Israel faces several challenges today including a stalled peace process with an increasing worldwide call for a bi-national state solution; Iran’s nuclear program; and the growing social divide in Israeli society between religious and secular Jews.  A two-state solution should remain the only acceptable resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  However, the calls for one state for Jews and Palestinians alike will continue to gather steam in the future.  Given the current demographic situation and problems in Israeli society, maintaining the status quo does not benefit Israel.

By listening to the presidential campaign rhetoric or watching the nightly news, one would not guess that the reality on the ground in Iraq is changing.

Security has improved significantly. Last month, for the first time, fewer U.S. troops were killed in Iraq than in Afghanistan. The numbers of Iraqi citizens killed has also dropped markedly, though it remains unacceptably high. This change is clearly reversible but the people in Iraq and in the region are starting to believe in it.

The headline from Gallup's latest poll reads: Americans Favor President Meeting With U.S. Enemies: 6 in 10 think it's a good idea to meet with president of Iran.

Hopefully, sound U.S. policy will be based on sound judgements and strategy, as opposed to opinion polls.  This specific poll, however, asked the wrong questions and is of little value.

The May 26, 2008 edition of "The Nation" dedicates the cover to "Reflections on the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of Israel."  Here, again, one of the masters of selective focus, Avi Shlaim, penned his article, "A Somber Anniversary."

Like Benny Morris, Shlaim became famous as one of the founding fathers of the New Historians and Revisionist authors.  However, their journeys of late have been mirror opposites.  Morris began on the left and has now fallen off the deep end on the right with his political views; Shlaim began on the left and has continued his race to the margins of the left.
 

 

With great sadness I read Fedwa Wazwaz’s opinion piece on Saturday, May 10 entitled “Israel’s 60th is not a reason for celebration.”  Sadder still is that she leads a program to foster dialogue and understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims.  Her article moves the Palestinian cause backwards, not forwards.

Wazwaz began her piece on why Israelis and Jews should not celebrate Israel’s 60th year of existence by quoting a letter published by British Jews in the Guardian.  The small group who are wracked with guilt over the plight of the Palestinians turn to the writing of the late, Edward Said, who emphasized that “what the Holocaust is to the Jews, the Naqba [Catastrophe] is to the Palestinians.”  True, Said delighted in this comparison and while there can be no doubt that Palestinians have suffered by the hands of Israelis and Arabs alike, such a statement requires no deep analysis to reveal its absurdity.

 

          Since the 1982 war in Lebanon, Israel has been transformed in mainstream media from the role of David fighting Goliath to the role of Goliath punishing David. In part, this is a symptom of the rise of Israeli and Jewish revisionist historians (Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappé, etc.) who began to publish their works in the 1980s; the increasing anti-Israeli biases in most Middle Eastern Studies departments at respected universities; Israel’s failure to present a concise narrative to combat the claims of their opponents; and laziness on the part of many mainstream reporters.
          A core problem is that it has become fashionable to publicly bash Israel and draw a moral equivalency between Israeli military strikes against known terrorists and the homicidal terrorists who seek to kill the maximum amount of civilians by strapping on bombs packed with nails. With the growing anti-Israel sentiment in the mainstream media, Americans who support Israel, value America’s security, and understand that there is a global war on political Islam that must be waged and won, will not likely be armed with enough facts to counter absurd claims in Western media and on Western campuses.