The debate in Israel about the efficacy of the prisoner swap deal with Hezbollah continues.

Alexander Yakobson writes in Ha’aretz that the real cost of the exchange of “prisoners for bodies” with Hezbollah is more Israeli bodies, since the deal projects Israeli weakness. He could have argued his point much more effectively and clearly simply by saying that this deal gives further encouragement to Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to kidnap more Israelis and demand ransom.

In an editorial whose point escapes me, The Jerusalem Post, which argued against the deal, says, “All of us must now respect the decision” by the Israeli Cabinet to make the swap.

Ynet’s Roee Nahmias writes that the deal constitutes a victory for Hezbollah, albeit “by points rather than by knockout:”

Nasrallah looked into the cameras a few times and promised to Kuntar that he shall be released. The operation to abduct the IDF soldiers was called “the promise that was kept.” What can we say; this promise at least was indeed kept.

In an editorial Wednesday, Ha’aretz calls on the Israeli prime minister to reject pressure to open up Israel’s doors to another 8,700 would-be Ethiopian immigrants. Tracing some of the history surrounding the aliyah of the Falash Mura (which you can read more about here), the editorial slams Ehud Olmert for bending to “political pressures, here in Israel and especially from the United States,” to expand immigration from Ethiopia:

Once again it became clear that Israeli governments cannot be relied upon to implement policies that they themselves determined. There is always room for yet another committee, another pressure group, another reexamination.

If the explanation for the mass Falashmura immigration is demographic, then there is no limit to the number of people who are prepared to convert to Judaism in order to immigrate to Israel and improve their living conditions. If the justification is family reunification, then Israel has a great number of nuclear families begging to be reunited with non-Jewish relatives in Russia, including adopted children and grandmothers who were deported at the end of a visit, and there are Israeli Arabs who have been prohibited from living here with their spouses.

In order to set a sane immigration policy, we need a political leadership that can plan ahead.

Ha’aretz published an editorial along similar lines in April, albeit with different numbers cited (there’s Ha’aretz for you!).

Read this JTA story I wrote for more background about who these 8,700 people are, and visit this archive for more on those befuddling numbers…

Michelle Citrin and William Levin

Dina Kraft, JTA’s Israel Correspondent met up in Jerusalem with singer Michelle Citrin aka Rosh Hashana Girl and her creative partner and friend William Levin. They are the team who brought the world the two YouTube hits “Twenty Things to do with Matzah” and “I Gotta Love You Rosh Hashana” — part of their attempt to bring a touch of the young, hip, and artistic to being Jewish today.

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

Unnamed senior Pentagon officials told ABC News there is an “increasing likelihood” Israel will attack Iran, and soon.

The official identified two “red lines” that could trigger an Israeli offensive. The first is tied to when Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility produces enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. According to the latest U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments, that is likely to happen sometime in 2009, and could happen by the end of this year.

“The red line is not when they get to that point, but before they get to that point,” the official said. “We are in the window of vulnerability.”

The second red line is connected to when Iran acquires the SA-20 air defense system it is buying from Russia. The Israelis may want to strike before that system — which would make an attack much more difficult — is put in place.

Some Pentagon officials also worry that Israel may be determined to attack before a new U.S. president, who may be less supportive, is sworn in next January.

For more on that, read this piece by JTA’s Ron Kampeas.

An article in Tuesday’s Science Times sheds light on the dilemma faced by Ariel Sharon’s doctors when he suffered a minor stroke shortly before his major, incapacitating stroke two and a half years ago. Microbleeds, which likely caused Sharon’s massive stroke on Jan. 4, 2006, continue to raise questions for about how to treat patients at risk for strokes.

Israel’s Channel 10 TV has a segment (translated by Ha’aretz) about a campaign in the schools of Kiryat Gat, a southern Israeli city, warning Jewish girls against getting romantically involved with Bedouins. Schoolgirls are shown a video titled “Sleeping with the Enemy,” which warns against sexually exploitive Arabs.

