lewis (1916-2018): an intellectual giant

By Asher Susser
Asher Susser is senior fellow and former director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at... Read more > May 2018

Israel70 | Israel’s grand strategy and the return of Russia as a Great Power

By Efraim Halevy
Former head of Mossad Efraim Halevy presents a sweeping overview of Israel’s strategic situation. He argues that the... Read more > May 2018

Book Review | Why Palestine Matters: The struggle to end colonialism

By Cary Nelson
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has published an ideological and political manual for anti-Israel organising ahead of its bi-annual... Read more > May 2018

Archive | Fathom Forum: Learning from Qassem Soleimani

By Jonathan Paris
Jonathan Paris argues that we underestimate the determination and the capacity of the Iranian regime to project power... Read more > May 2018
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Israel70 | Young Voices: time for the decision of the century in the West Bank

By Rob Geist Pinfold
Rob Pinfold is a Neubauer Research Associate at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Israel's Arabs should be in Israel's government

By Tal Harris
Tal Harris is the spokesperson of MK Amir Peretz and a PhD candidate in sociology on urban migration... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: The moderate majority in Israel must find its voice in the decade ahead

By Tel Aviv Widrich
Tel Aviv Widrich is director of operations for Darkenu. Meaningful change in Israel, though desired by the moderate... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: A Plea for Civility  

By Aaron Kalman
Aaron Kalman is a diplomatic adviser to Education Minister Naftali Bennett and former Jewish Agency Emissary to Australia.... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: From the Kibbutz to the shared economy?

By Netta Geist
Netta Geist is a former Parliamentary Advisor to MK Stav Shaffir. She holds an MA in Public Policy... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Young Voices: Will a leader of Middle Eastern descent emerge to lead this Middle Eastern country?

By Hen Mazzig
Hen Mazzig is an Israeli writer, international speaker, social media activist and advocate. Hen’s family comes from Iraq... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | How to keep the window open for the two-state solution

By Dennis Ross
As Israel approaches its 70th anniversary and the peace process at a low ebb, Dennis Ross, former Middle... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Palestinians are raising the alarm – the time to rescue the two-state solution is running out

By Ziad Darwish
Dr Ziad Darwish is a member of The Palestinian Committee for Interaction with Israeli Society – PLO (PCIIS).... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Forget ‘the ultimate deal’. For now, the status quo is the best option available

By Shalom Lipner
Shalom Lipner is a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.... Read more > March 2018

Israel70 | How to fix the crisis in Israel-World Jewry relations

By Gidi Grinstein and Ari Afilalo
Gidi Grinstein and Ari Afilalo argue that on the eve of Israel’s 70th anniversary, it must reembrace its... Read more > April 2018

Anti-Zionism and the Humanities: A response to Saree Makdisi

By Cary Nelson and Russell Berman
This lengthy essay by two leading US professors challenges the world of academic publishing. They identify the symptoms... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Israel70 is a special bumper issue of the journal that maps the state of Israel at 70 years old and... Read more > March 2018

One-to-one | Towards the renewal of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process

By Dahlia Scheindlin
On 22 March Fathom editor Alan Johnson sat down with Dahlia Scheindlin for the first of Fathom’s one-to-one interviews,... Read more > April 2018

Israel70 | Celebrating the argument

By Einat Wilf with Shany Mor
Zionism and the State of Israel are unique examples of a movement of national liberation, and a state,... Read more > March 2018

Israel70 | It is time for the minority to establish itself as a political actor in Israeli decision-making

By Mohammad Darawshe
Mohammad Darawshe is Director of the Center for Shared Society at Givat Haviva Institute and also served as... Read more > March 2018

Israel70 | Yisrael Aumann on gaming Israel's future

By Yisrael Aumann
Yisrael Aumann is an Israeli-American mathematician and a professor at the Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality... Read more > March 2018

Book Review | Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine

By Cary Nelson
Sunaina Maira’s book Boycott! The Academy and Justice for Palestine would not ordinarily be a publication of special... Read more > May 2018

The space between the Iraq-Iran border and the Mediterranean Sea today constitutes a single arena of conflict, by Jonathan Spyer

By Jonathan Spyer
Jonathan Spyer is a fellow at the Middle East Forum and a freelance security analyst and correspondent for... Read more > February 2018

‘As Jews who experienced the Holocaust, we have a moral obligation to help our neighbours': Talking to ‘Lt Col. E’...

By Elhanan Miller
Since 2016 the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has operated its Good Neighbour Project, which coordinates the transfer of... Read more > February 2018

Book Review | Jews and Leftist Politics: Judaism, Israel, Anti-Semitism and Gender

By Colin Shindler
This important book is based on an international conference on Jews and the Left held in New York... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Feminism in Israel is a special issue of Fathom journal that brings together the voices of 22 women from across... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Perhaps peace comes dropping slow: Rabbanit Tirza Kelman reflects on a trip to Northern Ireland

By Tirza Kelman
Two dozen religious Israelis met with an Irish priest. It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Palestinian, Feminist, Peacebuilder: an interview with Huda Abu Arqoub

By Huda Abu Arqoub
Huda Abu Arqoub is Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), a network of civil society... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Meeting the challenges, making the changes: governing for women’s equality

By Rachel Azaria
Rachel Azaria is a Modern Orthodox Israeli politician, currently serving as a member of the Knesset for Kulanu.... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Haredi Feminism: an interview with Pnina Pfeuffer

By Pnina Pfeuffer
Pnina Pfeuffer is a leading figure in Haredi feminism and a regular columnist for Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, and... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Gender equality and the status of women in Israel: an interview with MK Aliza Lavie

By Aliza Lavie
Aliza Lavie is a member of the Knesset for Yesh Atid and a senior lecturer at the School of Communication at Bar-Ilan University.... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Feminism and the melodies of Judaism

By Elana Maryles Sztokman
The decision of Elana Maryles Sztokman, a long-time leading figure in US and Israeli Orthodox Jewish feminism to... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Feminism and Israeli-Palestinian Peace: an interview with Sarai Aharoni

By Sarai Aharoni
Sarai Aharoni is Assistant Professor at the Gender Studies Programme, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and one of... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Feminism and Jewish-Palestinian Solidarity can make another Israel possible: an interview with Fida Nara and Sarit...

By Fida Nara and Sarit Larry
Mahapach-Taghir is a grassroots, feminist, Jewish-Arab organisation that works for social change through education and empowerment in marginalised communities... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | Contesting social exclusion in Israel

By Michal Gera Margaliot and Miriam Zalkind
In this in-depth interview with Fathom deputy editor Calev Ben-Dor, the leaders of the Israel Women’s Network raise... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | ‘Pious men and dangerous women’: sex-segregation as a threat to women’s equality in Israel - an...

By Yofi Tirosh
Dr Yofi Tirosh is angry that she is still devoting ‘most of my time, energy, rage and despair... Read more > February 2018

Feminism in Israel | ‘There is a place for everyone in this feminist struggle for life’: an interview with Samah...

By Samah Salaime
Samah Salaime is the founder of Na’am/Arab Women in the Center. A social worker, she lives and works... Read more > February 2018
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Jewish votes and British foreign policy: The 1930 Whitechapel by-election

By Ronnie Fraser
At the Whitechapel and St. George’s by-election on 3 December 1930 Jewish voters directly influenced British policy on... Read more > January 2018

The Netanyahu Years: an interview with Ben Caspit

By Ben Caspit
In this exclusive interview, Fathom deputy editor Calev Ben-Dor sits down with Ben Caspit, a senior columnist for... Read more > Winter 2017

Why is there no Museum of Contemporary Israeli History?

By Liam Hoare
Israeli museums, argues Liam Hoare, are a terrain of political struggle over history and memory. ‘Until these arguments... Read more > Winter 2017

BICOM-JN Conference 2017 | Speech by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry

By Emily Thornberry
This speech was delivered by the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry at the BICOM-Jewish News Conference, held in... Read more > Autumn 2017

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... Read more > Winter 2017

‘The door won’t always remain open’: David Makovsky on the ‘Settlements and Solutions’ project

By David Makovsky
Fathom hosted a private briefing with David Makovsky, the Ziegler distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute and director... Read more > Autumn 2017

‘Trump is continuing Obama’s retreat from the world’: William Kristol on US foreign policy

By William Kristol
William Kristol is the founder and editor at large of the influential US political magazine The Weekly Standard.... Read more > Autumn 2017

‘Whatever happens in the region must come from the region’: Sir John Jenkins on Islamism, Modernity and the Middle East

By Sir John Jenkins
Sir John Jenkins is a former UK Ambassador to Syria (2007-9), Libya (2011) and Saudi Arabia (2012-5). In... Read more > Autumn 2017

The Palestinian reconciliation agreement – context, consequences and open questions

By Michael Herzog
On 1 November, the Hamas movement began the process of handing over the three Gaza border crossings to... Read more > Autumn 2017

A Proposal for a Federal Republic of Israel

By Arieh Hess and Emanuel Shahaf
The Federation Movement advocates a new political approach to peace in which Israeli law is applied to the... Read more > Autumn 2017

The Suez Crisis and the Jews of Egypt

By Lyn Julius
‘There are few greater injustices than to say about something that happened, that it did not happen’ wrote... Read more > Autumn 2017

Fathom 18 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Fathom 18 is a bumper issue offering 30 pieces on four broad topics: the Middle East after ISIS,... Read more > Autumn 2017

Fathom eBook | Balfour 100: The Fathom Essays

By Fathom Editors
Fathom has published a new eBook to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which you can... Read more > Autumn 2017

Fathom Forum | Reciprocal Radicalisation Hotbeds: how Islamist and far-Right extremism feed off each other

By Julia Ebner
The following remarks were made to a Fathom Forum in London on 3 October 2017. Ebner is a... Read more > Autumn 2017

Balfour 100 | Christian Zionism and the Balfour Declaration

By Gershon Shafir
Gershon Shafir argues that British Christian Zionism pre-dated practical Jewish Zionism and helped to ensure that, by the... Read more > Autumn 2017

Balfour 100 | 'Weizmann corralled the British government behind the Zionist movement': an interview with Jonathan Schneer

By Jonathan Schneer
Jonathan Schneer’s book The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict was praised by Simon Sebag Montefiore... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: Can ISIS really be defeated without legitimate local governance? | Kyle Orton

By Kyle Orton
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: Where will ISIS regroup? | Ely Karmon

By Ely Karmon
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: Will ISIS now target Egypt? | Michael Barak

By Michael Barak
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: Why ISIS will survive the loss of its 'Islamic State' | Aymenn al-Tamimi

By Aymenn al-Tamimi
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: Will the counter-insurgency tactics used to defeat ISIS help it recruit new fighters? | Craig Whiteside

