09 November 2026 – President Herzog taps Eisenkot to form a coalition and more on The Israel Brief.
10 November 2026 – New Knesset sworn in and more on The Israel Brief.
11 November 2026 – 13 US states warn the UK and The Netherlands about sanctions against Israelis communities, honouring Veterans on The Israel Brief.
12 November 2026 – Lewis Hamilton, stay in your lane! This and more plus your mensches and morons on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
We Were Slaves in Lithuania. Lithuania Calls It Marginal.
By Grant Gochin
Next spring, at Seder tables around the world, a child will ask why this night is different from all other nights. The family will answer with the sentence at the heart of the Haggadah: Avadim hayinu le-Pharaoh be-Mitzrayim. We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.
For generations, Jews have retold an enslavement more than three thousand years old. The Mishnah requires each of us, in every generation, to see himself as though he personally came out of Egypt. We eat the bitter herb so that the slavery stays in the mouth and does not retreat into a textbook.
That leaves a question I cannot put down. We keep Pharaoh’s whip alive across three millennia. We do not keep the Lithuanian county head’s labor order, the Lithuanian policeman’s rifle or the hands a Lithuanian farmer tied, though all of them belong to the lifetime of people still alive.
In 1941, Jews were enslaved in Lithuania. Lithuanian officials listed them, Lithuanian police guarded them and Lithuanian farmers worked them, under rules the German occupier wrote. Most of them were then murdered.
Lithuania’s state Genocide and Resistance Research Centre published, on page 40 of its 2020 Holocaust volume, a description of Lithuanian participation as “essentially marginal.” The passage gets there by pointing up the German chain of command. I asked the Centre to correct or annotate it. On 3 November 2026, it refused.
My earlier articles in this series I set that one sentence beside the murders, the rapes, the murdered children and the plunder. Now I set it beside the slavery.
A note on sources. Nothing here depends on the Centre’s authority. Where I quote the Centre, I treat its words as claims about itself, not as proof. The facts come from wartime documents, from historians working outside the Centre, and, where it cuts deepest, from the Centre’s own pages.
Jewish women return to the Kovno ghetto after forced labor on the outside. They line up to be searched by German and Lithuanian guards. Kovno, Lithuania, between 1941 and 1944.
AVADIM HAYINU: WE WERE SLAVES IN LITHUANIA
The occupier did not hide what the system was. On 13 August 1941, Reich Commissioner Hinrich Lohse ordered that Jews fit for work be drafted for forced labor. The historian Joachim Tauber, in Arbeit als Hoffnung, shows that their pay was to cover bare subsistence and was not to match the work done. In April 1942, Franz Murer told Vilnius employers in writing that the assignment of Jews to work “ist Zwangsarbeit” – forced labor. The money for that labor went into the Reich Commissioner’s budget.
The orders came from the Germans. The lists were made by Lithuanians.
On 7 August 1941, the Lithuanian head of Kaunas County ordered lists of all Jewish males aged 12 to 60, with their trades, for labor deployment. The order went to Lithuanian township heads and Lithuanian police posts. It reached down to boys of twelve, a year short of their bar mitzvah, to be recorded by trade.
The next day, the Lithuanian head of Alytus County reported to the Lithuanian Labor Organization Department, sorting the Jews of his county into age groups for work. On 20 July 1941, the Lithuanian Activist Front staff in Joniškis recorded that 30 to 40 Jews were used every day on roads and bridges. Under the Lithuanian General Council for Internal Affairs sat an Inspectorate of Forced Labor Camps, which supervised the camps and regulated their finances. The historian Christoph Dieckmann found its camp statutes, issued on 1 October 1941. When the German Security Police complained in 1943 about conditions in the camps of the state peat trust, the Generalkommissar replied that the camps had to use “freely recruited Lithuanians” as guards.
The Centre calls this marginal.
Jewish forced laborers at work making shoes in a ghetto workshop. Kovno, Lithuania, December 1943.
MA NISHTANA: FOUR QUESTIONS FOR THE CENTER
Pravieniškės was a forced-labor camp east of Kaunas. Dieckmann describes it in 1941 as mainly a labor camp for Jews. The Centre’s own journal records that the prisoners who worked its peat bog and forest “už darbą negaudavo jokio atlygio” – they received no payment for their work.
The same article records about 280 Jews shot at Pravieniškės in August 1941 and 253 more in September. It says the guards carried out the executions. For the killings of 1941, it names no one. The Yahad map of killing sites attributes the September shooting to members of a Lithuanian self-defense battalion, together with German troops.
Yakob Vizgordiski works at a machine in a factory in the Kovno ghetto in German-occupied Kaunas, Lithuania, between 1941 and 1943.
Forced labor without wages is slavery. The Centre wrote down the missing wages itself.
So, here are four questions for the Centre, in the form every Jewish child knows.
• Why is an order that reached down to boys of twelve marginal?
• Why is a peat bog where prisoners worked for nothing, and where about 533 Jews were shot, marginal?
• Why are farmers who bound women’s hands and feet and drove them to the pits marginal?
• Why are policemen who marched women and children to a labor camp, and then shot them, marginal?
The Centre’s answer rests on rank. The Germans gave the orders, so the Lithuanian part was secondary. Rank tells you who signed the directive. It does not tell you what happened to the boy on the list, the prisoner on the bog or the woman whose hands were tied. For each of them, the Lithuanian official, guard and farmer were the slavery. They were the ones in the room.
A group of children in the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania. This photograph was taken by George Kadish between 1941 and 1943.
MAROR: THE WOMEN OFTELŠIAI
The bitter herb at the Seder is meant to make the eyes water. Let it be Telšiai.
In the summer of 1941, the Jewish women of Telšiai were held at Geruliai. Their husbands, fathers and sons had already been shot. Yad Vashem’s record of the site preserves a survivor’s words: farmers would come to the camp and forcefully take the girls to work in the fields.
Khane Pelts survived to testify, and I set out her account in an earlier article. Some peasants, she said, kept the women to spare themselves the cost of servants, and “exploited the women with hard work.” Before Christmas, the women were ordered back, supposedly for health examinations. “Many peasants bound the hands and feet of their Jewish women and took them back.” Those who were a little late “brought the bound women directly to the pits near theRainiaicompound.”
Tauber records that the farmers paid the occupation authority three rubles a day for each Jewish woman. The farmer paid the German. Tauber’s account records nothing paid to her. She was taken by force from a camp where her family’s killers stood guard. She could not refuse and could not leave. When the farmers had no more use for her, they tied her hands and feet and delivered her to be shot.
The farmer paid three rubles for her day’s labor. What power did she have to refuse?
WORK, THEN THE PIT
At the Seder we sing Dayenu, “it would have been enough,” and count the gifts one by one.
The Centre’s word deserves its own count. Had the record held only the murders, it would have been enough to strike the word. Only the rapes – and it would have been enough. Only the murdered children. Only the plunder. Now add the slavery.
How much more does the Centre need?
“WE WERE SLAVES TO HITLER IN GERMANY”
Lithuanian collaborators guard Jews before their execution. Ponary, Lithuania, June–July, 1941.
