Submitted Stories by Michael S. Arnold RSS Feed Stories Submitted by Michael S. Arnold
Japanese center illuminates the Holocaust
About an hour north of Hiroshima, where the world's first atomic bombing incinerated an entire city, a Japanese educational center teaches about another holocaust half a world away. Read more »
Boosting Israel-Japan trade
Japan and Israel are seeking to establish a framework for joint research and development in civilian and defense areas where they have similar needs, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on a visit to Tokyo. Read more »
Bronfman: Singer took money
In a letter intended to ease distress over the firing of World Jewish Congress official Israel Singer, the group's president wrote that Singer was fired because he was taking money without proper authorization or documentation. Read more »
Questions remain after visit to Israel
Delegates from the Conference of Presidents’ annual Israel mission came, saw — perhaps more than they had bargained for — and left, many with more questions than when they arrived. Read more »
Philanthropist has ear of world leaders
There are a number of apocryphal stories about Lev Leviev, the Israeli diamond mogul who has become one of the Jewish world´s pre-eminent philanthropists. Read more »
U.S. Jewish group sees fruit of Russian investment
MOSCOW, Aug. 6 (JTA) — The microphones had been removed from the stage of Jewish School #1311 and the high school students, who had spent an hour serenading their guests in Yiddish and Hebrew and then another hour leading them on a tour of their school, had lapsed into casual teen-aged banter. The executive committee members of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture gathered outside the building, where the sun still shone here at 10 o'clock on a summer night. The Memorial Foundation delegation packed many memorable events into its three-day meeting last month, but many cited the visit to the school as particularly moving. The evening began with a speech from principal Grigory Lipman — a former teacher who founded the school a decade ago — and featured a series of endearing performances by students who came to the school to deepen their Jewish identity. The performance ended with a line of students dancing through the auditorium, joined by figures such as Hebrew University rector Menachem Ben- Sasson, and Menachem Elon, head of the World Union of Jewish Students and a former justice on Israel's Supreme Court. The scene couldn't have been better scripted from the perspective of the New York-based Memorial Foundation, which was holding its annual executive committee meeting in Moscow for the first time, despite 35 years of activity in Russia. "I already know about this school, but I wanted our people to see it," said Jerry Hochbaum, the Memorial Foundation's executive director. "Many American Jews still see Soviet Jewry in terms of 'Let My People Go,' " the slogan of 1970s efforts on behalf of Jewish refuseniks. "They don't realize what the fabric of Russian Jewish life is today," Hochbaum said. "I take offense when people say there's no future for Jews in Russia. You can't tell me that a community like we saw tonight" has no future. While it's not clear how many of the foundation's 36-person delegation would agree — dire demographic forecasts and the tenuousness of Russian Jewish identity were sources of frequent debate at foundation meetings — many members of the delegation were surprised by the extent of the Jewish renaissance they saw around them. "I was moved to tears," Eli Zoborowski, chairman of the International Society for Yad Vashem, said of the performance at Jewish School #1311. The last time he was in Russia, Zoborowski said, it was 1979 and the Jews he met feared to talk with him. One particularly brave soul slipped Zoborowski a note beneath the table, giving Zoborowski his address and asking him to write. When they did finally speak it was haltingly — the Russian man speaking in German, Zoborowski replying in Yiddish. At Lipman's school, the students showed they could speak decent Hebrew, and were informed enough about Israeli pop culture to mimic songs by their idols. Reflecting back to his 1979 trip, Zoborowski said, "we never dreamed we would see a day like this." Lipman's school is the crown jewel of a burgeoning system of Jewish education that is one of the Memorial Foundation's key projects. Only a decade after the collapse of communism, the Association of Jewish Schools and Principals of the Former Soviet Union has grown to include 53 elementary and high schools — of all ideologies and affiliations — that teach nearly 30,000 students. At the university level, Jewish studies programs draw both Jewish and non-Jewish students. The Memorial Foundation has been one of the backers of Project Judaica, the Jewish Theological Seminary's graduate program at the Russian State University for the Humanities. While the first crop of