I think if you conducted the same survey of J Street, you would find a great many oldsters like me in the membership.

I agree with your arguments here Ezra, but don't rely on Brodkin. Her book is trash, based on sketchy research and mostly personal experience rather than any systematic study. Read Hasia Diner's review of it in the Journal of American History (Sept 2000) for more information.

Ezra, I think you're extrapolating from your experience among lefty Jewish friends. I would bet (still without data) that AIPAC has its share of young people thanks to the birthright-israel generation.

I would hope that Walt and Mearsheimer aren't really at the heart of it. That would be frightening.

I think that Bush's unpopularity has been the main factor in causing the younger cohort of Jews to be less reflexively pro-Israel than their parents and grandparents. Bush took a hard line towards the Palestinians, which automatically gives them legitimacy as a people and a movement in many circles - especially those that have an influence on the youngsters like academia and the entertainment industry.

If Bush or Cheney came out and blasted Israel Achmadinijad style, there would be an upwelling of support for Israel among young American Jews that would make your head spin.

Same thing has happened to the Korean and Vietnamese younger generations.

Stay in America long enough and you forget and no longer appreciate why or how you came to be here.

The youth today?

All of you are spoiled brats.

Really that simple.

Nothing different about being a Jewish spoiled brat.

Don't overanalyze it and blame or infer that there is something wrong with your elders because they endured the Holocaust but your generation is "better" because they didn't.

Maybe it's your generation with the problem.

Honestly what the HELL kind of reasoning are you employing?

You young whippersnappers... with your I-phones, and your tweets, and your 31 flavors... In my day, we didn't have telephones or ice cream...and we liked it. Floffledy floo!

Naked displays of power by establishment Israel-supporters such as we have just come through would have to, I would imagine, do quite a bit to accelerate this sense of divergence in younger people from the sense of overriding insecurity experienced by their parents' and grandparents' generations.

"all of you are spoiled brats."

what a sad commentary.
after growing up with the lessons of viet nam and iraq, the tragic presidency of george w. bush, the immorality of leadership and the people in power over their earlier years, the increasing fragmentation of families and culture and now the economy, which holds the hopes for their future, i would hardly call this generation spoiled.
in fact, i think it is a generation that is growing up in a far less hopeful america. i dont think it has been an easy ride at all for the younger generation.
but i do agree with ezra's point.
american schools are filled with children who speak dozens of languages, who share disparate cultural experiences....and they know how to get along better, in spite of their parent's prejudices....they are finally a generation that is transcending that.
a lot of the philosophy of the older jewish generation is about exceptionalism.....it is not a world view....
i think many young jewish people now ask,
"is it good and fair for the whole world?"
rather than, "is it good for the jews?"

and this is the view that is at the heart of judaism..Hash-m created a whole universe, not just one group of people in it.
read genesis.

well, at least in genesis, there is a world-view.
one of the great difficulties, in reading the Torah, is that prayers and supplications are on behalf of "Thy people israel," rather than for the sufferings of all people.
whenever you limit your prayers for one group, or teach a child that they are chosen over all others, that they, alone, are unique in G-d eyes, it diminishes a child's view of other people.
others do it, by telling children they are unique if they live in a bigger house, if they have "more stuff"....
maybe everyone having "less stuff" and the need to share the world's resources now, will create a more compassionate generation among the newly young.

one thing is for sure, that for the youngest generations now, having barack obama as our president, is advancing that more conscious world view, by light years.
if you spend time with children, you can already feel the change.

Walter Rathenau.

I actually agree with you a great deal on this, Ezra - that younger Jews don't experience the same anxiety as older Jews, at least not in the same way. Except I have a different take on it. Now, American Jews are not priviliged. That's just a bizarre claim. We're relatively well tolerated. Except there have been lots of periods in history when Jews have been well tolerated.

Unfortunately, the oppression of Jews is not well theorized or understood. We understand the worst periods sort of well, but we don't understand the subtler forms -how antisemitism exists as a structural oppression- well at all. We don't know why antisemitism comes in waves separated by periods of tolerance and flourishing. Actually, some strange people have made the bizarre claim that pre-Nazi Germany was a time of unique Jewish integration and influence in European society. But it would be hard to deny that some German Jews experienced it that way - as a time of prosperity and influence.