By Craig Whiteside
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

After ISIS Symposium: What is the scale of the threat to the UK from returning Jihadis? | David Wells

By David Wells
Editorial Introduction to the Symposium: In this symposium, six experts – Kyle Orton, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Craig Whiteside, David... Read more > Autumn 2017

BDS and DSA: the American Left loses its way

By Jo-Ann Mort
Dissent editorial board member Jo-Ann Mort, a cofounder of the Democratic Socialists of America and former vice-chair (and... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire

By Bruce Maddy-Weitzman
A book about the League of Nations, let alone one of its little known subsections, the Permanent Mandates... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Reflection from No Man’s Land

By Lauren Mellinger
In his new memoir The Endless Quest for Israeli-Palestinian Peace: A Reflection from No Man’s Land former UN... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | We Were the Future: A Memoir of the Kibbutz

By Liam Hoare
Of all the aspects and institutions of kibbutz life, the children’s house is one that in particular continues... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The Left in Disarray

By Colin Shindler
Most of the time, the key terms of the anti-capitalist Left have no clear meaning, they express and... Read more > Autumn 2017

Book Review | The End of Jewish Modernity

By Philip Spencer
This is a sadly disappointing book. At one level, it is yet another example of a widespread failure... Read more > Autumn 2017

No Room for Small Dreams: How the Start-up Nation can help create the Start-Up Region

By Chemi Peres
Chemi Peres is the chairman of the Peres Centre for Peace and Innovation, founded by his father Shimon... Read more > Autumn 2017

Israel's diplomatic relations reconsidered

By Michael Koplow
There is a fundamental assumption undergirding the argument that people like me make about Israel needing to come... Read more > Autumn 2017

Southern Syria: How to stop the Iranian plan for regional dominance

By Michael Herzog
Michael Herzog served as head of the IDF’s Strategic Planning Division and chief of staff to Israel’s minister... Read more > Autumn 2017

Fathom Forum | ‘City on a Hilltop’? Sara Hirschhorn on the clash between liberal values and settler realities

By Sara Hirschhorn
Fathom was delighted to welcome Dr Sara Hirschhorn to a Fathom Forum in London to discuss her recent... Read more > Autumn 2017

The Israeli visa law and other own goals in the BDS wars

By Gerald M. Steinberg
It’s time to press reset on Israel’s confused response to the genuine threat of BDS and demonisation. A... Read more > Autumn 2017

‘The assumption that a conflict of over 100 years can be solved by a piece of paper is totally detached...

By Yair Hirschfeld
As the play Oslo opens in London, Fathom’s Calev Ben-Dor sat down with Yair Hirschfeld who was, with... Read more > Autumn 2017

Oslo | Staging the ‘White Man's Burden’

By Einat Wilf
To mark the Tony Award winning play Oslo opening in London this September, based on the Oslo Peace... Read more > Autumn 2017

A question of moral responsibility: an interview with Hagai El-Ad of B’Tselem

By Hagai El-Ad
Hagai El-Ad is the Executive Director of B'Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the... Read more > Autumn 2017

Human Rights and German-Israeli relations after the Gabriel Affair

By Gadi Taub
In April 2017 the social democratic German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel decided to meet with Breaking the Silence... Read more > Autumn 2017

‘The Zionist Left needs to understand that change is impossible without us’: an interview with MK Ayman Odeh

By Ayman Odeh
21 per cent of Israel’s citizens are Arab-Palestinians. Since 2015 the leader of the Joint List – an... Read more > Autumn 2017

‘We have to share the land somehow. But for peace, the Palestinians must change their narrative’: an interview with Yossi...

By Yossi Kuperwasser
Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser was chief of the research division in IDF Military Intelligence, and until recently,... Read more > Autumn 2017
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Fathom 17 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Fathom 17 is a special issue to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. We have three... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | The world of our founders: being Jewish in Palestine after Balfour

By Donna Robinson Divine
Donna Robinson Divine argues that the Zionist nation-building story, while inspiring, does not reflect the trials, pains and... Read more > Summer 2017

Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in West Germany in the 1970s: Lessons for Today

By Martin Jander
In this provocative analysis of discourse about Israel in West Germany in the 1970s, Martin Jander claims that... Read more > Summer 2017

A Deeply Rooted Anti-Zionism: Reflections from South Africa

By Milton Shain
While the degree of support for radical anti-Zionism in South Africa is often wildly exaggerated – the government... Read more > Summer 2017

The Left and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The path to righteous hatred

By Jamie Palmer
In this timely and eloquent essay, Jamie Palmer explores the impact on the politics of the Left of... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | All the Rivers

By Liam Hoare
It is hard to know how to talk about Dorit Rabinyan’s third novel, All the Rivers, an elegant,... Read more > Summer 2017

The Last Palestinian: The Rise and Reign of Mahmoud Abbas: an interview with Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon

By Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon
Fathom Assistant Editor Samuel Nurding sat down with Grant Rumley and Amir Tibon to discuss their new book... Read more > Article

Book Review | Colonialism and the Jews

By John Strawson
Jews, like other peoples, have been much affected by the history of colonialism and empire. The Babylonian exile... Read more > Article

Trump is in danger of pulling a reverse Obama

By Ilan Goldenberg
A month ago after returning from a trip to Israel, I wrote that we may be on the... Read more > Summer 2017

A future for Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding

By BICOM
BICOM and Fathom have published a new research report, A future for Israeli-Palestinian peacebuilding. It has been written... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | The Shell

By Kyle Orton
In Syria, the West has been keen not to repeat the mistakes of Iraq — defined as being... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | ‘Mack’: Aaron Aaronsohn, the NILI intelligence network and the Balfour Declaration

By Efraim Halevy
NILI – an acronym for the biblical Hebrew phrase, Netzakh Yisrael Lo Yeshaker, meaning ‘The Eternal One of... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | Repairing the World: why Britain should now recognise the State of Palestine

By Elias Zananiri
Elias Zananiri, Vice-Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) Committee for Interaction with the Israeli Society, argues that... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | We need to talk about the Balfour Declaration

By Toby Greene
2017 is the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the British government’s letter of support for the establishment... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | British policy in Palestine 1917–1925

By James Sorene
Despite issuing the Balfour Declaration in 1917 and subsequently obtaining the Mandate for Palestine from the League of... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | Before Balfour: The Labour Party’s War Aims memorandum

By Ronnie Fraser
Ronnie Fraser tells the little-known story of the British Labour Party’s support for Zionism. Three months before the... Read more > Summer 2017

Balfour 100 | Chaim Weizmann, the Guardian and the Balfour Declaration

By Azriel Bermant
The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George believed that ChaimWeizmann would become ‘the one name that will be... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | Yitzhak Rabin: Soldier, Leader, Statesman

By Neill Lochery
I must warn the reader at the start of this review of a couple of personal points that... Read more > Summer 2017

Book Review | Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation

By Cary Nelson
Kingdom of Olives And Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, edited by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, is a... Read more > Summer 2017
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Fathom 16 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
On its 50th anniversary, this special issue of Fathom maps the causes, courses and consequences of a watershed... Read more > Spring 2017

Einat Wilf: Constructive ambiguity has not worked. Peace needs constructive specificity

By Einat Wilf
Einat Wilf is one of the most creative Israeli thinkers on the peace process. In this talk to... Read more > Article

1967 | How the Six-Day War is still transforming Israel

By Donna Robinson Divine
For most Israelis, the military victory of 1967 rescued the country from an existential threat. But for some,... Read more > Spring 2017

Fathom Forum | Professor Sammy Smooha: ‘Israeli Democracy in Comparative Perspective’

By Sammy Smooha
Sammy Smooha is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Haifa, and winner of the 2008 Israel... Read more > Article Spring 2017

1967 | 'A deal with the region should go through Ramallah’: an interview with Nidal Foqaha

By Nidal Foqaha
Nidal Foqaha is Director-General of the Palestinian Peace Coalition-Geneva Initiative in Ramallah. He served as an advisor at... Read more > Article

1967 | ‘The Palestinians won’t pay the price of peace, which is recognition’: an interview with Michael Oren

By Michael Oren
Michael Oren is a former Israeli ambassador to the US and currently serves as Deputy Minister for Diplomacy... Read more > Article

1967 | How Nasser’s vendetta against America led to the Six-Day War

By Gabriel Glickman
For 50 years historians have debated the question of what motivated Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s disastrous drift... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | The international media and the Six-Day War

By Meron Medzini
Professor Meron Medzini served as the Director of Israel’s Government Press Office (GPO) in Jerusalem during the Six-Day... Read more > Article

1967 | As long as the Arab world views Israel as a temporary aberration to be conquered, Israel will stand...

By Einat Wilf
To bring a permanent end to the Israeli military occupation of much of the territory acquired during the... Read more > Spring 2017

‘The situation in Gaza is much worse than prior to the war in 2014’: an interview with Giora Eiland

By Giora Eiland
Giora Eiland served in the IDF for 33 years, rising to Major General. He left the IDF in... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | Internalising defeat – the Six-Day War and the Arab world: an interview with Kanan Makiya

By Kanan Makiya
Kanan Makiya is known for two seminal books - Republic of Fear, which called attention to the cruel... Read more > Article Spring 2017

Abbas in Washington: dancing in place or moving forward?

