Word: avive
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...fathom: in recent days, millions were celebrating the idea that a man actually rose from the dead, while another doubtless felt that he was committing a holy act that would gain him a place in heaven when he strapped a bomb to his body and entered a Tel Aviv restaurant. The leap of faith is--and has to be--a plunge into the unrational (which to skeptics seems "unreasonable"), and by its nature it is a move that leaves the rest of us behind. Every religion is a different language that, to those outside it, makes as little sense...
Saul Friedlander--as reported, a scholar of great distinction--no longer teches half the year at Tel Aviv, but an invitation for an interim appointment under the terms of the chair turned out to be precluded...
Black days come all too often in Israel, and Friday was another. Members of the extremist group Hamas gave their own judgment when they shattered the Jewish holiday afternoon in downtown Tel Aviv with a powerful bomb. As costumed merrymakers paraded down the city's streets to celebrate Purim, which commemorates the deliverance of the Jews in ancient Persia from a plot to slaughter them, a man entered one of the cafes and detonated himself, killing three Israelis and injuring at least 47 more. A six-month-old girl, her tiny, blood-soaked body cradled in a policewoman's arms...
...Netanyahu, who won election on his promise to bring peace with security, the deaths in Tel Aviv cannot help raising questions about whether his way is working. When reporters standing amid the cafe wreckage suggested Har Homa had contributed to the bloodshed, Netanyahu bristled, "Nothing justifies terrorism." He is surely right about that, and there is an incalculable moral difference between building on disputed land and setting off a bomb in a cafe. But violence is the only real lever the Palestinians have in their conflict with the Israelis, so scenes like that in Tel Aviv are certain...
...carnage in Tel Aviv was only the latest, some would say inevitable, result of the troubles that have piled up during Netanyahu's 10 months in power. One difficulty was plain old inexperience. Netanyahu came into office almost wholly without practice in the real business of government. His energies in public life were spent crafting an image and smoothly making arguments for or against policies, but not formulating them. He never mastered strategy, only shifting tactics. In command of a telegenic appearance and a glib tongue, he figured his rhetoric could explain away his mistakes...