Israel has been engaged in heated debate in recent days about the efficacy of trading Arab prisoners with blood on their hands for the remains of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped by Hezbollah in July 2006.

The Jerusalem Post’s Matthew Wagner weighs in with a piece on what the Jewish sages might have said about this swap.

Glynis Ann Ritchie has a touching essay in The New York Times’ style section about how she, a starry-eyed American Jewish girl, fell for a hunky Israeli soldier on a Birthright Israel trip. Though the Israeli turns out to be part of the parade of callous men that Ritchie says “opened up my chest, scooped out the contents and tossed them into the trash,” he does leave her with something positive and long-lasting: a healthy self-image.

• Louisiana has passed an “academic freedom” bill permitting school districts to promote Creationism in the classroom.
• A Texas court has upheld the right of religious organizations to engage in practices that may constitute physical and emotional abuse, even when those practices may endanger the well-being of a minor.
• A public school teacher in rural Ohio was fired for promoting Christian views in the classroom and branding crosses onto his student’s arms.
• Video has surfaced of pop singer Amy Winehouse shoving a fan during a recent performance at a rock festival in the UK.
• Contradicting earlier reports that the two were receiving “Kabbalah counseling,” the UK’s Sun reports that Madonna and her husband, director Guy Ritchie, may divorce over the singer’s involvement with the Kabbalah Center.
• Jewlicious contributor DJ Handler reminds us of a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Adam Sandler first explored the disco-loving Israeli persona that would come to be known as the Zohan.
• A religious studies professor at Virginia Tech explains what the Zohan tells us about post-Zionism and vice-versa.
• An Orthodox court in Israel has issued a ban on portable video players, such as the video iPod, claiming “their devilish distributors want nothing more than to drive the people of Israel to sin.”
• Jay Michaelson ponders whether there’s room for the Jews in Narnia.
• Jewish Currents editor Rokhl Kafrissen looks back at Nextbook’s Jews & Power event, raising qualms with the conception of Jewish “liberalism” advocated by the likes of Ruth Wisse and Leon Wieseltier.
• And finally, daaaaaamn, Ahmadinejad’s wife is smokin’! Psych!

In his latest piece of “national security” reportage The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh uses insinuations and several leaps of logic to raise questions about the wisdom of the Bush administration’s apparent funding of covert activities designed to destabilize Iran’s religious leadership.

The headline and Hersh’s juxtapositions suggest that Hersh believes these activities are problematic and a sign that the Bush administration is “preparing the battlefield” for a U.S. attack against Iran.

But the activities also could be interpreted as just the opposite: The White House may be taking this action as an alternative to launching a full-out assault against the Islamic Republic and its suspected nuclear weapons program, and it may well prove more successful than an attack, sanctions or doing nothing.

Hersh makes several leaps of logic in his piece.

The first focuses on whether or not the White House’s initiative — $400 million worth of activities authorized by an executive order called a Presidential Finding — is for military activity to overthrow the regime in Tehran, and whether killing is an intrinsic or merely incidental part of the operations.

The anonymous administration sources cited in the story (they’re almost all anonymous in Hersh’s reporting) say the operations are not about killing:

As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, [a] former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.”

The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm.

The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer.

Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House.

So has Hersh.

But isn’t this what the doves have been pushing for all along? They’d prefer the White House provide support for regime change in Iran from the inside, rather than seeing the U.S. adapt the hawks’ call to attack Iran head-on.

The survival of the current regime in Iran isn’t a partisan issue. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to see the perpetuation of a government that supports and sponsors terrorist groups, threatens U.N. member states (Israel and some Persian Gulf countries, including Bahrain), has nuclear ambitions, and on a daily basis persecutes and represses its own citizens.

So what’s the problem with the White House spending $400 million a year to try and change that in a less destructive and costly way than a frontal attack?
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