The eighth president of Israel, Moshe Katzav, is now a convicted rapist, after a three-judge panel of the Tel Aviv District Court issued a unanimous decision to that effect. A man honored upon his election just a decade ago as a boy from the slums who made it to the top, he is now reviled
It apparently began when a mischievous fourteen-year-old playing hooky from school ran off to an isolated spot near his town on the Carmel mountainside in order to smoke a nargilah (water pipe). Tragically, he seems to have been careless in disposing of the hot coal from the pipe. One’s heart goes out to him: this Tom Sawyeresque
Media frenzies often divert attention away from substance. So it was last week when U.S. Vice President Joe Biden visited Israel and the Palestinian Authority. His well-publicized mission was to raise confidence between the parties and launch proximity talks, but the PA and Israel have urgent preoccupations elsewhere. The PA, facing fierce competition from Hamas,
Road 443 is an east-west highway that connects Israel’s coastal “Center” with its largest city and capital, Jerusalem. For about thirty kilometers, 443 cuts through a section of the West Bank northwest of Jerusalem, connecting the major town of Modi’in, and also major Palestinian population centers Ramallah and El Bira, to the national highway grid.
