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The present volume of the Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann begins with the Allied victory in Europe and ends in the investigation of the Palestine problem by the United Nations Special Committee. Within this period Weizmann was reduced from being the President of the Jewish Agency and the acknowledged leader of his people to a lonely figure, virtually retired from public life. This was because he continued to place his faith, at least until the summer of 1946, in cooperation with Great Britain, the Mandatory Power, while his principal colleagues in Zionism were adopting the ways of violence in Palestine.

After an unprecedented second round of elections – the final outcome is still unclear. We’re now entering the next stage of the political lifecycle: coalition negotiations. The Israel democracy Institute provides detailed analyses of this election’s outcomes compared to others in Israel’s history.

This election will be less about which candidate ends up as prime minister, but rather the real possibility of radical judicial reforms that might soon pass in the Knesset and which would limit the Supreme Court’s ability to perform crucial oversight over the political system.

The relationship between Israel and the American Jewish community has been central to the ability of both communities to develop and flourish over the past 70 years; it is likewise vital to the national security of Israel and the entire Jewish people. The current generation has witnessed increasing trends of distance and alienation between Israel and American Jewry, a weakened connection and sense of mutual belonging, and the decline of responsibility and involvement between the two communities. These join the challenges concerning the continuity of the American Jewish community and its political and social influence within the United States.

The opening of this volume finds Chaim Weizmann in the United States, facing two urgent tasks: the rallying of American Jewry into a single, united front behind a Zionist platform; and the winning over of the Roosevelt Administration to the Zionist position. Following the breakdown of talks between Zionists and non-Zionists in the autumn of 1942, the Bnai Brith organization was asked by the Zionists to set up a preliminary meeting of American Jewish organizations that would prepare for a democratically-convened conference. This body would then appeal to the American Jewish community over the heads of its established leaders.

We have seen from the previous volume in this series how support for the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states, with substantial portions retained under the Mandate, had waned in the British Cabinet during 1938. Chaim Weizmann had struggled throughout that year to keep the scheme alive, but to no avail. The Technical Commission under Sir John Woodhead, which had been in Palestine ostensibly to produce a detailed plan, pronounced the scheme unworkable in any form. Thus, as 1939 dawned, the Zionist leader faced the unwelcome prospect of a conference at which Arabs and Jews would meet with British representatives to seek a compromise solution to the problem based upon a unitary Palestine.

Hezbollah responded with restraint to Israel’s three-pronged attacks over the past two weeks in Syria, Iraq, and, above all, a neighborhood in Dahiya, the vast Shiite area in Beirut where Hezbollah is headquartered. The organization’s effort to avoid escalation reflects its demographic problem in Lebanon.

This whiteboard video explains the structure of Israel’s education system, including the country’s commitment to early childhood learning programs, challenges of educational equality and funding for different segments of the population, and a comparison of Israel’s academic success with other nations.

The two and a half years covered by this volume of the Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann introduce a period of unparalleled tragedy for the Jewish people, with, ironically, the Zionist move­ment in deep conflict with Great Britain, for most of the time the only Power actively engaged in the struggle against Jewry’s enemy, Adolf Hitler. Despite ever-increasing evidence of Nazi intentions towards the Jews, British immigration policy as regards Palestine remained tied to the rigidly-enforced limits set by the White Paper issued by the Chamberlain Government in May 1939.

With the emergence of new parties and alliances, changes in party leadership, and maneuvering of party list order, we have updated our biographies of candidates to know about for the September 17th election.

An Israeli invention that pulls water from air will be deployed in Nigeria following a meeting at United Nations headquarters in New York regarding the freshwater crisis in the Chad Basin of Africa. Lake Chad is the main source of drinking water for millions of people in Chad, Cameroon, Niger and Nigeria.

As mirrored in this volume of his letters, the years 1937-38 were for Chaim Weizmann the most critical period of his political life since the weeks preceding the issuance of the Balfour Declaration in November 1917. We observe him at the age of 64 largely drained of physical strength, his diplomatic orientation of collaboration with Great Britain under attack, and his leadership challenged by a generation of younger, militant Zionists. In his own words he was ‘a lonely man standing at the end of a road, a via dolorosa. I have no more courage left to face anything—and so much is expected from me.’

