new york times personal essay submissions

How We Redesigned the New York Times Opinion Essay

When a team of editors, designers and strategists teamed up to talk about how times opinion coverage is presented and packaged to readers, they thought of a dinner party..

The NYT Open Team

By Dalit Shalom

Picture a dinner party. The table is set with a festive meal, glasses full of your favorite drink. A group of your friends gather around to talk and share stories. The conversation swings from topic to topic and everyone is engaged in a lively discussion, excited to share ideas and stories with one another.

This is what we imagined when we — a group of New York Times editors, strategists and designers — teamed up last summer to talk about how to think about how our Opinion coverage is presented and packaged to our readers. We envisioned a forum that facilitated thoughtful discussion and would invite people to participate in vibrant debates.

The team was established after a wave of feedback from our readers showed that many people found it difficult to tell whether a story was an Opinion piece or hard news. This feedback was concerning. The Times publishes fact-based journalism both in our newsroom and on our Opinion desk, but it is very important to our mission that the distinction between the two is clear.

The type of Opinion journalism our group was tasked with rethinking was the Op-Ed, which was first introduced in the Times newspaper in 1970. The Op-Ed was short for “opposite the Editorial Page,” and it contained essays written by both Times columnists and external contributors from across the political, cultural and global spectrum who shared their viewpoints on numerous topics and current events. Because of the Op-Ed’s proximity to the Editorial Page in the printed newspaper, it was clear that published essays were Opinion journalism.

Then The Times began publishing online. Today, most of our readers find our journalism across many different media channels. The Op-Ed lost its clear proximity to the Editorial Page, and the term has been used broadly as a catch-all phrase for Opinion pieces, leaving the definition of what an Op-Ed is unclear.

To learn more about the friction our readership was describing, we held several research sessions with various types of Times readers, including subscribers and non-subscribers. Over the course of these sessions, we learned that readers genuinely crave a diversity of viewpoints. They turn to the Opinion section for a curated conversation that introduces them to ideologies different than their own.

In the divided nature of politics today, many readers are looking for structured arguments that prepare them to converse thoughtfully about complicated topics. Some readers said they want to challenge and interrogate their own beliefs. Others worry that they exist in their own bubbles and they need to understand how the “other side” thinks.

And across the board, readers said they are aware that social media platforms can be echo chambers that help validate their beliefs rather than illuminate different perspectives. They believe The Times can help them look outside those echo chambers.

Considering this feedback, we took a close look at the anatomy of an Op-Ed piece. At a glance, Opinion pieces shared similar, but not necessarily cohesive, properties. They had an “Opinion” label at the top of the page that was sometimes followed by a descriptive sub-label (for example, “The Argument”), as a way to indicate a story belonged to a column. That would be a headline, a summary and a byline, often accompanied by an image or video before the actual text of the story.

By looking at those visual cues, it became clear to us that they could be reconfigured to better communicate the difference between news and opinion.

We created several design provocations and conducted user testing sessions with readers to see how this approach and a new layout might resonate. Some noticeable changes we made include center-aligning the Opinion label and header, labeling the section in red and providing more intentional guidance and art direction for visuals that accommodate Opinion pieces.

While many readers could tell the difference between news and opinion stories, they didn’t understand why certain voices were featured in the Opinion section. They wanted more clarity about the Op-Ed, such as who wrote it and whether the writer was Times staff or an external voice. In the case of external contributors, readers wanted to know why the desk chose to feature their voice.

These questions took our team back to the drawing board. We began to realize that the challenge at hand was not solely a design problem, but a framing issue, as well.

We had long philosophical conversations about the meaning of Op-Ed pieces. We talked about the importance of hosting external voices and how those voices should be presented to our readers. The metaphor of a dinner party figured prominently in our conversations: the Opinion section should be a place where guests gather to engage in an environment that is civil and respectful.

We began to sharpen how we might convey the difference between an endorsement of a particular voice and hosting a guest — one of many who might contribute to a lively debate around a current event.

The more we thought about the Opinion section as a dinner party, the more we felt how crucial it was to communicate this idea to readers.

As we approached the designs, we set out to create an atmosphere for open dialogue and conversation. Two significant editorial changes came out of our group conversations.

After many iterations, we decided to introduce a two-tiered labeling system, so that readers could understand unequivocally the type of Opinion piece they were about to engage with. For external voices, we added the label “ Guest Essay ,” alongside other labels that indicate staff contributors and internal editorials. The label “Guest Essay” not only shifts the tone of a piece — a guest that we are hosting to share their point of view — but it also helps readers distinguish between opinions coming from the voice of The Times and opinions coming from external voices.

The second important editorial change is a more detailed bio about the author whose opinion we are sharing. With the dinner party metaphor in mind, this kind of intentional introduction can be seen as a toast, providing context, clarity and relevance around who someone is and why we chose them to write an essay.

