Ofir Haivry, an Israeli historian and political theorist, is vice-president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and the author of John Selden and the Western Political Tradition (Cambridge). He served as chairman of the Public Advisory Committee for Examining Israel’s Approach regarding Worldwide Communities with Affinity to the Jewish People, appointed by Israel’s ministry of Diaspora affairs.
Underneath the checked boxes, Israeli politics isn’t so easily captured by markers of identity.
Decade by decade, they can transform the face and energize and re-moralize the base of Jewish societies everywhere.
Unprecedented numbers of individuals with some historical connection to the Jewish people are seeking closer contact with it, and many are aspiring to join it.
When, 100 years ago, the victors in World War I needed a push to get behind “the right of Jews to reconstitute in Palestine their National Home,” Italy was there.
Now home to the majority of the world’s Jews, Israel has responsibilities for the future of the Jewish people as a whole.
Birthrates are falling across the world, especially in developed nations—except in one. How did mainstream, middle-class Israelis start having children again, and what does it mean?
Smaller and internally more homogeneous political units may offer a brighter prospect for stability in the region than the forcible unification of decomposed Arab states.
Who or what will replace a century of failed Sunni Arab dominance? What, if anything, can the West do to help shape the future?
How long before the "strong" Arab states of the Middle East follow Syria, Iraq, and Libya into chaos?