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Jerry Izenberg covered 53 Super Bowls. His memoir covers his Jewish Newark upbringing.
(JTA) — Over the course of an illustrious 72-year career as a newspaper reporter, Jerry Izenberg has just about seen it all.
The longtime columnist for The Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey, Izenberg covered the first 53 Super Bowls. He’s been to 58 Kentucky Derbies, not to mention numerous Olympics, World Cups and boxing matches. He considered Muhammad Ali a close personal friend.
But the fiery 92-year-old, who still contributes to the paper as a columnist emeritus from his home in Nevada, doesn’t approve of the term “journalist.” He’s a newspaperman.
He dropped the name of Samuel Pepys, the 17th-century British diarist, as a contrast.
“Every day he took his big diary, and he wrote what he did this day, what he was planning to do later — that’s a journalist,” Izenberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m not in my world. I’m in the world of other people trying to interpret and to repeat what values they have or what lack thereof they have.”
Izenberg’s latest story breaks that rule. His 17th book, which hits shelves on Monday, is a memoir about his Jewish upbringing in Newark. Titled “Baseball, Nazis, and Nedick’s Hot Dogs: Growing Up Jewish in the 1930s in Newark,” the memoir centers on Izenberg’s relationship with his father Harry, a World War I veteran and former minor league baseball player who passed on his love of the sport to his son.
Izenberg’s father emigrated to the United States as a child, leaving Lithuania with his family to escape anti-Jewish pogroms. As his sportswriter son recounts it, Harry discovered baseball even before he could speak English.
The Izenbergs’ love of baseball transcended all. When Jerry got his first baseball glove at ten years old, it was a milestone that in his father’s eyes surpassed even his bar mitzvah. (Maybe unsurprisingly, Izenberg would later skip bar mitzvah tutoring to play baseball after school.)
“He had given me a lifetime gift — a simple game and a simple shared love for it,” Izenberg writes in the memoir. “It remains there, bright and shining in memory eighty-three years later. In the soul of my memory, I see our kind of shared love of baseball again. It never fades.”
Jerry Izenberg and his father Harry shared a bond over baseball. (Book cover courtesy of The Sager Group, LLC; photograph courtesy of Jerry Izenberg)
The pair’s passion for baseball was closely intertwined with their Judaism. Growing up in Newark in the 1930s and 40s, Izenberg was a fan of the New York Giants baseball team (which left for San Francisco after the 1957 season). They featured a lineup filled with Jewish players: Harry Danning, Harry Feldman and Sid Gordon.
But in the pantheon of Jewish baseball during Izenberg’s childhood, there was a clear king, and — much to the chagrin of Izenberg’s father — he played in Detroit. Hank Greenberg, the greatest Jewish hitter in baseball history, was at the peak of his Tigers career from 1935-1940, winning two most valuable player awards on his way to the Hall of Fame.
At the Izenbergs’ dinner table, there were only a few select topics that were allowed to be discussed: baseball and the Nazis.
In 1938, Greenberg was chasing all-time great Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs, which Ruth had set in 1927 with the Yankees. Greenberg would ultimately reach 58 homers, falling just short of history, while drawing several walks in the season’s final games.
“My dad was convinced that was antisemitism,” Izenberg said. “And I said to him, later on when I got into the business and I knew people, ‘did it ever occur to you that the guys who pitched against him didn’t want to be the guy who threw his 60th home run ball? They’d be linked to him forever.’ My father said, ‘That’s an interesting theory, but you’re full of crap.’”
Of all the anecdotes Izenberg shares of his memories with his father, one non-sports related scene stands out. And it has to do with that second dinner table topic.
One Saturday in 1939, Izenberg and his father went to the Newsreel Theatre in Newark, where audiences gathered to watch news and sports highlights of the week. That day, the theater showed footage of the infamous Madison Square Garden rally held by the German-American Bund, the American Nazi organization.
Izenberg remembers leaving the theater with his father, who was visibly angry. His father talked about how the Nazis — or, as he called them, mamzers, Yiddish slang for “bastards” — had to be stopped.