Some of these changes may seem subtle, but sometimes the best dinner conversations are nuanced. This body of work signals an important moment for The New York Times in how we think about expressing opinions on our platform. We believe that one of the things that makes for a healthy society and a functioning democracy is a space for numerous perspectives to be honored and celebrated. We are confident these improvements will help further Times Opinion’s mission of curating debate and discussion around the world’s most pressing issues.

Dalit Shalom is the Design Lead for the Story Formats team at The New York Times, focusing on crafting new storytelling vehicles for Times journalism. Dalit teaches classes on creative thinking and news products at NYU and Columbia, and in her free time you can find her baking tremendous amounts of babka.

Written by The NYT Open Team

We’re New York Times employees writing about workplace culture, and how we design and build digital products for journalism.

More from The NYT Open Team and NYT Open

Estimation Isn’t for Everyone

The evolution of agility in software development.

CJ Robinson

How the New York Times Games Data Team Revamped Its Reporting

Huge amounts of data from wordle and connections changed the way our team approached data infrastructure and design.

Rohit Supekar

How The New York Times Uses Machine Learning To Make Its Paywall Smarter

The new york times launched its paywall in march 2011, beginning its journey as a subscription-first news and lifestyle service. since its….

How to Dox Yourself on the Internet

A step-by-step guide to finding and removing your personal information from the internet., recommended from medium.

Bringing Dark Mode to our News Apps

How teams across the new york times launched the dark mode feature to our news apps..

Lyft Design+

Designing with, not for

Hosting a co-creation workshop with drivers at lyft.

Stories to Help You Grow as a Designer

Interesting Design Topics

Icon Design

Dylan Babbs

Uber Design

Designing the latest generation of Uber Navigation: maps built for ridesharing

The story of how we redesigned uber navigation from the ground up using rapid prototyping and data-driven design..

UX/UI-trends in 2024

The 2023 year was rich in technological innovations: we witnessed the introduction of virtual glasses from apple, the surge of generative….

Matej Latin

UX Collective

90% of designers are unhirable?

Or why your cookie-cutter portfolio doesn’t cut it and how to fix it.

Why your UX Portfolio is not getting interviews in 2024? Do’s & Don’ts!

Prologue: who should spend the time to make a killer portfolio website.

Text to speech

Opinion Welcomes New Deputy Editors for Guest Essays

The opinion team announces two new deputies to help guide the report. Read more in this note from Vanessa Mobley.

For the guest essay operation in Opinion, I’m excited to announce two new deputies to help lead our team. Lauren Kelley , who is now our Op-Ed editor leading reproductive rights coverage, will become Deputy, News, and Ariel Kaminer , rejoining The Times from BuzzFeed, will be Deputy, Ideas & Investigations.

Starting Sept. 26, Lauren will be Deputy, News. Lauren, who led Op-Ed’s coverage of the Dobbs decision and has worked in Opinion for almost five years, has approached the biggest questions about reproductive rights and restrictions in America, and their impact on the country , with rigor and probity . She will bring her incisive editing and astute judgment, as well as her empathic and generous leadership, to this new position. She is committed to producing a timely and relevant report that reflects the core conflicts that drive the news, from a range of political and ideological perspectives.

Originally from Dallas, Lauren has a B.A. in English from Texas Christian University. Before joining The Times’s editorial board in 2018, she was the politics editor at Rolling Stone, where she led coverage of the 2016 elections.

Starting Sept. 19, Ariel Kaminer returns to the Times in the role of Deputy, Ideas & Investigations, after seven years at BuzzFeed News, most recently as executive editor for investigations. Her 16-person team punched above its weight, with projects such as the FinCEN files investigation and a deep dive into the alleged kidnapping plot against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Their award-winning work captured international attention, shook up corporate policies, challenged conventional wisdom and resulted in laws being changed. Ariel is an exceptional editor, experienced in both politics and culture, investigations and personal essays. Her previous positions at The Times included story editor at the Magazine, where she edited an investigation into sexual abuse at the Horace Mann School; Arts & Leisure editor; digital deputy of the Culture desk; and Metro reporter covering higher education, where she explored complicated campus politics and revealed the brutal working conditions at N.Y.U.’s glittering Abu Dhabi campus. She also wrote the City Critic and Ethicist columns. Her role in Opinion will be as a catalyst for the deep and satisfying conversations that Opinion convenes around ideas.

Originally from Tenafly, N.J., Ariel is a graduate of Princeton University.

Please join us in congratulating Lauren and offering a warm welcome to Ariel.

Explore Further

Vanessa mobley joins opinion to lead op-ed team, adrienne shih and adam westbrook join opinion, eleanor barkhorn joining opinion.

We use cookies and similar technologies to recognize your repeat visits and preferences, as well as to measure and analyze traffic. To learn more about cookies, including how to disable them, view our Cookie Policy . By clicking “I Accept” on this banner, you consent to the use of cookies unless you disable them.