By Daniel B. Shapiro
Writing exclusively for Fathom, Daniel B. Shapiro, former Ambassador of the United States of America to the State... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | Why more and more Israeli Jews think the settlements are in Israel

By Oded Haklai
Oded Haklai reports on research suggesting that for the generations of Israeli Jews born after 1967, the pre-1967... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | A Political Theory for the Jewish People

By Nahshon Perez
A Political Theory for the Jewish People is a fascinating book, offering a rich and nuanced discussion of... Read more > Spring 2017

Ken Livingstone and the myth of Zionist ‘collaboration’ with the Nazis

By Paul Bogdanor
In this meticulous rebuttal of the former Mayor of London’s charge that ‘you had right up until the... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | North Korea and the Middle East

By Jack May
At a recent conference Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman identified North Korea as the greatest threat to global... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | The wisdom of Resolution 242

By Toby Greene
The logic of UN Resolution 242 – that this is a conflict of two sides with rights and... Read more > Spring 2017

Book review | Israel and Palestine Alternative Perspectives on Statehood

By John Strawson
It is extraordinary that 70 years after the UN partition resolution we are still discussing the future of... Read more > Spring 2017

New thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process: towards a hybrid approach

By BICOM
The peace process is currently at an impasse. Bringing the parties together for another intensive effort at reaching... Read more > Article Spring 2017

1967 | Don’t believe the hype: the settlers have not made the two-state solution unachievable

By Orni Petruschka and Gilead Sher
After 50 years of Israeli control over the West Bank, increasing numbers believe that a ‘two states for... Read more > Article Spring 2017

On Chaim Gans on the Jewish Diaspora

By Michael Walzer
Fathom has invited a series of writers to respond to Chaim Gans’s A Political Theory for the Jewish... Read more > Spring 2017

Response to Michael Walzer’s ‘On Chaim Gans on the Jewish Diaspora’

By Chaim Gans
Writing in Fathom Michael Walzer responded to the discussion of diaspora Jews in Chaim Gans’s book A Political... Read more > Spring 2017

‘I did not leave the Likud, the Likud left me’: an interview with Moshe Ya’alon

By Moshe Ya'alon
Moshe Ya'alon is a former Chief of Staff for the IDF and served under the Netanyahu government for... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | Remembering the Six-Day War

By Michael Walzer
One of America’s foremost political thinkers, Michael Walzer wrote his seminal book Just and Unjust Wars in 1977.... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | The Six-Day War and Israeli society: an interview with Yossi Klein Halevi

By Yossi Klein Halevi
Yossi Klein Halevi is the author of the acclaimed book Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | Nasser’s Antisemitic War Against Israel

By Matthias Kuntzel
Matthias Kuntzel is the author of the award-winning book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | The Global Left and the Six-Day War

By Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park,... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | Natan Alterman or Amos Oz? The Six-Day War and Israeli Literature

By Liam Hoare
Israeli writers were split by the Six-Day War. On one side was the poet Natan Alterman, whose Movement... Read more > Spring 2017

1967 | The Six-Day War was a watershed in Middle Eastern history

By Asher Susser
The Arab defeat in 1967 shattered the image of pan-Arabism as a vehicle of Arab modernisation. The Islamists... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | The Master Plan: ISIS, al-Qaeda, and the Jihadi Strategy for Final Victory

By Kyle Orton
Brian Fishman's The Master Plan provides a comprehensive history of the Islamic State’s (IS) strategic evolution, covering the... Read more > Spring 2017

Book Review | The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu

By Colin Shindler
Admiration and respect are not words usually attached to the persona of Benjamin Netanyahu by either friend or... Read more > Spring 2017

State and religion in Israel: An interview with Elazar Stern

By Elazar Stern
Elazar Stern is an Israeli politician and former soldier. He served as a Major General in the IDF... Read more > Spring 2017

Fathom Forum | Jeffrey Herf: Undeclared Wars with Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967-81

By Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland. His books include Nazi Propaganda for... Read more > Spring 2017

Seize the Moment – Build a New Regional Paradigm

By Koby Huberman
The two-state solution is the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet we need a new paradigm... Read more > Spring 2017

Fathom Forum | Gabrielle Rifkind: Fog of Peace: How to Prevent War

By Gabrielle Rifkind
Gabrielle Rifkind is director of the Oxford Process Programme at Oxford Research Group (ORG), an independent peace and... Read more > Spring 2017
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Fathom 15 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
The 19th century American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson was not slow to offer pieces of advice. Many ended... Read more > Winter 2016

Balfour 100 | We need to talk about the Balfour Declaration

By Toby Greene
2017 is the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, the British government’s letter of support for the establishment... Read more > Summer 2017

How to change reality in Gaza and shape the evolution of Hamas: an interview with Grisha Yakubovich

By Grisha Yakubovich
Col. (res) Grisha Yakubovich spent the majority of his 30 years in the IDF in the Coordinator of... Read more > Winter 2016

What Trump should do with the Iran deal

By Emily B. Landau
Dr. Emily B. Landau is a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in... Read more > Winter 2016

Everyday Binationality in Jaffa: an interview with Daniel Monterescu

By Daniel Monterescu
Daniel Monterescu is the author of Jaffa Shared and Shattered: Contrived Coexistence in Israel / Palestine.[1] An anthropologist... Read more > Winter 2016

‘Cooperation between rivals’: a new paradigm for understanding the Israeli-Palestinian system (2006-2016)

By Doron Matza
Doron Matza proposes a new critical paradigm to understand the relationship between the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships: ‘cooperation... Read more > Winter 2016

Justifying Israel: An interview with Chaim Gans

By Chaim Gans
Chaim Gans is a political philosopher and Professor of Law at Tel Aviv University. He is the author... Read more > Winter 2016

The BDS Disinformation Campaign in the Modern Language Association

By Cary Nelson
In this comprehensive essay, Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and co-editor... Read more > Winter 2016

Mamlakhtiyut, peace and the dangerous rise of populism: In memory of Shimon Peres

By Amir Peretz
Amir Peretz is a Member of Knesset (Labor Party), former defence minister and former minister for the protection... Read more > Winter 2016

Debating Israel’s Identity

By Ruth Gavison
Ruth Gavison is Professor Emerita, holding the Haim H. Cohn Chair of Human Rights, in the Faculty of... Read more > Winter 2016

Trump and the Middle East: Prospects and Tasks

By BICOM
At the 2016 BICOM-Jewish News Policy Conference, ‘UK-Israel Shared Strategic Challenges’, a panel of Middle East experts discussed... Read more > Winter 2016

Mosul: after ISIS, what next?

By Seth Frantzman
Mosul has suffered three jihadist takeovers since 2004. In a detailed mapping of the conflict and its actors,... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Tragic Encounters and Ordinary Ethics: Palestine-Israel in British Universities

By Keith Kahn-Harris
The publication of this book could hardly be better timed. The disturbance at a Friends of Israel Society... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Dreams Deferred: A Concise Guide to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Luke Akehurst
I tried to read Dreams Deferred in the conventional style, cover to cover. Bad idea. The book isn’t... Read more > Winter 2016

Book Review | Ike’s Gamble: America’s Rise to Dominance in the Middle East

By David Lowe
In 2013, shortly after his nomination for US Defence Secretary, then Senator Chuck Hagel purchased three dozen copies... Read more > Winter 2016

Book review | A Horse Walks Into a Bar

By Liam Hoare
A Horse Walks Into a Bar, an opening line to many a haggard joke, is not necessarily what... Read more > Winter 2016

Fathom Forum with Dr. Dalia Fadila: 'Q Schools: Educating for equality in Israel’

By Dalia Fadila
This September Fathom hosted Dr. Dalia Fadila, faculty member of the International School for Leadership and Diplomacy at... Read more > Autumn 2016
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Fathom 14 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Fathom 14 examines four challenges facing Israel: the challenge of creating a shared society, of creating a security system... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

Lessons from Cyprus for Israel-Palestine

By Dahlia Scheindlin
Cyprus has experienced a protracted, unresolved conflict for roughly five decades. Like Israel-Palestine, the conflict has ethno-nationalist and... Read more > Autumn 2016

Returning Jihadis: A Generational Threat

By Peter Neumann
Professor Peter Neumann’s new book Radicalised: New Jihadists and the Threat to the West, has been described as... Read more > Autumn 2016

The old ways have had their day. Peace-making will look very different in the era of Trump

By Claire Spencer
Claire Spencer is Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme and Second Century Initiative,... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

Trump, Israel and the Jews: What Happens Next?

By Shany Mor
Shany Mor is a former Director for Foreign Policy on the Israeli National Security Council. In these first... Read more > Autumn 2016

The Resistible Rise of Benjamin Netanyahu: an interview with Neill Lochery

By Neill Lochery
Neil Lochery is the Catherine Lewis Professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean Studies at University College London (UCL).... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

Opinion amongst the young is drifting. An International Fund for Israeli-Palestinian Peace is urgently needed

By Joel Braunold John Lyndon
‘The best people to convince Israelis that Palestinians are not monsters, and to show the Palestinians that Israelis... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

The Israeli-Palestinian Arena – what could be done short of an agreement

By Michael Herzog
Michael Herzog has been a participant in nearly all Israeli-Palestinian negotiations since 1993. In this important essay, which... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

Dave Rich | ‘The Left's Jewish problem’

By Dave Rich
    Dave Rich is deputy director of communications at the Community Security Trust (CST), associate research fellow... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

After Brexit (1): Jonathan Rynhold on Israel’s future relations with the UK and the EU

By Jonathan Rynhold
Fathom’s contributing editor Dr. Toby Greene sat down with Jonathan Rynhold, professor of Political Science at Bar Ilan... Read more > Autumn 2016

After Brexit (2): Azriel Bermant on Israel’s future relations with the UK and the EU

By Azriel Bermant
Azriel Bermant, a lecturer in International Relations at Tel Aviv University and a former research fellow at Tel... Read more > Autumn 2016

Book Review | The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism

By Philip Spencer
To say this is a timely book is something of an understatement. Over the past few months, evidence... Read more > Autumn 2016

Symposium | A security system for the two-state solution

By Kris Bauman & Ilan Goldenberg
Colonel Kris Bauman is Senior Military Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) at the National... Read more > Autumn 2016

Symposium | Israel’s core security requirements in permanent-status negotiations

By Michael Herzog
As an official involved in most of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over the last 23... Read more > Autumn 2016

Symposium | ‘Separation is not the answer’: Gershon Hacohen on Israel’s security

By Gershon Hacohen
Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen served in the IDF for 42 years, commanding troops in battle on the... Read more > Autumn 2016

‘Each must see the Other’: Education and mutual recognition in Israel – an interview with Ayman Agbaria

By Ayman Agbaria
Professor Ayman Agbaria is a Palestinian poet, playwright, scholar and activist. He is a senior lecturer in education... Read more > Autumn 2016

Fathom Forum with Dr. Dalia Fadila: 'Q Schools: Educating for equality in Israel’

By Dalia Fadila
This September Fathom hosted Dr. Dalia Fadila, faculty member of the International School for Leadership and Diplomacy at... Read more > Autumn 2016

How Obama Sold the Iran Delusion

By Ben Cohen
Ben Cohen explores the Obama administration’s masterful success in persuading so many American influencers to buy into a... Read more > Autumn 2016

Shiraz Maher | Mapping contemporary Salafi-Jihadism

By Shiraz Maher
Shiraz Maher is the author of Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Hurst, 2016) and Deputy Director at... Read more > Summer 2016

Communists Against Jews: the Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland in 1968

By Simon Gansinger
‘Everything started collapsing then’, wrote Halina Zawadzka, who survived the Shoah in Poland, about her experience of 1968... Read more > Autumn 2016

Like a Cloud Contains a Storm: Jean Améry’s Critique of Anti-Zionism

By Marlene Gallner
Jean Améry is best known in the anglophone world as a Holocaust survivor and author of At The... Read more > Autumn 2016

‘People didn’t dream there would be Haredim’: an interview with Rabbi Menahem Shemtov and Rebbetzin Shoshana Shemtov

