Gal Beckerman was a staff writer and then the Forward’s opinion editor until 2014. He was previously an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review where he wrote essays and media criticism. His book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review and Bookforum. His first book, “When They Come for Us, We’ll Be Gone: The Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” won the 2010 National Jewish Book Award and the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, as well as being named a best book of the year by The New Yorker and The Washington Post. Follow Gal on Twitter at @galbeckerman
Gal Beckerman
By Gal Beckerman
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Opinion In Knesset, Populism Trumps Reason
What is happening in the Knesset? It seems that every week brings forth a new bill that would curtail some aspect of Israel’s democracy. As Carlo Strenger writes in Haaretz today, “It is hard to avoid the impression that the parliamentarians of the 19th Knesset have engaged in a ferocious competition for chauvinism and anti-liberalism.”…
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Opinion Bibi and Abu Mazen Kiss
One can always dream, right? This photo(shopped) image has been making the rounds and it’s hard to tear your eyes away from that pucker. It’s one of a series from a new ad campaign from Benetton that harkens back to the days when they were regularly producing wonderfully subversive ads that demanded a double take…
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Opinion Another Goldstone Inaccuracy
With his New York Times op-ed today, Judge Richard Goldstone continues his long march towards insuring that his name no longer be synonymous with self-hating, Israel-bashing Jew. He has written to argue — from his vantage point of having been a judge in apartheid-era South Africa — that the attempt to label the situation in…
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Opinion Bibi Netanyahu: Islamic Scholar?
Like Vladimir Putin, who can just don a wetsuit and emerge from a deep sea dive holding two sixth-century artifacts, there is apparently nothing Benjamin Netanyahu can’t do. Just read the seventh paragraph of this New York Times story, about the opening of the Metropolitan Museum’s new Islamic art galleries. It mentions a visit that…
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Opinion The Political Dividends of the Shalit Deal
Looking at the results of a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 2 and the Sarid Institute for Research Services, it’s clear that the Israeli public is smiling on Benjamin Netanyahu, now fresh from negotiating the release of Gilad Shalit. The poll shows that Likud would win 37 seats in the next Knesset, up 10 from…
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Opinion Israeli Reality Versus Our Projections
I just returned from a few weeks in Israel, and was there during the dramatic denouement of the Gilad Shalit story. The trip reminded me why it’s important for those of us who observe and comment and tear our hair out over Israel to actually experience the country as a place — as opposed to…
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Opinion Obama Is Israel’s Captain America
Apparently, all it took was a speech. After Barack Obama’s address to the United Nations last week, in which he spent approximately two minutes telling the Israeli narrative in a way that satisfied certain Jewish ears (and, of course, opposing Palestinian statehood), he is suddenly in the good graces of the Israeli population for really…
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Opinion Our Man at the U.N.
It’s an eventful week here for those of us following the never ending saga known as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The spotlight is now, of course, on the United Nations General Assembly, where the Palestinians will make their case for statehood and the Americans and Israelis will tell us why this is a bad idea. Our…
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