Uri Orbach warns on YNet that the Israeli public is unwilling to tolerate the notion of Israeli Arabs joining in violence against the Jewish state:

Matan Vilnai was not being nice recently when he said that the Arabs could bring a holocaust upon themselves if they keep on shooting at us. It would have been better had he chosen the word “disaster.” Effie Eitam was also not being nice when he threatened that we will expel Arab citizens of Israel who have been out of control at protest rallies and in the Knesset. The citizenship rights of Israeli Arabs are not conditioned on anything.

However, it should be noted that the words uttered by both Vilnai and Eitam did not cause great shock around here. This is not because most of the Jewish public thinks we should expel the Arabs, bur rather, because most Jews are simply fed up with the conduct of the Palestinians in Gaza, and most Jews are unwilling to tolerate Arab Israelis joining the waves of hate on occasion. …

The fact that Vilnai’s and Eitam’s recent statements were received with relative quiet is a very bad sign for the Palestinians, both within and beyond the Green Line. Those who think that Jewish citizens have no national feelings towards their state may one day discover that we have nationalistic feelings. Those who think that the Jews don’t care about their honor, and flag, and sovereignty, will not bring a holocaust or expulsion upon themselves, but they will discover that Israel’s Jewish citizens are not suckers, and that we know how to enlist for a cause.

I hope that this question will never face a test, but if it gets to that, heaven forbid, it will suddenly turn out that grave danger overrides tolerance.

Goldie Hawn is heckled in Glasgow by pro-Palestinian protesters at a fund-raising appearance for KKL Scotland (the JNF equivalent).

The Harvard Crimson reports on the controversy stirred up by a multi-media exhibition at the Harvard Hillel featuring testimonials from Israeli soldiers about their time in Gaza and the West Bank:

“Breaking the Silence” — a traveling exhibit of over 100 photographs and videos testimonials curated by former Israel Defense Force (IDF) soldiers — drew a crowd of nearly 200 on its opening night on March 1. Critics have said the exhibit portrays only the extremes of military life — such as a picture of an IDF soldier smiling in front of several corpses — and offers little context.

“By hosting this exhibit, Harvard Hillel only promotes enmity and hatred towards Israel and gives legitimacy to these sentiments by stamping its approval on the biased, distorted collage of pictures,” said [ZOA's Mort Klein].

But Franklin M. Fisher — an MIT economics professor and chair of Americans for Peace Now, which advocates for peace in the Middle East and sponsors “Breaking the Silence” — said he disagreed with Klein’s view. Fisher said the exhibit does not constitute criticism of Israel, adding that “not all criticism of Israel is hostile.”

Nadav Shragai (HA’ARETZ):

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert knows the study hall of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem very well. Up to a few years ago he was the mayor of Jerusalem and a regular guest of honor at the main event organized by the yeshiva, the annual Jerusalem Day celebration.

Olmert would make his crowd-pleasing speeches about the unity of Jerusalem, and a sea of knitted skullcaps carried him on high.

A lot of bad blood has passed between Olmert and his former knitted skullcap-wearing fans since then. The pleasant memories have turned into real bitterness against the man they consider to have betrayed them and converted.

The bloody terror attack on the flagship of the religious Zionism movement will only make their attitude toward Olmert more extreme. …

Bradley Burston (HA’ARETZ):

To the Westerner who “understands” the terrorist:

Spare us the explanations.

Spare us the learned, sociology-drenched justifications.

Spare us the reasons why you “get” Palestinians when they gun Jews down in cold blood.

Spare us the chapter and verse on how the plight of the Palestinians is at the root of Islamic terrorism the world over, and if the Palestinians were to receive full justice, Islamic terrorism would pass from the world.

Spare us. …

Amir Mizroch (JERUSALEM POST)

This attack was aimed specifically for the religious Zionist and settler population, and the terrorists knew that by speaking in this language, to these people, their message could only be interpreted in one way. This will be seen in terms of Ishmael and Isaac. …

Settler radio talk- show hosts are interpreting this prophecy by saying that if the Jews don’t stop Hamas, the Palestinians, Hizbullah and any other Islamic fundamentalists God will force the Jews to do it. The talk-show hosts blame Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and President Shimon Peres, and several callers into the broadcasts are unanimous in their condemnation of the Israeli government and calling on its removal.