By Rabbi Menahem Shemtov and Rebbetzin Shoshana Shemtov
Rabbi Menahem Shemtov is the chairman of the Rabbis Committee for Inter-Religious Dialogue formally on behalf of the... Read more > Autumn 2016

‘The trends in high-tech are changing, but not at a pace Arab graduates need’: An interview with Reem Younis

By Reem Younis
Reem Younis is co-founder of Nazareth-based Alpha Omega, a global high-tech company that seeks to further high-tech skills,... Read more > Article Autumn 2016

Book Review │ Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War

By James Sorene
Israel’s military operations always have a name. As a mark of his achievement in June 1967, Chief of... Read more > Autumn 2016

Book Review │ Judas

By Liam Hoare
Amos Oz was 14 when, two years after his mother took her own life, he left the city... Read more > Article

Book Review | Ben-Gurion: His Later Years in the Political Wilderness

By Colin Shindler
This latest work from Avi Shilon describes in detail Ben-Gurion’s last decade – from stepping down as prime... Read more > Autumn 2016

Lies, Damned Lies and the Academic Boycott of Israel

By Michael Yudkin
Oxford University academic Michael Yudkin critiques the ‘Academic boycott’ promoted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and... Read more > Article Summer 2016
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Fathom 13 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Fathom 13 examines four questions central to explaining the current impasse in the peace process between the Israelis... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Undeclared Wars on Israel: East Germany and the West German Far Left 1967-1981: An Interview with Jeffrey Herf

By Jeffrey Herf
http:// Jeffery Herf is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Maryland. His books include Nazi Propaganda... Read more > Article Summer 2016

For peace, we need vision, hope and bridge-building: an interview with Aziz Abu Sarah

By Aziz Abu Sarah
Aziz Abu Sarah is a National Geographic Explorer and Cultural Educator. A Palestinian from Jerusalem, Aziz has pioneered... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Darkenu: keeping the dream of Israel alive

By Polly Bronstein
Israel has a new organisation. Darkenu styles itself as the movement of Israel’s moderates. It’s leader Polly Bronstein... Read more > Article Summer 2016

‘Where is Syria going? A Round Table with Jonathan Spyer

By Jonathan Spyer
The Fathom editors hold a monthly invite-only round table discussion in our London office between a policy expert... Read more > Article Summer 2016

London Calling: Why Mayor Sadiq Khan is ‘Good for the Jews’

By Marcus Roberts
‘Yes, but is it good for the Jews?’ goes the classic question, often used ironically, to ask what... Read more > Article Summer 2016

‘The greatest emissary the Jewish people ever had’: Asaf Siniver on Abba Eban

By Asaf Siniver
Asaf Siniver’s biography of Abba Eban tells the story of an entirely exceptional man who by the age... Read more > Article Summer 2016

We are weak because there is no Palestinian non-violent movement

By Ali Abu Awwad
Ali Abu Awwad is a leading Palestinian activist and the founder of Roots – an Israeli-Palestinian project in... Read more > Article Summer 2016

We must not be afraid to talk about the roots of the conflict

By Shaul Judelman
Shaul Judelman is a Jewish Israeli living in the Gush Etzion settlement and he is the coordinator of... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Assessing the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Policy

By Grant Rumley and Adam Rasgon
Has the internationalisation strategy pushed by President Abbas transformed international public opinion and diplomacy and set the Palestinians... Read more > Article Summer 2016

After Oslo’s failure, the two-state solution is now an international responsibility: an interview with Husam Zomlot

By Husam Zomlot
Husam Zomlot serves as ambassador-at-large for the state of Palestine and adjunct professor of Government at Birzeit University.... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Sykes and Picot ignored the sectarianism of the Middle East, and we are still paying the price

By Asher Susser
It is 100 years since the signing of the Sykes-Picot Agreement – the division of the territory of... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Anti-Zionism: 21st Century Avatar of the Longest Hatred

By Richard Landes
In this bracing polemic, the US academic Richard Landes argues that the demonising anti-Zionism of what he calls... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Israel and the Death Penalty: Lessons from the Talmud

By Edward Rettig
The proposal to make it easier to pass the death sentence is a troubling exercise in unsustainable moral... Read more > Article Summer 2016

An Antisemitic Hoax: Lenni Brenner on Zionist ‘Collaboration’ With the Nazis

By Paul Bogdanor
The former mayor of London Ken Livingstone has defended his explosive claim that Adolf Hitler was ‘a Zionist’... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Book Review│Doomed to Succeed: The US- Israel Relationship from Truman to Obama

By David Lowe
On 12 May 1948, nearly six months after the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into separate Jewish... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Book Review│Socialism of Fools: Capitalism and Modern Anti-Semitism

By Colin Shindler
The Italian academic, Michele Battini examines the gradual transformation of the traditional Christian anti-Semitic charge of usury into... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Social Cohesion and the Future of Israel

By Mike Prashker
Mike Prashker, author of a forthcoming book, A Place for Us All – Social Cohesion and The Future... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Docaviv 2016 – The Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival

By Gavin Gross
This May witnessed the annual Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival, an event dedicated to the development and... Read more > Article Summer 2016

The Eloquence of Oriented: An interview with Jake Witzenfeld

By Jake Witzenfeld
  Sitting in the Green Room at JW3, the London Jewish Community’s cultural centre, a jetlagged Jake Witzenfeld,... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Defending Human Rights in a Nation Under Siege: A Sermon of Sorts

By Edward Rettig
In a chaotic and morally obtuse situation, little understood by outsiders, Israel must still try to follow the... Read more > Article Summer 2016

Hitler and the Nazis’ Anti-Zionism

By Jeffrey Herf
Jeffrey Herf, author of the award winning book 'Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the... Read more > Article Summer 2016
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Fathom 12 | Editorial

By Fathom Editors
Fathom 12 addresses five themes. First, the rise of the new antisemitism. Alex Chalmers hit the headlines when... Read more > Spring 2016

First Industrial Nation Meets Start-Up Nation

By Alex Brummer
Beyond the headlines, Britain and Israel – the First Industrial Nation’ and the ‘Start-Up Nation’ – are drawing... Read more > Spring 2016

Can Israel remain secure in a world of Arab disintegration, American retreat, and Iranian ambition?

By Calev Ben-Dor
In a comprehensive and clear-sighted survey Fathom deputy editor Calev Ben-Dor assesses the implications of regional disintegration for... Read more > Spring 2016

Representing the Trial: Judith Butler Reads Hannah Arendt Reading Adolf Eichmann

By Russell Berman
Judith Butler is one of the world’s most influential academics and public intellectuals and a leading supporter of... Read more > Article Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Mitchell Cohen

By Mitchell Cohen
Perry Anderson and the House of Anti-Imperialism Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long essay, ‘The House... Read more > Article Spring 2016

Antisemitic anti-Zionism and the scandal of Oxford University Labour Club

By Alex Chalmers
Alex Chalmers was co-Chair of Oxford University Labour Club until he resigned in February, alleging that a ‘large... Read more > Spring 2016

'What we are lacking is courageous leadership': an interview with Koby Huberman

By Koby Huberman
BICOM Chief Executive James Sorene spoke with Koby Huberman, who was a high tech entrepreneur before it was... Read more > Spring 2016

Two-state solution 2.0: New Israeli thinking on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Toby Greene
A number of proposals for how Israel can act to change the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian arena... Read more > Spring 2016

Prisoners, Peace and the Palestinian National Movement: an interview with Ashraf al-Ajrami

By Ashraf al-Ajrami
Ashraf al-Ajrami was the Minister of Prisoners Affairs for the Palestinian Authority (PA) between 2007 and 2009. A... Read more > Spring 2016

'Doing God', or the importance of religious peacemaking: an interview with Rabbi Michael Melchior

By Michael Melchior
When it comes to conflict resolution, the dominant view has been that God should be taken out of... Read more > Spring 2016

Learning the Lessons of the Oslo Peace Process

By Yair Hirschfeld
Yair Hirschfeld was a key architect of the Oslo Accords and is now the Director General of the Economic... Read more > Spring 2016

Nawi-Gate: the self-immolation of the Israeli far-left

By Eylon Aslan-Levy
Israeli TV broadcast extraordinary claims by a far-left Israeli activist: that he had delivered to the Palestinian Authority... Read more > Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Michael Walzer

By Michael Walzer
Perry Anderson’s War Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long essay, ‘The House of Zion’, was published... Read more > Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Einat Wilf

By Einat Wilf
Anderson’s One-State Solution ignores the certain fate of the Jews Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long... Read more > Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | John Strawson

By John Strawson
One-State is a Trap for Two Peoples in Palestine and Israel Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s... Read more > Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Shany Mor

By Shany Mor
Perry Anderson’s Theological Anti-Zionism Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long essay, ‘The House of Zion’, was... Read more > Spring 2016

Perry Anderson’s House of Zion: A Symposium | Cary Nelson

By Cary Nelson
Perry Anderson’s Reactionary Fantasy Editorial introduction to the Symposium: Perry Anderson’s long essay, ‘The House of Zion’, was... Read more > Spring 2016

Book Review│The Definition of Anti-Semitism

By Robert Fine
The word ‘antisemitism’ currently has a strange aura around it. There is a curious reluctance on the part... Read more > Spring 2016

Book Review | Diasporic Activism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

By Keith Kahn-Harris
One of the most striking features of intra-Jewish conflicts over Israel in the UK and elsewhere in the... Read more > Spring 2016

Book Review | The Rise of the Israeli Right: From Odessa to Hebron

By Jonathan Rynhold
This book will serve as the definitive history of the Israeli Right in English. Building on his previous... Read more > Spring 2016
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Fathom 11

By Fathom Editors
Read more > Article

Fathom Forum | David Newman | Thinking creatively about borders and settlers

By Professor David Newman
David Newman is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, and a Professor of Geopolitics in the Department... Read more > Autumn 2015

Fathom Review 2015

By Fathom Editors
Preface by Anthony Julius Fathom exists to fathom Israel's complexities. It engages with a troubling characteristic of much... Read more > Autumn 2015

Deterring Iran: Time for a new mindset

By Michael Herzog
As the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 goes into effect with the announcement of Implementation Day... Read more > Autumn 2015

‘This shows it is possible to transform Israel into a just society’: Ron Gerlitz on the Arab Economic Development Plan

By Ron Gerlitz
The Israeli government has approved an ambitious $3.85 billion plan for the social and employment development of Israel’s Arab citizens.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Models of Israeli disengagement: an interview with Shany Mor

By Shany Mor
Shany Mor is a former Director for Foreign Policy on the Israeli National Security Council. In this video he... Read more > Autumn 2015

‘There is a clash of civilisations’: An interview with Benny Morris

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
In this in-depth interview, Israeli historian Benny Morris speaks with Professor Gabriel Noah Brahm about his work, his... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Einat Wilf

By Einat Wilf
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Six steps to defeat ISIS

By Giora Eiland
Giora Eiland spoke to Fathom about six steps the coalition must take to defeat ISIS: cooperating with Russia,... Read more > Autumn 2015

The Syrian Cauldron – A View from Israel

By Michael Herzog
As Parliament is set to debate joining the coalition against ISIS in Syria, BICOM Senior Visiting Fellow Brig.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Rabin eBook | Foreword by President Reuven Rivlin

By Reuven Rivlin
  This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded... Read more > Autumn 2015

Rabin eBook | A statesman not a politician: remembering Yitzhak Rabin

By Uri Dromi
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

What does the ‘Corbyn Revolution’ mean for the UK Left and Israel?

