The past 40 years have seen huge changes in the lives and expectations of women all across the world. To the women of the middle classes of the Western world it may well seem that the changes in their situation are the most relevant and the most important, as the proliferating media debate, revise, reformulate and revile feminist ideas. Much of this is mere chatter, which fuels the lifestyle magazines, is dictated by fashion and the endless hunt for novelty, and can safely be ignored.

Feminism was no sooner recognised as a social force than the commercial media were bound to declare that it was over.

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Among American Jews today, there are a great many Zionists, especially in the Orthodox world, people deeply devoted to the State of Israel. And there are a great many liberals, especially in the secular Jewish world, people deeply devoted to human rights for all people, Palestinians included. But the two groups are increasingly distinct. Particularly in the younger generations, fewer and fewer American Jewish liberals are Zionists; fewer and fewer American Jewish Zionists are liberal. One reason is that the leading institutions of American Jewry have refused to foster—indeed, have actively opposed—a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens. For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door, and now, to their horror, they are finding that many young Jews have checked their Zionism instead.

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