Benny Ziffer

The biggest problem of the 21st century, and not only when it comes to sex services, is uncouthness.

From all this it emerges that neither Michaeli nor Majadele are really to blame for the spat that ended with the throwing of a glass of water in the Knesset this week. The real blameworthy party in the battle between the two faithful-servant camps is the Israeli-Jewish lord and master himself.

Indeed, there is nothing that has done more for the prostitution of the art of singing in our country than forcing it, on the grounds that it's 'official,' upon both those who want it and those who do not want it.

We have here a struggle between the hypocritical good guys (Europe ) and the sincere bad guys (Turkey and sometimes Israel ), who've not accepted the fact that history is nothing but a sequence of narratives.

On an edifying visit to the museum of literature tucked away in the garden of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul.

Universal values have lost their validity - and that includes the very notion of tolerance itself.

For the first time in 27 years my application for a visa to Egypt was refused. But it also taught me a lesson I never got to know - or or never wanted to know.

These good people want to save democracy from the hands of the right. But is it legitimate to do this by fomenting constant panic, lest the nation of Israel find itself in the grip of a murderous dictatorship?

A new French book attempts to grapple with a Turkish operation to save 476 Jews from France during the Holocaust. Many of those rescued spurned their saviors thereafter and the episode has virtually been lost to history.

Once upon a time you could rely on vacationing Israelis to start the day with mountains of food on their plates, without a thought for their waists and the waste.

A strange and alien creature came back into our confident Israeli existence with the return of Gilad Shalit after nearly five and a half years in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

The problem of our automatically being considered Jews is burdensome and there is no denying that; but even 1,000 authorizations from the Interior Ministry can't change this, and won't turn Kaniuk the Jew into Kaniuk the non-Jew.

'We have yet to fathom the smallest part of the miracle called the human body. Sometimes I ask myself why some parts of the heart seem superfluous, why they seem to complicate the organ's functions. But then you discover that such a part has a purpose.'

Jews - Israelis in particular - usually remember for all time those who treated them badly.

When they are truly authentic, Sephardic Jews live forever.

We should thank the Egyptian people for having exposed in its nakedness another corner of the colossal waste of public money on illusions.

A 'non-meeting' in the Jordanian capital with the woman who owns and knows more about Palestinian dresses than anybody else, but is convinced there is no one left that even cares about them.

With all due respect, I would like to suggest to the "9/11" disaster that it take itself a bit more proportionately.

Today one must no longer write 'rich people'; that has been replaced in the media by the alternative description: 'people with high incomes.'

It is likely that after the periphery-dwellers' ritual of humiliating the no-longer-admired chanteuse, some of them tossed and turned because their conscience was bothering them.

My mother threatens that if I join the protestors on Rothchild she will revoke my inheritance and give her two apartments to Tel Aviv University.

The public transportation reform may be a way to provide instant group therapy for paranoia and excessive anxiety, rather than a plan to make it easier to get around in Gush Dan.