Middle East

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — By all accounts, the most admirable feature of American Thanksgiving is that it’s being celebrated by all citizens. Irrespective of religious affiliation, skin colour or income, all Americans feel the need to give thanks for the country in which they live, even when they’re grossly disadvantaged in comparison to

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM–It’s always refreshing when serious people refuse to give up hope – as a growing number of “peaceniks” in Israel have done – about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The latest effort comes from three distinguished Israelis: a former admiral, a former peace negotiator and a businessman. I understand the article in

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — Israel has something of an anti-European complex. That’s the impression readers of The Globe and Mail, Canada’s “national newspaper,” are likely to get from a report by its Jerusalem-based correspondent Patrick Martin. Writing about Israeli reactions to the incident that cost a colonel his job because, as Martin put

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –The full Hebrew name of Holocaust Memorial Day is yom hasho’a v’hagvurah, the day of catastrophe and heroism. The commemorations in Israel tend to put at least as much stress on the heroism as on the catastrophe. Thus the annual state ceremony at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial complex, in

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM — What was supposed to be a routine ceremony in the official residence of the President of Israel turned out to be a spirited rebuttal in the current debate about the relationship between Israel’s Supreme Court and the Knesset. It has been flamed by a new proposal by Minister of

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM –I surmise that most of the media in the Diaspora that report on Israel will describe the way the Government of Israel handled the “flytilla” earlier this week to have been not only successful but also prudent. That’s not the only impression I get here. To recap: Several hundred activists

By Rabbi Dow Marmur JERUSALEM– I’ve believed for a long time that the greatest danger that the Jewish state is currently facing doesn’t come from the outer threat of Iranian nukes but from within, particularly from the continued expansion of the settlements. I thought I saw ample evidence of it when my wife and I spent