The survivors did not wait for anyone’s permission to put their own slavery into the Seder. In April 1946, they gathered in Munich for the first Passover after liberation, led by the U.S. Army chaplain Abraham Klausner. The Haggadah they used was written by a Lithuanian Jew, Yosef Dov Sheinson, a Hebrew teacher from Kovno who had survived slave-labor camps in the Dachau complex. Klausner’s preamble said it plainly: Pharaoh and Egypt had given way to Hitler and Germany. Sheinson rewrote the opening line: “We were slaves to Hitler in Germany.”
Then came the moment that belongs to the youngest child. At every Seder table in the world, a small voice asks why this night is different. In Munich there was no small voice. The children had been murdered, and the Center for Jewish History calls their absence the first and most painful difference of that night. A survivor who was there later recalled that when the time came for the Four Questions, the room began to weep. Grown men, who had carried stones and dug graves, sat at the table and could not begin. Then one man asked the child’s question himself, and the others joined him, as JTA reported.
Next spring, a child will ask that question again. Somewhere in that room should be the memory of the children who could not ask it in Munich, and of the women in Telšiai who were never asked anything at all before their hands were tied.
On August 30, 1941, Jewish women from the towns of Telšiai, Alsedziai, Varniai, Zarenai, Laukuva, Luoke and Nevarenai were transported by Lithuanian policemen from the Geruliai camp, located ten kilometers from Telšiai, to pits dug in a forest a short distance away where they were shot by the pits, and buried. According to testimonies, Jewish children were thrown alive into the pits and then killed. Seen here after the war are two women at the site of a mass grave at Geruliai. (Photo Collection, 503/13777)
That is the precedent. Survivors who had been slaves months earlier made their own enslavement part of Passover. Sheinson’s opening line named the German master. He was writing in Germany, among the ruins of his own family, and owed no one a complete indictment.
Lithuania owes one, and it has had eighty years. A 2011 Centre study says provincial Jews were most likely “not regarded as a serious labor force.” Not serious enough to be kept alive. Serious enough to be listed by trade, guarded on the bog, rented to farmers and returned bound to the pits.
The IHRA working definition of Holocaust denial and distortion lists, as distortion, intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany. Lithuania is a member of IHRA. IHRA has not ruled on page 40. The Centre, however, was shown the record and expressly kept the word. Measure that conduct against the definition its own state adopted.
SAY IT ABOUT AMERICA
Try the word on another history. Suppose an institution of the American government called the overseers, the slave patrols and the slave traders “essentially marginal,” because the laws were made elsewhere, and refused to correct it. No museum, university or official would stand beside it, and no Black American would be asked to prove that the overseer mattered to the man under his whip. American slavery was a crime of whips, rape, stolen children and auction blocks, but it ran on a cold arithmetic: an enslaved man was capital, and a dead slave was a loss on the books, so his owner kept him alive to work. In Lithuania, no one carried a Jew on the books. The Jew was a body waiting for a pit, and when the work ran out there was no sale and no inheritance, only bound hands and a trench. That was not a labor system that happened to kill. It was a killing system that paused for labor. So why do we Jews accept the word? Lithuanian officials are welcomed by Jewish organizations and photographed at Jewish events while the state’s Genocide Centre keeps “marginal” in print. No Black community in America would sit for that photograph.
BE-KHOL DOR VA-DOR: IN EVERY GENERATION
The Haggadah says that in every generation they rise up to destroy us. It also says that in every generation we must see ourselves as though we left Egypt. The two sentences belong together. Memory is how Jews answer those who would erase them.
Pharaoh is not distorting anything. A European Union member state is, today, with a state budget behind it.
The Centre can still act. It can correct or annotate page 40. It can answer the forced-labor record, document by document. The Seimas, to which the Centre answers, can ask why it refused.
Until then, I ask every rabbi, every community and every family that will sit at a Seder table this Passover to add one more remembrance to the night:
We were slaves in Lithuania. We were listed by Lithuanian officials, guarded by Lithuanian police and worked on Lithuanian farms, within the lives of our parents and grandparents. Lithuania’s Genocide Centre calls their part marginal. Tonight we remember them, and we refuse the word.
Let the youngest child ask a fifth question: Why on this night do we remember Telšiai, Dimitravas, Pravieniškės and Aleksotas? Let the answer be: Because the state that holds their records calls the Lithuanian part marginal, and we will not let that word stand.
What was marginal about binding a woman’s hands and feet and delivering her to the slaughter pits?
About the writer:
Grant Arthur Gochin currently serves as the Honorary Consul for the Republic of Togo. He is the Emeritus Special Envoy for Diaspora Affairs for the African Union, which represents the fifty-five African nations, and Emeritus Vice Dean of the Los Angeles Consular Corps, the second largest Consular Corps in the world. Gochin is actively involved in Jewish affairs, focusing on historical justice. He has spent the past twenty five years documenting and restoring signs of Jewish life in Lithuania. He has served as the Chair of the Maceva Project in Lithuania, which mapped / inventoried / documented / restored over fifty abandoned and neglected Jewish cemeteries. Gochin is the author of “Malice, Murder and Manipulation”, published in 2013. His book documents his family history of oppression in Lithuania. He is presently working on a project to expose the current Holocaust revisionism within the Lithuanian government. Professionally, Gochin is a Certified Financial Planner and practices as a Wealth Advisor in California, where he lives with his family.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Insights into what gave this New York’s legendary landmark its magnetic bohemian charm.
By Motti Verses
Last weekend marks the tenth anniversary of the passing of Leonard Cohen, the Jewish Canadian singer-songwriter and poet behind “Hallelujah” and “Suzanne”. Cohen was by far my favorite singer during my university years and as a hotel enthusiast, I can think of no more fitting moment to revisit New York’s Hotel Chelsea, which he called home during part of his early musical career. This is also a story of a remarkable Jewish talent, the generosity of a less recognized Jewish hotelier and a bygone chapter of Jewish life in one of Manhattan’s renowned neighborhoods.
Manthattan Marvel. Looming large not only architetually but culturally, the Hotel Chelsea on West 23rd Street emerged as one of the city’s greatest unofficial artist colonies, given the proliferation of renowned novelists, poets, painters, playwrights, actors, filmmakers, and musicians who put head to pillow at the Chelsea. (Photo: Wikipedia)
“I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, you were famous, your heart was a legend. You told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you would make an exception,” Cohen sings in his 1974 candid, bittersweet classic “Chelsea Hotel #2” recalling his brief, intimate encounter he shared with American blues-rock icon Janis Joplin. Words that have outlived them both.
Elevator Encounter. Leonard Cohen and Janis Joplin (left) famously met in the Chelsea Hotel’s elevator in the spring of 1968 after Joplin was originally looking for musician Kris Kristofferson. Years later, he turned their encounter into “Chelsea Hotel #2.” ( Photo: Gorupdebesanez / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA) 3.0. Left photo:Publicity photo / Wikimedia Commons, public domain (US).
For me, a walk along Manhattan’s 23rd Street inevitably leads to this legendary hotel, where Cohen’s voice seems to linger behind the red-brick façade and wrought-iron balconies. Here, he found a place to write, kindred spirits and an encounter with Joplin that would become part of music history.
