A strange thing happened almost immediately after sources briefed reporters that the cabinet unanimously decided to accept a ceasefire with Hamas: ministers began denying it.

When reports of explosions in Gaza came in, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Paris.

Who was in charge while the premier was away? Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev assumed the position, while Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman had the authority to call together the security cabinet.
Every time Netanyahu leaves the country, he appoints someone to take his place. Of late, Regev has been his usual choice, based on her loyalty to Netanyahu.

The premier cut his trip short on Sunday night, and headed back to Israel, rather than leaving Regev with the reigns.

Netanyahu probably would have returned to Israel even if he had a permanent deputy, but the fact that a first-time minister was at the helm when a security incident broke out called attention to the lack of a vice premier. Continue reading

Conservative American firebrand Ben Shapiro opens up about Israel and Judaism.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro‘s star has been rising in the US in recent years. He’s only 34 years old, but he began his career 17 years ago, writing a syndicated column, and now he has his own news site, The Daily Wire, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” a podcast with millions of listeners.

In between, he managed to become editor-at-large of the far-right – these days, some would say alt-right – website Breitbart, and resigned in 2016. Shapiro accused Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon, an eventual adviser to US President Donald Trump, of turning the site into “Trump’s personal Pravda.”

Later that year, the Anti-Defamation League identified Shapiro as the No. 1 target of online antisemitism among Jewish journalists in the US, and he received the most hate by far.

Shapiro continues to be targeted from all ends: from the Left, because he’s staunchly conservative, and from the Right, because he is not a Trump cheerleader, and doesn’t hesitate to criticize the president. Continue reading

Antisemitism has been on the rise since 2014 – meaning before Trump became or even announced that he was running for president – but spiked by nearly 70% in 2017.

“This is a case where if they had an armed guard inside they might have been able to stop [the shooter] immediately,” US President Donald Trump said on Saturday, after the Sabbath massacre at the Tree of Life Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Later he tweeted, “This evil antisemitic attack is an assault on humanity. It will take all of us working together to extract the poison of antisemitism from our world. We must unite to conquer hate.”

As often happens with Trump, his comments reflect two divergent paths that would lead to very different policies.

Should US Jews be barricading themselves inside their synagogues, the way many European Jews do, because antisemitism is a foregone conclusion? Or should there be an active effort to eradicate antisemitism? Continue reading

he theme of this week’s Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly is “we need to talk,” focusing on the divisions between Israeli and US Jews. There has been a lot of talk about the growing divide between the groups in recent years and this conference was meant to put it in the spotlight.

The marketing materials released before the GA listed statistics on the political differences between the two groups. At the GA, however, there were signs about lifestyle differences: Israelis, for example, are far more likely to keepkosher (63%) than American Jews (22%), and are far less likely to intermarry (2%) when compared to Americans (44%).

That says a lot about where these two groups come from. The difference between living in a Jewish country, and being part of a Jewish minority in another country is, in many ways, the root of the difference between the two sides here – even if US Jews may be the most successful and best-integrated Diaspora community in history. Continue reading

Gov. Murphy vowed to use the full extent of law to fight antisemitism.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy encouraged US citizens in Israel to vote in the November 6 election, during a visit to Israel this week.

“I encourage everybody I meet to vote,” Murphy said on his way to Jerusalem to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, the third day of his trip. “Participation is going to be key.” Continue reading

The court disregarded constitutional arguments against the BDS ban, upholding the law but saying the government was exercising it in the wrong way.

When Lara Alqasem was refused entry to Israel because of her connections to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, and she remained in detention for two weeks because of her refusal to leave, the refrain from critics of the decision was: This is undemocratic.

In the end, the Alqasem saga showed just how democratic Israel really is. Continue reading

The former Iranian president mixes criticism of American racism with anti-Israel comments. Ahmadinejad quoted the Tupac song “Changes” to amplify his statements.

“How can one be indifferent to the sufferings, discrimination and inequalities of millions?”
“Everyone has the right to live with respect, dignity and comfort.”

These are things that many people have said before, in different wordings and contexts.
But this week, the unlikely person who made these statements on Twitter was former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad presided over the Islamic Republic when it topped lists of state executions, including as punishment for homosexuality; killed dozens of protesters on the street; and discriminated against its minorities.

Now, Ahmadinejad has a new persona. He’s now “woke” – a slang term for enlightened, often used to describe adherents of left-wing politics – but he has not dropped his anti-Israel and antisemitic attitudes. Continue reading

Staunch Israel supporters are criticizing the country’s anti-boycott policies. Is the law necessary for Israel’s well-being and is it worth the damage?

According to political legend, former US president Lyndon B. Johnson once said, after seeing an anti-Vietnam War segment on CBS News, “If I’ve lost [Walter] Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.”

Fair or not, Israel seems to have lost its Cronkite this week, when The New York Times’ arguably most pro-Israel writers Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, who described themselves as “unhinged Zionists,” wrote a joint column criticizing Jerusalem’s policies to combat boycotts. Continue reading

THE VIRTUE OF NATIONALISM
By Yoram Hazony
Basic Books
304 pages; $30

Many Zionists, people who support a state for the Jewish people in our historic homeland, may want to read The Virtue of Nationalism for intellectual arguments that support their Jewish nationalist view through a broader perspective, supporting the concept of independent nation-states as an organizing principle for the world.

However, they will find that The Virtue of Nationalism’s author Yoram Hazony, president of Jerusalem’s Herzl Institute, has done a disservice to many of Israel’s supporters and to anyone else who leans towards nationalism, but doesn’t share his extremely narrow view of what that means. Continue reading