So, when people disagree with you, it's not because they're old. It might be because they have a different understanding -perhaps even based on greater knowledge- of what antisemitism is.

Did you read Christopher Hitchen's review of Gregor von Rezzori's _Memoirs of an Antisemite_? There's a reason Hitchen's titles the piece "The 2,000 year old panic." There's a long history of dismissing the anxieties of Jews as just a Jewish problem - too damaged by the past to live comfortably in the present. It's condescending and often more racist than compassionate, and it's justified a lot of antisemitism through the ages. Or historian Shulamit Volkov's _Germans, Jews, and Antisemites_ where she tries to figure out why more Jews didn't leave Germany, and concludes it was a confusing time. Despite the fact that Hitler was excpetionally clear in his plans for extermination, very few people realized it. Why was that? Because of the stereotype of the hypersensitive Jew.

Now, American Jews are not priviliged. That's just a bizarre claim. We're relatively well tolerated. Except there have been lots of periods in history when Jews have been well tolerated.

Antisemitism hasn't been intense and unvaried throughout history, sure, but I think you're overstating your case. There are 13 Jews in the Senate right now and 30 in the house, even though Jews are only about 2 percent of the overall population. Even the Republican Party, which generally receives abysmal support from the Jewish community, has seen fit to make one their minority whip. This part is harder to quantify, but they also seem to have a disproportionate influence on the national culture, not that there's anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.

Jews aren't privileged in the literal sense of the term ("private law"), but then, almost no one is; that's basically archaic. In the modern sense of the term - a group with disproportionate representation and influence - yes, Jews are obviously privileged. And privileged groups don't generally have the bunker mentality that is a natural and necessary response to how things (are/were/have been) elsewhere.

As a young, multiracial, Sephardic Jew who grew up in the South and who supports J Street, I thought this was a really interesting piece, but I think you might be overstating the privilege thing a bit. Not every young American Jew, or every young American dovish Jew, is a white Ashkenazi Jew living in a liberal, welcoming, coastal city. And not every young white Ashkenazi Jew living in a theoretically welcoming coastal city is seamlessly accepted by the mainstream - my boyfriend was from that sort of background and environment, and dealt with neo-Nazi gangs in high school.

Certainly, as Jews, we have disproportionate representation in government, but many of us are also still "the other" in many parts of the US.

I don't know if the generation gap is real or not - some commenters seem to be disputing it. I do think that at least some segments of the Jewish community are increasingly resisting the idea of Jewish exceptionalism, and younger people are growing up with more exposure to diversity.

Without groups like J Street, lefty, dovish Jews who nevertheless support Israel's existence might feel like they had no alternative but to suck it up and support groups like AIPAC. J Street makes that unnecessary, and maybe that's why it's seen as a threat.

Nothing generational about it unless one wants to trot out the usual Churchillian quote about heart vs. brain or Santayana's for failing to learn from history.

What I see from bloggers like Ezra and Glenn is that they are as reflexively anti-Israel as the neons are pro. One can see no right the other can see no wrong.

Neither stance is helpful and it is one of the reasons progressives the last few months have found themselves labeled as "juiceboxers", "poutragers", etc. The problem with constant outrage is it gets tiresome and suggests more negative motivations.

In Ezra's post above he almost flashes to the real issue. And yes, it is a challenge to today's generation to realise that, dragging in another quote, history may not exactly repeat but it always rhymes.

There are no lack of examples through history when just when jews thought they were fully integrated there was an epic tragedy to start the cycle again. The backlash gearing up across Europe and the ME has less to do with Israeli actions than with old fashioned local political power plays.

I have deep issues with some of Israel's actions but I don't make the mistake of thinking it is a monolothic or even dualistic entity whose very existence is thoroughly secure either.

On this particular topic Progressives seem to forget events have a sequence, that they accumulate. And that it cuts across all the players.

It's not mature thinking to on one hand insist everyone put the past behind them and in the next breath pout and rage when doing the same stupid thing repeatedly hasn't done any good.

You're conflating two distinct groups of people while forgetting recurring Jewish history.

1) J-Street is a pro-Israel group. It is just seeking to realign what "pro-Israel" means in America. It is fueled by the thousands of supporters who feel a very real tie to Israel, whether brought up privileged or not.

