All the seemingly disjointed fragments of news that maddeningly disrupt the steamy summertime tediousness are in fact interrelated – disturbingly so.

The purportedly enlightened campaign against Jewish circumcision and the equally sanctimonious outcry against kosher slaughter (most gallingly and recently in the very same Poland whose soil is soaked with Jewish blood like no other spot on this planet) are links in the same chain that led to the European Union’s burgeoning anti-Israeli boycott (disingenuously hinged on the settlements pretext) and to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s artificial resuscitation of the moribund and grossly misnamed peace process (that hinges on the release of convicted murderers whose hands drip with Jewish blood).

The fact is that those who cannot abide ancient Jewish rituals for a variety of insincere excuses and who seek excuses to justify double standards against the Jewish state, stayed eerily silent when the Palestinian Authority demanded liberation for some of the most heinous perpetrators of hate crimes since the Holocaust (which Europe assiduously attempts to banalize/belittle). Continue reading →

Our memories tend to be so short that all too often déjà vu looks brand new. This is the case with the looming release of 82 convicted terrorists to facilitate the opening of yet another round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. But we’ve been there and seen that.

Demanding “gestures of goodwill” and “confidence building measures” from Israel as a price for showing up for talks is a routine Palestinian tactic. It crops up with each attempt to resuscitate contacts and always takes the same shape. Continue reading →

To contextualize the provocations of the so-called hilltop youth, and the possibly linked price-tag inanities, we need to visit unloved and forsaken southern Tel Aviv – From Neveh Sha’anan all the way to the Hatikva and Shapira Quarters. Their sordid streets offer an improbable but pertinent perspective for the barren rocky landscapes of Judea and Samaria.

It’s not instantly obvious but there’s much that ties the denizens of these seemingly disparate settings. In a word it’s disaffection.

Our mainstream doesn’t care about the Israeli remainder in areas of Tel Aviv that had ceased to matter to trendsetters. The same goes for those broadly denigrated as “settlers.” Tenaciously clinging to values long ago discounted by conceited talking heads, they’re physically and psychologically removed from Tel Aviv’s clubs and cafes, besides being anathema to the in-crowd’s fashion police.

The stories of those whom stuck-up snobs disown – whether they live only several run-down blocks away or beyond the sacrosanct Green Line – get no hearing, to say nothing of sympathy. Continue reading →