Fathom For a deeper understanding of Israel and the region DONATE TO FATHOM Home About us Society Region Peace Anti-Zionism History Events Book Reviews Previous Issues Contributors Donate to Fathom Join over 9000 global opinion formers by subscribing to Fathom's influential Weekly Newsletter Email Address * First Name Last Name Fathom Latest Issue Winter / 2023 Gaza After Hamas | ‘The idea of Hamas will remain in place as long as the Palestinian issue burns heavy... By Gershon Baskin Fathom editors Alan Johnson and Jack Omer-Jackaman speak to renowned writer and peace activist Gershon Baskin. They discuss... Read more > December 2023 ‘I had never witnessed such barbarism before’: Major ‘F’ and the Battle of Holit By Suzan Quitaz Suzan Quitaz is a journalist at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, having worked previously at the Qatari News... Read more > December 2023 Poem | October | by Adi Keissar By Adi Keissar In 2018, Fathom interviewed Adi Keissar, an Israeli poet of Yeminite descent and founder of Ars Poetica, a... Read more > December 2023 The ‘Ben Gurion Canal’: A new crazy anti-Israeli conspiracy theory is doing great business on the internet while the social... By Jonas Hessenauer Jonas Hessenauer is a social scientist and researcher on antisemitism. He is currently working at the Tikvah Institute... Read more > December 2023 Comparing the Hamas Pogrom of 7 October to the Holocaust is a misuse of Holocaust Remembrance say Omer Bartov, Raz... By Ingo Elbe and Enrico Pfau Ingo Elbe and Enrico Pfau of Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg map the several ways in which... Read more > December 2023 “America needs to maintain a balance of power against radical Islam” | Fathom Interview: Jonathan Rynhold By Jonathan Rynhold Fathom Deputy Editor Calev Ben-Dor speaks to Professor Jonathan Rynhold, head of the department of Political Studies at... Read more > December 2023 Opinion | Gaza After Hamas | Wanted: Two-State Realism By Paul Gross If you think the largest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust, perpetrated by the genocidal Islamists controlling... Read more > December 2023 No one believes that any criticism of Israel is invariably antisemitic. The American Association of University Professors has set up... By David Schraub David Schraub is Assistant Professor of Law at Lewis and Clark Law School. He responds here to a... Read more > December 2023 Opinion | I am a Zionist because I am a leftist, not in spite of that commitment By Jack Omer-Jackaman Jack Omer-Jackaman is the author of Caught Somewhere Between Zion and Galut: Zionism, Israel and Anglo-Jewry’s Identity, 1948-1982... Read more > December 2023 ‘When Iran says “death to Israel”, it means precisely what we saw on 7 October’ | An Interview with Behnam... By Behnam Ben Taleblu Behnam Ben Taleblu, a native Farsi speaker, is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies,... Read more > November 2023 A False Sense of Security, Effective Shield or Morale Booster? Israel’s Missile Defence By Azriel Bermant Israel has established an integrated system spanning the entire country to address multiple threats, activating the different systems... Read more > November 2023 Opinion | The Paradigm Shift of 7 October and a Plan for the Jewish Future By Sara Hirschhorn ‘What have we learned since 7 October?’, asks Sara Hirschhorn. Her reply: that the West is being lost... Read more > November 2023 Book Review | In the Shadow of the Wall By Alex Stein A few years ago, I built a special tour for a group of Diaspora Jews who were in... Read more > November 2023 Fathom Long Read | Political Antisemitism Explained By Bernard Harrison Bernard Harrison’s book Blaming the Jews: Politics and Delusion (Indiana University Press, 2020) is, we believe, a vital... Read more > November 2023 "What makes the Palestinian predicament special is displacement, occupation and fragmentation – the outcome of their defeat in three Arab-Israeli... By Shany Mor Fathom editors Alan Johnson and Calev Ben Dor talk to Dr Shany Mor, lecturer in political thought at... Read more > Article November 2023 In Memory of Vivian Silver (1949-2023) By Amal Elsana Alh’jooj Vivian Silver was a universally admired Israeli peace activist who advocated for Palestinian rights. She was murdered by... Read more > November 2023 “Israelis and Palestinians don’t fully recognise the trauma the other is living in right now” | Fathom Interview: John Lyndon By John Lyndon Fathom editors Alan Johnson and Jack Omer-Jackaman speak with John Lyndon, Executive Director of ALLMEP (The Alliance for... Read more > November 2023 Gaza After Hamas: A Proposal for a Palestinian Future By Solon Solomon Solon Solomon is Assistant Professor at Brunel University London and former member of the Knesset Legal Department on... Read more > November 2023 “Hamas was expecting Hezbollah to follow… Hezbollah and the Iranians were planning to overwhelm Israel”| Fathom Interview: Hanin Ghaddar By Hanin Ghaddar Fathom editors Jack Omer-Jackaman and Calev Ben-Dor talk to Lebanon expert Hanin Ghaddar, Friedman Senior Fellow at the... Read more > November 2023 Universities in Crisis | The Professors and the Pogrom: How the theory of ‘Zionist Settler Colonialism’ reframed the 7 October... By Derek Spitz This essay seeks to register and understand the deeper causes of the appalling reaction of parts of the... Read more > November 2023 Universities in Crisis | ‘We need to reckon with how horrific liberation can be’: How Lara Sheehi Rationalised the Hamas... By Cary Nelson Cary Nelson argues that Lara Sheehi’s comments over recent weeks have provided a roadmap for rationalising the nightmare... Read more > November 2023 Universities in Crisis | Glorifying Atrocities: The Case of Brown University By David Litman David M. Litman examines Brown University and its Center for Middle East Studies (CMES). After the Holocaust, many... Read more > November 2023 Universities in Crisis | Open Letter to the Signatories of ‘Letter by media & communications scholars on British news media... By Paul Frosh Paul Frosh is a Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.... Read more > November 2023 Universities in Crisis | Opinion: There is no academic freedom for Jewish faculty at the University of Toronto By Stuart Kamenetsky Stuart Kamenetsky is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. His opinion piece ‘The University of... Read more > November 2023 Autumn / 2023 "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 Summer / 2023 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 Spring / 2023 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 Davi… truncated (9,029 more characters in archive)