ELDER OF ZIYON
Matti Friedman’s Lens and Sisyphean Mud
by Vic Rosenthal
January 24, 2019

…To really understand the conflicts surrounding Israel since its coming into being, one needs to zoom out even further than [Matti] Friedman does. One needs to take into account that not only Arabs and Muslims are viscerally opposed to the concept of Jewish sovereignty, many Europeans and even some circles in America are too. Although they might not go as far as to compare Israel to a malignant tumor, they are quite comfortable saying that the creation of Israel was a mistake. Friedman’s lens must be widened to include not just the greater Middle East, but much of the Western world. READ MORE

NEW YORK TIMES There Is No ‘Israeli-Palestinian Conflict’ There isn’t an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the way that many outsiders seem to think, and this perception gap is worth spelling out. It has nothing to do with being right-wing or left-wing in the American sense. To borrow a term from the world of photography, the problem is one of zoom. Simply put, outsiders are zoomed in, and people here in Israel are zoomed out. Understanding this will make events here easier to grasp.