Early Life and Israel
Chafetz was born and raised in Pontiac, Michigan. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he moved to Israel. He spent a decade in the army, government service and politics. In 1977, he was appointed director of the Government Press Office, a post he held for five years during the administration of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Chafets was an active participant in the Egyptian-Israeli peace process and a delegate to the first Israeli-Egyptian peace negotiations.
He was the founding managing editor of the Jerusalem Report magazine and is the author of twelve books of fiction, media criticism, and social and political commentary, three of which have been named Notable Books of the Year (by The New York Times). He is also the recipient of the 2008 Wilbur Award for his book A Match Made In Heaven.
He was a regular columnist for the New York Daily News from 2000 until 2004. Today his columns appear frequently in major newspapers around the world, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Post. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Sunday Magazine. In 2008, his NYT Magazine cover story on Mike Huckabee was a finalist for the National Magazine Award.
Chafets is a spirited political polemicist. A strong supporter of Israel, he has been a vocal critic of Arab dictatorships, Islamic radicalism, extremist groups such as Hizbollah and Hamas, and what he perceives as a pro-Palestinian bias in academia and the media. He is also well known for his opposition to the role of religious political parties in Israel.
Read more about this topic: Zev Chafets
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or israel:
“In early times every sort of advantage tends to become a military advantage; such is the best way, then, to keep it alive. But the Jewish advantage never did so; beginning in religion, contrary to a thousand analogies, it remained religious. For that we care for them; from that have issued endless consequences.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“He is a strong man who can hold down his opinion. A man cannot utter two or three sentences, without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, namely, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding, or, in that of ideas and imagination, in the realm of intuitions and duty.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Who is the LORD, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Exodus 5:2.
Pharaoh.