The New York Times

The learning network | getting personal: writing college essays for the common application.

Getting Personal: Writing College Essays for the Common Application

Language Arts

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

• See all in Language Arts »
• See all lesson plans »

Overview | How can reading The New York Times help students practice for the new college essay prompts on the Common Application? What tips on college-essay writing can they learn from The Choice blog? In this lesson, students will explore the open-ended topics for the 2013-14 Common Application essays through writing and discussion. Then, they will identify and examine Times pieces that might serve as “mentor texts” for their own application essays. Finally, they will craft their own college admissions essay in response to one of the new prompts, using advice from Learning Network and The Choice Blog.

Materials | Student journals

Warm-Up | Prior to class, post these prompts at the front of the room, or prepare to project them. Do not tell students that they are the new prompts for the Common Application essay.

When students arrive, ask them to form two concentric circles, facing one another. During the activity, the students forming the inside circle remain still, which the students in the outside circle will travel to their left when given the signal. Explain to students that you are going to do a “speed-dating” activity.

Project or unveil the first prompt and tell students that they will talk about the topic with the person across from them for five minutes. Within that time, each student should play the role of speaker and listener. Set a timer for five minutes and signal that they should begin. Once time is up the outer circle rotates left. Unveil a new topic and begin the process again until students have discussed each topic, rotating to new discussion partners with each prompt. Then, ask students to return to their seats.

Alternatively, depending on the nature of your class, you could post the topics up around the room and ask students to take their journals and form small groups by each topic. Then, conduct a free-writing marathon. Have students free-write using the topic they are standing in front of as a starting point. Tell them they have five minutes and set a timer. At the conclusion of the time period, ask students to rotate to the next topic and begin free-writing. Repeat this process until students reach their starting point. Then, ask them to return to their seats.

Open discussion by asking the following questions:

• Which of these topics did you find the easiest to discuss? Why?
• Which of these did you find difficult? Why?
• Which of these prompts did you want to continue talking (or writing) about?

Then, invite students to share a story or a favorite free-write effort with the whole group.

Finally, share with students that these are the new essay topics for the common application essay and ask them what they think. Are these good topics? Is there something here for everyone? Do some help colleges get to know students better than others? Do they fuel or lessen anxiety about the college application process? You might use some of the comments in response to The Choice post to spark discussion.

Related | In Common Application Releases New Essay Prompts , Tanya Abrams unveils the new Common App essay topics for the 2013-14 admissions season.

The new Common Application — which received some criticism a few months ago for removing the “topic of your choice” essay prompt — has released five new essay prompts for the 2013-14 admissions season, Inside Higher Ed reports. Students who plan to use the Common App, a form that allows students to apply to multiple colleges and universities simultaneously, are advised to keep these essay prompts in mind. Savvy juniors, and regular readers of this blog, know that the earlier a college applicant starts drafting his or her essay, the more prepared they are. Here are the new essay prompts: Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn? Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again? Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you? Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

• Why did the Common Application receive criticism several months ago for its essay prompts?
• Do you miss the “topic of your choice” option? Why or why not?
• Why would The Choice publish these topics now?
• What do the new topics have in common??
• How do you feel about the new word count?

RELATED RESOURCES

From the learning network.

• Lesson | Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay
• Student Opinion | What Mundane Moments in Your Life Might Make Great Essay Material?
• Lesson | Getting Personal: Creating Your Own College Essay Prompts

From NYTimes.com

• Common Application is Removing a Surprising Essay Topic
• Juniors: In the Quiet of Summer, Start Your Essays
• Your Admissions Essay, Live on Stage

Around the Web

• Juniors and Common App Essays: Wait to Write Them
• TeenInk College Guide: Today’s Best College Essays
• >MIT Admissions: How to Write a College Essay

Activity | Tell students that they will have the opportunity to expand on the ideas they discussed at the beginning of class by drafting an essay in response to one of the prompts, but first, they are going to comb The New York Times for models of each topic and look closely at them to see how others have told their stories and what they might learn about how to effectively tell their own. ( Note: Many of the pieces we’ve chosen as “mentor texts” below, are either by or about young people, but some are not. Please use the choices as suggestions only: there are many, many pieces in The Times weekly that fit the Common App prompts well.)

Assign pairs or groups of students each one of the new Common App essay topics and ask them to search the Times (and elsewhere) for essays that might serves as models. Give each group the following articles, essays, or columns to use as starting points. Each group member should find at least one additional model and bring in the clipping or Web site to class for analysis and discussion.

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story.

• It’s O.K. to Put Yourself First : An essay in which a writer meditates on the impact of a serious illness on her life and family.
• My Son and the City : A woman moves to New York City with her son, who has serious medical challenges and developmental disabilities–and, she writes, “in a place famous for its anonymous crowds, [he] has been learning about people.”

