The Great Game
Some weeks ago, something curious happened: Israel discovered that Iran is the Great Satan. It happened quite suddenly. There was no prior sensational news, no new discovery. As if by theorder of a drill-sergeant, the whole Israeli phalanx changed direction. All thepoliticians, all the generals, all the enlisted media, with the usual complement ofprofessors-for-hire, – […]
Rally This Saturday
When: Saturday night, February 9, 2002, at 7.00 PM Where: Museum Plaza, Tel-Aviv. How: Buses will pick up from: Acre 16:00 from the Acre-Haifa sherut station at Egged. Carmiel : 15:15 from the parking lot of the Central Bus Station (Egged). Sakhnin : 15:45 from the gas station at the western entrance to town. Misgav […]
Break the Head
Many years ago I got interested in a field of military activity called Psychological Warfare,in which all the armies in the world invest considerable resources. Psychological warfare is the opposite of propaganda. Propaganda tries to convince the otherside that we are right. Psychological warfare does not try to convince anybody, it is aninstrument of war […]
Napoleon at the Gates of Ramallah
In his epic “War and Peace”, Tolstoy describes the battle of Borodino, one of the cruelest inhistory, in which Napoleon opened the way to Moscow. In the middle of the terrible battle, thehero of the book looks for the Russian commander, Kutusov. He finds him sitting on a chair on thetop of a hill, looking […]
The Ongoing Blood Feud
Sari Nusseibeh, the new Palestinian commissioner for Jerusalem, tells an interestingstory: Once, driving under pressure because he was late for a lecture at Bir Zeit University, heinadvertently hit a woman crossing the road to catch a bus. He stopped, of course, helped thewoman up and offered to take her to hospital. But she told him […]
Something is Moving
I once saw in a Western a Red Indian (or should I say a Native American?) putting his ear to theground and hearing a train tens of miles away. In the course of the years I have tried to imitate that Indian. I try to hear changes in the publicmood long before they appear on […]
“The Ships on the Way”
The chiefs of the three big parties in Israel – the Likud, the Labor Party and the army – weresitting on the stage. They were frustrated. They knew already that they had not succeeded inselling the great show that they had prepared with so much effort: the capture of a ship loadedwith weapons, commissioned by […]
No Palestinian “Saison”
“You aren’t serious,” the Algerians told the PLO leaders. “You must kill your opponents!” That was years ago. The PLO leaders had asked their victorious brothers, the AlgerianLiberation Front (FLN) veterans, for advice. They tendered their counsel generously: “Youcan’t wage a war of liberation when there are internal differences. There can only be oneparty. There […]
If I Were Mofaz
If I were Shaul Mofaz, I would by now be very worried indeed. In Belgium, Ariel Sharon is standing trial for his part in the Sabra and Shatila events of 19years ago. At first, he treated this as a joke. No more. Now he is spending a fortune (of ourmoney) on this trial. The prosecution […]
So, Who Is Relevant?
The year 2001 is about to end, but at the last moment a new word – a Latin one to boot – has enteredthe Hebrew political lexicon: “irrelevant”. This is a new phase in the fatal duel between the two veteran gladiators, both experienced andshrewd, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat. Sharon has declared that Arafat […]