Israel’s soul has been the subject of much anguish. Writers and politicians have been lamenting its demise for decades. Shalem Center senior fellow Daniel Gordis believes that policy should invoke “something incredibly powerful and positive about the Israeli soul.”¹ For decades, novelist David Grossman complains, settlers “have operated in the gray areas of the Jewish-Israeli soul.”² He also claims that “the agonized Israeli soul, hardened by external and internal wars, is . . . ardent about finally divesting itself of the burden of constant animosity.”³ Richard Silverstein, of the liberal blogTikun Olam, abhors the murder of donkeys and other...

On an ordinary day in the spring of 2008, I was navigating throngs of thirsty and hungry students between classes at Virginia Tech’s Squires Student Center, in pursuit of a watery but much-needed cup of coffee. After emerging from the energetic and impatient crowd, I saw that I had a bit of time before my next class and decided to drop by the multicultural student office down the hall so I could chat with its director, a friendly and intelligent man. My friend wasn’t in the office, but the trip nevertheless ended up being instructive. Adorning the modestly sized anteroom...

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has a long and distinguished history. It was founded in 1913 by Chicago lawyer Sigmund Livingston to combat rampant anti-semitism in the United States, which at the time entailed quotas on university admissions, the exclusion of Jews from various social and political communities, and even lynching. Nearly a hundred years later, Livingston might be surprised that his vision has grown into the powerful organization it is today. It is not only the ADL’s level of potency that has evolved; its range of activity has expanded alongside its organizational growth. These two maturations are causal: it is...

In this chapter I examine the work of two intellectuals whose scholarship is rooted in socially liberal traditions of black Christianity. Both intellectuals, Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, are prolific writers and public figures. Both have produced seminal theoretical and philosophical work. Both comment frequently on issues of broad debate (using points of view considered radical by corporate media standards). And both occupy exalted positions in academe (West at Princeton and Dyson at Georgetown). The two are generally aligned politically and work within the same intellectual traditions, some of which each helped create. West and Dyson are two of...

Much of Zionism’s humanistic discourse relies on affirmation through negation: Iran is irresponsibly nuclear (implying that Israel deserves its nuclear weapons even though it still hasn’t confessed to having them), Arabs and Muslims are irrationally violent (implying that Israel is peaceable or uses violence judiciously), Arab states are backward and Third World (implying that Israel is cosmopolitan and European). The latest Zionist intervention into the culture wars is especially clever and equally disingenuous: the Arabs are incurably homophobic (implying that Israel is modern and open-minded if we allegorize queers as canaries and civic attitudes as coal mines). In 2009 StandWithUs,...

Since the advent of Western colonization, it has been remarkably difficult for white subjects in the metropole to access their deepest psychological sensibilities. All too frequently they need to enter into worlds so alien and exotic that they have no choice but to undertake agonizing introspection. Such was the fate of legendary figures like Marlowe, Dances with Wolves (Lieutenant Dunbar), and Albert Camus. Luckily for white subjects, colonization provided them a nearly limitless geography of mystique, peril, and strangeness. Usually these forays into foreign territory are voluntary, but sometimes they are forced. No matter their origin, they always have this...

The anxious chattering guardians of national consciousness, composed of liberal writers and eager do-gooders, killed Israel’s soul. They did not kill it through violence, however. They killed it by inventing it. This death isn’t tragic. It is to be celebrated. Israel’s soul needed to die if the many peoples of the Near East are to continue living.

By endowing a nation-state, the progenitor of militarism and technocracy, with the most abstract but sacred element of humanity, a soul, those fretting over Israel’s encounters with darkness ensured its eternal soullessness. This paradox does not threaten Israel’s future; it portends the safety...