Hardly a week passes without a media report concerning the growing chasm between American Jews and Israelis over issues of culture, religion and politics. The recent Israeli elections may aggravate the divide.
In the early and mid-1980s, I saw up close some of the remarkable Israeli efforts, supported by the United States government and a few American Jewish groups, on behalf of Ethiopian Jews.
The recent thaw in Israeli-Saudi relations must be understood in the context of the lengthy Saudi Arabia-Iran cold war, and, more generally, the larger conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites.
Within a relatively short period of time, a full load of sobering, even shattering, bad news has rained upon Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s head.