 Samir Kuntar is Israel's longest-held Lebanese prisoner. In 1979, the Druze teenager who had grown up during Lebanon's civil war embarked on an attack against northern Israel, one from which he hasn't returned.
Israel has suffered many attacks over the years, but the one that killed the family of Smadar Haran and a police officer nearly 30 years ago was seared into the nation's collective memory, and the tragic results became a symbol.
So did Kuntar himself. A celebrity prisoner in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has set Kuntar's release as a goal, repeatedly promising to free him and stating categorically that no prisoner swap would take place without him. Israel is loath to free Kuntar.
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 U.S. President George Bush arrived today in Sharm El-Sheikh for peace talks with his Egyptian counterpart, Hosni Mubarak, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas.
Yet, no warm welcome should be expected, especially when it is believed that he mainly came to the region to celebrate Israel's 60th anniversary. Earlier this week, demonstrators in downtown Cairo protested his visit, accusing him of siding with Israel at the expense of the Palestinians.
Egypt is the final stop in Bush’s Middle East tour after Israel and Saudi Arabia. He first landed in the Jewish state, where he addressed the Knesset to congratulate the Israelis on their country's anniversary.
“Masada will not fall again,” Bush said in his speech Thursday, referring to the Jewish desert fortress that was attacked by troops of the Roman Empire. While the speech was hailed as “historic” by some Israeli papers, it elicited stir in Egypt. The state-owned daily paper Al-Ahram dismissed the speech as inspired by the Torah.
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President Bush received several rousing standing ovations during his speech Thursday to the Israeli Knesset.
Not everyone was quite as enthused.
Several Arab Knesset members staged a walkout before the speech, and one Palestinian activist angrily dubbed his speech "a love fest" for the Jewish state.
To be honest, there was a lot of love in the air between Bush and his Israeli hosts.
Stating that President Harry Truman recognized the new Jewish state 11 minutes after David Ben-Gurion’s declaration of independence, Bush said, “Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you.”
Bush's speech also caused waves back in the U.S.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama angrily responded to what he contended was an unfair swipe at him by Bush. In a not-so-veiled shot at Obama's stated willingness to negotiate with Iran, Bush mocked what he called "the false comfort of appeasement" and said: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before."
White House officials denied the remark was directed at any one person, but Obama fired back within hours, accusing Bush of distorting his position and employing "the politics of fear."
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: George and Laura Bush. Credit: Agencia Brasil
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President Bush arrived in Israel today to help celebrate the Jewish State's 60th anniversary and possibly help nudge along the (so far lackluster) Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations he launched last fall.
With Bush's time in office winding down, Israeli observers sound genuinely nostalgic to see him go, and some are already fretting about Israel's future with someone else in the White House.
An editorial in the Jerusalem Post this week declared: "Of all the US presidents over the past 60 years, it is hard to think of a better friend to Israel than George W. Bush."
He'll meet several times with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose own longevity in office is being questioned due to shaky popularity, a fragile coalition and an accelerating corruption investigation against him. One Israeli columnist dubbed this "a meeting of the lame ducks."
Bush is likely to hear complaints from Palestinians that his schedule here reflects his administration's loyalties and sympathies. Bush has no plans to travel to the West Bank and will meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas later this week in Cairo, but not in Ramallah.
On the same day as Palestinians throughout Israel, the occupied West Bank and the besieged Hamas-run Gaza Strip will commemorate the 60th anniversary of "The Catastrophe," Bush will be addressing the Israeli Knesset.
Bush is also likely to hear a lot in the coming days about pardoning convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard before he leaves office. The issue is expected to be quietly brought up by Israeli officials, and pro-Pollard activist groups, as the picture below shows, are not-so-quietly doing the same.
In an interview with Israel's Channel 10 before leaving the U.S., Bush was diligently noncommittal when asked if he had received a formal request to pardon Pollard and whether he was considering it. BUSH: We are constantly analyzing cases. There's been no change in the government's attitude at this point.