students arrived at the university with virtually no Jewish background, Project Judaica is starting to receive graduates of schools like Lipman's, who come with a fair amount of Jewish knowledge, according to director David Fishman. The schools are particularly important for the rebirth of Jewish life in Russia. In most countries, Jewish schools reflect the character and values of the community, Hochbaum said. In the former Soviet Union, where a rich Jewish life was devastated by the Holocaust and decades of Communist repression, the schools are the main building blocks of Jewish renewal and students are responsible for teaching parents about their heritage. The educational projects are relatively new for the Memorial Foundation, which was founded in 1965 with Holocaust reparation money from West Germany and charged with rebuilding the Jewish life that had been destroyed by the Nazis. Since then, the foundation has spent some $10 million on projects in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Given the constraints imposed by Soviet officials, the foundation for years focused mainly on publishing books on Jewish history and culture, working closely with an Israeli govermental agency known as the Liaison Bureau that combined community outreach with intelligence gathering. To date, the foundation has published more than 600 titles in Russian. The foundation also trained religious functionaries and communal workers — rabbis, those who perform ritual circumcisions — to take up positions in the community. Yet Hochbaum sensed that the ground was shifting in the Soviet Union. "There was a feeling that one day the situation would change, and we ought to have the resources in place to deal with it," he said. That day came with Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost policy, and the foundation quickly branched out into educational programs and leadership training programs. Among the leaders the foundation sponsored were prominent refuseniks such as Yosef Mendelevitch, Yosef Begun and Knesset member Yuri Edelstein. The foundation also supported religious and cultural figures such as principal Lipman. Another grantee was Ilya Altman, an archivist who received funding in the early 1990s to help identify all the government and state archives in Russia that might contain Jewish material. Several years later, Altman has finished his doctorate and directs the Moscow Holocaust Center, the country's leading independent institution for Holocaust research and education. The government recently agreed to use his books as part of the first Holocaust curriculum in Russian schools, Altman told JTA. In addition, the foundation supported the training of both of Russia's chief rabbis — Adolph Shayevich, head of Moscow's historic Choral Synagogue, and Berel Lazar, the Chabad rabbi who heads the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia — a remarkable display of ideological flexibility given the leadership struggle the two rabbis have waged in recent years. The conference also has supported Reform and secular leaders. Indeed, the crowd at the opening session of the annual meeting — where foreign Jewish organizations and the four umbrella organizations that claim to speak for Russian Jewry all were represented — showed how deftly the foundation has maneuvered through the minefields of Russian and international Jewish politics. In all, the foundation has given nearly 1,000 institutional grants and 1,700 individual ones in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and more than 100 people have gone through its leadership training programs. With the initial work of rebuilding Russian Jewish life well under way, the foundation is moving to the second stage, empowering local leaders to make decisions for the community. As a generation of homegrown Jewish leadership develops, however, it could cause friction with international Jewish organizations that want to dictate the Russian Jewish agenda and, in some cases, justify their own budgets. Hochbaum sees that power shift as a welcome development. "We don't believe we have to call the shots," Hochbaum said. "The external agencies are still important, but it's inevitable that the Russians should be the leaders of their own institutions and shape them according to their own vision of Jewish life." And, he says, it's important for world Jewry to understand that "there's an authentic Jewish life developing here, whose institutions in some cases are as good as institutions in the West." A few members of the executive committee with extensive background in Russian Jewish affairs were not surprised by what they saw during the foundation meeting. "If you had shown me this 10 years ago I would have reacted with more emotion," said Herman Branover, a physicist at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and editor of the Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry. "Now we're already getting used to it." But