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.

Saree Makdisi, professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and the author of “Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation,” says the two-state solution is dead — both sides must share the land, equally:

There is no longer a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Forget the endless arguments about who offered what and who spurned whom and whether the Oslo peace process died when Yasser Arafat walked away from the bargaining table or whether it was Ariel Sharon’s stroll through the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem that did it in.

All that matters are the facts on the ground, of which the most important is that — after four decades of intensive Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories it occupied during the 1967 war — Israel has irreversibly cemented its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state might have been created.

The puppets from Hamas television reflect on Israel’s 60th birthday:

Palestinian Media Watch has posted this clip on YouTube showing a segment from Hamas-run television asserting that the Holocaust was a plot cooked up by Israeli leaders to win international sympathy for their cause:

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Larry Derfner makes the case for an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire:

There are reasons for Israel not to want a cease-fire with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. For one, the terrorist groups will take it as a victory; it will be a great morale booster for them. For another, it will undercut Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian moderates; the message they’ll take from it is that their way, the way of negotiation, didn’t work, while the Hamas/Islamic Jihad way, the way of terror, worked. And this conclusion will be drawn not only by Palestinians, but by much of the Muslim world, including Iran.

Not good.

Nevertheless, I am in favor of Israel accepting a cease-fire with Hamas. How the Palestinians and other Muslims interpret such a cease-fire would be one thing; the true import of it would be something very different - which the Palestinians and other Muslims would see soon enough.

If a cease-fire worked, it would bring peace and quiet on both sides of the Israel-Gaza border, while the downside for Israel wouldn’t be any steeper than it’s already been for several years. By agreeing to a cease-fire we don’t have anything to lose, and a lot to gain. If Hamas offers, we should accept.

I KNOW some of you have questions. Such as: What if it doesn’t work? What if Hamas keeps firing Kassams? Or what if Hamas upholds the cease-fire but Islamic Jihad doesn’t?

The answer is: Then the cease-fire is over and Israel goes back to war in Gaza like we’ve been doing for the last seven years. Nothing gained, but nothing lost, either. …

With all the hubbub in the Jewish world these days surrounding Israel’s 60th anniversary, it was perhaps inevitable that Israel’s critics would want their own commemoration. As JTA reported yesterday, this week has been branded “Nakba Week” at Columbia University, with a whole host of events planned around what Palestinians see as the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation.

Several campus groups are participating. Two that are not – surprise! – are Hillel and the Progressive Jewish Alliance, a Hillel subgroup. Apparently, Hillel and PJA declined to co-sponsor an April 14 event that had the word “Nakba” in its description. According to Columbia senior David Judd, who assailed both groups in a piece in the Columbia student newspaper, the Spectator, Hillel cannot acknowledge the Nakba because of its stated commitment to a Jewish democratic Israel.

He writes:

In the case of the April 14 event, I’m told this policy was cited against any Hillel association with the claim that Palestinians suffered a historical wrong in 1948. Whatever happened that year, it cannot be labeled a “catastrophe.” Harm done to Palestinians cannot, apparently, be acknowledged in this framework as an ethical offense. Where it cannot plausibly be denied nor justified, absolute silence on the subject must suffice.

This implication may seem a stretch from the formal wording of Hillel policy—and indeed, it is unlikely that, should Hillel or PJA have cosponsored, either would have suffered any direct sanction. But deriving an imperative from the Hillel formula for the exclusion of Palestinians from ethical consideration does not require too strained a reading.

A stretch indeed.

(more…)

Joshua Faudem’s documentary on the bombing of Mike’s Place, “Blues by the Beach,” is coming out at the end of the month. It’s being released exclusively online, not in theaters or on DVD. Here’s the trailer.

Click here to purchase the full film.

Here’s a press release: (more…)

“We have been through some tough times, but the doctors and nurses have been at our side throughout the six months we have been here,” a Palestinian mother from Nablus today told former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Roselyn, at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital-Ein Kerem. Saad, her 8-year-old son, is recovering from a bone marrow transplant he underwent to save him from a hereditary blood disease. “Save the Children,” a joint project of Hadassah and the Peres Center for Peace, provided much of the support for Saad’s treatment and long hospital stay in the Pediatric Oncology and Hematology Department. Pictured with Saad and his mother are, from left: Dr. Michael Weintraub, Head of the Department of Oncology and Hematology; Prof. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, Director General, Hadassah University Medical Center; and President and Mrs. Carter.

Jimmy Carter’s plan to meet the Hamas leadership in Damascus is “sensible,” says the Hamas foreign minister, and “brings honesty and pragmatism” to the Middle East.

In a Washington Post op-ed today, Mahmoud al-Zahar offers some choice insights into the thinking of the Hamas leaders Carter is so eager to engage in dialogue:

Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the core of the Jewish state — the violent expulsion from our lands and villages that made us refugees — to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or negotiated away. Judaism — which gave so much to human culture in the contributions of its ancient lawgivers and modern proponents of tikkun olam — has corrupted itself in the detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.

A “peace process” with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements; removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which we can start to be whole again.

The Post’s editorial board isn’t buying it. On the facing page, the Post slams Carter and slams Hamas — but justifies publishing its op-ed in the name of “clarifying” who we’re dealing with.

Mr. Zahar lauds Mr. Carter for the “welcome tonic” of saying that no peace process can succeed “unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions.” Yet Mr. Zahar has his own preconditions: Before any peace process can “take even its first tiny step,” he says, Israel must withdraw to the 1967 borders and evacuate Jerusalem while preparing for the “return of millions of refugees.” In fact, as Mr. Zahar makes clear, Hamas is not at all interested in a negotiated peace with the Jewish state, whose existence it refuses to accept: “Our fight to redress the material crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun,” he concludes.

In that fight, no act of terrorism is out of bounds for the Hamas leader, who endorses the group’s recent ambush of Israeli civilians working at a fuel depot that supplies Gaza. The “total war” of which he speaks was initiated and has been sustained by Hamas itself through its deliberate targeting of civilians, such as the residents of the Israeli town of Sderot, who suffer daily rocket attacks.

These facts would hardly need restating were it not for actors such as Mr. Carter, who portray Hamas as rational and reasonable. Hamas is “perfectly willing” for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “to represent them in all direct negotiations with the Israelis, and they also maintain that they will accept any agreement that he brokers with the Israelis” provided a referendum is held on it, the former president told the newspaper Haaretz. Compare that claim with Mr. Zahar’s own words on the opposite page. In fact, Mr. Zahar has called Mr. Abbas “a traitor” for negotiating with Israel — a label that is, in the Palestinian context, an incitement to murder.