
Cliff Savren reports for the Cleveland Jewish News on Israel and the Middle East from Ra’aana, Israel.
Latest Column
This month’s takeover of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., by a mob has been a major topic of media coverage in Israel. My hunch is that it has also finally prompted a shift in how Israelis perceive former President Donald Trump – now that his term is over.
Recent Headlines
Israel entered 2021 as a country of contrasts. It began the year with a daily count of more than 5,000 new coronavirus cases. Earlier in the pandemic, the government warned that anything exceeding 100 cases a day would set off alarm bells. On the other hand, Israel has also racked up a recor…
I recently needed to refer to a credit card charge on a purchase that I made in March. I was shocked to look at the credit card statement. I had so taken my life for granted. At the beginning of the month, there were charges for Tel Aviv restaurants, for Israel Railway train tickets and for …
Last week, Israel inched closer to its fourth Knesset election in two years. And it’s all the fault of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has put his personal interests ahead of the country’s – as he tries to hold onto office and perhaps evade his pending trial on charges of bribery, fra…
I was relieved that Joe Biden won the presidential election – relieved for the United States, which, whatever your views about the president-elect, will surely be governed with a steadier hand, more professionalism and a more rational worldview. I was also relieved as an American Israeli.
Israel is gradually emerging from its second COVID-19 lockdown,
The global coronavirus pandemic has accentuated the strengths and weaknesses of countries around the world. In the United States, the astoundingly high infection and death rates have highlighted not only the failures of leadership, but the irony that a country that is the world leader in med…
Just a few weeks ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened a news conference to discuss the surprise development that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to normalize relations, in a deal brokered by the United States. That’s big news, and the speculation is that Bah…
Shortly after my family and I moved to Israel from Cleveland, Benjamin Netanyahu was appointed finance minister and gained my grudging admiration, despite his right-wing foreign policy positions, for being willing to take decisive action on the economy, even though his approach was unpopular.
It’s not clear when I will be making my next visit back to the United States from Israel. At the moment, I would have to go into two weeks of quarantine on my arrival in America and then another two weeks on my return to Israel due to the coronavirus.
Call me old fashioned. There is something about a printed newspaper that reflects the place and time in which it was produced, and that will never be captured quite as well in 50 or 100 years by looking at archived online internet articles about a historical event – such as the coronavirus p…
After three rounds of inconclusive elections, Israel is about to have a new government. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should have resigned long ago to tend to the three criminal indictments on which he will shortly be tried, so it’s disconcerting to think that he will be starting a new t…