others considered the renaissance of Russian Jewish life a revelation. "For me, this visit is like seeing the day after having seen the night," said Jose Meiches, a professor of engineering in Sao Paolo and former president of Brazil's Jewish community. The last time he was in Russia, in 1989, was just before Glasnost, Meiches said. On a visit to Leningrad — known today as St. Petersburg — the group's guide refused to take them to a synagogue, dropping them off some distance away so he could tell authorities he didn't know their destination. "It was quite an experience trying to find something Jewish then," Meiches said, comparing it to the student performance he had just seen at Jewish School #1311. "This is a real story of rebirth. We will keep these memories until the end of our days." (JTA Managing Editor Michael S. Arnold recently visited Moscow on a trip partially sponsored by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.) Read more »
U.S. Jewish group sees fruit of Russian investment
MOSCOW, Aug. 6 (JTA) — The microphones had been removed from the stage of Jewish School #1311 and the high school students, who had spent an hour serenading their guests in Yiddish and Hebrew and then another hour leading them on a tour of their school, had lapsed into casual teen-aged banter. The executive committee members of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture gathered outside the building, where the sun still shone here at 10 o'clock on a summer night. The Memorial Foundation delegation packed many memorable events into its three-day meeting last month, but many cited the visit to the school as particularly moving. The evening began with a speech from principal Grigory Lipman — a former teacher who founded the school a decade ago — and featured a series of endearing performances by students who came to the school to deepen their Jewish identity. The performance ended with a line of students dancing through the auditorium, joined by figures such as Hebrew University rector Menachem Ben- Sasson, and Menachem Elon, head of the World Union of Jewish Students and a former justice on Israel's Supreme Court. The scene couldn't have been better scripted from the perspective of the New York-based Memorial Foundation, which was holding its annual executive committee meeting in Moscow for the first time, despite 35 years of activity in Russia. "I already know about this school, but I wanted our people to see it," said Jerry Hochbaum, the Memorial Foundation's executive director. "Many American Jews still see Soviet Jewry in terms of 'Let My People Go,' " the slogan of 1970s efforts on behalf of Jewish refuseniks. "They don't realize what the fabric of Russian Jewish life is today," Hochbaum said. "I take offense when people say there's no future for Jews in Russia. You can't tell me that a community like we saw tonight" has no future. While it's not clear how many of the foundation's 36-person delegation would agree — dire demographic forecasts and the tenuousness of Russian Jewish identity were sources of frequent debate at foundation meetings — many members of the delegation were surprised by the extent of the Jewish renaissance they saw around them. "I was moved to tears," Eli Zoborowski, chairman of the International Society for Yad Vashem, said of the performance at Jewish School #1311. The last time he was in Russia, Zoborowski said, it was 1979 and the Jews he met feared to talk with him. One particularly brave soul slipped Zoborowski a note beneath the table, giving Zoborowski his address and asking him to write. When they did finally speak it was haltingly — the Russian man speaking in German, Zoborowski replying in Yiddish. At Lipman's school, the students showed they could speak decent Hebrew, and were informed enough about Israeli pop culture to mimic songs by their idols. Reflecting back to his 1979 trip, Zoborowski said, "we never dreamed we would see a day like this." Lipman's school is the crown jewel of a burgeoning system of Jewish education that is one of the Memorial Foundation's key projects. Only a decade after the collapse of communism, the Association of Jewish Schools and Principals of the Former Soviet Union has grown to include 53 elementary and high schools — of all ideologies and affiliations — that teach nearly 30,000 students. At the university level, Jewish studies programs draw both Jewish and non-Jewish students. The Memorial Foundation has been one of the backers of Project Judaica, the Jewish Theological Seminary's graduate program at the Russian State University for the Humanities. While the first crop of students arrived at the university with virtually no Jewish background, Project Judaica is starting to receive graduates of schools like Lipman's, who come with a fair amount of Jewish knowledge, according to director David Fishman. The schools are particularly important for the rebirth of Jewish life in Russia. In most countries, Jewish