EVERYBODY KNOWS the scene from school: a small boy quarrels with a bigger boy. “Hold me back!” he shouts to his comrades, “Before I break his bones!” Our government seems to be behaving in this way. Every day, via all channels, it shouts that it is going, any minute now, to break the bones of … Read more
THE KILLING of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Muatasim was not a pretty sight. After seeing it once, I looked away when it was shown again and again on TV – literally ad nauseam. Commercial TV exists, of course, to make money for the tycoons by appealing to the basest instincts and tastes of the … Read more
THE MOST sensible – I almost wrote “the only sensible” – sentence uttered this week sprang from the lips of a 5-year old boy. After the prisoner swap, one of those smart-aleck TV reporters asked him: “Why did we release 1027 Arabs for one Israeli soldier?” He expected, of course, the usual answer: because one … Read more
ON YOM KIPPUR eve last week, when real Jews were praying for their lives, I sat on the seashore of Tel Aviv, thinking. I was thinking about our state, the State of Israel, in which I have, so to speak, a founder’s share. Will it endure? Will it be here in another 100 years? Or … Read more
AN OLD photo from World War I shows a company of German soldiers getting on the train on their way to the front. On the wall of the car somebody had scribbled: “viel Feind, viel Ehr’” (“The more enemies, the more Honor”.) In those days, at the very start of what was to be the … Read more
“THERE ARE situations in which a real patriot has no alternative but to be a traitor,” wrote the distinguished German journalist, the late Rudolf Augstein, in a review of one of my books in the late 1980s. “My Friend, the Enemy,” described, among other things, my meeting with Yasser Arafat. It was the first encounter … Read more
HERE IS a story that has never been told before:When the Titanic was well out into the Atlantic, its crew mutinied. They demanded higher wages, less cramped quarters, better food. Theyassembled on the lower decks and refused to budge from there. A few old hands from the engine room tried to extend the scope of … Read more
A WONDERFUL SPEECH. A beautiful speech.The language expressive and elegant. The arguments clear and convincing. The delivery flawless. A work of art. The art of hypocrisy. Almost every statement in the passage concerning the Israeli-Palestinian issue was a lie. A blatant lie: the speaker knew it was a lie, and so did the audience. It … Read more
“WILL THIS be the happiest day of your life?” a local interviewer asked me, referring to the approaching recognition of the State of Palestine by the UN. I was taken by surprise. “Why would that be?” I asked. “Well, for 62 years you have advocated the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel, and … Read more
IT SOUNDS like the title of a romantic movie. “Daphne, Itzik and all the Others”. It starts off with a friendship between two youngsters, he in his early thirties, she in her mid twenties. Then they quarrel. He leaves. She remains. The audience knows exactly what it wants: it wants the two to reunite, kiss, … Read more