Uncategorized
Meir Shalev and Yehonatan Geffen were Israeli cultural royalty. Their deaths leave a hole on the left.
(JTA) — Over the last few months, since the far-right government announced its plans for an overarching constitutional overhaul, Israel’s embattled liberal camp has experienced a renaissance. Unprecedented mobilization on the part of protesting masses, business leaders and the IDF vanguard has left the government in disarray and, in the wake of a seemingly endless string of electoral defeats, invigorated the left to an extent that it had not seen since the 1990s. The left may be dead, but it is not quite buried yet.
But amid this process of rejuvenation and weeks before Israel celebrated its 75th anniversary, the Israeli left experienced two symbolic blows in ironic proximity when two cultural titans died within days of each other.
Meir Shalev, an eminent novelist, and Yehonatan Geffen, an incredibly prolific journalist, author and songwriter, were also prominent public intellectuals. Both had spent decades dabbling in current affairs as columnists for the mass-circulation dailies Yedioth Aharonoth and Maariv, respectively.
Shalev was 74 when he died on April 11. Geffen, who died on April 19, was 76.
The symbolism did not stop at their premature and almost simultaneous passing. It was, rather, the final chapter of two lives that also began in great proximity: Shalev and Geffen were born a little over a year apart in the agricultural community of Nahalal, the Camelot of the Labor Zionism movement. Both were descendants of Zionist aristocracy: Shalev’s father was the Jerusalemite author and educator Yithzak Shalev, and Geffen’s maternal uncle the legendary general-turned-politician Moshe Dayan. Like many of their cohort, they were groomed for the driving seat of the newborn State of Israel.
Their formidable life’s work, thus, was largely an ongoing attempt to deal with the burden bestowed upon them by their pedigrees. And this is where they differ, despite the eerie similarities in their biographies.
Many of Shalev’s novels, especially the earlier ones, were loving tributes to his lineage. They included “A Pigeon and A Boy,” which is set during the War of Independence and won the National Jewish Book Award in 2006, and “The Blue Mountain,” set on a moshav (an agricultural cooperative) shortly before the founding of Israel. Though never overly sentimental and always strewn with a heavy dose of irony, Shalev’s writings were adoring accounts of a bygone generation, complete with their shtick and quirks and foibles. His protagonists were shrouded in a certain mythology, which Shalev did not labor to deconstruct entirely; he was just attempting to humanize and bring them down to earth.
But while Shalev looked up to his parents’ generation, Geffen blew a raspberry in their faces. He was part of a tight cohort of musicians and artists who grew up in Israel post-independence — a tribe that included David Broza, Arik Einstein, Gidi Gov, Shalom Hanoch and Yehudit Ravitz, all household names in Israel. Geffen’s song “Could It Be Over?”, featured on Arik Einstein’s 1973 album sporting the deliberately ironic title “Good Old Israel,” exemplifies the challenging relationship. From the opening line (“They say it was fun before I was born, and everything was just splendid until I arrived”), the song is a mischievous and self-deprecating take on Israel’s founding myths. Enumerating them one by one — the draining of the swamps, the heroic battles for Jewish sovereignty, the nascent Hebrew culture in the pre-state Yishuv — Geffen sarcastically concludes: “They had a reason to get up in the morning.”
More broadly, Geffen was bent on smashing every aspect of the Zionist ethos. In defiance of the image of the Hebrew warrior, of which his uncle Moshe was the poster boy, Geffen was an adamant pacifist as well as, famously, a very bad soldier himself. Having been called for reserve service during the first Lebanon War, in 1982, he was performing for soldiers ahead of the IDF offensive on Beirut when he was dragged off stage by the commanding officer for calling on the troops to refuse. His song “The Little Prince of Company B” (sung by Shem-Tov Levy), about a timid and frail fallen soldier praised as a hero against his will, was one of the first and best-remembered anti-war songs in the Hebrew canon.
Geffen’s counterculture instincts were informed by his great American heroes — notably the Jewish iconoclasts Bob Dylan and Lenny Bruce — and this admiration was in itself a jab at his upbringing, characterized by vain parochialism masquerading as self-sufficiency. Geffen felt more at home in New York (where he spent several years) and Tel Aviv than in the fields of the Jezreel Valley; his tools were not a sickle and a plow, but rather a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of whisky.
