Yitzhak Laor

The city we?re all supposed to salute as a highly-touted symbol ?(?freedom of worship for all,? ?the city of three religions,? ?the eternal capital of the Jewish people??) has not managed to become a sacred value in its own right.

The speed with which Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech has become part of the "national consensus" demonstrates the extent to which Israelis are willing to unite around violence

There is something ironic about Nobel Peace Prize laureate President Shimon Peres' cry of alarm over Iran's nuclear program.

Do you want to free captive soldier Gilad Shalit? Don't demand the release of Palestinian prisoners, demand the tightening of the siege on Gaza. In Hebrew freedom sounds like fences.

It seems the shrunken peace camp is again waiting for the sheriff to release us from the imbroglio created by our governments - settlements, taking over the Palestinian water economy and integrating the West Bank into Israel (without integrating its subjects).

Israel's monopoly on everything related to the collective memory turns its politicians, the overseers and directors of this memory, into loudspeaker heroes.

The compulsory conscription law is the supreme, traditional norm of Israeli society, and it covers up everything, both in denial and in acceptance of one's punishment.

Whatever the makeup of the next coalition, the left's role will be manifested in the streets, not in waiting for the next elections.

We will pay for years for rallying behind the army - for considering it "part of us" and that "we are the ones who sent them," not the government.

Tens of millions of people in the United States went to the polls and decided that the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) tradition that reigned in America does not work.

Complaining about Barak or Netanyahu or Ehud Olmert will not confer a political identity on anyone. To merit representation, you have to want someone to represent you because of his political views.

This is the logic that the average Israeli needs to digest on a daily basis: This place belongs to the Jews. The Arabs are foreign. Some think that we need to behave nicely toward foreigners. Some think we need to oust them. Here is the pus.

Rose's melodrama is a vociferous soundtrack to drown a silence in which poor children's fates are going from bad to worse.

The 60th anniversary of Israeli independence gives Israel Television an opportunity to clean the air.

The obsession with head coverings deserves to be examined by the religious persons among us. How many among them see themselves on the "Western" side, concerned at the sight of women who cover their heads?

From what does the morality of sacrificing Palestinian national life derive if not from 'it's good for me, what do I care about them?'

Israeli law defines the state as Jewish and democratic. The Shin Bet is now trying to turn the "and" into an "or." Israeli democracy, in Shin Bet head Diskin's terms, is protecting itself against the undermining of its nature as a democracy for Jews.

The appropriation of the frescoes is intolerable, because it is an expression of Israel's inability to understand that there was and is Jewish life outside the confines of the Hebrew language and the Israeli nation.

On Christmas eve, many Hebrew-speaking Jewish couples could be seen coming out of church in Jaffa after midnight mass.

A bleak future awaits Israel if it continues its politics of counting on support of the Bush-Blair duo; Two lame ducks who will soon be replaced.

Brigadier General Hirsch is the embodiment of the "new generals." Whatever the historical nature of the IDF battle against the Palestinians, the abuse of the Palestinians during the second intifada is also a significant part of the years of the IDF's decline.

It is worth asking a few leading questions in order to understand the nature of the Gay Pride parade, and clarify what does not belong in the debate over it.