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?