Aryeh's Israel Outlook

[ Published July 30 '23 at https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-752794.] Lessons for Israel: Love means being able to say sorry - opinion We need a professional mediator to enable effective communication in a series of closed meetings to bridge the gaps over the summer. In   Love Story , Ali MacGraw’s dying character Jennifer says to Oliver (Ryan O’Neal), “Love means never having to say you’re sorry”. Two years later, when Barbara Streisand’s character repeats the line in the comedy   What’s Up Doc , O’Neal’s character exclaims, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!” Saying sorry is part of a healthy relationship. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong. Naturally, we offer apologies when we’re wrong. Even when we think we’re in the right, and that we’ve done nothing to cause pain, we can still be sorry. We can regret that the argument has generated hurt feelings, that both sides have suffered, and that a relationship has been damaged. Sometimes a tactical retreat, in ...

 [Published on Times of Israel May 4 '23 - https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/emotional-social-media-stampedes-and-israels-judicial-reform-debate/] Emotional Social Media Stampedes and Israel’s Judicial Reform Debate  As the New Knesset session opens, Israel is a divided nation (and people) today.  Perhaps not “as never before” as some claim (think of the Zionist/anti-Zionist debates of a century ago, the German reparations dispute soon after the country’s founding, or the more recent discord over the withdrawal from Sinai in 1981, the 1993 Oslo accords, the 1999 pullout from Lebanon, the disengagement from Gaza in 2005, just to name a few)… but somehow this time it seems more severe, more fateful.  Why is that? I’d like to suggest here a number of ideas which, taken together, suggest not only an explanation of how we got here, but a way out of the morass and a way forward, together.   And I do so in the spirit of, and in honor of, Rabbi Leo Dee and his call f...