Last month would have been the 100th birthday of Ephraim Kishon, widely considered Israel’s greatest satirist. Kishon’s work spanned books, films, and even board games. Hillel Kuttler examines his legacy:

Experts tie Kishon’s keen observations of society, from the perspective of an average Israeli, to his being an outsider. Kishon was a Holocaust survivor from Hungary whose name—he was born Ferenc Hoffmann—was Hebraicized by a port official upon immigrating in 1949.

He quickly learned and mastered Hebrew and soon was penning columns in the language in local newspapers. He went on to write books and screenplays and make films. Two of the five movies he directed, Sallah Shabati (1964) and The Policeman (1971), which he also wrote and co-produced, earned Academy Award nominations as best foreign-language films.

Every August, a Jerusalem theater hosts a weeklong humor festival in Kishon’s honor. And this year’s did not disappoint by bringing with it the sort of scene Kishon himself might have created, thanks to a controversial poster for a play performed at the festival:

The poster shows the faces of three men and the play’s title, Naked. The word is meant as a metaphor for the show’s theme: a behind-the-scenes look at how a circus operates. No one is nude. But some Jerusalem residents presumed indecency and pressured the mayor’s office to withdraw its funding for the festival and to shut down the show.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.