Q: So?
BUSH: No change.
Q: But your -- did you get such a request?
BUSH: Oh, yes, constantly.
Q: Constantly?
BUSH: Sure.
Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: Ashraf Khalil
"5.4 million Jews live in Israel today -- more than in any period throughout history, but only 0.1% of them believe" in Jesus, says an internal memo of Israel's messianic communities announcing a campaign to spread the gospel throughout the country's Jewish residents. Anti-missionary circles say their "intelligence people" intercepted the "shocking memo" (Hebrew) that also expressed concern over legislators' support for a bill seeking to tighten restrictions on missionary activity, already outlawed in Israel.
Reportedly, a campaign equating Jesus with salvation came to an abrupt end after people complained of billboards on buses throughout the country reading "Jesus = Yeshua = Salvation" (the words are very similar in Hebrew, perhaps too close for some). An urgent appeal by Yad L'Achim to the national bus company bore quick results and the billboards were removed within hours, the company's advertising department stating it did not want to offend the Jewish public's feelings.
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Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's troubles continue to lurch onward with no sign of a quick conclusion.
Investigators from the National Fraud Unit raided the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor on Tuesday searching for incriminating documents dated back to Olmert's time as minister. On Monday, they raided Jerusalem's city hall, where Olmert served as mayor for 10 years.
The corruption investigation against Olmert centers around allegedly illicit cash payments from Jewish-American millionaire Morris Talansky, but investigators have also questioned two other wealthy Jewish-American businessmen.
Olmert has escaped several corruption investigations before this and never been formally charged. He managed to hang on in 2006 despite plummeting popularity over his government's handling of the conflict with Hizbollah. through it all he's cultivated a reputation as the ultimate teflon survivor.
But few seem to be betting on him this time. Recent polls indicate 60 percent of Israelis feel he should resign.
Columnist Sima Kadmon said the investigators appear to have a strong case and the allegations, which involve cash-stuffed envelopes, are particularly tawdry.
"It appears that part of the shock in the political system and the media is not over the offense, but rather, over its lack of sophistication," Kadmon wrote.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
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 A number of opposition MPs and independent activists have recently launched a campaign to pressure President Hosni Mubarak’s regime to stop exporting natural gas to Israel. Under the Slogan “No to the Gas Setback”, the opposition gave the government an ultimatum of 30 days to go back on a deal that obliges Egypt to provide Israel with gas for 15 years.
Under the contract, Egypt is committed to pump 1.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year into Israel. For the opposition, the deal is another blow similar to the “1967 setback” under which Israeli forces occupied Egypt’s Sinai, among other Arab territories. If the government does not heed the opposition’s call, campaigners are threatening to take to the streets.
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President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said he'd be delighted to meet with the president of the United States.
Just not with George W. Bush, whose term runs out in eight months.
"Except for the Zionist regime [i.e., Israel], we are ready to negotiate with any country," he told reporters in one of his infamous rambling news conferences today: "Before I said I was ready to have a debate with President Bush. Now I say I am ready to hold a debate with the U.S. presidential candidate before large audiences of the world, because Bush is the outgoing president and no longer relevant."
The press-friendly president of an increasingly press-unfriendly country also took on questions ranging from Iran's controversial nuclear program to the price of food in the capital.
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Israel celebrated the 60th anniversary of its birth this week with fireworks, skywriting jet planes and numerous blue-and-white Star of David flags.
But for Palestinians, both inside Israel and in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip, it's a whole different anniversary. Due to differing calenders, Palestinians mark Israel's creation on May 15 and call it Al Nakba, the catastrophe.
Today, as part of a week of commemorative rallies and vigils leading up to May 15, several hundred Palestinian, Israeli and international activists held a silent march through mostly Jewish West Jerusalem.
There were no slogans, no banners and no Palestinian flags. With participants holding maps and following a bullhorn-holding leader, the march seemed like some sort of architectural tour.
