Refugee promise, immigrant fear
Many European countries characterize the refugee crisis as a “German problem.”
Many European countries characterize the refugee crisis as a “German problem.”
The beginning of a new year is a good time to assess where Israel stands.
Israel turned 66 years old in 5774, the year that just passed. Some 8.2 million people live in Israel, of which 24,000 immigrated in the past year.
As the beginning of Chanukah and end of the year approach, where does lsrael stand?
Whenever the Middle East peace process is a topic in the news or in discussions, its factual stagnation is almost automatically blamed on the Israeli settlement development. It is one of the most controversial issues in the Middle East conflict.
The biased news coverage on Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, is frightening. It is therefore of vital importance to mention in discussions about the Middle East all relevant facts, in order to give the audience a full and balanced picture. I would like to illustrate this with two examples.
Once again, during the year that is drawing to a close, there was no country that was more harshly criticized, no state that was more frequently condemned than Israel.
For 40 years, my grandfather`Arthur Cohn held the office of chief rabbi of Basel, a city to which he had come at the age of 23. Although unwavering in his religious principles, which he sought to inculcate and foster in the community, he was exceedingly tolerant toward those of other beliefs.
Throughout Jewish history, it has been necessary, time and again, to fight prejudice and false accusations. To mention just one notorious example, there is the blood libel of Pesach, which accuses the Jews of using the blood of Christian children for the baking of matzot — a blood libel that is again being disseminated, in our days, in Arab countries and even in Russia.
President Bush\’s historic visit to Israel and the Middle East can only delay the inevitable disappointment.
Why? It follows the enormous anticipation of the Annapolis conference in late 2007 — a conference the overwhelming majority of Israelis believe failed. Since then, the expectations of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as expressed in Annapolis, that an agreement can be ready in 2008, have proven to be naive and utterly unrealistic.