We are actually having pleasant, peaceful days, bathed in clear azure skies, as busy as ever, quietly rejoicing in the prosperity of our brave people. Yet we know that at any moment we could be attacked with rockets by the fractured but fiercely determined Revolutionary Guards or the barefoot Houthis.
Our synagogue is different from those in Europe: it’s completely open. You enter through a glass door—no bulletproof glass, no police officers, no security at all, and the prayer hall has a huge window front facing the desert. I sit right by the windows, and when we sing
Today I read excerpts from my as-yet-unpublished novel, "Immortality", an amusing, grotesque story set entirely in Israel. My Munich agent, L.K., one of Germany's most successful literary agencies, offered the novel to more than 30 German publishers a few years ago, all of
Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip have beaten, maimed, and publicly executed dozens of Palestinians according to a United Nations report published yesterday. “These cases involved executions, kneecapping, and bone-breaking with metal pipes or cement bricks and were framed by the perpetrators as punishments for alleged collaboration with Israel,
What a wonderful spring. No travel looms. I confess that I've completely lost my desire to travel. My friend John, who lives out in the desert in Sde Boqer, in a beautiful house on the crater rim, says: "I'm a homeboy. I like to be
Cancel culture can target the wrong people. Israeli director Nadav Lapid was excluded from a prestigious French film festival under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists. Three hundred “filmmakers” protested this decision in an open letter, but they did not speak out against Israel-hatred or anti-Semitism; rather, they objected
A few hours in Beer Sheva this morning. The city now has nearly a quarter of a million residents—four times as many as 30 years ago when we first arrived—not counting the more than 100,000 Bedouins who have settled in the surrounding area, living in the open,
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At 5 a.m., after a sudden awakening, I read the proofs of my story "Via Appia," which is to appear in the upcoming issue of the literary journal "Sinn und Form" in Berlin. The short story had been "in my drawer" for ten
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Yesterday, two more Israeli soldiers were killed. And who talks about the many who are wounded? There are a distressing number of young men with war injuries. A symbol of the damage the entire country is suffering. Is the military intervention in Lebanon necessary? Since I live in southern Israel,
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I try to read five different Israeli newspapers every day to reflect the extreme "diversity" of opinions here. I start with the traditionally left-wing HaAretz, followed by the center-left Times of Israel, the popular Yediot Acheronot, and finally the decidedly pro-Israel Israel HaYom and Jerusalem
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Der Spiegel, the mildly antisemitic publication of Germany's conformist intellectuals, has been reveling for the third day in Germany's failed attempt to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. The culprit is... guess what... Israel! As Spiegel Online reported yesterday: "Meanwhile, SPD
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The following text of mine on the topic of “Health in Times of War and Disaster” was recently published in a German magazine, and it surprises even me. Did I really write that? And have I actually experienced all of this? And developed such a strange sense of equanimity in