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THE GERMAN name Sternhell means bright as the stars. The name fits: the positions of Professor Ze'ev Sternhell indeed stand out sharply against the darkness of the sky. He warns against Israeli fascism. This week, Israeli fascists laid a pipe-bomb at the entrance of his apartment and he was lightly injured.

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IN COLLOQUIAL Israeli Hebrew, when someone discovers something that everybody else already knows, we say: "Good morning, Elijahu!"

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Two locations, two rival political powers. Solidarity against Israel is gradually disintegrating as both regimes, and many individuals living under them, begin to see the future only in terms of their personal survival.

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Fathiya Barghouti, the mayor of Qarawat Bani Zeid, north of Ramallah in the West Bank, has to lie every time she submits the draft budget to the ministry for local government – under the law, it cannot be approved if it shows a deficit. She is not the only one: not a single local council has managed to avoid a chronic deficit, especially since 2006, when the international boycott of the Hamas government began and the impact of the Israeli siege hit more severely than ever. “They promised us they would change the law and make it correspond to reality,” says Barghouti. “But they can’t, because the Legislative Council [parliament] isn’t functioning.”

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Recently I was asked by the German Else-Laker-Schueler-Gesellschaft, which commemorates the German-Jewish-Israeli poetess, to describe how peace would look like. On the eve of Yom Kippur, the day of reconciliation, I would like to distribute it instead of my weekly article.

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An Israeli academic injured in a pipe bombing two weeks ago has told the BBC he fears a "climate of violence" may be threatening democracy in the country.

Zeev Sternhell, a well-known critic of Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, said he suspected far right-wing Israelis were to blame. ...

"Democracy cannot survive in a climate in which organised groups that are speaking in the name of Jewish history, of God, or of the future of Israeli society are allowed do everything - where everything is legal, everything is legitimate because these acts are in the service of a superior goal," said Mr Sternhell. ...

Mr Sternhell said he had received no personal threats in the weeks before the attack.

But he said poster had been found in his neighbourhood offering a reward of $320,000 to anyone who killed a member of Peace Now, an Israeli group campaigning against settlement building to which he belongs. ...

Mr Sternhell, a Holocaust survivor, is best known for his work on the history of fascism.

Earlier this year, he was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for political science.

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THROUGHOUT ITS thousands of years of history, Akko has never been an Israelite town.

Even according to the mythological story of the Bible, the Israelites did not conquer the city, which was already an ancient port. The first chapter of the Book of Judges, which contradicts much of the description given in the Book of Joshua, states unequivocally: "Neither did [the tribe of] Asher drive out the inhabitants of Akko. (Judges 1:31)

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THE PRESIDENT of the United States is the king of this planet. I live on this planet. Therefore, the election of the President concerns me, too. Very much so.

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In two world wars it rushed to the rescue of the opponents of tyranny.

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IN THREE days, it seems at the moment, the incredible will happen: the most important "white" country in the world will elect a black president.

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IN JULY 2004, the convention of the Democratic Party was about to nominate John Kerry as its candidate for President. The organizing committee had to decide who would deliver the keynote speech. In the American tradition, that speech sets the tone for the whole convention.

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