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.
Comments (14)Hamas: words and deeds
There's the story of the mother determined that her five-year-old wunderkind should be well-educated and one day headed for a top university. She decided to pump him with new vocabulary words each day. When little Charlie came home from school, his mother promptly said, "Charlie, what's the difference between ignorance and indifference?" To which he, totally uninterested in the exercise, shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "I don't know and I don't care."
At times, that's the sense I get from the world about Hamas.
It's as if there is an ignorance, perhaps a willful ignorance, about what Hamas, which rules Gaza, really means.
About this blog In the Trenches
American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris assesses challenges to Jewish security worldwide.
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