Older texts, available to read on this site.
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The idea of a temporary release from social constraints has existed since the dawn of human society. Masked dances, costume festivals, orgiastic processions, and similar forms of liberating ecstasy are found in almost all cultures. They represented an interruption of routine activity—of what we call "work." An
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In our small village in the Negev Desert, September 11, 2001, was a brilliantly beautiful day. The air was clear and dry; one could see far across the landscape—all the way to Jordan and the reddish hills of biblical Moab. Since we had neither a television nor a radio
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Few groups of people are as unpopular in Europe as the "Israeli settlers." This term refers to the Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, now almost 800,000 people, living in 156 settlements (144 in the West Bank, 12 in East Jerusalem) and 196 smaller
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Wie das Königreich Jordanien aus der Konkursmasse des Osmanischen Reiches zustande kam Veröffentlicht in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung am 31.8.2026 Das letzte der islamischen Großreiche, das türkisch-osmanische Reich, begann im achtzehnten und neunzehnten Jahrhundert rapide zu zerfallen. Zugleich gelang es den Engländern, sich in Ägypten festzusetzen, vor
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Literary Transformations of a Landscape Besides the Earth’s natural deserts, there are those created by humans, and this process of fertile land becoming desertified, usually referred to by the English term desertification, is documented early in literature. Even in ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts, the ambivalence of arid regions with
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(In the following text I presented my thesis on the "flexible ego of Israelis". It was written for an American Jewish magazine, below you will find a German version, published in print magazine Opus (Nr. 101, Nov. 2024). An extended German version was published on Achgut.com on
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(Text first in English, than in German) The relationship between Germany and Israel is of necessity a complex one. Given the fraught historical and political context one can easily get over-emotional. It would appear that this relationship, always fragile, is now close to breaking point. German by birth and
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Desert and Peace For decades, planet Earth has been undergoing a rapid process of desertification. Deserts, arid regions, and steppes are expanding worldwide—each year by an area roughly the size of Germany. While deserts have always existed due to climatic or geological factors, since the twentieth century, they have
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On the Current Situation of Israeli Arabs The new spokesperson for the Israeli army in Arabic is Lieutenant Colonel Ella Waweya, a Muslim Arab from the city of Qalansawe in central Israel, not far from the coastal town of Caesarea on the Mediterranean Sea, where Benjamin Netanyahu's villa