After Israel and Syria announced this week they were renewing peace talks, the question on the minds of many was: Why now? Iran and Hezbollah’s rising power, new Israeli willingness to cede the Golan, the fading influence of the Bush White House and Ehud Olmert’s domestic troubles all are being cited as possible factors. JTA managing editor Uriel Heilman talks with diplomatic correspondent Leslie Susser in Jerusalem about the prospects of and motivations behind Israeli-Syrian peace talks.

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In the current issue of New Voices, the magazine written by and for Jewish college students …

A report on assertions by some students that the threat of anti-Semitism is being exaggerated by outside Jewish groups.

A look at how other ethnic groups are looking to replicate Birthright – and what the implications are for the melting pot.

An interview with Newark Mayor Cory Booker in which he talks about the future of the American city, a politics of hope and Shmuley Boteach.

The publication is also sponsoring a May 28 panel discussion titled “Jews, Blacks, and the Post-Racial Candidate.” Speakers include: Ari Berman (The Nation), Ta-Nehisi Coates (Village Voice and The Atlantic Monthly) and Sam Freedman (Professor of Journalism, Columbia University and New York Times columnist).

One of the top candidates to be the new U.N. high commissioner for human rights may bring the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva to new lows, warns one pro-Israel watchdog organization.

Mexican Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba — who is the front-runner for the post, according to Human Rights Tribune, rarely missed an opportunity to single out Israel for special opprobrium during his year as president of the Council, according to Hillel Neuer, executive director of U.N. Watch. Neuer clashed with de Alba in this session of the Human Rights Council.

This week, Neuer had this to say to JTA about de Alba, who was president of the Human Rights Council from mid-2006 to mid-2007:

“His record was one of weakness, at best, in the face of the takeover by the Islamic group of the Human Rights Council. He oversaw the massive erosion of what was already a problematic institution. Under his watch, the supposedly reformed U.N. Council ended its scrutiny of Belarus, ended its scrutiny of Cuba, and he refused to let Canada vote on its package of reforms. He also oversaw the singling out of Israel as a permanent agenda item at the Human Rights Council.”

The current high commissioner, Louise Arbour, has held the post for four years. She, too, has endured her fair share of criticism from the pro-Israel camp — residents of Sderot stoned her when she visited the town in November 2006, just a few months after she warned during the Israel-Hezbollah war that “those in positions of command and control” could be subject to “personal criminal responsibility” for their actions in the 2006 war. But if Arbour is succeeded by de Alba, the Council will only get worse, Neuer warns.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey, who can be seen here smiling with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a meeting in Tehran in March, reportedly is another leading candidate for Arbour’s position.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights is an appointee of the U.N. secretary-general. Spokesman Brenden Varma told JTA on Monday that Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon hopes to make his appointment by the end of June.

Perhaps feeling besieged by the overwhelmingly negative media coverage of Israel’s 60th birthday — which seemed to be more an opportunity to question the Jewish state’s future than celebrate its past — the founding president of the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, Yehezkel Dror, argues in an essay in the Forward that Israel shouldn’t worry too much about morals when it comes to securing Israel’s survival.

Here is his justification of the use of Israeli nuclear weapons:

…if the threat is sufficiently grave, the use of weapons of mass destruction by Israel would be justified if likely to be necessary for assuring the state’s survival, the bitter price of large number of killed innocent civilians notwithstanding.

But Dror is a bit disingenuous to write an entire piece about the need for realpolitik to supersede Jewish morality and not once mention the Palestinians. In doing so, he ignores the most pressing moral dilemma Israelis face today.

Most Israelis don’t need to decide whether or not Jerusalem’s Defense Ministry should expand trade ties with Beijing or Ankara, but what they should do when facing an angry Palestinian woman at a West Bank checkpoint who could be either pregnant or hiding a bomb, how to feel after reading a Peace Now report that 40 percent of Jewish homes in the West Bank were built on private Palestinian land, or what to tell their children when they see a soldier pull aside Arabs on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem and subject them to tough questioning about where they’re going and why.

Are these measures necessary to secure Israel’s existence? It’s a tough call Dror doesn’t address.

Sunday’s New York Times marks Israel’s 60th birthday with four Op-Eds about the Jewish state.

Thomas Friedman writes that the whispering campaign to stoke Jewish fears about Barack Obama is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the U.S. president in supporting Israel and promoting a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Jeffrey Goldberg, who recently interviewed Obama for The Atlantic, draws on his conversations with Ehud Olmert for a story in that same magazine to argue that American Jews are the monkey wrench in the peace process. He throws the U.S. Jewish organizational world some bones — “The people of AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning,” he writes — but, echoing the arguments of the new left-wing, pro-Israel lobbying group J Street, Goldberg writes that being pro-Israel sometimes means saying no to Jewish settlement in the West Bank and yes to a Palestinian state.

In her essay, Ruth Gruber recall the stateless Holocaust refugees for whom Israel’s establishment was a godsend.

And in the obligatory “Nakba” piece, Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury ponders the “catastrophe” of Israel’s existence for the Palestinian Arabs. While an eloquent expression of Arab sentiment about Israel, Khoury ignores the nakba of the last 60 years: the Arab world’s insistence on keeping the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war homeless and disenfranchised, outsiders even after it became obvious they would never return to their homes in the Jewish state.

The Times’ coverage Sunday also included an insightful, amusing and depressing Reporter’s Notebook by Sheryl Gay Stolberg about President Bush’s Middle East tour. Turns out he doesn’t quite understand why Arabs and Jews don’t dance together.

On Monday, the Times added another a feature about how Israeli artists are undergoing a rare flowering, gaining international recognition for works that make universal statements about very Israeli phenomena.

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award winning actor Jon Voight who is in Israel for the state’s 60th anniversary festivities. While here, Voight joined Chabad-Lubavitch in welcoming children evacuated from the devastated Chernobyl region of the Former Soviet Union to Israel. I spoke to Mr. Voight about his relationship to the Jewish community, his involvement with Chabad’s Children of Chernobyl campaign, and his affinity for the state of Israel.

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[Update] Here’s video of Jon Voight dancing on the Chabad telethon:

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.

Last night, the President’s Conference reached its climax with an event celebrating the historic relationship between Israel and the United States. In their successive addresses, which were interspersed with musical and (more questionable) dance performances, President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and the event’s chair, American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, celebrated the uniqueness of the U.S.-Israel relationship, expressed gratitude for America’s commitment to Israeli security, and lavished praise upon U.S. President George W. Bush, the evening’s guest of honor, whom they characterized as the most supportive U.S. President Israel has ever known. Their remarks, which were met with thunderous applause, preceded a brief address by President Bush, who linked the destinies of the U.S. and Israel through their shared commitment to bringing peace to the Middle East. The full audio of each speech follows.

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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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