Eric Silver

Kibbutz Camp Offers Hope to Survivors

Published on October 16, 2003

In Kibbutz Negba, a dozen Israeli teenagers attending a summer camp in the guesthouses of this Negev kibbutz were asked to model small trees, and then decorate them with photographs of themselves.

New Channel BeamsJewish Programming

Published on May 15, 2003

The soap opera, argues Shlomo Ben-Zvi, is the most Jewish of all television formats.

Voter Apathy High Among Israeli Arabs

Published on January 23, 2003

Omar Baransi, a 71-year-old retired building contractor with a lined, leathery face, brags that he won't be voting in Israel's general election on Jan. 28. "We don't trust anyone these days," he said, "not even the Arab candidates. We've been citizens for 55 years and nothing has changed."

The Shinui Stance

Published on January 23, 2003

Tommy Lapid, who has made a second career hammering the ultra-Orthodox, says he didn't go into Israeli politics in order to become a government minister. But the outspoken, 71-year-old veteran journalist is suddenly warming to the prospect.

Statesman Abba Eban, Dies at 87

Published on November 21, 2002

The maverick Irish writer-politician Connor Cruise O'Brien once celebrated Abba Eban, who died in Tel-Aviv Sunday at the age of 87, as "the most brilliant diplomat of the second half of the 20th century."

The Palestinians’ Yom Kippur

Published on September 12, 2002

It's as if the Palestinians are having their own Yom Kippur this year.

Labor’s New Favorite

Published on August 22, 2002

At times of crisis, Israelis reach for a general. Public anxiety brought Moshe Dayan to the Defense Ministry on the eve of the 1967 Six-Day War, Yitzhak Rabin to the premiership after the traumatic near-defeat in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and the aging Ariel Sharon to power in the midst of the intifada in 2001.

A Reason to Party

Published on August 8, 2002

After Osama bin Laden demolished the World Trade Center, then-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani made a point of dining out in Manhattan.

‘It Was Chaos’

Published on August 1, 2002

David Kosak, a 35-year-old rabbinical student from the University of Judaism, was lunching with classmates at Hebrew University's Frank Sinatra cafeteria on Wednesday when the bomber struck.

Out of Arafat’s Hands

Published on July 18, 2002

In the reoccupied West Bank town of Hebron, an activist in Yasser Arafat's Al Fatah, a graduate of Israeli prisons, lamented the other day: "I gave up my dream of the whole of Palestine for the sake of the Oslo accord. And what did I get? Corruption, no democracy, security services abusing and blackmailing our people. And now I'm getting Israeli soldiers invading my town and the Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to protect me."

Bill Would Segregate Israelis

Published on July 11, 2002

If Israel's friends and diplomats have a harder time this week convincing the world that Israel is not a racist state, they have only their own government to blame.

Saudi Arabia Stirring

Published on February 28, 2002

Last Sunday's cabinet decision to pull back the tanks from Yasser Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, but keep the Palestinian leader quarantined in that West Bank city, was a classic vindication of the former secretary of state's wit and wisdom.

Palestinian Peacenicks

Published on February 21, 2002

It sounds confused, if not downright contrary. Most Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip applaud violence against Israelis, yet they are eager for a cease-fire and for their political leaders to get back to the negotiating table.

Crackdown

Published on January 31, 2002

"They are like mice," said Yeheskel Abu-Zwilli, a 74-year-old Iraqi-born Israeli, surveying the wreckage of the photography shop he has run in Jerusalem's Jaffa Street for 45 years. "Wherever there's a hole, they sneak in."

Israel Intercepts Arms Shipment

Published on January 10, 2002

The capture of a massive Palestinian arms shipment 300 miles down the Red Sea from Eilat has revived Israel's spirit after 15 demoralizing months of intifada mayhem. "This is what we are trained for," exulted a senior security officer. Every-one invoked the 1976 Entebbe rescue of hijacked airline passengers.

New Year; Old Problems

Published on January 3, 2002

For Israel and the Palestinians, 2001 was a year of failure, collapse and escalating violence. Failure of international diplomacy, collapse of mutual trust, violence that claimed 200 Israeli lives and 574 Palestinian.

