Avoid LHR but read Rabinovich

Greetings, chaverim v'mispocha. I returned to Tel Aviv on Friday after spending last week in New York. Since a travelogue should presumably contain information that is useful for other travelers, let me issue the following travel advisory: avoid London-Heathrow like the plague! That airport mishandled my luggage twice -- on the way to New York and again when I returned to Tel Aviv. They couldn't keep track of a bag if it was tied around their necks.

Even when I'm not in Israel, it's never far from my mind. While I was in New York, I went to hear a public lecture at NYU on "The New, New Middle East" by Itamar Rabinovich, Israel's former ambassador to the United States, the chief negotiator with Syria under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and the president of Tel Aviv University from 1999 to 2007. He is also the author of several books, including Syria Under the Ba'ath; The War for Lebanon; The Road Not Taken: Early Arab-Israeli Negotiations; The Brink of Peace: Israel and Syria; and Waging Peace: Israel and the Arabs at the End of the Century. Having just recently blogged about Shimon Peres's 1993 book The New Middle East, I thought it would be interesting to attend Dr. Rabinovich's lecture, and I was not disappointed. I found it cogent and convincing -- enough so that I'd like to read his published work.