Gaza Settler Pullout Protest Draws 500

By David Finnigan
Published on July 28, 2005

More than 500 demonstrators, mostly Orthodox Jews, gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles last weekend to oppose Israel's planned, upcoming pullout of settlers from Gaza.

Liberal Academics Blind to Terror Threat

By Avi Davis
Published on October 14, 2004

"Come on, Mr. Davis," he said with an edge now in his voice. "You should know better. You're a journalist. That neocon crap is just as easily disproved as Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. It's clear fabrication -- used by Bush and his cronies to justify an unjustifiable war. Better to check the terrorism coming out of Washington before looking elsewhere."

Silence on Israel Is Not Golden

By Rabbi Susan Laemmle
Published on January 9, 2003

For Avi Davis, truth is a blazing light threatening to blind the unprepared.

There are no moderating factors or gradations, just a division between those who can handle its assault and those who can't.

In contrast to Davis' unitary absolutism, traditional Jewish wisdom tends to frame things in twos and threes. So we read in Pirke Avot 1:18, the teaching of Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel, that "the world is established on three principles: truth, justice and peace."

Israel in the Arab Mind

By Carin Davis
Published on April 25, 2002

As tensions in the Middle East soar, many Jewish Angelenos search for answers to the generations-old question: Can there ever be peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors?

A Swift, Immediate Reaction

By Avi Davis
Published on September 13, 2001

Watching the second tower of the World Trade Center crumble into dust on Tuesday, I was able to imagine the horror of the survivors of the Titanic as they witnessed their vessel sink into the Atlantic Ocean. A symbol of human progress and ingenuity, a monument to economic strength and power, the Titanic was regarded as indestructible. So too the World Trade Center represented, more than any other edifice in the United States, America's sense of its own power and invulnerability. Rising more than 100 stories high, these towers once so effectively dominated the New York skyline that in the air they could be seen from 150 miles away. When a 1993 car bomb failed to destroy them, the sense of invulnerability may have also given way to a sense of complacency.

Opinion

By Avi Davis
Published on June 18, 1998

The sight of Israeli Minister of Tourism Moshe Katzav being kissed by Israeli singer and Eurovision song contest winner Dana International must have made someone, somewhere blush. But you wouldn't have known it by reading any of the Israeli papers last week. With the kind of glee that is only reserved in the Holy Land for the smashing of idols, Israeli editorialists pounced on Dana's victory as further proof that Israel, having produced not just a Eurovision contest winner, but a transsexual one, has finally arrived as a nation among nations. So finally, we have the good word from Israel: Androgyny is in. Ethnocentricism (read Judaism with its intolerance for diversity and priggish emphasis on sexual purity), is most definitely out.