Shalev, in his political writing, also advocated for left-of-center politics that is sometimes derisively described as “Ashkenazi”: moderate, civil, Western in its orientation, calling to rally around a common good — a type of political discourse that, as recent events show, speaks to fewer and fewer Israelis. “The Israeli public is moving more and more to the right. The war in 1967 may have destroyed Israel,” he told an interviewer in 2017. “We took a big bite that is now suffocating us. All Israel has done since 1967 is deal with aspects of the occupation. Israel has not been dealing with the things I feel it should deal with. With my political views, I am a minority in Israel.”
Shalev was a pastor of sorts; Geffen was sometimes a Jeremiah and sometimes a court jester, and often both.
They were representatives of two distinct streams within the traditionally fragmented Israeli left; the very same left that, despite the current resurgence, seems too often to have more streams than members.
—
The post Meir Shalev and Yehonatan Geffen were Israeli cultural royalty. Their deaths leave a hole on the left. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
Netanyahu says he is formally seeking the pardon Trump requested on his behalf
(JTA) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is formally seeking a preemptive pardon of the criminal charges he has long faced, saying in a video address ending his prosecution was needed to bring unity to a divided nation.
“I am certain, as are many others in the nation, that an immediate end to the trial would greatly help lower the flames and promote broad reconciliation — something our country desperately needs,” Netanyahu said in the speech on Sunday as his attorneys filed a petition with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who is responsible for granting pardons.
Netanyahu’s speech comes weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump wrote to Herzog advocating a pardon, which Herzog said he could not consider because Israeli law requires the accused or his family to make the request.
Netanyahu has three legal cases open against him, on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. They relate to allegations that he accepted lavish gifts in exchange for political favors and that he used his position to secure positive media coverage. The trial in the cases began in 2020 and has proceeded in fits and starts, with hearings routinely canceled as Netanyahu attends to Israel’s affairs, including the multi-front war and a protest movement that Netanyahu and his allies allege has been stoked through foreign interference.
In his speech, Netanyahu did not acknowledge guilt and said, as he long has contended, that the charges against him were political in nature. He alleged that crimes had been committed in the case against him. He also cited Trump’s advocacy on his behalf.
“President Trump called for an immediate end to the trial so that, together with him, I could advance even more vigorously the vital interests shared by Israel and the United States, within a time window that may never return,” Netanyahu said.
Herzog’s office said it would consider the pardon request in accordance with Israeli law. Netanyahu’s critics lambasted the request, saying it amounted to another assault on country’s legal norms by the prime minister, whose right-wing government has led an effort to overhaul the judiciary.
“I call on President Herzog: You cannot grant Netanyahu a pardon without an admission of guilt, an expression of remorse, and an immediate withdrawal from political life,” tweeted opposition leader Yair Lapid while making a video address of his own.
Netanyahu’s request comes as the country nears elections that must take place within the next year. Netanyahu was reelected most recently in 2022, after the charges against him were in place.
A previous prime minister who faced legal charges, Ehud Olmert, resigned before being charged and requested a pardon only after being convicted and jailed.
The post Netanyahu says he is formally seeking the pardon Trump requested on his behalf appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
After facing criticism, Dublin tables proposal to rename Herzog Park — for now
(JTA) — A proposal to rename a Dublin park that honors one of Ireland’s most famous Jewish emigres has been tabled following criticism from the Israeli president and the Irish prime minister.
But the bid to rename Herzog Park could be revived if the Dublin City Council’s naming committee follows a different procedure, the council’s chief executive said in a statement on Sunday, a day before the planned vote.
The park was renamed in 1995 for Chaim Herzog, the son of the first Irish chief rabbi who became Israel’s sixth president in 1983, seven years after famously ripping up a United Nations resolution that declared “Zionism as Racism.” His son, Isaac Herzog, is the president of Israel today.
Pro-Palestinian activists called for the park to be stripped of the Herzog name during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, citing Chaim Herzog’s role as a prominent defender of Zionism. Last year, activists covered all references to the Herzog family at the park with Palestinian flags and added placards with the name “Hind Rajab Park,” referring to the 6-year-old Gaza girl killed during the war who has become a symbol of pro-Palestinian advocacy.
The campaign came amid staunch pro-Palestinian sentiment in Ireland, where Israel recently shuttered its Dublin embassy, citing “antisemitic rhetoric of the Irish government,” including its recognition of an independent Palestinian state and its support for anti-Israel resolutions in international bodies during the war in Gaza.
Isaac Herzog’s office had expressed concern about the renaming proposal, saying that it believed the park’s new name would be “Free Palestine.” It said in a statement on Saturday that stripping the Herzog name from the park would harm “the unique expression of the historical connection between the Irish and Jewish peoples” and undermine the legacy of Chaim Herzog, whose father supported Irish independence and who himself fought in the British Army during World War II.