By Luke Akehurst
Veteran activist and former UK Labour Party National Executive Committee member Luke Akehurst offers an in-depth look at... Read more > Autumn 2015

Fathom eBook | The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin

By Fathom Editors
Fathom has published a new eBook to mark the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Tzipi Livni

By Tzipi Livni
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Fathom Forum | Jonathan Rynhold | What does the US presidential election mean for US-Israel relations?

By Jonathan Rynhold
Dr. Jonathan Rynhold is author of The Arab-Israeli Conflict in American Political Culture (2015), senior researcher at the... Read more > Autumn 2015

Islamic State and Islamist politics in the UK: why ‘not in my name’ is not enough

By Dave Rich
Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust argues that while IS has the support of only small minorities... Read more > Autumn 2015

Ultra-nationalism, settlements and Jewish extremism: an interview with Sara Hirschhorn

By Sara Hirschhorn
Settlements and settlers in the West Bank are seen as by many in Europe and the West as... Read more > Autumn 2015

Is it Iran’s Middle East now?

By Jonathan Spyer
Leading regional expert Jonathan Spyer thinks not. While the single best organised and most aggressive alliance active currently... Read more > Autumn 2015

The Corbyn left: the politics of position and the politics of reason

By David Hirsh
Abstract This paper is about a preference within contemporary left-wing culture for defining opponents as not belonging rather... Read more > Autumn 2015

The Left and the Jews: Time for a Rethink

By Alan Johnson
A shorter version of this talk was delivered as a contribution to a panel discussion on ‘The Left... Read more > Autumn 2015

Book Review│Australia & Israel: A Diasporic, Cultural and Political Relationship

By Philip Mendes
Australia and Israel are superficially the oddest of couples. They are geographically distant, and massively different in size.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Book Review | Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel

By Matti Friedman
Einat Wilf's book Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel is available on Amazon or... Read more > Autumn 2015

David Cesarani: In Memoriam

By Jeffrey Herf
As readers of this journal know by now, David Cesarani, Professor of History at Royal Holloway, London University... Read more > Autumn 2015

Rabin eBook | Why Rabin matters today

By Luciana Berger
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Omer Bar-Lev

By Omer Bar-Lev
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Michael Herzog

By Michael Herzog
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Sara Hirschhorn

By Sara Hirschhorn
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Symposium on Rabin's legacy – Ronen Hoffman

By Ronen Hoffman
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Rabin eBook | Rabin in Churchill’s War Rooms: remembering a Prime Minister

By Sir Martin Gilbert
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015

Rabin eBook | Rabin’s Strategy: understanding security and the limits of power

By Shlomo Avineri
This piece is from Fathom’s eBook The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin, which can be downloaded here.... Read more > Autumn 2015
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Fathom 10

By Fathom Editors
Read more > Article

What Palestinian terrorists write on Facebook

By Elhanan Miller
As the British government’s recently launched counter-extremism strategy acknowledges the role of social media in spreading hate, Elhanan... Read more > Summer 2015

Fathom eBook | Two States for Two Peoples – 20 Years after Oslo II: How to renew the peace process...

By Fathom Editors
To mark the 20th anniversary of the Oslo II agreement, Fathom has published an eBook – Two States for... Read more > Summer 2015

Making Sense of ISIS: an interview with Michael Weiss

By Michael Weiss
Michael Weiss is the co-author with Hassan Hassan of the New York Times bestseller ISIS: Inside the Army... Read more > Summer 2015

Building Peace from the Grassroots

By Joel Braunold
On 30 June 2015, Joel Braunold, US Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP) spoke to... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |Boycotting Israel is Wrong: The progressive path to peace between Palestinians and Israelis

By Luke Akehurst
Boycotting Israel is Wrong is a timely short book on the BDS phenomenon by Australian academics Philip Mendes... Read more > Summer 2015

Debating Michael Walzer’s 'Islamism and the Left'

By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and one of... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review | Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide

By David Lowe
David E. Lowe is the Vice President for Government Relations and Public Affairs at the National Endowment for... Read more > Summer 2015

The New Special Relationship: The British Conservative Party and Israel

By Alan Mendoza
In recent years, a once ambivalent relationship between the world’s oldest political party and one of its younger... Read more > Summer 2015

‘The time to compromise is when you are strong’: an interview with Omer Bar-Lev MK

By Omer Bar-Lev
Omer Bar-Lev is an MK for the Zionist Union. He was a commander in one of the IDF’s... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |The Paradox of Liberation: Secular Revolutions and Religious Counterrevolutions

By James Bloodworth
What has happened to the secular and democratic left? It would be an exaggeration to say that everywhere... Read more > Summer 2015

In These Times: A Statement on Contemporary European Anti-Semitism

By Shalom Lappin, Brian Bix, Eve Garrard, Steve De Wijze, Matthew Kramer, and Hillel Steiner
Antisemitism is a form of racism. Indeed, it is one of the oldest and most virulent instances of... Read more > Summer 2015

Book Review |Catch The Jew!

By Michael Wegier
Tuvia Tenenbom is a product of the Ultra-Orthodox community in B'nai Brak, near Tel Aviv. He grew up... Read more > Summer 2015

Israel’s Embittered Generation

By Marc Goldberg
After another election disappointment for the Israel left, British-Israeli blogger Marc Goldberg asks how Israeli Labour can win... Read more > Summer 2015

Terrorism in cyberspace

By Gabriel Weimann
Professor Gabriel Weimann spoke to a Fathom Forum about his book Terrorism in Cyberspace: The Next Generation. The... Read more > Summer 2015

Interfaith on Campus: lessons of the St Andrews Coexistence Initiative

By Joel Salmon
St Andrews is an institution consistently placed in the top three universities in the UK. Over 600 years... Read more > Summer 2015

The Collective Impact Forum and Arab Employment: an interview with Yifat Ovadia

By Yifat Ovadia
Yifat Ovadia established the Collective Impact Forum (CIF) to increase the employment of the Arab population in Israel’s... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM Conference 2015: ‘If we stand together against religious persecution, we win’, a speech by Lord Sacks

By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
Former Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks in a speech to the BICOM-Jewish News ‘UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference’. Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM Conference: Discussion on Iran

By BICOM
A panel discussion on Iran at the UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference. Participants were: Sir Richard Dalton (Chatham House),... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Discussion on radicalisation

By BICOM
A panel discussion on radicalisation at the UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference. Participants were: Charles Farr (Director of the Office for... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Yair Lapid in conversation with Bronwen Maddox

By Yair Lapid
Leader of the Yesh Atid party Yair Lapid speaking to Prospect editor Bronwen Maddox the BICOM-Jewish News ‘UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference’. Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Isaac Herzog in conversation with Jonathan Freedland

By Isaac Herzog
Leader of Israel's opposition and Zionist Union party Isaac Herzog speaking to The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland the BICOM-Jewish... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: A speech by Shaul Mofaz

By Shaul Mofaz
A speech by former IDF Chief of Staff and Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz at the the BICOM-Jewish News ‘UK/Israel... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Collapse of Arab states and the rise of ISIL

By BICOM
A panel discussion on the collapse of Arab states and the rise of ISIL at the UK/Israel Shared Strategic... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Does increasing antisemitism threaten the future of European Jewry?

By BICOM
A panel discussion on antisemitism at the UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference. Participants were: Fulvio Martusciello MEP ,Sarah Benioff (DCLG), Robert... Read more > Summer 2015

JN-BICOM 2015 Conference: Have rejectionists slammed the door on the two-state solution?

By BICOM
A panel discussion on the two-state solution at the UK/Israel Shared Strategic Challenges Conference. Participants were: Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, Omer Bar... Read more > Summer 2015

Multi-stage Coordinated Unilateralism: A Proposal to Rescue the Two-State Paradigm

By Cary Nelson
In this wide-ranging and hopeful essay, Cary Nelson aims to move the international conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict away from mutual... Read more > Summer 2015

Red lines and pitfalls: the Iran deal and beyond – an interview with Mike Herzog

By Michael Herzog
Brig. Gen. (res.) Michael Herzog assesses the underlying concerns with the Iran nuclear negotiations, the implications for the... Read more > Summer 2015

Reflections on Contemporary Anti-Semitism in Europe

By Kenneth Waltzer
The editors are proud to launch a new longer-form publication. Each 'Fathom Insight' will allow writers and readers... Read more > Summer 2015

Gaza One Year After - An Interview with Elhanan Miller

By Elhanan Miller
  Elhanan Miller is the Arab Affairs reporter for the Times of Israel. Alan Johnson is the editor... Read more > Summer 2015
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Fathom 9

By Fathom Editors
Read more > Article

The resurgence of neo-traditionalism

By Asher Susser
Asher Susser explains the resurgence of tradition throughout the region and its political consequences  for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Making David Into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel

By Michael Allen
700 British artists have announced that they are boycotting Israel until the ‘colonial oppression of Palestinians’ ends. In... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Ben-Gurion: Father of Modern Israel

By Colin Shindler
Berl Katznelson, one of Labour Zionism’s ideological founders described David Ben-Gurion as ‘history’s gift to the Jewish people.’... Read more > Winter 2015

Film Review: Dancing Arabs

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
A review of Dancing Arabs (Aravim Rokdim) by Eran Riklis (Director) and Sayed Kashua (screenwriter). The critically acclaimed... Read more > Winter 2015

The ideological roots of media bias against Israel

By Matti Friedman
On 26 January 2015 the former AP reporter Matti Friedman delivered the keynote speech at BICOM’s annual dinner... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | The Hilltop

By Liam Hoare
The Hilltop is the first Israeli novel to chronicle the inner lives of the settlers that has been... Read more > Winter 2015

Making Sense of the Israeli Elections

By Naomi Chazan
On 20 March 2015, three days after the Israeli election, former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Naomi Chazan... Read more > Winter 2015