Marchers wearing black T-shirts that read "Nakba survivor" stopped at several homes in the Talbiyeh neighborhood. Elderly Palestinians would emerge from the crowd to recount memories of the home their families fled in 1948, many still holding the house keys and assuming they would return when the Arab-Jewish hostilities died down.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photos by Ashraf Khalil
In the course of researching today's story on growing Palestinian support for a one-state solution, Bureau Chief Richard Boudreaux and I came across an absolute mountain of articles, books, speeches and message boards devoted to the topic.
As a service to you, our noble readers, we've cleared out the chatter and present here a quick list of sources we found interesting and provocative.
For starters, here's an recent analysis of one-state sentiment in The Jerusalem Report magazine and a point-counterpoint of columns by Israeli and Palestinian thinkers posted on the Bitterlemons website.
Any one-state discussion has to include the Electronic Intifada. The well-known pro-Palestinian site is one of the online nerve centers for one-state sentiment, and founder Ali Abunimah has even written a book on the topic.
And here's the 9-year old public endorsement of one-state by iconic Palestinian academic and author Edward Said that may have helped relaunch the modern movement.
One-state advocates freely admit that they're on a 20-year plan, at best. It will take that long, they say, for Israelis to even be willing to consider the idea.
Time will tell if that's true, but at the very least the issue is non-starter for this generation of Israelis. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert speaks of a single shared state as a nightmare scenario that must be avoided, as does U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Israeli leftist Uri Averny pronounces the idea "a vision of despair," as does the peacenik Meretz Party, and one Zionist blogger calls it a recipe for Israel's destruction.
One of the few prominent Israelis willing to envision a shared Israeli/Palestinian state is Ilan Pappe. Here's a transcript of a debate on the issue between Pappe and Averny.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
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A story online today details how Palestinians are losing hope that negotiations will ever produce a fair deal for an independent state beside Israel.
In response, sentiment is growing among Palestinians to stop fighting for territory and begin struggling for equal rights and voting privileges in a land where Arabs will soon be the majority.
We'll put it to the readers:
This one is not for readers with delicate stomachs. Consider yourselves warned.
Much has rightly been made of the myriad deprivations suffered by residents of the Gaza Strip because of the 10-month-long economic siege of the territory imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas took control last summer.
Merchants have run short of everything, from auto parts to diapers; an alarming percentage of the population now lives on international aid; and all but emergency surgical procedures are put on the back burner because of shortages of most medical supplies.
Now comes a new sign of Gaza's desperate state — one that should disturb fans of the Mediterranean beaches in Israel and Egypt.
A new United Nations report states that public utilities officials in Gaza have pumped millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Mediterranean over the last three months.The shortage of fuel and constant power cuts make it impossible to treat the sewage, the report states: Full sewage treatment requires 14 continuous days of uninterrupted power supply which cannot occur due to daily power cuts and insufficient fuel to operate power-supplying and back-up generators."
According to the report, the sewage flows northward toward the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon.
— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: Coming soon to a beach near you. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
 The Los Angeles Times' Sebastian Rotella today explores the Shiite militant group Hezbollah's drive to reequip itself with rockets in preparation for a possible war with Israel. The article cites analysts and spooks in the Middle East and Europe as well as Hezbollah itself about the group's weapons arsenal:
Hezbollah leaders have declined to discuss specific numbers. But a source close to Hezbollah agreed with the Israeli assessment of the military buildup... "We are ready, and we are stronger than two years ago," the source said. "In every battle there are weak and strong points. We have found solutions to all of our weak points from that experience."
Indeed. Hezbollah's preparations go beyond merely rearming itself. It has also revamped its organizational structure and possibly bolstered its intelligence-gathering capabilities, say analysts and experts.
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Condoleezza Rice is in town pushing for the removal of more Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank. President Bush arrives later month and will likely push further to revive the lackluster Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Meanwhile, right-wing members of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's fragile coalition constantly threaten to bring down his government if the negotiations actually address anything important like the division of Jerusalem.
