Benny Ziffer

In every generation the dovish wing of the Labor Party is blessed with a tender politician who mumbles nice words; the poet who, like the albatross, the stately sea bird in the well-known poem by Baudelaire, is hobbled by its huge visionary wings once it lands on the deck and whose ludicrous walk makes it the victim of abuse by coarse sailors.

Television viewers on the eve of Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel's Wars who wanted to zap their way out of the realms of depression may well have come across the two lengthy interviews that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave to CNN and Sky News (Monday, 9 P.M. and afterward).

In his speech at Yad Vashem on Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Day (Channel One, Monday, 20:00), on the backdrop of a fancy torch that spat fire upward in a proper straight jet of flame, President Moshe Katsav said: "Behind us are 4,000 years of Jewish history."

Bukharan, Afghan, Baluch and Turkish rugs, Israeli kilims and the piece de resistance - Persian rugs. What one should know before buying a handmade Oriental rug

The wicked Antiochus of the week was the stuttering, unshaven fellow who shouted on television at Oded Granot, Channel One's Arab affairs commentator: "Who gave you planes? Who gave you tanks? Who gave you money? The Americans" (News Magazine, Friday, 8 P.M., Channel One). The trouble is that there was some truth to this section of his remarks, as the journalist Danny Rubinstein (from Ha'aretz) observed in his sharp-eyed commentary about Granot's interview with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (

Ha'aretz interviews Giorgio Battistoni, who in his book about Dante Alighieri and Immanuel of Rome, explains how the two poets may have influenced each other's work

On Sunday, a wise and courageous Hebrew-language writer said some very harsh things. And not in the context of sales promotion for a new book. It was David Grossman, who on "Mabat," the daily news program broadcast on Channel One at 9 P.M., called on IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers to refuse to obey orders of the type given to the army on the eve of Yom Kippur.