Bombers and the Martyr Syndrome

Published on December 6, 2001

Palestinian suicide bombers killed a total of 28 bus passengers and young people in a four-day orgy of blood and vengeance that stretched from Haifa and Hadera in the North to Jerusalem in the South.

A New Iraqi Threat?

Published on November 29, 2001

George W. Bush's gritty message to Saddam Hussein this week that any nation that develops weapons of mass destruction for terrorist purposes "will be held accountable" flashed a warning light to Israel.

Arafat’s New Point Man

Published on November 22, 2001

It takes a pretty sophisticated politician to stand in front of a roomful of intifada-hardened reporters and announce that he is "politically naive."

PFLP Kills Ze’evi

Published on October 18, 2001

To the end, Rechavam Ze'evi, murdered at the age of 75 by a Palestinian gunman on Wednesday, was a soldier in mufti. Alone among the Israeli generals who went into politics, he continued to sport his army identity disk around his neck. It was a statement: the battle for the Jewish State was not over, and one of its most aggressive commanders was still fighting.

Muted Response

Published on October 11, 2001

Israel is on high alert to meet any reprisal attacks by Palestinian or Lebanese supporters of Osama bin Laden.

Censorship of Dancing Streets

Published on September 20, 2001

After noon prayers in the mosque last Friday, hundreds of Palestinian Muslims marched in triumph through Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp brandishing portraits of Osama bin Laden, some as big as 15 feet.

New Airline Safety Takes a Cue from El Al

Published on September 20, 2001

El Al, Israel's national carrier, is proud of its reputation as the world's safest airline, but it prefers others to do the boasting for it.

Reconquer, Negotiate or Separate?

Published on August 23, 2001

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is set to meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in Berlin next week under the aegis of the German government. Peres has proposed a "gradual" or phased cease-fire. In a plan presented to U.S. envoy to the Middle East, David Satterfield, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, Peres called for a staggered cease-fire in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to Ha'aretz. The plan would divide the West Bank and Gaza , and the Palestinians and Israelis would restore calm separately in each area until a total cease-fire is reached.

Wagner Soap Opera

Published on July 12, 2001

It was meant to be the "not Wagner" concert: Daniel Barenboim, the pride of Israeli music-lovers, conducting his Berlin orchestra, the Staatskapelle, on the last night of this year's Israel Festival. Little did we know.

Entebbe Teaches Israel to Dare

Published on June 28, 2001

Ephraim Sneh, a stocky, taciturn soldier-turned-politician, doesn't scare easily. Entebbe, the most daring rescue operation in Israel's military history, wasn't his first taste of combat. The Yom Kippur War, he shrugged, was worse. But he shudders at how easily it could have gone disastrously wrong.

As the giant Hercules transport plane lumbered through the night sky out of the Ugandan airport on July 4, 1976, one of the 98 hostages beckoned to Col. Sneh, who headed the medical team. "Excuse me, sir," the plump woman said, "I'm afraid I'm sitting on something military."

Heeding a Tenuous Cease-Fire

Published on June 7, 2001

The suicide bombing last Friday night that killed 20 young Israelis outside a beach-front disco in Tel Aviv trans-formed Israel's international image from bully boy to victim.

Why Does Israel Get Such Bad Press?

Published on May 24, 2001

It was not always Israel's fault.

Settlements Quandary

Published on May 24, 2001

The Bush administration has let Ariel Sharon off the hook -- for now.

The Violence Heats Up

Published on May 10, 2001

The intifada took a fateful stride from popular uprising toward war this week with news that the Palestinians are stockpiling longer-range, more lethal weapons that could threaten Ashkelon and Tel Aviv, as well as paralyzing flights from Ben-Gurion International Airport.

The Violence Heats Up

Published on May 10, 2001

The intifada took a fateful stride from popular uprising toward war this week with news that the Palestinians are stockpiling longer-range, more lethal weapons that could threaten Ashkelon and Tel Aviv, as well as paralyzing flights from Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Israeli patrol boats, backed by spotter planes and helicopters, intercepted a Lebanese boat smuggling Katyusha surface-to-surface rockets, shoulder-launched Strella anti-aircraft missiles, and an arsenal of shells, mortars, anti-tank grenades and land mines from northern Lebanon to Gaza.

