Haim Watzman
I envy Americans. The choice they face in their coming election is so clear. The choice we Israelis will face in our next election couldn’t be more muddled.
The choice in the United States is so stark because nearly every policy the Republican administration has put into action has failed, and in just the ways [...]

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My wife occasionally mentions a repeated gag on the fake news broadcast on Saturday Night Live in the 70s. After other mangled news, the announcer would say, “And Franco is still dying.” Given what he could expect in the next world, it’s no wonder he was slow about moving there.
But the record for slow political [...]

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Haim Watzman
Shouldn’t journalistic ethics apply to bloggers? Specifically, shouldn’t bloggers refuse to accept perks from companies, organizations, and power brokers they write about? I’m a newbie in the blogging world, but I believe that any blogger who seeks credibility and independence must accept this standard.
The issue came up specifically when I attended the First International [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg
Col. Binyamin Gibli took his secrets with him to the next world when he died this week - unless, as historian Tom Segev forlornly hopes, the old spookmaster left instructions to publish the ghost-written manuscript of his autobiograhy, and it explains what really happened in the Dirty Business of the 1950s. The hope [...]

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Haim Watzman
“Ehud Barak will Talk More to the Media,” says the headline in today’s Ha’aretz (Hebrew edition). It’s a mark of the sad state of Israeli politics that it’s worth a headline when the leader of what ought to be the country’s progressive camp decides to talk to the press.
It’s hard to believe but, since [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg
A friend from America passed through Jerusalem and brought me a recent book of far-away American history, perhaps thinking that I should get my mind off the troubles a kilometer or two from my home. Allen C. Guelzo’s Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates that Defined America was well worth the read, but it did [...]

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Haim Watzman
Here I am stuck in New Jersey, while the four suitcases checked by me and Ilana are in flight. In other words, while security at Kennedy International Airport kept Ilana and me from bringing hand cream into the secure area, our luggage was allowed to fly on its own to Israel. If a terrorist [...]

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Does Rev. John Hagee - friend of Joe Lieberman and erstwhile endorser of John McCain - believe the End is Nigh? Is that what’s behind his oft-proclaimed love for Israel? Does he expect horrible suffering for Jews during the apocalypse that he yearns for?
I would have thought these were easy test questions, to be [...]

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Let’s update political jargon. Writers still use “dog whistle” for a political message heard clearly by one audience but entirely missed by everyone else. That’s so twentieth-century. Please update to “teenage ring-tone”: Young ears hear it. Older ones don’t. Students yes, profs no. You can pick the tone that will [...]

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Moshe Hagar is an ex-colonel who now heads the religious pre-army academy, or mekhinah, at the settlement of Yatir south of Hebron. Such academies provide a year of study after high school, before army service. The idea is to increase motivation and develop leadership skills. The Hebrew web-page for Hagar’s academy (on a government website) [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg
The Israeli Post Office has issued a stamp commemorating the settlements of Gush Katif in Gaza - the settlements evacuated by the Israeli goverment in 2005. The stamp shows an orange ribbon, originally the symbol of the furious protest movement against the withdrawal. Today the ribbon is the icon of those [...]

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An afterword on Ma’ariv publishing the note that Obama put in the Wall: McClatchy correspondent Dion Nissenbaum brings the newspaper’s most recent comment on the affair. It doesn’t improve the Ma’ariv’s journalistic rep:
Maariv received the note last Thursday and, after realizing it contained no personal or intimate content, decided to publish it.

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