■ IF ANYONE doubted that the Netanyahu era is in the twilight of its rule, this was obvious before US President Joe Biden made international headlines with his comment that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting Israel more than he’s helping.
One only had to peruse the weekend newspapers on International Women’s Day last Friday. Conspicuously absent from among the scores of female influencers and achievers in a wide range of professions, social entrepreneurship, and other activities was Sara Netanyahu.
A group of mothers of hostages who have been held captive in Gaza for well over 150 days received no response when they recently asked to meet with her. One of the mothers who was interviewed on radio two weeks after the request was made told Liat Regev on KAN Reshet Bet that since the request had been made two weeks earlier, nothing had been heard about a meeting one way or the other.
The mothers made allowance for the fact that Sara Netanyahu had been ill with the flu, and were even more generous in saying that they did not know whether the request had been passed on to her. In case it hadn’t, someone should have told her that the request was public knowledge.
In November, the Prime Minister’s Office reported that Sara Netanyahu met with families of hostages being held by Hamas, heard the families’ horrific stories, and spoke to them at length, family after family, about what they had gone through since October 7.
Battles in the media
■ ISRAEL’S MEDIA battles are proving tougher than its military wars. It would be bad enough if Israel had to contend only with the traditional media. But everyone has access to social media platforms, and everyone has the ability to spin fake news. Israel is being battered by fake news dispersers, as well as influencers who are calling for a ceasefire in the war with Hamas.
Sometimes social media activists pass on false information they have received, and sometimes they make it up themselves. The end result for anyone surfing the Internet is a sea of antisemitism and anti-Israelism. A lot of Zionist leaders say it’s one and the same thing, but a lot of antisemites say they have nothing against Jews, but they don’t like Israel because of the way it treats Palestinians; or, vice versa, they admire Israel but find that too many Jews are corrupt.
It’s doubtful that Eylon Levy, a well-known government spokesman, or Gil Hoffman, the executive director of Honest Reporting and a regular columnist for The Jerusalem Post, where he was previously the senior political reporter, would agree with either. Both will discuss their bouts with the media in a live appearance at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem on Wednesday, March 20, at 7:30 p.m. Admission charge is NIS 25.
To register and purchase tickets go to the Begin Center website. Those unable to attend in person can watch the event on Zoom at 7:30 p.m. Israel time. The link to join the webinar on “Fighting the Media War” is:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86856135426
Webinar ID: 868 5613 5426
Must see exhibitions
■ IF YOU missed the opening of the Threading exhibition that opened at the Italian Museum and launched the current Jerusalem Biennale last Sunday, all you really missed were the speeches. It’s impossible to give due attention to exhibits when the room is packed with people who are busy talking, moving in all directions, or eating. All the galleries in the museum were crowded, and it was difficult to properly view and appreciate the works on display.
There will be other openings of different exhibits this week. Altogether, there are more than 30 exhibitions in almost as many venues, in addition to solidarity exhibitions that were and are being held in North and South America and in Europe, featuring some of the Jerusalem exhibitors.
The biennale was originally supposed to open in November, but was delayed by the October 7 assault on the Gaza border communities.
Among the exhibitors was well-known Jerusalem artist Heddy Breuer Abramowitz, who is also a copy editor and writer at the Post.
Abramowitz’s work is a repurposed Passover Seder towel, which she believes came from her grandmother’s dowry, and on which she has traced the hands of members of her family. Her work is displayed alongside historical textile works from the museum’s collection and those of contemporary Jewish women artists.
One of the people who specially flew in from abroad for the occasion was James Snyder, the director of the famed New York Jewish Museum and a former long-term director of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.
Snyder, who was inundated by friends and acquaintances, including many from his most recent position as executive chairman of the New York-based Jerusalem Foundation Inc., recalled that Rami Ozeri, the founder and creative director of the Jerusalem Biennale, had approached him in 2011, when he was director of the Israel Museum, to tell him that his dream was to establish a Jerusalem Biennale to promote Jewish art.
Snyder, who is an art historian who spent many years in executive positions in New York’s Museum of Modern Art before he came to the Israel Museum, told Ozeri that there’s no such thing as Jewish art. “There’s art and there’s Judaism,” and if Ozeri was willing to accept that premise, he would help him. And that’s how the Jerusalem Biennale began. Snyder found it quite emotional, particularly as the central theme dedicated to women’s creativity was decided long before October 7.
As far as he was aware, the Jewish Museum is the only one in New York dealing with exhibits related to October 7, but unlike the biennale, the decision to focus on women’s creativity was made after October 7 and not before. The Jewish Museum will also begin to show exhibits related to expressions of antisemitism.
Daniel Niv, the recently appointed director of the Italian Museum, said that instead of looking backward at the magnificent legacy of Italian art, the new policy is to look forward. The museum directorate is now looking forward to expanding horizons.
