Israel Harel

You don’t change a winning brand name like Likud. But the ideological atmosphere within the party will owe more to Kadima than to the teachings of Jabotinsky and Menachem Begin.

How could it be that the justices were so blind? How could they justify someone who trampled on the good names of the soldiers? Their parents? Their relatives? Their friends? Their neighbors?

The ideological roots driving Israel lie in Ein Harod and Nahalal, not in Elon Moreh. A response to Amos Schocken.

Obama might be able to promote a Palestinian state, but he cannot promise that it will respect civil liberties.

The zealots of the prosecution who in their stupidity dispatch policemen and arrest warrants to deal with the rabbis, force moderate rabbis who hold very different views from those of Lior and Shapira to stand by them.

As long as peace is a prisoner of those who call the darkness light and the light darkness, the suffering of those who yearn for a possible peace will only grow.

There is something strange, perhaps even perverted, when Arabs support Israel – not so? And Israel – this is the essence of its complex – is attracted in some strange way to those who deny its existence and murder its sons.

The American president instructed Israel to halt its military operation, which is, in essence, a carbon copy of the operations against terrorism being carried out by George W. Bush's forces.

Habayit Hayehudi is being torn apart from within over the identity of the next chief Ashkenazi rabbi.

Through a lack of vision and assertiveness, Israel's governments have relinquished the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and weakened the state's claim to other parts of the Jewish homeland.

Only a national referendum on future territorial withdrawal would convince the public that it is truly the will of the nation.

If Obama wants to be heard by the Israeli public, he should not bypass the Knesset, as this will be regarded by many as an insult.

Since Operation Defensive Shield crushed the second intifada, quite a few politicians, including ‘has-beens’ in the defense establishment, have tirelessly predicted an inevitable third one.

Even after decades in which religious Zionists combined work and Torah studies, many of their leaders still feel inferior to Ashkenazi Haredim.

Through his failings, Netanyahu is likely to bring this chapter in Israeli governance to an end.

He believes that thanks to him, the religious-Zionist public has regained its political power. But he’s mistaken.

Despite recent strains in the Israeli-American relationship, the U.S. will continue to rely on Israel as an island of stability in the chaotic Middle East.

There is a yearning for a change in values, for a renewal of Zionism and the appearance of worthy leaders but this will apparently have to wait for sometime in the future.

The contemporary return to Zion was made possible thanks to the sense of mission and devotion that so many imbibed from the values carried aboard the secular, pioneer Zionist wagon.

When an army cadet cheats in navigation, he is immediately kicked out. But most of the policemen and career soldiers who took part in the rabbinical fraud linked to former chief rabbi Bakshi Doron were not dismissed.

Likud is once again using Jerusalem to prevent the leaking of votes. In 1996 it was fear from the left, and now, it is fear from the right.

It is the 'commander's spirit,' circa 2012 that has terrorists fire thousands of rockets at Israel, and is what will lead us to the next intifada.

Israel is going to pay a heavy price for his bombastic declarations about building in area E-1 - declarations which apparently will not have any cover.

Putting Likud princes in their place is a lesson for all those who want to use an ideologically unified party to implement a political doctrine which is alien to it.

The greater the slander and hints of her ideological desertion to the enemy camp, the stronger she grows and the higher she rises in the polls.

What then happened to the legacy of the young woman and man of the 'silver platter' generation? Where did they look for the future? Or are they looking for the future and not finding it?

In any properly-run country, when a rotten apple wants to return to politics he's immediately brushed off with scorn and contempt. Not so in Israel.

While Egyptians celebrate 'October victory,' Israelis see the Yom Kippur War as a defeat. Both are mistaken.

It's not necessary to resuscitate the founders' archaic style, but it is necessary to adopt the moral, ethical and national values that guided them.

Promoting deep, substantive changes requires changing our lifestyle; our national character, if you will. I fear that the average Israeli, whether religious or secular, is not ready for this.

Despite his eloquence, despite his strong and unambiguous case, Netanyahu's personality lacks the leadership factor. Only a person blessed with this factor can create a deterrent coalition against Iran.

The prime minister must find the courage to declare publicly what I hear from cabinet ministers in closed meetings: Gentlemen, the prosecutors and the judges must stop here.

Now that the European Union is outlawed Modi’in and Maccabim as well, they will target the Givat Ram campus, which, like the Supreme Court, Knesset and government complex, is on the Sheikh Bader village lands.