IT IS not easy to be an Arab in Israel. It is not easy to be a woman in Arab society. It is not easy to be an Arab in Israeli politics. And even less easy to be an Arab woman in the Knesset. Haneen Zuabi is all these together. Perhaps because of this she … Read more
SO NOW we have another anti-Semite. Mazal Tov (“good luck”) as we say in Hebrew. His name is Ban Ki-moon, and he is the Secretary General of the UN. In practice, the highest international official, a kind of World Prime Minister. He has dared to criticize the Israeli government, as well as the Palestinian Authority, … Read more
HAMELIN, a small town in Germany (not so far from where I was born), was infested with rats. In their despair, the burghers called upon a rat-catcher and promised him a thousand guilders for liberating them from this plague. The rat-catcher took his pipe and played such a sweet melody that all the rats came … Read more
AS IS well-known, Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”. That is its official designation. Well… AS FOR Jewish, it’s a new kind of Jewishness, a mutation. For 2000 years or so, Jews were known to be wise, clever, peace-loving, humane, progressive, liberal, even socialist. Today, when you hear these attributes, the State of Israel … Read more
IN ANY list of Israel’s 100 most important women, Ilana Dayan would occupy a prominent position. Dayan (no relation to the late general with the eye patch) is the host of one of the most prestigious television programs. While Israeli TV in general is slowly sinking into a morass of stupid “reality” entertainment, her program, … Read more
THE ISRAELI Ministry of Education has struck a book from students’ reading lists.Big deal. Happens every day in Russia, China and Iran. But this was not a revolutionary work by a fire-eating rebel. It is a gentle novel by an appreciated female author, Dorit Rabinyan. Her cardinal sin was the plot: a love story between … Read more
WHEN THE State of Israel was founded, the new foreign minister, Moshe Sharett, did something that seemed quite natural. He sold his private apartment. In his new function, he was accorded an official residence. A modest one, needless to say. Sharett thought that it was unseemly for a public official to retain a private apartment … Read more
TWO WEEKS ago, Benedict Anderson died. Or, as we say in Hebrew, “went to his world”. Anderson, an Irishman born in China, educated in England, fluent in several South Asian languages, had a large influence on my intellectual world. I owe a lot to his most important book, “Imagined Communities”. EACH OF us has a … Read more
BY NOW EVERY ISRAELI has seen the TV clip several times – showing a 14-year old Arab girl being shot dead near the central market of Jewish Jerusalem. The story is well known: two sisters, 14 and 16 years old, have decided to attack Israelis. The clip, taken by a security camera, shows one of … Read more
BINYAMIN NETANYAHU is our prime minister for life. So it seems. So he evidently believes. Not only believes. He acts accordingly. To make sure, he has done the two necessary things: (a) eliminate every possible competitor, and (b) surround himself with male and female nincompoops, no one of whom could be considered by anyone a … Read more