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Haviv Rettig Gur

Haviv Rettig Gur

The Times of Israel

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The new state budget favors Haredim, and hurts them

At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, an old Haredi myth has it, lie a million sets of tefillin, the phylacteries worn on arm and head by Jews at...

23.05.2023 20

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Jerusalem Day needs to get back to its human story

Jerusalem Day is a fraught day, a day that once had a specific and nearly universal meaning for Jewish Israelis but whose most visible commemorations...

18.05.2023 30

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

The storm before the calm

Until the start of hostilities with the Islamic Jihad terror group this week, Netanyahu’s government seemed to be teetering on the brink of...

11.05.2023 80

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Pro-overhaul protest showed the right’s strengths — and the government’s weakness

Thursday’s protest in support of the government’s judicial overhaul was big enough. Whether it was around 100,000, as opponents claimed, or...

29.04.2023 80

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

How one bereaved mother changed Israel’s Memorial Day and the country itself

On June 7, 1982, then-prime minister Menachem Begin and defense minister Ariel Sharon arrived at the Crusader-era Beaufort Fortress in south Lebanon...

25.04.2023 90

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

The forgotten horrors that hide in the Holocaust’s long, dark shadow

Western Holocaust commemorations have a peculiar uniformity to them. They speak of Nazism as a warning against intolerance and chauvinism. They recall...

18.04.2023 90

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Israeli politics are in chaos. Are its enemies poised to take advantage?

The tide is finally turning against Israel, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah boasted on Friday. “The resistance… is confident while the Israeli...

18.04.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

As violence catches Netanyahu’s coalition flat-footed, far-right turns on the army

Things were just starting to stabilize for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chaos-ridden government. Failure, it is said, can sometimes be a...

09.04.2023 80

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Sinking in polls, Netanyahu belatedly bids to take control of his chaotic coalition

It’s one of the recurring ironies of Israeli politics: Nothing stabilizes a teetering government or parliamentary coalition more effectively than...

06.04.2023 80

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Things fall apart

The Israeli right is gripped in a deep malaise. It has its argument about the over-powerful High Court. It believes that argument. It’s been making...

27.03.2023 300

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

The implosion of Israel’s ruling party

In the election of 2015, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party ran a campaign warning that then-opposition leader Isaac Herzog would allow the Islamic...

22.03.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Anatomy of a self-sabotaging reform

“Perhaps the most common of all hard-bargaining tactics,” writes Harvard Law Prof. Robert Mnookin, is what he calls “extreme claims followed by...

14.03.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

No longer willing to carry entire burden: Reservist protest hints at deeper crisis

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is set to fly to Italy on Thursday. It won’t be the flight he dreamed of. According to numerous Israeli media...

08.03.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

In Netanyahu’s Israel, from fiery riots to boardroom bedlam, chaos reigns

At 4:08 p.m. on Sunday, journalist Yossi Yehoshua tweeted a poster produced by a group of extremist settlers who called for a mass march on the...

27.02.2023 200

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

The sudden, surprising indispensability of the Israeli presidency

The fight over the government’s judicial overhaul can be divided into two periods: Before President Isaac Herzog’s February 12 speech, and after...

20.02.2023 90

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Deep distrust fuels the judiciary fight and will shape its fallout

The architects of the government’s judicial overhaul are afraid, and they’re not ashamed to admit it. They don’t fear the protests, they don’t...

14.02.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

In the Knesset and in the streets, the leaders of the Israeli center-left are MIA

“Mistakes happen. We’re all people,” National Unity party chief Benny Gantz tweeted on January 23. It was an apology of sorts. Gantz’s party...

07.02.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Netanyahu’s conspiratorial-minded government is treating every issue like a war

In 2017, an Israeli right-wing activist published a book that became an overnight mainstay of the conservative Israeli bookshelf. It was a fierce and...

01.02.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Who runs Netanyahu’s Israel?

Over the past few weeks, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made himself generously available to a great many foreign media outlets and sympathetic...

24.01.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

How 3 decades of Deri’s legal troubles now see Israeli judicial independence at risk

Israeli politics were thrown into turmoil on Wednesday when Israel’s High Court of Justice ruled that Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, the leader of...

20.01.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Battle over High Court exposes frailty of Israel’s piecemeal system of government

Last week, Justice Minister Yariv Levin presented his ambitious plan for reforming the Israeli judiciary, and its critics have not minced words,...

11.01.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Amid deadlock, Trump urges Republicans to back McCarthy as US House speaker

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Wednesday called for far-right Republicans to end their blocking of the party’s candidate to become US House speaker,...

04.01.2023 80

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

Are Haredi political parties standing in the way of their community’s prosperity?

All of a sudden, everyone is talking about Haredim. The formation of the new government and the dramatic concessions offered by Prime Minister...

04.01.2023 100

The Times of Israel

Haviv Rettig Gur

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