What Could American-Style Gun Culture Do to Israel?

An Armed, Internally Divided Nation Is Not One That Makes Peace Easily

mong the core Israeli national narratives fractured by the October 7 Hamas terror attacks and the months of war and violence that have followed was the notion that Israel’s ethos on firearms differed from that of the United States.

Both countries were gun-centric democracies, that narrative allowed, but the U.S. was a land of too many guns and too few laws—while Israelis “trust their state, and don’t fear each other.”  A common refrain emphasized that “in Israel it is not a right to bear arms, but a privilege.”

I knew this mentality …

Three Generations, Two Immigrations

A Salvadoran American-Turned-Israeli Reflects on Moving Between Cultures and Finding Home, Again and Again

The first time I immigrated, 34 years ago, I was a toddler brought to the United States by my parents from our native El Salvador. A year ago, I immigrated …

The Black Angeleno Who Took on the ‘Problem of Palestine’

Diplomat Ralph Bunche’s UN Work Paved the Way for Israel’s Birth

On May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, soon to be the first prime minister of Israel, gave the first public reading of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. With an eye toward wooing …

Do Israeli Teens Offer a Solution to Silicon Valley’s Pipeline Problem?

One of Israel’s Coolest After-School Programs Trains High Schoolers—Especially Girls—in Cybersecurity

Ilana Gutman “knew nothing about computers” three years ago when two soldiers visited her freshman high school class in Ashdod, a city in the south of Israel, and encouraged the …

A ‘Musical Intifada’ in the West Bank

Criss-Crossing a Traumatized Land With Young, Palestinian Musicians

Over the last five years, as I criss-crossed the West Bank to document one young musician’s dream to build music schools amidst Israel’s military occupation, I’d often come upon a …

Lost and Found in Jerusalem

Helping Women in the Jewish State Helped Me Find Meaning in My Lukewarm Jewishness

“Where are you going?” the grizzled, shaggy-bearded driver barked at me. After 15 hours of traveling, I was sandwiched between tourists on an Israeli shuttle en route from Tel Aviv …