Manfred Gerstenfeld: One example among others is Martin Indyk, twice US ambassador to Israel. Under Foreign Secretary John Kerry, Indyk was the US special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in 2013 and 2014. Yet it is too easy to claim that the professional Indyk failed whereas the amateur Jared Kushner broke a decades-long deadlock in the Middle East. Indyk had his own opinions.
Isi Leibler: Israeli voters have chosen Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in what was essentially a referendum over whether he should be re-elected to a fifth term of office.
The list of 50 Most Influential Jews published by The Jerusalem Post included Marie van der Zyl, the recently elected president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
Ronald Lauder is a billionaire and respected art collector who became passionately committed to Jewish life when, as U.S. ambassador to Austria, he witnessed virulent antisemitism. I have known him for over 20 years and was involved in no small measure in his election as president of the World Jewish Congress.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin served to increase the paranoia about him to an all-time high...writes Isi Leibler.
Isi Leibler: Over 10 years ago, I warned that the passivity of the Anglo-Jewish leadership would likely lead to disastrous political consequences and negatively impact the younger generation, which was being inadequately educated to face its challenges.
The dramatic swing to the right in the recent Austrian elections is likely to have widespread repercussions throughout Europe. It will also oblige Israel to reconsider its current approach to far right-wing groups....writes Isi Leibler.
World leaders – including some of our American friends – are apparently still unwilling to face reality and continue to delude themselves that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority can be induced to making a peace settlement if Israel continues to appease them and excuse their crimes.
Tomorrow, most Israelis, secular as well as observant, will celebrate Passover, the festival of freedom in which we recount our life of slavery and exodus from Egypt and how we became a nation.
Throughout his election campaign and thereafter, even while fulsomely praising Israel and vowing to treat us as a true ally, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that his former deal making experience would enable him to resolve the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Political correctness still seems to impel us to continue chanting the mantra that we are prohibited from relating to antisemitism as a cause for settling in Israel and insisting that the only motivation for aliyah today is to enable a committed Jew to lead a truly Jewish life in his homeland...writes Isi Leibler.
Let My People Go: The untold story of Australia and the Soviet Jews 1959–89 has been awarded the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award for History.
I am an octogenarian and one of the few who has both witnessed the tragedies and become engaged directly in the triumphs of the Jewish people in our time.
