If you\’re like me, you probably read news reports about religious freedom the way you read the latest news on global warming: plowing dutifully through, eyes half-glazed over, certain it concerns you but not quite sure how.
The prime minister also seems to have underestimated the degree to which the United States, the European Union and other interested bystanders are watching every move in his contorted quest for \”peace with security\” — and increasingly concluding that the Palestinians are right to suspect him.
The government is now trying to pass an updated version of the conversion law, which, it claims, gives consideration to Conservative and Reform Jewry
along with news of its editor\’s death, the YiddishForward of May 15 carried front-page reports about India\’s nucleartests, the U.S.-Israeli diplomatic crisis, the naming of a specialprosecutor to probe the secretary of labor, and Israel\’s new militarychief of staff.
Some of you may have caught last week\’s New Yorker (May 25) with journalist David Remnick\’s profile of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. If not, I urge you to call the magazine\’s offices in New York and order a back copy, or simply visit your local library.
Just after dawn two years ago today, May 29, 1996, the all-night vote count finally tipped against Shimon Peres and for Binyamin Netanyahu, who would become the new prime minister. In the intervening two years, Peres was succeeded as head of the Labor Party by the slain Yitzhak Rabin\’s protegé, Ehud Barak. After a long stretch of running ahead of Netanyahu in the polls, Barak has now slipped behind.
Netanyahu came to America an embattled primeminister on May 13. He left four days later a conquering hero, buoyedby a reception in the Jewish community that aides said exceeded theirwildest expectations.
Regarding the domestic political pressures thatBinyamin Netanyahu faces in his decision-making on the peace process,the prime minister himself probably summed it up best in the \”Israelat 50\” interview he gave to Newsweek: \”I am a coalition ofone.\”
On Salah a-Din Street, the main street on the Arab side of thecapital, the spirit was very different. People kept their heads down,aware that they were being watched, aware that the Jews weren\’t toofond of them these days.
