It’s completely understandable that the parents of Israel’s captive soldiers are doing all they can to bring their sons home. In a nation where most sons serve in the army, the sentiments of anxious parents carry a lot more sway than they do in America (Remember Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in the Iraq war?). But that doesn’t mean that the parents of Israel’s captive soldiers should dictate Israeli policy, Israeli columnists and pundits caution.

On Wednesday night, Miki Goldwasser penned a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert demanding that he accede to Hezbollah’s demands for the release of convicted murderer Samir Kuntar in exchange for the return of her son, Ehud Goldwasser, who was taken captive in a July 2006 cross-border attack. The letter, which was carried by all the Israeli papers, argued that Hezbollah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah will not stop attacking Israel until the release of Kuntar, a Lebanese Druse who snuck into Israel in 1979 and killed four people, including a 4-year-old girl and her father. Goldwasser wrote:

If Kuntar is not considered a bargaining chip today, more kidnappings will follow, perhaps involving Israeli civilians touring abroad this time. Nasrallah is determined to bring Kuntar back come hell or high water.

Meanwhile, a furious Noam Shalit, father of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, demanded that Israel reject any cease-fire offer from Hamas that does not include his son’s return, pledging to take his fight to court to thwart the cease-fire.

But Israel knows that Hamas will not back down on its demand for a cease-fire as a precondition to a prisoner swap deal involving Shalit, and it is dangling both the carrot and the stick in front of the terrorist group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israel has gone ahead with the cease-fire that took effect Thursday morning, but at the same time Olmert is warning that the truce is Hamas’ last chance to avoid a major IDF invasion of Gaza. For now, word is that negotiations to secure Shalit’s release will resume next week.

After calling on Olmert last week to accept a cease-fire deal, Ha’aretz praised Thursday’s truce. Ynet’s Sever Plocker slammed it, saying it destroyed the only leverage Israel had with Hamas, while Ynet’s Uri Misgav wrote that the lull of a cease-fire could create positive conditions for negotiations to free Shalit.

Ha’aretz’s Ari Shavit writes that a confrontation between Hamas and Israel is inevitable, but Israel should try a cease-fire first to demonstrate that it has exhausted all avenues for dealing with the group.

Of course, will any Israeli effort ever be considered enough by those who blame Israel’s isolation of Hamas for its extremism and terrorism?

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On the eve of an apparent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the terrorist group that rules Gaza, the chatter in Israel already has moved onto another subject: Israel’s other threatening neighbor, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The New York Times reports that Israel is willing to engage in peace talks with Lebanon about “all issues,” including a disputed piece of land on the Israel-Lebanon border called Shebaa Farms. But what Israel is most interested in is the return of its two captive soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, who were kidnapped by Hezbollah in the deadly incident that sparked the 2006 Lebanon war.

The families of the two soldiers met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s negotiations chief on Wednesday, and Israel reportedly is discussing the outline of a prisoner swap deal with Hezbollah. A deal likely would include the return to Lebanon of Samir Kuntar, a Lebanese Druse man who snuck into Israel in 1979 and murdered an Israeli man and his 4-year-old daughter, along with two Israeli policemen. This release of Kuntar is a cause celebre among many Lebanese, Palestinians and others who mistake the murder of a little girl and her young father for an act of heroism.

Nevertheless, Ha’aretz’s Uzi Benziman says repatriating Kuntar for Goldwasser and Regev would be a price worth paying, even if politically unpopular. Echoing that sentiment, Ynet’s Sima Kadmon says waiting might result in the Regev-Goldwasser captivity turning into that of Ron Arad, the Israeli airman who went down over Lebanon in 1986. Arad survived the fall and was captured, but he has not been heard from in some 20 years. His whereabouts remain unknown, and Israeli intelligence officials privately say it is highly unlikely he is still alive.

Arad’s family, however, say such a deal is not worthwhile.

On the Gaza front, Israel and Hamas continued to trade fire on Wednesday, with some two dozen rockets fired into Israel from the Palestinian strip.

Ynet’s Alex Fishman writes that the Hamas-Israel cease-fire deal

is taking shape for one reason: The two weak governments on both sides of the Gaza fence have an interest in seeing the deal succeed. Only one element has an interest in sabotaging this deal: The Iranians. They will make an effort to unravel it through the Islamic Jihad organization. This is where Hamas will be tested: Is it indeed an Iranian satellite, or does it only exploit Tehran for its own needs?