Recount an incident or time when you experienced failure. How did it affect you, and what lessons did you learn?

• A Rat’s Tale : A writer discusses her failure to be the sister her brother wanted and what she learned.
• Pancake Chronicles : An entertaining account of a disastrous first job.
• A Heartbroken Temp at Brides.com : After a groom changes his mind, his would-be bride, with “no money, no apartment, no job” takes a position at a wedding Web site.

Reflect on a time when you challenged a belief or idea. What prompted you to act? Would you make the same decision again?

• From Tehran to the B Train : A young woman stands up to a mugger on the subway.
• Winning Essay: Win a Trip Contest : An essay about fighting injustice all around the world.
• I Found My Biological Parents, and Wish I Hadn’t : “I’d expected to find more common ground,” writes the author of this essay.

Describe a place or environment where you are perfectly content. What do you do or experience there, and why is it meaningful to you?

• Yes, I’m in a Clique : A Student from Columbine High School discusses the comfort of a clique.
• My Manhattan; A Lifetime of Memories and Magic : A meditation on Central Park
• My Home in Africa : An American feels at home in the Republic of Benin.

Discuss an accomplishment or event, formal or informal, that marked your transition from childhood to adulthood within your culture, community, or family.

• A Life Plan for Two, Followed by One : An essay about young love and loss of innocence.
• Forbidden Nofruit : A reflection on junk food, family, and rebellion.
• Bitter Sweets : A young man who has “a hard time” with his Chinese-American identity looks for an apartment with his white girlfriend.

Generally speaking, the following Times sections offer good models for personal essays:

• Lives Columns
• Modern Love Columns
• The Townies series

In addition, the following Learning Network features pull together high interest pieces that make good models for student writing.

• Great Read-Alouds From The New York Times
• Teenagers in the Times
• Using Opening Lines From the Magazine’s ‘Lives’ Column as Writing Prompts
• 10 Personal Writing Ideas

When students identify the models, ask them to analyze them as models for writing, using the following questions:

• How does the writer begin the piece? Is it effective? Why or why not? What advice would you give an essay writer based on how this model begins?
• Where do you see the writer demonstrating what he or she is saying? In other words, where is he or she showing, rather than telling?
• What words does the writer use that really make his or her voice come alive for you?
• How does the piece end? Is this an effective technique? Why or why not?
• Finally, try “reverse outlining” the piece to see how the writer organized and developed his or her ideas.

Help students explore more Times models and advice for writing well with this lesson . For expository essay models that go beyond the personal, try this one .

Going Further |

After exploring Times models, students are now ready to craft their own essays. Ask students to choose a topic that intrigued them during the warm-up and draft an essay, using Times Resources to help them.

They might start with the three articles we’ve pulled drawings from to illustrate this lesson plan:

• Common App 4.0
• The Almighty Essay
• Returning Favors With Neighborly Advice

Then move on to specific advice offered by The Choice blog:

• On College Essay, Write About Something That Made You ‘Feel Deeply’”
• A Plea From the Admissions Office to Go for the ‘Dangerous’ Essay
• What the New Dean at Pomona Looks for in an Essay

• Hearing the Voice of a 51-Year-Old Man in the Essay of a 17-Year-Old Girl
• Treating a College Admissions Essay Like a First Date
• Crafting an Application Essay that ‘Pops’
• Tip Sheet: An Admissions Dean Offers Advice on Writing a College Essay
• Advice on Whittling Your Admissions Essay

Students who are having trouble coming up with ideas might browse the responses to our Student Opinion question What Mundane Moments in Your Life Might Make Great Essay Material? or this tip sheet from The Choice blog.

Teachers wishing to develop this lesson into a more complete unit on the college essay might focus more on crafting the essay itself using this lesson on Going Beyond Cliché: How to Write a Great College Essay” coupled with the resources from this 2009 lesson . Students might also find this advice useful.

Once students have completed their drafts, ask that they use the College Essay Checklist (PDF) to evaluate their essays either individually or in pairs.

Common Core ELA Anchor Standards, 6-12

Reading 1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs and larger parts of the text (for example, a section, chapter, scene or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. 10. Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently.

Writing 3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details and well-structured event sequences. 4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization and style are appropriate to task, purpose and audience. 5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting or trying a new approach.

Speaking and Listening 1. Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

Language 1. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking. 3. Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, and to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

Comments are no longer being accepted.

What a great resource you are, and to think that until last week I had no idea you even existed! Thanks to your post, I just followed up on The Choice’s suggestion to add additional helpful essay-starting exercises of my own. “What’s in your room?” has long been the prompt I use to get things rolling – even before the Common App posted its new questions. And look: Question 4 readily lends itself to that train of thought.

