Maybe there’s some uniquely calm land where military heroes and ex-generals don’t get a head start in politics. But that land is neither Israel or the United States. The only thing consistent about John McCain’s campaign is the claim that he deserves to be president because he was a POW. Closer to where I live, [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Occasionally, pop culture offers the appropriate commentary on matters of state. To understand Shaul Mofaz’s feelings about Tzipi Livni winning the Kadima primary, view a snippet of this scene from She’s the Man, a remake of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night set in high school. (Sorry, there’s a block on embedding the clip.) The relevant [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg This post is really about Jews and Obama. Patience. A Ha’aretz-Channel 10 poll a couple of days before the Kadima primary said that Tzipi Livni was ahead among the party’s voters, 47-28 percent. Exit polls last night showed Livni with about that share of the vote, with Mofaz doing better, but not better [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Tomorrow Kadima will pick someone to replace Ehud Olmert as party leader. Olmert will then quit, to the sound of 7 million people sighing in relief, and his replacement will get the chance to form a new government and become Israel’s prime minister. The method that Kadima will use to make this momentous [...]

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OK, Lehman Bros went belly up. Far as I am from wealth, I still find this upsetting. I find it even more upsetting that the Israeli political system currently has about as much credibility with the public as Lehman’s assets had with its creditors. The ruling party’s vote tomorrow for a new leader comes down [...]

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While we’ve all got on our eyes on Ehud Olmert’s alleged sticky fingers, Prof. David Kretzmer has called for an investigation of whether one of Olmert’s would-be successors has committed crimes of an entirely different order. Kretzmer is emeritus professor of international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem – a dry understated title for [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Buried in a Ha’aretz story on training exercises aimed at rebuilding the Israeli army’s ability to fight a war is the mention of the newspaper’s own report [emphasis added] from October 2002 about the expected reduction in training exercises by the regular units for 2003, stating: “The burden of the territories displaces training; [...]

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Gershom Gorenberg Tzipi Livni is running against the embodiment of dumb military macho, and she’s responding wrong. In a Ha’aretz piece this morning (in Hebrew), political reporter Mazal Mualam tells us that Livni’s main competition in Kadima, Shaul Mofaz is conducting “a negative campaign against Livni, focused on her lack of military experience” while Livni [...]

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