The amazing thing about coming to Israel, perhaps especially in summer, is that for all of the fears that people outside of Israel have for her, apparently Israelis themselves are not troubled nearly as much as her supporters overseas are. In Australia we worry for...
Mazal tov to Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison who pulled off the completely unexpected and will lead a majority government! Noteworthy when it comes to Australian foreign policy vis a vis Israel, is that it means that we can expect continuity of Australia’s...
Purim is over and we are moving into the final period before the Israeli elections. These elections are perhaps the most interesting in recent times, however there really only two candidates running.
The central focus of the Chanukah story was the attempt by the Greeks in the second century BCE, to force the Jewish people into giving up our belief in G-d and in the Torah, our ritual observance, our values and our culture. It was a desire to eradicate the Jewish people as a people, by stopping Jewish continuity.
September 2018 marks twenty-five years since Oslo and that famous handshake on the White House lawn by Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat under the patronage of President Bill Clinton. And a lot will be written about this anniversary. The one undeniable truth over this period has been the disenchantment of those who supported Oslo and who had believed that finally the Palestinians were going to reverse their original mantra as expressed in 1921 by the Palestine Arab Executive Committee when they said: “Either us or the Zionists. There is no room for both.” Those in Israel who still support the principles of Oslo and yearn for a Two State solution, understand where the fault lies for it not yet occurring. AB Yehoshua who was at one time on the Meretz list running for the Knesset, said in an interview in Ha’artez that: “Yasser Arafat first misled the world when he said he wanted a secular, pluralistic and democratic state and then trampled the Oslo Accords with terror attacks.” Yehoshua also blamed Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, for “rejecting Israel’s land-for-peace offer in 2008”. Einat Wilf a former Labour MK, in a recently published book says that her party’s assumption in […]
Having just returned from Israel after participating in the Jewish Agency Board of Governors’ meetings, it was time to reflect on just how surreal it was to be in Israel—And on many levels. But why should this trip have been any different? In Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the biggest challenge is finding a seat in overcrowded cafés or restaurants, whilst the residents of the south are still dealing with those “peaceful protesters” from Gaza. You know the ones burning the fields of Israeli towns and villages with their “peaceful” kites and almost nightly firing rockets into Israel to show how much they really want co-existence. And as Israel, with some UN and USA backing, attempts to work out how to get as much aid as possible that cannot be used for terror purposes into the Hamas run enclave, the Palestinian Authority led by that other “peacenik”, Abbas – demanding, (demanding mind you) that no aid be given to Gaza until Hamas recognises his authority. Abbas is a real humanitarian! If this is how much he cares about his fellow Arabs, what hope have we got when it comes to the Jews. Up north is another looming catastrophe. After two days […]