Observations, articles, opinions etc. in Dutch and English. The author, Bert de Bruin (Yonathan Dror Bar-On), is a Dutch-Jewish historian, who has specialized in modern Jewish history and in the history of the Middle East, and who in 1995 emigrated from the Netherlands to Israel. In July 2008 his first book, Israel en ik - Vijftien bekende Nederlanders over hun verhouding met een zestigjarige (Israel and I - Fifteen well-known Dutchmen and -women on their relationship with a 60-year-old), was published. He also edited Een veilig Israel in een vreedzaam Midden-Oosten (A Safe Israel in a Peaceful Middle-East), which contains speeches (by Paul Bremer, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Dan Meridor, Mark Rutte, Maxime Verhagen and others) held at an international conference in the Peace Palace in The Hague in March 2010. For feedback please post a comment, or send this blog's author an email.

Monday, April 30, 2007

While eating falafel earlier today I read Yedioth Aharonoth. Obviously many of the headlines dealt with the publication, at 4 o'clock this afternoon, of the interim report of the Winograd Commission, which has been investigating the functioning of this country's military and political authorities before and during the second Lebanon war. Experts do not expect that as a result of the report - which heavily criticizes the way in which the Prime Minister, Defense Minister and Chief of Staff conducted the war - Ehud Olmert and Amir Peretz will be forced to step down. That could happen, though, when the final report is published in the summer. Of two excellent op-ed articles I found an online English translation. Yaacov Hasdai wrote about Golda Meir's government ( "...compared to the cabinet we have today, it was a government of giants " ) and argues why Golda deserves a re-appreciation. Nahum Barnea's piece I liked in particular. It deals with all the spin that is being spun by Olmerts PR managers and quotes one of Olmert's aides: "Had Olmert prepared for the war the way he is preparing for the war over the Winograd report [...] perhaps there would have been no commission and no report." Barnea concludes with just two words that say what almost an entire nation must be feeling: "If only."

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