Gil Troy is the author of The Age of Clinton: America in the 1990s. His forthcoming book, The Zionist Ideas, which updates Arthur Hertzberg’s classic work, will be published by The Jewish Publication Society in Spring 2018. He is a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University. Follow on Twitter @GilTroy
One American history student recently wrote me that, following a link from the Web log Little Green Footballs, he noticed my “name on a list of ‘known Jews.’ Does it disturb or frighten you to be bluntly characterized as a ‘Zionist American Jew,’” he asked, “or do you take a degree of pride in your…
Summer is ending and students are returning to campus. Many Jewish students, however, will be returning not only to seminars and syllabi, but also to the anti-Israel protests and propaganda that have plagued many North American campuses since the Palestinians launched their intifada in the fall of 2000. Montreal’s Concordia University, in particular, has become…
In June, Fatah power broker Marwan Barghouti wrote a note from his Israeli jail cell to Khaled Mashal, Hamas’s negotiator in Damascus, urging a cease-fire with Israel. Barghouti, who despite being on trial for the murder of 26 Israelis, passes for a “moderate” in the lethal caldron of Palestinian politics, observed that since the September…
The first generations of American Jews earned a reputation as progressive politically but morally disciplined. The current generation of young Jews, though, lacks those ethical foundations. We have raised a generation of super-consumers often contemptuous of Judaism — because it offers no alternative to suburban superficiality — and addicted to modern America’s vices. A Hillel…
George W. Bush’s America — like its loyal friend Israel — has once again demonstrated the old saw that democracies are slow to anger, but once mobilized they are well-nigh unstoppable. Just as Israel did reluctantly and belatedly last spring, the United States has demonstrated in Afghanistan and in Iraq that you cannot defeat terrorism…
My grandmother used to sigh, “Shver tsu zayn a yid” — it’s tough to be a Jew. These days, though, it’s even tougher to be a Zionist. It is an act of triple-chutzpah. Diaspora Zionists risk the opprobrium of anti-Zionists who libel Zionism as racism, of Israelis like writer A.B. Yehoshua who uses crude sexual…
Just who is George W. Bush? Is he “Top Gun,” as Newsweek recently crowned him, or “The Right Man,” as David Frum argues in his book, a master of strategy besting Democrats and Iraqis with ease? Is he the “deliberate, patient” visionary Bob Woodward depicts in “Bush at War,” a leader so clever, so engaged,…
Oddly energized by the intellectual onslaught against the Jewish state, “Israel advocacy” is hot on campus these days. Yet there must be more to a Jew’s relationship with the Jewish state than countering “myths” with “facts.” We need a more positive and meaningful engagement with Israel. Alas, too many community leaders stereotype Israel as the…
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