Your suggestions have also been a good way for me to refine an area where I don’t quite agree. I’ve never found it useful to have students look at model essays written by other people, in the same way I don’t (usually) find it a good idea when students begin their essays with someone else’s lofty quotation. I’d much rather give them the strategies to look deeper within themselves to provide both the text and, more importantly, the subtext. In fact, I don’t feel that even the Common Core heeds the omnipresence of a deeper intuitive logic within the writing process. In the college essay I believe the chief goal should be to get students to realize they are the only authority they may need when it comes to making, then sharing, the amazing, unique connections they have arrived at based on experiences they alone are qualified to speak of. =)

Thanks so much for letting us know, Maxene! (And consider inviting your students to do our Summer Reading Contest , too!) –Katherine

This chart is very use fol for students

This is one of the most extensive and helpful posts I’ve read on how to write college admissions essays. My feeling is that most English teachers know their great literature, but are not as versed on teaching writing–especially narrative style pieces. I agree that the best place to get ideas for unique topics, as well as learn how to structure these more informal essays, is by reading what others have written. You have collected a wonderful assortment of sample essays. Reading excellent writing, especially the New York Times, is also very helpful, especially feature-style articles that use creative writing techniques, such as anecdotal leads and descriptive details. I try to share similar writing advice on my blog, Essay Hell.

Excellent resource, thank you.

I am in the process of writing my common application essay, and this is served as inspiration.

It was very useful for me.

Is the essay you write just as important as your SAT scores?

This will help me immensely when I begin writing my college essay prompt.

Some students have a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. //www.essayhelpcollege.blogspot.com //writingcenter.unc.edu/handouts/application-essays/

Common Application will retain the current set of first-year essay prompts for 2014-15, without any edits or additions. //dartmouth.edu/writing-speech/ wwwbuyessay.co.uk

I saw some sources about relationship. Is it okay to write about your love and how in has influenced you to become a better person?

Hi, these tips are really helpful to write my personal statement for law school. I was feeling overwhelmed to compose my personal statement.

Found your blog very useful & informative. Thanks for such a nice post.

What's Next

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Personal Essays

The Fab Five and Hair That Does the Talking

By Hanif Abdurraqib

How I Proposed to My Girlfriend

By Kathryn Schulz

When Williamsburg Was on the Wrong Side of the River

By Jami Attenberg

Mayfield, Before and After

By Bobbie Ann Mason

Sunday Reading: Personal Reflections

By Erin Overbey

My Failed Attempts to Hoard Anything at All

By David Sedaris

Stalking a Rustically Hip Family on Instagram

By Emily Flake

A Dark Ride

By James Marcus

Julius: The Story of a Premature Birth

By Jon Michaud

The Nick Cave Song That Changed My Life

Nearby and Familiar: A Strategy for Picking Restaurants

By Calvin Trillin

Two Sister-Poets Gone Too Soon: Ntozake Shange and My Sister

By Hilton Als

The Sordid Necessity of Living for Others

By Justin Torres

Memories of V. S. Naipaul

By Paul Theroux

I’ve Quit Writing Personal Essays About Quitting Things: A Personal Essay

By Jake Tuck

My Father and Sandy Koufax

By David Sipress

The Personal-Essay Boom Is Over

By Jia Tolentino

One Child’s Life

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Guest Essay

The View Within Israel Turns Bleak

By Megan K. Stack

Ms. Stack is a contributing Opinion writer who has reported from the Middle East.

It was the pictures of Palestinians swimming and sunning at a Gaza beach that rubbed Yehuda Shlezinger, an Israeli journalist, the wrong way. Stylish in round red glasses and a faint scruff of beard, Mr. Shlezinger unloaded his revulsion at the “disturbing” pictures while appearing on Israel’s Channel 12.

“These people there deserve death, a hard death, an agonizing death, and instead we see them enjoying on the beach and having fun,” complained Mr. Shlezinger, the religious affairs correspondent for the widely circulated right-wing Israel Hayom newspaper. “We should have seen a lot more revenge there,” Mr. Shlezinger unrepentantly added. “A lot more rivers of Gazans’ blood.”

It would be nice to think that Mr. Shlezinger is a fringe figure or that Israelis would be shocked by his bloody fantasies. But he’s not, and many wouldn’t be.

Israel has hardened, and the signs of it are in plain view. Dehumanizing language and promises of annihilation from military and political leaders. Polls that found wide support for the policies that have wreaked devastation and starvation in Gaza. Selfies of Israeli soldiers preening proudly in bomb-crushed Palestinian neighborhoods. A crackdown on even mild forms of dissent among Israelis.

The Israeli left — the factions that criticize the occupation of Palestinian lands and favor negotiations and peace instead — is now a withered stump of a once-vigorous movement. In recent years, the attitudes of many Israelis toward the “Palestinian problem” have ranged largely from detached fatigue to the hard-line belief that driving Palestinians off their land and into submission is God’s work.