2) The apathetic Jews you describe, even if of the younger generation, don't care at all about Israel. For this group, your analysis may hold, but it must be severed from your reason why J-Street is a threat to AIPAC, et al. The apathetic Jews are a non-factor in the advocacy world. Or, if they are a factor, they are antipathetic to Israel and have actively subscribed to the anti-Zionist narrative. That makes them not only AIPAC antagonists, but J-Street nonbelievers as well.

3) It is the apathetic/antipathetic-to-Israel Jews that have ditched the sense of "continued threat," not the J-Streeters. The sense of impending doom for Israel and world Jewry very much animates supporters of both AIPAC and J-Street across the generations. J-Street advocates its pro-peace message with such immediacy because it fears that without peace in the very near future, Israel will cross a point of no return and it will only be a matter of time before Israel ceases to exist.

Liberal Zionists, not anti-Zionists, are very aware that Jewish comfort in the US is hardly exceptional in our history. We feel privileged to live in safety and with acceptance, but we are always on the lookout for the next Herzlian moment that the German Jews, in its latest iteration, failed to see.

The problem now is that the pure anti-Semitism that Herzl witnessed in the Dreyfus Affair is no longer so easy to spot. Israel's existence and Zionism's follies have created a legitimate "anti-Israel" and "anti-Zionist" discourse. But the fear remains that these legitimate criticisms may be wolves in sheep's clothes. While there are many, such as Judea Pearl, who readily conflates anti-Zionism as the new anti-Semitism, many others find the line hard to distinguish between the good-faith critics and the bad-faith bigots.

J-Street, then, rather than go on an impossible witch-hunt for true Jew-haters posing as anti-Zionists, seeks to prevent the Herzlian moment--the that is, the Jewish "oh shit, we're fucked" moment--before it comes. That's the difference between supporters of J-Street and supporters of AIPAC: J-Streeters largely think that moment is imminent if right-wing Israel advocacy and policy continue to hold the day; AIPACers largely think that they can prevent the moment by condemning all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic and pushing Israel to continue exercising its might for survival.

And this is where the real generation gap, if any, shows itself: the pro-Israel right still believes that its enemies are operating militarily to destroy Israel; the pro-Israel left understands that Israel's enemies know Israel can only be destroyed politically and each rocket they send into Israel goads Israel, with its raw memories of near-extermination, to react so forcefully as to undermine its political legitimacy. The pro-Israel left, recognizing that Israel is no longer militarily existentially threatened, knows the solution is political and political only; the pro-Israel right believes the world's attitude, or the ways to deal with Israel's threats, hasn't changed since '67.

Indeed, views on '67 are a dividing line between the right and the left. Do you believe Israel's victory was a heroic miracle that justifies all it has done since? Or do you believe '67 was a heroic miracle that cursed Israel with a self-destructive hubris for which a change is now desperately needed? How one advocates for Israel, no matter what generation that person belong to, depends on how one answers that question.

I would argue a different point -- a certain kind of Jewish apathy is actually AIPAC's best friend. Much of their clout comes from their ability to mobilize a significant number of American Jews who don't have active Jewish lives and aren't involved or engaged enough to follow Israeli events closely. These folks can satisfy their minimal sense of tribal obligation by sigining the petition and writing a check when someone tells them that Israel's future is threatened. AIPAC has succesfully branded itself as the voice of our community, and that's all these folks can be bothered to know.

The congregation I was brought up in, for example, was one of those nominally Conservative suburban behemoths where they could barely get enough people for a minyan many Saturdays (that's 10 people, for those who need a primer). But a huge percentage of the folks who couldn't be bothered to show up more than twice a year were dues-paying AIPACers who could be counted on to respond like Pavlov's dogs whenever the threat was suggested.

On the other hand, the folks I know who are most excited about J Street are much more involved Jewishly. They keep kosher, observe Shabbat and holidays and give their kids good religious educations. And they stay informed enough about Israel to understand that a two-state peace is the only hope for the country's survival.

This is all based on a small subset of folks I know, of course. I know AIPAC has lots of supporters in the Orthodox world, and JStreet attracts a lot of secular lefties. But it's not an insignificant phenomenon either.

"If Bush or Cheney came out and blasted Israel Achmadinijad style, there would be an upwelling of support for Israel among young American Jews that would make your head spin.

Posted by: PiltdownMan"

Are you saying that young American Jews are reactionary and incapable of taking a postition on an issue based soley on the merits of that position?