Israel's future
■ SOCIETAL ENTREPRENEUR Gidi Grinstein, the founder and president of the Reut Institute, an Israel-based strategy and action group focused on effecting change in areas critical to Israel’s future, and the founder and president of Tikkun Olim Makers, was invited to a conference that took place last month in Abu Dhabi.
The invitation was issued by Dr. Firas Habbal and Dr. Fawaz Habbal of the Emirates Scholar Research Center on the basis of an article Grinstein had written highlighting the legacy of Abraham and Moses as the founding origin of tolerance in humanity.
Grinstein was asked to participate and contribute to the conference on Dialogue of Civilizations and Tolerance. He was also given an award.
Such a moment of coexistence and a message of peace and coexistence can only happen in, and come from, the UAE, he declared.
The primary reason for the invitation was the work of Tikkun Olam Makers across religious, political, and national lines, inspired by the teaching of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks that “the best way to heal a broken society is to build things together.” At the conference, which was sponsored by the UAE’s Ministry of Tolerance and Coexistence, Grinstein spoke about Sacks and his legacy to representatives of religions and cultures from around the world.
He was not the only Israeli or Jewish participant.
After October 7, he thought that the invitation might be withdrawn. But no. Together with other Jews and Israelis – among them Einat Levi, Rabbi Naomi Kalish, Rabba Tamar Elad-Appelbaum, and Huda Raphael – he was contacted prior to the conference with the assurance that he and all other Israelis would be welcome. “After the October 7 massacre and during the war in Gaza, they called me to make sure that I was still coming: ‘Mr. Gidi, you are our guest. You are welcome. Please come.’”
The organizers wanted all the invitees to attend, regardless of the war between Israel and Hamas.
Smitten by the UAE, Grinstein describes it as “an incredible country, where tolerance is not only a value upheld and celebrated in the public domain by government and society, but also a pillar of their national security. The Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, where an equal-size mosque, church, and synagogue dwell in one space and on one platform, is absolutely awe-inspiring conceptually and architecturally.”
The legendary Barbra Streisand
■ AS SHE tours America promoting her 1,000-page memoir, My name is Barbra, superstar singer and actress Barbra Streisand is garnering loads of publicity and reviews enhanced by her receiving a Life Achievement Award presented to her last month by the Screen Actors Guild in Los Angeles.
An interesting side to her character was recently revealed in a New York Times obituary for New York-born expert on, and dealer in, antiques Bruce Newman, a flamboyant member of the tribe like Streisand.
In his own memoir, Newman wrote that Streisand is very knowledgeable about antiques, and is familiar with the names of the great furniture designers of the ’30s and ’40s.
On one occasion when Newman visited Streisand in her apartment, she showed him a kitschy pink and blue porcelain mirror, in a frame covered with cupids, flowers, and ribbons. She asked his opinion, and he replied that it was not the most beautiful object. “I know,” she told him. “I bought this mirror with the first buck I ever earned singing. I keep it here to remind myself of the time when I didn’t have any money.”
War and journalism
■ JOURNALISTS WORK in a vacuum. We never know who is reading what we write or how it affects them, unless their reaction is to send a letter to the editor or, in this digital age, they make direct contact with the writer.
In January of this year, the writer of this column wrote a feature about one of Israel’s most widely known Holocaust survivors, Rena Quint. The article was published in In Jerusalem, the local supplement of the Post, and in the paper’s digital edition. It apparently stirred memories for Richard Marcus of Silver Spring, Maryland, who at the beginning of this week, sent the following email.
“I just came across your article on Rena Quint which appeared in The Jerusalem Post in January. I was an elementary school student of hers back in the early 1960s in Brooklyn, New York. I had her as a teacher the year she got married; our entire class attended her huppah, and while we were all so happy and excited for her getting married, we were also so sad she would not finish out the academic year. We loved her.
“I was so pleased to see her alive and well and still doing good work. I would like to contact her. Do you have any contact information for her? Or if you are not keen on divulging it, could you somehow forward this message to her? I’d like to be in touch before it’s too late.... The school was the East Midwood Day School.”
Hopefully, his letter may be read by others who were in the same class, and will help to facilitate a virtual reunion not only with their beloved teacher but with each other.
Herzog's message
■ WHILE HIS wife has been traveling around the country during the month devoted to International Women’s Day to participate in a variety of events, President Herzog sent a message to the well-attended IWD event hosted by the Ambassadors’ Club of Israel, which was held last Friday at the Hagana Museum in Tel Aviv.
While the courage and ingenuity of women was highlighted at most such events, the ACI has consistently related to Women of Valor at its annual IWD events.
