It’s hunky-dory to kick off another year with comforting reassurances of stability. There are no unsettling changes in the wings. What was is what will be, albeit with slight superficial variations. For instance, Yossi Beilin will keep on tinkering with our existential interests as he did so assiduously hitherto. Although he announced his retirement, indefatigable Beilin is still out there avidly looking for E.T., still trying to broker that intergalactic encounter between alien life-forms, the one that will bless us with universal bliss. Continue reading →

We’re all familiar with holier-than-thou anti-Semites whose much-touted “best friends” invariably are Jews. Well, the good news is that Jane Fonda is awfully fond of us. She says so in her blog. Given all that fondness, Fonda feels persecuted for no fault of her own. She cannot fathom why she must “wake up in the morning to a barrage of e-mails” about “a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to feature a celebratory ‘spotlight’ on Tel Aviv… By doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not, a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel’s image, make her appear less warlike.” Continue reading →

“Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la happy birthday sweet 16,” Neil Sedaka crooned his way to pop-culture immortality in those antediluvian days of 1961. Sixteen years are indeed a milestone. Any girl born this week in 1993 is, to borrow from yesteryear’s hit-song lyrics, “not a baby anymore.” She might well have “turned into the prettiest girl” and into “just a teenage dream.” Continue reading →

Without historical context there can be no real understanding of existential issues, certainly not of essential continuities. That’s why those who seek to obfuscate and skew do their utmost to erase telltale fundamental perspectives and present whatever they focus upon as cogent isolated concerns. Continue reading →