So everything that has happened and will happen in the day before the truce is a game: Who will emerge as “the man,” who will deliver the last blow, and who will fight to the last moment for its truce terms? This is what Hamas is doing, and this is what we’re doing as well.

Ha’aretz has an article on how B’Tselem’s decision to distribute cameras to Palestinians may end up landing several Jewish settlers in jail for a recent attack on Arab shepherds.

Three months ago, the B’Tselem human rights organization gave Muna al-Nawaja a video camera. Nawaja, 24, lives near the Israeli settlement of Sussya, in the southern West Bank. Between caring for her young son and tending the family’s sheep, she learned to use the camera, fell in love with it and now carries it with her everywhere.

But its “baptism of fire” occurred last week, on Sunday afternoon. Most Israelis were busy preparing for the Shavuot holiday. But some had a different priority: savagely beating Nawaja’s relatives. She managed to capture a few seconds of the beating - in which her 57-year-old aunt was severely injured, and two uncles, age 60 and 33 were hurt - on film. But she never dreamed that it would prove to be the main, and possibly only, evidence available to the police investigating the assault.

B’Tselem has posted video clips from the incident in question.

Over at JTA Election Central, we posted on Liz Cheney’s not so veiled swiped at the Bush-Rice policy of pressing for the Palestinian elections that culminated with a Hamas victory. Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo linked to our post, under the headline “All in the Family,” referring to Cheney’s vice-presidential dad.

Well, later in the week at the AIPAC conference, a Cheney family cousin (Barack something or other) also took a swipe at the Bush administration over the issue:

We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and abide by past agreements. There is no room at the negotiating table for terrorist organizations. That is why I opposed holding elections in 2006 with Hamas on the ballot. The Israelis and the Palestinian Authority warned us at the time against holding these elections. But this Administration pressed ahead, and the result is a Gaza controlled by Hamas, with rockets raining down on Israel.

Rice is sticking to her guns. Here’s what she had to say about the topic in a recent essay that she wrote for Foreign Affairs: (more…)

The Israeli press is all atwitter about whether or not Israel should launch a major military operation to curb Palestinian rocket fire from the Gaza Strip on Israeli communities down south. (Read about JTA’s Jacob Berkman dodging Palestinian rockets last week here.)

The consensus, it seems, is against an operation.

“It didn’t work before, and it won’t work this time either. It is merely an attempt to buy time that won’t lead us anywhere,” writes Ariella Ringel-Hoffman in Ynet:

The proposal for one decisive blow should be replaced with creative ideas that would bring Gilad Shalit back home and expand the lull agreement, so it will have the potential of creating dramatic change in the region.

In an editorial Wednesday, Ha’aretz advises pursuing an Egyptian-mediated ceasefire with Hamas rather than launching a war Israel cannot win:

There is no persuasive reason for a military action, except the fact that we cannot accept continued firing on Israel, and Hamas’ continued arming. In contrast, there are a number of reasons for a cease-fire, however temporary. The main reason is that Hamas can no more be eradicated than could Hezbollah.

The Jerusalem Post’s reliably hawkish Caroline Glick finds the idea of a ceasefire politically expedient but strategically disastrous:

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With the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy upon us, former AIPAC and Israeli embassy official Lenny Ben-David is highlighting a series of dispatches that RFK wrote during his 1948 visit to Israel.

Click here to read the actual dispatches, which appeared in the now-defunct Boston Post.

The Jewish people in Palestine who believe in and have been working toward this national state have become an immensely proud and determined people. It is already a truly great modern example of the birth of a nation with the primary ingredients of dignity and self-respect.

Ben-David has an essay in the Jerusalem Post arguing that RFK was a genuine friend of Israel, who paid for this support of the Jewish state with his life.

And this from Sasha Issenberg in the Boston Globe:

The shooting of Robert F. Kennedy is widely remembered as part of the wrenching domestic turbulence of the 1960s. But some scholars are beginning to see it as something quite different yet no less significant: America’s first taste of the political violence of the Middle East.

Marty Peretz offers an amen on his blog.