The Resistible Rise of Iran: an Interview with Michael Ledeen

By Ben Cohen
Fathom advisory editor Ben Cohen spoke with the historian and analyst Michael Ledeen about US foreign policy towards... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | Jews and the Left: The Rise and Fall of a Political Alliance

By David Hirsh
Social theorists sometimes enjoy treating the ‘now’ as the key turning point of history; they like it because... Read more > Winter 2015

Israel, Europe and the converging terror threat

By Amichai Magen
Dr. Amichai Magen maps the increasing interconnectedness of the Islamist terror threats faced by Europe and Israel, and... Read more > Winter 2015

The Future of the Israeli Right: An interview with Yoaz Hendel

By Yoaz Hendel
Israel’s upcoming election is being billed as a choice over the future ideological direction of the country. To... Read more > Winter 2015

‘There is no policy, we are on the edge of a volcano’: an interview with Efraim Halevy

By Efraim Halevy
Efraim Halevy was Director of Mossad from 1998 to 2002. Alan Johnson is the editor of Fathom. They... Read more > Winter 2015

An Arab Social Worker in Israel

By Lamis Shibli Ghadir
Lamis Shibli Ghadir explains the challenges and the rewards of being an Arab social worker in the Ein... Read more > Winter 2015

Anti-Judaism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism

By Eve Garrard
An edited speech given by Eve Garrard, Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University... Read more > Winter 2015

Book Review | A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide

By David Cesarani
Historian David Cesarani hails Alon Confino’s triumphant demonstration that anti-Jewish policies are within the realms of comprehension and... Read more > Winter 2015

The Struggle over the Iranian Nuclear Programme

By Yossi Kuperwasser
It is incumbent on Israel to use all the diplomatic and political tools at its disposal to halt... Read more > Winter 2015

Israel’s Jane Austen: Irit Linur’s all too normal Israel

By Noga Emanuel
In 2002 the Israeli novelist Irit Linur wrote an open letter to the editor of Haaretz announcing that... Read more > Winter 2015

‘Only a blind person would ignore the gravity of the threat which is emerging’: an interview with Dore Gold

By Dore Gold
To get a contrasting view on Prime Minister Netanyahu’s national security policy, Fathom deputy editor Toby Greene spoke with Dore... Read more > Winter 2015
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Fathom 8

By Fathom Editors
Read more > Article

After Gaza: the case for Israeli unilateralism

By Paul Gross
If the status quo is unsustainable and the grounds for a negotiated agreement are absent, at least for... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Drawing Fire: Investigating the Accusations of Apartheid in Israel

By Robert Fine
It is a feature of our times that certain aspects of what Israel has become – notably its... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel

By Andrei S. Markovits
The editors deserve major kudos for having compiled an impressive anthology featuring contributions in opposition to the deeply... Read more > Autumn 2014

Has Israel damaged Palestinian health?

By David Stone
An evidence-based analysis of the nature and impact of Israeli public health policies practices in the West Bank... Read more > Autumn 2014

Palestinian politics after the Gaza conflict: Ben Cohen interviews David Pollock

By Ben Cohen
Where is Palestinian politics going? Fathom advisory editor Ben Cohen talked to David Pollock. Hamas ‘It's not unreasonable... Read more > Autumn 2014

Rachel Shabi’s Mizrahi post-Zionism: a Critique

By Lyn Julius
The discrimination and injustice suffered by Mizrahi Jews in Israel has been used instrumentally by Rachel Shabi to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Alongside or instead of Israel: which Palestine is the UN in solidarity with?

By Einat Wilf with Shany Mor
Tomorrow, the United Nations marks the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.’ But which version of... Read more > Autumn 2014

How the World Turned Against Israel: an interview with Joshua Muravchik

By Joshua Muravchik
Israel was once the plucky underdog supported by Western public opinion, Left and Right. Today, it is the... Read more > Autumn 2014

Givat Haviva and the pursuit of a shared society

By Mohammad Darawshe
Mohammad Darawshe, the Co-Executive Director of the Givat Haviva Institute, spoke to a Fathom Forum in September 2014... Read more > Autumn 2014

In Defence of Zionism

By Gadi Taub
Gadi Taub is a prominent Israeli historian, author, screenwriter, political commentator and Senior Lecturer in the School Public Policy and the Department of Communications... Read more > Autumn 2014

A new Tikva for all Israelis

By Benjamin Pogrund
Benjamin Pogrund argues that revising the national anthem could be an important symbolic step towards achieving the integration... Read more > Autumn 2014

Britain’s reaction to Operation Protective Edge

By Toby Greene
The UK’s response to the recent Gaza conflict demonstrates, not for the first time, the role that domestic... Read more > Autumn 2014

Winning the media war

By Einat Wilf
Einat Wilf’s regular column – dispatches from a roving ambassador for Israel – asks how to win the... Read more > Autumn 2014

Settlements and the Two-State Solution: Lorin Bell-Cross interviews Dani Dayan

By Dani Dayan
Settlement construction is a controversial topic within Israel and is often the subject of international criticism and concern.... Read more > Autumn 2014

Settlements and the Two-State Solution: Alan Johnson interviews Lior Amihai

By Lior Amihai
Settlement construction beyond Israel’s internationally recognised borders is a controversial topic within Israel and often the subject of... Read more > Autumn 2014

IS and the incoherence of Western policy

By Jonathan Spyer
The West wants to destroy IS but it has neither allies on the ground nor a grasp of... Read more > Autumn 2014

Reflections on the Middle East’s Christians in these strained times

By Habib C. Malik
Christians of the Middle East, whether free or captive to dhimmitude, have not readily identified with the travails... Read more > Autumn 2014

Sami Michael: The Discreet Ironist of Israeli Literature

By Noga Emanuel
The Israeli novelist Sami Michael evolved from an Iraqi Jewish communist writing in his native Arabic language to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Israel and the World Powers: Diplomatic Alliances and International Relations beyond the Middle East

By Jacob Eriksson
This volume comes at a particularly interesting time for Israel. The most recent war in Gaza has claimed... Read more > Autumn 2014

Book Review | Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through Twenty-First Century Antisemitism

By Dave Rich
First, the disclosure: Ben Cohen is a friend and comrade who was kind enough to invite me to... Read more > Autumn 2014

Why we keep getting the Middle East wrong

By Mordechai Kedar
Dr Mordechai Kedar spoke to a Fathom Forum in London in September 2014 about why so many Western... Read more > Autumn 2014

BDS vs. conflict-resolution

By Sapan Maini-Thompson
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement ignores a key principle of conflict-resolution: severing economic ties risks perpetuating... Read more > Autumn 2014

The European Association of Israel Studies and the Academic Boycott

By Ruth Amossy, Denis Charbit and Nadia Ellis
The European Association of Israel Studies sparked controversy in September by requesting that a lecturer at Ariel University, located in a... Read more > Autumn 2014
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Fathom 7

By Fathom Editors
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Shlomo Brom | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Shlomo Brom
Part 1 Part 2 Toby Greene: We have been interviewing a number of analysts over the last few... Read more > Summer 2014

Emily Landau | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Emily B. Landau
Toby Greene: We’ve been speaking to a range of experts about how to bring a substantial long-term change... Read more > Summer 2014

Einat Wilf | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Einat Wilf
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just Israelis and Gazans, but... Read more > Summer 2014

Benedetta Berti | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Benedetta Berti
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. To avoid a fourth, Udi Dekel and Shlomo Brom of... Read more > Summer 2014

Jonathan Spyer | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Jonathan Spyer
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just Israelis and Gazans, but... Read more > Summer 2014

Asher Susser | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Asher Susser
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just Israelis and Gazans, but... Read more > Summer 2014

Michael Herzog | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Michael Herzog
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just Israelis and Gazans, but... Read more > Summer 2014

Jonathan Rynhold | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Jonathan Rynhold
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just the Israelis and Gazans,... Read more > Summer 2014

Matthew Levitt | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Matthew Levitt
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. To avoid a fourth, Udi Dekel and... Read more > Summer 2014

Gershon Baskin | Gaza Symposium: Reconstruction for Demilitarisation?

By Gershon Baskin
Alan Johnson: There have been three military operations in Gaza since 2008. Not just the Israelis and Gazans,... Read more > Summer 2014

IDF operations and the laws of war

By Pnina Sharvit-Baruch
Israel’s military operation to stop rocket fire at Israeli cities and to destroy Hamas tunnels under the Gaza-Israel... Read more > Summer 2014
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Fathom 6

By Fathom Editors
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The Journey of the Kurds

By Gary Kent
The journey of Iraqi Kurdistan from dictatorship to democracy has been remarkable. Gary Kent reports on the transformation... Read more > Spring 2014

The new assault on Israeli academia (and us)

By Cary Nelson
Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors and co-editor of The Case Against Academic... Read more > Spring 2014

A reply to The Lancet’s ‘Open letter for the people in Gaza’

By David Stone
Introduction On 22 July 2014, one of the world’s leading medical journals, The Lancet, published a letter entitled... Read more > Spring 2014

Philosophers For Hamas!

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
A leading European philosopher has declared for killing ‘Zionists’ and arming Hamas. Gabriel Brahm asks what it all... Read more > Spring 2014

The Two-State Solution: The Way Forward

By Manuel Hassassian and Raphael Cohen-Almagor
When we launched Fathom the editors declared that the journal would be ‘a partisan and artisan of the... Read more > Spring 2014

Mutual recognition is essential for a solution

By Toby Greene
The Hassassian and Cohen-Almagor document is commendable for its embrace of mutual recognition, respect and dialogue, even if... Read more > Spring 2014

Israel’s National-Religious Jews and the quest for peace

By Ofer Zalzberg
The Middle East Peace Process has often marginalised the voice of the ‘National-Religious,’ or ‘Religious Zionist’ Jews. Ofer... Read more > Spring 2014

Demarcating the Israeli-Palestinian Border

By Professor David Newman
One reason for the foundering of the recent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks was the failure of the parties to... Read more > Spring 2014

Disaster in the Levant: the Syrian Civil War in its fourth year

By Jonathan Spyer
Jonathan Spyer is one of the few policy experts to regularly visit the front lines in Syria. In... Read more > Spring 2014

Time for a Revolution in Israel’s Global Engagement

By Gidi Grinstein and Daphna Kaufman
Israel needs a revolution in how it thinks about foreign relations. To meet huge external challenges it needs... Read more > Spring 2014

Book Review: Israel Has Moved

By Jonathan Cummings
According to Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, the essence of modernity can be understood in the way in... Read more > Spring 2014

Finding the Words: a review essay

By Liam Hoare
Books under review: Falling Out of Time David Grossman, Jonathan Cape, 2014, pp.208; Neuland, Eshkol Nevo, Chatto &... Read more > Spring 2014

