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In Memoriam: The Man Who Fostered my Love of Israel
Edward Cohen. Credit: Courtesy.
JNS.org – I’ve been writing this column for more than a decade, but this week will, sadly, be very different for a few dozen of my readers.
I’m referring to a group of people—friends, family members, Israel advocates—who received my column every week courtesy of an email from my father, Edward Cohen, but who won’t be getting it from him this week. A fortnight ago, my Dad, who was 83, suffered from an overwhelming stroke at his apartment in Tel Aviv. Despite the best efforts of the doctors at Ichilov Hospital to revive him, he passed away about 12 hours later.
I traveled to Israel for his funeral—not an easy feat, given that most international airlines are not flying into Tel Aviv thanks to the war launched by Hamas with its pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7. If I’d flown directly from New York, I would likely have missed the funeral because of the lack of seat availability, so instead, I spent one night on a plane from JFK to London, where I met up with my brother, and the next night on an El Al flight from Heathrow Airport to Ben-Gurion Airport outside of Tel Aviv, where we landed, quickly showered and made our way to Jerusalem to bury our father at the cemetery in Givat Shaul. Then it was straight back to Tel Aviv for the shiva at the home he shared with his Israeli wife and their two daughters.
In truth, much of my trip is remembered as a blur. The combination of the awful news and the jet lag left me physically exhausted and not very communicative. But I do recall quite clearly several people coming up to me at the funeral, shaking my hand, wishing me a long life and then telling me, “You know, your Dad was very proud of you; he used to email me your JNS column every week.”
The point I want to emphasize, however, is that my Dad didn’t just passively shep nachas—admittedly, a very Ashkenazi phrase to use in remembering my proudly Sephardi father!—from my writings. He was an inspiration, and I learned an enormous amount from him, especially my Zionism, over the years.
As my brother memorably put it at the funeral, Dad loved Israel as if it were a person. His was an intense, joyous love, in which he garnered profound satisfaction from the mere act of waking up in a Jewish homeland, driving or walking along streets with Hebrew names, or buying nuts, baklava and other treats at the shuk. In both spiritual and material terms, he served our ancient homeland admirably, donating to numerous charities, sitting on the board of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) from its inception under the tutelage of his late, dear friend, Dr. Dan Elazar, as well as spending two very busy years as the chairman of the Israel Free Loan Association (IFLA). He was, in Jewish parlance, a macher. It was a fact I gleaned during my teenage years when I spent summers with him in Israel, where he’d moved after his divorce from my mother, often accompanying him to meetings and social events where he would invariably receive an enthusiastic welcome.
As sons and fathers tend to do, we argued a lot. There were times, I know, when he was desperately worried about me; I think, in particular, of my flirtation with revolutionary Marxism during my university years and the anti-Zionism that came with it. But equally, I think my Dad knew how supremely uncomfortable I was, deep down, with having to be an enemy of the Jewish state, so when I recovered my senses, he was pleased but not really surprised.
He knew, I think, that I would come back, and he was one of the reasons that I did so. Not to ingratiate myself back into my Dad’s good books, but because I couldn’t cast aside all the things I learned before I started reading Leon Trotsky, Isaac Deutscher, Ralph Miliband and other Marxist revolutionaries and scholars, most of whom happened to be Jews. Nor could I ignore my own family history; my mother’s family in Bosnia, all of whom were youthful Zionists, was decimated during the Holocaust, while my father fled with his family from Iraq, where he was born, in 1941. Along with so many other immigrants, my relatives came to the teeming city of London, where they lived happy and productive lives, my father included. But unlike many other Jews there, my Dad was never truly at home in England. He yearned to be in Israel, and as soon as he got the opportunity to live there, he seized it.
The last few weeks of my Dad’s life were, as was the case for the rest of us, overshadowed by the Hamas pogrom. During the 1980s and 1990s, he’d engaged with members of the Israeli peace camp, particularly a small group of Israeli Sephardic intellectuals who hoped that they could forge a common cultural bond with the Palestinians, but those efforts, well-intentioned as they were, didn’t get anywhere, and eventually, he became disillusioned. Following the failure of the Oslo process and the outbreak of the 2001 Palestinian intifada, he reverted to being a security hawk. He was never a hater—never someone to lump all Palestinians into the same basket—but neither did he trust their integrity. When the Hamas terrorists penetrated the border on Oct. 7, he was grimly vindicated.
I miss my Dad, and every day that passes drives home his absence from my life. I miss the phone calls, the WhatsApp chats, even the annoying questions he’d email my way at the height of a busy day. I will miss landing in Israel and going straight to his apartment—a ritual that is as old as I am. But most of all, I feel a deep sadness at the fact that he left us in the middle of this ghastly trauma and won’t be here to see how it resolves.
My Dad, you see, was confident that Israel would triumph in this latest installment of its battle to simply exist. I want to believe that he is right, and I think he is. And when victory does come, it will be a victory for him, too, as the Israel he loved so passionately will continue to flourish.
I have said my last farewell to my Dad, but his presence is with me. Every time I check the news from Israel, I think of him and am tempted to reach for my phone, call him and ask what he thinks … before remembering that I can’t. All that remains is his legacy, and it is one that I will treasure.
So, goodbye Dad, and thank you for shaping me into the proud Jew that I became. Thank you for being the person who introduced me to Israel, its land, its cultures, its food, its politics, its joie de vivre. Thank you for loving me, and know that I loved you.
May you rest in peace. And may your memory be a blessing.
The post In Memoriam: The Man Who Fostered my Love of Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.