Many of the top leadership of the religious Zionist movement, speaking at the funerals, spoke of revenge of the blood. The fact that the Jewish students were killed in a house of God touched the most basic nerve of many Israelis, and especially of the religious Zionist public.

The rabbis called on the students not to carry out acts of revenge, saying that judgment is in God’s realm. …

Calev Ben-David (JERUSALEM POST):

Rarely have terrorists chosen their target with so much malicious care as in Thursday night’s attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav Yeshiva.

In striking the flagship institution of the religious Zionist movement, a Jerusalem landmark whose history is linked with the founding and fulfillment of the Jewish national home in the Land of Israel, the gunman aimed his weapon at the heart of the Zionist enterprise.

If the goal was to outrage the general public and to inflame that particular segment of it most skeptical of the possibility of Israel one day coming to terms with its most immediate Arab neighbors, then the bullets struck home with deadly and accurate force.

Beyond that, as the first terrorist attack on this scale in nearly two years - since a Tel Aviv suicide bomber killed nine in April 2006 - the impact of this incident will be profound.

This will be a sharp blow for those Israelis, especially Jerusalemites, who have allowed themselves to let their psychological guard down since the second intifada petered out. That the gunman was able to carry out this operation in the heart of a crowded Jerusalem neighborhood, some distance away from the Arab neighborhoods of the capital, will raise serious questions about assumptions made since the construction of the West Bank security barrier. …

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Yossi Klein Halevi tells how continuing Palestinian violence has cured him of being a “guilty Israeli.”

In the early 1990s, while serving as a reservist soldier in Gaza, I became a guilty Israeli. By day, my unit patrolled the refugee camps where sewage flowed in rivulets and old men stared with hatred and children with despair. By night, we entered bedrooms and retrieved suspects whose offenses ranged from membership in terror organizations to failure to pay a water bill. More policemen than soldiers, we found ourselves enforcing an occupation whose threat to Israel’s Jewish and democratic values had become unbearable.

According to Halevi, it’s not just him, thanks to a series of diplomatic betrayals and violent attacks.

The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.

Now, he says, the true test will be what happens in Gaza.

So long as Gaza refuses to heal itself, Israelis will rightly suspect that the Palestinian goal remains Israel’s destruction. Not even a full withdrawal from the West Bank, they fear, will end the war, any more than the pullout from Gaza stopped the rockets. Israel’s crime isn’t occupying but existing.

And so we move toward the next terrible round of conflict. This time, though, for all our anguish, we will feel a lot less remorse. Because even guilty Israelis realize that, until our neighbors care more about building their state than undermining ours, the misery of Gaza will persist.

On the eve of U.S. Secretary of Condoleezza Rice’s upcoming trip to the Middle East, Glenn Kessler reports in the Washington Post that the prospects for peace have “shifted dramatically” since President Bush held the Annapolis peace conference three months ago. And, now, the White House’s influence on the players in the region appears to be waning.

Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator, said that key players in the region are moving beyond the Bush administration. “The feeling is that if you keep the flash points on a lower or somewhat higher flame, it will give you more cards when a new administration comes in,” he said, speaking in a phone interview from Israel. “Everyone is sucking up to the Iranians,” he added.

The signs of American irrelevance are apparent throughout the region. Even Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed as a potential peacemaker by the Bush administration, mused last week to the Jordanian newspaper al-Dustour that in the future it might be necessary to return to armed struggle against Israel. And Syria, which received an unexpected invitation to Annapolis, believes that the peace summit was “an exercise in public relations” and that Bush has no interest in peace, as Syria’s ambassador to Washington, Imad Moustapha put it last week.

The stalled process has added to skepticism in Israel, according to Kessler.

A poll published in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week showed that 69 percent of Israelis surveyed believed the talks would not bring peace, while 78 percent believed the talks were being held only for political reasons.

During a recent visit to Washington, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad charged that Israel has “not done a thing materially on the ground to help my government.” Israeli officials counter that Israel has taken steps to bolster the Abbas government, but that some efforts — such as new restrictions on settlement growth — cannot be publicized because of the tenuous political situation in Israel.”

Ha’aretz argues in an editorial Thursday that “restraint can no longer be seen as strength” when dealing with the continued Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel in the south. (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.

Hamas bunny vows to eat the Jews (watch out, Kibbutz Gezer)…

Going through some old emails and found this about Bush’s trip to Israel. A little late, but still…