Posts under ‘In the News’

Listening to the morning news just now, they mentioned that the Israeli political party of Shas has officially launched its elections campaign under the slogan of, how original, “Yes, we can!”
Hilarious, really. Shas is the only political party in Israel that successfully runs under the ethnic card, playing on the rift between Ashkenazi and Mizrahi [...]

Remember the old joke about “The Elephant and the Jewish Problem”?
It has many variations, but the essence is the same. A group of people of various nationalities are asked to write essays about the elephant. Each brings his own perspective and national biases. In the versions I know, the French guy writes about the elephant’s [...]

Online interactions concerning the politics of Israel and the Middle East are not easy for me. I find myself too often, trying to explain that there is a big difference between Israel and the views and actions of a particular Israeli government. That the Zionist ideas and ideals are not necessarily reflected in current Israeli [...]

Apparently some Israelis are taking an active side in the American elections. I happen to know from my cat forums just how emotional and heated up these elections can get. Cats and politics? Well, yes, we have a special forum dedicated to debates and current events and let me tell you, these elections generate quite [...]

While the ceasefire still holds, technically, it’s not going too well.
Gaza border crossings stay closed in light of rocket fire
So, to sum this up:
Israel doesn’t shoot. The Palestinians fire rockets, but it’s not Hamas doing it. So, is that a violation of the ceasefire?
Apparently, not enough of a violation to declare the ceasefire void, but [...]

Israel on Wednesday officially confirmed that an Egyptian-proposed ceasefire (tahadiyeh) with Palestinian militant groups in the Gaza Strip will go into effect at 6 A.M. Thursday.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/993702.html
There is a lot of controversy in Israel concerning the topic of a ceasefire with Hamas. What people are afraid of, in a nutshell, is this -
1. The Hamas [...]

Here’s an optimistic piece of local news -
Programming for peace / Israeli hi-tech companies outsource to West Bank
I think this is absolutely awesome. Finally, cooperation and in a field that does both sides good. I like the fact that there are educated people, engineers and programmers, and not what we call here “black labor”. [...]

Just read this post by Liza Rosenberg -
The Little Ass that Could
Eloquent as always, Liza expresses a common view in Israel these days: that the entire peace initiative vis-a-vis the Syrians is nothing more than a media spin produced by Olmert to save his seat -
Under normal circumstances, I would probably be guardedly thrilled at [...]

The news just broke out on the radio. It’s official now - Syria and Israel have been negotiating for three days now. The negotiations are facilitated by Turkey, bless them. I am pretty excited about this!
I’ve been saying for a couple of years now that peace with Syria, is IMO, the key to peace in [...]