Straws in the Wind

Published on April 26, 2001

Israelis have learned the hard way not to invest too many hopes in Yasser Arafat. Yet this week, despite the suicide bombing in Kfar Saba, the booby-trapped car in Or Yehuda, the renewed sniping at the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, straws are wafting in the diplomatic wind.

Palestinians Escalate Conflict

Published on April 19, 2001

The Palestinian intifada, which began as a civil uprising against the Israeli occupation, is rapidly becoming a low-intensity war between armed forces. And the low intensity is getting higher and higher by the day.

Changes in Attitude

Published on April 5, 2001

There were more police than customers in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market last Friday morning, when Jewish families would normally stock up for the weekend. Downtown, the strolling, shopping and coffee-bar crowds had deserted the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall for the fashionable German Colony.

Increased Insecurity

Published on March 29, 2001

The attacks plumbed new depths In Hebron on Monday, when a Palestinian sniper shot dead a 10-month-old baby, Shalhevet Pass, as she was being wheeled by her parents through the West Bank city's Jewish neighborhood.

Zoo Rebbe

Published on February 15, 2001

When Natan and Tali Slifkin were married in Los Angeles last year, their friends turned up in Disneyland animal suits. It was not your classic Orthodox wedding.

Blown Deal

Published on January 11, 2001

Bill Clinton is wasting his time. The chances of a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian deal before he hands over the presidency to George W. Bush on Jan. 20 are negligible.

Acts of Vengeance

Published on January 4, 2001

Twenty thousand mourners, seething with anger, followed the bodies of Binyamin and Talia Kahane through downtown Jerusalem to the Givat Shaul cemetery last Sunday night. Most of them were Orthodox yeshiva students, admirers of Meir Kahane, the assassinated founder of the Jewish Defense League and of the outlawed Kach party. The rabbi's son and daughter-in-law, aged 34 and 31 respectively, had been shot by Palestinian gunmen as they drove home from a Jerusalem Shabbat to the West Bank settlement of Kfar Tapuach. Five of their six children were injured.

Tough Concession

Published on December 28, 2000

The lines are being drawn this week for what the Israeli tabloids are calling "The Battle for Jerusalem."

Last Call

Published on December 21, 2000

Early this month, Bill Clinton told the visiting Israeli justice minister, Yossi Beilin, that he was ready to devote the remaining weeks of his tenure to Middle East peacemaking. As a lame-duck president, he said, his calendar was clear.

Leah’s Legacy

Published on November 16, 2000

After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated five years ago this month, his wife Leah cast herself as the unforgiving scourge of the Israeli right, which she blamed for fostering the atmosphere in which a Jewish radical, Yigal Amir, pulled the trigger.

Mr. Oslo

Published on October 26, 2000

Uri Savir may not have won a Nobel Peace Prize, but far more than the three national leaders who did, he is Mr. Oslo. For three long months in 1993, the then director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry sat secretly in the Norwegian capital and hammered out an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization that kindled hopes of an end to a century of belligerence.

“Where Do We Go From Here?”

Published on October 19, 2000

We are able to deal with this situation," says Yisrael Medad, a veteran, American-born settlement activist, "because we remember what happened in 1947 to '48. We are returning to our history."

Yom Kippur II

Published on October 12, 2000

I first met Maurice Singer on the far bank of the Suez Canal during the second week of the Yom Kippur War, soon after Israel had counter-attacked across the waterway. The British-born, 28-year-old machine-gunner was grimy and sweating on his clanking, dust-encrusted half-track, the forerunner of today's armored personnel carrier. Like all his comrades, he scribbled a phone number and asked our group of reporters to let his family know he was okay.

Two Insults Too Many

Published on August 10, 2000

Ovadia Yosef, the Shas spiritual mentor and former Sephardichief rabbi of Israel, is a gold medalist among insulters. The mediahere monitor his Saturday night sermons, broadcast live on Shas's pirateradio station, for his latest news-making tirades.

The Un-Peres

Published on August 3, 2000

Inevitably, Katzav, who surprised the nation and the pundits by defeating Shimon Peres 63-57 in a secret ballot of Knesset members, projected himself as a president who can unify a society riven between Easterners and Westerners, religious and secular, rich and poor, veterans and newcomers, Jews and Arabs.

