Benny Ziffer

There is nothing more ignorant and pretentious, arrogant and racist than claiming that the Mizrahim don’t have poets or writers 'outstanding' enough to be depicted on the State of Israel’s paper currency.

The evacuation on Tuesday of the Jewish families who had squatted in the wholesale market in Hebron was a popular television entertainment of this type: One could almost say that it was designed exclusively for television.

Anyone who has wanted to watch a real news program - that is to say, a program that would present to him what is happening in Israel and abroad, during a single time slot (something totally elementary, no?) - will hardly have found this of late on any channel.

PM Ehud Olmert radiated pretentiousness and futility among Nobel Prize laureates and royalty in Petra.

The excavation of the tomb of Herod was carried out in occupied territory, where Israel has no moral right to dig and certainly not to remove archaeological artifacts.

what does this say about us - a country that has pretenses to equality - if among the more than half of the population that comes from the countries of Asia and Africa (as the statistical bulletins put it), there is not a single person who is worthy of receiving the Israel Prize?

Yaron Bracha, suspected of having driven under the influence of drugs at high speed and run a red light killing six people, is the essence of Israel.

Every person with a brain in his head knows that a concern about extremist Islam has been with Egypt for a generation, and has no direct connection to the current scandal. What was worse even than the things that Granot said were the pictures that were screened in the background as he spoke. They showed a Hezbollah-style march of masked young men. God knows what that had to do with the Six-Day War.

Israel executes people all the time, without trial, on television, which usually has nothing to say about it. These are simply not called 'executions,' but 'targeted killings.'

The authenticity of the Bnei Menashe's descent from the Biblical tribe is comparable to mine from Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf, or from Snow White's Seven Dwarfs.

I have no doubt that this tendency 'to embrace' − a verb that has become meaningless − will be the only real victor in the present Lebanon war, which will be remembered for the victory of sticky kitsch over the last vestiges of restraint.

When Georgre W. Bush called Hezbollah's actions "shit," he meant it literally and also on a deeper, hidden level.

Sooner or later, all presidents of the State of Israel seem fated to become the butt of jokes, if they are not sad jokes themselves.

'Sovereignty' is a wonderful slogan to wave about in order to arouse national pride and in order to promote esprit de corps in times of crisis. But is Israel truly a sovereign country?