The Jerusalem Post has an editorial Friday voicing skepticism over reports that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is set to “commit Israel to a much more intensive engagement with the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.”

Nothing that has leaked out of the first discussion on the issue, held at the Prime Minister’s Office on Wednesday, and nothing in the record of this government or its predecessors, suggests that Israel understands the complexity and immensity of the challenge posed by the Israel-Diaspora relationship. Thus, while Olmert’s initiative deserves praise, it also needs urgent direction.

The first important step, the Post’s editors argue, is to understand the difference between Jewish existence in America and Israel. (more…)

Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the New York Jewish Week, tackles what he sees as Israel’s biggest problem: “Israel’s greatest worry,” he writes in his latest column, “is not over its military, diplomatic or political strength, but its serious loss of brainpower, which effects every aspect of society.” (more…)

In his column this week, Jewish Exponent editor Jonathan Tobin complains that the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran seems to have put an end to the attention being focused on the question of how to stop the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.

By leading with its claim that the Iranians had abandoned their nuclear-weapons program in 2003, the top American spies neatly spiked any chance that an international coalition could be formed to impose a tough sanctions regime on Tehran…. But there was one little problem with the NIE. It was probably wrong.

Critics of the document (in Israel, Europe and here) pointed out that a close reading of the text showed that, despite the opening language about a decision supposedly taken in 2003 on weapons design, the rest of the nuclear program was still going full-steam ahead. With their ongoing progress toward nuclear material capability, it wouldn’t take much to take the last step toward a weapon.

If that wasn’t reason enough to worry about the NIE’s conclusion, then surely, Iran’s brazen announcement earlier this month that it had begun to deploy a new generation of machinery to produce nuclear fuel should have set off alarms.

According to Tobin, “it isn’t necessarily too late to undo the damage” done by the NIE. One key step is to figure out where Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain stand on the Iran issue. The problem, he adds, is that though “some tactical differences have emerged,” observers are left with “a frustrating lack of information on what is, in all likelihood, the most important decision that the next president will take.”

That makes it all the more important that the press and the public begin to press the candidates for specifics about their ideas on this subject.

Given the stakes involved, we can’t wait until next year to find out more about their thinking. The latest revelations about the NIE make it imperative that the time to learn about their Iran policies is before November.

We still can’t believe that Abe Foxman and Lou Dobbs won’t say anything about the CNN host’s recent bashing of the ADL (these aren’t exactly guys you associate with “no comment”).

But American Jewish Committee is now wading into the debate, with a statement criticizing some of the guests on Dobbs’ program and other cable shows: (more…)

Here is the Palestinian-produced political cartoon, titled “The Illegitimate,” that Hamas is trying to ban newspapers in Gaza from publishing:

Jeursalem Post editor David Horovitz takes a shot at Michael McConnell, “the man responsible for the US National Intelligence Estimate that two months ago essentially cleared Iran of pursuing a nuclear bomb.”

Last week, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the admiral said that in hindsight, “I think I would change the way that we described [the Iranian] nuclear program.”

Here’s the very first sentence of that immensely ballyhooed NIE, which was greeted rapturously by Iran and with horror in Israel when it was published in early December: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Teheran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

What McConnell is now saying amounts to the very opposite: Yes, runs the amended narrative, we think the Iranians may have halted what we narrowly, foolishly and misleadingly defined as their nuclear weapons program four years ago, we’re not sure if they’ve restarted it, but the fact is that we led you all astray with our definition of that program in the first place.

You see, the new line continues, weapon design and weaponization — those narrow aspects that might have been halted — really constitute the “least significant portion” of a nuclear weapons program. In retrospect, we should have relied on more than a footnote to make that clear. The “most difficult challenge” is actually “uranium enrichment [to] enable the production of fissile material,” and, as we probably should have stressed more prominently, work on that is proceeding apace. …

Or, to put it another way: Whoops. We meant to say that Iran is closing in relentlessly on a nuclear weapons capability, but we didn’t express ourselves very effectively, and wound up making you believe the reverse. Sorry. But we’re fixing that now, so we’re all back on the same page. No biggie, right?

Wrong.

(more…)

The Israel Policy Forum has published an article heralding the recent arrival in Washington of a delegation of security experts consisting of three Palestinian women (Amal Jadou, Enas Nazzal, and Haitham Arar) and three Israeli women (Israela Oron, Eynat Gepner-Goldstein, and Etty Yevnin).

An all-female joint delegation consisting of an Israeli general and two colonels alongside officials of the Palestinian interior ministry is unusual enough. But what made this group stand out was not gender, but the message—from a group of established security professionals—that military means alone will not bring security to Israelis or Palestinians.

They maintained that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not one where victory is decided on the battlefield between uniformed soldiers, but rather it is a dispute fought within civilian communities.

Memebrs of the delegation stressed that women are “often on the first line of defenses for families and the first victims of failures in security.” In addition, they assume formal security roles.

Israeli women have always been required to serve in the military or an auxiliary service, while the first group of Palestinian police women only recently completed their training. …

Greater participation of women is one fundamental aspect of making sure that security concerns are not only handled by military forces, but involve civil society as well. Just as women are more likely to admit when they need to ask for directions, former Brigadier General (ret.) Israela Oron said in a talk she gave in Cambridge, they are also more likely to say when a new approach is necessary. That approach is negotiating toward peace. And “Peace,” Oron said “is the only way to achieve security.

Ha’aretz’s Amir Oren argues that Imad Mughniyah, the Hezbollah leader allegedly killed by Israel, is irreplaceable.

Mughniyah’s assassination has a substantive side but also a psychological one. Both challenge the myth commonly disseminated by those who fear (because they know why) that they will be targeted for assassination. It is the myth that “everyone can be replaced.” This myth aims to keep Israel and other countries from targeting senior figures in terrorist organizations. The theory is that there is no point in taking such action if every assassination only further enrages the masses and stokes their determination to rally to the cause. Moreover, sometimes the successor is more effective and worse for Israel than his predecessor.

(more…)

Lubavitch.com has a post from writer Mordechai Shinefield breaking down the recent “Chabad” episode of “House” (which he notes was the highest-rated program of the night):

The episode opened with a wedding officiated by California Chabad House representative Rabbi Yossi Mintz, and the singing of a Chabad style Chasidic melody. Richard Kaplan, a cantor from East Bay, sang the niggun for the episode.

Kaplan, who was contacted by the music department at NBC Universal, says that he is “not formally connected with Chabad, but [I] have great respect for Chabad and derive great benefit from Chabad teachings.”

The episode of the medical drama revolved around a music executive (played by Heather Joy Sher Laura Silverman) who recently traded in her secular life for the world Chasidism actress played Tova, a recent returnee to Judaism. She is suffering from the expected mix of mysterious physical symptoms, plus, House insists, some sort of altered mental state that would explain her sharp turnabout (”She went directly to the extremes of Chasidism. A life of stringent rules. She became a masochist”). (more…)

The image on the left is plastered all over Seattle-area synagogues, plus the local Jewish newspaper. But it’s too hot for the Seattle Times. On the right is the image on the Web site of the Seattle chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women.

And, to think, it was only a few years ago that Seattle’s Jewish Federation wouldn’t let Leonard Nimoy show all of his Shekhina photos.