Leaders and leadership: Is something missing?

It's become an energizing habit of mine to attend the annual Summer University organized by the European Union of Jewish Students (EUJS). Hundreds of young people from across Europe gather in a picturesque spot for a week of studying and socializing.

This year, I addressed the students on the subject of leadership. When I asked them to identify individuals currently in the public arena - elected officials, moral voices, persons of conscience - whom they admired, there was a moment's silence. Then came a torrent of names. But when put to a vote, only four people enjoyed any widespread support. Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama ranked at the top, followed by Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy.

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How I envy the ideologues!

How I envy the ideologues when it comes to Israel-related issues!

It's so simple and straightforward. The thinking is airtight, the solutions obvious, and the counterarguments mere distractions. There's no room for self-doubt, no time for anguish.

If only the rest of the world would see things their way, all would be hunky-dory. Alas, those who don't must, by definition, be out of step, behind the times, unenlightened.

Take five of Israel's most pressing strategic challenges.

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Separating fact from fiction

Recently, I met a gentleman at a dinner. He asked me what I do. I said I work for AJC. He replied that he had once been a member, but quit because we weren't sufficiently "pro-peace." When I pursued the point, he said that the decision to make peace was in Israel's hands, but no one would make it, and groups like AJC were too busy "protecting" the Israeli government.

In a similar vein, the lead letter in the August 18th issue of The Jerusalem Report, written by Martin J. Weisman of California, stated: "I have to conclude that Israel may never have peace. The greatest obstacle to a two-state solution, and a source of great frustration for Israel's friends, are the West Bank settlements mostly inhabited by religious Zionists."

And in an exchange between British blogger Joy Wolfe and leaders of the "Free Gaza" campaign - which recently sent two boats to Gaza in the hope of garnering media attention - an Israeli-based member, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein, condemned Israel for "collective punishment of 1.5 million people," "war crimes," and "crimes against humanity," and described Gaza as "an open prison, a sort of concentration camp - most of those people perfectly innocent ordinary human beings who want to be at peace with us..." All this, she argued, "is about as far from Judaism as I can imagine."

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Why are Palestinian refugees different from all other refugees?

Why indeed?

Tragically, there have been countless refugees in the annals of history.

Many have fled political persecution, religious harassment, racial or ethnic targeting, or gender or sexual discrimination.

It's happened in just about every era.

In the twentieth century alone, tens of millions of refugees, if not more, were compelled to find new homes - victims of world wars, border adjustments, population transfers, political demagoguery, and social pathologies.

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne codified the population exchange of Greeks and Turks, totaling more than 1.5 million people. Ancestral homes were wiped out on both sides.

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An impossible dream?

After 9/11, I wrote what I called "The Missing Speech."

It was my imagined call from the Oval Office to confront our ever-growing - and increasingly dangerous - dependence on oil from hostile nations. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman noted, this was the first time in American history that we were funding both sides of a conflict in which we were involved.

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Are we one people?

How naïve I've been all these years!

I actually thought that Jews meant it when they spoke of "one people" and repeated the injunction, "All Jews are responsible one for the other."

It helped that this is the spirit in which I was raised. I was surrounded by all kinds of Jews - unbelieving and observant, knowledgeable and unschooled, native and foreign-born, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, engaged and apathetic. I always assumed that, in spite of our differences, or perhaps because of them, we were all one community.

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The greatest generation up close

Ten years ago this month, my father passed away. In his declining years, he had few friends and only a tiny family, and since he was almost obsessively modest about himself, little was known about him outside a small circle. He deserved more. He was part of the generation that was put to the ultimate test, and he passed with flying colors. He saw nothing special in what he did, but what he did was awe-inspiring. We owe his generation, which some have called the Greatest Generation, more than we may ever realize.

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Durban Redux?

The names of certain cities take on special meaning.

Munich was the site of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's third and final meeting with Adolf Hitler, in a two-week span, in September 1938. On his return, the British leader, speaking from 10 Downing Street, promised "peace with honour" and "peace for our time," only to be faced with a full-fledged war less than a year later.

In other words, Munich became synonymous with appeasement.

Or take Yalta, the location of the 1945 summit involving US President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Though much else was discussed, including the Soviet Union's entry into the war against Japan, Yalta will long be remembered as the venue where Poland's future in the Soviet sphere of influence was essentially decided.

In other words, Yalta became synonymous with sellout.

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A Cri de Coeur from two Jewish generations

I've never visualized myself as a matchmaker, but in this particular case, I'm more than happy to give it a try.

Last week, AJC held its 102nd Annual Meeting. Among the more than 1,200 registrants, we had large contingents of Jewish leaders from literally dozens of countries. Similarly, we were blessed by the presence of young Jewish leaders, many representing student and youth groups from around the world.

In the interstices of the five-day meeting, I met privately with as many of these individuals and groups as possible. It's important to know what's on their minds and to see where, if at all, we might be in a position to help.

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Israel at 60: reasons to celebrate

Israel is about to mark its sixtieth anniversary.

Some friends say they're in no mood to celebrate. The timing isn't right, they complain. The country's political circuitry is overloaded. Danger lurks on the Gaza and Lebanon borders. Iran's nuclear ambitions - and annihilationist threats - loom large. Disputes over the current peace talks with the Palestinian Authority are daily fare. Israel continues to take a beating in UN forums. The drumbeat of anti-Zionism grows louder. A fractious social climate creates long-term and seemingly insoluble fissures between Arab and Jew, not to mention Jew and Jew. And global market volatility spells trouble for the Israeli economy.

All true, perhaps. But the story mustn't end there. Milestone anniversaries offer the chance to step back, however briefly, from the news of the moment and take stock of the larger picture.

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