This bleak ideological landscape emerged slowly and then, on Oct. 7, all at once.

The massacre and kidnappings of that day, predictably, brought a public thirst for revenge. But in truth, by the time Hamas killers rampaged through the kibbutzim — in a bitter twist, home to some of the holdout peaceniks — many Israelis had long since come to regard Palestinians as a threat best locked away. America’s romantic mythology and wishful thinking about Israel encourage a tendency to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the main cause of the ruthlessness in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 35,000 people. The unpopular, scandal-ridden premier makes a convincing ogre in an oversimplified story.

But Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, the creeping famine, the wholesale destruction of neighborhoods — this, polling suggests, is the war the Israeli public wanted. A January survey found that 94 percent of Jewish Israelis said the force being used against Gaza was appropriate or even insufficient. In February, a poll found that most Jewish Israelis opposed food and medicine getting into Gaza. It was not Mr. Netanyahu alone but also his war cabinet members (including Benny Gantz, often invoked as the moderate alternative to Mr. Netanyahu) who unanimously rejected a Hamas deal to free Israeli hostages and, instead, began an assault on the city of Rafah, overflowing with displaced civilians.

“It’s so much easier to put everything on Netanyahu, because then you feel so good about yourself and Netanyahu is the darkness,” said Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist who has documented Israel’s military occupation for decades. “But the darkness is everywhere.”

Like most political evolutions, the toughening of Israel is partly explained by generational change — Israeli children whose earliest memories are woven through with suicide bombings have now matured into adulthood. The rightward creep could be long-lasting because of demographics, with modern Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews (who disproportionately vote with the right) consistently having more babies than their secular compatriots.

Most crucially, many Israelis emerged from the second intifada with a jaundiced view of negotiations and, more broadly, Palestinians, who were derided as unable to make peace. This logic conveniently erased Israel’s own role in sabotaging the peace process through land seizures and settlement expansion. But something broader had taken hold — a quality that Israelis described to me as a numb, disassociated denial around the entire topic of Palestinians.

“The issues of settlements or relations with Palestinians were off the table for years,” Tamar Hermann told me. “The status quo was OK for Israelis.”

Ms. Hermann, a senior research fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, is one of the country’s most respected experts on Israeli public opinion. In recent years, she said, Palestinians hardly caught the attention of Israeli Jews. She and her colleagues periodically made lists of issues and asked respondents to rank them in order of importance. It didn’t matter how many choices the pollsters presented, she said — resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict came in last in almost all measurements.

“It was totally ignored,” she said.

The psychological barrier between Israelis and Palestinians was hardened when Israel built the snaking West Bank barrier, which helped to forestall attacks on Israelis toward the end of the second intifada — the five-year Palestinian uprising that erupted in 2000, killing about 1,000 Israelis and roughly three times as many Palestinians. The wall helped keep West Bank suicide bombers from penetrating Israel and piled extra misery on ever-more-constrained Palestinian civilians, many of whom refer to it as the apartheid wall.

Many Israelis, Ms. Hermann told me, are at a loss when asked to identify the border where Israel ends and the West Bank begins. Her research from 2016 found that only a small percentage of Israelis knew for sure that the Green Line was the border delineated by the 1949 Armistice. The question of whether this border should even be depicted on Israeli school maps has been a heated topic of debate within Israel; with a rueful laugh, Ms. Hermann described many of the classroom maps as “from the river to the sea.”

Such ignorance is a luxury exclusive to Israelis. Palestinians make it their business to know exactly where the border between Israel and the West Bank lies, which checkpoints are open on a given day, which roads they may and may not use. These are not abstract ideas; they dictate the daily movements of Palestinians, and confusing them could be fatal.

Israel’s uneasy detachment turned to rage on Oct. 7.

A handful of songs with lyrics calling for the annihilation of a dehumanized enemy have been circulated in Israel these past months, including “Launch,” a hip-hop glorification of the military promising “from kisses to guns, until Gaza is erased” and suggesting that the West Bank city of Jenin is under the “plague of the firstborn,” a reference to the biblical story in which God smites the eldest sons of Egypt. The smash hit “ Harbu Darbu ,” addressed to “you sons of Amalek,” promises “another X on the rifle, ’cause every dog will get what’s coming to him.”

“There is no forgiveness for swarms of rats,” another song goes . “They will die in their rat holes.”

Israeli shops hawk trendy products like a bumper sticker that reads, “Finish them,” and a pendant cut into the shape of Israel, with East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza seamlessly attached.

Israeli protesters have repeatedly taken to the streets in anguish over the hostages held in Gaza and rage at Mr. Netanyahu (who faced intense domestic opposition long before Oct. 7) for failing to save them. But the demonstrations should not be conflated with international calls to protect civilians in Gaza. Many Israelis want a cease-fire to free the hostages, followed by the ouster of Mr. Netanyahu — but the protests do not reflect a groundswell of sympathy for Palestinians or a popular desire to rethink the status quo ante of occupation and long-silenced peace talks.

