Among those disembarking the Scandanavian Airlines flight on July 23 1967 in Tel Aviv, was a thin, bearded man in his 30s named Waguih Ghali. Like the other passengers, he walked into Lod airport—and stopped at the passport control counter. “You mean,” the clerk said, double checking that he had heard correctly, “that you are Egyptian?”
The Ottomans ruled what is now Israel for 400 years, and during that time they made some iconic contributions to the man-made landscape. Sultan Suleiman I (a.k.a. Suleiman the Magnificent) completed the current walls of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1541. The Jaffa Clocktower, finished in 1903, was built to celebrate the silver jubilee of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Over time, innumerable Ottoman buildings have been lost, replaced by those of British or Israeli design, just as they in turn had replaced those of the Crusaders, Mamluks, Byzantines, Romans, Hasmoneans, Greeks, ancient Israelites, Babylonians, Assyrians and Philistines.
Israeli novelist Dorit Rabinyan was enjoying a peaceful afternoon at home on December 30, 2015, when a phone call from an old friend, Haaretz journalist Or Kashti, changed her life. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “It may be the biggest story I will ever break.” “Good for you!” replied Rabinyan. “No,” said Kashti quietly, “it is very good for you.”
Sheldon Adelson’s newspaper, Israel Hayom, changed the course of Israeli politics and moved the country further right.
Will the hard-charging casino magnate have the same luck in Las Vegas?
Moment reached out to an eclectic group to ask: which event most defined the last half-century of the Israeli experience?
“The Paris accords were a rare occurrence in which the world united—save for Syria and Nicaragua—to care for the welfare and health of future generations,” Israel Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz posted on Facebook. “Even if there’s a 50 percent likelihood that climate change and global warming are caused by human activity, it is our duty to act to minimize risks.”
Guy Laron’s challenging new book, The Six-Day War: The Breaking of the Middle East, is well worth reading even though Laron, a lecturer in international relations at Hebrew University, focuses too much on the war’s international context and, at times, relies too heavily upon unsubstantiated speculation
“To this day, most Israeli Jews think of Arab food as cheap ‘hummus-chips (french fries)-salad-kebab’—all said as a single word. But it isn’t really Arab food at all.”
Which event most defined the last half-century of the Israeli experience?
Fifty years. More than half of them, many more, have been years of acrimony. Was the Six-Day War just a great triumph—or a triumph whose consequence is grave devastation? Was it worth it? Pick the facts that support your viewpoint: The 1967 war resulted in overconfidence that brought about the 1973 war; the 1967 war convinced some Arab leaders that Israel was no longer weak and that removing it by force was not a realistic option; the war enabled Jews to settle the more important regions of its ancient homeland; the war put Israel in charge of territory occupied by Palestinians.
The “miraculous” victory of 1967 returned major holy places in Jerusalem and the West Bank to Jewish control, including the Temple Mount in the Old City (known as Haram al-Sharif to Muslims), the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. This unexpected bounty, like other seemingly wondrous developments, actually fueled intense friction between Jews and Muslims. Sadly, the miracle of Israeli control of the holy places over 50 years has reduced the possibility of a peaceful solution to the wider conflict.
