Budget Games
The end of the year is rapidly approaching but Israel still does not have a State Budget for the next year, 2021, which promises to be exceedingly challenging. Moreover, Israel does not have a State Budget for the current year even though according to the Coalition Agreement, a two-year budget (20-21) should have been passed. […]
Of Bad Taste and Dictatorship
This week, two demonstrations (one pro-Bibi, and one anti-Bibi) made the news, even though demonstrations have become almost a routine and the media (depending on their political inclination) have settled into de facto reporting without too much passion. The pro-Bibi demonstration took place in Caesarea, where die-hard likudniks with Orly Lev in the forefront, gathered […]
The Beginning of the Vaccine Wars
For almost nine months now, the world has been in the ban of the Covid-19 crisis, with more than 55 million people infected and almost 1.4 million deaths. Immediately with the appearance of the virus in China, pharmaceutical companies have started efforts to develop either a cure for the disease or preferably a vaccine. While […]
The end of a (pipe) dream
“With Biden in the White House we will have a war with Iran”. “Biden will return us to the ’67 borders”. “Biden will agree to a Palestinian State”. “Biden is going back to the Iran Nuclear Accord”. These are just some of the panic reactions heard in Israel from mostly right-wing politicians, who believe that […]
Peace at a Price
In the past couple of months, almost miraculously, the American President, Donald Trump (not known as the greatest diplomat), managed to do what has eluded others for many years. He convinced Arab States to enter into peace and normalization agreements with Israel. The fact that the States that at this point have made that step, […]
The disasters that led to The Rabin Murder
This week it is twenty-five years ago that Yitzhak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel was assassinated. The murder was the culmination of months of incitement against Rabin by his political opponents and by the religious establishment. And no matter what is being said and written about the assassination, Israel never recovered from it, and sometimes […]
Yad Vashem is not a Political Toy
The Holocaust is no doubt the most traumatic episode in the history of the Jewish people in modern times and even in retrospective of the seventy-five years that have passed, it is still difficult to comprehend that six million people were exterminated because they were Jewish. After the creation of the State of Israel in […]
A Peace Accord as a Weapon to Destroy Democracy
Last month, Israel and the United Arab Emirates, with the help and mediation of the United States, signed a peace accord between them, with agreements to establish full diplomatic relations, business interactions, direct flights between the countries and other steps that characterize normal relations between countries. A big step in solving the decades old conflict […]
The Sins of a Six-Year old Boy
A couple of days ago, a news item in Haaretz exposed (again) the most vexing problem that Israeli democracy has to deal with, and should have dealt with long ago. The article probably was seen by most readers, but if they already decided to read it, it probably did not leave a lasting impression. The […]
The State of Haredi vs. the State of Israel
After four long weeks, including all the Holydays, Israel is carefully and slowly coming out of the lock-down that was imposed on the population to curb the increasing spread of the Corona virus. The government made decisions to avoid the mistakes of the first lock-down and will relax restrictions slowly and with a continuous control […]
