I was Brooklyn bound – or so I thought. I took the subway to see a fellow alumna of New York’s High School of Music and Art (as today’s LaGuardia High School for the Arts was then called). I looked forward to the nostalgic reunion. I hadn’t been in NYC for ages, and catching up with an old classmate seemed an indispensable component of walking down memory lane. Continue reading →

The Prime Minister’s Office recently earmarked a trifling NIS 200,000 to “deepen awareness of Theodor Herzl’s legacy.” But instead of forking anything out for hype and pageantry, Ehud Olmert need only focus on what got Herzl into hot water at 1903’s Sixth Zionist Congress. There the harbinger of Jewish national revival felt impelled to vindicate himself and reaffirm his devotion to Zion, rendered suspect after he proposed Uganda as a nachtasyl (nighttime asylum) – a temporary haven for Jews fleeing czarist pogroms. Continue reading →

Speakers of Yiddish and German doubtlessly remember being cautioned that their conduct reflects on how they were reared. When their behavior failed to meet expectations, the predictable admonishing question always was “where is your kinderstube,?” Literally kinderstube means the children’s room or nursery. Over time it had come to be semi-synonymous with propriety because it denoted upbringing – the scene where value-systems are nurtured. Continue reading →

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. – James Madison

The fact that political science professor Ze’ev Sternhell received the Israel Prize as Independence Day drew to a close last week was nothing but a proclamation of prejudice by the High Court of Justice, because that same court had 11 years previously deprived the late Shmuel Schnitzer of the prize awarded him. Continue reading →

One of the best books anywhere about the lead-up to Israel’s independence is perhaps the most unlikely, least attractive and inordinately trivia-laden little volume imaginable. It was composed by a man considered to have been one of old Mapai’s particularly lackluster functionaries – Ze’ev Sherf. The pinnacle of his career was his brief elevation to the post of finance minister in 1968. Continue reading →

Few of my past columns have elicited as much hate-mail as a recent Tack on perfidious Swiss neutrality. Several messages, oozing with particular vitriol, were signed by Arab names. The authors of others purported to be Swiss. Though in cyberspace nothing should be taken at face value, some of what supposedly originated on the Alpine moral high ground did have that ring of authenticity – like the one which affirmed the precedence of Swiss interests over “some goddamned foreigners,” i.e. Jews. “No wonder we Swiss don’t like your people,” the writer summed up. Continue reading →

At the very last moment, PA figurehead Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) got cold feet. Fearing flak, he canceled the awards ceremony in which the PLO’s highest medal of heroism was to be conferred on five women – all convicted terrorists behind Israeli bars. Continue reading →

Jimmy Carter’s peace-partner Khaled Mashaal wasn’t joking. Hamas’s Damascus-based kingpin may have been deliberately thumbing his nose at us – or try ing to rub our nose in it – but there was no hint of levity in his recent interview with Sky News. Reporter Tim Marshall asked Mashaal why Hamas fires rockets at Israeli kindergartens. To this Mashaal responded with deadpan ostensible earnestness: “We didn’t attack a kindergarten. We have primitive weapons. I ask the international community and the Americans to give us more advanced weapons so we can shoot more accurately.” Continue reading →

There are two types of inveterate peaceniks, like there are two types of incurable smokers. The first variety adamantly refuses to consider conclusive evidence about the detrimental effects of tar and nicotine. Exhaling vaporous clouds from their nostrils, type-one sorts attest to the virtues of their harmful habit. Not only do they continue to light up, but they preach to the rest of us to consume more packs. The more we smoke, the more we’ll deserve being counted among the beautiful people – by their own say-so – stronger and saner than all others. Continue reading →

Rare is the temptation to turn over any of one’s finite column space to another’s op-ed ruminations. But Gilad Sharon’s recent Yediot Aharonot piece – “It’s all about hatred” – is one such irresistible exception.

Every sentence by Ariel Sharon’s younger son deserves to be chiseled in stone. Gilad’s straightforward truths should be resonated at home and abroad – often, loud and unequivocally. His words ought to be uttered morning and night by our current premier – the elder Sharon’s one-time lackey deputy – and by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who got where she did by deftly sucking up to Gilad’s father and hitching an opportunistic ride on his coattails. Continue reading →