Ira Sharkansky
Sharkansksy is professor emeritus of political science at Hebrew University. He may be contacted via ira.sharkansky@sdjewishworld.com
Impossible to say who’ll win Israel’s upcoming election
Where are we now?
Who knows?
Indications of infections are down. The parties and religious events at Purim do not seem to have produced an increase. Widespread inoculations are the explanation. They work to prevent a...
Alignments shifting as Israel heads for new elections
Less than three months to the election, there are clear signs that things are changing. New parties; individual activists, some abandonment of Likud; lots of anti-Bibi.
The major new players are Gideon Sa’ar, Naftali Bennett,...
Whatever happened to Israel’s Labor party?
Remember the greats of Israeli politics. David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres?
And the Labor Party, dominating politics from 1948 to 1977?
Golda Meir won 49 seats in the election of 1969, and Yitzhak...
Israeli, U.S. Jews split on Biden vs. Trump
Jews are sharply divided. Here, in Israel, close to or more than 70 percent support Donald Trump, and only 30 percent or less support Joe Biden.
In America, among Jews, the figures are opposite. Polls...
COVID-19 impacts health, politics in U.S., Israel
My last column, about Israel’s perils of September, brought forth several comments about similarities elsewhere.
No surprise, except for a friend’s note about the correspondence between disease and populism, often distorted with wild claims as...
Pandemic, opposition to Netanyahu mark August
Dog days of August? Or political morass, with no effective leadership? And wandering amidst a pandemic that can be ignored. By some.
Israel has recently been mired in a quarrel as to whether to budget...
Protests about many issues now common in Israel
Confusion prevails in the government. And has been joined by multiple protests and strikes.
Several are protests by the ultra-Orthodox, against closures in their neighborhoods or towns.
Others are protests against economic issues, demanding more money...
Fighting attorney general, coronavirus, Bibi lays annexation aside
There are several reasons to wonder about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Is he losing it?
A prominent case is a series of tweets that he wrote against the decision of the Attorney General, that Bibi...
Annexation mess comes amid a coronavirus mess
The noise about annexation, more or less, is reaching toward a climax.
July 1 is supposed to be the date.
Discussions proceed in Jerusalem and Washington, with arguments in both places.
And holding fire are the Palestinians,...
The George Floyd case as seen from Israel
Is there anyone within range of this letter who doesn’t know the sad story of George Floyd?
Here, half a world away from Minneapolis, and with our own problems of disease and violence, we’ve seen...