Yariv Mohar, at The Blogs

Oct 29, 2025, 1:37 PM

Pro Palestine protest and encampment in Stanford University, April 2024. (Wikimedia, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license)

Recently, I came across a post by a prominent Palestinian activist denouncing the horrific executions and acts of torture carried out by Hamas against Gazans it suspects of being critics or opponents — and condemning the silence of international...

Oct 4, 2025, 11:25 PM

Mutual De-Radicalization: The Post-War Task

A program for the mutual de-radicalization of Israelis and Palestinians is urgently needed as we enter, hopefully, a post-war era. Reconciliation processes are inherently fragile when large segments of society remain steeped in vengeance, hatred, and blanket demonization of the...

Sep 28, 2025, 12:07 AM

Distrust – Caution or a Political Instrument?

It is quite natural for there to be deep distrust between two peoples engaged in a protracted conflict, and for good reasons on both sides—for example, between Israelis and Palestinians. A small illustrative example: Israelis experienced the deadly Al-Aqsa...

Sep 19, 2025, 6:22 PM

Policy Alternatives Are a Must for Human Rights

The human rights community’s difficulty in swiftly mobilizing political actors to exert effective pressure on Israel is closely tied to its inability to formulate and present viable alternatives. When you seek to pressure a state to abandon abusive policies,...

Aug 30, 2025, 1:52 PM

Equality-Oriented Judaism: A Needed Brand

Zionism is rapidly turning into a toxic brand in large parts of the West—effectively equated with “Jewish supremacy” (much like “white supremacy”). While this is not entirely accurate—though not wholly unfounded in relation to some streams of Zionism—the perception...

Aug 24, 2025, 4:36 PM

Ignoring Israelis Weakens Pressure on Israel

Even before the expected battle on Gaza city the images from Gaza strip are unbearable: entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, families starving, children buried under debris. Many legal scholars already call Israel’s actions genocide; at the very least, they...

Jun 30, 2025, 12:08 PM

Preventing Extremism-Nuclear Fusion

Ben Gvir_Khamenei and the_Nuclear threat

“With great power comes great responsibility,” said Spider-Man. And what power is greater than possessing a nuclear arsenal? As Israelis, we are rightfully alarmed by the possibility that Iran could obtain nuclear weapons, especially in light of the regime’s recurring...

May 13, 2025, 2:47 PM

Overlooking Those Who Could End the War

Trump torn between a dove of peace and a gun

We are at a critical juncture—one that could determine whether the Trump administration continues recent gestures that point toward pragmatic arrangements in the Middle East, or veers sharply back toward dangerous fantasies: re-occupying Gaza, expelling its population, and building...

May 8, 2025, 10:12 PM

Single-Track Strategy Risks Palestinians

BDS protest. Jean-François Gornet - https://www.flickr.com/photos/jfgornet/14691556577/ Wikipedia - cropped image

Amid the prospect of escalating violence and atrocities in Gaza, it might seem petty to focus on the hostility many Israelis and Jews feel from international human rights groups. When this issue is addressed—such as in Michael Powell’s recent...

Apr 30, 2025, 5:02 PM

The Risks Progressives Won’t Discuss

Militant abducting a man during the Re'im music festival massacre

Some progressive organizations around the world find it hard to express empathy toward Israeli victims of the October 7 massacre. However, the phenomenon was not absolute: many did find the courage to condemn the horrific attack and express solidarity...

About Me

Yariv Mohar is a sociologist specializing in the intersection of terrorism and human rights, as well as a long-time human rights practitioner. He currently co-leads the Pro-Human Campaign and the Initiative for National Security and Human Rights.