Unveiling the contours and contrasts of an ever-changing Middle East landscape Reliable reportage and insightful commentary on the Middle East by seasoned journalists from the region and beyond
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What’s happening in Israel today? See from every Monday – Thursday LOTL’s The Israel Brief broadcasts and on our Facebook page and YouTube by seasoned TV & radio broadcaster, Rolene Marks familiar to Chai FM listeners in South Africa and millions of American listeners to the News/Talk/Sports radio station WINA, broadcasting out of Virginia, USA.
(*Listen to Rolene Marks discusses this week “Operation Breaking Dawn” on WINA/The Schilling Show)
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Articles
(1)
UNhealthy OBSESSION
The United Nations seems to be unable to loosen its grip on anti-Israel obsession
By Rolene Marks

Entrenched in an endless loop of defaming and delegitimising Israel, the writer questions the UN’s obsessional focus of maligning the Jewish state while ignoring the world’s worst offenders of human rights. Supposedly “dedicated to fighting antisemitism”, why is the universal global organisation its primary promoter?
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(2)
LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE
Considering the past, making the case for the present and for Israel
By David E. Kaplan

Despite these days of much talked about “global despair”, the writer questions what era in history would be preferable to the present? Man’s response to global problems with Israel in the vanguard makes the world a safer and healthier place.
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(3)
LIVING UNDER FIRE
Israelis coping with barrage after barrage of rockets fired from Gaza
By Rolene Marks

A peaceful Shabbat in Modi’in in central Israel was interrupted by the wails of a sudden siren, sending the writer, her husband and ‘Jack’, their “very disciplined cat” running into the shelter. For 3 days, much of Israel’s southern population were doing the same as Islamic Jihad unleashed 1,100 rockets and mortars into Israel. Israelis respond with resilience.
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(4)
FLIGHTPLAN TO FREEDOM
The impact of a Russian Jewish pilot’s plot to hijack a Soviet plane to freedom
By Jonathan Feldstein

How do you judge success? Even though the attempt to steal an unoccupied civilian aircraft on 15 June 1970 by Jewish Soviet pilot Mark Dymshits and a group of sixteen “refuseniks” was unsuccessful, it inspired a generation of Jews to leave the USSR and seek freedom in Israel. The plane may not have taken off, but the movement it inspired, did!
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LOTL Cofounders David E. Kaplan (Editor), Rolene Marks and Yair Chelouche
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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).