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Challenge Online Magazine

Online Magazine on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, on Society and Politics Published in Tel Aviv, it features mainly political analysis.

CHALLENGE for peace and equality is a leftist E-magazine focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a global context. The English CHALLENGE was launched with a separate Hebrew edition (ETGAR) as a printed magazine in 1990 during the first Intifada. Both editorial boards were staffed by radical Israelis who oppose the Occupation. The magazines covered numerous aspects of alternative thinki

ng and practice in Israel: human rights, free speech, and tolerance for the Other. The hard core of the editorial boards consisted of activists who later formed a political party called DAAM (Arabic acronym of the Organization for Democratic Action). The Oslo Accords were a turning point for CHALLENGE. In contrast with many on the Israeli Left who applauded the Accords, Challenge’s editors presented a severely critical analysis of the “peace plan,” warning that the creation of the Palestinian Authority would mean the end of hope for a democratic Palestinian state. CHALLENGE stood alone in this analysis. Later it continued criticizing Israel for using the Oslo Accords to deepen the Occupation. It also criticized both wings of the Palestinian leadership, Fatah and Hamas: Fatah for collaborating with Israel although the issues vital to the Palestinians had been deferred at Oslo, and Hamas for deceiving the Palestinians with a distorted, fundamentalist, and unrealistic platform that would soon bring Gaza to ruin. We continue to think that the two regimes, Fatah and Hamas, have exploited the conflict to build their own power structures while their people languishes in poverty. Come the Arab Spring in 2011, CHALLENGE supported change, claiming that at last the Arab young demonstrators are pointing in the right direction: No to secular dictators and No to fundamentalism, Shi’ite or Sunni. The young generations of the Arab world called for democracy and a decent living. CHALLENGE stood firmly with the Syrian Popular movement for freedom. Since 2008, CHALLENGE appears as an E-Magazine presenting its vanguard analysis of Israeli, Palestinian and Arab politics. A quarter century after Oslo it is clear that the Two State Solution, which may have had a narrow window after the first Intifada, became defunct when Oslo rearranged the Occupation, precluding the chance for Palestinian independence. After 50 years of Occupation, Israelis are coming ever closer to operating a form of Apartheid, namely a return to direct Occupation. Such a scenario will open the possibility for movement in the opposite direction: One state with Israeli and Palestinian citizens sharing labor and resources for the benefit of all. That will mean Goodbye to the era of nationalism and Hello to a society for all its citizens. This goal requires of both peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, that they struggle for the democratization of society, as part of a democratic transformation of the Arab world too. Needed are citizen initiatives that express the quest for bridges between peoples, especially by good use of the technological revolution. Instead of stressing differences and divisions, we must seek our common good, which will lead to political, economic, and social equality between Jews and Arabs. CHALLENGE is not supported by any donor or institution. It is free and open to all readers. We hope what we write will encourage you to donate towards our internet and distribution costs.

17/05/2021

Why has Hamas decided to go all out in defense of Al-Aqsa all of a sudden, while in Israel everyone was positive it did not want an escalation?
Hint: It had nothing to do with Netanyahu.

Read More: t.ly/9YJL

14/05/2021

Roni Ben-Efrat, Challenge Magazine chief editor, writes:

