Anshel pfeffer biography definition
•
Anshel Pfeffer is a British-Israeli reporter. He is a senior correspondent and columnist for Haaretz and the Israel correspondent for The Economist. Pfeffer is the author of Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In this week's conversation, Yascha Mounk and Anshel Pfeffer discuss Israel's strategy for defeating Hamas and whether it is likely to succeed; why the global left has failed to grasp the horrors of 10/7; what implications the war has for Jewish life in Europe and America; and why, after the war, Israel urgently needs to lösa the internal tensions that have marked the country since its founding.
The transcript and conversation have been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Yascha Mounk: We are now nearly four weeks into this conflict, four weeks since the worst terrorist attack on Jewish civilians since World War II. You've been in Israel throughout this period, you're in Jerusalem right now. How fryst vatten this being processed by
•
At the end of July, the prolific Anglo-Israeli journalist Anshel Pfeffer ended his long association with the Jewish Chronicle (JC) to join the Economist. In the scramble to replace Pfeffer, a senior editor at the JC suggested bringing in another Anglo-Israeli writer, Elon Perry. Almost no one in Jewish or indeed Israeli journalism had heard of Perry, but he was vouched for internally and appeared to have impressive bona fides as a veteran of both journalism and the Israel Defence Forces.
Perry soon delivered a series of thrilling scoops, culminating in a “world exclusive” about the Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s plans to flee Gaza to Iran bygd crossing the Philadelphi corridor, on the Egyptian border, and taking some Israeli hostages with him for protection. Conveniently, this story emerged just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was refusing to give an inch of that very same slice of territory – the Philadelphi corridor, which runs between Egypt and Gaza –
•
Anshel Pfeffer is the author of a major new biography of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In this wide-ranging discussion at a recent Fathom Forum in London Pfeffer talked candidly about his book and its subject. He claims that Netanyahu’s sustained dominance of Israeli politics is no interlude after which normal Labour Zionist service will be resumed. Bibi, says Pfeffer, is ‘Israeli through and through, and in order to understand what makes Israel tick today you must understand Netanyahu’. Below is an edited transcript.
Question: What distinguishes your biography of Benjamin Netanyahu from the others that have been published in the last few years?
Anshel Pfeffer: I started working on the book about three years ago. My greatest challenge was working out how to package his long and intense public career into a 400-page book. The solution I came up with, after a few false starts, was to tell the story of Israel through the lives of Netanyahu (Bibi) and his fam