Tahrir Square, Tel Aviv

AMRAM MITZNA is a nice guy. He is modest and radiates credibility. He reminds one of the late Lova Eliav, the Secretary General of the Labor party who quit the party in disgust. Like Eliav, he has a lot of practical achievements to his credit – Eliav built the Lakhish area villages in South-Central Israel, Mitzna volunteered to administer the remote town of Yerucham deep in the Negev.

“Buji” Hertzog is also a good guy. He is a scion of a genuine Jewish aristocratic family, in the positive sense of the word; his grandfather was a Chief Rabbi, his father the President of Israel. A person whose deeds as Minister for Welfare speak for themselves – even though he has an unfortunate habit of running – after every action – to tell his (American) friends, as the Wikileak papers disclose. (This is an allusion to a classic Israeli joke: “Why do Israeli men finish so quickly? Because they can‘t wait to run and tell their friends.”) „Tahrir Square, Tel Aviv“ weiterlesen

Wrong Side

OF ALL the memorable phrases uttered by Barack Obama in the last two years, the one that stuck in my mind more than any other appeared in his historic speech in Cairo in the early days of his term. He warned the nations not to place themselves “on the wrong side of history.” „Wrong Side“ weiterlesen

“Islam is the Solution”

FIRST, AN apology: I am not going to write about the Wikileaks.
I like gossip as much as the next (wo)man. The leaks provide a lot of it, interspersed with some real information.
But there is nothing really new there. The information only confirms what any intelligent person could have worked out already. If there is anything new, it’s exactly this confirmation: the world is really managed the way we thought it was. How depressing. „“Islam is the Solution”“ weiterlesen