Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel » Mark Donig

In DC, The Talmud Finds a New Home

Mark Donig — Tue, 28 May 2013 20:33:24 +0000

In the heart of America’s capital city, something special is happening in Jewish life. Just one block away from the White House, for the past three months a devoted group of young professional Jewish men of a variety of religious backgrounds has been gathering each Tuesday evening, not to network with their peers (as is [...]

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Reexamining nonviolence in a new Middle East

Mark Donig — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:15:08 +0000

Two years after Egyptians took to the streets and took down Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, protests have once again exploded across the country. The violent clashes in Port Said, Cairo, and elsewhere have underscored the outrage so many Egyptians feel at a Mohamed Morsi-led government that has stolen the people’s revolution. Their anger and concern, [...]

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The unilateral disengagement of the American titans of peace

Mark Donig — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 14:44:44 +0000

What does unilateral disengagement sound like today? If you are listening for the noise of soldier uprooting settler, your attention is focused not only on the wrong signals, but on the wrong continent. A new unilateral disengagement is emerging from the other side of the Atlantic, having sounded a final call before falling into a [...]

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Beyond Anti-Semitism: Why Bob Simon (and his international activist equivalents) always comes back to Israel

Mark Donig — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:29:23 +0000

I asked [the protesters] once this one clichéd question that always comes to mind – ‘So why Israel of all places? Why not Syria? Egypt? Russia or China?’ One of them put on a serious face. ‘Are you insane?’ he asked me. ‘These are all extremely dangerous places!’ So wrote Tal Dror in his illuminating [...]

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What Gunter Grass talks about when Gunter Grass talks about Israel

Mark Donig — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:32:26 +0000

West Berlin, June 3, 1967. A renowned leftist German writer sits before a group of students at Berlin’s Free University, speaking. The students share the writer’s political ilk, but are of a different generation. The writer, middle-aged and already shackled with the burden of his country’s history and the personal guilt of a secret past, [...]

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On the Push to Move America’s Red Lines on Iran, Issues of Definition and Enforcement

Mark Donig — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:37:55 +0000

A few days ago I co-published a new piece (along with Jaclyn Tandler, Junior Nuclear Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) in Diplomatic Courier, which you can find here. It’s called “On Nuclear Capability: Drawing Red Lines in a Gray Area.” The article derives from an issue more of us might do well [...]

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David Makovsky, Elliott Abrams, Aaron David Miller: three views on President Obama’s AIPAC speech

Mark Donig — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 04:19:54 +0000

David Makovsky, Elliott Abrams, and Aaron David Miller. Three top-tier Middle East experts. Three distinct backgrounds and perspectives on Middle East Policy. And unsurprisingly given their backgrounds, three very different verdicts on President Obama’s speech today, and its implications for tomorrow’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister tomorrow at the White House. First, I’ll touch [...]

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Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY) on Pres. Obama and PM Netanyahu

Mark Donig — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:37:47 +0000

I just wrapped up a brief conversation with Congressman Eliot Engel, a Democratic Representative from New York who has a long history of support for Israel. Congressman Engel appeared very pleased with President Obama’s speech and was “especially happy to hear that the President is not looking for containment” toward Iran. Ultimately, Engel said, the [...]

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President Obama’s speech: a rare moment of unity

Mark Donig — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:12:06 +0000

WASHINGTON — The first reviews from AIPAC attendees on the President’s address are in, and they are generally positive – although a few noted that Obama did not really formulate any shift in position; that is to say, he repeated that he wants to give sanctions a chance to work, while still maintaining that “no [...]

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On Obama and Netanyahu: A View from AIPAC Policy Conference

Mark Donig — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 15:13:25 +0000

From the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC – With election season coming into full swing, a definitive Obama-Netanyahu meeting upcoming, and the looming Iranian threat growing more potent by the day, the stakes at this year’s AIPAC Conference could scarcely be higher, politically and globally. President Obama is set to give a speech to [...]

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