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
London Police Set Up Specialist Jewish Protection Team
A police officer stands at the scene, after a man was arrested following a stabbing incident in the Golders Green area, which is home to a large Jewish population, in London, Britain, April 29, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
British police are setting up a new team of 100 officers including counter terrorism specialists to help protect Jewish communities across London after a series of antisemitic attacks including the stabbing of two men.
The plan announced on Wednesday for a dedicated protection team comes as officers announced more arrests for antisemitism, including detaining a 35-year-old man on Saturday after rocks were thrown at an ambulance belonging to the Jewish community.
London‘s top police boss Mark Rowley said Jewish communities were facing “sustained threats” from hostile state actors as well as extreme right-wing groups, elements of the extreme left, and Islamist terrorists.
Detectives are examining whether the arson incidents have possible Iranian links, after British security officials warned that Iran was using criminal proxies to carry out hostile activity.
Since late March, there have been a number of high-profile arson attacks with four Jewish ambulances burned and synagogues targeted. Last week, two Jewish men were also stabbed. Both victims survived the attack.
Over the past four weeks, police said they had arrested around 50 people for antisemitic hate crimes and charged eight individuals. On top of that, 28 arrests have been made as part of investigations alongside counter terrorism policing for arson and other serious incidents.
“This new team will be primarily focused on protecting the Jewish community, which faces some of the highest levels of hate crime alongside significant terrorist and hostile state threats,” said a statement from London‘s Metropolitan Police force.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer convened a meeting on Monday with business, health and cultural leaders aimed at trying to tackle antisemitism.
Uncategorized
Iran Reviewing US Proposal to End War, Though Key Demands Remain Unaddressed
People walk on a street near a mural featuring an image of the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, May 6, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran said on Wednesday it was reviewing a US peace proposal that sources said would formally end the war while leaving unresolved the key US demands that Iran suspend its nuclear program and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
An Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson cited by Iran‘s ISNA news agency said Tehran would convey its response. US President Donald Trump said he believed Iran wanted an agreement.
“They want to make a deal. We’ve had very good talks over the last 24 hours, and it’s very possible that we’ll make a deal,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Wednesday.
Earlier in the day, Trump had sounded more pessimistic about the chances of a deal. In a Truth Social post, he threatened to restart the US bombing campaign in Iran, calling the possibility of Tehran agreeing to the latest US proposal a “big assumption.”
Trump has repeatedly played up the prospect of an agreement that would end the war that started Feb. 28, so far without success. The two sides remain at odds over a variety of difficult issues, such as Iran‘s nuclear ambitions and its control of the Strait of Hormuz, which before the war handled one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas supply.
A Pakistani source and another source briefed on the mediation said an agreement was close on a one-page memorandum that would formally end the conflict. That would kick off discussions to unblock shipping through the strait, lift US sanctions on Iran, and set curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, the sources said.
It was unclear how the memorandum differs from a 14-point plan proposed by Iran last week, and Iran has yet to respond to the latest US proposal.
Iran‘s semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an unnamed source, said the US proposal contained some unacceptable provisions, without specifying which ones.
Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, a spokesperson for parliament’s powerful foreign policy and national security committee, described the text as “more of an American wish-list than a reality.”
“The Americans will not gain anything in a war they are losing that they have not gained in face-to-face negotiations,” he wrote on social media.
OIL PRICES TUMBLE
Reports of a possible agreement caused global oil prices to tumble to two-week lows, with benchmark Brent crude futures falling around 11% to around $98 a barrel at one point before rising back above the $100 mark.
Global share prices also leapt and bond yields fell on optimism about an end to a war that has disrupted energy supplies.
Trump on Tuesday paused a two-day-old naval mission to reopen the blockaded strait, citing progress in peace talks.
The US military has kept up its own blockade on Iranian ships in the region. US Central Command said forces fired at an unladen Iranian-flagged tanker on Wednesday, disabling the vessel as it attempted to sail toward an Iranian port in violation of the blockade.
NO MENTION OF KEY US DEMANDS
The source briefed on the mediation said the US negotiations were being led by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner. If both sides agreed on the preliminary deal, that would start the clock on 30 days of detailed negotiations to reach a full agreement.
