IN A few weeks, Israel will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War. Millions of words, most of them hollow, will be poured out. As usual. But the event deserves better. It is a drama unique in human history. Only a biblical writer could do it justice. William Shakespeare could have turned his hand … Read more
SOME DAYS ago, a man committed an act of terrorism in the center of London, a city I love. He ran over several persons on Westminster Bridge, stabbed a policeman to death and approached the doors of Parliament, where he was shot dead. All this in the shadow of the tower of Big Ben, an … Read more
WHAT IS the difference between a “corporation” and an “authority? You don’t know? Join the 8.5 million Israelis who don’t know either. It’s a national riddle. The whole country is absorbed by it. The Prime Minister announces that he will “go to the very end” to achieve his end. Which end? I don’t know. I … Read more
A FEW days ago I happened upon an excellent British movie, “Testament of Youth”, based on the memoirs of Vera Brittain. Vera tells her story, the story of a British girl who grew up in a bourgeois family without worries or sorrows, when World War I put an end to that paradise. Her brother, her … Read more
IF SOMEONE had told me 50 years ago that the rulers of Israel, Jordan and Egypt had met in secret to make peace, I would have thought that I was dreaming. If I had been told that the leaders of Egypt and Jordan had offered Israel complete peace in return for leaving the occupied territories, … Read more
NAPOLEON CAME to a German town and was not welcomed with the traditional artillery salute. Furious, he summoned the mayor and demanded an explanation. The German produced a long scroll of paper and said: “I have a list of 99 reasons. Reason No. 1: we have no cannon.” “That’s enough’” Napoleon interrupted him, “You can … Read more
I BELIEVE I was the first to recommend that the soldier Elor Azaria, the killer of Hebron, be granted a pardon. But this recommendation was conditional on several requirements: first, that the soldier openly and unconditionally confess his crime, that he apologize and that he be sentenced to many years in prison. Without these conditions, … Read more
SO HOW THE HELL did it all start? Last week I tried to describe the 1948 war, starting from the shooting at a Jewish bus on the morrow of the UN partition resolution. Some readers dispute the timing. They insist that the war started on May 15, on the morrow of the founding of the … Read more
AFTER MY last article, in which I mentioned that the Arabs started the 1948 war after the partition resolution of the UN, I received several furious messages. The writers, who (I suppose) were born after the events, accuse the Zionists of starting the war in order to expel the Arab population. Since I took part … Read more
THE MOST incisive analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict I have ever read was written by the Jewish-Polish-British historian Isaac Deutscher. It consists of a single image.A man lives on the upper floor of a building, which catches fire. To save his life, he jumps out of a window and lands on a passerby in the … Read more