Assembled by Ken Stein and Eli Sperling Emory University and Center for Israel Education kenstein@israeled.org or kstein@emory.edu Morsi Abu Mokh, “Between the Rational and the Emotional: Factors Influencing the Political Participation of Arab Citizens in Israel,” Moshe Dayan Center, August 12, 2019. https://dayan.org/content/between-rational-and-emotional-factors-influencing-political-participation-arab-citizens Ofer Aderet, “Israeli Tech Pioneer Who Made It Possible to Talk on […]

The considerations that have so far guided Hezbollah’s calculated retaliation on September 1, 2019 following Israel’s strikes, and the August 25 drone strike in Beirut in particular, reflect its character as an organization with multiple identities – all of which influence its decision making. Hezbollah simultaneously constitutes a pivotal link in the regional “resistance axis” led by Iran; a Lebanese “resistance” movement and “defender of Lebanon”; and an organization within Lebanon that preserves its independent identity and autonomous decision making. Even as Hezbollah is involved in the overarching “resistance axis” against Israel, its commitment to the Lebanese state serves as a restraint. In its brief round of fighting with Israel, Hezbollah, which seeks to avoid broadening the confrontation to a war ruinous for both Lebanon and itself, behaved like a careful state-like actor.

Two weeks to the elections Jewish Israelis show a strong preference for a unity government while Arab Israelis prefer a center-left wing government led by Gantz. Also over the past five months there has been a steady decline in the public’s optimism about the future of Israel’s democracy and security.

Major changes had taken place in the structure of the Zionist Organization during the four years between the rejection of Chaim Weizmann at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress of 1931 and his reelection in 1935. The most important of these was the secession of the Revisionists, who established the New Zionist Organization in September 1935. The second was the strengthening of the Labour groups to become the central force in the movement, with 45 per cent of the delegates at the Nineteenth Congress compared with 29 per cent in 1931. Finally, there was the continued decline of the two wings of the General Zionists. These factors both necessitated and facilitated Weizmann’s return to the leadership.

It was the style of Weizmann’s leadership rather than his politics that came under fire at the 17th Zionist Congress held in Basle in July 1931. His policies, to be sure, were much criticized, but his displacement from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency at that Congress did not alter the basic strategy of the movement. Officially, Weizmann remained in the wilderness for the ensuing four years, until his re-election as President at the 19th Congress in Lucerne in August 1935. Nevertheless, he would not allow his political judgment to relax, nor would he abdicate from his role as a Jewish statesman of international rank. For January, 1933, saw the advent of Adolf Hitler to power.

According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) the population of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA: the Arab countries and Iran) will increase from 484 million in 2018 to 581 million in 2030 and 724 million in 2050.[1] (See Table 1) Between 2018 and 2030, the population is forecast rise by almost 1.7 percent annually and between 2030 and 2050 by just over 1.2 percent annually. By far the largest country demographically is Egypt, and its population is forecast to rise by almost 1.8 percent annually between 2018 and 2030 and by almost 1.4 percent annually between 2030 and 2050. This edition of Iqtisadi examines the report and its implications.

Israel’s political system requires its leaders and political parties to reach compromises and agreements in order to effectively govern the country.

Volume XV of the Letters of Chaim Weizmann opens with the Zionist leader in an ambiguous situation: although he has resigned the Presidency of the Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency in protest against the Passfield White Paper of October 1930, which restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and the acquisition of land there, no successor has been selected. Weizmann in fact is still the head of the movement, and this situation continues until he finds himself formally replaced as President by Nahum Sokolow at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress the following year.

This special survey examines attitudes of right wing voters on a number of issues related to September’s election including the possibility of a unity government and recent proposals that would limit judicial review and oversight of Knesset and government decisions. The poll reveals that 42% of right-wing voters support a unity government and that 43% oppose additional political power for elected officials at the expense of the Judicial Branch of government.