The Chelsea Hotel occupies a distinctive place in the history of hospitality: a hotel with a soul, where an innkeeper’s personal judgement helped shape a community of artists. Its legend grew from the people who lived, created and connected there. Their stories made the building itself a cultural destination.
Shining Light. New York’s Hotel Chelsea at dusk, its glowing neon sign illuminating the red-brick façade and ornate iron balconies. (Photo courtesy of Hotel Chelsea.)
In the Chelsea of the 1960s, Victorian grandeur survived beneath decades of wear. Ornamental iron balconies dressed the exterior, while inside, faded furnishings and worn surfaces told a less glamorous story. Some rooms were basic; others retained fireplaces, high ceilings and the generous proportions of a more prosperous age. Elegance and neglect could occupy the same room.
For audiences who watched ‘A Complete Unknown’, the film about Bob Dylan’s early years, the atmosphere may feel familiar. The film’s evocation of the hotel dim interiors, weathered walls and rooms where music mattered more than appearances offers a way of imagining the world Cohen would enter a few years later.
Musician Musing. An AI generated image of young Leonard Cohen in the 1960s in his Hotel Chelsea bedroom
The Chelsea began life in the 1880s as a cooperative apartment building. Converted into a hotel in 1905, it gradually became an address where artists could find affordable accommodation and one another. By the time Cohen arrived, its corridors connected established names, unknown talents and people whose ambitions might never pay the rent.
Presiding over this unlikely household was Stanley Bard, the Jewish manager and co-owner who became almost as inseparable from the Chelsea’s identity as its famous residents. Born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, Bard followed his father into the business. Under Bard, the hotel developed a remarkably personal approach to the people who called it home. He so valued and trusted aspiring artists, writers and musicians, he famously would tell his struggling residents, “Don’t worry, keep painting” and would accept their work in lieu of cash allowing broke creators to keep a roof over their heads while leaving the hotel lobby and hallways filled with an evolving gallery of contemporary works.
New York Elegance. The posh lobby of today’s New York’s Hotel Chelsea, with its ornate ceiling, warm lighting and eclectic furnishings. (Photo courtesy of Hotel Chelsea.)
Truly a bygone hotelier, Bard’s support for struggling artists was legendary. In a documentary interview, he described the atmosphere at the Chelsea as so conducive for creativity that he was happy to reduce their rent, defer payment or accept an artwork against a bill.
There was business instinct alongside patronage. Famous residents attracted paying visitors, and Bard’s prices and patience could depend on his relationship with a tenant. He could be demanding, mercurial and generous. The community he cultivated made the Chelsea a hotel unlike any other.
The Canadian songwriter, singer and poet experienced that personal hospitality. In an interview, Cohen recalled telling Stanley Bard that he did not need a suite. Bard insisted he take it anyway, without charging him the suite rate. It is a small but revealing detail: a room assigned through conversation, guided by an innkeeper’s sense of who belonged there.
Cohen came to New York in 1966. After staying elsewhere in the city, he was drawn to the Chelsea Hotel because he had heard he might meet “people of my own kind.” The hotel supplied both solitude and companionship. It also provided a setting for his professional breakthrough: a Columbia Records producer heard him perform in his room, helping open the way to his recording career.
Loitering in the Lobby. One of the most iconic and successful rock performers of her era, Janis Joplin is seen here inside the Hotel Chelsea in 1969. (Photo by David Gahr.)
The encounter that gave the hotel its most enduring Cohen association came in 1968. As he later told the story, he met Janis Joplin in the lift. She was looking for the tall-rugged music writer Kris Kristofferson; Cohen jokingly claimed to be him. Their brief sexual encounter became the subject of “Chelsea Hotel #2”, transforming a private memory into a song that would forever link their names to the building.
Writer’s Room. Arthur Miller (center) with (l-r) Robert Whitehead and Elia Kazan working on the production of the play ‘After the Fall’ in the Chelsea Hotel, 1963. Miller lived at Hotel Chelsea in Room 614, where he wrote After the Fall, a play said to reflect his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. His years at the hotel remain part of its literary legacy. (Inge Morath / The Inge Morath Foundation / Magnum Photos)
Other Jewish musicians, including Bob Dylan, passed through the Chelsea Hotel’s world. Jewish writers such as Arthur Miller also formed part of its extraordinary cultural history. Yet daily life in the hotel depended equally on residents who never became famous.
Warm Welcoming. The impressive fireside seating area in today’s Hotel Chelsea’s lobby, framed by colourful artworks and an intricately carved mantelpiece would have in earlier days warmly welcomed writers like Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas, and Arthur C. Clarke who would have sat through New York winters, burning wood while drafting manuscripts, arguing over art, or weathering personal crises. (Photo courtesy of Hotel Chelsea.)
Stepping out onto 236 West 23rd Street, leads to another Jewish story at Congregation Emunath Israel, known as the Chelsea Shul. Founded in 1865, the congregation moved into a former Presbyterian church in 1920, introducing stained-glass windows and Jewish symbolism. It initially served many Jewish immigrants working in the bustling garment and fashion industries – tailors, sewing-machine operators, cutters and pressers to proprietors of workshops and clothing businesses. Today it remains a spiritual hub through partnerships with Chabad of Chelsea and JGrads NYC, catering heavily to young professionals and students in the area. Whether Leonard Cohen ever prayed there is unclear, but its proximity adds another layer to the Jewish history of this stretch of Manhattan.
Religious Roots. Leonard Cohen backstage at Newport Folk Festival in 1967. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Montreal in 1934, his Lithuanian Jewish mother, Marsha Klonitsky, immigrated to Canada from Kaunas (Kovno) in 1927 and was the daughter of Talmudic writer and rabbi Solomon Klonitsky-Kline. His paternal grandfather, who had emigrated from Poland to Canada, was Canadian Jewish Congress founding president Lyon Cohen. (Photo: David Gahr)
Today’s Hotel Chelsea offers a markedly different experience. Following a prolonged redevelopment, it reopened in 2022 under new ownership, years after Cohen’s death. Some longstanding residents remained as the building began welcoming travellers again, now as a luxury hotel. Historic marble, mouldings and the staircase were preserved, while guest rooms acquired marble bathrooms, rainfall showers and contemporary comforts.
Street Saga. A short walk from the Hotel Chelsea on 222 West 23rd brings you to 236 West 23rd Street and the Congregation Emunath Israel, known as the Chelsea Shul. (Photo: Motti Verses)
Ten years after Cohen’s death, his song remains one of the Chelsea Hotel’s most intimate keepsakes. The hotel has secured its place in hospitality history by turning a residential address into a cultural institution. Its next chapter poses a different question: can the comforts of a luxury hotel coexist with the unconventional spirit that made the hotel a legend?
Leonard Cohen – Chelsea Hotel
*Feature picture: New York’s Hotel Chelsea, with the red-brick façade and ornate iron balconies. (Photo: Motti Verses).
About the writer:
The author, Motti Verses is a seasoned hotel expert, traveler, writer, and videographer, and formerly served as Head of Public Relations for Hilton Hotels & Resorts in Israel. Today, as a travel writer and hospitality trends analyst, his insights and experiences are regularly featured in leading Israeli media outlets.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Perspectives and insights from writers in the Arab media
If Israelis are battling to decipher their election results wondering where it will eventually lead, Arab writers in the region are no less curious and concerned. They see the 2026 election not as a purely internal Israeli affair but a strategic junction that could impact upon the Palestinian issue and the broader regional landscape.
