Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:31:59 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Amnon Rubinstein :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Amnon+Rubinstein istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/new-political-vision-for-israel/46404/ Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST The Committee of Arab Mayors in Israel recently issued a document proffering a new political "vision." The message is sharp and clear: The Arab-Palestinian minority in Israel no longer advocates a two-state solution. Beside the future Palestinian — Arab- Muslim — state there should be a binational state, Jewish and Palestinian, which will give the Palestinian minority special political rights. Israel would thus lose its specific nature as a Jewish homeland, as its flag, national anthem, and... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/facing-down-ahmadinejad/42562/ Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST There is one advantage to President Ahmadinejad's latest outburst at the University of Tehran: It removes the fog of misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding the major issue of the Middle East — the survival of the Jewish state. That issue, or rather the Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel's existence, has not really disappeared since 1948, when the Arabs sought to annihilate the fledgling state. Nevertheless, in recent years there were encouraging signs that the Arab world, having... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/forgotten-christian/40738/ Mon, 2 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST The pope's dictum about Islam and the inevitable follow up — demonstrations, church burnings, assassinations, and the expected apology — are part of a wider scene: the precarious position of Christian communities in the Middle East as a result of a radicalized Islam. Arab Christian communities identify with Arab nationalism — indeed, Christian Arabs were the founding fathers of this movement. They share with their Muslim brethren a common language, ethnic origin, and a total rejection of Israel... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/targeting-air-traffic/38228/ Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The plot failed: cooperation between the security services of the United Kingdom, Pakistan, and America foiled the plan to massacre hundreds of air passengers over the Atlantic through the explosion of sophisticated undetectable chemicals set off by Islamist British-born suicide terrorists.Yet Scotland Yard and the British home secretary insist that this is possibly one plot out of many being hatched by Islamist terrorists. International terrorism is targeting air traffic in three different... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/premature-act/36755/ Wed, 26 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST This is Israel: one day it is a prosperous offshoot of the West and then, the next day, it descends into a Middle East nightmare. One day the nightly news is about the Tel-Aviv stock exchange and then the news deal with death and destruction. Only yesterday one of the major issues was whether or not to move the planned international gay pride parade from Jerusalem to Tel-Aviv and now the main question is "when, if at all, will this ever stop?" Indeed, many Israelis think that this is just a... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ambivalent-mood/35598/ Fri, 7 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST It could have been otherwise: the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza should have, and could have, ushered in a period of reconciliation between Israel and the future Palestinian state: Had the various Palestinian armed units held their fire, had they allowed the new border to calm down and enabled trade, aid and the passage of workers to pass peacefully through, Israeli public opinion, as well as the new Israeli government would have moved into the second phase which would consist of unilateral... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/irresistible-impulse-to-bash-israel/34608/ Fri, 16 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST It's Thursday (or Friday or any other day) and another boycott against Israel is being declared - by a union in Ontario, university teachers in Britain, and church organizations everywhere. Not a word about Iran, whose president denies the Holocaust but seeks to complete it by "erasing" Israel from the map; not a whisper about the genocide in Darfur; no mention of Tibet or of beheadings in front of cameras in Iraq - only one spot on earth deserves to be boycotted or divested by "progressive"... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/to-the-euston-station/33720/ Thu, 1 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EST Query: Who wrote the following paragraph? The Heritage Foundation? Some fundamentalist neo-cons? The Weekly Standard? "We reject without qualification the anti-Americanism now infecting so much left-liberal thinking. The United States of America is a great country and nation. It is the home of a strong democracy with a noble tradition behind it and lasting constitutional and social achievements to its name. Its peoples have produced a vibrant culture that is the pleasure, the sourcebook and the... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/iran-threat-clear-and-present-danger/32883/ Wed, 17 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Beyond the rhetoric's relating to the Iranian menace lies a clear and present danger to the very existence of Israel. The rhetoric is that Iran, by defying the international community, threatens world peace and that its insistence on manufacturing nuclear bombs as well as long-distance missiles destabilizes the Middle East. The facts are that only one country is the immediate target for a nuclear holocaust: Israel: The rhetoric is that international pressure and the threat of sanctions may... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/end-of-multiculturalism/31924/ Mon, 1 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Some years ago professor Nathan Glazer published a book titled "We are all Multiculturalists Now," and at the time it seemed a very apt title to describe the state of progressive Western thought: multiculturalism was the wave of the future: it extended the ideas of equality from the sphere of individuals to that of cultural groups and minorities; it denoted the end of white hegemony and patronage; it paid special attention to "the different other;" it was a revolt against colonialism in the old... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/willful-negligence-or-premeditated-prejudice/30426/ Wed, 5 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST The paper "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," written by Professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, has met so much controversy, including on this page from Professor Alan Dershowitz (March 31) that it would seem useless to add fuel to the bonfire. However, one point in their paper needs further elucidation because it is partially true. In their attempt to show that Israel is not a democracy, and thus not worthy of American support, the authors write: "Israel was explicitly founded... AMNON RUBINSTEIN http://www.nysun.com/opinion/secret-of-kadima/29437/ Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST Public opinion polls indicate that the Israeli political party Kadima will get approximately 40 seats in the next elections to the 120-member Knesset. This is an unprecedented success for a new party in Israel's rather conservative electoral scene. What is the reason for this phenomenal performance? There was an early warning in the last elections, held in January 2003: Shinui, a centrist liberal party, raised its share in the Knesset to 15 seats from 6, while both Labor and Meretz - two...