When 41-year-old American novelist Joshua Cohen won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction last week for his semi-roman à clef, The Netanyahus, the first question occurring to close observers of Israeli culture and politics wasn’t “Is it good for the Jews?” but “How bad is it for Bibi and the family brand?”
Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister, has little international experience. Like Netanyahu, he opposes the Iranian nuclear deal.
Modern Hebrew, especially military and political jargon, tends to reflect the state of the nation.
Nuclear talks with Iran are resuming. Absent from the table will be the United States, which dropped out of the nuclear deal in 2018.
The latest news came late last week. Morocco has joined the growing list of Arab countries upgrading their relations with Israel. This list now includes the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
One of Donald Trump’s favorite lines when addressing Jewish American or Israeli listeners, is that if he ran for office in Israel, he’d get “98 percent” of the votes.
He’s not exaggerating by much.
You don’t have to feel sorry for Israel’s right-wing politicians and ideologues, but if by some chance you want to, here is one possible reason: They often seem like winners and become losers.
Aaron David Miller is a veteran Middle East peace negotiator, analyst and author, now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Miller spoke with Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein about the recent Israel-UAE peace deal.
“This doesn’t mean that the Jewish pro-Israel left is about to win its fight against annexation. But it does show that their voice is strong enough to sway staunch AIPAC supporters to speak out against the Israeli government’s line, and that, perhaps in a marginal way, they will make Netanyahu listen, if not to American Jews, than to pro-Israel American lawmakers.”
