Once upon not too many decades ago – before globalized media crassness took over and when Israelis were way more erudite – folks around here freely quoted such literati as German poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller. It wasn’t considered elitist or esoteric. So when the Palmah was disbanded and its altruists felt they were used and then ungratefully discarded, they resorted to Schiller’s comment in his 1783 play Fiesco: “The Moor has done his work, the Moor may go.” Continue reading →

Those little neglected news stories that rarely make front-page headlines and never receive airtime are often the most telling of all. It’s through them that deliberately suppressed fundamental truths occasionally surface. It’s there that big lies are sometimes, albeit inadvertently, exposed. Continue reading →

Sometime at the very start of 1982 I attended a function at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which would have been entirely forgettable except that rarely was I since as nauseated as then. I came away revolted by the spectacle of my Israeli colleagues eagerly milling around ambassador Sam Lewis, seeking his attention and trying to outdo each other in heaping mockery and contempt on their own prime minister. Brutal jokes at Menachem Begin’s expense came fast and furious. Lewis visibly appreciated them and laughed condescendingly. Continue reading →

The only thing I ever admired about Michael Jackson was his doll collection. He had a hoard of vintage 1930s-era composition Shirley Temples that I shamelessly envy. Otherwise, I confess to being underwhelmed.

That probably marks me as hopelessly out of sync with most of humanity – to judge by the media-hyped hysteria about the self-inflicted demise of yet another showbiz oddball. So sorry to be a killjoy at a time of an obvious international mourning fest. Continue reading →

When I grew up, got to meet and even strike up a friendship with my childhood idol Dosh (the late Kariel Gardosh), I asked him which, to his mind, was his most enduring political caricature. For that, he replied, we need to return to December 1956, approximately a month after the Sinai Campaign and the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Dosh noticed that while the international community was seething about Israel’s feisty self-defense, it wasn’t overly perturbed about the human rights and self-determination brazenly crushed beneath heavy military armor right in Central Europe. Continue reading →

As anecdote has it, George Bernard Shaw once asked an attractive socialite whether she’d sleep with him for a million pounds. After she answered in the affirmative, he offered her a mere 10 shillings. Outraged, she railed: “What do you take me for? A prostitute?” Shaw reputedly replied: “We’ve already determined that. We’re just haggling over the price.” Continue reading →

US President Barack Obama’s intentions when delivering his overlong, cloying and history-warping Cairo University speech may have been good. He may have genuinely imagined himself on a messianic mission to win Muslim hearts by virtue of his own (hitherto expediently downplayed) Muslim background. Continue reading →

There never were good old days. Olden times produced heaps of evil, torment and immeasurable pain – foremost for the long-suffering Jewish people. But at least psychologically the bad old days were simpler and therefore the misery was more straightforward. Continue reading →

In salvaging the image of a beleaguered country like Israel, it’s not merely the justice of the case which counts, and not only how convincingly it’s made in private. The key is to ensure listenership. Even the most effective of arguments is useless without an audience. Continue reading →

From the outset it was unrealistic – if not altogether foolish – to look for any show of emotional empathy or heartfelt contrition from the German pope during his historic address at Yad Vashem. Those who harbored such expectations didn’t base them on Benedict XVI’s actual personality but on a kindly spiritual Santa, a figment of their wishful thinking. Continue reading →