So the last thing Olmert needs right now is the ghost of scandals past rattling its chains outside his window.
On Friday, Olmert was subject to police questioning for 90 minutes at his official residence in Jerusalem. The reason: an urgent inquiry ordered by Israel's attorney general reportedly focusing on bribes paid by an American businessman to Olmert before he became prime minister.
A statement issued by Olmert's office said: "He is convinced that as the truth will emerge in the framework of the police investigation, the suspicions against him will dissipate."
Given the urgent nature of the inquiry and still sketchy details about the suspected crime, coverage of the issue has been understandably breathless.
Olmert has been implicated in a host of prior scandals including political appointments and shady real estate details. But the former mayor of Jerusalem has always manged to land on his feet. So far.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: Olmert and Rice. Credit: US Embassy/Tel Aviv
Shortly after four Palestinian siblings and their mother died Monday in the midst of an Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip, Israeli officials began disputing claims that a tank shell had struck the Abu Mutiq family home. See 6 killed in Israeli raid on Gaza.
Today Israel released footage meant to bolster its claim that the home was destroyed by a secondary blast--caused when the air force fired on two militants carrying explosives and approaching Israeli troops.
Here's the video, so take a look and let the debate commence.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
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Israelis have a knack for doing things backwards, sideways and upside-down — anything but straight. The country's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was famous for standing on his head. And now, even the Israeli flag is upside-down.
Israel's Bank Hapoalim printed the flags, which were given out free with the weekend papers, as a well-meant gesture of corporate patriotism before Independence Day next week. Thing is, they're printed wrong. The Star of David is misaligned in reference to the stripes, and essentially it rests on its side rather than its tip. Oops. "This is what happens, apparently, when we leave our Zionist creation up to the Chinese," said Israel Radio's Amikam Rothman this morning.
The design of the flag was first displayed in 1885 and first used in 1897, until being adopted by the state in 1948.
This is the flag I got with today's Maariv newspaper.
And this is how it should be, the bases of each triangle parallel to the stripes:
—Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
Photo: Top, funny flag. Credit: Batsheva Sobelman/Los Angeles Times. Bottom: Correct flag.
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This is the most loaded week in Israel's year. One week of grounding; an anchor, a reality-check, the center of gravity.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is being marked Thursday. In exactly one week,the country shall commemorate its war and terror victims, back to back with Independence Day the following day. The essence of Israeliness compressed into a week of transitions: past to present, grief to celebration, individual to collective, Jew to Israeli.
The changes are sharp, nearly impossible at times. Yet most Israelis are accustomed to furious swinging of the pendulum of its national mood and emotions.
A week apart, Holocaust Remembrance and Independence Day - with the price paid for the latter in between - are bookends containing the modern text of a nation; the commemoration days were among the first laws passed by Israeli governments.
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This is the most loaded week in Israel's year. One week of grounding; an anchor, a reality-check, the center of gravity.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is being marked Thursday. In exactly one week,the country shall commemorate its war and terror victims, back to back with Independence Day the following day. The essence of Israeliness compressed into a week of transitions: past to present, grief to celebration, individual to collective, Jew to Israeli.
The changes are sharp, nearly impossible at times. Yet most Israelis are accustomed to furious swinging of the pendulum of its national mood and emotions.
A week apart, Holocaust Remembrance and Independence Day - with the price paid for the latter in between - are bookends containing the modern text of a nation; the commemoration days were among the first laws passed by Israeli governments.
Read on »
 Not all quiet lately on Lebanon's southern front with Israel.
Peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have come under political fire by Israeli authorities for reportedly covering up for Hezbollah's re-arming activities.
This comes at at particularly tense time. All sorts of people are warning of yet another round of war erupting between the Jewish state and the Lebanese Shiite militant group.
The Israeli daily Haaretz today quoted government and military officials accusing the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) of concealing information about Hezbollah.