An Israeli Citizen
A Letter to Charlotte Kates - Pro-terrorist Law Student at Rutgers University

The following letter was written to the President of Rutgers State University by an Israeli citizen after reading Kates' published comments on the Israeli/Palestinian situation !!

Dear Ms. Kates,

I think you are a remarkable woman. You are neither an Arab nor a Jew, you do not study the Middle East, or any associated subject, and correct me if I am wrong, you have never visited this region. Therefore I am somewhat astounded at your expertise and to your comments on Israel being an "Apartheid" state.

I have lived in Israel for many years and I would be delighted to take you on a little virtual tour of our country. Let me first give you a couple of minor points. Israel occupies 0.1% of the landmass of the Middle East and it is the only Jewish state, not only in this region, surrounded as we are by 22 Arab states, but in the world.

Let us begin your virtual tour!!
You have already been through immigration at Tel Aviv Airport with your boyfriend, whom we shall call Ken. You will have filled out a visitors form. This form will not ask you, as it will in many of the countries that surround us, what is your religion, and it will certainly not ask you, as they do in Saudi Arabia, for a "certificate of religion".

The day is Sunday! You will want to attend a church service. No problem in the Apartheid State of Israel. We tolerate and freely allow worship for all religions. This is more than can be said for nearly all of the surrounding 22 Arab nations. In fact many of them would not even have a single church, let alone a synagogue.

After a lovely service you and Ken would head for a leisurely lunch, maybe at one of the lovely beachfront restaurants in Tel Aviv. You would most likely have returned to your hotel and put on a very casual outfit, as fitting the very hot Israeli summers. This could be a pair of shorts and a tight fitting skimpy t-shirt. No problem in the Apartheid state of Israel. In Israel we allow freedom of dress, especially for women, who are not made to wear bulky long robes, a veil to cover their face, and, wouldn't it be a pity if you had to cover that lovely coiffed hairdo, as you would probably have to in most of the surrounding 22 Arab states.

During lunch Ken could gaze lovingly into your heavily painted eyes, complete with a good application of black mascara. He would be free to lean across and kiss your lips, finely painted with lip liner, 2 shades of burgundy lipstick and gloss. People would probably think you were in love, especially as Ken has proudly displayed a good wine on the table. Public displays of affection and consuming alcohol in the Apartheid state of Israel is nothing unusual and its not even scorned upon. That's more than can be said for most of the surrounding 22 Arab states, where your glossy lips would be considered whorish and alcohol is forbidden. But, Ken being a little flirtatious pinched one of the young waitresses while you went to reapply your lipstick. It was harmless and luckily for the young girl in the Apartheid State of Israel, her father and 6 brothers will not take her to the family pool in the evening and drown her, as they would in some of the surrounding 22 Arab states.

After lunch you and Ken drive around. You are even allowed to drive. It is not forbidden in Israel. You stumble across a kindergarten. The children are running around and enjoying themselves. They are not made to sit for hours reciting by rote, pages from religious books. Their games are in the sand pit or on the swings. They are not infested with hate or told the only honor to their lives will be in death. In the Apartheid state of Israel we rejoice in life and living. We do not promote murder and violence by brainwashing our children with hatred, as they do in many of the surrounding 22 Arab states.

By the end of the day you and Ken come across a political rally. Many thousands have turned up. In the Apartheid State of Israel, all the citizens, men, women, Jew, Arab and Christian are free to vote. We are allowed to openly criticize the government and our media, including the T.V. and newspapers, offer, without prejudice, a choice of opinions. Every person has the right to openly agree or condemn the government. This can certainly not be said for most of the surrounding 22 Arab states, ruled as they are by oppressive dictators, where any dissent is met with dire consequences.

Of course, most of the 22 surrounding Arab countries can't offer you a good old-fashioned homicide bombing as a tourist attraction. This can only happen in the apartheid state of Israel, surrounded as we are, by so many hostile countries, determined, as you are to wipe us of the face of the earth. Where else can you get on a crowded bus, often packed with children and come face to face with some poor, plighted Palestinian ghoul who thinks life isn't very jolly, having been fed and brainwashed by evil organizations like Hamas, to believe that the only way forward is to murder innocent people. This dehumanized creature will have been fed on a 24/7 diet of lies and hate incitement, he will have been coaxed with the reward of 72 vestal virgins waiting for him in Paradise. His demonic mother will be dancing in the street waving her $10,000 check.

