'J Street' to the Left of me, jokers to the Right...

When one is attacked from both sides, it's easy to feel virtuous. Having opponents from the far left and the far right does not guarantee you're a moderate. It simply situates you in what farmers who trusted butter over its artificial modern substitute would have called the "margarine middle."

Last week I was hit from both extremes. There seems to be a missing "nuance gene" when it comes to Israel. The most reasonable people, the most skilled professionals, somehow find themselves behaving irrationally, talking wildly and acting sloppily when the topic is raised.

My previous blog, "Israel's self-hating Jews," which condemned Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman for blaming the Obama settlement freeze idea on the president's "Jew boy" advisers, triggered numerous attacks against me for daring to question the mayor's horrific choice of words. You would have thought Mayor Nachman was the holy Reb Nachman of Breslav, given his devotees' intensity. My critics refused to acknowledge that using such language - when trying to convince a State Department delegation, no less - was crude, rude and self-defeating.

Nachman's followers took an attack on him as an attack on them, on Israel, on the Jewish people and on truth itself, while perceiving it as a deluded defense of Obama's foreign policy, despite my criticisms of the administration's Israel strategy.

Most disturbingly, they felt completely justified using offensive, racist language to describe fellow Jews with whom they disagree, thus undercutting those of us who have been forced to spend far too much time fighting anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, racism, and ethnic stereotyping of all kinds.

These rhetorical bomb-throwers confirmed every liberal caricature of the aggressive, self-righteous, my-way-or-the-highway settlers - but characteristically blamed me for helping to perpetuate that stereotype.

Let me say regarding the "Jew boy" issue what I say when anti-Semites masquerading as "mere" anti-Zionists compare Israelis to Nazis. Intelligent people can find a rich choice of words to convey disdain without resorting to cheap, ugly, inflammatory anti-Semitic language that reveals the critics' own prejudices.

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Gaza war shows Israel's democratic resilience

After the Second Lebanon War, one former tank commander sighed, "when my kids were teenagers and stumbled, I reassured them that, fortunately, the lessons learned outweighed the damage done: so too with Israel's army." Two and a half years later, forced to confront Hamas's rocket barrages targeting Israeli civilians, Israel fulfilled this prophecy. Great democracies like Israel can transform citizens' grumblings into constructive self-criticism, turning officials' failures into redemptive improvements. 

Ironically, while applying many lessons learned, this war illustrated the Lebanon War's success. Hizbullah's inaction as Israel pummeled another Iranian proxy, Hamas, suggests Israel's message of deterrence worked. Still, despite this gain, the civilian Winograd commission and numerous internal IDF reviews proposed clever solutions to the logistical and strategic problems that plagued the battlefront and the homefront. 

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'Thank you, George W. Bush'

Once again, in Israel's hour of need, George W. Bush has supported the Jewish state eloquently, passionately, gracefully. At a time when most presidents use their rapidly shrinking bully pulpit to burnish their legacies, Bush devoted one of his final Saturday radio addresses to defending Israel's actions and condemning Hamas. "This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel's destruction," Bush declared. He added that "Since Hamas's violent takeover in the summer of 2007, living conditions have worsened for Palestinians in Gaza. By spending its resources on rocket launchers instead of roads and schools, Hamas has demonstrated that it has no intention of serving the Palestinian people." George W. Bush has consistently used this kind of clear rhetoric to distinguish between Palestinians' self-destructive addiction to terrorism and Israel's justified self-defense.

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The two state solution as the only unhappy alternative

Some readers objected to the end of my last column on the lessons of Oslo. Most of the column argued that Arab and particularly Palestinian rejectionism destroyed Oslo yet most Westerners could not fathom Palestinian political culture's destructive and self-destructive addiction to violence. Nevertheless, I concluded, the only solution remains a two-state solution. Critics deemed this claim contradictory.

The two-state solution remains the most logical solution for Israelis and Palestinians because, like the infirmities of old age, it beats the alternative, or in this case, the alternatives. Extremist Palestinians advocate the one-state solution, trusting that masses of Palestinian voters in a secular democratic state would overwhelm Israelis. Across the spectrum, since 1967, many right-wing Israelis have endorsed the status quo, ignoring the psychic, moral, diplomatic, military, political, and economic costs to Israel of controlling millions of hostile non-citizens. A two-state solution can take many forms, including federations with Egypt and Jordan that would mean a three-state or a one and two half-state solution. Somehow, Israel must stop governing millions of Palestinians.

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Remember the terror victims at the Seder

Once again, we will celebrate our joyous holiday of liberation this seder with heavy hearts. Even as we revel in our freedom as Jews today, even as we marvel at Israel's steadiness amid the terrorist onslaught, even as we begin celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary, too many Israeli families are in pain. This year, as we think of three Israeli hostages in a Mitzraim, in dire straits, and think of an entire region, the western Negev, including the city of Sderot, held hostage, we must reclaim our symbols, remember our losses, reaffirm our commitment to Israel, to the Jewish people, and to a true peace.

In the bloody, unnecessary war the Palestinians began by turning away from negotiations toward violence, too many died, too many have been injured, on both sides. And too many seders now have empty chairs - missing husbands, fathers, brothers, sons; missing wives, mothers, sisters, daughters.

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'April Fools' report minimizes Palestinian anti-semitism

I usually don't like playing bash-the-journalist. I try avoiding the ritualistic Tirade against the Times, which keeps pro-Israel New York Times readers' blood flowing. But an April 1, 2008 front-page article was so ridiculous it could have been an April Fools joke. "IN GAZA, HAMAS'S FIERY INSULTS TO JEWS COMPLICATE PEACE EFFORT," the headline ever so delicately proclaimed - as if there was much of a peace effort with Hamas to complicate, and as if the bombs raining down on Sderot or hundreds of cold-blooded murders over the years did not first "complicate" matters. Even the usually hostile International Herald Tribune reprinted the article under a more accurate headline "HAMAS RATCHETS UP ANTI-JEWISH RHETORIC." Equally absurd, the one line the Times website highlighted pronounced:  "While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect, efforts to end incitement against Jews, Hamas feels no such restraint." Moral obtuseness is one of the great crimes of our times and of the Times.  The editors too easily forgive Fatah's "imperfections" in fighting anti-Semitism.

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