Between rocket attacks from Gaza, I must take pause to fathom the present crisis, when the State of Israel appears to be coming apart at the seams. All my adult life, together with my colleagues, I have warned of this moment. I saw reckless leaders and indifferent or scared citizens on both sides allowing injustice and cruelty to go unhindered. Injustice in Israel/Palestine began with the conquest by Zionism - well before 1967. But the 54-year-long Israeli Occupation, the reluctance to admit its crimes, and the attempt to hoodwink the Palestinians at Oslo in 1993, have made Israel's intentions clear. The spark this time was a renewed attempt by Israel to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
In their shortsightedness, Israeli leaders thought that as long as the Palestinian issue was not a "strategic threat" to Israel’s existence, they could continue dominating the lives of 5 million rightless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, restrict their freedom of movement, and doom them to poverty.
In their shortsightedness, Israeli leaders believed that they could develop a hi-tech nation while ignoring the future of the Arab citizens inside Israel’s borders, who make up a fifth of its population. This is the stuff on which hate is nourished, providing a stage for religious and nationalist fanaticism.
In his shortsightedness, Benjamin Netanyahu in particular nourished a strong racist base, encompassing religious Jews of all types, settlers and outright fascists, as if the reckoning could be postponed forever.
In its shortsightedness, the Zionist Left neglected and continues to neglect its duty to oppose the Occupation, opting instead for various arrangements with the Right.
In its shortsightedness, Israel’s government has ignored the takeover of Arab cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods in Israel by armed mafias, never imagining that violence would spread to Jewish streets. "Let them kill each other," was their attitude.
In its shortsightedness, aiming to crush any secular liberal Palestinian voice, Israel built up Hamas in the 1980’s, thinking it would stick to religion and charity. But Hamas, with its dream of an Islamic state, has since become the only military and political factor that can irritate Israel. Since 2008 we have lived through four rounds of war, which turned out to be blood for nothing.
I wish I could put all the blame on Israel. Unfortunately, neither Hamas nor Israel hesitates to use civilians in their wars. For its part, the Palestinian Authority has willingly slipped into irrelevance.
When I watched with dread the attack of a brainwashed rightwing mob on the American Capitol, I did not imagine that a few months later I would be watching Arab and Jewish mobs in Israeli cities, assaulting peaceful citizens because of their ethnic identity.
Such is the situation. We don't have the luxury to stop struggling for reason and justice. We struggle not because we are sure we will win, but because we have no choice. This cannot be a Zero Sum Game! A source of hope comes from Washington, where a serious attempt is underway to mend the fabric of American society. We too have years of injustice to mend.

11/05/2021

Let Us Breathe!
When the black movement in the United States raised the slogan "let us breathe", for us here, in our struggle for rights of Palestinian workers it was a natural slogan to adopt. Daily some 150,000 West Bank residents enter through formidable crossings into Israel's labor market. They are exploited and discriminated against in various ways.
Read more: t.ly/htQr

13/04/2021

When the Occupation ceases to be a topic in Israel, the division between Right and Left disappears. Meanwhile, the neoliberal economy has become a consensus, and so a coalition can be formed connecting Bennett to Meretz.

Read More: t.ly/BUCA

14/03/2021

An Israeli-Palestinian Green New Deal will create a future of growth and partnerships among all residents of Jerusalem, and will replace the hostility between populations with mutual fertilization and cultural richness. Such a Jerusalem can be an engine for shared life in the country, instead of a topic that blows up peace negotiations. In order to get to know Jerusalem and its problems better, while discussing the possibility for finding solutions, we host three speakers today.

Read More: t.ly/mLDr

07/02/2021

Mansour Abbas puts religion before nationalism, breaking up the Arab Joint List.
Read more: https://cutt.ly/Lkbt5j6

09/01/2021

Mtanes Shihadeh seeks a core solution.

As long as sectoral politics and opportunistic collaborations continue between the "Center-Left" and the Joint List, or between the Right and the Islamic movement, Arab society will lag behind and the gaps will only deepen, while Israeli society will continue to be torn between liberals and conservatives.

Read More: https://cutt.ly/ojzlR5Q

30/12/2020

No more “Bibi or Tibi.” It’s “Bibi or Gidi!”

A new socioeconomic platform must be adopted, one built on an equal distribution of wealth, investment in human welfare rather than tycoons, and the equality of all human beings between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. If we embrace the humane conception and abandon nationalist isolation, the road to a diverse society, in which the Palestinians become equal citizens, will give democracy its full meaning.

Read more: https://cutt.ly/ejeDgfR

20/12/2020

After you, Stav Shaffir!
The effort to establish a Democratic Party in Israel depends not only on open primaries, but on a very broad consensus between Jewish and Arab leaders, who will be willing to abandon the Zionist or Arab nationalistic ideologies and unite to build a broad democracy, bringing hope to both Israelis and Palestinians.
Read more: https://cutt.ly/EhVmxhR

22/11/2020

Where is the Israeli Biden?
The Israeli Left hates Netanyahu, but is afraid of making common cause with the Arabs. It knows that without them it has no chance of winning, just as the American Left knows that without the support of blacks, the Right cannot be defeated. And so the Israeli Left is trying to overthrow Netanyahu without the Arabs, and to maintain a state that is both Jewish and democratic. In other words it wants the impossible, and thus splits and crumbles, uniting each time behind a retired general, again collapsing on Election Day in the face of a cohesive right-wing bloc that has internalized the rules of the political game.
Read more: https://cutt.ly/ahtIP4C

25/10/2020

Biden-Harris and Israel.
The worse Trump is for Americans, the better he is for Israelis. In Israel the question that matters is, "What is good for the Jews?", because who cares about the Gentiles? In this way it is possible to have warm relations with dictators like General Sisi in Egypt, the Jordanian king and the Gulf princes, who share in persecuting political opponents, denying democracy, and discriminating against women and minorities. Israel judges Trump not by the disaster he caused for the Americans, but on how much he benefits Israelis.

