In his appearance Sunday before the Knesset's new anti-corruption investigative committee, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss announced that he will be publishing his report on the government's implementation of the withdrawal and expulsion plan from Gaza and northern Samaria in January. Lindenstrauss's report is set to review the insufficient protection of the communities around the abandoned Gaza Strip; the impaired…
There are two types of political leaders in democratic systems of government: those whose political power grows in tandem with that of their party and political base, and those whose political power grows on the back of their party and political base. US president Ronald Reagan was probably the most recent archetype of the first type of political leader. Former…
The Quartet's envoy and former World Bank president James Wolfensohn is reputed to be quite a deal maker. One of the deals he made as the Quartet's envoy to the region was the purchase by wealthy American Jews of greenhouses owned by the Jews who were expelled from Gaza this past summer and their transfer as a gift to the…
While most Israelis have been caught up in the general elections fever brought on by the election of the socialist workers' boss and radical post-Zionist Amir Peretz to the helm of the Labor Party, another contest has been unfolding in the shadows. The long-run consequences of this other contest may very well surpass in importance the issue of who…
With Histadrut general strike king Amir Peretz’s primary elections victory over Vice Premier Shimon Peres last week, the Labor Party has finally removed all its masks and officially embraced post-Zionism as its guiding ideology. By electing Peretz, the Labor Party of David Ben-Gurion has declined to the status of an anti-Zionist political party. While Oslo and Labor’s embrace of…
It would seem that the world has gone mad. Israel's security is being systematically undermined by its own government and the US-led international community. At this point it seems that the Sharon-Peres government is engaged in a perverse competition with the Bush administration to determine who can come up with the most deranged counter-terror policy. Last week it was…
The French are in serious trouble. They have a home-grown insurrection on their hands. In some ways – mainly in the intensity of the violence – the current insurrection recalls the 1968 student rebellion. But there is a major difference between the spring of 1968 and the autumn of 2005. In 1968 the rioting students – at least those who…
In the year and a half which preceded the implementation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's withdrawal and expulsion plan from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria, the leftist elites in Israel waged an unrelenting cultural war against the Israeli Right generally and against religious Zionists specifically. Religious Zionists were portrayed by the media, by entertainment icons, by Sharon's advisers, and…
Gazing from across an ocean at the undoing of US President George W. Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the US Supreme Court was like gazing at Elysium. In the public debate that erupted in the wake of Bush's announcement four weeks ago that he was nominating his personal attorney to the highest court in America, we saw what…