Hardly a surprise, much of the Arab discourse reveals ambivalence. While on the one hand, many commentators make no secret of their hope that Israel’s current government will be replaced, on the other, these same commentators are skeptical of any meaningful policy change under an alternative Israeli government, particularly on the “issue of Palestine”.
While for Israelis, the distinction between their political camps is immense, for many Arab observers, they see the election less between “right” and “left” and more of “different shades of right.”
Below are two illuminating perspectives that capture the Arab understanding of Israel’s 2026 election and its uncertain aftermath.
David E. Kaplan
Editor Lay of the Land
November 9, 2026
(Articles Translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)
ISRAEL AFTER THE ELECTIONS: CONSENSUS OR CONFRONTATION?
By Tarek Fahmy
Al-Ittihad, UAE, October 31
Despite predictions that Israel’s parliamentary elections would produce no fundamentally new political reality and would merely extend the pattern established by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s previous governments, some within Israeli society, particularly former military officers, see a deeper problem. They believe Israeli voters remain heavily influenced by the domestic media and are unable to assess their country’s position within a complicated regional environment where Israel continues to face rejection and hostile developments that undermine its interests.
From this perspective, the electorate has failed to adopt a different approach to the challenges confronting Israel. This requires a serious reassessment, particularly because no incoming government will easily repair the country’s internal divisions. Instead, it will operate through familiar coalition arrangements and complicated political calculations, pursuing compromises designed to satisfy its supporters rather than confronting the larger questions of Israel’s future, its ability to preserve past achievements and the need to rebuild a society facing a profound crisis.
The likely outcome reflects a bleak reality for a society unable to escape the pressure of the right, which will remain the dominant political force, or adequately absorb the changes taking place around it. Much of the electoral speculation centered on the composition of the next government and the emergence of new political figures from the military establishment, often without substantial political or economic experience.
Yet Israel faces a structural crisis requiring more than a reshuffling of personalities. Any governing coalition should formulate new policies rather than perpetuate Netanyahu’s current approach under a different arrangement. The immediate challenge is therefore domestic, particularly amid fears that the religious right will retain its grip on power. Most of the politicians contesting these elections have familiar records and offer little prospect of genuine change.
Israel’s difficulty is not simply forming a government. The possible coalition scenarios were largely anticipated before voting began, reflecting established party structures and the electorate’s response to them. Netanyahu’s departure would not, by itself, solve the problem. Nor would a government headed by former general Gadi Eisenkot necessarily rescue Israel from the profound crisis that has brought it to the edge of the abyss.
Pessimistic about Progress. Should Gadi Eisenkot succeed in forming a government, the writer questions whether he will he be able to rescue Israel from the profound crisis that has brought it to the edge of the abyss. (Photo: Screenshot on factbook)
President Isaac Herzog has warned about the consequences for Israeli security and even the possibility of civil war, alarming the public and encouraging at least superficial agreement in response. Israel must therefore use the post-election period to restore consensus and build renewed national resilience, regardless of the results or whether the individuals in power change. This requires reorganizing political priorities and reconsidering the policies governing coalition relationships.
Israel’s party history, however, suggests that producing policies acceptable to all forces inside and outside a coalition will be extremely difficult. The country needs genuinely cohesive coalition agreements, rather than repeated warnings that its political factions cannot work together.
Netanyahu has repeatedly called for a national-unity government bringing Israelis together, an idea raised shortly before the elections. Eisenkot, however, declared that he would not enter a coalition with Netanyahu and would pursue a different course. This suggests that meaningful agreement may remain elusive until Israel’s entire party landscape is reorganized, rather than simply determining whether Likud can prevail over emerging rivals. Likud’s accumulated political experience will also influence the calculations of competing parties.
After the elections, Israeli policy toward its regional neighbors is likely to remain shaped by military considerations, including an expansionist strategy and security arrangements imposed in areas Israel regards as strategically sensitive. At the same time, efforts will continue to unite the Israeli public around perceived threats, particularly by reviving the Iranian question and maintaining Hezbollah and the Houthis as adversaries.
Domestically, genuine change is equally unlikely. Israel’s internal crisis will take years to overcome, especially if controversial legislation continues, including measures concerning the ultra-Orthodox community, military obligations, loyalty, and national cohesion. An electorate already confused by competing pressures has had limited opportunities for genuine choice under the influence of the media, powerful institutions, and political forces seeking to preserve the existing order for their own purposes. The election may change the composition of the government, but without a fundamental reconsideration of Israel’s domestic and regional policies, the underlying crisis will remain.
– Tarek Fahmy
ARABS & ISRAEL’S ELECTIONS: A ONE-SIDED LOVE AFFAIR
By Adhwan al-Ahmari
Independent Arabia, UK, October 29
One of the stranger phenomena these days is the eager anticipation with which Arabs are following Israel’s elections. Without exaggeration, interest may be greater than in the American midterm elections. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may win or lose, but that is not the important point. What deserves attention is the enthusiasm among some Arabs for the opposing camp led by Gadi Eisenkot, sometimes even because of his Moroccan Jewish background and the prospect that, if victorious, he would become Israel’s first Sephardi prime minister.
In short, this support is motivated by hostility toward Netanyahu and what some regard as the crimes committed by “Mr. Bibi” against Gaza’s population, alongside the continuing bombardment of Syrian and Lebanese territory.
This is hardly the first time Arabs have supported one Israeli political camp against another or anxiously awaited an Israeli election result. The irony is that many of those following, supporting, or opposing particular candidates refuse to recognize Israel itself.
In 1992, when Arabs hoped for Labor Party leader Yitzhak Rabin to defeat the right-wing prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, their anticipation was justified. Rabin won, subsequently paving the way for the 1993 Oslo Accords and the peace treaty between Jordan and Israel the following year. Even Netanyahu, whose defeat some now eagerly await, previously attracted Arab support against Ehud Olmert after the first Gaza war. That support was not born of affection for Netanyahu but anger over Olmert’s military campaign.
Such rapid political wagers are emotional. The eventual outcome has been the collapse of Israel’s peace camp and an expansion of settlements since 2010 on a scale surpassing what came before.
Cosmetic Change. For the writer, Eisenkot differs little from Netanyahu and is unlikely to be an “advocate of peace.”
The reality is that Eisenkot does not differ from Netanyahu in opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is no advocate of peace. During his election campaign, he even sought to outflank Netanyahu by criticizing earlier indications that “Mr. Bibi” might accept Palestinian statehood. The candidate some Arabs hope will win is therefore someone who reproaches Netanyahu for having been open to granting Palestinians rights. This contradicts Eisenkot’s own promises to protect West Bank Palestinians from settler attacks and halt settlement expansion.
Eisenkot is also associated with the “Dahiya doctrine” from the 2006 war against Hezbollah, a military approach that permits overwhelming force against civilian infrastructure in areas associated with the organization.