Volume XIV of the letters of Chaim Weizmann, written in the period between the Sixteenth Zionist Congress and the British Government’s Statement of Policy of 21 October 1930, gives a central place to the establishment of an enlarged Jewish Agency by the inclusion of non-Zionists, and to the political struggle which followed the 1929 disturbances in Palestine. The achievement of the Jewish Agency would undoubtedly have marked a high point in Weizmann’s Zionist leadership were it not diminished by the world-wide economic slump and a crisis in relations with the British Government.

Jerusalem is the largest and most complex city in Israel. According to data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) at the end of 2017 Jerusalem residents comprised roughly 10% of the total population of the State of Israel (901,302 persons). 62.1% of the city’s population are classified as “Jews and others” (559,849 persons), and 37.9% of its residents are classified as Arab (341,453 persons). At the same time, according to ICBS figures, approximately 72,600 residents left Jerusalem between the years 2007-2017. In 2017 for example, Jerusalem’s population was reduced by 6,000 people as a result of negative internal migration (of which, 5,800 were “Jews and others” and 200 were Arabs).

Volume XIII of the Letters of Chaim Weizmann, covering the period March 1926 to July 1929, gives preponderance to two crucial issues: the economic crisis which struck at the Jewish community in Palestine, bringing the Zionist Organization to the verge of bankruptcy and threatening the very survival of the Jewish National Home; and the resumption of efforts to form an expanded Jewish Agency with the participation of non-Zionist Jewish leaders. In March 1926 Dr. Weizmann and his wife Vera arrived in Palestine to find great distress resulting from the developing economic crisis there.

The State Comptroller’s Office is the only institution outside of the defense establishment that conducts comprehensive and independent audits of security matters; hence its importance to national security. In the view of newly-appointed State Comptroller and Ombudsman Matanyahu Englman, an audit is meant to be a constructive process that addresses issues of national value; the audit process is a tool that supports the government and prime minister; audits that are liable to affect real-time decision making should be avoided; and the Comptroller should also report on the success of those audited. By contrast, his predecessor, retired judge Yosef Shapira, stressed that the State Comptroller is not the government’s in-house auditor and that audits do not depend on the good will of any external party.

Imagine a growing Israeli startup whose product is deepfake videos that are based on artificial intelligence and appear to be utterly authentic. The company’s marketing efforts, according to its website, are conducted by two departments — “consulting for corporations” and “consulting for governments and politicians.” In addition, “the company helps its customers uncover their opponents’ weak spots and make them go viral.” Finally, imagine that the company describes its employees as “highly experienced men and women, graduates of elite units of the IDF intelligence branch and Israeli government intelligence agencies,” and that its technology is based on developments by these same security agencies. When you are done imagining this, it’s time to think about the private intelligence firm Black Cube.

This volume of the Weizmann Letters covers a period of two years and nine months, from the 13th Zionist Congress at Carlsbad in August 1923 until Chaim Weizmann’s departure from London for a visit to Palestine in March 1926. These were years of reorientation in the history of Zionism, with its center of gravity shifting from the political sphere to the task of construction in Palestine. The transition was bound to involve difficulties for the movement, for political work, with its immediate challenges, would naturally be more appealing than the practical work in Palestine, which was gradualist, and only bore fruit after a considerable lapse of time.

Veterans of the Jewish Resistance in France participated in the rescue of tens of thousands of Jews during WWII. They provided emissaries from the Land of Israel with vital infrastructure for clandestine Zionist activities in France, including money, manpower, forged documents, accommodation, and contacts among the French authorities. In July-August 1947, they were significantly involved in the dramatic story of the Exodus 1947, the ship full of Holocaust survivors turned back by the British. It is regrettable that their contribution to the creation of the State of Israel is almost entirely absent from the collective memory.

The opening of the eleventh volume of the Weizmann Letters, which covers the period from January 1922 to July 1923, finds Weizmann in Berlin on his way back to London from a meeting in Vienna of the Actions Committee of the Zionist Organization. The journey was one of many which Weizmann undertook during this period. Of the nineteen months covered by this volume he spent eleven months outside Britain, an indication of the international nature of the complex diplomatic, political, and financial problems which Weizmann and the Zionist movement faced in these years.