Grapevine, August 22, 2025: Brains betrayed...

■ WHY DO highly intelligent people do stupid things? Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps changing the plot, even though he knows that he’s being recorded every time he speaks in public or gives a radio or television interview.

When she insulted courtroom security guards this week, she crossed every red line while screaming that she had parliamentary immunity. Most of her Likud colleagues were either embarrassed, angry, or both.

Even Levin was publicly critical of her. Had one of the Arab legislators used the same insensitive terminology, he or she would have promptly been arrested for incitement. Gotliv has been a source of embarrassment to the Likud and to the Knesset as a whole for the past two years.

Surely there must be some kind of mechanism to remove her, similar to what is done in sports on the principle of three strikes and you’re out.

Netanyahu stood waiting for the plane to land. Schalit, wearing an Israeli Army uniform, stepped out and saluted, and Netanyahu embraced him even before the young man’s father was given a chance to do so.

When the hostages taken on October 7, 2023, come home, the last person they want to see is Netanyahu. If there is any Israeli official who should welcome them home, it should be President Isaac Herzog, who, since day one, has unstintingly devoted himself to the hostages, their families, and those who have returned from captivity.

He has met with them, spoken on their behalf to heads of state and other foreign dignitaries, given hostage-related interviews to foreign media, repeatedly visited the sites of the atrocities, and attended hostage funerals and memorial events.

He’s been doing this almost every day of the week in addition to his regular presidential duties.

Many more people, or perhaps all the hostages, might have been saved if early on in the war, Netanyahu had been forced to watch Operation Thunderbolt, the film in which Yehoram Gaon plays Lt.-Col. Yoni Netanyahu, the PM’s older brother who led the Entebbe rescue operation in July 1976 and lost his life in doing so.

A clip from the film is included in the new documentary about Gaon that premiered at the Israel National Library this week. The clip shows Yoni declaring that the redeeming of hostages is one of the most important duties in Jewish tradition.

Most of the hostages were Israelis, but there were other Jews as well, he underscored, and it was essential to rescue them all as quickly as possible. That clip demonstrated the significant difference between the two brothers, though a much younger Bibi, who as a soldier, was a member of the IDF’s elite unit, would have then shared Yoni’s attitude.

Bibi, together with Ehud Barak, a future prime minister and defense minister, was involved in a rescue operation in May 1972 on board a Sabena plane, which had been hijacked by terrorists. Despite their political differences, the two later worked together in government, but unfortunately their relations soured, and they are now sworn enemies.

■ THERE ARE still great fashion designers and elegant outfits that are paraded on red carpets of major international events like the Academy Awards or fashion weeks in New York, Paris, and Milan, but fashion dictates are fast disappearing.

The days when the hemline on a woman’s dress was determined by her age are over. Cinderella’s slippers have given way to Ugg boots and sneakers, and trends are more related to comfort than to prevalent design concepts.

It’s not uncommon to see a middle-aged to elderly woman in a low-cut, mini-skirted dress, which reveals knobbly knees and wrinkled skin. It’s what she wants to wear and the kind of garment in which she feels comfortable regardless of how unflattering it may be.

The general attitude to fashion has changed and is changing. Fashion maven Yaara Keydar, an art historian, curator of fashion displays, and an expert on the history of fashion, will deliver a lecture in Hebrew on the new era in the fashion industry.

She will discuss how people dress and how they look at fashion and whether styles and trends reflect the future or are a sign of nostalgia for the past. It may be a little of both, certainly with the return of maxi skirts and dresses, which were popular in the 1960s because they were both romantic and non-constricting, unlike during a previous era in which the silhouette was enhanced by tight-fitting corsets.

The 1960s saw a much more free-flowing silhouette sans corset. Today’s maxi is also free flowing, but made of different fabrics that have emerged in a progressive technology-conscious world.

Keydar will address the changes in fashion at Musa in the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv on Friday, August 29, at 10 a.m.

If they can sacrifice Torah studies in order to attend demonstrations during which property is destroyed, traffic is stuck, and people’s lives are disrupted, why can’t they serve in the IDF like members of the Religious Zionist community who combine Torah studies with military duty and give the best of themselves to both?

The refusal by the majority of Haredim is shameful. Even more shameful is the way in which they attack those of their communities who respond favorably to call-up notices. But most shameful of all is that among the rabbis who are encouraging the avoidance of national service is former Sephardi chief rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, whose title includes Rishon LeZion (First for Zion).

How can a spiritual leader in a Zionist state, who receives his income and his pension from that state, encourage his followers to act against its laws and national interests?

The gathering took place in Herzliya Pituah at the residence of Ambassador JP Singh.

The ambassador hoisted the Indian National Flag and read out President Droupadi Murmu’s address to the nation. In his own remarks, JP Singh highlighted the growing strategic partnership between India and Israel, the shared democratic values, and the importance of standing together during times of crisis.

Although Israelis are much more familiar with Prime Minister Narendra Modi than they are with Murmu, she is no less an inspirational figure, having been the first girl in her village to matriculate and subsequently earn a university degree.

Murmu received a BA in political science and economics from Ramadevi Women’s College. She later worked in government departments and as a teacher before becoming a politician and serving in a series of ministerial positions.

She is passionate about democracy and the preservation of India’s diverse cultural heritage.

Katz, who celebrated his 46th birthday last week, started out as a military reporter and was the paper’s military and defense reporter for close to a decade before returning temporarily to the US, where he was born, to serve as a fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism.

While at Harvard, he was a faculty member at Harvard’s Extension School, where he taught an advanced course in journalism. Following his return to Israel, he was an adviser to former prime minister Naftali Bennett when the latter was education minister.

Inter alia, he is a fellow of MEAD, the New York-headquartered Middle East America Dialogue, where he hosts unbiased discussions between international experts on the Middle East.

At home in Jerusalem, he is a fellow of the Jewish People’s Policy Institute.

Katz will be in New York in September to promote his new book, While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East.

Within the context of his promotional visit, he will be the guest of Wall Street legend Matthew Rothman on the Upper East Side on Thursday, September 4, where he will join Aaron MacLean, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, for a discussion.

Their conversation will be part of the School of War podcasts.