Israel

What does it mean that every person is created in the image of God? How does this affect how we treat those with whom we are at odds? The attached PDF looks at Jewish sources on the obligations incumbant on us because we are created b'tzelem Elohim and how these obligations related to relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

This year is the first year that I hear Israelis remark that the State may be a temporary phenomenon: "I am happy to live in a Jewish state, to be alive at a time when Jews have a state. But the last state we had, the Maccabean one, two thousand years ago, lasted a hundred years, and this one will probably be shortlived, as well. We don't know how to be an autonomous people and live in a larger world. We are always overtaken by fanaticism," one Israeli told me.

Democracies need to have an independent judiciary in order to defend civil liberties which can easily be trampled on by majority opinion swayed by alarmist media or politicians seeking to exercise power. But courts, too, can be caught up in the hysteria of the moment or be subject to political pressures. When that happens, democratic institutions are in severe danger.