A year after British Prime Minister Cameron promised to legalize homosexual marriage by 2015, he touted Britain as “the best place to be gay, lesbian or transgender anywhere in Europe” (Telegraph, July 24, 2013).

The European Commission recently decided to refuse funding for Israeli projects in settlements beyond its 1967 borders and to place labels on settlement-made products to enable Europeans to boycott these items (EU Observer, July 16, 2013). However, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu sees the EU mandates as a threat to national sovereignty: “I will not let anybody harm Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jerusalem… We will not accept any external dictates regarding borders” (ibid.).

My family went through hard economic times in 1971. My father lost his job as a pharmaceutical salesman due to a company merger and he was unemployed for quite a while. As a result, finances were very tight, so our family of six no longer enjoyed many of the niceties to which we were accustomed. Mother was determined to save money.