Новости за 11.01.2016

Over the weekend, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel suffered its second consecutive defeat at the American Historical Association’s annual conference. By a vote of 111-51, the largest professional body of American historians rejected a resolution to sanction Israel over alleged violations of Palestinian academic freedom. (No other country’s practices—including Palestine’s—were on the agenda.)

To be a Hilltop Youth is to first disaffiliate with all establishments in Israel. Especially the settlements. These young Hasidic-looking men and women make their homes out of trucks, cars, trailers, caves—anything suitable for a makeshift shelter—atop the hills of Judea and Samaria. They see themselves as connected to the Land of Israel, not to any of the institutions of the Israeli state. The very violent group among them consists of no more than a few dozen core members and a few hundred more... Читать дальше...

Last week, the New York Public Library released more than 180,000 images to the public, available for hi-res download, with no strings attached. (These images from the NYPL digital collections, have fallen out of copyright.) The entire digital collection includes more than simply photographs; it also includes historical maps, botanical illustrations, ancient religious texts, menus and pamplets, along with manuscripts and papers from Charles Dickens, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne... Читать дальше...

Ugh, the Golden Globes—seemed like it was going to be such a non-event this year, didn’t it? I mean, the awards show has always lacked the stentorian and self-important splendor of the Oscars because it tends to give off a more plebian vibe: The Golden Globes are a company who couldn’t get it together to throw a holiday party before the holidays, so it decides to have a little shindig when everyone is back from vacation have never been in a less of a mood to ingest canapés that aren’t worth the calories... Читать дальше...

Long before our daughter presented us with beautiful little Sammy, our first grandchild, she was peppering me with what moniker I prefer for this new role in relation to her future child. I confess: I resented the inquiry in no small part because the available titles—”bubbe,” “zayde,” and even the milquetoast “grandpa” (and its generic variations)—didn’t at all fit. What did, I could not say. Eventually, the conversation petered out; where we left it was that Sammy would call me what he would, when words came to the little lad. Читать дальше...

Everyone loves sanctions. But privileged Russians still enjoy imported French cheeses, and Iran’s Republican Guard is profiting handsomely from running a black market in sanction-busting imports. Even BDS may not be the dire threat that both its fevered proponents and its enemies like to imagine. Why? Because the truth is that sanctions are not really that hard to evade, and boycotts are not that hard to break. I know, because I helped to break the Arab boycott of Israel with the reluctant leverage of the Coca-Cola Corp. Читать дальше...

On a recent Friday evening in Jerusalem, more than a dozen participants from a Chinese business delegation snapped photos of each other waiting outside a house in Nachlaot, a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood best known for the famed Machane Yehuda outdoor food market. At this hour, the market was shuttered and empty, and various renditions of the kiddush could be heard coming from the densely populated hodgepodge of newly renovated and dilapidated apartments stacked along the area’s winding alleyways. Читать дальше...