Why would they do that? To avoid any friction with the Iranian-backed group, the paper reports:
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Professor William Beeman at the University of Minnesota passed along a note today from "a colleague with a U.S. security clearance" about the mysterious Syrian site targeted in a Sept. 6 Israeli airstrike.
The note raises more questions about the evidence shown last week by U.S. intelligence officials to lawmakers in the House and Senate.
The author of the note pinpoints irregularities about the photographs. Beeman's source alleges that the CIA "enhanced" some of the images. For example he cites this image:
The lower part of the building, the annex, and the windows pointing south appear much sharper than the rest of the photo, suggesting that they were digitally improved.
The author points to more questions about the photographs of the Syrian site.
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The tragic images on display today were all too familiar for residents of the Gaza Strip: the crumbled remains of a family home, the wailing relatives outside the hospital and the tiny white-shrouded corpses.
Equally familiar were the war of words and dueling accusations that ritually follow tragedies like today's explosion that killed a mother and four of her young children.
Palestinian officials placed the blame on "Israeli aggression." Israeli officials blamed the willingness of Palestinian militants to attack from areas crowded with civilians and laid ultimate blame on Hamas and other Gazan militant factions.
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So are the Syrians or the Americans bending facts about Kibar?
That's the site in the eastern deserts of Syria destroyed in an Israeli airstrike on Sept. 6. The consequences Kibar airstrike continue to unfold. Los Angeles Times Washington bureau reporter Nicole Gaouette writes today about the bipartisan skepticism of U.S. lawmakers about the timing and substance of the Bush administration's presentations (see video below) about the site last week. The presentations to the Senate and House intelligence committees were meant to show that North Koreans were helping the Syrians build a plutonium reactor. Instead, the evidence drew unusually strong criticism.
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Parents separated and estranged, teenage daughter commits suicide. The essence of tragedy. But the story cannot be put to rest until the daughter is, and this won't happen until the parents agree on how.
The mother asked that her daughter be cremated, a very uncommon choice in Israel. The father agreed at first but changed his mind and sought traditional burial. The mother claimed that he had no authority to intervene, as he was not the girl's biological father.
By the time the DNA testing proved his fatherhood, it was too late: The body had been cremated. All a judge could do was to issue an injunction against scattering her ashes. When police arrived at the mother's house, she said it was too late for that too and the police left with the urn and remaining ashes, which the father wants buried traditionally.
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The arrest of 84-year-old Ben-ami Kadish on charges of spying for Israel continues to fuel speculation and analysis here and in the U.S. A Jerusalem Post survey showed that 71% of more than 3,000 respondents believed that the Kadish case would harm U.S.-Israeli relations.
Much of the speculation centers on the curious timing of the arrest — not only more than 20 years after Kadish's alleged crimes took place but one month before President Bush will travel here to help celebrate the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel's founding.
One interpretation was that the Bush administration was using the case to pressure Israel into greater concessions in its talks with the Palestinians. Another claimed that the U.S. Justice Department remained obsessed with proving that convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard was just part of a larger ongoing network.
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Before there was Hollywood's Ari Ben-Canaan, there was Yossi Harel. Barely 30 years old, he commanded the legendary ship Exodus, carrying some 4,500 Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors from Europe to British Palestine in 1947. He died Saturday at age 90.
The ship sailed from a small port near Marseilles, France, on July 11, 1947. The British authorities, determined to stop the illegal immigration of Jews that had increased after the war, had adopted a new policy to return ships to their European point of embarkation and had warships accompany the Exodus once it left French territorial waters.
On the morning of July 17, a refugee named Dvora was on deck of what was still the SS President Warfield, watching the British warships approach. "That morning, our ship's name was not yet the Exodus.... Late in the afternoon, I saw a friend of mine, a Belgian boy, struggling with a long piece of cloth and some paint. He explained he was going to paint the name of our ship on the sheet: Hagana Ship, Exodus 1947.... After a while, the job was done. That is how our ship became exodus," she wrote in her memoirs.