Herzog said that he was pleased to acknowledge the extraordinary women living through extraordinary moments. He characterized women in general as a remarkable force of courage as well as “a voice of dignity, pride and affirmation of life.”
Relating to the unspeakable crimes against humanity perpetrated by Hamas, Herzog declared: “No amount of brutality can erase our humanity.” He also urged the diplomatic corps to demand the immediate release of the hostages being held by Hamas.
Both Herzog and ACI president Yitzhak Eldan referred to the 19 female hostages, who have been subjected to barbaric behavior and inhuman conditions, and who at that time had spent 154 days in captivity with no sign that their predicament would soon be history.
Eldan also referred to the female soldiers participating in the wars against Hamas and Hezbollah and the thousands of women in the North and the South who have been displaced from their homes.
He is proud that Israel “is blessed with highly motivated and capable women who perform like men, if not better.”
“We gathered here today not only to celebrate Israeli women’s heroism and diplomatic excellence, but also to raise our voice against those international women’s organizations which kept silent, indifferent to the tragedy of the Israeli women on October 7 and since that day,” said Eldan.
“It took five months for the United Nations to recognize the facts. How long will it take them to declare Hamas and Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations?”
Although the ACI is not a political organization, said Eldan, “we expect the world to put politics aside and condemn unequivocally the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas and Islamic Jihad.”
Women of Valor citations were awarded to the late Amit Man, the Kibbutz Be’eri paramedic who was represented by her mother and sisters; Nasreen Yosef from Moshav Yated; Tali Hadad and Border Police officer Amit Gur, from Ofakim; Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda, commander of Carakal, the IDF’s female combat battalion; Inbal Liberman, from Kibbutz Nir Am; and producer, actress, author, and unofficial spokeswoman for Israel Noa Tishby, who lives in Los Angeles, represented by her mother.
Special citations were also given to members of the diplomatic community. This year the honorees were: Kanta Rizal, the ambassador of Nepal, and Asako Mizushima, the wife of the ambassador of Japan.
Loving the country you serve
■ SOME AMBASSADORS fall in love with at least one of the countries in which they serve, and return from time to time after completing their terms. This applies to several American ambassadors who returned to Israel, and to some from other countries who served in lower diplomatic capacities but rose in the ranks and, after reaching ambassadorial status, asked to be sent to Israel.
Former Australian ambassador Dave Sharma was so enamored with Israel that he asked for and received an extension of his term. On returning home, he was a sought-after speaker at Jewish events.
Because his wife is also a diplomat, who put her career on hold while he was ambassador, he resigned from the Foreign Service and went into politics. He is now a senator for the state of New South Wales.
He has been back to Israel in a nondiplomatic capacity, and is coming again in May as the coleader of a technology trade mission together with Dan Andrews, a former premier of Victoria, David Gold, a tech entrepreneur and investor, and John McLindon, a tech founder and the CEO of SwiftFox CRM.
Mission members will meet with heads of some of Israel’s leading start-ups, venture capitalists, academic leaders of innovative technologies, and political leaders. They will also visit historic sites in Jerusalem and other parts of the country.
In the latter respect, Sharma will be able to add his own knowledge, not only from the perspective of a former ambassador but also as a keen cyclist who used to ride his bike from his residence in Herzliya Pituah to his office in Tel Aviv, and sometimes from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and even to Beersheba.
Breaking the Silence
■ THERE ARE none so blind as those who will not see, and none so deaf as those who will not hear. Many doubts have been cast at members of Breaking the Silence, a movement of Israeli Army veterans from different units and periods who have fought in Gaza, and who have returned home with tales that are far from complimentary to Israel.
Most Israelis don’t want to hear these stories, because they cast a blemish on the image that Israel wants to convey, and more important they do damage to the IDF and its reputation of moral integrity. The reluctance to believe these stories is understandable. On the other hand, soldiers who served at different times, and who are still reservists, are telling similar stories.
On Wednesday, March 13, at 7:30 p.m., Breaking the Silence will convene at Radical House, 27 Hatehiya Street, Tel Aviv, to probe what led to the events of October 7.
Prof. Yagil Levy, from the Open University, will speak on the role of Breaking the Silence, after which people who served as soldiers in Gaza during three different periods, including the current Operation Swords of Iron, will share their experiences and observations.
Kosher cooking
■ CELEBRITY CHEF Assaf Granit and his partner Uri Navon are finally going to be kosher. After all the nonkosher restaurants that their Machneyuda Group has opened in Israel, London, and Paris in the past, their upcoming venture in Jerusalem’s Rehavia neighborhood will be, according to a report in Yediot Aharonot, a kosher dairy and fish restaurant.
But that’s not all. The restaurant will be integral to a 22-room boutique hotel, which will be their first step into the hotel industry. The hotel will be housed in the Molcho building, which is a protected heritage site.