“I’m an 8-year-old kid, and I say, ‘But dad, they’re in Germany,’” Izenberg recalled. “And he looks at me, he says, ‘They’re not in Germany, they’re here.’ And he was right.” Indeed, following Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi-sympathizers could be seen marching down Newark’s streets.
The move theater incident is illustrated on the book’s cover — and was followed by a frequent father-son ritual: getting hot dogs at the popular chain Nedick’s.
To Izenberg, the virulent antisemitism of his youth — including the Bund, the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan and the rise of Father Charles Coughlin, the antisemitic “radio priest” — is a corollary for the current state of antisemitism, which is again on the rise in the United States, punctuated, he said, by the 2017 antisemitic white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, which he blames on former President Donald Trump.
Izenberg said he doesn’t believe any law can force people to love or even like one another, but that “you could legislate people and pressure people into keeping their damn mouth shut.”
He went on: “And for 30 years, we had that. We got relief from antisemitism… And then one day in Charlottesville, that son of a bitch gave them the license to say whatever they want. And that was a trigger that lit the flame of antisemitism, which then began to grow all at once. It was always in their minds. But it was not fashionable. They made it fashionable.”
Despite the anti-Jewish sentiment that was ever-present in his youth, Izenberg said he has not faced antisemitism in his journalism career. As a columnist who has covered just about every sport, Izenberg has received his fair share of criticism — most notably having his car windows smashed by two men who did not approve of Izenberg’s defense of Muhammad Ali, when at the height of his career the boxer stirred controversy with his support for the Nation of Islam and his refusal to enlist in the military.
Jerry Izenberg, right, and boxer Muhammad Ali were close personal friends. (The Private Collection of Jerry Izenberg)
Izenberg has written about social issues frequently throughout his career — especially race relations — a tendency that he said is inspired by the value of “tikkun olam,” or repairing the world. It’s an idea he learned from Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the famous activist leader who spoke just before Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington.
After leaving Nazi Germany, Prinz settled in Newark, on the same block as the Izenbergs. He would become a close family friend, and even offered to help Izenberg prepare for his bar mitzvah, despite the fact that his family belonged to a different synagogue.
Izenberg said he is guided by tikkun olam, “because I know [Prinz would] want me to keep it in the back of my mind, and my father would, too.”
“I’ve always tried not to fix the world — I don’t overrate myself that much — but I could fix the little part of it, the space that I take up,” he added. “And my job was a pathway to that.”
Izenberg’s decades-long career in sports journalism has earned him numerous accolades, including induction into 17 different halls of fame, among them the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame.
Along the way, he’s worked with and alongside a number of notable journalists, including ESPN reporter Jeremy Schaap, who previously hosted “Classic Sports Reporters,” for which he invited veteran sportswriters like Izenberg on the show to discuss various topics from sports history.
“For someone like me who really treasures that art form, Jerry was one of its master practitioners, and he’s still doing it, which is amazing,” Schaap told JTA.
Schaap hailed the breadth of Izenberg’s career, which he said epitomized the kind of big-city sports columnist that has become increasingly rare in the digital age.
“He’s a maniac, there’s no other way to put it,” Schaap said with a laugh. “All those Super Bowls, all those fights… the energy, the enthusiasm, the passion, all those things, in addition to the skills, makes him unique and has made him unique for decades.”
Schaap added that he and Izenberg shared a sort of unspoken bond over their Jewishness, and that Izenberg has taught Schaap a few Yiddishisms over the years. Izenberg’s tendency to slip Yiddish into his prose is evident in the memoir, from a comical retelling of his bris in the prologue to the frequent frustrated “genug” (“enough”) he heard from his mother as a child.
Ultimately, Izenberg said his parents represent the tachlis — the bottom line — of the memoir, and what he hopes readers take away from it. Izenberg said writing the memoir was cathartic for him, and that it even serves as a sort of love letter to his father.
“We were not, you know, ‘I love you dad,’” Izenberg said. “We were very respectful, but we didn’t express it. I tried to express it in this book. I hope I did.”
The release of Izenberg’s memoir is in no way a sign that the nonagenarian is slowing down. Even though he claims he works less than he used to, Izenberg said he plans to write six columns about next weekend’s Kentucky Derby.
