Haim Watzman
Beware of Israelis who call for unity. More often than not, what they really mean is “everyone should unite around my political program.”
In yesterday’s Ha’aretz, Moshe Arens calls for unity with an invocation of American revolutionary rhetoric (”Divided We Fall”). Yet his bottom line is that unity means acceding to the agenda of Israel’s [...]

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The Economist is allowing the world to vote for U.S. president. Given that the president of the Empire affects life worldwide, this seems fair to me.
Of course, any online poll like this is utterly unscientific. It depends on who knows about it, which in turn depends on who reads a fairly conservative site like the [...]

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Haim Watzman
Penitents are like voters. They face critical choices, ones that will set the course of their lives, and must make them in a situation of uncertainty. Committed voters try to grope through the fog of rhetoric in order to understand the true wills and predilections of the candidates they must choose from; penitents seek [...]

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Haim Watzman

They evinced no concern for the cleanliness of the area they lived in.… [T]he streets [were] filthy and stank to the skies.…They were considered to be swindlers, prone to lying. “An Arab never speaks the truth, except by mistake,” said policemen who served in the area.

That’s a description of London’s Jewish neighborhood, the East [...]

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Haim Watzman
Jeremiah the prophet, bound in chains in the convoy of Judean exiles the conquering army was taking to Babylonia, is freed by the captain of the guard. Jeremiah goes to Mitzpa, near destroyed Jerusalem, where Gedalya, whom the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar had appointed governor over Judea.
Jewish idealists and patriots who opposed the Babylonian occupation [...]

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Haim Watzman
“Israelis buy so many books!” an acquaintance told me in wonder and appreciation during my recent trips to the U.S.
“Yes, but don’t be overly impressed,” I cautioned. “The main reason is that we have a lousy public library system.”
Ironically, the libraries of the country of the People of the Book are small, under-funded, and [...]

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Haim Watzman
“Suicide,” said Shaya. He meant the one-state “solution” to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. More and more Palestinian intellectuals are now advocating a single state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, this after years in which short-sighted Israeli governments pursued policies aimed at making it impossible to establish a Palestinian state [...]

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Haim Watzman
It’s after 10 p.m. on a Saturday night and I’m descending an escalator in the Jerusalem Mall, located in the Malha neighborhood. My head is a bit muddled at this hour - a late one for me. I’m on a father-son outing - I’m going with my two boys, one a soldier, the other [...]

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Haim Watzman
Tomorrow Israel’s National Planning and Construction Board will take up a proposal to establish a new settlement in the eastern Lachish salient, southwest of Jerusalem. An ad in today’s Ha’aretz, placed by twelve of Israel’s most senior environmentalists, calls on the Board to reject the plan.
“The establishment of the settlement will lead, in [...]

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Haim Watzman
Y. Ben-David, South Jerusalem’s most intrepid commenter, writes, in response to my previous post on anti-Semitism in Islam, that a significant part of the Muslim world today subscribes to theologies that demonize the Jews, as well as to outlandish conspiracy theories. I’d like to declare here, on the front page of this left-wing peacenik [...]

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Haim Watzman

Joseph Licht, a religious Israeli with a devoted wife, five young sons, and a budding academic career attends a Torah class in Jerusalem given by a young rabbinic prodigy. The two men fall in love and conduct a passionate affair, leading Joseph to abandon his family and his religion—on the same day that his [...]

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Haim Watzman
All year I work hard to reinforce my Jewish-Zionist-Israeli conception of myself and to instill it in my children. I talk to them about the importance of serving their country, by serving in the army or by going to college in Sderot; about how we must preserve our heritage and traditions. And about why [...]

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