After the Summit

Published on July 27, 2000

Camp David is dead, long live Camp David. That was the slogan as the despondent, disappointed Israelis left the morning after the Middle East peace summit collapsed in the Maryland presidential retreat."The process is not over," said strategic analyst Yossi Alpher, a former special adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "It is hard to think that Barak will simply say, 'I'm finished dealing with the peace process.' They're going to have to get back to talking."
What, though, would they talk about?

Already Divided

Published on July 27, 2000

For all the mantras of Jerusalem as "the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people," reiterated by every Israeli leader since the Six-Day War, the city has never been monolithic.

Barak’s Gamble

Published on July 13, 2000

The Camp David summit looks like the boldest gamble by an Israeli leader since the founding father, David Ben-Gurion, declared the Jewish state in May 1948, to the rumble of invading Arab guns and the chattering teeth of his own querulous associates. Ehud Barak flew to the United States this week determined to make peace with the Palestinians, but with his coalition government and parliamentary support in tatters.

Letter to an American Friend

Published on July 6, 2000

Dear Uncle Sam,

Why are you humiliating us (Israel) like this?

After Assad

Published on June 15, 2000

Avraham Hamra met both Hafez Assad and his son, Bashar.

The Day After

Published on June 1, 2000

Over the past two decades, Israel has slowly and painfully learned a whole degree course of lessons from its adventures in Lebanon.

Widening the Wall

Published on May 25, 2000

Campaigners for religious pluralism drove two gaping breaches this week through Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox control of the Western Wall.

The PalestinianCapital?

Published on May 18, 2000

There is a grimy Arabic sign high on the wall of the imposing new building rising on a rocky, ragged hillside in the West Bank village of Abu Dis.

Out of the Killing Fields

Published on May 11, 2000

This Tuesday, one day before Israel celebrated its 52nd Independence Day, it solemnly and collectively honored the 19,109 soldiers, sailors and airmen who have died in defense of the reborn state since the United Nations voted to partition British Palestine on November 29, 1947.

Israel Speaks Up

Published on May 4, 2000

Israel this week came out of its shell and launched a public campaign against the trial of 13 Iranian Jews charged in Isfahan with spying for Israel and the United States.

Israel Speaks Up

Published on May 4, 2000

Israel this week came out of its shell and launched a public campaign against the trial of 13 Iranian Jews charged in Isfahan with spying for Israel and the United States.

Selling AWACS to China

Published on April 27, 2000

Chinese President Jiang Zemin donned his black kippah and followed in Pope John Paul II's footsteps to the Western Wall last week, confident that the world's biggest atheistic state would soon receive a $250 million airborne surveillance system from Israel Aircraft Industries on schedule. Despite intense American pressure to cancel the deal, the signs are that he will receive the other three or four AWACS he also wants to buy.

Dealing With Syria

Published on March 23, 2000

This weekend's Swiss summit between Bill Clinton and Hafez al-Assad is a make-or-break moment in the quest for peace between Syria and Israel. The American president will soon be a lame duck. The septuagenarian Syrian president is sick and eager to hand over the reins to his son, Bashar. And the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, the man in the empty chair in Geneva, is losing control of his coalition and his constituency.
If they don't reach an ag

The Wines They are a Changin’

Published on March 9, 2000

Forget the sweet and sticky Kiddush wine of yesteryear. Israeli wine is on the map. And Israelis are drinking it, too. The Promised Land is going yuppie.

Remembering Ofra Haza

Published on March 2, 2000

It is hard to write dispassionately about Ofra Haza, the Israeli pop icon who died last week at 41. She sang her fusion of Yemenite folk and '80s beat with intense, unabashed emotion. And she generated emotion in others.

The Honeymoon is Over

Published on February 24, 2000

Nine months after Ehud Barak took office as "everybody's prime minister," the honeymoon is over -- with his voters, coalition allies and Arab partners in the quest for peace. It is too early to write him off, but the Labor leader can no longer rely on loyalty or goodwill to see him through.

Early Withdrawal?

Published on February 17, 2000

Israel's leaders are losing whatever faith they may have had in Hafez Assad. They are no longer convinced that the Syrian president has made a strategic choice for peace.