Anyone reviewing three decades of Israeli elections will find that Arab expectations rarely involve reading between the lines. Instead, one camp is applauded simply to spite another. The only occasion on which Arab observers truly won this electoral lottery may have been Rabin’s victory in 1992.
In Lebanon, a popular saying goes: “If Likud wins, pack your bags and run.” My fear is that an Eisenkot victory could strangle what remains of the Palestinian dream. He may not win, of course, and that currently appears the more likely outcome.
Arab anticipation of Israeli election results, and the hope invested in one candidate over another, amounts to an acknowledgment of Israel’s existence and a belief that a prime minister might eventually pursue reconciliation, grant rights to the land’s original inhabitants, halt settlement construction, and recognize a Palestinian state.
Chinese culture offers a famous story illustrating contradiction, reportedly recorded some 2,000 years ago. A weapons merchant in the ancient state of Chu displayed his wares at a market. Holding up a shield, he declared: “Buy my shield! It is so strong that no spear can penetrate it.” He then raised a spear and announced: “Buy my spear! It is so sharp that it can penetrate any shield.” A wise man approached and asked: “What would happen if we struck your shield with your spear?”
The meaning lies in the wise man’s question.
– Adhwan al-Ahmari
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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President Isaac Herzog (R) awards Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot the mandate to form the next government at his official residence in Jerusalem. (Video screenshot)
ARTICLES
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EYE ON THE BALL
Pursuing in Israel the Krivine “Tennis for All” vision of “building opportunity, friendshipand understanding between Jewish and Arab communities” is never more urgent. By David E. Kaplan
Trailblazing Tennis. With Israel in crisis mode, more than ever we need our young generations – Jews and Arabs – to reach out to each other and find common ground as they navigate together the future.
My mission is to rebuild what my motherland – the Islamic Republic – has destroyed and erased. By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
Massacre Message. The writer, once a prisoner in Tehran’s infamous prison facing execution, broadcasts in Farsi to her fellow Iranians from the Nova Festival Memorial Site in southern Israel. “What the ayatollahs try to divide,we are determined to unite.”
While an acclaimed actor, as a Jew he fails as a leading man By Jonathan Feldstein
Mandy’s Misguided Messaging. Jewish ‘Homeland’ star, Mandy Patinkin posted that Jewish safety in the US is best served by voting for Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed who asserts Israel “…not be considered an American ally.” Once ‘connected’, the writer severs the connection.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
Pursuing in Israel the Krivine “Tennis for All” vision of “building opportunity, friendshipand understanding between Jewish and Arab communities” is never more urgent.
By David E. Kaplan
One would expect or at least hope our political leaders should set examples for coexistence but not so.
Clearly not the present crop of Israel’s leadership!
Did our paranoid Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, so quick to cry out that “Arabs are stealing the Israeli election” implying 20% of the population was taking something that was not theirs – the vote – ever think apart from moral repugnance how this would reflect on the country’s image?
Far removed from this current government’s stigmatization of Arabs, thankfully, there are Israelis, not politicians but ordinary citizens who do care an are trying to build bridges instead of walls between Arab and Jewish communities. I was reminded by this by Fonda Dubb, who a few days before the October 27, 2026 election, participated in a poetry reading at the home of Jane Krivine in Yichron Yaacov. Jane is the daughter of the late Freddie Krivine (1920-2005) and is the Chief Executive Officer at Freddie Krivine Initiative fulfilling the legacy of her late father who in 1992, championed tennis programs in Arab communities and set up a groundbreaking initiative during the Second Intifada in 2000, bringing together Jewish and Arab Israeli children.
The Visionaries. Taken in 1976, the six visionaries who realized their dreams and opened the Israel Tennis Centers are Freddie Krivine (far right) and then (l-r) Ruby Josephs, Dr Ian Froman, Harold Landesberg, Joe Shane and Dr. Bill Lippy. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
‘COACHING’ COEXISTENCE
While the country was in turmoil and communities lived in fear during this period characterized by intense violence, suicide bombings, and military incursions, Krivine’s “Tennis for All” initiative brought Jewish children from Caesarea, and Arab kids from Jisr a Zarqa and Faradis together to learn and play tennis. “The point was that Israeli youngsters representing diverse cultures and religions but who REPRESENT THE FUTURE were through my father’s favorite sport coming together and being enriched by the physical and social engagement,” says Jane. Not only will they emerge as tennis players as they advance to adulthood but also be better understanding human beings of each other. This is the underlying philosophy of the initiative.
Despite Freddie being advised he was crazy to attempt such a project during such a volatile time, when just boarding a bus or stepping into a restaurant was risking your life, “My dad believed it was precisely the moment to drive social change and unite Jews and Arabs through his beloved sport,” explains his daughter Jane.
Jewish-Arab Summer Camps. Since 2020, FKI annual summer camp have brought together Jewish and Arab children for a week of sports, culture, and discovery. Kids train intensively in tennis while also sharing languages, meals, and cultural activities. For many, it is the first time making a real friend from the other community. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Born in Harrogate, England in 1920, Freddie forged a connection with the emerging Jewish state early during the era of the British Mandate, studying at Pardes Hannah Agricultural College in 1935 before returning home and serving in the British army during World War II. A tennis enthusiast, Freddie would go on to co-found the Israel Tennis Centers in 1972 and moved to Israel in 1984, where he became Director of Women’s Tennis, propelling players like AnnaSmashnova, Tzippi Obziler, and Shachar Peer into the international top 100 — a feat Britain wouldn’t achieve for another decade.
RIGHT MOVE AT RIGHT TIME
Continuing Freddie’s vision following his passing in 2005, his daughter Jane established a charity in his name to continue and expand his work.
She explains:
“My father could see that Jewish and Arabs lived in homogeneous communities and didn’t mix and he knew that it was important to have Israeli-Arab children participating in the wider community. And then suddenly the Second Intifada blew up, and people were saying to him you’re mad Freddie, don’t go ahead with this now, its just not the right time. And he said “You’re wrong. It is absolutely the right time”.”
Inspirational Journey. One of the first recruits to the program, Mohameed Rashwan joined as an 8-year-old out of curiosity and looking for fun, is today FKI’s inspiring head coach. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
The head coach of the Freddie Krivine Initiative is an Arab who was one of Freddie’s first recruits. Mohameed Rashwan was 8-years-old when:
“… they came to my school. They told us there was a tennis class but we did not know what tennis really was. I knew that we were going to a sport class; I through, ‘why not – I’d get out of the village, take a bus, it will be fun,’ but nothing more than that.”
It turned out much more; it proved transformative. Stepping onto the court all those years ago was a step in a new direction.
Tennis at School. FKI brings ‘mini tennis’ into local schools in partnership with municipalities and teachers with coaches running fun sessions during PE classes and breaks, giving kids their first taste of the sport. Children already in the programs also visit schools to share their experiences build friendships. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Recalls Jane:
“Mohameed was one of the first children to join the program, he was a very keen tennis player, always smiling, and now he is a grown man and our head coach. When he switches languages from Hebrew to Arabic while coaching it has an impact – it normalizes healthy interaction between young minds. People, who otherwise would not meet and get to know one another start relating at a young age to each other and in each other’s language; it is so important. One has to work at it and that is what we are doing.”
