What’s all the fuss about Gal Gadot? Dozens of beautiful women have played the role of Cleopatra VII Philopator, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt on film, television and virtually every other media. As a member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy …

Perhaps Israel should just take their Nobel Prizes and go home to cry because we didn’t invent falafel? We just mechanised production first; were the first to market it to Europe and America and adapted it for local conditions as street food. The Palestinians certainly didn’t invent it either. You …

The response to this post has been far more immediate than usual ~ something I am profoundly grateful for. So what do they say? Hat tips to: Avi Eshel who wrote: They signed but did not ratify. They can lodge without being a state party under Art 12(3). Article 12 …

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. It seems very likely that the International Criminal Court (ICC) will decide to try Israel for alleged war crimes. They have already recognised the ‘State’ of Palestine, a victory for Palestinian weaponising of the ICC, even if the case never goes to trial. Although I appreciate the reasons …

Resigned acceptance of the inevitable? Why is everyone so much more upset with Trump than with Turkey? My first ‘contact’with the Kurds was when I wrote a piece about Mustafa al-Barzani for Sydney University student newspaper Honi Soit in the middle 1970s. Then, as apparently now, the response was deafening disinterest. …

Slovakia has become a major draw for Israeli families. I don’t think I have ever heard so much Hebrew spoken outside Israel. Probably so many Jews haven’t been present in Slovakia since before 1944. Hmmm?

  It’s not that so many countries with far worse human rights records than Israel decided that Israel alone should be named and condemned as the world’s greatest women’s rights offender that offends us but that so many with better records voted the same. By now you should have heard …

Orly Levi-Abekasis jumped from what by Israeli standards is the far-Right to the Left of the political spectrum.  She joined the Labor Party list for the upcoming elections. This set me thinking. She could have done better than joining a list in grave danger of not gaining enough votes to pass …

Left Right out? In the more than 37 years since I made aliyah I have not felt more depressed before a national election as I am today. If the pundits and the polls are correct – that’s a big IF in Israel because they are so often wrong – the next …

9 News Australia’s Amelia Adams parachutes in. We wonder if Nine News Australia will have the grace to admit that the Israel’s New Generation review of the upcoming Israeli elections by their UK correspondent was way off-beam?

Can you imagine Marc Lamont Hill accepting the apology of a commentator, at least a non-black one, using the ‘N’ word† and claiming he didn’t understand its connotations?  That he really thought it was only a variation of ‘negro’, the Spanish word for the colour black? I think not.

airbnb = air BDS To quote Kulanu Knesset member and Deputy Minister Michael Oren. “Airbnb’s policy is the very definition of antisemitism. No one should use its services.” The call came in response to an airbnb blacklist, which has removed all Jewish apartments in Judaea and Samaria from its listings — …

Nose to Nose Assuming 😞 that efforts to persuade deputy head of government of Ireland and Government of Ireland second-most senior officer Tánaiste Simon Coveney to cancel his meeting with Mahmud Abbas fail, what should they talk about over coffee and biscuits?

Speaking for the Defence (MAYBE?) Criticism of Israel is not (necessarily) antisemitism. Just remember: Lies are not criticism. Relabelling Nazi or medieval antisemitism as criticism of Israel is still antisemitism. Sharing a platform with those who don’t bother to hide their antisemitism is antisemitism by proxy Jeremy Corbyn made his …

The Duck test implies that a person can identify an unknown subject by observing that subject’s habitual characteristics. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is … But what if the duck is a crow† who has convinced himself …

What you should know about Palestinian juvenile offenders The law, international and domestic, apparently only recognises two groups who may be imprisoned, soldiers and criminals. Is Ahed Tamimi a child soldier?  Is she a political prisoner?  Is she a juvenile delinquent?  Is she Joan of Arc?

Fault-finders of Edward Horgan‘s ‘Standing up for Palestine’ in this week’s Ireland’s Sunday Independent newspaper (print, digital online) and Irish Examiner’s reader’s blog with slight changes in all three expect to be hit by the standard ‘Criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitism’ cliché. Well here’s a message.  Lies aren’t criticism. Here’s …

My answer to a Facebook question. I only realised after that the question really wasn’t addressed to me but to intellectuals and politicians in Arab states, a status I clearly don’t hold. The information is still valid. Pity to waste the effort.

His Majesty’s Government may have viewed with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people. In 1917 the British still had to defeat the Ottomans who had ruled for five hundred years.

More Fauxtography This is how minor accidents are recycled into anti Israel propaganda. Decide for yourself whether this is lazy journalism or straight out deception. Take a quick look at this photograph. I have emphasised the medic in Magen David Adom (Israel’s Red Cross) uniform and the Israeli license and …