He already has plans for his next few books, too — including a biography of New Jersey’s own Larry Doby, who was the second Black player in the MLB and first in the American League.
“I’ve had a great life, and I’m having a great life, but I ain’t done yet,” Izenberg said.
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Global Antisemitism Sparks Surge in Aliyah From Western Countries as Jews Leave US, UK, France for Israel
New olim disembark at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on the first charter aliyah flight after he Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, arriving to begin new lives in Israel. Photo: The Algemeiner
As global antisemitism continues to skyrocket, Israel recorded a surge in Jewish immigration from Western nations specifically in 2025, despite an overall decline in Jews abroad moving to their ancient homeland.
Israel welcomed over 21,900 Jews from more than 100 countries this year amid ongoing hostility abroad. The figure represented a drop of about one-third from last year’s numbers, due largely to a steep dip in Russian emigration.
However, aliyah – the process of Jews immigrating to Israel – from the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries surged sharply this year, according to data released Monday by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry.
This growing migration pattern comes as Jewish communities around the world, especially in Europe, have faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes, ranging from the vandalism of murals and businesses to violent physical assaults, that their communities continue to face.
“Aliyah to Israel in 2025 is a moving testament to Jewish resilience and the strength of the Zionist spirit, even amid security and national challenges,” Jewish Agency chairman Maj. Gen. (res.) Doron Almog said in a statement.
“In the shadow of the war, thousands of young people and families chose to bind their fate with Israel and build a shared future here,” he continued. “Aliyah is Israel’s growth engine, demographically, socially, economically, and morally.”
Continuing a steady upward trend, arrivals from France jumped 45 percent this year to 3,300, up from 2,200 in 2024, while immigration from the UK rose almost 20 percent to 840 immigrants.
Ministry data also showed 420 newcomers from Canada, 220 from South Africa, and 180 from Australia.
These latest figures come as Jewish communities worldwide warn of escalating threats in the wake of a deadly attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left 15 dead and at least 40 injured.
Earlier this year, a string of deadly terrorist attacks also targeted Jewish communities abroad, including the Yom Kippur assault in Manchester that killed two Jewish men, the firebombing of a march for Israeli hostages in Boulder, Colorado – which killed one and injured 13 – and the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington, DC.
According to Nefesh B’Nefesh (NBN), a nonprofit that promotes and facilitates aliyah from the US and Canada, overall North American immigration rose about 12 percent this year to 4,150 new arrivals, the highest annual total the organization has seen in four years.
“These olim [or new immigrants] underscore that aliyah is not solely a personal milestone, but a national and historic endeavor,” NBN executive director Rabbi Yehoshua Fass said in a statement.
“Together, these new olim are already helping to address Israel’s national needs and strengthen its future, and we recognize the significance of their decision to establish their lives in the State of Israel at this pivotal moment in the country’s history,” he continued.
Among all countries, Russia accounted for the largest number of immigrants in 2025, with about 8,300 arriving, continuing a trend seen every year since the 1990s. Yet, this figure represents nearly a 60 percent decline from 19,500 last year and is only a fraction of the 74,000 immigrants who arrived in 2022 following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The ministry also showed that about a third of all new immigrants during the year were aged 18–35, highlighting a continued trend of younger Jews making aliyah.
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the Israeli government has been working to boost the country’s capacity to attract and absorb rising numbers of new arrivals, introducing initiatives such as partnering with Israeli companies to provide immediate employment and offering a zero percent income tax rate for immigrants arriving in 2026.
Earlier this year, the government also unveiled a $46.4 million program to support immigrant integration and attract skilled Jewish candidates with in-demand expertise, including a reform to expedite professional licensing for new arrivals.
According to Jewish Agency data, roughly 30,000 Jews worldwide began the immigration process in 2025, with particularly significant increases seen in the UK and Australia.
Despite these figures, Israel still faces a net migration deficit, with more people leaving than arriving — a trend experts warn is expected to continue next year.
In 2024, approximately 80,000 Israelis left the country while only 24,000 returned, creating an unprecedented negative migration balance of almost 58,000 people, according to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics.
