I wish more Israelis were with me in outlying County Kerry, Ireland, just recently. There, in the tiny town of Cahersiveen, my doubting compatriots would have been reminded of what we face in the international community and why it has nothing much to do with how liberally we conduct ourselves, how many confidence- building concessions we make at the expense of our physical safety or how much we sacrifice of our rights to our historic homeland.

It’s all gallingly beside the point.

Our image has exasperatingly little to do with who we are. Distortions about us are blithely disseminated to the most susceptible and gullible members of society. Israel’s role as a scoundrel is made an axiomatic given, a premise for decent but distant folks, who know next to nothing (least of all Israel’s actual size) and couldn’t care less about the Mideast and its staggering complexities. But they are convinced that we are the bad guys. Continue reading →

When Housing Minister Avraham Ofer committed suicide on the third day of 1977, I was already a political reporter, with a good few years in the profession behind me. Yet when I was sent out to cover his funeral and arrived at City Hall, where the body lay in state, I encountered a difficulty which few of my colleagues ever did. The cops wouldn’t let me near and chased me off saying, “this is no place for children.”

My problem was that I looked about 12. I waved my press card in their faces, but to no avail. A few minutes later, City Hall’s glass doors flew open and my then-editor Ari Rath (who along with Ofer and Asher Yadlin hailed from Kibbutz Hamadiya) peered out and called to the officers: “It’s OK, this child is with me.” My embarrassment was now complete. Continue reading →

As many of you know, Sarah Honig is on vacation, but come March you can purchase her anthology of columns in her first book ‘Debunking the Bull’!

You can pre-order it from Amazon today!

Another Tack will be back at the end of January 2013.

Who says many of the more upwardly mobile and thoroughly assimilated American Jews are at best dormant Jews? Who says they are estranged Jews, disdainfully detached from the Jewish collective? Who says they couldn’t care less about Jewish solidarity, to say nothing of Jewish national interests?

Of course they care. Passionately. They are, if anything, political creatures. Did they not kick a god-awful fuss over news magnate Rupert Murdoch’s stirring defense of Israel during the latest Gazan round? Did they not let him have it? Is that apathy?

Did they not rush to pillory Murdoch for asking on Twitter: “Why is Jewish owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?”

Wow, they came out punching! It wasn’t the actual negligible matter of Israel’s ongoing struggle which stirred them. Siding with Israel or welcoming Murdoch’s warm support of Israel wasn’t what aroused their emotions. Nor were they moved by the issue of anti-Israeli media bias. Far from it. This is just the sort of preoccupation that leaves them cold and consistently condescending. Continue reading →

When the blood-curdling battle cry exhorting the masses to slaughter the Jews, “Itbach al-Yahud,” was first shouted on April 4, 1920, by Arab marauders rampaging through the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, it was accompanied by another mantra: “A-Dawla ma’ana” – the government is with us.

That was the first brazen reverberation of the trust that Jews can be attacked with impunity, that no deterrence exists. It was since oft-chanted during the perpetration of other atrocities during the British Mandate era masterminded by infamous Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, most notably the hideous Hebron massacre of 1929.

In a broad sense, that same premise endures and it has spurred Hamas and its assorted Gazan cohorts – all Husseini’s avid torchbearers – to escalate their rocket fire, ambushes and other assorted provocations.

Their confidence was buoyed by a confluence of conditions. Foremost was the seeming Israeli toleration for the random rocketing of an ever-expanding sphere of population centers. Our prolonged inaction had lent the impression of powerlessness and, in our region apparent weakness only invites intensifying aggression. Continue reading →

President Shimon Peres these days casually dismisses talk of his return to politics as “mere speculation. I myself never said anything.” He rarely does. He just enjoys the hype. He relishes the buildup, the attention and excitement.

But, despite the thrill and flattery, there really is no way Peres would have fallen for the dubious temptations tossed his way to headline a new Knesset list – perhaps a reborn Kadima – with Tzipi Livni as his number two.

It would have been a perfect pretext to allow Livni to climb down from her claim to top-billing, regardless with whom she might run. Her hubris notwithstanding, she surely never possessed the drawing power to field a ticket exclusively reliant on her own charisma. Any potential running mates are unlikely to yield the primacy to her, based on nothing but her own high self-esteem.

Therefore, Peres definitely is just what her spin doctors might prescribe – a big-time name, for whose sake it would be no dishonor to vacate first slot. At the same time, as a very elder statesman, Peres is presumed to present no long-term political threat. It can get no better – but only for Tzipi.

Trouble is, there’s nothing in it for Peres.

Besides the fact that he has never won a national election, he cannot possibly surpass the renown which titular head-of-state status confers upon him. It’s the ultimate career-culminating rank. It enables him to satisfy his yen for globetrotting, for rubbing shoulders with the international who’s who, the literati and glitterati, the news-makers and opinion-shapers. The world is his oyster and there’s plenty of opportunity for making mischief too, which has always Peres’s particular penchant. Continue reading →