And over at the Forward, Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, writes:

Kennedy’s assassin was a Palestinian resident of Silwan in East Jerusalem, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. He chose to kill Kennedy on that exact date because it coincided with the first anniversary of Israel’s stunning victory during the Six-Day War. Sirhan hated Kennedy because he had supported Israel; in fact, that was exactly what Sirhan said when he testified at his own trial. He remains in prison, serving a life sentence for the murder.

Why is it important that we remember this barely-remembered historical tidbit about the death of Kennedy? Because one man’s hatred of Israel utterly re-directed American political life and the story of the presidency.

Earlier this week we linked to Gershom Gorenberg’s article on the efforts of a hawkish pro-Israel group to warp articles in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to reflect the group’s views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Well, it seems there may be more to the story. HonestReporting, another pro-Israel media watchdog, says it’s really Palestinian groups that are messing around on Wikipedia. Here’s their report on the matter.

Several recent stories shine a light on the challenges and opportunities of the new YouTube-era environment that Israel and its advocates are operating in.

Ha’aretz has a report today on the Israeli Consulate in New York arranging to have videos played on the jumbo screens in Times Square of celebrities sending Independence Day greetings.

“We’re aware of the influence that [the celebrities] filmed in the clip have on so many people around the world,” said Asi Shariv, Israel’s Consul General in New York. “Their connection with Israel is an important part of our efforts to tell the Israeli story to a young, Western audience that does not take an interest in the [Mideast] conflict.”

Of course, all sides have access to video and the means to distribute it on the Internet. For example, Ha’aretz also is reporting that on Tuesday the human rights group B’Tselem unveiled video footage showing an Israeli soldier “firing a rubber-coated bullet at an Israeli protester at close range, during a protest against the separation fence in Bil’in two months ago.”

“The shooting,” according to Ha’aretz, “appears to violate IDF regulations, which state that rubber bullets may be fired from no closer than 40 meters.”

And, of course, plenty of video of the incident in question is up on YouTube.

This video has a quick shot at the end of the wounded Israeli protester on a stretcher…

And then there are user-generated Web sites like Wikipedia, where a well-coordinated stealth campaign can tilt seemingly unbiased information one way or the other. The problem is that Internet-based campaigns coordinated via e-mail leave a paper trail — a point hammered home by Gershom Gorenberg’s recent column in the American Prospect about pro-Palestinian activists exposing an alleged attempt by CAMERA to train supporters to infiltrate and influence the Wikipedia editing process.

Earlier today, JTA correspondent Dina Kraft had the opportunity to speak with Stuart Eizenstat, who served as an adviser, undersecretary and ambassador under the Clinton and Carter administrations. Mr. Eizenstat discussed Holocaust restitution in Israel, the challenges posed by Iran’s nuclear program, and Jimmy Carter’s recent visit with Hamas.

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To subscribe to JTA’s Behind the News podcast, click here.

Jay Lefkowitz, a onetime Bush adviser, argues in the New York Sun today that the president’s faith in democracy and belief in the sanctity of life have produced a revolutionary U.S. policy benefiting both Israel and the Palestinians:

But while Mr. Bush’s record on Israel surely has not been the product of any political debt he may have owed the Jewish community, he nonetheless proceeded to remake America’s Arab-Israeli policy in the most profound way. The signal event was his Rose Garden speech on June 24, 2002. The president called for establishment of a Palestinian state, but set reform and democracy and abandonment of terror as conditions for establishment of the state: “It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. … My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security.”

Never before has a president articulated as forcefully that a Palestinian State was an objective of our foreign policy. As I listened to the president deliver the speech and heard him speak about it in the subsequent days, I realized that the president had turned United States policy on its head — in a way that was not only sympathetic to Israel, but also pro-Palestinian.

Over at the Washington Post, Michael Abromowitz reports on critics who say that despite Bush’s good intentions his policies have ultimately been bad for Israel:

Appearing at an Israeli Embassy reception last Thursday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state, Vice President Cheney voiced a sentiment that is common among many American Jews, evangelicals and others. “Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than the 43rd president of the United States,” he said.

Yet as President Bush prepares to return to Jerusalem this week to celebrate the milestone, that assessment is the subject of fierce debate both here and Israel. Few doubt the sincerity of Bush’s passion, which has translated into unprecedented backing for Israeli self-defense and the most clearly stated presidential commitment to protect Israel if it is attacked.

But from left to right, Bush also faces criticism for pursuing Middle East policies that, many diplomats and analysts believe, have left Israel more threatened than when he assumed office in January 2001.