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Trump, hosting Netanyahu in Florida, says next phase of Gaza ceasefire plan will begin ‘as quickly as we can’
President Donald Trump repeated his claims that the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire plan is imminent ahead of a highly anticipated meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Monday in Florida.
While progress on the U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel in October has been slow moving, with both Israel and Hamas accusing the other of failing to uphold their end of the bargain, Trump appeared eager to find ways to speed up the peace process as he stood beside Netanyahu Monday afternoon.
When asked by a reporter how quickly Trump hoped to move into phase two of the ceasefire plan, he replied “as quickly as we can” before stipulating that the next phase was contingent upon Hamas disarming.
But later, when asked by another reporter whether the reconstruction of Gaza will begin before Hamas is disarmed, Trump replied, “I think it’s going to begin pretty soon,” adding that he and Netanyahu were “looking forward to it.”
“Look what a mess it is, and it’s been a mess for centuries, really, it’s been a mess for a long time. It seems to be born for that, but we’re gonna straighten it out,” said Trump of the enclave. “We’re already starting certain things, we’re doing things for sanitary conditions and others, but Gaza is a tough place. You know the expression ‘it’s a tough neighborhood,’ it’s truly a tough neighborhood.”
At another press conference following the meeting, which lasted roughly two hours, Trump said that Hamas would be given “a very short period of time to disarm.”
“If they don’t disarm as as they agreed to do, they agreed to it, and then they’ll be held to pay for them, and we don’t want that, we’re not looking for that, but they have to disarm within a fairly short period of time, withdrawing its force,” said Trump. Later, Trump said that the other countries who backed the ceasefire deal would “wipe out Hamas” if the terror group does not disarm.
Following the meeting, Trump also appeared to revive his past proposal for Palestinians in Gaza to voluntarily leave the enclave, a plan that received a chorus of condemnation when he first broached the subject in February.
“I’ve always said it, I said if they were given the opportunity to live in a better climate, they would move,” said Trump, referring to Palestinians in Gaza. “They’re there because they sort of have to be. I think it would be, I think it’d be a great opportunity, but let’s see if that opportunity presents itself.”
Over two months after all 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal, the remains of only one deceased hostage, Ran Gvili, remain in Gaza.
The next phase, which would include Israel and Hamas losing authority in Gaza and the establishment of a “Board of Peace” to oversee the enclave’s future, is expected to begin once Gvili is returned.
“It’s the only one left, and we’re doing everything we can to get his body back,” said Trump of Gvili. “And the parents just said, hopefully he’s alive. And I said I’d love you to think that way.”
Later, Trump also repeated his false claim that no hostages were released from Gaza under the Biden administration. In November 2023, 105 hostages, mainly women and children, were released during a temporary truce.
Beyond pressure from Washington to initiate the next phase of the ceasefire, the pair were also expected to discuss a host of other topics, ranging from Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities to Israel’s relations with Turkey and Syria.
When asked whether Trump would ask Netanyahu to sign an agreement with Syria amid tensions between the two countries, Trump responded, “I hope he’s going to get along with Syria.”
Following the meeting, Trump said that the was “sure” that Israel and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will “get along,” an assertion that Netanyahu appeared to back.
“Our interest is to have a peaceful border with Syria,” said Netanyahu. “We want to make sure that the border area right next to our border is safe. We don’t have terrorists, we don’t have attacks.”
Trump also appeared to respond positively when asked whether he expected Turkish forces to be stationed in Gaza, a proposal that Israel has sought to block. (Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been overtly hostile to Israel over the course of the war in Gaza.)
“I have a great relationship with President Erdogan, and we’ll be talking about it, and if it’s good, I think that’s good, and a lot will be having to do with Bibi,” said Trump. “We’re going to be talking about that, but Turkey has been great.”
Later during the press conference, Trump expressed his openness to launching an assault on Iran amid reports that the gulf nation is seeking chemical and biological warheads for its ballistic missiles. In June, the United States joined Israel’s conflict with Iran and bombed three sites in the country, a strike that it claimed had “obliterated” its nuclear capabilities.