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Despite months of tension, Israel and Syria appeared Thursday to be engaged in indirect talks on the outlines of a peace accord that would include an Israeli pullout from the Golan Heights.
Direct, U.S.-brokered talks over the territory, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War, collapsed in 2000. There have been periodic peace overtures since, but the current effort is viewed as more serious because it is being mediated by Turkey, which has close relations with both countries.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described his hope for a deal in an interview last week before Passover, telling the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, "I am acting on this issue, and I hope that my efforts mature into something meaningful."
Click here to read more.
—Richard Boudreaux in Jerusalem
A supporter of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has sent a note in a response to an earlier post suggesting that the presidential candidate's statement vowing to "totally obliterate" Iran if it were to launch an attack on Israel was taken out of context.
Actually, what she said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America" was that she would "totally obliterate them" even if they merely "consider" launching an attack on Israel.
Here's a clip from the interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo: Below a transcript of the entire exchange:
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This was already going to be a year where we heard a lot about convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard. As the Bush administration winds down, speculation has been steadily building about a potential end-of-term pardon for the former Navy analyst serving a life sentence for espionage.
President Clinton, at the end of his presidency, considered a pardon for Pollard -- who was granted Israeli citizenship in prison. But Clinton was reportedly talked out of it by the intelligence community, which was still livid about the scope of the damage done.
Now a new Israeli spy scandal has brought up Pollard's name again. Accused spy Ben-ami Kadish, an 84-year-old retired Army engineer, reportedly had the same handler as Pollard, an allegation which revives longstanding speculation that Pollard was just part of extensive and ongoing Israeli network in America.
"This was a much larger espionage operation with sleeper cells in the United States than we understood or could have known at the time," said Joseph E. DiGenova, the former U.S. attorney who helped prosecute Pollard.
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Better be careful what you say in the heat of a political campaign. It could have global repercussions.
 Presidential contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's vow to "obliterate" Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it attacked Israel on her watch was duly noted in the U.S.
[UPDATE: To see a video and full transcript of the comment, click here.]
Jaded American insiders shrugged off the remark as typical campaign season bluster, filed away with myriad other exaggerations and gaffes.
But it prompted shock overseas as well as headlines from Bulgaria to New Zealand.
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Two blockbuster Middle East espionage tales emerged from Washington today.
First, a scoop by Los Angeles Times diplomatic reporter Paul Richter and intelligence reporter Greg Miller: The CIA plans to brief key lawmakers in a closed-door session about the mysterious Syrian site that was the target of an Israeli air raid in September.
The report cites anonymous Beltway officials. Here's an excerpt:
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Jimmy Carter knew what he was getting into when he launched his one-man Middle East diplomacy tour. After emerging as the most prominent American critic of Israeli policy, the former president wasn't expecting to be received here with open arms.
But as the Nobel Peace Prize-winner returned to Jerusalem after meeting with Hamas leaders in Damascus, his aides said they were amazed that not a single Israeli government minister was willing to meet with him during the several days he was here last week.
"We expected a cold reception but not to be treated like this," said one Carter advisor.
Carter hailed the public acceptance by Hamas of a two-state solution on pre-1967 borders, provided the proposed peace deal was approved in a Palestinian referendum. The development, Carter said, proved Israel and the U.S. were "making a very serious mistake" in refusing to meet with the militant group, which won parliamentary elections in 2006 and now controls the Gaza Strip.
Carter laughed when asked if he thought his actions would spark debate back home about the United States' foreign policy and its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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The Iranian government has officially and regularly decried former President Jimmy Carter since the founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.
But it looks like some within official Iranian circles are willing to let bygones be bygones, especially now that Carter has defied the Bush administration by meeting with the Palestinian militant group and Iranian ally, Hamas.
Iran's animosity toward Carter stretches back decades. He was, after all, the U.S. commander in chief who toasted deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi months before a popular 1978 uprising against his rule, briefly offered the monarch sanctuary in America and dispatched an ill-fated rescue team to free American diplomats and embassy employees being held hostage in Iran.
