Ira Sharkansky

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Israel appears to be losing big time on the two issues topping its international agenda. Predictions are that the greater powers will reach an agreement with Iran that the Prime Minister has said time and again will be very bad, worse than no agreement, and making no meaningful contribution to ending Iran’s […]

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Those who doubt that Israel is a normal country–along with everything that makes it abnormal–only have had to look and listen to the Hebrew media over the most recent few days. The bulk of the print and noise has not concerned Iran or Palestine, but a famous singer, his middle age relatives

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–The latest incident of violence to reach the headlines, which is not to say that it is the latest incident, involved the murder of a young soldier not yet finished with basic training, while on a bus returning from sick leave, . The even younger lad who stabbed him numerous times before

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Israelis and Americans are going through a couple of bad patches with Barack Obama. The two issues are as different as they could be, but are united in reinforcing distrust of duplicity at the top. Americans’ problems are currently focusing on the limping roll out of what is linked directly

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Twice a year at about this time, Israelis hear about the murder 18 years ago of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. It happens twice, like some other occasions, due to the the country’s juggling of two calendars, secular and Hebrew. Like JFK, Yitzhak Rabin has grown in stature with an improved personality since

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Here we are, with at least 2,000 years of animosity from outsiders, along with quarrelsome Jews. Some believe with great intensity that God gave us everything between an Egyptian river and far to the east. Some believe that the Jews of Palestine then Israel have been responsible for their problems

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — Jewish history provides reasons to expect that the Jews of America and Israel have grown apart, and that different experiences will compete with what they share by way of faith and culture. Most American Jews are five or more generations from European roots. Those of Israel are only two generations

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM — There is a worrisome paragraph in a New York Times article, which is otherwise encouraging in indicating that the Obama administration is learning its limits in the Middle East: “But other goals appear to have been dictated as much as by personnel as by policy. After vigorous debate, the group

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Those of you still cheering the Obama-Kerry foreign policy have a new and even more dramatic reason to applaud. They have succeeded in creating an alliance that might solve all the problems of the Middle East: between Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. It may not be what was intended, but amateurs occasionally

  By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–If you are not yawning now, you will if you reach the end of this column. The topic is the local authorities of Israel, and the recent election, which in almost all of the cases said to be controversial by excited media personalities turnout was low and incumbents returned to office.

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Years ago, Grandma told me, for the nth time, that God helps them who help themselves. It’s a message she should have directed to the Palestinians, as well as to her lazy grandson. Once more, the Palestinians are blaming others for their problems, while their most obvious roads to progress remain unused.

By Ira Sharkansky JERUSALEM–Israel is a nuisance, and its Prime Minister the nuisance in chief, known for pompous talks at the United Nations, lecturing to the President of the United States about what is appropriate for both their countries, and reminding the world of Iranian perfidy while virtually all others are praising the openness of

By Ira Sharkansky The US economy and Gaza may sound like distinct issues, except that they are both high on my worry list. Two newspaper articles make the crucial points, even though one deals exclusively with the US economy and the other with Gaza, and neither mentions the other. One, in the Washington Post, puts