Stephen Oryszczuk

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Dec 10, 2020, 1:49 PM

The mood has changed – now Israel has support

Houses of Parliament. (Andrew Buchanan on Unsplash via Jewish News)

I still remember the battered leather satchel from which he removed Volume 373 No. 42. A retired professor, back in the great halls within which he was still revered, had come to meet 20-year old me, advise me on a 9/11 debate I was organising, and...

Aug 13, 2020, 7:41 PM

US-Israel-UAE deal is a win-win-win

Benjamin Netanyahu and the U.A.E.'s Prince Mohammed Al Nahyan. (Wikipedia/Author US Department of State and Prime Minister's Office (GODL-India)) via Jewish News

For the first time in his presidency, and with an election just three months away, Donald Trump this week showed ‘the art of the deal’ by presiding over a most unlikely yet earth-shaking geopolitical matrimony. Regardless of whether Trump was the brains behind, or the...

May 7, 2020, 3:11 PM

Boris’s 2018 view of Crimea may inform his 2024 view of Israel

Boris Johnson. (Photo credit: Victoria Jones/PA Wire via Jewish News)

A little over two years ago, while foreign secretary, Boris Johnson penned a Government article about Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Moscow had “broken the first principle of international law – that countries may not acquire territory or change borders by force,” he wrote. “We...

Apr 23, 2020, 1:10 PM

How Jewish News went from Shevarim to Tekiah Gedolah

Last summer, I read about a Canadian economist who resigned from the World Bank to devote herself to a movement revitalising Jewish spiritual life in America. Jennie Litvack was just 55 when she died in June last year, by when she had established herself as a...

Apr 14, 2020, 11:51 AM

‘God bless the compromisers’ – a personal tribute to Rabbi Pinter

Rabbi Avrohom Pinter (Jewish News)

My two favourite rabbis have long been a female progressive rabbi from Finchley and a Charedi rabbi from Stamford Hill. Not being of the faith, or of any faith come to that, the idea of having one favourite rabbi is strange, let alone two. One...

Mar 13, 2020, 12:25 PM

Shocking health stats show why Israel was so quick to shut its border

Workers wearing protective suits disinfect a bus as a preventive measure amid fears over the spread of the coronavirus, in Tel Aviv Photo by: Tomer Neuberg-JINIPIX via Jewish News

Earlier this month I was in Israel, one of the last foreigners allowed in without first having to prove how I could lock myself in a room for a fortnight. I was there to cover the election and stayed on for a few days to...

Feb 20, 2020, 3:30 PM

As with everything Israel, settlements aren’t that simple

A sign points to Israeli tourists sites and activities in the Jewish settlement Shilo, West Bank. (Photo by Debbie Hill/UPI via Jewish News)

Whatever happens in next week’s ‘yet-another’ Israeli election, the main issue to watch out for out in terms of movement, once all the chairs have been arranged, is settlements. The reason why settlements will be top agendas for both the new Israeli cabinet and Middle...

Aug 16, 2019, 3:11 PM

The new rules of engagement: who’s welcome and who isn’t

At some point I must have nodded off, because I awoke to news that Israel had denied entry to two US Congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who just happen to be the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. “Optics, shmoptrics,” I heard someone...

Dec 3, 2018, 12:53 PM

Case 4,000 shows how precarious Israel’s free press is

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a rally.
Photo by Tomer Neuberg- JINIPIX via Jewish News

Imagine the Met Police had just said Theresa May should be charged with corruption for pushing laws worth millions of pounds to ITV in return for positive news coverage about her. That, in essence, is what has just happened in Israel. Welcome to the mysteriously-named...

Jun 26, 2018, 1:07 PM

Ehud, I’d have forgiven you for your sins if you’d made peace

But he’s a crook. That’s what I kept thinking during my 90-minute interview with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was jailed for fraud and bribery and released from prison a year ago. But you’re a crook, I thought, as he told me how...

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About Me

Stephen Oryszczuk is the Jewish News Foreign Editor