The week’s must-reads: Making sense of a PM’s indictment and 5 other stories
Why an intransigent Netanyahu is bad for Israel * How climate change will fan the flames in Israel * Beloved and loathed PM Golda Meir * Photographer shoots a rainbow of Jews
The people of Israel entered this week not knowing who would head the government in the near future, and ended the week on the same footing — but under very different circumstances.
A day after Blue and White leader Benjamin Gantz failed to form a new coalition government and returned the mandate to President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was charged with criminal wrongdoing in three separate cases against him and will stand trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.
The Times of Israel’s overworked political correspondent Raoul Wootliff explains Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision, the first time in Israel’s history that a sitting prime minister is facing criminal charges.
The charges, writes Wootliff, cast a heavy shadow over Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving premier, and his ongoing attempts to remain in power.
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In an analytical op-ed, the Times of Israel’s founding editor David Horovitz describes the ripple effect for all Israelis of a prime minister who, while professing respect for Israel’s law enforcement community, goes on to castigate it, repeatedly, in the harshest terms.
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In other grave news, our environment reporter Sue Surkes spoke with leading climate change researcher Prof. James (Jim) Salinger, who said that if we think Israel is hot now, just wait until immensely hotter temperatures are the norm by 2050.
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This week, the Anti-Defamation League released figures that show that roughly one in four Europeans harbors strongly negative attitudes toward Jews. Deputy Jewish World editor Yaakov Schwartz brings the story, reporting that according to a worldwide 2019 poll on anti-Semitism commissioned by the ADL, respondents from countries in Central and Eastern Europe showed a marked increase in anti-Semitic beliefs. Age-old stereotypes about Jews controlling business and finance, and being more loyal to Israel than to their home country, remain firmly entrenched.
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Jewish World editor Amanda Borschel-Dan reports on what may be the sole archaeological remains of Bulgaria’s medieval Jewish community, currently being uncovered in the country’s ancient capital of Tarnovgrad (today’s Veliko Tarnovo). The proposed Jewish house of worship was discovered on the outskirts of a medieval fortress complex located on the city’s Trapezitsa Hill. If confirmed as a synagogue after further research, it would be the only one from Bulgaria during this era, and one of only a handful of medieval synagogues discovered throughout the continent.
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Beloved by Diaspora Jews (for more than her widely circulated chicken soup recipe), Israel’s only female prime minister Golda Meir has a much more nuanced perception in the Holy Land. Times of Israel film writer Jordan Hoffman speaks with Shani Rozanes, an Israeli filmmaker living in Berlin and one of the three directors behind “Golda,” which aims to bring balance to that picture.
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What, or who, is a “typical” Jew? This is the question deliciously unanswered in photographer John Offenbach’s new book, “Jew.” Offenbach, whose book forms the basis for the Jewish Museum of London’s latest exhibition, also entitled “Jew,” has many stories to tell about his subjects, some of which he shares with London correspondent Jenni Frazer.
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