Ukrainian-born Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (1856-1927), whose pen name was Ahad Ha’Am (Hebrew for one of the people), was a proponent of Spiritual, or Cultural, Zionism, which made him a rival to Theodor Herzl and Political Zionism, the movement dedicated to creating a nation-state in Palestine for all Jewish people worldwide. Ahad Ha’Am remains relevant to understanding the roots of the conflict in Palestine and Israel that has cost so many innocent lives. Hans Kohn, a Bohemian-born American writer, shed light on Ahad Ha’Am’s thinking about the “Arab problem” for Herzl’s movement in “Zion and the Jewish National Idea,” published in Menorah Journal, Autumn-Winter 1958. (The…

Less than a year before election day, recent polls indicate that former President Donald Trump is leading incumbent President Joe Biden in key swing states that will decide the fate of the 2024 presidential race, The Hill reported.Trump leads Biden in hypothetical match-ups both with and without third-party options on the ballot in states including Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, according to fresh polling. Notably, Biden carried each of those states in 2020, and Trump will need to flip at least a few of those states if he is to win in 2024. While these numbers indicate that…

The Turkish Foreign Ministry has condemned what it called the "provocation" in a mosque in the occupied West Bank by Israeli troops who were seen reciting a Jewish prayer. Video footage showed soldiers inside a mosque in Jenin refugee camp using loudspeakers to recite the Shema Yisrael, a central prayer in Judaism. Towards the end of the clip, laughter can be heard as troops walk outside the mosque and a Hanukkah song rings out from the loudspeaker. It was not clear when the footage was filmed, but Israeli forces were engaged in a deadly raid in Jenin this week that saw 11…

I do not believe that anything I say about what is happening in Gaza will affect Israeli or American policy in that conflict. But I want to be on record so that when historians look back on this moral calamity, they will see that some Americans were on the right side of history. What Israel is doing in Gaza to the Palestinian civilian population – with the support of the Biden administration – is a crime against humanity that serves no meaningful military purpose. As J-Street, an important  organization in the Israel lobby, puts it, “The scope of the unfolding humanitarian…

The Foreign Ministry publicly defended on Monday the Indonesia Hospital in Gaza from Israeli allegations linking the privately funded health facility to Hamas, a group that launched a surprise attack on Israel on Oct. 7. It was the correct decision of the ministry, although a bit too late. In a press briefing with foreign reporters, Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday the Indonesia Hospital had been built by Hamas "on a site that sat on top of a network of Hamas tunnels, to conceal the underground fortifications". "Hamas systematically built the Indonesia Hospital to disguise its underground terror infrastructure,"…