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Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg is a senior correspondent for The Prospect. He is the author of The Unmaking of Israel, of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 and of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount. He blogs at South Jerusalem. Follow @GershomG.

Recent Articles

The Strange Case of Robert Malley

The recent hounding of Barack Obama for the supposed anti-Israel stance of his informal adviser Robert Malley is an instructive point in the controversies surrounding who gets to tell the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Gershom GorenbergMar 27, 2008

Of all the recent efforts to smear Barack Obama, none strikes me as stranger than the claims that one of his informal advisers on foreign affairs, Robert Malley, is anti-Israel. This, in turn, is supposed to prove that as president, Obama is liable to institute dangerous changes in U.S. policy toward Israel.

Burden of Proof

Increasingly, the rabbis in the Israeli state bureaucracy demand proof that people registering to marry are really Jewish. The proof they seek is unavailable to most American-born Jews.

Gershom GorenbergMar 13, 2008

Am I a Jew? This is a remarkably strange question for me to ask. No aspect of my identity is more obvious to me. I've been aware of being Jewish since before I can remember. We missed school on Rosh Hashanah; everyone else had Christmas trees. My grandparents' native language was Yiddish. This is besides the fact that I chose 30 years ago to move to the Jewish state.

THE GAZAN CONUNDRUM.

Gershom GorenbergMar 03, 2008

The NY Times has an analysis today on Israel's dilemma in negotiating peace with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas when Hamas, not Abbas, controls Gaza. As the last few days' events showed, military confrontations between Israel and Hamas make it impossible for Abbas to keep negotiating. And even if he reached a deal, how much would it mean when he doesn't speak for Gaza? An alternative is negotiating directly with Hamas. But that's a a painful choice -- it legitimizes the Islamic movement's takeover of Gaza, and mean Israel would be negotiating with two separate representatives of the Palestinians.

MCCAIN, HAGEE, AND SYMPATHY FOR THE ASSASSIN.

Gershom GorenbergMar 03, 2008

As Sarah Posner has noted, one reason that that Texas pastor and popularizer-of-the-apocalypse John Hagee gave for endorsing John McCain was the latter's "support of the state of Israel." Hagee also claimed that he personally backs Israel because it is a democracy, not because of its place in apocalyptic scenarios.

Breaking the Gazan Impasse

If there is a way out of the current crisis, it lies in reuniting the West Bank and Gaza under a Palestinian unity government. That might require the release of Marwan Barghouti, the Palestinian political figure who has done the most to promote unity.

Gershom GorenbergFeb 28, 2008

The most important news photo from Israel this week was the one that didn't appear. It would have shown 40,000 unarmed Palestinian marchers, children and women and men, pouring through a gap trampled in the border fence around Gaza toward Israeli troops. With tear gas failing to work its dark magic in the rain, with the crowd pushing forward past those felled by rubber bullets, Israeli commanders—half panicked, half agonized—would have ordered their men to aim live fire at the marchers' feet. Ineluctably, some of the shots would have hit higher. The footage would have shown people kneeling next to the fallen. It might have shown the crowd still marching forward.

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