The U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report does not mince words when discussing civil society and attempts to suppress it:

"As we have seen in the Middle East and elsewhere, governments cannot suppress civil society indefinitely, and they can never suppress it legitimately."

It is by now almost a cliché to restate the famous saying by Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it;" but sometimes, historical repetitions are begging us to remember this keen observation.
It happens to be 61 years

Some cups of tea should be sipped even if one is not thirsty: "They don't admit that they're investigating you. They just say that they're friends and they want to chat [over a cup of tea]. I say that since they're just friends, I can accept their invitation or not."

"Go back to Gaza, you traitor!"
-- MK Miri Regev (Likud), in Arabic, to MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad)

July 13th 2010, the day in which the Knesset revoked the parliamentary privileges of an elected member of parliament through a public humiliation spectacle, represents a black day for...

In 1948, just a few years after World War II, the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration was drafted with the memory of the War's horrific human rights violations still fresh and resonating in the minds of its authors. It has...

Sometime between Israel's first Human Rights March in Tel Aviv and getting falsely arrested in Sheikh Jarrah, I had the pleasure of being one of close to 2,000 participants in the annual Limmud in the UK. The Limmud Conference brings together Jews...

In recent weeks, the ongoing weekly protests in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah have succeeded in making headlines both in Israel and abroad. Sheikh Jarrah is one of the most contentious neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, where Israeli settlers are

In an unprecedented show of strength, diversity, and optimism, more than 5,000 people marched together in Tel Aviv on December 11, in Israel's first Human Rights March. More than a hundred organizations - many of which had previously never cooperated - came together for the march and rally, and,...

There's a limit to how many blows democracy can take before it is trampled down and beaten into something else. Democracy and human rights are absolutely essential for protecting who we are, preserving our rights, and enabling us to realize the equality we all deserve.

Prime Minister Netanyahu was quoted in The Washington Post on Saturday, in response to a question on an independent inquiry following the Goldstone report, responding thus: "We're looking into that not because of the Goldstone report but because of our own internal needs."

There exists both hypocrisy and truth...

For starters, here's the sprint version of this post: this Saturday, I am going to participate in the first full triathlon in my life. It's a huge effort, and honestly - I'm quite anxious, but also excited and hopeful. I hope to be able to actually finish, and to even...

The annals of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have certainly charted many triumphant peaks of newspeak. Still, recent weeks seem to somehow have succeeded in yet setting new records in this unfortunate endeavor. Cynicism put aside, we should not be amused. The cost of politicians toying so recklessly with our future is...

July 1: Not A Marginal Difference
An IDF officer allegedly orders one of his soldiers to shoot a bound, blind-folded Palestinian detainee at close range. The soldier then fires a rubber bullet at point-blank range at Mr. Ashraf Abu Rahma. The incident is caught on-camera by a B'Tselem...

The prologue was a national election campaign, which, amongst other novel ideas, put into question the citizenship of one in five Israelis. With such a promising opening, chapter one quickly unfolded: Less than 100 days into this new government, a barrage of anti-democratic initiatives emerged: Nakba remembrance on Israel's Independence...

Listening to all the endless, pompous rhetoric about Jerusalem, one might be convinced to believe that this is a city inhabited by divine symbols, not by real human beings, flesh, blood, sweat and all. But Jerusalem is obviously both: a city of unique international symbolism and home to more than...

In a recent NY Times piece ("In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Look at Past Use", April 21), a former advisor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2005 and 2006, Mr. Philip D. Zelikow, is thus quoted:

"Competent staff work could have quickly canvassed relevant history, insights from the...

As any trekkie knows, rifts in the space-time continuum are a fact of life; and as any Israeli knows, one of the defining such domestic rifts is the one between Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv: for the two cities are only 60 kilometers (40 miles) away, and yet they stand some 2,000...

When I was younger, or so the legends go, the wars here were more robust. They used to come once a decade or so, coherent, conventional, with a clear beginning and ending. And now, I blinked my eyes, and suddenly it is January of 2009. It's a month of Broadway...

A powerful intersection between the personal and the professional can be good reason to pause, contemplate, and perhaps even try and conjecture an op-ed or a blog post. Such is my predicament, as I recall that striking talkback from a most thrilled individual writing from somewhere on this planet, featured...