While Israelis are scraping their dead children off the sidewalks, the Palestinians will be lighting fireworks and dancing in the street, to honor this mass murderer as a hero, often to their children who are being systematically nurtured to be the next generation of mass murderers.

The Apartheid state of Israel. Forgive me Ms. Kates but you seem somewhat confused as to the meaning of the word. It usually refers to segregation. Its funny isn't it that a large section of the Jews who live in this apartheid state had to flee for their lives from nearly all of the surrounding 22 Arab states. These countries not only have no tolerance for Jews, they refer to anyone who is not a Moslem as an Infidel and an enemy. I find it somewhat curious that you find nothing "apartheid" about these countries. Maybe you should do a project on how many churches there are in Saudi Arabia. Let me help you - there are none. It would not be tolerated.

I am proud to live in this Apartheid State. In 55 years we have become one of the most technologically advanced nations on this planet, with many innovations that have made Israel a true leader in many fields. It is tragic that we have to live in a region that feels threatened by our achievements. Israel is not an apartheid state and it is appalling that a so-called intelligent and thinking person like you can go around finding feeble excuses for mass murder. Ms. Kates there is no justification, in any society, for getting on a crowded bus, often packed with children, detonating an explosive belt, often packed with nails and shrapnel and destroying innocent lives. This is not a freedom fighter, or a person seeking justice, but a chronically and irreversibly evil human being.

I can only assume that one day in the near future Ms. Kates, you will chip off that heavy layer of make up and discover your conscience.

here is why J street will fade away - most of its members are young democrats who came of age during the bush years. they are, like everyone else in their generation, so self-absorbed that remain willfully ignorant of the events of 93-2000. thus, they believe that a two state solution can be at hand if only Israel would give up the West Bank! there could be peace! yea!

and since they are so reflexively anti-Bush, any use of force is suspect.

Never mind most of these people grew up in tony suburbs where nothing bad ever happened.

What the events of 93 to 2000 (and gaza in 2005) show, is that Israel can keep giving up land "for peace" -- except that such actions led to a wave of suicide bombings (the 2nd intifada) -- something on the scale of 17 9/11's -- led to an entrenched Iranian backed terrorist mini-state in south lebanon (Hezbollah) and rockets littering the south for the last 8 years (gaza).

of course, on this blog, to speak these home truths gets you labelled "reactionary" and "zionist" (pejoratively; as if asking for a jewish homeland -- the only one in the world and less than 1/10000 of the world's landmass - is so terrible).

Unfortunately, though a majority of Israelis would have willingly given up land for peace (which is why Oslo happened in the first place, not to mention negotiations with syria, the retreat from lebanon and the retreat from gaza) -- the settlers and their right wing enablers take advantage of the peace process' failure to pursue their own ends.

now J street doesn't recognize these subtleties -- they only want the world as they "wish" it to be. AIPAC tends to be right wing, though i bet that if you look at its membership it is more democratic than republican.

J streeters will end up going away b/c the group will no longer be the fashion of themoment -- or they will become more engaged and will learn that, at least for now, land for peace doesn't work. outside of a hard leftie, no one will ask israel to give upthe jordan valley.

I only wish j streeters actually knew where that was!

peace out!

I thought Mike totally nailed it.

ba, on the other hand, writes like the good and faithful Boer he is. I'm sure life was wonderful in Capetown - all the beaches, the pretty girls, the wildlife. And, golly gee, the occasional straw-colored African could even try for white. And life probably wasn't too bad among the Boers in Johannesburg either.

I very much doubt that either the Africans in the townships or the Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories are quite so blase about life under the heel of their Boer and Israeli overlords with their shared apartheid ideology.

ndm -- i see you take the strategy to attack me personally, make an analogy that doesn't hold and then hysterically call me a racist.

All without actually responding to the claims that I made!

I wish i lived in your world!

BA

ba -

I did not attack you "personally," I merely mocked your rosy-eyed view of Israel. Although Israel does treat its Palestinian citizens somewhat less well than its Jews citizens no one believes that Israel itself is an apartheid state. Israel has, however, made an apartheid state of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. And, frankly, you should be far more concerned about the Israeli treatment of Palestinians there than you should be about my description of it as apartheid.

