Monthly Archives : April 2020

From Holocaust to Independence – online symposium


To mark Israel’s Independence Day, I participated in an online symposium titled From Holocaust to Independence with David Horowitz, Katie Hopkins and Boaz Bismuth, organized Forum Ori Cafe Shapira and moderated by Yishai Fleischer. It was a pleasure to participate and I hope you enjoy the discussion. Here is Part 1. Here is Part 2.

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Lob’s hostile (but disarming) takeover


Apparently, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is sensitive to criticism. Over the past week, it received enormous – and well-deserved – flak after it announced the decision of its nominating committee to select former HIAS chairman Dianne Lob to serve as the Conference’s next chairman. In what is largely viewed as a formality, the full Conference…

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American Jewry’s Organizational Crack-Up


  Last week an event occurred will be remembered as a key moment in the disintegration of organized American Jewish support for Israel and American Jewish organizational life itself. Last Friday, the leaders of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations announced that the Conference’s nominating committee had selected Dianne Lob, the immediate past president of HIAS to…

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Pandemics, Palestinian incitement and peace


A few weeks ago, officials in Israel’s Health Ministry were calling for Israel to “medically annex Judea and Samaria” for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic. The notion was that while Israel and the Palestinian Authority are separate political entities, from a public health perspective, they are indivisible. On a practical level, the call was superfluous. From the moment the…

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Israel and Trump’s war on the coronavirus


The presidency of Donald Trump has shaped coalition talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Blue and White party chairman Benny Gantz. For weeks, the chief stumbling block holding up a unity government deal was Gantz’s attempt to delay or block Israeli implementation of Trump’s deal of the century which greenlights the implementation of Israeli law over parts of Judea…

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Coronavirus lessons for coalition talks


We are living through a grave crisis. And crises have a knack for clarifying fundamental truths. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed several of them. First, our ability to control our world is limited. An unknown number of months ago, through unclear means, the coronavirus broke out in China and landed in the rest of the world shortly thereafter.  Over the…

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Latma is back! Finally, something to watch!


After a 7 year absence, Latma, the greatest Israeli satire series ever, (and the one I founded and run), is back. Two weeks ago we ran our first episode of Latma2020 on Israel Channel 20. Last night we broadcast Episode 3. Below are the English subtitled version of Episode 1 and the musical clip from Episode 2. We hope to…

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