The young waitress in the Tel Aviv hotel lobby can’t hide her excitement. The most controversial politician in Israel is here, ever impatient and attired in his trademark perfectly tailored suit. All eyes, in fact, are on Avigdor Lieberman, the new deputy prime minister and unabashed right-wing politician who has earned the world’s scorn, for, among many other things, his call to execute fellow Knesset members who dare to meet with members of the Palestinian group Hamas. Not to mention his call for Israeli air strikes against Iranian and Egyptian cities or his plan to revoke the citizenship of Israeli Arabs, whom he’d deport to a future Palestinian state. As he sips a glass of red wine (he grimaces; it doesn’t meet his standards), the subject of this commotion acts as if he doesn’t hear the...

Continue reading