Book Review: My Promised Land: The Triumph and the Tragedy of Israel

By Hannah Weisfeld
As a British Jew reading Ari Shavit’s account of modern day Israel, his starting point feels particularly poignant.... Read more > Spring 2014

East meets West in film

By Yair Raveh
It is not only in politics and the street that Israel’s ethnic tensions surface. Our film reviewer Yair... Read more > Spring 2014

The Philosophy behind ‘BDS’: a review of ‘Deconstructing Zionism: A Critique of Political Metaphysics’

By Gabriel Noah Brahm
What is one to make of a volume of specialised essays in contemporary philosophy – a compilation including... Read more > Spring 2014

Jerusalem Solitudes in Early Hebrew Literature

By Noga Emanuel
As the spiritual bedrock of Judaism, Jerusalem had been a magnet for millennial longing. For centuries Jews intensely... Read more > Spring 2014

Israel and the Territories

By Ahron Bregman
Fathom editors spoke to Ahron Bregman about his new book Cursed Victory: A History of Israel and the... Read more > Spring 2014

Israeli Youth in Distress

By Simcha Getahune
Dr Simcha Getahune, Director of ELEM – Youth in Distress spoke to Fathom’s Bethany Coates about troubled youth... Read more > Spring 2014

America’s Global Dilemma

By Ben Cohen
‘Reset,’ ‘Pivot,’ ‘Leading from Behind,’ ‘Red Lines,’ – the catchphrases of President Obama’s foreign policy are now often... Read more > Spring 2014

Jews and the Left

By Philip Mendes
Dr Philip Mendes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Medicine at Monash... Read more > Spring 2014

The state of Hamas: Toby Greene interviews Benedetta Berti

By Benedetta Berti
Questions have been raised about the direction and intentions of Hamas since the signing of a reconciliation agreement... Read more > Spring 2014

Saving the Promised Land: Alan Johnson interviews Ari Shavit

By Ari Shavit
Ari Shavit’s My Promised Land: The Triumph and the Tragedy of Israel is one of the most talked... Read more > Spring 2014

Václav Havel’s legacy and the struggle for human rights in Iran today

By Ladan Boroumand
Ladan Boroumand is the cofounder and research director of The Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation (ABF), an NGO dedicated to... Read more > Spring 2014

Dispatches from the front: a quarterly report from a roving ambassador for Israel

By Einat Wilf
Welcome to Einat Wilf’s new Fathom column. A former MK and now a roving global ambassador for Israel... Read more > Spring 2014

The ISIS-Kurdish War

By Jonathan Spyer
Jonathan Spyer, a Middle East analyst, author and journalist specialising in the areas of Israel, Lebanon, and Syria... Read more > Summer 2014
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Fathom 5

By Fathom Editors
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Sderot: the bomb shelter capital of the world

By Alan Craig
Since 2000 the city of Sderot has been a target of rockets fired from the Gaza Strip into... Read more > Winter 2014

The unwelcome arrival of the quenelle

By Dave Rich
When the Premier League footballer Nicolas Anelka celebrated a goal by performing a quenelle salute he touched off... Read more > Winter 2014

Holocaust Inversion and contemporary antisemitism

By Lesley Klaff
One of the cruellest aspects of the new antisemitism is its perverse use of the Holocaust as a... Read more > Winter 2014

Israel’s Arab citizens and the struggle for equality

By Joshua Muravchik
'Israel Apartheid Week’ is looming on campuses worldwide. In fact,  as this edited extract from a new ebook... Read more > Winter 2014

Revisiting Isaac Deutscher

By Martyn Hudson
The Polish historian and socialist Isaac Deutscher coined the term ‘the non-Jewish Jew’ to celebrate the tradition of... Read more > Winter 2014

The new Bedouin politics

By Safa Abu-Rabia
An exciting new Bedouin Arab leadership is emerging in Israel’s Negev region. Younger, feminist, critical of both state... Read more > Winter 2014

The Politics of Benjamin Netanyahu: an interview with Aluf Benn

By Aluf Benn
Aluf Benn, Editor in Chief of Haaretz newspaper spoke to Fathom Editor Alan Johnson about the politics and... Read more > Winter 2014

We must divide the land: an interview with Isaac Herzog

By Isaac Herzog
The newly elected Labour leader Isaac Herzog sat down with Fathom to discuss what the Britain-Israel relationship means... Read more > Winter 2014

The Geneva deal and Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

By Ben Cohen
Amid the fanfare about the interim agreement reached in Geneva in November 2013 over Iran’s nuclear programme –... Read more > Winter 2014

The legacy of Ariel Sharon: an interview with David Landau

By David Landau
Few individuals have had more impact on the history of the state of Israel than its former Prime... Read more > Winter 2014

Sakhir the Rock Opera: an interview with Yariv Ben-Yehuda

By Yariv Ben-Yehuda
Yariv Ben-Yehuda is the co-creator, along with Erez Cohen of the rock opera Sakhir, a high-octane romp through... Read more > Winter 2014

Do look back: Lou Reed’s Jewish soul music

By Steven Lee Beeber
When I was writing my book about the Jewish origins of punk, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s, I referred... Read more > Winter 2014

Film Review: Bethlehem vs. Omar

By Yair Raveh
The media pitted one against the other. It was indeed a catchy story: two films from two sides... Read more > Winter 2014

The fruits of Arab labour: an interview with Sayed Kashua

By Sayed Kashua
Sayed Kashua is the creator of the hugely popular Israeli television sitcom Arab Labour and one of the... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Rebels Against Zion

By David Hirsh
In the first half of the 20th century, most Jews failed to find their way to a successful... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Moynihan’s Moment

By Michael Allen
The eminent political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset described Daniel P. Moynihan as ‘the prescient politician’ for his suggestion,... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Like Dreamers

By Liam Hoare
Israel, as Amos Oz once observed, was born out of a spectrum of dreams and visions, blueprints and... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State

By Colin Shindler
In his autobiography, Chaim Weizmann commented that Theodor Herzl was ‘not of the people’ despite being an inspiring... Read more > Winter 2014

Book Review: Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life

By Peter Ryley
The inclusion of the anarchist Emma Goldman in the Yale University Press Jewish Lives series is to be... Read more > Winter 2014
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Fathom 4

By Fathom Editors
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The view from outside

By Yigal Shtayim
The tools that citizens are using to advance human rights in Tel Aviv and beyond are evolving. A... Read more > Autumn 2013

Rules of Engagement

By Richard Pater
An Israeli Defence Force reservist recounts a day patrolling the southern Hebron hills of the West Bank. It’s... Read more > Autumn 2013

UNRWA: an obstacle to peace?

By Einat Wilf
For the sake of peace, reform of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is urgently needed,... Read more > Autumn 2013

Women, the Wall and the Struggle for Jewish Pluralism in Israel

By Noa Sattath
Women of the Wall has been challenging Orthodox religious authorities for over 25 years by praying at the... Read more > Autumn 2013

Time to End Palestinian Incitement

By David Pollock
The glorification of violence in Palestinian Authority media must be addressed if peace talks are to succeed. Even... Read more > Autumn 2013

Social Justice in Israel

By Tali Nir and Marc Grey
How much social justice can we really expect from the Nineteenth Knesset? The Association for Civil Rights in... Read more > Autumn 2013

Restoring our glorious tradition

By Dov Lipman
The growing size of the ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) population, and its self-imposed isolation from the worlds of military service... Read more > Autumn 2013

Hezbollah as a Criminal Organisation

By Matthew Levitt
The radical Shiite Lebanese organisation Hezbollah may be best known for its armed activities, but it also runs... Read more > Autumn 2013

Twenty years after Oslo: peace now?

By Toby Greene
Was Israel’s attempt to resolve its dispute with the Palestinians through bilateral negotiations with the PLO doomed from... Read more > Autumn 2013

Two States is Common Sense

By Hitham Kayali
The one-state solution is a mirage. Only the two state solution can meet the national aspirations of both... Read more > Autumn 2013

Hilik Bar MK on the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks

By Hilik Bar
Hilik Bar MK is Secretary General of the Israeli Labour Party, the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, and... Read more > Autumn 2013

The Making of Within the Eye of the Storm: an interview with Bassam Aramin, Rami Elhanan and Shelley Hermon

By Alan Johnson
Bassam Aramin and Rami Elhanan, a Palestinian and Israeli, were once dedicated fighters willing to kill and be... Read more > Autumn 2013

On Jerusalem: an interview with Danny Seidemann

By Danny Seidemann
Daniel Seidemann is an Israeli attorney specialising in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem. He is the founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem,... Read more > Autumn 2013

Christianophobia: an interview with Rupert Shortt

By Rupert Shortt
Rupert Shortt is the author of Christianophobia: A Faith Under Attack and religion editor of the Times Literary... Read more > Autumn 2013

Book Review: Menachem Begin: A Life

By Steven J. Zipperstein
'Had there been telephones back then,’ recalled a close aide years later, ‘Begin would never have survived his... Read more > Autumn 2013

Book Review: The Tragedy of a Generation: The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe

By Henry Srebrnik
The Tragedy of a Generation, states the book’s dust jacket, is ‘the story of the rise and fall... Read more > Autumn 2013

Letting the right one in: the rise of the Israeli horror film

By Yair Raveh
This has got to be the most surprising, and thrilling, of all trends to have ever emerged in... Read more > Autumn 2013

Book Review: Hank Greenberg: The Hero Who Didn’t Want to Be One

By Andrei S. Markovits
Growing up in the West Romanian town of Timisoara in the 1950s as the only child of a... Read more > Autumn 2013

Book Review: The Invention of the Land of Israel

By Israel Bartal
Shlomo Sand’s political treatise, The Invention of the Land of Israel, is another link in his larger project... Read more > Autumn 2013
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Fathom 3

By Fathom Editors
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Occupy Zionism

By Stav Shaffir
The social protest movement is patriotic, seeking to ‘occupy Zionism’ by completing the founders dream of a country... Read more > Summer 2013

A moment to seize in the Israeli-Palestinian arena

By Michael Herzog
In March 2013 Brig. Gen. (ret.) Michael Herzog analysed a possible opportunity in the Israeli-Palestinian arena for BICOM. Here... Read more > Summer 2013

Can the new Knesset fix the old problems?