The full agreement would end the competing US and Iranian blockades on the strait, lift US sanctions, and release frozen Iranian funds. It would also include some curbs on Iran‘s nuclear program, with the aim of a pause or moratorium on Iranian enrichment of uranium.
While the sources said the memorandum would not initially require concessions from either side, they did not mention several key demands Washington has made in the past, which Iran has rejected, such as curbs on Iran‘s missile program and an end to its support for proxy militias in the Middle East.
The sources also made no mention of Iran‘s existing stockpile of more than 400 kg (900 pounds) of near-weapons-grade uranium.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump’s ally against Iran, said on Wednesday the two leaders agreed that all enriched uranium must be removed from Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear bomb.
Tehran denies wanting to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Uncategorized
Brussels cathedral installs plaques apologizing for medieval antisemitic persecution depicted in stained glass
(JTA) — More than 650 years after Jews in Brussels were executed and expelled following false antisemitic accusations, church officials at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula have installed a plaque apologizing for the persecution commemorated in its stained glass windows.
At a ceremony on April 27, Archbishop Luc Terlinden of Mechelen-Brussels and Rabbi Albert Guigui, the chief rabbi of Brussels, unveiled four plaques, written in Dutch, French, English and Hebrew, providing historical context for the windows and an apology for the antisemitic persecution tied to the events they depict.
The plaques, which Terlinden signed, state that “baseless accusations of the desecration of the Eucharistic host were made against Jewish communities” in medieval Europe and that the accusations “led to persecution, massacres, and unjustifiable expulsions.” The windows show Jews being executed at the stake in response to their alleged attacks on the Eucharist, bread that Catholic doctrine considers a literal representation of Jesus’ body.
“Theological and social anti-Judaism is in direct contradiction with the Gospel of Christ, which calls for truth, justice, and brotherhood,” the plaques say. “We ask forgiveness from the Jewish people for the suffering these accusations have caused.”
The stained glass windows in the cathedral depict the “Brussels Host Desecration,” an antisemitic accusation in 1370 that Jews had desecrated communion wafers, leading to the execution of Jews in Brussels and the expulsion of the city’s Jewish community.
The windows have drawn scrutiny for decades, particularly as the Catholic Church sought to reckon with its history of antisemitism. In 1969, shortly after the landmark Nostra Aetate declaration rejecting longstanding anti-Jewish Catholic doctrine, the Archbishop of Brussels ordered that several paintings be removed and a plaque be mounted to offer context about the remaining depictions.
Several years later, the European Jewish Congress noted last week, Catholic leaders did install a plaque that drew readers’ attention to “the biased nature of the accusations [against the Jews accused of the desecration] and to the legendary presentation of the ‘miracle.’”
But Flora Cassen, the director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies and a scholar of European antisemitism, said the existing plaque was “very ambiguous about the responsibility and what happened” and installed in an easy-to-miss location. The new plaques, she said, contain a clear and “very moving” apology and cannot be missed by anyone who comes to see the windows.
“The significance is enormous of the church finally putting a plaque there that tells the story, that acknowledges the antisemitism behind it, that acknowledges that it was a slander and that it resulted in persecution and in the execution of Jews in Brussels and their expulsion,” Cassen said.
The new plaques cite Nostra Aetate and the Catholic Church’s subsequent effort under Pope John Paul II to reckon with historical antisemitism in 2000. They affirm the church’s “commitment to combat all forms of antisemitism, to deepen dialogue between Jews and Christians, and to pass on to future generations a clear remembrance, based on the acknowledgement of truth and mutual respect.”
While some have called for the historic windows to be removed, Guigui said in a statement that the plaques represented an appropriate way to address relics of historical antisemitism.
“What matters today is how we look at these images,” the rabbi said. “They must not be erased, because they are part of history, but they must be accompanied by explanation and moral insight in order to understand the context and avoid repeating past mistakes.”
The post Brussels cathedral installs plaques apologizing for medieval antisemitic persecution depicted in stained glass appeared first on The Forward.