schools reflect the character and values of the community, Hochbaum said. In the former Soviet Union, where a rich Jewish life was devastated by the Holocaust and decades of Communist repression, the schools are the main building blocks of Jewish renewal and students are responsible for teaching parents about their heritage. The educational projects are relatively new for the Memorial Foundation, which was founded in 1965 with Holocaust reparation money from West Germany and charged with rebuilding the Jewish life that had been destroyed by the Nazis. Since then, the foundation has spent some $10 million on projects in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Given the constraints imposed by Soviet officials, the foundation for years focused mainly on publishing books on Jewish history and culture, working closely with an Israeli govermental agency known as the Liaison Bureau that combined community outreach with intelligence gathering. To date, the foundation has published more than 600 titles in Russian. The foundation also trained religious functionaries and communal workers — rabbis, those who perform ritual circumcisions — to take up positions in the community. Yet Hochbaum sensed that the ground was shifting in the Soviet Union. "There was a feeling that one day the situation would change, and we ought to have the resources in place to deal with it," he said. That day came with Mikhail Gorbachev's Glasnost policy, and the foundation quickly branched out into educational programs and leadership training programs. Among the leaders the foundation sponsored were prominent refuseniks such as Yosef Mendelevitch, Yosef Begun and Knesset member Yuri Edelstein. The foundation also supported religious and cultural figures such as principal Lipman. Another grantee was Ilya Altman, an archivist who received funding in the early 1990s to help identify all the government and state archives in Russia that might contain Jewish material. Several years later, Altman has finished his doctorate and directs the Moscow Holocaust Center, the country's leading independent institution for Holocaust research and education. The government recently agreed to use his books as part of the first Holocaust curriculum in Russian schools, Altman told JTA. In addition, the foundation supported the training of both of Russia's chief rabbis — Adolph Shayevich, head of Moscow's historic Choral Synagogue, and Berel Lazar, the Chabad rabbi who heads the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia — a remarkable display of ideological flexibility given the leadership struggle the two rabbis have waged in recent years. The conference also has supported Reform and secular leaders. Indeed, the crowd at the opening session of the annual meeting — where foreign Jewish organizations and the four umbrella organizations that claim to speak for Russian Jewry all were represented — showed how deftly the foundation has maneuvered through the minefields of Russian and international Jewish politics. In all, the foundation has given nearly 1,000 institutional grants and 1,700 individual ones in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and more than 100 people have gone through its leadership training programs. With the initial work of rebuilding Russian Jewish life well under way, the foundation is moving to the second stage, empowering local leaders to make decisions for the community. As a generation of homegrown Jewish leadership develops, however, it could cause friction with international Jewish organizations that want to dictate the Russian Jewish agenda and, in some cases, justify their own budgets. Hochbaum sees that power shift as a welcome development. "We don't believe we have to call the shots," Hochbaum said. "The external agencies are still important, but it's inevitable that the Russians should be the leaders of their own institutions and shape them according to their own vision of Jewish life." And, he says, it's important for world Jewry to understand that "there's an authentic Jewish life developing here, whose institutions in some cases are as good as institutions in the West." A few members of the executive committee with extensive background in Russian Jewish affairs were not surprised by what they saw during the foundation meeting. "If you had shown me this 10 years ago I would have reacted with more emotion," said Herman Branover, a physicist at Ben-Gurion University in Israel and editor of the Encyclopedia of Russian Jewry. "Now we're already getting used to it." But others considered the renaissance of Russian Jewish life a revelation. "For me, this visit is like seeing the day after having seen the night," said Jose Meiches, a professor of engineering in Sao Paolo and former president of Brazil's Jewish community. The last time he was in Russia, in 1989, was just before Glasnost, Meiches said. On a visit to Leningrad — known today as St. Petersburg — the group's guide refused to take them to a synagogue, dropping them off some distance away so he could tell authorities he didn't know their destination. "It was quite an experience trying to find something Jewish then," Meiches said, comparing it to the student performance he had just seen at Jewish School #1311. "This is a real story of rebirth. We will keep these memories until the end of our days." (JTA Managing Editor Michael S. Arnold recently visited Moscow on a trip partially sponsored by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.) Read more »
