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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

More Years in the Desert

Gershom GorenbergFeb 19, 2003

JERUSALEM -- I ran into the Labor party politician at a bar mitzvah celebration, a few days after the election in which the Israeli left suffered its worst-ever defeat. "Celebration" is a euphemism. The bar mitzvah boy was the son of a left-wing activist; most of the guests belonged to the same political camp, and the happier ones looked merely morose. A circle of activists, think tankers and journalists formed around the pol, who held forth with enthusiastic glumness.

Gen. Election

Gershom GorenbergDec 05, 2002

In the lobby of the Jerusalem Convention Center, glossy campaign leaflets of wannabe Knesset members carpeted the floor. Activists flowed from the hall where the Labor Party's newly chosen leader, Amram Mitzna, had pledged to order Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip upon becoming prime minister. The party convention was ending unexpectedly early, as Mitzna's overwhelming victory had persuaded backers of ex-party chief Binyamin Ben-Eliezer to drop a challenge on how to pick Knesset candidates for Israel's Jan. 28 elections.

In Israel's Interest?

Gershom GorenbergSep 30, 2002

More than 15,000 Israelis lined up on a single day to get new government-issue gas masks, the daily newspaper Ha'aretz reported Sept. 18. On the same page: Israel's Defense Ministry was seeking an advance on next year's budget to speed gas-mask production, inoculation of hospital staffers for smallpox was about to begin and Interior Minister Eli Yishai was preparing a special budget request to boost firefighters' readiness to deal with a large-scale attack -- a necessity, he said, given the tension with Iraq.

Book Review:

Gershom GorenbergSep 03, 2002

The Left Behind series

By Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins. Tyndale House Publishing, $14.99 each

Spontaneous Fission

Gershom GorenbergMay 24, 2002

I noticed it the first time one day when I took a cab
downtown. I avoid buses; they blow up on occasion. Next to the Old City walls,
the taxi turned left off King Solomon Street. And there, at the start of Jaffa
Road (West Jerusalem's main street), a police van was parked at an angle across
the asphalt and a metal police barricade left just one lane open. A cop with an
M-16 rifle stood eyeballing each car that rolled by. He let us pass without
stopping. Neither the driver nor I looked Palestinian. I glanced back to make
sure: Yes, there was really a checkpoint framed between the stone buildings. A
half-remembered picture flashed in my mind of a downtown street ending in

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