Ben Reiff

Ben Reiff is an editor at +972 Magazine and Vashti Media. Twitter: @bentreyf.

Recent Articles

Jews march within a large rally for a ceasefire in Gaza in central London, November 11, 2023. (Alisdare Hickson/CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED)

A ‘no-go zone’ for Jews? The making of a moral panic in London

While antisemitism in the U.K. has certainly risen, politicians and the media are deliberately inflaming sensationalist narratives for a repressive agenda.

By Ben Reiff March 13, 2024

Israeli Justice Minister Yariv Levin addresses the Knesset ahead of a vote to abolish the reasonableness standard, Jerusalem, July 24, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Israel’s justice minister gives away the real aim of the judicial coup’s first law

In a Knesset speech, Yariv Levin listed five gov't decisions that were blocked for being ‘unreasonable.’ All were about Palestinians and the occupation.

By Ben Reiff July 25, 2023

Settlers of the Nachala Settlement Movement set up tents near Kiryat Arba, with the intention to establish illegal outposts in the West Bank, July 20, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Smotrich wants one million West Bank settlers. That’s not so far-fetched

Seeking to double the settler population, Israel's far-right government is expediting infrastructural plans that were — often literally — laid decades ago.

By Ben Reiff July 12, 2023

Rabbi Leo Dee at the funeral of his daughters Maia and Rina at the Gush Etzion Regional Cemetery in Kfar Etzion on April 9, 2023. The sisters were killed in a shooting attack in the Jordan Valley; their mother, Lucy, later died of her wounds sustained in the same attack. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)

A British-Israeli tragedy, born out of the occupation

To omit the violent context in which the Dee family killings occurred is to condemn countless more Palestinians and Israelis to the same fate.

By Ben Reiff April 11, 2023

Far-right MK Itamar Ben-Gvir takes part in the 'flag march' in the city of Lydd, December 5, 2021. (Oren Ziv)

Israelis are calling their leaders fascists. Why can’t British politicians?

What will it take for British officials and other international actors to start taking Israeli leaders at their word and offer any meaningful pushback?

By Ben Reiff February 7, 2023

The radical bloc at an anti-government demonstration in Tel Aviv, January 21, 2023. (Oren Ziv)

‘No democracy with apartheid’: Inside the radical bloc at Israel’s anti-gov’t protests

Activists tell +972 that they want to challenge Israeli protesters to look beyond the far-right coalition and see the conditions that enabled its rise.

By Ben Reiff January 25, 2023

Avrum Burg (left) and Faisal Azaiza (right), co-chairs of the new All its Citizens party, at the public launch event in Tel Aviv, December 16, 2022. (Oren Ziv)

Can a new Jewish-Arab party breathe life into the Israeli left?

'All its Citizens' wants to unite the left in Israel around the principle of complete equality for all. But can they even agree on what that looks like?

By Ben Reiff December 21, 2022

Matzpen co-founder Moshé Machover, London, July 11, 2008. (Hossam el-Hamalawy/CC BY 2.0)

The last first Israeli anti-Zionist

Sixty years after co-founding the radical leftist group Matzpen, Moshé Machover reflects on the organization’s enduring legacy, the internal splits that led to its demise, and its lessons for today's anti-Zionist left.

By Ben Reiff November 24, 2022

MK Itamar Ben Gvir, head of the Otzma Yehudit party, and activists protest in support of the deportation of asylum seekers in southern Tel Aviv, October 12, 2022. (Tomer Neuberg/Flash90)

In the war on African asylum seekers, Ben Gvir finds a hero’s welcome

Left-wing activists confronted the Kahanist lawmaker's visit to south Tel Aviv, but his supremacism appears to be mobilizing a growing base in the city.

By Ben Reiff October 17, 2022

A forensic team from Israel's Health Ministry opens Yosef Melamed's grave in order to take a DNA sample, Nahalat Yitzhak Cemetery, Tel Aviv, July 27, 2022. Melamed's family, who immigrated from Yemen, believe he was kidnapped along with hundreds of children from Middle Eastern and North African countries in the 1940’s and 1950’s. (Oren Ziv)

Why is Israel digging up the graves of Mizrahi children?

After years of pressure, Israel is taking measures to uncover the fate of children, mostly Yemenite, who disappeared in the 1950s. +972 spoke with two activists about the families’ long road to justice.

By Ben Reiff August 24, 2022