Most American Jews (those commenting here excluded) have never heard of AIPAC and therefore do not support AIPAC or it's policies and activities although they do support Israel. AIPAC is the home of leaders of Jewish major Jewish organizations and their political interests but rank and file Jews have had no place there, Christian Zionists have a bigger role. The divide discussed here by many bloggers between older and younger Jews is the fault of the American Rabbinate who have been incapable of speaking to their congregations and community without the fear inducing continual promotion of the holocaust. Millions of committed Jews have been driven from the community by the Rabbi's inability to communicate contemporarily. I am not diminishing the holocaust, just the Jewish leaders inability to communicate without constantly employing that "crutch". Both AIPAC and the leadership of Israel are seemingly unaware about the world at large in 2009 and how we communicate instantly.
How out of touch is Israel? Just last week they got around to budgeting $2 million dollars for Public Relations to deal with the Gaza Adventures fallout. Yes, that was $2 million dollars.

I love ba. This is great. I think it's the first time I've seen the phrase "homicide bombers" used in earnest outside a Free Republic comment thread. It's also precious to criticize J-Streeters for being anti-Bush and being skeptical about the use of force. Yeah, those bastards are also opposed to child pornography, and yet they inexplicably think puppies are cute.

This dehumanized creature will have been fed on a 24/7 diet of lies and hate incitement, he will have been coaxed with the reward of 72 vestal virgins waiting for him in Paradise.

"Dehumanized." It's accurate, but I have the vague sense that you didn't mean it that way.

cyrus,

i don't know what you're talking about. You elide different categories and cite things I never wrote.

J streeters are skeptical about the use of force -- but have no conception that their view of what should happen in Israel and the Territories has already been tried -- to amazingly bad effect! unless of course you consider hamas, hezbollah and the al aqsa martyrs brigades to be "progressive".

this may be instructive to you, if you had a brain to reason with!

By YOSSI KLEIN HALEVI

Enemies of the American-Israeli alliance could not have conjured a scenario more fraught with potential for misunderstanding. In Washington, a new president is reaching out to the Muslim world, including Iran. In Jerusalem, the government about to take office represents the disillusionment of the Israeli public with 15 years of failed peace talks. For President Barack Obama, power is a means to encourage the rational self-interest of opponents. For Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu, power is the means of defending his people from irrational hatred. Mr. Obama's mandate is for change; Mr. Netanyahu's is for survival.

Though the inclusion of the Labor Party in Mr. Netanyahu's otherwise right-wing coalition will shift it toward the center, differences between Washington and Jerusalem will persist. With Iran about to achieve nuclear capability, and its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza gaining strength, this is the worst possible time for tension between the U.S. and Israel. But a crisis can be averted if both countries consider each other's most pressing needs and remain focused on their shared anxieties.

The first prerequisite is genuine realism in Washington regarding negotiations with the Palestinians. It will be tempting in the coming months to blame Mr. Netanyahu -- who has refused to commit himself to a two-state solution -- for the absence of a peace agreement. But that breakthrough would have eluded any Israeli government. Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his foreign minister, Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, couldn't have tried harder to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.

Instead of continuing to pursue the unattainable, the American-Israeli approach should focus on creating a civil society in the West Bank that is an essential precondition for the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. Mr. Obama will find a ready partner in Jerusalem for improving economic conditions in the West Bank. That process would present the Palestinians with a stark choice between their two territories: the beginnings of prosperity in a peaceful West Bank, or devastation in a jihadist Gaza.

Inevitably, the most sensitive issue in managing the American-Israeli relationship will continue to be settlements. Under President Bill Clinton's December 2000 Middle East peace plan, settlement blocs like Gush Etzion near the 1967 border would be retained by Israel in an eventual agreement. Indeed, no Israeli government will stop building in those West Bank blocs.

The tacit agreement between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, then, needs to be American acquiescence in continued building within the highly populated settlement blocs, in exchange for Israeli restraint in building beyond the blocs. The Netanyahu government has a mandate from the Israeli public to act decisively against any security threat, and to resist international pressure for premature peace agreements. But it doesn't have a mandate to resume massive settlement expansion across the West Bank.