Employment and Internship Program. Sponsored by FKI, teen participants take certified coaching courses, which they later then return to intern and work within FKI programs as assistant coaches and mentors. It ensures sustainability by creating the next generation of Jewish and Arab role models. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
THE SCORE CARD
The FKI has two major goals. The first is working with Arab children from low socio-economic villages, focusing on empowerment and helping them integrate into Israeli wider society. The second is to organize activities for the wider community in order to mobilize participation of as many Jewish and Arab children “to run around playing together. Tennis is the tool to bring them together,” says Jane.
Moriah a young Jewish summer camp participant explains:
“I didn’t know I would be good at tennis or even if I like tennis when I joined the camp but it turns out that its great fun playing tennis, Jews and Arabs together,” and shows a bracelet on her arm made by one of her new Arab friends.
Hand in Hand. Emphasis on “togetherness”, Jewish and Arab children playing together during Ramadan 2022. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Bracha Birbaum-Gerish, a parent of a FKI participant, offers her perspective that the program provides a real and meaningful channel to actualize her ideals:
“So, you can believe in something and say you want peace, and that you want to get along with everybody, but few ever actually go out there and talk to someone different from them. This program has been taking everything I believe in and putting it into action.”
No one said it would be easy. Explains Jane:
“It’s quite a leap of trust for young children to spend time with other children who speak another language; who live in the same country but have never met but then we see the success – how they play with each other; how they lose all that sense of mistrust. I then see the effect it has on their parents and on the wider community.”
Community Encounters – Festivals, Seminars, Social Activities. Beyond tennis, FKI organizes regular encounters for parents and relatives of program participants that include Hanukkah, Purim, and Ramadan festivals, family picnics, and parents’ days. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Says parent Bracha Birbaum-Gerish:
“October 7 felt like a big blow to the ideology of peace and coexistence. Having said that, it does not take away from the fact we don’t have any other choice. I cannot envision any other future. What is the alternative?”
The message from the Krivine vision says Freddie Krivine Initiative Director Lee Wilson“is to support programs like these that encourage Israeli communities – Jewish and Arab – to keep building a society that is equal for everyone because at the end of the day, none of us are going anywhere.We have one country, and we are all destined to live here together.”
After School Tennis and Homework Clubs. Each week, around 150 Arab children from Fureidis and Jisr a-Zarqa join Jewish peers from Beit Hanania, Binyamina, and Pardes Hana at the FKI clubhouse in Moshav Beit Hanania. Volunteers and teachers work with the kids on art, languages, and social activities before they head to the tennis courts. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
In Israel’s troubled times of today, Director Wilson maintains the spirit of the late Freddie Krivine when she recalls “When everyone told him, ‘This isn’t the time,’ he would reply, ‘This is exactly the right time!’ “We, too, believe right now — when Israel is in crisis – this is the time to keep building relationships for a better Israel.”
Playing for Hope in Coexistence. “I know we are not changing the whole world, but we are breaking down barriers,” says Freddie Krivine Initiative Director Lee Wilson of the tennis project. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Over the years since her father’s passing in 2005, the Initiative under Jane’s leadership has:
– expanded its tennis programs in disadvantaged Arab communities
– introduced after-school homework clubs, summer camps, educational support and
– initiated joint Jewish-Arab community activities.
Says Jane, “I say to people, I inherited this charity, this non-profit from my father, it was his legacy to me. And now I know I am at that point in my life that I can pass that legacy on to the next generation.”
In June 2022, the Freddie Krivine Initiative received the Israeli Parliament’s Quality of Life Prize for its efforts to promote social mobility among Arab youth and to foster coexistence by bringing together Jewish and Arab children through tennis. The award was presented by then Speaker of the Knesset, Mickey Levi to founder Jane Krivine, celebrating 22 years of impactful work.
In 2025 which marked a quarter-century of bringing children together through tennis, education and shared experiences, the three daughters of Mackie Behrman, a much-loved cousin of Freddie Krivine initiated an annual Arab and Jewish children’s tournament in his memory – the Mackie Behrman Memorial Tournament. Following this in 2026, is the inauguration in November of the Tennis Together Doubles Open for adults at the Haifa Tennis Centre. Each doubles team will comprise one Arab player and one Jewish player.
Cross Court to Cross Culture. The finals of the second Mackie Behrman Tournament, the culmination of two weeks of tennis bringing together 22 Jewish and Arab teenagers aged 14–16. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
Looking back, more than 10,000 children have benefited from FKI programs with former participants having become doctors, teachers, business owners and professional tennis coaches, with some now mentoring the next generation.
The message of the FKI is “Tennis Together” – with the focus on together. It’s a message we need to all embrace as we venture forth into the future.
Building a Shared Society Together. The message on the court is poignant. The twinning clubs from diverse communities ensure the project’s reach and influence extends far beyond a single community. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
*Feature picture: Tennis Together. Jewish and Arab Children together at Freddie Krivine Initiative’s Club on Moshav Beit Hanannia. (Photo courtesy of FKI)
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
02 November 2026 – We will dance again with Boy George and the drums of war beat louder. This and more on The Israel Brief.
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04 November 2026 – Blue waves sweeps the House of Representatives, Trump announces end of military aid by end year and more on The Israel Brief.
05 November 2026 – Vance takes aim at Israel, who is likely to form a coalition and more on The Israel Brief.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
My mission is to rebuild what my motherland – the Islamic Republic – has destroyed and erased.
By Marziyeh Amirizadeh
As the founder and president of NewPersia.org, I come to Israel for my fifth visit in three years with a clear mission: to restore what the Islamic Republic regime has destroyed, to rebuild the friendship between the Iranian and Israeli people, and to help create a future founded on truth, dignity, mutual respect, and peace. In Israel I am not only physically closer to Iran, the country of my birth, since I fled in 2010, I also feel a similar culture that makes me feel at home. While Iran is the country of my birth, Israel is my spiritual home.
Helping Hand. The writer (r) in January 2026 with Jonathan Feldstein (l) harvesting olives in Israel as part of the Root & Branch partnership, the proceeds of which will help Israelis impacted by the war.
I established NewPersia.org to give voice to persecuted Christians and oppressed women under Islam, exposes the regime’s lies, and works to restore relationships between Persians, Jews, and Christians. The Islamic regime does not represent the heart, history, or true identity of the Iranian people. Our past includes friendship, protection, and respect for Jews dating back to King Cyrus. Before 1979, Israel and Iran enjoyed warm relations. The ayatollahs hijacked and destroyed all that. I believe it will be restored once the Islamic regime falls.
I am not alone among Iranians who are committed to restoring that historic friendship, a bond that existed long before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. We will rebuild the cultural, historical, diplomatic, and human connections the regime has spent decades trying to erase. I bring a message of solidarity from countless Iranians who love Israel, admire its people, and stand with Israelis against the regime’s terrorism, hatred, and hostility all rooted in evil, extremist Islam.
Massacre Message. The writer broadcasting in Farsi to her fellow Iranians from the Nova Festival Memorial Site in southern Israel.
