The Man of Twists and Turns

Writers usually decide to be writers before they know what they might write about. In my case, a journey from teenage isolation in Britain to the violence of the Middle East led me to the elements of my fiction which could be true — not just based on reality, but in the sense that they [...]

I’ve an essay on Ariel Sharon and his irresistible appetites — culinary and political — in a book out this week called Eating Mud Crabs in Kandahar: Stories of Food during Wartime by the World’s Leading Correspondents. My essay is excerpted on Salon.com and elicited some responses from people who were too daft to see [...]

When I first became a journalist, a great revelation was the free food people gave me. Coming from a home in which, my mother would freely admit, the most exciting culinary moments came when the oil in the chip pan caught fire, gourmet stuff on someone else’s tab was a considerable career incentive. For example, [...]

*Editor’s note: The Man of Twists and Turns has obtained the text of a major exclusive which was set to appear in The News of the World in London this week. However, News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old tabloid to dampen a scandal over its reporters hacking into private voicemails, use of [...]

Israeli law enforcement officials, concerned about virulent divisions between left- and right-wing groups in the country, have warned that a political assassination could be imminent. Dudi Cohen, Israel’s police commissioner, told a conference earlier this month that “murder for ideological reasons … could occur in Israel” and that it was “one of the most disturbing [...]

When Ehud Barak announced his plan Monday to split from Israel’s Labor Party and form a new parliamentary faction built entirely around himself, the defense minister displayed his usual combination of keen strategic thinking and craven self-interest. Barak’s stated logic is this: He wants to stay in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightist coalition because he [...]

The Israeli parliament voted last week to set up a committee to investigate the funding of local human rights groups that right-wingers here say are acting against Israel’s interests —a move opponents compare to the McCarthyism of the United States in the 1950s. The committee, which was an initiative of legislators from several parties in [...]

For the first time in years, the people of Bethlehem have something more to celebrate at Christmas than the recollection of an important birth in their town 2,000 years ago. After the city’s economy was devastated by the Palestinian intifada over the last decade, Bethlehem’s economic recovery has picked up pace in the last year [...]

If I wrote a crime novel filled with the kind of twaddle that passes for breathtaking revelation in this week’s blanket Wikileaks coverage, it’d be panned. Surprise, surprise. The Saudis want America to do a number on Iran, without taking responsibility for it themselves (and meanwhile Saudis are the big funders of al-Qaeda). Sarkozy shouts [...]

Israel’s holy men have long had a reputation for an approach toward the society around them that is, shall we say, considerably less conciliatory and compassionate than the Dalai Lama. Lately the country’s rabbis appear to be taking it to a new grade of nastiness. A judge on the Tel Aviv Rabbinical Court, Dov Domb, [...]