If anything, with the world’s attention fixed on Gaza, Israel’s far-right government has intensified the domination of Palestinians. The single largest Israeli land grab in more than 30 years happened in March , when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced the state seizure of 10 square kilometers of the West Bank. The land takeovers are accompanied by a bloody campaign of terror , with an ever-less-distinguishable mix of soldiers and settlers killing at least 460 Palestinians in the West Bank since Oct. 7, the Palestinian health ministry says.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, the police have handed out guns to civilians and set up de facto militias in the name of self-defense. But questions about whom these newly armed groups are meant to defend, and from whom, have created a creeping unease.

The weapons have gone not only to West Bank settlements or towns adjacent to Palestinian territories and Lebanon but also to communities set deep in Israel’s interior, particularly places that are home to a mix of Arab and Jewish residents . An analysis published in January by the newspaper Haaretz found that while the national security ministry wouldn’t disclose which communities got gun licenses or the criteria used to decide, Arab communities — even those on Israel’s frontier — did not seem to be eligible.

The guns sent a chill through Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have often been invoked in defense of the state. Look, Israel’s advocates often say, Arabs live more freely in Israel than anywhere else in the Middle East.

Hassan Jabareen, a prominent Palestinian lawyer who founded Adalah, Israel’s main legal center for Arab rights, told me that many Arab citizens of Israel — who constitute one-fifth of the population — live in fear.

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have in the past provoked community protests, riots and clashes among Arabs and Jews in Israel. After Oct. 7, though, the message was clear: Stay quiet.

“The police left no doubt that we were enemies of the state,” Mr. Jabareen said, “when they started arming the Jewish citizens of Israel and called Jewish citizens to come to the station and take your arms to defend yourself from your Palestinian neighbor.”

Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer who lives with her family in the Israeli city of Haifa, told me that these past months have been thick with unease. She has long imagined herself as a living holdover from the once-thriving Arab population that was largely displaced from what is now Israel. A “remnant,” she calls herself, who for years moved through Israel feeling invisible.

Now the sense of invisibility has melted. Both Ms. Buttu and Mr. Jabareen said that the current atmosphere in Israel had drawn closer and sharpened in their minds the mass displacement known in Arabic as the nakba, or catastrophe, as if history might yet loop back. Mr. Netanyahu evoked the same era when he referred to Israel’s current onslaught as “Israel’s second war of independence.”

“They didn’t see us,” Ms. Buttu said. “We were the ghosts; we were just there. And now it’s like, ‘Wow, they’re here.’ There is an interest in trying to get rid of Palestinians. We’re on the rhetorical front lines.”

Long before this current storm of violence, Mr. Netanyahu’s far-right government had worked to strengthen Jewish supremacy. The 2018 “nation-state law” codified the right to national self-determination as “unique to the Jewish people,” removed Arabic as an official language and established “Jewish settlement as a national value” that the government must support. Palestinian members of the Knesset famously shredded copies of the bill in Parliament and yelled, “Apartheid,” but it passed all the same.

In 2022, Israel reauthorized its controversial family unification law, largely barring Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens from receiving legal status — or living with their spouses in Israel — if they are from the West Bank or Gaza. The law also applies to people from the “enemy states” of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq (homes to Palestinian refugee communities), as well as Iran.

With legal disadvantages and social pressures mounting, Palestinian citizens of Israel have started to look abroad for support. Mr. Jabareen told me that his organization is preparing an application to the United Nations to request international legal protections for Palestinians inside Israel. In March a Palestinian citizen of Israel was granted asylum in Britain after arguing that returning would very likely expose him to persecution because of his political views and activism for Palestinian rights and Israel’s “apartheid system of racial control of its Jewish citizens over its Palestinian citizens.”

Another stark sign of Israel’s hardening is the hundreds of Israelis — mostly Arabs, but some Jews, too — who have been arrested, fired or otherwise punished for statements or actions regarded as endangering national security or undermining Israel’s war efforts. Even a social media post expressing concern for Palestinians in Gaza is enough to draw police scrutiny.

Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, a scholar who lectures at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Queen Mary University of London, said on a podcast that Zionism should be abolished, that Israel may be lying about the extent of sexual assault that took place on Oct. 7 and that Israelis were “criminals” who “cannot kill and not be afraid, so they better be afraid.” Israeli police responded in April by jailing Ms. Shalhoub-Kevorkian overnight and asking a judge to keep her locked up while they investigated her on suspicion of incitement. The judge decided to release her but acknowledged that she “may have crossed the line from free expression to incitement.”

