the promised podcast

Pole Position

The Prime Ministers of Israel and Poland issue a joint declaration about WWII, asserting that Poles mostly treated Jews benignly. Historians of the Holocaust express outrage. And, anyway, should Israel’s Prime Minister be signing agreements about what’s true and false in Jewish History?

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More Notes on Camp

What happened to good old summer camps when kids slept on rocks under stars and sang around campfires? Why have they yielded to space camp, video game camp and veterinary medicine camp?

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Right=Bright, Left=Bereft?

A new poll finds that Israeli right-wingers, who tend to be poorer than average, are optimistic about the country’s economic future, while Israeli left-wingers, who tend to be richer than average, are pessimistic. Was Netanyahu right when he said that leftists are just sour-pussed nattering nabobs of negativism?

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Avi Gabbay’s Excellent Imposture

Labor Party Head Avi Gabbay pays shadowy consultants to post faux-Facebook pages trashing centrist rival Yair Lapid. Is Gabbay just a politician who is in it to win it, or is he yet another politician who has lost his soul?

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The Council for the Preservation of Historic Inefficiency?

Should Israel’s government subsidize such quaint anachronisms as artisanal bread-baking and clothes-making, for the sake of preserving a once-beloved cultural heritage destroyed by the globalization, corporatization and factorization of pretty much everything?

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Bougie’s Golem

Former Labor head and present-day chair of the opposition, Yizhak “Bougie” Herzog, is elected to head the venerable, old Jewish Agency. But is the organization better off dead?

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Put Away for Take Away?

Sara Netanyahu is indicted for charging taxpayers $100,000 for fancy take-out (while also charging the taxpayers for a full-time chef). Should the wife of a Prime Minister really stand trial for bilking the public coffers for cardboard cartons of comestibles?

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Notes on Camp

Should Jewish summer camps teach campers “the Palestinian narrative”? How do you communicate a complex and morally-alive picture of Israel and Zionism to open-hearted kids aged 7 to 17?

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Mothballing The Hope

Tel Aviv University doesn’t play Israel’s national anthem at graduation, out of respect for the feelings of Muslims and Christians. Is this self-abnegation, as some argue, or a brave step towards a more inclusive Israeli future?

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Benjamin Netanyahu’s New World Order

According to reports, PM Netanyahu used the threat of Iran’s nuclearization to build, strengthen and solidify relations with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, sometimes behind the back of the American. Should we be high-fiving him, or tsk-tsking?

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