I still recall the day, some 40 years ago, when my mother told me that she remembered vividly the moment that she’d heard that FDR had died. I was stunned. She’d been so young. How could she possibly remember it at all, much less so clearly? Gradually, I came to understand that there is a certain kind of moment when something so important transpires that, even years later, we remember not only what happened, but where we were, who spoke, how we felt. Each of us has a different list. Mine includes Anwar Sadat’s arrival in Tel Aviv, and Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. The Challenger explosion. Ariel Sharon’s stroke. Many more. Two weeks ago, there was another. I woke ...

Jerusalem Post Weekend Magazine February 11, 2011 I imagine that I am not alone in having thought often of November 1977 in the last several weeks. I was young, a college student, but I still remember one particular afternoon of that month with exceptional clarity. Anwar Sadat was coming to Jerusalem. I had no TV in my Columbia University dorm, so my grandparents invited me over to watch with them. My grandfather was an enormous presence in my life. Physically large, tall and wide, he was a scholar, a public intellectual, a gifted orator, a no-nonsense teacher who grilled me in Bible and Talmud, who (as if I didn’t have enough to read in college) sent me home ...

FOR decades Shimon Peres, now Israel’s president, has spoken of his country’s yearning for a “new Middle East,” one in which Israel is at peace with its neighbors, regional economies cooperate and the conflict with the Palestinians is finally set aside. Now, with Egypt’s government on the edge of collapse, Israel is suddenly faced with a “new Middle East” — and Israelis are terrified. Many Westerners believe that the events in Egypt are a disaster for the Jewish state. Its most important regional ally faces possible chaos and an Islamist takeover. Add to this King Abdullah II’s recent dismissal of his cabinet in Jordan (the only other Arab country that has signed a peace treaty ...

The Jerusalem Post; January 28, 2011 The creation of Ehud Barak’s Independence faction, with its collateral damage to the already hemorrhaging Labor Party, puts Israel into that rare category of First World countries without a social-democrat-like party of any significance. Yet even Labor’s opponents ought not breathe a sigh of relief. Our ossified government, with no opposition to goad it into action, is passively presiding over the demise of much of what we have toiled to build. True, the blame for the demise of Israel’s Left really lies with Yasser Arafat. When he unleashed the second intifada (more aptly called the Palestinian terror war) after Camp David sputtered, he proved once and for all that the Palestinians ...

Few of us, left to our own devices, would choose to have an opposition. “Get out of my way,” we’re inclined to say, “and just let me do what I know is right.” Oppositions, it seems to us, are an unfortunate but unavoidable part of political life. It’s the common view, but it’s wrong. Oppositions matter, because no political party, no ideology and no nation has a monopoly on wisdom. But as much as we need to welcome opposition, oppositions also need to know what to oppose, and how. The growing American Jewish opposition to Israel’s foreign policy (or lack thereof) is a case in point. A couple of weeks ago, I sent a friend in the ...

When our kids want to tell us that we're totally out of touch, they stare at us with a look of complete exasperation, and then say, with utter derision, "You're so American." They don't mean that there's anything fundamentally wrong with America or with Americans. They simply mean that the categories that we grew up with as the products of liberal, democratic-voting, civilrights- engaged, suburban American Jews cannot always apply to life here. This past Shabbat, I asked our son, Avi, about someone with whom I was thinking of doing some work, but about whom I was also worried. I knew that Avi knew him, and so I asked, "Is he a racist?" Avi looked at me, ...

It took only a few minutes of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's nauseatingly self-congratulatory impromptu press conference on Saturday night to confirm what we all knew too well this country is in infinitely worse shape than we might wish to admit. The prime minister had every right to list the many countries he'd called upon for help, to exult in the number of planes that would soon be joining the battle to snuff out the Carmel Forest flames, and to assure Israelis that soon this country would soon have its very own airborne firefighting force, just as real countries do. It would have been nice, ...

Not long ago, relatively few Jews around the world could name Canada's prime minister. Today, there are many hundreds who, though they did not know his name just weeks ago, now do. That is because the text and YouTube version of Stephen Harper's extraordinary speech at a recent Canadian Conference on Anti-Semitism have gone viral, making their way onto Facebook and countless websites and parking themselves in thousands of in-boxes. In the speech, Harper made clear that he, unlike many, understands that the new anti-Israel rhetoric now taking the world by storm is nothing more than anti-Semitism repackaged. As Harper noted, Harnessing disparate anti- Semitic, anti-American and anti-Western ideologies, [the attack on Israel's legitimacy] targets the ...

Natan Zach's announcement that he would be joining a Gaza-bound flotilla might well have passed unnoticed. After all, Zach one of the last great poets of the independence era is now 80 years old. Long revered for his artistry and scholarship, he's also made no secret of his politics. Zach announced years ago that he would not cross the Green Line, adding that he hoped his books would not be sold there, either. But this is Israel, where few nonstories are allowed to pass without someone fanning the barely flickering flames. This time, a member of the Likud's Knesset faction reacted with outrage and immediately wrote to Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar demanding that Zach's poetry be removed ...

Summarizing the stalemate in the Israeli- Palestinian talks, a CNN anchor reported earlier this week that as soon as the settlement building freeze ended, Israel sent in bulldozers to renew the building. The claim is patently false, of course, for Israel did no such thing. Groups of people, most of them living in the settlements, did begin building again, as the law permitted them to. So why did CNN portray the story that way? Most reasonable people understand that any eventual peace settlement will involve the creation of a Palestinian state on some significant portion of the West Bank. Some Israelis are in favor, some are desperately opposed and others are pained by the prospective ...