Spring is coming, love is in the air, and it’s wedding season in Israel. Every day, dozens of couples head off to the Old City of Jaffa to have their photos taken just hours before their big night, in what has become over the years a ritual, and an industry. I find it beautiful, charming, disgusting and kitsch all at once. I wish them love and light.
Back in 2009, Shaul Mofaz presented the world with his proposal for a peace plan with the Palestinians. Continue reading
Ousted Kadima chairwoman Tzippi Livni is retiring from politics for now. She leaves behind a bland, uneventful political career with barely any accomplishments to speak of.
When then-Kadima leader Ehud Olmert faced withering criticism for his handling of the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, and even more withering fire for his alleged corruption probes afterwards, Livni failed to push Olmert aside and forge a new leadership. By trying to keep ‘politically clean,’ by promising ‘a different politics without cynicism,’ Livni remained politically ineffectual. Only after Olmert was forced to resign did she inherit the mantle of leadership. She didn’t take it from him, it, like much of her political career, was handed to her.
After the general elections in 2009, in which Livni’s party won the most Knesset seats [28 to Likud's 27] she failed to form a coalition government, paving the way for Netanyahu to take the reins of power. Livni’s inexperience and naïveté cost her the prime minister’s office. By sending her negotiators to potential coalition partners with a fixed offer, Livni was outflanked by Netanyahu, who showed that he is a much savvier political operator.
In the three years since her failed bid for power, Livni has failed to keep Kadima united, vibrant, and relevant. Above all, her failure to respond in time to last summer’s socioeconomic protest sealed her fate. The Kadima Chairwoman stayed out of the socioeconomic protest movement that erupted here in early June, not wanting to give the government the excuse it was looking for to taint the grassroots movement, which started over the high price of cottage cheese and lack of affordable housing, in a political hue. Livni calculated, wrongly, that the Israeli middle class would rise up and hound Benjamin Netanyahu’s government out of town. But, as things turned out, the middle class didn’t want a revolution [as middle classes rarely ever do]. It wanted the government to get to work. It wanted the government to fix things, lower prices, lower taxes, and make day-care tax deductible.
She failed to make peace with Mofaz, she failed to coax Yair Lapid into Kadima, or even into an alliance with Kadima, and she failed in inspiring the nation by coming up with something, anything new.
Her term as foreign minister under an Olmert government also proved uneventful, with Olmert doing the heavy lifting opposite PA President Mahmoud Abbas, and behind the scenes with Bashar Assad. She never struck out on her own [as Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is doing, rightly or wrongly] and she never offered even the faintest hint of originality, creativity, or dogged determination.
And then, finally, she failed to defeat Mofaz, a challenger that she already beat once before.
Three years after inheriting the party from Ehud Olmert, who inherited it from Ariel Sharon, Tzipi Livni was unceremoniously shown the door.
The only thing surprising about any of this is the surprise at her demise by those who didn’t know her. But those of us who followed her career closely are not so surprised.
If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, what is it? What is it? That’s right; it’s a lame duck political party. It’s Kadima.
This is the sorry state of Kadima now: On paper, it is the largest political party in the Knesset, but in reality has lost much of its electoral support to a resurgent Labor Party and newcomer Yair Lapid. It is also potentially on the verge of a cataclysmic split which threatens to send the party from its current 28 mandates into single digits. Continue reading
The racist, uneducated, teenage thugs of the Beitar Jerusalem soccer club this week invaded Malha mall near the club’s Teddy Stadium in the capital’s Malha neighborhood. Continue reading
Anti-Semitic political cartoon in New York Times/ Herald Tribune? or ‘just’ anti-Israel? Or is it spot on? What do you think?
This, to my mind, looks classic anti-Semitism. The Jew dragging the American into another war in Iran…
I do think that this specific cartoon, coming as it does in this political and security climate, is offensive, and dangerous. I happen to think that it is in America’s supreme interest that Iran does not get the bomb, and that Israel feels secure that it can defend itself, no matter what. Because if Jerusalem feels insecure, it will lash out, in very powerful and unpredictable ways. I would like to see a cartoon that reflects that. That Israel and America are in the same corner, and not one telling the other what to do. They are in this together, and if anyone is in the ring with Iran and has been physically fighting for a long time, it is Israel.
I’m used to seeing this kind of cartoon in the Arabic press, not the New York Times.
Arab News, January 13, 2008 (Saudi Arabia)
So what do we know about Mohammed Merah, the 24-year-old Frenchman of Algerian extraction who killed three French paratroopers and four Jews in Toulouse? Continue reading
Just in the past three weeks, our people have been attacked in Ashdod, Beersheba, Ashkelon, Bangkok, New Delhi, Tbilisi, and now Toulouse.