Threatening Peace

Published on February 10, 2000

A deadly escalation of Hezbollah's guerrilla campaign and Israeli retaliation is threatening to sabotage the Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations -- not least because Israeli analysts suspect that President Hafez Assad is deliberately stoking the furnace in Southern Lebanon in order to strengthen his bargaining hand on the Golan Heights.

Lost in Jerusalem

Published on January 27, 2000

The blind boy, who agrees to talk so long as I don't identify him, is one of a floating population of 100-150 homeless, English-speaking teenagers living rough around Zion Square in the center of town: the unsung failures of aliyah and Jewish studies tours.

Barak’s Battles

Published on January 13, 2000

Ehud Barak is going to have a hard time persuading the Israeli voters to endorse any deal with Syria that entails a withdrawal from most or all of the Golan Heights. The public is drifting away from the prime minister. So far.

A Gift in the Hand is Worth…

Published on January 6, 2000

peace with Syria in West Virginia this week. But the 76-year-old economic cooperation minister may have moved within striking distance of the last public position he still craves: the presidency.
The prospects of Ezer Weizman's completing his second term have diminished after he confirmed a report by investigative journalist Yoav Yitzhak that he received nearly half a million dollars from a French Jewish tycoon, Edouard Seroussi, while serving as a legislator and minister in the '80s.

Political Gamesmanship

Published on December 30, 1999

As sure as death and taxes, Israelis can count on a coalition crisis every year in the last week of December. It happened three times to the Likud's Binyamin Netanyahu, and no one was surprised that this month it happened to his Labor successor, Ehud Barak.

Seale on Syria

Published on December 16, 1999

Patrick Seale, President Hafez al-Assad's official biographer, predicted this week that Syria and Israel would conclude a comprehensive peace agreement within one year. Since Ehud Barak was elected six months ago, the veteran British Middle-East journalist has played a key role as the nearest to a Syrian emissary shuttling between the chronically hostile capitals of Damascus and Jerusalem.

A Barak Diary

Published on November 18, 1999

Ehud Barak stomps down the aisle of the old, white Boeing 707 that doubles as Israel's Air Force One. He has come to shmooze with the traveling press corps. Close up, he is shorter than expected. He clenches his shoulders like a muscle-bound wrestler. His pudgy face looks as if it was molded from children's modeling dough, his hair as if he still has it trimmed by his old army barber. No $200 stylist at the airport for him.

Nation/World Briefs

Published on October 21, 1999

nation and world briefs

Ehud Barak’s First 100 Days

Published on October 21, 1999

Ehud Barak has never been celebrated for his modesty. Presenting his government to the Knesset on July 6, the new prime minister declared: "I believe that this day will be chronicled as a milestone and a turning point --a time of reconciliation, unity and peace."

Mideast Briefs

Published on October 21, 1999

Mideast briefs

Safe Passage?

Published on October 7, 1999

Within days, up to 1,000 Palestinians presently barred from entering Israel will be free to travel each day on a 26-mile "safe passage" that links the Palestinian-controlled territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The Two Sides of the Street

Published on September 9, 1999

The only thing Jerusalem's Jewish and Arab shopping malls had in common when news broke last Friday of the Wye II deal was that no one was dancing in the streets. There was relief that something at last was about to move on the Israeli-Palestinian front, but it takes more than Madeleine Albright playing what she fetchingly called an American "handmaiden" to disperse the suspicions of half a century.

Shas Blinks First

Published on August 19, 1999

The Sephardic Shas Party, which had threatened to pull its 17 Knesset members out of the coalition if the turbine rolled, was left spluttering with indignation. National Infrastructure Minister Eli Suissa, who spearheaded resistance to the move, branded it "unprecedented chutzpah."

Farewell to a Friend

Published on July 29, 1999

Israel had good reason to remember King Hassan II of Morocco as "a friend and a statesman," and not just because of his tireless efforts to build bridges between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors.
Secret cooperation between the Moroccan and Israeli intelligence services began in 1961 under King Hassan's father, Mohammed V, who allowed Moroccan Jews to emigrate to Israel. The younger monarch broadened and institutionalized the contacts after Meir Amit, the then-head of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, clandestinely met Hassan in Marrakech in 1964. Undercover contacts continued, with only two brief interruptions, until Hassan's death last Friday.