“Removing the Herzog name, if it happens, would be a shameful and disgraceful move,” the statement said. “We hope that the legacy of a figure at the forefront of establishing the relations between Israel and Ireland, and the fight against antisemitism and tyranny, will still get the respect it deserves today.”
On Sunday, Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, stepped in, condemning the renaming proposal and calling for its withdrawal.
“The proposal would erase the distinctive and rich contribution to Irish life of the Jewish community over many decades, including actual participation in the Irish War of Independence and the emerging state,” he said in a statement. “This proposal is a denial of our history and will without a doubt be seen as antisemitic. It is overtly divisive and wrong.”
Later in the day, reports emerged that the council was indeed withdrawing the proposal, which had by then drawn condemnation from Jewish groups around the world as well. In a statement, the council’s chief executive, Richard Shakespeare, confirmed that the proposal would not come up for a vote at Monday’s meeting.
Shakespeare said the council’s commemorations and naming committee had not followed the “statutory procedures” required for a “secret ballot” to approve a renaming and that he would be sending the proposal back to the committee for reconsideration. He offered an apology without addressing the content of the criticism surrounding the proposal.
“On behalf of the Executive of the City Council, I wish to apologise for this administrative oversight,” Shakespeare said. “A detailed review of the administrative mis-steps will now be undertaken and a report furnished to the Lord Mayor and Councillors.”
Herzog Park is located in a neighborhood of Dublin that is home to other symbols of the city’s bygone Jewish past. It sits near the intersection of Zion Road and Orwell Road and is located a short walk from the city’s progressive synagogue, Orthodox synagogue and a new Chabad center, which recently opened Ireland’s first kosher restaurant in decades to acclaim from both Jewish and non-Jewish diners.
The City Council is also involved in a proposal to build apartments on the site of the Orthodox synagogue, which the Jewish community put up for sale several years ago amid what local Jewish leaders said was a shift toward secularism among the city’s Jews.
“Herzog Park is more than a name on a sign. For the neighbouring Jewish families and schools, it is a place filled with memory, and a quiet reminder that our community has deep roots in Dublin,” Yoni Wieder, who was inaugurated as Ireland’s chief rabbi last year, said in a statement.
“When the park was named in honour of Chaim Herzog in 1995, it was a recognition not just of one man, but a chapter of shared Irish-Jewish history. That history has not changed, and it cannot be undone by motions or votes,” Wieder said. “The Jewish story in Ireland deserves to be acknowledged, not quietly removed.”
The post After facing criticism, Dublin tables proposal to rename Herzog Park — for now appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Palestinian-American teen from Florida freed from Israeli detention after 9 months
(JTA) — A Palestinian-American teenager was freed last week after nine months in an Israeli detention facility, following advocacy for his release by 27 Democratic lawmakers.
Mohammed Ibrahim, 16, of Palm Bay, Florida, was arrested in February while visiting his family in the West Bank. Israeli officials said he had thrown rocks at Israeli settlers, an allegation that Ibrahim and the Council on American-Islamic Relations denied.
Ibrahim initially confessed to throwing the rocks, but later said in an affidavit that he had confessed out of “sheer fear” after he claimed that the “interrogator threatened that if I did not comply, he would instruct the soldiers to beat me,” according to the Associated Press. Israeli law considers stone-throwing a serious offense punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
After a recent hearing in his case was delayed, he was released on Thursday. His family told the BBC that he had lost weight and was suffering from conditions sustained during his detention.
Ibrahim’s detention was first reported by the Guardian in July after his cousin, 20-year-old Palestinian-American Sayfollah Musallet, was killed during a confrontation with Israeli settlers in the West Bank.
The detention and killing took place amid flaring tensions in the West Bank, including sustained attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian villages and farmers, that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has denounced.
In October, a group of 27 Democratic lawmakers signed onto a letter urging Rubio to pressure the Israeli government to release Ibrahim.
“We write with grave concern regarding the detention without trial of Mohammed Zaher Ibrahim. Mohammed is a U.S. citizen from Florida who was reportedly blindfolded, handcuffed, and arrested on February 16th, 2025 when Israeli forces reportedly entered his family home in al-Mazra’a ash-Sharqiya at 3 a.m.,” the letter read. Some of the lawmakers called attention to Ibrahim’s cause subsequently, as well.
In a statement to the BBC, the state department said it was providing consular support to Ibrahim’s family, adding that “the Trump Administration has no higher priority than the safety and security of US citizens.”
The post Palestinian-American teen from Florida freed from Israeli detention after 9 months appeared first on The Forward.