“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” said Trump. “We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them, but hopefully that’s not happening. I heard Iran wants to make a deal. If they want to make a deal, that’s much smarter.”
When asked by a reporter whether he sought to “overthrow” the Iranian regime, Trump replied, “I’m not going to talk about overthrow of a regime.” But when asked by a reporter whether he would support an Israeli attack on Iran if the country continues to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, Trump responded “absolutely.”
The meeting between Netanyahu and Trump also comes as Trump has called for Israeli President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu, who currently has three legal cases open against him, on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust.
Responding to a question about the potential for a pardon, Trump claimed that Herzog had said the pardon was “on its way.”
“He’s a wartime Prime Minister who’s a hero, how do you not give a pardon? You know, I think it’s a very hard thing not to do it,” said Trump. “I spoke to the president and he tells me it’s on its way. You can’t do better than that, right?”
Following Trump’s remarks, Herzog’s office issued a statement stating that there had been no talks between him and Trump since the American leader wrote to Herzog advocating for a pardon in November.
“There has been no conversation between President Herzog and President Trump since the pardon request was submitted,” Herzog’s office said in a statement.
At the end of the press conference, before the two leaders entered Mar-a-Lago in an embrace, Netanyahu responded to the only question posed to him: “What makes President Trump such a strong friend to the State of Israel?”
“I think Israel is very blessed to have President Trump leading the United States, and I’ll say leading the free world at this time,” said Netanyahu, reiterating his long-held praise for the leader. “I think it’s not merely Israel’s great fortune. I think it’s the world’s great fortune.”
Trump then took his turn at the question, telling reporters that the Israeli leader could be “very difficult on occasion.”
“Bibi’s a strong man. He can be very difficult on occasion, but you need a strong man,” said Trump. “If you had a weak man, you wouldn’t have Israel right now….Israel, with most other leaders, would not exist today.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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It’s a classic trick of liars and crooks — and it’s shaping Israel’s response to war and disaster
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying a new technique to avoid accountability for the Oct. 7, 2023 attack: pretending — but not very convincingly — to invite it.
Netanyahu has spent more than two years blocking the establishment of an independent inquiry commission led by a Supreme Court justice, a step that has been normative following calamities in Israel since 1968. After Hamas invaded and massacred close to 1,200 people, kidnapping some 250 to Gaza, Israelis almost universally assumed this path would be followed.
Instead, Netanyahu’s government has recently moved to establish a government commission that would have representatives from both the coalition and opposition, politicizing a process that is supposed to be impartial. And amid these machinations came the most revealing and credible portrait yet of Netanyahu’s mindset immediately after the attack. Eli Feldstein, a former close aide and spokesperson to Netanyahu, said in a televised interview aired last week that right after the Hamas assault, Netanyahu’s first instruction to him was to figure out how he could evade responsibility.
“He asked me, ‘What are they talking about in the news? Are they still talking about responsibility?’” Feldstein, who now faces trial for allegedly leaking classified information, recalled. The “first task,” Netanyahu had in mind after the massacre, Feldstein said, was to stifle calls for accountability and craft messaging that would offset the media storm.
Even allowing for Feldstein’s legal complications, the story has the ghastly ring of truth— in part because of the entire inquiry farce.
A real inquiry would likely deliver harsh conclusions about Netanyahu’s misguided strategy of coddling Hamas; his failure to heed intelligence before Oct. 7; the staggering human cost of the war that followed; the failure to dismantle Hamas despite two years of brutal fighting; Israel’s growing international isolation; and Netanyahu’s repeated rejection of diplomatic exit ramps.
It is obvious that a commission dealing with such explosive matters must not be controlled by the very people it will judge. Yet that is exactly the system Netanyahu has engineered, while arguing that a state inquiry would be stacked against him. Most Israelis see the attempted whitewash clearly, and some three quarters of the public have consistently said they want a state commission.
Realistically, Netanyahu is hoping the opposition will refuse to appoint its own members or cooperate in any way, enabling him to campaign in the 2026 elections on the claim that his rivals blocked the inquiry. That is a shameless strategy — and entirely consistent with his system.
A complete failure
The facts that would confront any serious investigation are not controversial.
