David Shulman

‘Like a Gossamer Sheet’

“The first time I experienced life on the West Bank, staying over in Palestinian homes, a whole new horizon opened up for me. I entered into that life, its personal friendships, its language, its ravishing landscapes, and its evident suffering. All of it felt meaningful and real.”

Evil in the West Bank

As long as the daily horrors in the occupied territories continue and the extreme right remains in power, democracy in Israel will be sick at the core.

Netanyahu’s War

Engineering a second Nakba and annexing the occupied territories are integral parts of Netanyahu’s war against the State of Israel’s democratic institutions, its social solidarity, and above all the rule of law.

A Deadly Apathy

A blank indifference to cruelty and atrocity as a normative mode of waging war has infected Israel’s collective conscience.

An ‘Unlawful Presence’

The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is illegal, yet this will do little to reduce the settlers’ savage violence against Palestinians or force Israelis to become conscious of it.

Israel: The Way Out

If Israel is to survive, physically and spiritually, it needs to undergo, collectively, a sea change in its vision of reality and face some unpleasant though obvious facts.

A Bitter Season in the West Bank

The war in Gaza has provided Israeli settlers fresh opportunity and impunity. I see entire villages fleeing in panic.

Déjà Vu in Israel

The conceptual system that has dominated Israeli thinking and policy for decades has been exposed, repeatedly, as dangerous and delusional.

Heading Toward a Second Nakba

Nathan Thrall argues that the accident in which Abed Salama’s son died was a predictable, even inevitable, outcome of the Israeli occupation in its quotidian forms.

Cosmic Oceans Squeezed into Atoms

The idiosyncratic wisdom of the Tirukkural’s poetry is about aliveness, perhaps the most elusive of human goals.

Lost Illusions

Sylvain Cypel’s transformation from liberal Zionist to ferocious critic of Israel.

Cracks in the Israeli Consensus

The latest round of violence in Gaza has led to the reemergence of the Palestinian national movement—as well as more skepticism among Israelis about repeatedly making war on Hamas.

The Widows’ Laments

Buddhist Baedekers

Waiting for the Perfect Word

The Ravishing Art of Alchi

I visited Alchi in 2004. I was left, then as now, after spending some weeks with Peter van Ham’s book, with a sense of a dizzying proliferation of vital beings mobbing my eyes. In all of South Asian art, there is nothing quite like these densely painted murals.

Bedouins Halt the Bulldozers

For the Israeli right, the Bedouin Palestinians of al-Khan al-Ahmar are one of the last obstacles to a far-reaching annexationist program. They also have the incorrigible flaw of not being Jews in a Jewish state now run on exclusionary ethno-nationalist principles.

The Last of the Tzaddiks

What is a decent human being supposed to do in the face of devastating threats to human dignity and basic human rights?

Off With Their Heads

Bulldozing the Peace Process in Israel

The most immediately consequential effect of Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem is to reinforce Israel’s belief that sheer force will subdue the Palestinians and make them go away. This is the annexationist program that now drives Israeli policy.