A Conversion Solution

Published on June 3, 1999

Softly, softly, Israel has launched a joint Orthodox-Conservative-Reform program to solve the problem of quarter of a million Russian immigrants who are Jewish according to the Law of Return (at least one Jewish grandparent), but not according to Halachah (a Jewish mother).

Enter the New Prime Minister: Ehud Barak

Published on May 27, 1999

Two decades ago, after hearing the then-Col. Ehud Barak deliver a eulogy for a fallen comrade, popular Israeli poet Haim Guri predicted: "One day, this man will be prime minister." On May 17, Israel's voters proved him right. Barak was elected by a landslide, his 56 percent to 44 percent for the right-wing incumbent, Binyamin Netanyahu -- the younger brother of the man Barak eulogized in 1976, Yonatan Netanyahu, who was killed rescuing a planeload of hijacked passengers at Entebbe airport.

Lessons From the Front

Published on May 13, 1999

Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak fought side-by-side a quarter of a century ago in some of the most intrepid exploits of Israel's crack anti-terrorist unit, the Sayeret Matkal.

The Warrior and Witness

Published on April 15, 1999

Ben-Zion Blustein, the teen-age lone survivor of a White Russian Jewish family, spent most of World War II on the run, hiding in the forest, fighting with the partisans against the German occupiers and their local collaborators.

‘I Was Wrong about Netanyahu’

Published on April 1, 1999

Of all the Likud loyalists who have walked out on Binyamin Netanyahu, last week's defection of Gen. Yossi Peled is arguably the most damaging.

‘My Judaism Is the Civilization’

Published on March 4, 1999

Amos Oz, Hebrew novelist, secular prophet and self-proclaimed "non-synagogue" Jew, has joined his local Reform congregation in Arad, the Negev desert town where he has lived since leaving Kibbutz Hulda a decade ago.

Answering the Call

Published on February 18, 1999

Anne Roberts is passionate about the idea of tzedakah, a concept she has diligently instilled in her son Spencer Nieman.

‘Shalom,‘Friend’

Published on February 11, 1999

Israel mourned King Hussein this week as one of its own. The government ordered flags flown at half-mast on all public buildings.

A Royal Concern

Published on February 4, 1999

At the height of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was rushing all available combat troops to the Syrian and Egyptian fronts, an Israeli official was asked who was defending the eastern border. "King Hussein," he replied, "as usual."

Soldier of Misfortune

Published on December 10, 1998

Lisa Weinmann-Myara, a State University of New York graduate who settled in Jerusalem with her Israeli husband 16 years ago, is waging a vigorous defense of her soldier son, who faces a court martial on charges of disgracing himself and the army by allowing a Palestinian mob to steal his automatic rifle when it stormed the car in which he was hitchhiking through the West Bank.

What To Do About Lebanon?

Published on December 3, 1998

A new coded message has entered the chilly lexicon of Israeli anxiety. "Heavy fighting is taking place in Lebanon," intones the news reader. Hundreds of mothers and fathers with soldier sons serving across the northern border know immediately what that means. There are casualties, but the families have not yet been notified.

Hostile Intimidation

Published on November 26, 1998

Every Saturday afternoon, spot on 5 p.m., through the summer and into autumn, a squad of Jerusalem police clip-clopped on horseback past my house on Rehov Hanevi'im, the Street of the Prophets.

A Historic Yes on Wye

Published on November 19, 1998

Israel's ratification of the Wye agreement, calling for another 13-percent West Bank withdrawal in return for Palestinian security measures, was completed on Tuesday night when the Knesset endorsed the American-brokered deal by a vote of 75 to 19, with nine abstentions.

Bibi’s Betrayal

Published on October 29, 1998

"Binyamin Netanyahu is no longer the leader of the national camp," Aharon Domb, general secretary of the West Bank and Gaza Jewish settlers' council, said this week, with all the finality of a judge pronouncing sentence.

One Woman’s Crusade

Published on October 22, 1998

Getting to see Aida Suleiman is like playing chess with a temperamental computer. The first time I tried, she stood me up at the last minute because she had to deal with an emergency at a home for battered wives.