One way to do this is through Root & Branch which I co-founded with my friend and orthodox Jewish partner, Jonathan Feldstein. We are bringing Chrisitans to harvest olives in Israel as a symbol of love and unity, and have the vision to establish a memorial that honors the lives and shared history of Israelis and Iranians who have suffered and been murdered at the hands of the Islamic Republic. This will stand as a lasting symbol of remembrance, reconciliation, and the restoration of our historic bond. I pray it will be the cornerstone for Iranians to establish meaningful memorials like the ones I have seen in Israel. We can learn from Israel, and heal from five decades of suffering with which they have been afflicted.
Reminding her fellow Iranians. Explains the writer, “Each one of these Israelis brutally murdered by Hamas were supported by the brutal regime of the Islamic Republic.”
In the spirit of that reconciliation, we will strengthen the growing unity between our peoples and turn our shared values, history, aspirations – and enemies – into a lasting partnership. This includes recovering, preserving, and telling the historical truth the Islamic regime has distorted, suppressed, and attempted to erase. We will educate fellow Iranians about the suffering, trauma, and challenges the Israeli people have endured, encouraging understanding, compassion, and solidarity through videos like this in Farsi, speaking directly to the Iranian people. We will hold the terrorist regime accountable for forcing the Iranian nation to repeat slogans such as “Death to Israel” for its own propaganda and political interests, using our country’s name, history, reputation, and resources to promote hatred and wage war against Israel and the West.
We also much expose and undermine the regime’s false narrative that Iranians are enemies of Israel. Many Iranians see Israel as a nation that has heard their cries after decades of oppression. They admire the Israeli people, its soldiers, and its leadership. I seek to deliver a warm message of friendship, respect, and affection to the Israeli people from the kindhearted people of Iran, many of whom dream of visiting Israel and reconnecting with a nation they consider a historic friend. Visiting the Gaza border last month, I was privileged to meet and speak with high school students who were encouraged to hear that the Iranian people love Israel, and that we – Israelis and Iranians – share the common enemy of the Islamists.
We must also express our sincere sympathy and apologies to the Israeli people who have been targets of the terrorist ideology rooted in our birthplace. We recognize the suffering, fear, trauma, and loss that Israeli families and children have endured through years of terrorism, conflict, and hatred. My dear Israeli brothers and sisters: the Iranian people are not your enemies. Even when the regime attempts to turn the world against Israel by spreading antisemitism, hatred, and misinformation, we will not remain silent. We stand with Israel, defend their dignity, and speak the truth.
We honor the legacy of King Cyrus by supporting the Jewish people’s right to preserve their religious heritage and historical connection to Jerusalem. Cyrus did not merely permit the Jewish people to return and rebuild their Temple; he also provided financial support through the royal treasury. As recorded in Ezra 6:3-5, a memorandum of his decree, later reaffirmed under King Darius, specified that the Temple was to be rebuilt with royal funding, including construction expenses, and that the sacred vessels taken from Jerusalem were to be returned.
King Cyrus the Great supported the Jewish people by issuing the Edict of Restoration in 538–539 BCE, allowing exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Second Temple.
Cyrus’s legacy represents something extraordinary: a Persian king who recognized the importance of religious freedom, honored the Jewish people, and actively supported the restoration of their sacred heritage. We aspire to carry that model and spirit of friendship, generosity, and respect into our own generation. We honor, respect, and embrace the people of Israel and recognize the importance of their faith, heritage, and relationship with the God of Israel and the centrality of Jerusalem to all the Jewish people. Respect for one another’s history and spiritual identity is essential to genuine friendship.
When the Islamic regime falls and Iran is free again, we will welcome Israelis to our homeland with open arms and the highest honor. We want Israelis and Jews in general to visit our cities, explore our historic sites, experience our hospitality, and rediscover the friendship that once connected our nations. We will serve kosher kebab, kotlet, and Ghormeh sabzi. Future generations of Iranians and Israelis should grow up knowing that they were never destined to be enemies.
Reconstruction & Redemption – Model for Today. Cyrus the Great, who founded the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC is the subject of much praise in the Hebrew Bible. Here is a depiction of the reconstruction of Jerusalem under Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes. (Picture from the Book of Ezra, 1921.)
We are not here to create another division. We are here to heal one imposed by the ayatollahs. We want to reclaim the legacy of Cyrus, replacing propaganda with truth, hatred with friendship, destruction with restoration, and fear with hope. What the Islamic regime has tried to destroy, we are determined to rebuild. What it has tried to divide, we are determined to unite.
Long live the friendship between the Iranian and Israeli people. May a free Iran and Israel become friends once again, not only for our generation, but for generations to come just as in generations past.
About the writer:
Marziyeh (Marzi) Amirizadeh is an Iranian American author, public speaker, human rights advocate, and President of Newpersia.org. She has written two books “Captive in Iran,” and “A Love Journey with God” which are available on www.marzisjourney.com. She is an Iranian American who immigrated to the US after being sentenced to death by hanging in Iran for the crime of converting to Christianity. She endured months of mental and physical hardships and intense interrogation in Evin prison- one of the most brutal prisons in the world.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
While an acclaimed actor, as a Jew he fails as a leading man
By Jonathan Feldstein
You don’t know this about me, but award-winning actor Mandy Patinkin, and I go way back even though we’ve never met. In 1988 following being named ABC News Person of the Week, I spent most of the rest of the year negotiating a TV movie contract about my life that led ABC News to select me with this distinction. There’s a lot more to the five-minute ABC News story, enough to have a LA producer call me the following Monday in my office.
The movie never materialized as a consequence of a changing mood in Hollywood. Movie producers clearly decided following Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev introducing glasnost and perestroika, and emerging as “the darling of the West”, such a movie would likely be perceived of as being anti-Soviet and hence financially too risky.
Poster of Patinkin. An imagined poster of Patinkin playing the writer who supported during the 1980s Soviet Jewish refuseniks.
I reminded the producer that my story was about liberty, how one individual could help another achieve freedom. Even still, I was not ashamed with it being branded anti-Soviet because the Soviet Union literally represented nothing good globally, or specifically vis-à-vis the Jewish people about which my story was focused. I was fine leaving the contract.
What did all of this have to do with Chicago-native Mandy Patinkin?
At the time, the conversation about the movie had progressed that even though we never signed the contract, we were talking about who would be the lead actor playing me. Mandy Patinkin was the frontrunner for consideration and although he was 10 years older than me at the time – and still is – people believed he could be made to look younger. He had a beard, as I did at the time. He was Jewish and my story was a very Jewish story about freedom. So for the preference being for a Jewish actor to play me, his name was being seriously floated.
I was thinking about Patinkin recently following comments he made regarding Jewish support for the Senate candidacy of Abdul El-Sayed for Senate in Michigan. Despite his relative fame as an actor, his misguided comments expose ignorance.
Mandy’s Misguided Messaging. Jewish ‘Homeland’ star, Mandy Patinkin posts that Jewish safety in the US is best served by voting for Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed who advocates an end to U.S. military aid to Israel including defensive systems like the Iron Dome.
Patinkin has posted videos urging Jewish voters to support Abdul El-Sayed citing concern for their “safety” in the US.
Patinkin asserts:
“Jewish safety depends on a real multiracial democracy, and Abdul is the one fighting to protect it.”