Miss Israel heads from pageant to army
BAYAMON, Puerto Rico, May 15 (JTA) – Most of the young women competing for the Miss Universe title had nice plans when they left Puerto Rico last weekend: modeling contracts, university studies, jobs, or vacations with their boyfriends. Miss Israel Ilanit Levi, however, faced something a bit more grueling: basic training. Like most Israeli women, Levi, 19, will have to do a stint in the army, a tour of duty she postponed for six months to prepare for the May 11 beauty pageant in Ruben Rodriguez Coliseum in this industrial suburb of San Juan. Yet she didn't seem at all bothered by the prospect, clowning around with her fellow contestants in the days before the pageant as if she hadn't a care in the world. Levi was all business when necessary, however, impressing the judges enough in the weeks of interviews, photo shoots and dance rehearsals leading up to the pageant to earn a spot as a semifinalist on pageant night. After an initial pass by all 77 contestants in representative national costumes – and no, Levi didn't wear her famous bulletproof dress – the field was narrowed to the 10 semifinalists who dominated the rest of the show. Levi didn't make it to the group of five finalists, however, hampered perhaps by the fact that she was significantly shorter than her competitors – a mere 5 feet 7 inches, next to Amazons measuring close to 6 feet. In addition, her simple black dress seemed rather plain next to the elaborate evening gowns chosen by the other semifinalists. Still, Levi's achievement marked the best finish by an Israeli since 1978, the end of a remarkable stretch beginning in 1958 when Miss Israel placed among the Miss Universe semifinalists or finalists in all but four years. Israel has won the Miss Universe title only once, when Rina Messinger took the crown in 1976. It won the slightly less prestigious Miss World pageant in 1999. Unlike pageant powerhouses Venezuela and India – which invest years of training and thousands of plastic surgery dollars in promising beauty queens - - pageants are not a big business in Israel. Perhaps as a result, the Israeli contestants often lack the polish and poise that make the difference among outstanding candidates. For example, many of this year's 77 contestants used an interview question about the most interesting event in their lives to mention prizes they had won or volunteer work in humanitarian causes. Levi, with typical Israeli bluntness, said she couldn't recall anything very interesting. While it may not have helped her with the judges, her naturalness made Levi one of the more popular girls among the group at last Friday's pageant, won by hometown hero Denise Qui?ones of Puerto Rico. As the contestants braced themselves for a final rehearsal that lasted from 1 p.m. to nearly midnight the day before the pageant, many slouched in their seats with bored looks on their faces. Levi was a blur of activity, however, talking, snapping gum, answering her cell phone and teaching Miss Croatia, Maja Cecic-Vidos, the Hebrew slang for excellent – "akhla." She then dragged Miss New Zealand, Kateao Nehua-Jackson, outside for a quick smoke. Her family, meanwhile, admired Levi's rehearsal outfit: skin-tight black Spandex pants with silver flame designs on the flared legs and a sparkling silver halter top. "Can you believe those pants cost only $20?" Levi's sister, Nitza, asked a friend sitting with her in the audience. "Or was it $21?" After three weeks in Puerto Rico on a grueling schedule of rehearsals and photo shoots, Levi said she missed Haifa, where she grew up with her four siblings in a single bedroom. "I'm dying to get home already," she told JTA as admirers tried to pull her away for photographs. "I want to be able to go where I want, when I want to." That, sister Nitza said, is just like Ilanit. "She's not one of those people to let this all go to her head," Nitza Levi said. "She's still the same Ilanit, one of those people who, no matter what happens, still likes their small, warm home." Indeed, after the show, Levi seemed decidedly nonplussed by her strong finish. "It was OK," she said. "Not something grandiose or extraordinary." Her family, in fact, seemed more exuberant than Levi that she had been picked as one of the most beautiful women in the world. "Ever since I was a kid, I knew my sister was the most beautiful woman," Levi's brother