Israel’s Mystery Man

Published on October 8, 1998

The most talked-about, perhaps the most feared, figure in Israeli politics this holiday season is neither a statesman nor a rabble-rouser. He is Yitzhak Kedouri, a frail, mystical Iraqi-born rabbi, barely able to speak or to walk unaided, whose widely distributed kabbalistic amulets are credited with swaying thousands of underprivileged Sephardic Jewish voters.

Radio Days

Published on September 10, 1998

The Yom Kippur War, which yanked thousands of Israeli soldiers out of the synagogue and onto the battlefield just 25 years ago, rears like a watershed halfway between the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and its 50th anniversary this year.

Citizen Sheinbein?

Published on September 10, 1998

In Roger Hanin's semi-autobiographical film, "Soleil" (1997), 13-year-old Meyer is kicked out of school for being Jewish in Vichy North Africa. It is a sign that things have changed for his family in Algeria, where Jews had peacefully lived for centuries amid the Moslems. Now, Meyer's communist father must go into hiding; his mother, Titine (Sophia Loren), must raise her children alone, charming black marketeers into giving her food. She manages to talk authorities into keeping Meyer out of jail when he is caught writing anti-government graffiti.

Mideast

Published on August 27, 1998

What the Israeli right likes to call "the battle for the Land of Israel" is in danger of turning into a war of the ultras, Arab extremists vs. Jewish extremists.

Mideast

Published on August 20, 1998

Casinos Austria, a state corporation that operates more than 100 casinos worldwide, is investing $150 million in the project, which will eventually include 800 hotel rooms, a golf course and tennis courts on a five-square-kilometer site.

Mideast

Published on August 13, 1998

Gil Wiener, the husky soldier who dragged out the first survivor of the Nairobi bombing to be saved by the Israeli dog squad last weekend, is a 29-year-old architecture student working his way through college as a lifeguard at the Hebrew University swimming pool in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu Suffers Knesset Defeat

Published on August 7, 1998

Binyamin Netanyahu recently suffered the most wounding parliamentary defeat of his two-year premiership. It left the Likud leader more dependent than ever on the pro-settler right, which has threatened to bring him down if he hands any more of the occupied West Bank to Yasser Arafat.

Yitzhak Kedouri

Published on July 30, 1998

The most talked-about, perhaps the most feared, figure in Israeli politics this holiday season is neither a statesman nor a rabble-rouser. He is Yitzhak Kedouri, a frail, mystical Iraqi-born rabbi, barely able to speak or to walk unaided, whose widely distributed kabbalistic amulets are credited with swaying thousands of underprivileged Sephardic Jewish voters.

Mideast

Published on July 23, 1998

Like the dog that did not bark in the Sherlock Holmes story, the most revealing Israeli declaration of the week may turn out to be the one that was not uttered.

Mideast

Published on July 2, 1998

Richard Strauss's opera "Salome" had its Israelipremière in Tel Aviv this month. Strauss, who died in 1949,served, however briefly, as a cultural official in Adolf Hitler's Nazi administration. The season, by the visiting Kirov Opera from St.Petersburg, was an unchallenged hit. Strauss has been forgiven,perhaps because he had a Jewish daughter-in-law and soon learned thefolly of his ways.

Annexing Trouble

Published on June 25, 1998

The prime minister also seems to have underestimated the degree to which the United States, the European Union and other interested bystanders are watching every move in his contorted quest for "peace with security" -- and increasingly concluding that the Palestinians are right to suspect him.

Lonely at 50

Published on April 2, 1998

On the eve of the 50th birthday of the Jewishstate, Israelis have seldom felt so lonely. No one wants to come tothe party. Vice President Al Gore is one of the few foreigndignitaries who have accepted an invitation to the April 30 fiesta.The rest are either stalling or saying, "Thanks, but nothanks."

Leaving Lebanon

Published on March 26, 1998

Israel signed the Oslo peace agreement with itsold enemy, Yasser Arafat, because by 1993 the alternatives had becomeinsufferable. The Palestinian intifada, a revolt of thestreet, was sapping the morale of the Israeli army, fighting a futilesix-year battle with one hand tied behind its back. Nightlytelevision footage of soldiers in combat fatigues, chasing teenageboys wielding slingshots and petrol bombs, was undermining Israel'sdeterrent credibility in its confrontation with the Arab states aswell as its international moral case.

