Two weeks ago in Parshah Ki Tisa, Moshe comes down the mountain after receiving the word of God, whereupon seeing the Israelites dancing around the golden calf, he smashes the Ten Commandments. Later, he will receive a new set, and place the broken shards of the first one with the unbroken and "perfect" set in the Kodseh HaKodashim ("the Holy...
The day after Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak was ousted by a widespread public uprising, I found myself presenting a lecture about Solidarity, the mass trade union movement that convulsed Poland 30 years ago and paved the way for the collapse of the Iron Curtain a decade later. It also helped land me in jail in 1983, resulting in my expulsion...
Despite his frequent threats to quit, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas doesn't want to be tossed onto history's garbage heap with the rulers of Egypt and Tunisia, so he decided over the weekend to shuffle his Cabinet and schedule long-postponed elections. Along the way, he also lost his chief peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, a 20-year veteran of verbal sparring with the...
It is a shocking contrast: When Iranians protested an American enemy -- Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime -- President Barack Obama said nothing for days and refused to intervene. Now, when Egyptians protested an American ally -- Hosni Mubarak's regime -- Obama quickly and forcefully intervened, calling for the man's resignation, which has now occurred. We are fully aware that Mubarak has...
Feb. 11 marks 25 years since Natan Sharansky crossed the Glienicke Bridge from East to West Germany and became a free man. Countless stories have been told about his defiance of the Soviets and courageous actions during more than nine years of imprisonment. Sharansky is one of many heroic prisoners of Zion. But it is through his wife, Avital, that...
Sivan 15, 5773
