Zoo Rebbe
February 15, 2001
When Natan and Tali Slifkin were married in Los Angeles last year, their friends turned up in Disneyland animal suits. It was not your classic Orthodox wedding.
Eric Silver
Blown Deal
January 11, 2001
Bill Clinton is wasting his time. The chances of a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian deal before he hands over the presidency to George W. Bush on Jan. 20 are negligible.
Acts of Vengeance
January 4, 2001
Twenty thousand mourners, seething with anger, followed the bodies of Binyamin and Talia Kahane through downtown Jerusalem to the Givat Shaul cemetery last Sunday night. Most of them were Orthodox yeshiva students, admirers of Meir Kahane, the assassinated founder of the Jewish Defense League and of the outlawed Kach party. The rabbi\’s son and daughter-in-law, aged 34 and 31 respectively, had been shot by Palestinian gunmen as they drove home from a Jerusalem Shabbat to the West Bank settlement of Kfar Tapuach. Five of their six children were injured.
Tough Concession
December 28, 2000
The lines are being drawn this week for what the Israeli tabloids are calling \”The Battle for Jerusalem.\”
Last Call
December 21, 2000
Early this month, Bill Clinton told the visiting Israeli justice minister, Yossi Beilin, that he was ready to devote the remaining weeks of his tenure to Middle East peacemaking. As a lame-duck president, he said, his calendar was clear.
Leah’s Legacy
November 16, 2000
After Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated five years ago this month, his wife Leah cast herself as the unforgiving scourge of the Israeli right, which she blamed for fostering the atmosphere in which a Jewish radical, Yigal Amir, pulled the trigger.
Mr. Oslo
October 26, 2000
Uri Savir may not have won a Nobel Peace Prize, but far more than the three national leaders who did, he is Mr. Oslo. For three long months in 1993, the then director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry sat secretly in the Norwegian capital and hammered out an agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization that kindled hopes of an end to a century of belligerence.
“Where Do We Go From Here?”
October 19, 2000
We are able to deal with this situation,\” says Yisrael Medad, a veteran, American-born settlement activist, \”because we remember what happened in 1947 to \’48. We are returning to our history.\”
Yom Kippur II
October 12, 2000
I first met Maurice Singer on the far bank of the Suez Canal during the second week of the Yom Kippur War, soon after Israel had counter-attacked across the waterway. The British-born, 28-year-old machine-gunner was grimy and sweating on his clanking, dust-encrusted half-track, the forerunner of today\’s armored personnel carrier. Like all his comrades, he scribbled a phone number and asked our group of reporters to let his family know he was okay.
The Un-Peres
August 3, 2000
Inevitably, Katzav, who surprised the nation and the pundits by defeating Shimon Peres 63-57 in a secret ballot of Knesset members, projected himself as a president who can unify a society riven between Easterners and Westerners, religious and secular, rich and poor, veterans and newcomers, Jews and Arabs.
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