Asher said. "I've been around in the world, and there isn't anyone as beautiful as Ilanit." On second thought, he admitted, the pageant's hosts – super models Elle MacPherson and Naomi Campbell – came pretty close. But the family said they felt the judges had other considerations when choosing the next Miss Universe. "It doesn't just come down to beauty here," Nitza Levi said. "There are a lot of other factors, like politics and language." Detractors, however, said politics had worked in Levi's favor. Jase Choenni, manager for Miss Netherlands Reshma Roopram, sketched an elaborate conspiracy theory to explain why his beautiful charge – and fiancee – wasn't a semifinalist. Levi was chosen, he said, by judges who wanted to help Israel's international image at a time when most news from the region paints Israel as bloodthirsty and violent. The national manager for Trinidad & Tobago noted ominously the preponderance of Jewish names among the judges who picked the semifinalists. Yet few men who laid eyes on Levi wouldn't do a double take. Her exotic features – she has olive skin and piercing eyes – reflects her international heritage: Her father made aliyah from Morocco, her mother from Libya. There even was enough of a Latin look about Levi to make her a favorite with Puerto Ricans, who compared her to Puerto Rican-American Jennifer Lopez. Not all the images of Levi that made the local press were flattering, however. One paper used a huge picture of Levi looking angry and bored to depict the contestants' frustration with the preparations for the event. The picture scandalized the groupies circulating about the pageant, who feared it would hurt Levi's chances. Levi laughed it off as a chance and candid moment. "Look, it's really hard work," Nitza Levi said. "They keep them going from morning to evening." Still, it wasn't quite as challenging as, say, basic training. After the army, Levi hopes to study psychology and work as a children's therapist. Given the recent months of Mideast violence, it was inevitable that Levi would be asked frequently about politics. As Israel's representative at the forum, she felt obligated to defend the country's image. The other contestants "want to know how I live, what it's like," she said. "I want to make sure they know that what they read about in the paper, the war and the violence – it exists, but it doesn't dominate our lives." Still, politics intrudes even into the world of beauty pageants. As in the 2000 pageant – which took place while Israel still occupied its security zone in southern Lebanon – Miss Israel 2001 got the cold shoulder from Miss Lebanon, who was under orders from her government to ignore Levi. "Our countries are not at war, but" she and Levi "are not going to be friends, either," said Miss Lebanon Sandra Rizk. "We just try to be businesslike." Levi's closest friends among the contestants were Cecic-Vidos of Croatia, Miss Egypt Sarah Shaheen and Nehua-Jackson of New Zealand. In fact, Levi admitted, the pageant turned out to be a lot more fun than she imagined. "I thought it would be like jail, all the time 'Don't do this, don't do that,' " she said. "But none of us here is really thinking about being Miss Universe; it's too overwhelming for us. So we just concentrate on enjoying ourselves.'' Read more »
Barak’s term was short but important
NEW YORK, Feb. 6 (JTA) – Ehud Barak's term as Israeli prime minister was among the shortest in Israeli history, but in just 19 months he succeeded in altering the strategic landscape of the Middle East and recasting the terms of Israeli political debate. Barak's most recognized accomplishment was the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon after a bloody 18-year engagement. In that sense, Barak and the man who defeated him Tuesday, Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, stand as bookends in Israeli history: Sharon was the man who led Israeli forces into Lebanon, Barak the one who took them out. The ultimate verdict on the withdrawal is still out, however, as Hezbollah militants continue to harass Israel along its northern border and many Palestinians consider Hezbollah's war tactics a model for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Still, Barak's bold move ended the slow bloodletting of Israeli youth in southern Lebanon, removed a strategic card from the Syrian arsenal and erased a major stain on Israel's international reputation. On the peace process, Barak is scorned by many Israelis for his willingness to consider extraordinary concessions even in the face of Palestinian violence. History, however, may judge Barak's efforts differently. By going further than any other Israeli leader in his pursuit of final peace agreements with the Palestinians and Syrians – only to be met with intransigence and rejection – Barak's greatest achievement may have been to pull the masks off Israel's "peace partners" as no right winger ever could. Criticized for "zigzagging" on important policies in office, Barak displayed a remarkable consistency in his attitude toward the peace process. Despite his courage in touching what he called the "living heart" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he always was skeptical of the Oslo process and never really trusted Palestinian intentions. From his days as army chief of staff when the 1993 Oslo accord was negotiated under Prime Minster Yitzhak Rabin, Barak objected to what he considered a major weakness of the peace process: the focus on interim agreements under which Israel gradually surrendered its bargaining chips without having an idea of the Palestinian endgame. After becoming prime minister, Barak refused to implement the remaining withdrawals demanded of Israel, and instead sought to go straight to a final agreement, even if it entailed deeper Israeli concessions. While that final agreement proved beyond his grasp, Barak – unlike even his predecessor, the Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu – did not turn over even one acre of land to Palestinian control. The major concessions Barak reportedly was willing to offer – dividing Jerusalem, giving the Palestinians unprecedented control of the Temple Mount, relinquishing virtually all the land Israel won in the 1967 Six-Day War - - destroyed many of Israel's sacred cows of the last three decades, and seem likely to set the parameters of Israeli political debate in the coming years. Yet those concessions were not enough for the Palestinians. Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat continued to hold out for the "right" of some 3 million to 4 million Arab refugees and their descendants to return to homes they left in 1948, a demand that would amount to demographic suicide for Israel. And Arafat refused to countenance any measure of Israeli control of holy sites in Jerusalem, denying any Jewish historical tie to the Temple Mount. Arafat's response to Barak's offer was the low-intensity war that has engulfed the Palestinian territories since late September. In effect, the Palestinians overthrew Barak, just as they overthrew his two predecessors. With his return to violence, Arafat more than any other individual is responsible for the victory of Sharon, a man the Palestinians profess to hate. That lesson is instructive for what it says of Palestinian intentions, and points to the greatest danger now facing Israel. The Palestinian preference for a "hard-line'' Israeli leader appears to confirm the charge that Arafat is not truly interested in a peace agreement – but knows that under a right-wing government, Israel is likely to take the international blame for any tension. The return to the international doghouse Israel inhabited during Netanyahu's term would be a significant diplomatic blow. More important, however, is the danger of a rift within Israeli society if the left also returns to blaming Israel for any deterioration in the peace process. Because of the concessions he was willing to make, Barak restored for most Israelis a belief in the justness of their cause, a belief that such a war truly was not responsible for the violence of recent months. That's no small feat, given Israelis' remarkable penchant for self-flagellation. If war comes on Sharon's watch, it's far from clear that it will find Israel with such unity of purpose. What little Sharon has revealed of his diplomatic plan does not augur well for the prospect of a peace agreement. Given the rehabilitation of other once-disgraced Israeli leaders – Sharon and Netanyahu come quickly to mind – it's quite possible that the Israeli and Palestinian publics will soon clamor to have Barak back. Read more »
Clinton outlines peace plan
With only days left before he leaves office, President Clinton went public with an outline for a Middle East peace agreement that he believes will continue to guide future administrations. Read more »
RSS Feed Breaking News
Updated 05/24/12 @ 04:11PM EST
- Jewish groups called on Israel to protect African migrants in Israel after riots in Tel Aviv.
- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel is returning campaign donations under investigation by federal authorities.
- A new survey suggests that Germans have lost some love for Israel over the past three years.
- An Arab-Israeli immigrant to the United States was found guilty of murder in Michigan.
- Israel's Arava Power Company has closed on financing for eight solar power projects worth $204 million.
- U.S. Jewish groups condemn anti-African violence in Tel Aviv
- Mandel returns funds under investigation
- Obama’s same-sex marriage nod echoes historic Catholic-Jewish debate
- Survey: Israel losing ground with Germans
- Israeli Arab guilty of murder in Michigan
- Israel’s Arava firm finances $204 million for solar projects
- Israel will solve African migrant problem, Netanyahu assures
- Senate distinguishes between Palestinian refugees and descendants