Read more: t.ly/Kza4

11/10/2020

It is not enough to call on Bibi to leave. It is much more important to build a new reality, in which there will be no room for Bibi, Bennett and the like, and such a reality will not be built if we ignore the fate of the Palestinians, the socioeconomic situation of Israeli society, and the country’s contribution to the climate crisis. The right is empowered by the inability of the opposition to pose a political and social alternative, although the current crisis is an opportunity to address these issues.
Read more: t.ly/8zUm

04/10/2020

The Israeli flag is not a flag of democracy because democracy has no flag.
Read more: t.ly/0ZnC

23/09/2020

Peace in the Time of Coronavirus.
Trump, like Netanyahu, has become a victim of the coronavirus, and could lose the White House in the presidential election in less than two months. If the Israeli public is not particularly impressed by the new regional peace, the American people are living in trauma due to the criminal negligence of the Trump administration in dealing with the pandemic.
Read More: t.ly/vwQr

23/08/2020

Netanyahu and MBZ mobilize for Trump

The democratic processes that began in Cairo in 2011 will be unstoppable, and toward January 2021, the fate of Trump and Netanyahu will be decided. One on election day, and the other in the Jerusalem District Court. It seems that regional peace is doomed to a fate similar to the fate of the Deal of the Century.

Read more: t.ly/UN5E

10/08/2020

Netanyahu versus the Cowardly Opposition
From the depths of the crisis that the US is undergoing, the demonstrators are leading an amazing protest that overshadows the protest in Israel. The whole purpose of demonstrations in Israel is to overthrow Bibi, but without building a social, economic and political alternative.

Read more: t.ly/5Bsf

28/07/2020

Netanyahu's New Deal
Bibi understands that the wind has turned and that he must steer the ship from neoliberalism to an Israeli New Deal … To deal with him, one must present an economic and political alternative, and not remain content with the protesters' rhythmic cries of "bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Read More: t.ly/eZbu

13/07/2020

Israel, Stanley Fischer won’t save you this time!
The pandemic is a wake-up call. The need is to change the paradigm from a capitalistic, growth-driven economy to a job-driven, human-centered one, and to shift to renewable energy, everywhere, even here in Israel.
Read more: t.ly/nTKJ

17/06/2020

People who live in a state that cannot operate the trains, whose schools are closed, with a quarter of its labor force unemployed and thousands of destroyed businesses, are not free for political exercises like annexation that have nothing to do with the real world.
Read More: t.ly/LV1a

03/06/2020

The trials and tribulations of Benjamin Netanyahu:
Netanyahu is facing a nightmare he never imagined: an economic crisis that threatens to destroy the achievements that have earned him the popularity he depends on.
Read More: t.ly/0UmX

17/05/2020

Why annexation and why now?
Read More: t.ly/mdgG
The annexation clause in the coalition agreement is intended to strike a winning blow against the Israeli left, end the illusion of two states forever and leave the Right with sole control over Israel's political discourse

07/04/2020

Today, when Israel, the West Bank and Gaza have become a single epidemiological unit, it is clear to everyone that the fates of both peoples are tied in a Gordian knot.
Read more: t.ly/wZGzk

26/03/2020

Corona in Israel’s backyard

It is absurd to suppose that the Palestinian Authority can handle the pandemic alone, with an annual budget of $4 billion, compared to the Israeli budget of $100 billion.

Read More: t.ly/exRvD

Talking politics Corona in Israel’s backyard Yacov Ben Efrat • March 26, 2020 • Israel is preparing for the Corona tsunami that will wash over it in the coming weeks. The graph of new cases published daily shows an exponential increase, and with it a spiking level of anxiety. Prime Minist...

10/03/2020

Political document of the Da'am Party in israel: The Palestinian Authority assisted in creating the fragmented Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, under de facto Israeli control. The Deal of the Century is an annexation plan of the West Bank to Israel, and a final end to the idea of an independent Palestinian state.

