In her deeply personal account of  living in Israel’s most cosmopolitan city, Getting Home: Young Anglos Find Themselves in Transcendent Tel Aviv, Miranda Früm explains why the city draw her contemporaries and how it keeps them there. Tel Aviv is an island of lost toys—all of us from near and...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Writing at the Israeli business oriented website Globes today, Norman Bailey writes that the recent election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India “looks promising for Israel.” Bailey, a professor at the University of Haifa, attributed Modi’s success as governor of India’s Gujarat state to reducing governmental interference in...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Two recent reports demonstrate that Israel, far from being isolated, is expanding its economic and diplomatic ties around the world. On Sunday, the Israeli cabinet announced an initiative to boost its trade ties with Latin America, particularly with the nations of the Pacific Alliance. On Monday, Tel Aviv University and...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

An Israeli news station has reported this morning on a poll conducted by Professor Sammy Smooha of Haifa University showing that the acceptance of Israel by Israeli Arabs increased markedly between 2012 and 2013. Channel 10/Nana reported (Hebrew) that the poll’s surprising results bucked conventional wisdom: The research shows that between 2012...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

According to a report released by the World Health Organization (WHO) this week, Israeli men now have the fourth longest life expectancy in the world. The Times of Israel reports: World Health Statistics 2014 puts the life expectancy at birth of Israel’s men at 80.2, behind only Iceland (81.2), Switzerland...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Israel and the United States are joining forces this week for the five-day, ballistic-missile-defense exercise Juniper Cobra. The Juniper Cobra exercises have been held every two years since 2001, and this year it will be the seventh exercise. In 2009, the main scenario of the exercise was an Iranian missile...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Last week on “Nakba Day,” the Palestinian commemoration of the disaster that was the founding of Israel, a group of children addressed a press conference at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture in Gaza. The children at the press conference “handed a letter in English and Arabic to the UN representative in Gaza”...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

In an analysis written for Tablet Magazine Thursday, Lee Smith argues that since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  no longer has to expend effort on negotiations with the Palestinians, he is freed to concentrate on the other “permanent threat” to Israel, Iran. Still, Smith does not see an Israeli strike on...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

Freedom House set Israel’s ranking at “free” in its 2014 report of press rankings released earlier this month, in a marked contrast to the trend that “global press freedom has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade.” Noting that “Israel enjoys a lively, pluralistic media environment in which press freedom is generally...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle

United States Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel visiting Israel this week dismissed last week’s Newsweek report accusing Israel of aggressively spying on the United States. Hagel’s reservation further undermines the report’s credibility already hurt by experts’ questions and the reporter’s dubious history. The Times of Israel reported on Hagel’s response when...

Continue Reading >>
  • Kindle