Government

Anti-Israel sentiment is PC at Oberlin College

January 18, 2016

Oy, what has happened at my alma mater? Oberlin College was in the news in December when its students declared that the campus dining department was guilty of a litany of offenses, in particular “cultural appropriation.” Trigger warning here: if you are uncomfortable with young people acting ridiculously, stop reading now. Still with me? OK, […]

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Israel’s Electoral System: the Best for Us?

March 9, 2015

As elections draw close, friends and family back in the old country often ask me how someone who grew up in the U.S. with a relatively simple and seemingly stable two-party system makes sense of Israel’s very different approach, with up to a dozen parties who have to be coaxed, coerced and wheedled together into […]

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Lost in Africa, Israel

August 15, 2012

We were on a guided tour of South Tel Aviv to get an in-person look at what dominated the news a few months back when my friend Eliot and I got lost. We were visiting the Central Bus Station and we had to use the bathroom. When we came out, our group was gone. As […]

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Canadian Cop

March 6, 2012

The woman at the rental car agency desk at Toronto’s Pearson Airport eyed my Israeli driver’s license suspiciously. She looked at the laminated card, then up at me, then back and forth several times. “You’re going to have a problem if a policeman pulls you over,” she finally said, explaining her hesitation. “There’s no English […]

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“Leisure Sundays” Stress Me Out

March 15, 2011

In recent weeks, Israeli Vice Premier Silvan Shalom’s has renewed a campaign to turn Sunday into an official day off in Israel, as with other parts of the world. The Anglo community has embraced the idea. As for me, I’m dead set against it. How could anyone be against Sundays, you might ask? Isn’t that […]

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Room 124

January 7, 2010

Israeli bureaucratic institutions have been slowly but surely modernizing over recent years. You can get in and out of the infamous Interior Ministry in less than a day…and you don’t have to line up at 8:00 AM just to shove your way in through the heavily guarded front door. The health funds now have computerized […]

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