To hear our officialdom’s mouthpieces, the Yom Kippur riots in Acre didn’t highlight a humiliating failure by the country’s law enforcement authorities. No contrition was aroused by the fact that a lone police car straggled passively behind hundreds of Arabs (many having arrived by organized bus transport, with their faces concealed and wielding axes) rampaging through a Jewish neighborhood in the small hours of the holiest day of the Jewish year. Continue reading →

Acre’s recent woes didn’t unexpectedly spring forth on Yom Kippur when an Arab driver saw fit to race though a still and silent Jewish neighborhood at 1 a.m. of the most solemn date on its calendar, with earsplitting music blaring from his car amplifiers. Likewise the trigger wasn’t the ensuing onslaught by ax-wielding Arabs on Jewish streets. Continue reading →

Israel’s a weird place. We relish extremes. During our socialist phase – under the pre-state and early-state hegemony of Mapai (yesteryear’s acronym for the Israel Labor Party) – we voluntarily were the USSR’s ideological quasi-outpost, albeit a democratic-cum-erratic one. Young Israel was tied to Mother Russia by sentimental bonds, yet was quite unwilling to endure communist hardships. Continue reading →

‘Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you what you are,” wrote Miguel de Cervantes in the 17th century. But this bit of folksy wisdom is older than the author of Don Quixote. He merely resorted to and repeated what was in wide circulation before him and what continues ubiquitously after him. Rare indeed is the mother anywhere who in one language or another – in an array of nuances on the theme – hasn’t sternly lectured her offspring and intoned that “you are known by the company you keep.” Continue reading →

The days preceding Yom Kippur are devoted to soul-searching and apologies. I have loads to atone for, like irresistible meanness to the two Ehuds, Tzipi and their assorted expedient sidekicks and agenda-pushing boosters. But, as incoming mail indicates, I’ve also offended (albeit unintentionally and without malice) some readers. So I’ll hereby seek to explain, by way of making amends. Continue reading →