On Oct. 7, 2023, the Gaza border was left almost completely unprotected. This, even though warnings of an imminent attack were abundant. Senior security officials had grown alarmed amid multiple intelligence assessments suggesting Hamas could be planning an assault. In the weeks — and even days — before Oct. 7, Israel’s three top security chiefs sought urgent meetings with the prime minister. They wanted to warn him that the unprecedented internal rift he was driving through Israeli society with his judicial overhaul was inviting attack.
Netanyahu refused to meet with them.
Then terrorists breached the border with ease and overran communities. The state and military failed to respond in a timely or organized fashion.
What worked, in those first critical hours and days, was not the government. It was the efforts of citizens. Volunteers. Reservists who rushed south without orders. Individual officers who grasped the scale of the catastrophe and acted on instinct and conscience. For days, the country was in chaos. Many assumed the government would fall.
This was a total failure. And it was built on Netanyahu’s prior policy of deliberately empowering Hamas. For years, he facilitated Qatari funding into Gaza and treated its rule as strategically useful because it divided Palestinian leadership and weakened the Palestinian Authority. He aimed to ensure there would be no credible Palestinian interlocutor with whom the international community might pressure Israel to negotiate a two-state solution. The danger of Hamas controlling Gaza, he believed, was preferable to the risks that would be required to achieve peace.
Under those circumstances, the judgment of a serious inquiry, as regards the government, is not in doubt. That is why Netanyahu’s current strategy is not to totally avoid accountability, but rather to dissolve it — to spread guilt so thinly that it disappears.
A dangerous slide into surrealism
This is where the government’s current arguments slide from cynical to dangerous. Among the more surreal claims now circulating is the suggestion that Israel’s judicial system bears responsibility for Oct. 7.
On a recent television panel in which I participated, Environment Minister Idit Silman said, without the slightest shame, that the Supreme Court cannot be trusted to appoint a State Commission of Inquiry because the court itself must be investigated. He implied that the current president of the Supreme Court — appointed automatically by seniority, precisely to prevent politicization — is himself criminally suspect. This claim is absurd, unsupported and revealing. It exists for one reason only: to delegitimize the one institution capable of appointing an inquiry beyond the government’s control.
Netanyahu’s allies now argue that the public no longer trusts the courts, and therefore the courts lack legitimacy to appoint an inquiry commission. They are recasting past rulings that imposed even minimal ethical constraints on military conduct, or sought to prevent outright massacres of Palestinians, as contributing causes of Oct. 7.
The truth is that public trust in the Supreme Court, which historically ranked just below the military among Israeli institutions, only began eroding because of attacks by Netanyahu and his surrogates. Since a criminal corruption investigation against him was first announced, they have systematically attacked the police, prosecutors and the judiciary.
Now the government points to the damage it caused as justification for sidelining the court altogether. It is, quite plainly, sabotage of Israel’s democracy and rule of law.
An independent judiciary is a strategic asset. It is what allows Israel to argue credibly that it can investigate itself — and therefore that foreign courts need not intervene on questions of war crimes or human rights, which sadly abound. Undermine that credibility, and Israel weakens itself internationally.
But it’s not just the judiciary. The government also insists that the opposition must be investigated too, going all the way back to the 1993 Oslo Agreements that set up the Palestinian Authority — because they once sat in government. The civil service must be investigated as well — because it implements policy. Netanyahu-aligned social media accounts have been peddling absurd conspiracy theories about the Shin Bet helping Hamas on Oct. 7 in order to harm Netanyahu. The end message: Everyone must be investigated — which is another way of saying that since everyone is responsible, no one is especially responsible.
This is the classic trickery of liars and crooks: Everyone is guilty of something, so no one is uniquely guilty, especially not the leader who held power for most of the past 15 years. But the truth is that authority concentrates at the top, and so must accountability.
Netanyahu’s strategy rests on the assumption that he can fool enough of the people enough of the time to cling to power. It has often worked for him, to Israel’s great detriment. All we can hope is that this new scheme will be a bridge too far. If Netanyahu’s coalition is ousted in upcoming elections, the next government will establish a real inquiry. Justice, even if delayed, will ultimately be done.
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