The contradiction of Jews electing an Islamist for their safety, is profoundly astounding.
In addition to my five minutes on ABC News, I have acted in one movie, and done some TV commercials and promos. I have done hundreds of live and recorded interviews. While I do know how to deliver a line, none of these make me an actor.
By the same token, that Patinkin has lived through and experienced modern Jewish history, neither makes him an historian, or an eligible qualified speaker on Jewish history. In fact, his uniquely diaspora perspective influenced by Buddhism is void of modern Jewish and Israeli history through which he has lived, much less not-so-ancient discrimination against Jews under Islam going back to Mohammed.
Saying that “Jewish safety depends on a real multiracial democracy,” views Jewish history through the prism of being outside Israel, with no awareness of Jewish life in Israel. It’s from the perspective of a tolerated second-class citizen protected by others. If that’s Patinkin’s view, no wonder he supports (and has been fooled by) the anti-Zionist antisemitic candidate in Michigan. Hooking his cart to El-Sayed’s Islamist horse, it doesn’t faze Patinkin that the candidate will not even call out antisemitic ads supporting his candidacy. Patinkin places himself solidly in the timeless role of Jews and Chrisitans under Islam as dhimmi – the second-class citizen who is either tolerated because of paying the Islamic jizya tax required of infidels, or being forcefully converted. It makes one wonder if Patinkin is trying out for the role of King of the Dhimmi.
Fiend not Friend. Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (above), who Mandy Patinkin supports has publicly stated that Israel “should not be considered an American ally.”
Embracing El-Sayed, much less the narrow diaspora-based mentality that Jewish security can only be granted by others, Patinkin has written himself out of any role in the Jewish future. Forget a leading role, he’s not even an understudy.
Patinkin does however embrace the role of “useless idiot” to the point he should be nominated for an Oscar! Sadly, too many Jews throughout history in shifting to the radical Left paid a heavy price some of whom in the process became puppets to the Islamists. It reminds me of the parents of another Chicago-born Jewish friend, Abe Stolar.
Born in Chicago in 1912 to Russian emigree parents who fled Czarist pogroms, Abe’s parents were homesick for the motherland. They were also inspired by communism and imbibing the communist Kool-Aid, as a teen, Abe’s parents took him to Moscow to see firsthand the worker’s paradise. Five years later under Stalin’s purges, Abe’s father was arrested and never seen again.
In 1975, Abe, his wife Gita and their son applied to leave the USSR. That’s right, Communism offered no freedom just to leave the socialist utopia. They received permission to leave, selling all their belongings yet at the last moment – before boarding the plane – their permission was revoked. The Stolars were forced to return to their empty Moscow apartment, hopeless.
I met Abe a decade later. He was an American citizen detained in Moscow, frustrated and desperate to leave, but he was jovial, friendly, and welcoming. Two years later, I went back to Moscow and visited Abe again. He was more hopeful as he saw signs that things in the USSR were changing, but he was still an American citizen forcefully detained in Moscow. Eventually, in 1989, at 77 years old, Abe and his family were able to leave and settle in Israel. Abe understood that the Jewish future, even at 77, was in Israel, not based on the whims of others.
Rescuing Refuseniks. ABC News Person of the Week segment from March 25, 1988, recounting the story of Jonathan Feldstein’s adoption of the Stein Family from Moscow, Soviet Jewish refusenicks, and his activities and activism which resulted in their freedom.
Mandy Patinkin’s ignorance of history is a shanda, an embarrassment. Unlike Abe Stolar’s parents, he has decades of seeing the horrible and dangerous consequence of the Red-Green (Communist-Islamist) alliance which he plays into now, Islamists using leftists to advance their ideology with the leftists gladly playing their role with glee.
Abe Stolar’s parents had not yet witnessed or experienced the Red-Green alliance, much less suffered under it. Perhaps they could be forgiven for their communist fervor given how badly Jews had been treated under the Czars. Patinkin should know better. There is not a single surviving and thriving Jewish community under Islam. To suggest that Jews in America – or anywhere for that matter – should outsource their future and safety to others, much less Islamists like El-Sayeed, is more than foolish. It is dangerous.
Saving Souls in the USSR. The writer (left), Kate, and her father Victorin in July 1985, the day he met them and proposed marriage in order to get her US citizenship and bring her family to America. (courtesy)
Closer to Abe Stolar’s age now than he was to my age in 1988, perhaps one day there will be a movie about Abe Stolar in which Mandy Patinkin can play the lead. Or maybe there will one day be movies about the Jewish communities purged under Islam with a role for Mandy Patinkin as one of the Jews dismembered by their Muslim neighbors. Until then, he has defined himself in such a fringe role among the Jewish people that he has essentially written himself out of the Jewish people. So, for him, of all people, to preach to the Jewish people, is inane at best.
I have other words, but then I might lose my PG-13 rating!
About the writer:
Jonathan Feldstein - President of the US based non-profit Genesis123 Foundation whose mission is to build bridges between Jews and Christians – is a freelance writer whose articles appear in The Jerusalem Post, Times of Israel, Townhall, NorthJersey.com, Algemeiner Journal, The Jewish Press, major Christian websites and more.
While the mission of Lay of the Land (LotL) is to provide a wide and diverse perspective of affairs in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world, the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by its various writers are not necessarily ones of the owners and management of LOTL but of the writers themselves. LotL endeavours to the best of its ability to credit the use of all known photographs to the photographer and/or owner of such photographs (0&EO).
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THE RISE OF THE ARAB ISRAELI – NO MORE SITTING ON THE SIDELINES!
More than Netanyahu or his rivals being unable to form a government which was predictable, less predictable was the historic surge in Arab voter turnout, propelling Arab-led parties to a record-breaking 19 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. While Netanyahu was quick to ashamedly accuse Arab parties of “stealing the vote”, these parties for far too long relegated to the margins of Israeli political life have now shifted the Israeli political landscape!
“What has made me happy is instead of just despair, the Arab citizens exercised their civil rights and we deserve those rights,” Raam party leader, Mansour Abbas told i24NEWS, who is seen here with his family voting on Tuesday in Maghar. (Photo: Mahmoud Illean / AP)
ARTICLES
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UNDER PRESSURE – A PUNCTURE TO POLITICS
A flat tire in Israel’s Arab and Druze north introduced rural revelations on election day. By Jonathan Feldstein
Turning into Tu’ran. This writer would never have turned off the highway to visit on election day this northern Arab village of Tu’ran but for a flat tire. He is glad he did so discovering unexpected insights on a day that may change Israel’s political landscape.
With the UN and the Norwegian Nobel Committee handing jurist Navi Pillay a megaphone on a platter, little wonder Hamas has welcomed her as its poster girl. By Marika Sboros
Parroting Pillay. John Spooner’s cartoon in an Australian newspaper captures Judge Pillay’s persistent bias against the Jewish state much appreciated by Hamas. What does it say about the “Prize” that rewards the supporters of killers?
How two officials defied systemic indifference to help save Jews in Nazi Europe. By Michel Levine
Reluctant Rooseveldt. In the driver’s seat, President Rooseveldt was delaying action in saving European Jews relegating the unfolding Holocaust to a secondary priority. Two senior administration officials worked to change direction. This is their story.
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