EHUD OLMERT is the opposite of Midas, King of Phrygia. Everything the king touched turned into gold, according to Greek legend. Everything Olmert touches turns into lead. And that is no legend. Now he is touching Mahmoud Abbas. He lauds him to high heaven. He promises to “strengthen” him. He is about to meet him. … Read more
WHAT HAPPENS when one and a half million human beings are imprisoned in a tiny, arid territory, cut off from their compatriots and from any contact with the outside world, starved by an economic blockade and unable to feed their families? Some months ago, I described this situation as a sociological experiment set up by … Read more
“REST HAS come to the tired / Repose to the toiler / A pale night covers / The fields of the Jezreel valley / Dew below and moon above / From Kibbutz Bet-Alfa to Moshav Nahalal…” This is what we sang when we were young. Now it is a TV nostalgia show, youngsters of the … Read more
“NOTHING SUCCEEDS like success,” says a typical American adage. The Israeli version, also typical, is: “Nothing succeeds like failure.” It seems that no one has any chance of winning an election here until they have proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, that they are a total failure. So it is quite possible that in the next … Read more
THE BLOODY battles that have erupted around the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp near Tripoli in Lebanon remind us that the refugee problem has not disappeared. On the contrary, 60 years after the “Nakba”, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948, it is again the center of attention throughout the world. This is an open wound. Anyone who … Read more
The Winograd committee of inquiry is not a part of the solution. It is a part of the problem.Now, after the first excitement caused by the publication of the partial report has died down, it is possible to evaluate it. The conclusion is that it has done much more harm than good. The positive side … Read more
I HAVE BEEN to many demonstrations in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square, even when it was still called “Kings of Israel Square”. I was at the legendary “Demonstration of the 400 thousand” after the Sabra and Shatila massacre (actually, there were around 200 thousand, which is still an impressive number). I was there when Yitzhak Rabin was … Read more
ON THE MORROW of Independence Day, a newspaper reported that an Arab child had refused to stand up while the national anthem was sung. The paper was furious. I was not. In fact, it raised a childhood experience from the depths of my memory. It was in Hanover, Germany, some months after Adolf Hitler had … Read more
AT THIS moment, negotiations on a prisoner exchange are in full swing. The term “negotiations” is really inappropriate. “Haggling” seems more fitting. One could also use an uglier expression: “trafficking in human beings”. The planned deal concerns living people. They are being treated like goods, for which the officials of the two sides are bargaining, … Read more
RECENTLY, THE CHIEF of the Shin Bet declared that the “Israeli Arabs”, a fifth of Israel’s population, constitute a danger to the state. He requested permission for the General Security Service to act against anyone who aims at changing the official designation of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” – even if they use … Read more