Soccer players live in dread of the “own goal,” where a player inadvertently kicks the ball into his own team’s goal, giving the other side the point. As I write, Israel appears poised to provide the world with a rare example of two “own goals,” and in the process harming Israeli democracy. The Israeli cabinet set
A burning house of GodOp-ed: Israel’s leadership must unite to confront menace threatening very fabric of societyDavid Rosen, Edward RettigA burned house of worship, in this case a mosque in the Israeli Arab town of Tuba Zangaria, and a desecrated Arab cemetery in Jaffa, were together an ominous opening to the New Year. To be sure,
Rabbi Michael Graetz offers a provocative suggestion: Masorti must form a political party. This is a bad idea on two counts: first, it would put the Masorti movement into the sick bed of political parties in Israel—political institutions whose existential crisis is a major component of the dysfunctions of the Israeli political system; and second,
The fifteenth annual rally commemorating the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square, will evidently be the last. The Rabin Institute announced that in light of falling attendance the annual assembly will be discontinued. Instead, his death will be commemorated by a state ceremony at his gravesite on Mt. Herzl in
When arsonists attacked a mosque at Beit Fajjar, south of Bethlehem, they left behind singed copies of the Koran and burned prayer rugs alongside graffiti messages that announced “revenge,” “a mosque must be burned,” and “price tag.” “Price tag” is a term used by radical settlers who say they are determined to exact a price
JERUSALEM — In the current controversy over the New Israel Fund, no side comes out looking good. Perhaps, then, we should begin our discussion with a play of the theater-of-the-absurd genre. In 1959 Eugène Ionesco published Rhinoceros, a study of the anti-democratic power of conformity. The plot follows a town whose residents are transformed, one after