Revisionist TV

Published on March 19, 1998

After 50 years of evasion, soft sell andhalf-truths, Israelis are coming to terms with the darker side oftheir own history.

Israeli Vice

Published on March 19, 1998

The young Lithuanian woman in the prison libraryhas the narrow chest, hunched shoulders and wary eyes of someone whohas known poverty and is not sure where the next blow is coming from.

Israel Won’t Remain

Published on February 5, 1998

Seven years ago, when Saddam Hussein hurled 39 Scud missiles at Tel Aviv, Israel reluctantly refrained from retaliating. The Bush administration convinced Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that an Israeli blow at Iraq would undermine the anti-Baghdad coalition assembled for Operation Desert Storm.

Harsh Realities on theGround

Published on January 4, 1998

Over the past two years, Jerusalem alone has beenshaken by two bus bombings and by explosions in the Mahane Yehudamarket and the Ben-Yehuda shopping precinct.

The Mossad Spy Who Turned Bad

Published on December 11, 1997

Graham Greene and John Le Carré have been there before: A shadowy source with access to the highest reaches of an enemy regime. A vain, furtive secret service handler with a chip on his shoulder, who insists that the informant will speak to no one but him. A steady flow of alarming exclusive reports, plausible but inherently uncheckable. An intelligence community more concerned with protecting its turf than investigating all the way when suspicions were first aroused.

Another Offer Arafat Can’t Refuse?

Published on December 4, 1997

Binyamin Netanyahu has made peace, for the time being, with his own disaffected coalition by offering the Palestinians a further West Bank withdrawal that is vague, qualified and conditional. But in the atmosphere of distrust generated by the Israeli prime minister, few are convinced that he has advanced the prospects of a wider peace.

One Saturday Night in Ramallah

Published on November 27, 1997

The bad news is that the peace process is going nowhere. The good news is that the Palestinians are learning all over again how to enjoy themselves.

‘A Split Is Hovering Over Likud’

Published on November 13, 1997

On the eve of his most testing American visit since he becamePrime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu was humiliated, live on prime-timetelevision, last Monday by the least likely of dissidents -- theblue-collar ward party bosses of the Likud central committeeconvention.

Los Angeles Sephardic Film Festival

Published on October 30, 1997

"Soleil" will debut here at the Director's Guild on Oct. 28, the gala opening of the second annual Los Angeles Sephardic Film Festival, sponsored by the Sephardic Educational Center.

Conspiracy of Censorship

Published on October 16, 1997

Israeli reporters are no slouches. They have better sources and tend to understand more than their foreign brethren.

Oh, What a Tangled Web…

Published on October 9, 1997

The botched assassination attempt on a Hamas official in Amman onSept. 25 has turned into a security, as well as a diplomatic,disaster for Israel. Commentators are calling for the resignations ofboth Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and chief of the Mossadexternal security service, Gen. Danny Yatom.

Power Over

Published on October 2, 1997

Manasreh's tale is part of a pattern of official intimidation, physical and financial, that has silenced almost all criticism of Arafat's regime in the mainstream Palestinian television, radio and newspapers.

An Uncomfortable Line

Published on September 25, 1997

Earlier in the week, Irving Moskowitz had stood in that gritty, neglected urban village on the flank of the Mount of Olives, hammering a mezuzah on a door post and telling the world's TV cameras that this was where "we" are making "our" home. Yet the truth was that as soon as he had signed a face-saving deal with the government of Israel, he was on the plane back to Florida in time for Shabbat.

Treading Water

Published on September 18, 1997

Madeleine Albright left behind a Middle East that's more fearful than when she arrived on Sept. 10 to salvage the peace process. In her first official visit, the secretary of state failed to restore even a modicum of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, or to coax the Syrians back to the negotiating table.

The Debate Over Lebanon

Published on September 11, 1997

Since the beginning of this year, 103 Israeli soldiers have died in, or on their way to, war in Lebanon. Twelve lost their lives in a botched marine commando raid last week. The total death toll since the 1982 "Peace for Galilee" invasion nowstands at about 1,200, and since the pullback to the South Lebanese security zone in 1985, some 500 soldiers have died.