2015 Z”L

It was a year that saw historic advances in gay rights, freedom for a long-serving Israeli spy, the overthrow of a Speaker of the House, Israeli lawmakers felled by charges of sexual harassment, a PM on his way to jail for corruption and a major political defeat for AIPAC and Bibi Netanyahu.

It also brought some very unusual candidates for president. A blowhard billionaire who liked to boast of his wealth and hostility toward foreigners and minorities,  a charismatic surgeon who flamed out when he became befuddled by foreign policy, and one I can personally relate to: a 73-year-old Jewish liberal with a home in Burlington, Vermont.

2015 also saw more hopes for peace between Israelis and Palestinians dashed as they were replaced by a low-level Intifada of lone-wolf Palestinians stabbing Israelis on the street or driving their cars into pedestrians.

You can read about these and more in my Washington Watch look back at 2015.  To paraphrase Walter Cronkite's closing on an old TV show, it was a year like all years, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times, and you were there.