Ira Sharkansky

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Guess what?  There is another proposal for solving Israel’s problem with the Palestinians. Michael Oren, recently Israeli Ambassador to the US, has proposed that Israel recognize the impossibility of reaching a deal with the Palestinians, define its borders, withdraw from the rest of the West Bank, and hope for the

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Settlers and the ultra-Orthodox are  important minorities in Israeli politics. Both are somewhere on the fringe of key decision-makers, but must be taken into consideration even if not part of the A-team. There is no precise measure of either group. “Settlers” are both more and less than the people living in post-1967

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Israelis have been seeking accommodation for decades, depending on when you start counting, first with Arabs and later with Palestinians. It is common, and perhaps justified, for Israelis and our friends to blame the Arabs for intransigence as well as violence. That is a cultural perspective, one that sees Israelis with

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Jews are nervous. That is a chronic condition, now heightened by talk of boycott, helped along by the likes of John Kerry and Thomas Friedman. Shimon Peres is joining those who say the conditions.are ripe for Israel to.make peace with the Palestinians, and it better succeed or else. On the ground however,where

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Two dramatic events, or maybe not so dramatic. Commentators see possibilities, while the rest of us will wait and see what comes next, if anything. One has optimists hopping. The other is sobering, but may portend significant responses. The event seen as a sign of hope was a presentation made

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — A sizable majority of American Jews support Israel. With respect to those who do and don’t, one of the stronger explanations is affiliation with a temple or synagogue. Affiliated Jews are more likely to support Israel, and the Orthodox stand out as more supportive than those in other congregations. No

JERUSALEM–The President of the EU Parliament, Martin Schulz, came to Israel and addressed the Knesset in what was mostly a ceremonial occasion to demonstrate his credentials as a friend of Israel and an opponent of boycotts. But one poorly crafted sentence brought forth an uproar. It didn’t help that he was speaking in German. There

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–There is a long tradition, no less prominent in Judaism than in other cultures, of voluntary service and donations collected for the benefit of the needy or some other public purpose. There is also a long list of eleemosynary organizations that have gone bad, with leaders using the resources collected for their

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM– The people of Israel of have survived worse than the threats currently being made by Palestinians, John Kerry and Thomas Friedman. The betting is that Israel and Palestine will agree to continue talking for another year, if only to avoid a frontal insult to the American administration. Kerry and Friedman do

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Are they or aren’t they threatening Israel? The US Secretary of State and the EU Representative in Israel both said, within days of one another, that the failure of the Israel-Palestine peace talks will increase the economic pressure on Israel. Israeli officials responded to both with counter threats that such language has

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–What we hear are hints of American proposals, veiled threats of sanctions and violence, yet claims of salvation if everyone behaves reasonably. If this is a place for reasonable action, it would be a change of what has happened too many times since David sent Bat Sheva’s husband to his death alongside