Israel’s ministers had a lot on their minds when they woke, 45 years ago, on June 5, 1967. Jerusalem’s Old City, however, was not even a passing thought. The day before, at the regular Sunday Cabinet meeting, they had approved the launching of a pre-emptive air strike against Egypt within 24 hours — “To do…
Is Egypt Palestine? It is a tired (and discredited) claim that Jordan is Palestine. But now there is a new one: that Egypt is. I inadvertently pushed a button I didn’t mean to push earlier this week in a conversation in Gaza City with a group of Islamists, mostly Hamas officials and their supporters. I…
Israeli media, quoting government sources in Jerusalem, say the controversial cancellation of the Egyptian-Israeli natural gas agreement is not diplomatic in nature, but rather has to do with a commercial dispute between private companies and the Egyptian state energy company that is currently before the courts. Globes, the authoritative Israeli business journal, reports (in Hebrew)…
The opportunity to interview the second-highest-ranking official in Hamas came suddenly, unexpectedly and at the very worst possible time: just before Passover. The Forward staff was shorthanded. Worse, at home, we were shifting into full Passover house-cleaning mode. I tried hard to argue for doing this any other week. But Stanley L. Cohen, the attorney…
The Arab Spring presents a conundrum for many liberal Jews. As liberals they feel compelled to advocate self-determination over tyranny and democracy over dictatorship. But as Jews they worry that the Arab dictators, particularly Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, held down the lid on a seething Pandora’s Box of popular anti-Semitism. On the contrary, though, I would…
It used to be easy to meet those leaders of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood who were not behind bars. They could be found in a dusty office on a Cairo side street; they had time for all visitors. Today, however, the movement has an imposing new headquarters in a suburb overlooking the city. One has to…
Reader Reuven Kalifon wonders why Ashkenazi tradition calls the fourth letter of the Hebrew alphabet “daled” even though its name is spelled ת-ל-ד (read right to left, daled-lamed-taf) and the final, dagesh-less taf is always pronounced as an ‘s’ in the Ashkenazi world. This is the same taf that we have in the letter bet,…
With Egypt’s first democratic elections ending in a landslide win for the Muslim Brotherhood, the United States has decided to open formal discussions with the Islamist group. Israel has also relaxed its years-long resistance to engaging with the political movement. American Jewish organizations, however, remain reluctant to reach out to the Brotherhood because of its…
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