By Tal Harris
The chances of the new Knesset fulfilling its promise of ‘new politics’ will depend upon its ability to... Read more > Summer 2013

A new vision for Jerusalem

By Meir Kraus
The Arab League decision to create a $1bn fund to ‘maintain the Arab and Islamic character’ of Jerusalem... Read more > Summer 2013

Turkey and Israel: the limits to rapprochement

By Shashank Joshi
Ties between the two countries will be repaired, but not restored anytime soon. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip... Read more > Summer 2013

The pleasures of antisemitism

By Eve Garrard
Antisemitism is much more than a cognitive error. It attracts by providing the deep emotional satisfactions of hatred,... Read more > Summer 2013

What does Israel's Arab minority really think?

By Alexander Yakobson
The Israel Democracy Institute’s annual survey reveals a gulf between the sentiments of many Israeli Arabs and the... Read more > Summer 2013

Responding to the NGOs Durban Strategy: between engagement and confrontation

By Gerald M. Steinberg
Will the new partnership between the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Oxfam challenge the global NGO-led... Read more > Summer 2013

‘We should still be prepared to intervene’: Richard Perle on George W. Bush, Barack Obama and the Arab Spring

By Alan Mendoza
One of the leading neoconservative intellectuals of the last half century, Richard Perle was Assistant Secretary of Defense... Read more > Summer 2013

The Jewish Political Tradition: an interview with Michael Walzer

By Michael Walzer
Political thinker Michael Walzer and Fathom editor Alan Johnson discuss The Jewish Political Tradition, the ambitious multi-volume series... Read more > Summer 2013

Book Review: The Peace Puzzle

By Ahron Bregman
A series of revolutions over the last two years – the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ – has created a... Read more > Summer 2013

Israeli cinema: gay but not queer

By Yair Raveh
Israeli cinema has been more mainstream and gay than subversive and queer. But that may be about to... Read more > Summer 2013

Book Review: The Muslim Brotherhood: From Opposition to Power

By Eric Trager
In the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Western analysts’ search for a ‘moderate Islamist’ alternative to Al-Qaeda... Read more > Summer 2013

Book Review: Moses Mendelssohn

By Robert Fine
Shmuel Feiner’s fine biography of Moses Mendelssohn shows us just how radical was the very ‘German’ moderation of... Read more > Summer 2013

Book Review: Fortress Israel

By Charles D. Freilich
Patrick Tyler begins Fortress Israel with an alleged Israeli ‘hit’ against an Iranian nuclear scientist. In reality, the... Read more > Summer 2013
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Fathom 2

By Fathom Editors
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There is a future with Yair Lapid

By Benjy Goldberg
Yesh Atid have brought a reforming passion to Israeli politics. Yair Lapid and his party are prepared for... Read more > Spring 2013

Yair Lapid is the heart of all things: a view from the Centre

By Gil Messing
The success of Yesh Atid, winning 19 Knesset seats just one year after its formation is politically dramatic... Read more > Spring 2013

A new country: a view from the Left

By Jo-Ann Mort
Jerusalem, January 25. The gloomy narrative that Israel’s soul had been captured by the settlers and the ideological... Read more > Spring 2013

Success in politics: a view from the Right

By Yisrael Medad
In the elections for Israel’s 19th Knesset the success of Benjamin Netanyahu almost proved to be his downfall.... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel’s economy: the in-tray

By Alex Brummer
From reforming the banks to the crisis in the Eurozone, from increasing Haredi employment to reducing social inequality,... Read more > Spring 2013

Obama’s second term: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not yet soluble

By Joshua Muravchik
There is no alternative to the two-state solution, but neither party is yet in a position to make... Read more > Spring 2013

Obama’s second term: empower the nation-builders not the extremists

By Hussein Ibish
Salam Fayyad’s institution-building program remains the only policy available to lay the groundwork for a successful two-state outcome.... Read more > Spring 2013

No blank cheques: Morsi and Hamas

By Benedetta Berti
Relations between Egypt and Hamas have improved under Morsi. But he has issued no blank cheque and continuity... Read more > Spring 2013

UK-Israel-Palestine and the new age of the city

By Liam Byrne
We are entering a new urban age, so let’s build world class partnerships between the great hubs of... Read more > Spring 2013

The right to democracy

By Amnon Rubinstein
There is a paradox at the heart of human rights discourse – its failure to recognise the right... Read more > Spring 2013

Why don’t the Arabs of Israel vote more?

By Mohammad Darawshe
A new study by the Abraham Fund Initiatives is optimistic about the potential to increase Arab participation in... Read more > Spring 2013

Needed: a paradigm shift in the ‘Middle East Peace Process’

By Shlomo Avineri
Almost twenty years after the signing of the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the... Read more > Spring 2013

The Syrian civil war

By Jonathan Spyer
The end of the Assad regime will probably not mark the end of the civil war but a... Read more > Spring 2013

Alibi Antisemitism

By Norman Geras
Israel has been made an alibi for a new climate of antisemitism on the left. In Marx’s essay... Read more > Spring 2013

The New Arab Politics

By Ghaida Rinawie-Zoabi
Ghaida Rinawie-Zoabi is the co-founder and general director of an Israeli NGO, Injaz Center for Professional Arab Local... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel’s Jazz Scene: an interview with Eli Degibri

By Eli Degibri
Eli Degibri is an Israeli Jazz saxophonist, composer and arranger. He is the co-Artistic Director of the Red... Read more > Spring 2013

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps: an interview with Emanuele Ottolenghi

By Emanuele Ottolenghi
Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. His most recent book,... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel has a narrative that can resonate: an interview with David Horovitz

By David Horovitz
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel, a current affairs website based in Jerusalem... Read more > Spring 2013

Head to Head: Yossi Beilin and Ephraim Sneh on the Iranian nuclear threat

By Yossi Beilin and Ephraim Sneh
Israeli policy makers across the political spectrum agree that Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a major... Read more > Spring 2013

In praise of compromise: Simon Round interviews Amos Oz

By Simon Round
Amos Oz has lived through every one of Israel’s wars and fought in two of them. He has... Read more > Spring 2013

The Making of The Gatekeepers: an interview with Dror Moreh

By Dror Moreh
Dror Moreh is the director of the Academy Award nominated Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers, a rare insight into... Read more > Spring 2013

The making of the law in these parts: an interview with director Ra’anan Alexandrowicz

By Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
The Israeli documentary The Law in these Parts won the Sundance 2012 World Cinema Grand Jury Documentary Prize... Read more > Spring 2013

Deathbed the Musical

By Liat Har-Gil
Israeli animation graduate Liat Har-Gil from Rosh Ha’ayen won the 2012 Faith Shorts, the global film competition of... Read more > Spring 2013

Israel reinvents the documentary

By Yair Raveh
The Gatekeepers is a masterpiece in a landmark year for Israeli documentaries. The last fifteen years have seen... Read more > Spring 2013

Can two walk together?

By A.B Yehoshua
An extract from a play by A.B. Yehoshua. Translated by David Janner-Klausner and adapted for stage by Amy... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Review: Israel’s Death Hierarchy

By Avi Kober
This is an excellent account of Israeli casualty aversion by one of Israel’s leading military sociologists. At the... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Review: Beyond Occupation

By Robbie Sabel
The book is a brief for the claim that Israeli practices in the territories amount to ‘a crime... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Review: Moshe Dayan: Israel’s controversial hero

By Shany Mor
Occasionally in the history of nations a character emerges who seems to personify the nation itself, not so... Read more > Spring 2013

Book Review: Parting Ways: Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism

By Alan Johnson
The cultural theorist Judith Butler has written what she intends as a critique of Zionism derived from Jewish... Read more > Spring 2013
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Fathom 1

By Fathom Editors
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Letter from Gush Etzion

By Samuel Lebens
Think you know who the settlers are? Think again I live beyond the Green Line. That makes me... Read more > Winter 2013

The accidental wisdom of Israel’s maligned electoral system

By Shany Mor
Routinely berated for producing weak governments beholden to minorities, Israel’s electoral system actually gives all a voice and... Read more > Winter 2013

To stop Iran, all options must (really) be on the table

By Emily B. Landau
The international community must now play hardball with Iran. Only escalating sanctions and a credible military threat can... Read more > Winter 2013

Defining antisemitism down

By David Hirsh
When the UCU rejected the EUMC Working Definition of antisemitism which states that some kinds of criticism of... Read more > Winter 2013

Shifting world, shifting priorities

By Toby Greene
The global economic crisis and the Arab Spring have impacted but not transformed the Britain-Israel relationship. Toby Greene... Read more > Winter 2013

Let’s get real in presenting Israel

By Mike Prashker
The story we tell about Israel should take its cue from Danny Boyle’s glorious but messy London opening... Read more > Winter 2013

Israel’s new strategic environment

By Asher Susser
Israel used to fear the potential of Arab power. Now it must be wary of the fallout from... Read more > Winter 2013

Israel’s Arab citizens

By Alice Wood
Integrating Arab citizens into the Israeli private sector is good for Israel’s Arab citizens, good for Israel’s economy... Read more > Winter 2013

The IDF 2.0: Alan Johnson interviews Amos Harel

By Amos Harel
A fast-changing society, a disturbing new regional security environment and radical new ideas in military philosophy: are we... Read more > Winter 2013

The Two Jerusalems: a review essay

By Noam Leshem
There are two Jerusalems: the celestial yerushalayim shel mala and the earthly yerushalayim shel mata. These three books... Read more > Winter 2013

Book Review: Spies Against Armageddon

By Ephraim Kahana
Inside Israel’s secret wars 22 years after the release of their best seller The Imperfect Spies, Yossi Melman and... Read more > Winter 2013

Book Review | Global Palestine

By Philip Spencer
The central argument of this book is that the question of Palestine is fundamentally a global question, indeed... Read more > Winter 2013

Book Review: Israel and the European Left

By Ezra Mendelsohn
Shindler offers a valuable account of the rise and rise of anti-Zionism within the European Left. At the... Read more > Winter 2013

Films of faith

By Yair Raveh
2012 will be remembered as the year in which Israeli movies finally found God. It's not often a... Read more > Winter 2013

The Future of Liberal Zionism: An Interview with Michael Walzer

By Michael Walzer
Michael Walzer is one of America’s foremost political thinkers. A professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study... Read more > Winter 2013

Helping Israel’s Arab citizens into high-tech

By Alan Johnson
Tsofen is an Israeli non profit organization designed to help Israel’s Arab citizens enter the country’s high-tech industry.... Read more > Winter 2013

Head to head: Moshe Arens and Ami Ayalon discuss coordinated unilateralism

By Ami Ayalon and Moshe Arens
Unilateral withdrawal from part of the West Bank was very much on the agenda following Israel’s withdrawal from the... Read more > Winter 2013

Thoughts of a National Liberal: an interview with Benny Begin

By Benny Begin
First elected to the Knesset in 1988 as a Likud MK, Benny Begin is Minister without Portfolio in... Read more > Winter 2013