The Deal of the Century and the one state solution

The "two-state" solution, on the table since the 1970s and later translated, with the assistance of the PLO and Arafat, into the failed and tarnished project of the Oslo Accords, came to its inevitable end in the Deal of the Century. With its very own hands, the Palestinian Authority assisted in creating the fragmented Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, under de facto Israeli control. The Deal of the Century is an annexation plan of the West Bank to Israel, and a final end to the idea of an independent Palestinian state.
Read more: t.ly/DGBLA

10/03/2020

A different perspective on the Israeli elections

Sisyphus in the voting booth

There is symbiosis between the Likud and the (Arab) Joint List. As Arabs flock to the polling stations, right-wingers flock in reaction. And the more the right incites against Arabs, the bigger the Joint List grows.

Read more: t.ly/1kdYB

09/03/2020

The Deal of the Century and the one state solutionThe "two-state" solution, on the table since the 1970s and later trans...

09/03/2020

11/02/2020

The Palestinian Authority was and remains the sole guarantor of the Zionist vision, because without the PA there can be no way to realize Trump’s Deal of the Century: no annexation, no greater Israel, no Jewish state and no democracy. The PA is the start-up nation’s most brilliant invention, enabling it to annex what it wants and keep the Palestinians out.

Israeli elections 2020, Talking politics The Deal of the Century: Trump’s Rump Yacov Ben Efrat • February 11, 2020 • The deal of the century is more a vision than a practical plan, more a revisionist Zionist propaganda document than a political one. In fact, it is essentially a collection...

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CHALLENGE for peace and equality is a leftist E-magazine focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within a global context. Published in Tel Aviv, it features mainly political analysis. The English CHALLENGE was launched with a separate Hebrew edition (ETGAR) as a printed magazine in 1990 during the first Intifada. Both editorial boards were staffed by radical Israelis who oppose the Occupation. The magazines covered numerous aspects of alternative thinking and practice in Israel: human rights, free speech, and tolerance for the Other. The hard core of the editorial boards consisted of activists who later formed a political party called DAAM (Arabic acronym of the Organization for Democratic Action). The Oslo Accords were a turning point for CHALLENGE. In contrast with many on the Israeli Left who applauded the Accords, Challenge’s editors presented a severely critical analysis of the “peace plan,” warning that the creation of the Palestinian Authority would mean the end of hope for a democratic Palestinian state. CHALLENGE stood alone in this analysis. Later it continued criticizing Israel for using the Oslo Accords to deepen the Occupation. It also criticized both wings of the Palestinian leadership, Fatah and Hamas: Fatah for collaborating with Israel although the issues vital to the Palestinians had been deferred at Oslo, and Hamas for deceiving the Palestinians with a distorted, fundamentalist, and unrealistic platform that would soon bring Gaza to ruin. We continue to think that the two regimes, Fatah and Hamas, have exploited the conflict to build their own power structures while their people languishes in poverty. Come the Arab Spring in 2011, CHALLENGE supported change, claiming that at last the Arab young demonstrators are pointing in the right direction: No to secular dictators and No to fundamentalism, Shi’ite or Sunni. The young generations of the Arab world called for democracy and a decent living. CHALLENGE stood firmly with the Syrian Popular movement for freedom. Since 2008, CHALLENGE appears as an E-Magazine presenting its vanguard analysis of Israeli, Palestinian and Arab politics. A quarter century after Oslo it is clear that the Two State Solution, which may have had a narrow window after the first Intifada, became defunct when Oslo rearranged the Occupation, precluding the chance for Palestinian independence. After 50 years of Occupation, Israelis are coming ever closer to operating a form of Apartheid, namely a return to direct Occupation. Such a scenario will open the possibility for movement in the opposite direction: One state with Israeli and Palestinian citizens sharing labor and resources for the benefit of all. That will mean Goodbye to the era of nationalism and Hello to a society for all its citizens. This goal requires of both peoples, Israelis and Palestinians, that they struggle for the democratization of society, as part of a democratic transformation of the Arab world too. Needed are citizen initiatives that express the quest for bridges between peoples, especially by good use of the technological revolution. Instead of stressing differences and divisions, we must seek our common good, which will lead to political, economic, and social equality between Jews and Arabs. CHALLENGE is not supported by any donor or institution. It is free and open to all readers. We hope what we write will encourage you to donate towards our internet and distribution costs.