For nearly two decades — starting with the quieting of the second intifada and ending calamitously on Oct. 7 — Israel was remarkably successful at insulating itself from the violence of the occupation. Rockets fired from Gaza periodically rained down on Israeli cities, but since 2011 , Israel’s Iron Dome defense system has intercepted most of them. The mathematics of death heavily favored Israel: From 2008 until Oct. 7, more than 6,000 Palestinians were killed in what the United Nations calls “the context of occupation and conflict”; during that time, more than 300 Israelis were killed.

Human rights organizations — including Israeli groups — wrote elaborate reports explaining why Israel is an apartheid state. That was embarrassing for Israel, but nothing really came of it. The economy flourished. Once-hostile Arab states showed themselves willing to sign accords with Israel after just a little performative pestering about the Palestinians.

Those years gave Israelis a taste of what may be the Jewish state’s most elusive dream — a world in which there simply did not exist a Palestinian problem.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator who is now president of the U.S./Middle East Project think tank, describes “the level of hubris and arrogance that built up over the years.” Those who warned of the immorality or strategic folly of occupying Palestinian territories “were dismissed,” he said, “like, ‘Just get over it.’”

If U.S. officials understand the state of Israeli politics, it doesn’t show. Biden administration officials keep talking about a Palestinian state. But the land earmarked for a state has been steadily covered in illegal Israeli settlements, and Israel itself has seldom stood so unabashedly opposed to Palestinian sovereignty.

There’s a reason Mr. Netanyahu keeps reminding everyone that he’s spent his career undermining Palestinian statehood: It’s a selling point. Mr. Gantz, who is more popular than Mr. Netanyahu and is often mentioned as a likely successor, is a centrist by Israeli standards — but he, too, has pushed back against international calls for a Palestinian state.

Daniel Levy describes the current divide among major Israeli politicians this way: Some believe in “managing the apartheid in a way that gives Palestinians more freedom — that’s [Yair] Lapid and maybe Gantz on some days,” while hard-liners like Mr. Smotrich and Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir “are really about getting rid of the Palestinians. Eradication. Displacement.”

The carnage and cruelty suffered by Israelis on Oct. 7 should have driven home the futility of sealing themselves off from Palestinians while subjecting them to daily humiliations and violence. As long as Palestinians are trapped under violent military occupation, deprived of basic rights and told that they must accept their lot as inherently lower beings, Israelis will live under the threat of uprisings, reprisals and terrorism. There is no wall thick enough to suppress forever a people who have nothing to lose.

Israelis did not, by and large, take that lesson. Now apathy has been replaced by vengeance.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

Megan K. Stack is a contributing Opinion writer and author. She has been a correspondent in China, Russia, Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan and the U.S.-Mexico border area. Her first book, a narrative account of the post-Sept. 11 wars, was a finalist for the National Book Award in nonfiction. @ Megankstack

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts
• RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
• 17 May 2024

Reading between the lines: application essays predict university success

Analysis of more than 40,000 university application essays found that gradual transitions between chunks of text correlated with higher marks. Credit: Dusan Stankovic/Getty

Aspiring students who wrote content-rich university admission essays were more likely to end up with higher grades in their classes 1 .

Access options

Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals

Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription

24,99 € / 30 days

cancel any time

Subscribe to this journal

Receive 51 print issues and online access

185,98 € per year

only 3,65 € per issue

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Nature 629 , 731 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01396-8

Berger, J. & Toubia, O. PNAS Nexus 3 , pgae163 (2024).

Article   Google Scholar  

Download references

Brazil’s plummeting graduate enrolments hint at declining interest in academic science careers

Career News 21 MAY 24

How to stop students cramming for exams? Send them to sea

News & Views 30 APR 24

How young people benefit from Swiss apprenticeships

Spotlight 17 APR 24

Editor (Structural biology, experimental and/or computational biophysics)

We are looking for an Editor to join Nature Communications, the leading multidisciplinary OA journal, publishing high-quality scientific research.

London or New York - hybrid working model.

Springer Nature Ltd

Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in - Quantencomputing mit gespeicherten Ionen

Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in - Quantencomputing mit gespeicherten Ionen Bereich: Fakultät IV - Naturwissenschaftlich-Technische Fakultät | St...

Siegen, Nordrhein-Westfalen (DE)

Universität Siegen

Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in (PostDoc) - Quantencomputing mit gespeicherten Ionen

Wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiter/in (PostDoc) - Quantencomputing mit gespeicherten Ionen Bereich: Fakultät IV - Naturwissenschaftlich-Technische Fak...

Professor Helminthology

Excellent track record on the biology and immunobiology of zoonotic helminths and co-infections, with a strong scientific network.

Antwerp, New York

Institute of Tropical Medicine

Assistant Professor in Plant Biology

The Plant Science Program in the Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering (BESE) Division at King Abdullah University of Science and Te...

Saudi Arabia (SA)

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies