The Man of Twists and Turns

The present Israeli government seems to make a specialty of dropping the ball. The only thing the top ministers won’t drop is the buck. They’re very adept at passing that.
Testimony last week revealed the lack of responsibility at the top of the Israeli government. Before a committee investigating a fouled up military operation, Prime Minister [...]

I was the first journalist to interview James Snyder when he arrived in 1997 from a sinecure at New York’s Museum of Modern Art to head the Israel Museum, the country’s premier cultural institution.
Snyder had neat white hair, a trim build encased in a seersucker suit, and a black tie. This, in a land where [...]

JERUSALEM — Israelis like to point out that theirs is the only democracy in a Middle East otherwise dominated by repressive regimes. Given the performance of legislators in the parliamentary session that just ended here, you might be forgiven for asking: with democracy like this, who needs dictators?
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, broke up last week [...]

In Israel, the Jews control the banks! They fill all the top positions in the media! They are behind all the major political powerbrokers! They even print the money!
Someone should look into this, Oliver, because I don’t think it’s just coincidence, and I know you’ll agree. I think you’re the man to expose it.

JERUSALEM — Palestinian negotiators said again this week they’d refuse to re-enter direct peace talks with Israel unless the current partial freeze on construction in Israeli settlements is extended when its term runs out in September.
But as a report released this week by the Israeli human-rights organization B’Tselem reveals, a real settlement freeze would have [...]

JERUSALEM—If you asked about a moment that encapsulates the tragedy of the Israelis and Palestinians, there’d be no shortage of incidents, fatal and wrathful, from which to choose. This week, however, I’d point out an occasion that was less shocking but just as poignant.
In a banquet hall of the King David Hotel, an Israeli leader [...]

(I posted this today on Global Post.)
At his White House press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, United States President Barack Obama enthused that the talks about talks will probably lead to talks, and his assessment was that the Israeli government is ready to take part in those talks.
As the camera shutters [...]

If you’ve ever slathered your skin in the healing, mineral-rich mud of the Dead Sea, you may want to stop reading now.
More than 8 million gallons of sewage from East Jerusalem is pumped downhill to the Dead Sea, raw and untreated, every day. That’s not just a little icky for those of us who like [...]

JERUSALEM — Time was anyone with an interest in the Middle East could be guaranteed a couple of books a year would be brought out by U.S. journalists based in the region. Now many of those correspondents are history, with news bureaus closing and those that remain cutting back. The new books written by Americans [...]

The company you keep can put the culture around you in a new light, let you see it as you haven’t before.
That’s true when I travel to different countries and discover that readers in Germany have a particular take on my Palestinian crime novels which differs from the way they look to Americans, for example.
I [...]