Sukkot, the Jewish holiday that marks the fall harvest festival and also commemorates 40 years of wandering by ancient Jews in the desert, commences at sundown on Wednesday. Jews throughout the world are building their local Sukkot, a temporary shelter that usually takes the form of a tent....

Is it remotely possible to close the gaps between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel?

62 percent of Palestinian Arabs who live in Israel believe that Israeli Jews "are foreigners who do not fit in this region, and they will eventually leave the country," according...

Everyone agrees President Obama made a gutsy political call when he ordered the Navy Seals to take out Osama bin Laden. There would have been a fierce backlash if the mission had failed. But he's not getting credit for demonstrating even more political courage by calling for an Israeli-Palestinian peace...

J Street, the political arm of the American Jewish pro-Israel, pro-peace movement, will convene its second national conference on Saturday night. There will be an enormous turnout. An organizer told me that about 2100 people are pre-registered (at their last conference, only 850 people were pre-registered but 1500 people showed...

"I appreciate your call. My staff was going to get in touch with you. The task force is meeting tomorrow at 8:30. Can you make it?"

"I'm afraid the Consulate will need to get someone else. I'm calling to tell you I can't help anymore. I'm too upset..."

"But the...

The blogosphere is buzzing about an essay by Peter Beinart in the New York Review of Books. Beinart convincingly denounces the Israel-right-or-wrong mantra of mainstream American Jewish organizations. He is justifiably worried about the future of "an American Zionist movement that does not even feign concern for Palestinian...

As it prepares for its first national conference this weekend, J Street, the political arm of pro-peace, pro-Israel American Jews, is being assailed by those who don't want it to take positions independent of the Israeli government.

Chuck Freilich, a former Israeli National Security advisor, castigates the J...

The pro-Israel peace camp in the U.S., my camp, has been content to settle for incremental American diplomacy. We've rallied around the Obama team and its call for freezing settlements, for small but friendly policy changes from the Arab states, for "confidence-building" measures. That incremental approach didn't work in the...

There are probably 25 people in the world who have enough information and experience to gauge the likelihood that Iran will develop a nuclear bomb, and --if it is intent on nuclear weapons-- when the warheads will be ready. I'm certainly not one of them. Neither are the leaders of...

Alarms are clattering in the minds of pro-Israel American activists whose mission in life is to close all gaps between official Israeli and American positions. In the weeks leading up to the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which begins May 3rd in DC, the Obama...

We still don't know a great deal about the Jane Harman affair, in which she allegedly agreed to try to intercede in the Justice Department's investigation of two former AIPAC employees. But I believe we now have incontrovertible proof of the utter stupidity exhibited by some of the main...

Obama-watchers ought to spend some time studying the works of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, because the President-elect has said that Niebuhr has profoundly influenced him. Lately, I have been reading Niebuhr to discover what lessons he could offer to Obama on American foreign policy, especially in the Middle East.

There are few Americans whose ideas offend me more than Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense who played a major role in planning and promoting the invasion of Iraq. I joined demonstrations to try to stop that invasion and am appalled that the preemptive war fetishists now have their...

Too many Israeli and American Jewish leaders have a problem with the L-word, "linkage." They reflexively denounce any suggestion that progress toward Arab-Israeli peace will help America solve its own problems in the Middle East. They should change their approach, because what they are doing not only ignores reality; it...