In late May I fell and broke my wrist. My right hand was out of commission for a while. Texting left handed isn’t fun, nor is typing for that matter, so apologies for the hiatus.
My wrist is feeling much better, well enough in fact to get back on the horse and start writing again. This week’s issue will be brief but expect more down the pike.
When Israel, Egypt and the European Union agreed to a memorandum of understanding on the delivery of Israeli natural gas via Egypt to the EU, I was in a bind. Literally. My arm was in a cast. Fortunately I was still able to make a small contribution by chatting with BICOM’s Samuel Nurding about the circumstances and consequences of the agreement as well as rely on Google Docs’ dictation feature to author a piece in The Jerusalem Post on the same subject. Not too shabby considering I couldn’t wash the dishes this month.
Former Member of Knesset Ksenia Svetlova’s recent piece in State of Tel Aviv is a beautiful fusion of childhood memories and political commentary on Putin’s war against Ukraine.
No doubt you’ve probably heard that Israel is headed to a 5th round of elections. Yes, a 5th round because the issues and the primary actors haven’t changed all that much. Netanyahu may now be in the opposition, but the overarching message by the effectively collapsed change government will still be “anyone but Bibi”. From their perspective, the job isn’t done. That doesn’t mean that everything will be the same, so I suggest reading recent pieces by The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz, Times of Israel’s David Horovitz, Ha’aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer, the latest Unholy podcast with Channel 12 political analyst Amit Segal, and Dahlia Scheindlin’s recent piece in The Forward for a wide-range of perspectives on the coalition government that was as well as the road ahead.
I hope you find this edition’s content engaging. Please feel free share this newsletter with others.
-Gabi