It is unclear yet what the motives for the Toulouse attack were, as French police had not classified it as a terror attack or hate crime. But does it make a difference? Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that Hezbollah had recently tried to attack Israel and Jewish targets around the world, and that these attempted attacks had been thwarted. Barak was speaking at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. We always knew Iran would retaliate all over the world against Jews if Israel attacked their nuclear facilities. They did it in Argentina in 1992 after Israel assassinated the Hezbollah leader. But who knew the Iranians would jump the gun this time? Continue reading
A poem for our times
On a table, together with all my options,
I sat under a nuclear umbrella and played with a mushroom cloud.
I was in a zone,
Of immunity.
I pitted a nuclear duck against a terrorist octopus.
They crossed each others’ red lines until both reached the point of no return
And spinning, they fell off the table.
I got up to close the window of opportunity,
as it was letting in a cold draft from the Islamic Winter outside.
Spring, all too short, was over.
Jewish leaders ask America to bomb their existential threat
If only they had. If only they will.
Increasingly, it looks as if Palestinian terrorists in Gaza are aiming their rockets at Israeli schools.
For a week now, some 250,000 Israeli kids have stayed away from schools, a situation which has greatly disrupted normal life in the country’s south. The government and the IDF have given the all-clear for children to return to school, but rockets keep on being fired. The mayors of the major cities in the South, together with many parents and teachers, have ignored the state’s orders and have kept the schools closed. A stalemate, with Israeli children caught in the middle between quarreling adults. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it would be like in Tel-Aviv, where I live, were we to be bombed mercilessly and repeatedly, like the Israelis living in the south have been. Or like we, in the country’s center, might be if Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities sometime this year. Continue reading
Life for the residents of the southern Israel is impossible, intolerable, and unsustainable. They live in constant fear and suffering, and they’ve been living like this for years. That’s the problem. It’s not as if it’s been days, weeks, or months. It’s not as if we’re asking them to sit tight while the army removes the terror threat from above their heads. This request they could bear. No, we’re not asking them to sit tight for a few weeks while our soldiers fight their tormentors in Gaza. Instead, we’re asking them to sit tight with no end in sight. And there aren’t just a few thousand of these poor souls anymore, like there was just a few years ago. We’re talking about a million Israelis now. Continue reading
IDF soldiers have posted even more videos of themselves dancing out in the field. This time, however, many of them are to the same single song, which has a unique set of dance steps. In the latest videos to be released, Israeli soldiers dance to a Brazilian hit called ‘Ai Se Eu Te Pego’ ['Oh, If I Catch You']. There are about a half dozen videos on YouTube of IDF troops, in a wide range of units, doing their version of this particular song. It’s uncanny. It’s as if there is a competition inside the Israel Defense Forces to come up with the best, whackiest version of Ai Se Eu Te Pego. Everyone’s doing it: tank forces troops, infantry, chemical and biological units, the Paratroopers and more. Continue reading
So what have we learned from this latest round of fighting so far?
1. While the Iron Dome anti-rocket system is a big hit in battle with the relatively small Islamic Jihad group [it has frustrated their plans and provided the Israeli government with time and space not to launch a heavier assault on Gaza], it won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the much larger, much more heavily-armed Hamas. Like King David and King Saul, Islamic Jihad has thousands of rockets, and Hamas has tens of thousands of rockets. If the Iron Dome won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the relatively small Hamas terrorist group, it definitely won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the Hezbollah terrorist group. If the Iron Dome won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the relatively small Hezbollah terrorist group, it definitely won’t stand up to a massive and sustained rocket barrage from the Syrian army. The Iron Dome is a smart, but limited tool, effective only in a limited conflict.
And here’s my Ahmadineduck!
Iran and world powers are set to resume talks about Iran’s nuclear program in the coming weeks.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says talks and sanctions won’t work to convince Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program, and therefore he sees no point in going into them. During the coming talks, Netanyahu believes, the Iranians will continue to enrich uranium. But Netanyahu has to pay lip service to the interests of the Americans and Europeans, who desperately want to avoid an Israeli strike on Iran, which would, according to most analysts, drive up oil prices, destabilize the world economy further, and may push an already teetering Middle East over the cliff. Continue reading
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the AIPAC conference in Washington this morning that there are still people who believe that Iran is not working to develop nuclear weapons:
Amazingly, some people refuse to acknowledge that Iran’s goal is to develop nuclear weapons. You see, Iran claims to do everything it’s doing, that it’s enriching uranium to develop medical isotopes.
Yeah, that’s right.
A country that builds underground nuclear facilities, develops intercontinental ballistic missiles, manufactures thousands of centrifuges, and that absorbs crippling sanctions, is doing all that in order to advance…medical research.
So you see, when that Iranian ICBM is flying through the air to a location near you, you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s only carrying medical isotopes.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then what is it?
That’s right, it’s a duck. But this duck is a nuclear duck.
So, ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the Iranian nuclear duck. I call him: Ahmadineduck!
This is the picture released today by the Israeli Government Press Office after the meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama. Continue reading
