Preparations for the celebration of Israel’s 70th anniversary are underway: Culture Minister Miri Regev is feuding with Knesset Speaker, Yuli Edelstein, over the question of who will speak at the Independence Day torch-lighting ceremony. She is determined to include Netanyahu,…
Article Author: Ben Efrat, Yacov
Tamar Zandberg of Meretz: The end of ideology
At the time of writing (early March 2018), it is not clear whether Knesset elections are in the making, or whether Netanyahu will get a “pass” that promises him quiet until November 2019. This highly politicized drama dwarfs another drama…
Netanyahu will leave a gaping hole
It’s incredible, but his inner circle of “knitted skullcap” advisors, who saw Netanyahu as a strategic asset leading to a national-religious revolution, has turned on him. They are Shlomo (Momo) Filber, Natan Eshel, Ari Harow, Roni Alsheikh and Avichai Mandelblit.…
Netanyahu in Russia: The starling went to the raven
While Israeli headlines were captured by Poland’s new law (exonerating that country from involvement in Nazi crimes), by the prospect that Netanyahu may be questioned under caution in a bribery scandal (the submarine affair), and by plans to expel thousands…
Mahmoud Abbas is angry. So what!
In an exhausting two-hour speech before the PLO Central Council on January 14, 2018, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) provided the morning papers with many headlines. Abbas laid into Trump saying Yehreb Beitak, a common insult which translates…
The Iranian threat is in danger
Far from the capital of Tehran, and without warning, the first demonstration took place in the city of Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and one of the Ayatollah’s strongholds. Could this portend the return of the Arab Spring? Mashhad, like Sidi…
Teva: Between Zionism and reality
Teva, a pharmaceutical company that started in Israel and went global, is collapsing and threatening to cut thousands of jobs here and abroad. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is attempting to intervene in this decision to save the plants in…
Trump decides: One state
In February 2017, at a joint press conference before the first official meeting between Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump made a typical slip of the tongue: “I’m looking at two-state and one-state and I like the one that both…
Labor’s new leader on being Jewish and Moroccan
”The Left has forgotten what it is to be Jewish,” says Avi Gabbay, and with some justification. After the Right established a monopoly on Judaism and cloaked it with support for all sorts of evil, such as the occupation and…
The Saudis and the Arab spring
The entire world was astonished when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman embarked on a sweeping crackdown and purged some of the kingdom’s most important princes and businessmen. Within a day, he announced the creation of an “Anti-Corruption Committee.” Saudi Arabia’s…