The Israeli Jewish public that voted overwhelmingly for right-wing parties did so primarily for security reasons. The Israeli right of 2009 is a mood, not an ideology. And Mr. Netanyahu understands the expectations of his voters. During the election campaign, he spoke incessantly about stopping a nuclear Iran and the jihadist threat generally -- not about settlement growth. However grudgingly, Mr. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition partners will likely accept some limitation on settlement building. And the presence of the Labor Party in the coalition will ensure moderation on the settlement issue. Indeed, the small National Union party is the only right-wing party that places massive settlement building at the top of its agenda, and it will not be part of this coalition.

For all their differences over the nature of a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, Mr. Netanyahu and Labor leader Ehud Barak have set those aside to focus on the most urgent issue facing the Middle East in the coming months: preventing the emergence of a nuclear Iran and the imposition of an irreversible blackmail on the region. Dealing with that threat will define this Likud-Labor coalition.

America and Israel should emulate the new Israeli government's single-minded focus. This is not the time to be distracted by what are, for now, secondary issues, like eventual Palestinian statehood. Nor should disagreements between Israeli and American intelligence agencies over the pace of Iranian nuclear development distract the two governments from their agreement over the danger posed by a nuclear Iran. By focusing on thwarting Tehran's nuclear ambitions, the U.S. and Israel will find Arab allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. That dynamic is already creating a shift in regional alliances, and could eventually lead to a real Middle East peace process.

In sparing Israel a narrow right-wing coalition and by persisting in creating a semblance of a national unity government, Mr. Netanyahu has taken the essential first steps in protecting his country's relationship with Washington. Now Washington needs to take the next step and affirm its readiness to work with the Netanyahu-Barak government to save the Middle East from apocalyptic threat.

I love the way ba quotes an entire piece by Yossi Klein Halevi, a man who has built an entire career predicated on their never being a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A single sentence of the above is evidence enough of his malice:

The first prerequisite is genuine realism in Washington regarding negotiations with the Palestinians.

ndm,

do you actually know anything, or do you just make up whatever comes out of the (small) brain of yours?

this is Yossi Klien Halevi --

In 2001 he published "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land". The book tells of his spiritual journey as a religious Jew into the worlds of Christianity and Islam in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Halevi joined the prayers and meditations in mosques and monasteries, in an attempt to experience the devotional lives of his non-Jewish neighbors and to create a religious language of reconciliation among the three monotheistic faiths.

Halevi has been active in Middle East reconciliation efforts, and serves as chairman of Open House, an Arab-Jewish educational project in the working class town of Ramle. He was a founder and board member of the now-defunct Israeli-Palestinian Media Forum, which brought together Israeli and Palestinian Journalists.

So it seems that, far from "building a career predicated on their never being a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he's actually worked, albeit in a small, personal way, to MAKE a solution to the conflict!

It's nice being you -- you can just make up the facts as you go along. La, la la....

ndm,

are you so stupid as to mix up "their" and "there"?

what are you, 12 years old?

just ak-sing!

read it and weep leftist pigs!

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/03/27/campus-revolutionaries-against-zionism/

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March 24, 2009 6:45 AM | Khaled Abu Toameh
Journalist
On Campus: The Pro-Palestinians' Real Agenda

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse.

On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. There was another campus where someone told me that I was a ‘liar” because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.

And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my “even-handed analysis” of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.

The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years.

The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don’t know -and don’t want to know - that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.

What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.

Many of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials I talk to in the context of my work as a journalist sound much more pragmatic than most of the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” folks on the campuses.

Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.

While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence. As such, we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.

"we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the gaza strip or the mountains and mosques of pakistan and afghanistan, but from university campuses across the u.s."

this is a way of spreading hate, propaganda and mistruths....

look at this...
http://www.aaper.org/site/c.quIXL8MPJpE/b.3794785/
a website that has come to me today,from an arab student group on a large, nearby campus.
it is the website of the american association for palestinian equal rights.
look at the website....look at the letter they have written to barack obama.
perhaps you can learn something by looking at this website.
this student group is also sending out information for the palestinian children's defense fund...to raise money for medical care for children injured in the invasion....
they are sponsoring blanket drives, as there are also not enough blankets for the children in gaza.
if you actually
took the time to engage in dialogue with a good heart and open mind with many of these students, you would not be saying such hateful things.
they are intelligent, educated, young people....and you are painting them with a cruel brush stroke.
they serve in the military ,they are the residents caring for you in the hospital. they are also your neighbors.

One of the problems with this post is the citation to Brodkin. Try reading Eric Goldstein's _The Price of Whiteness_. Much better.

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