But politics makes for strange bedfellows.
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Jewish families around the world are celebrating today's start of the Passover holiday with lavish communal meals. Observant Jews in Israel throw out or burn leavened food products, known as hametz; others just temporarily "sign away" ownership of their hametz to a non-Jew.
Celebrating the liberation of the Jews in Egypt from slavery, the week-long holiday is intensely family-oriented. One Jewish blogger in the U.S. pronounced it "one of my favorite holidays. Why? Because you don't have to go to the synagogue and it's mainly about sitting around and eating."
For those who aren't near their families, Chabad Jewish outreach centers around the world are hosting mass Seder meals. The world's largest annual Seder seems to take place in Nepal, a favored spot for thousands of young Israeli backpackers.
In Israel, Passover was preceded by several weeks of debate over a court ruling permitting the display of leavened products in restaurants and bars. Vocal protests and possible physical attacks from angry ultra-orthodox Jews are feared by some restaurant owners. Others have fretted about whether or not cigarettes are hametz.
Israeli security typically shifts into high alert during Passover. The army sealed off crossings from the West Bank on Friday. After Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip launched a massive attack on a border crossing early Saturday morning, an Israeli army spokeswoman said the attack may have been timed to disrupt Passover celebrations.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Caption: Hope you're hungry. Credit: Public Domain
"Police? I'd like to report a theft."
"What's been stolen?"
"My name."
"Who stole your name, sir?"
"The government!"
This is the beginning of a radio commercial advertising the government portal, with Israeli actor and singer Gidi Gov complaining that the government has stolen his family name for the government gateway, ending with the obvious suffix ".gov"
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Former U.S. President Carter whirled into Cairo today with his Middle East roadshow, calling the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza “abominable” while adding that there are “officials in Israel quite willing to meet with Hamas” and that may happen “in the near future.”
 His white eyebrows bright in the spotlight, Carter spoke to students and faculty at the American University here after talks with President Hosni Mubarak and a separate three-hour meeting with Hamas officials. The Bush administration and Israel have set rules not to talk to the militant Palestinian group but, Carter said, “I consider myself immune” from such restrictions.
He added that he wasn’t acting as a negotiator or mediator, but hoped that he “might set an example to be emulated” by others. The former president’s meetings with Hamas officials in recent days have outraged Israelis, but Carter was undeterred, even suggesting that his recent book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," was aptly named because apartheid “is the exact description of what’s happening in Palestine now.”
He played to a mostly appreciative audience, except for one American student from Amherst who suggested that by meeting with Hamas, Carter was giving legitimacy to terrorists. A murmur went through the crowd. Carter paused, and said: “My daughter was (once) arrested in Amherst.”
Laughter.
The former governor from Georgia said he told Hamas officials that “the worst thing” they’re doing to their cause is firing rockets into Israel, which he called "abominable and an act of terrorism.” Before the college student could grin in agreement, Carter did the mathematics of bloodshed. He said that for every Israeli killed in the conflict, 30 to 40 Palestinians die because of Israel’s superior military and “pinpoint accuracy.”
He then slipped back into diplomatic mode: ‘I’m not blaming one (side) or the other. . .Any side that kills innocent people is guilty of terrorism.”
It was almost 30 years ago that Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made peace at Camp David. In the current crisis, the former president took a moment to remember those times. He drew applause when, with a jab at the Bush administration, he mentioned that he didn’t wait until his final days in office to try to find a way to peace.
Carter said he had “an almost brotherly love for Anwar Sadat.” But Sadat and Begin didn’t get along. Carter recalled that until the last minute it was uncertain whether there would be a deal. He remembered autographing photographs for Begin’s grandchildren. He delivered them to the prime minister cabin's at Camp David. Begin flicked through the photos and read the names of the children out loud. Carter said Begin had tears in his eyes.
Begin turned to Carter and said: “Let’s try again” to make peace.
—Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
Photo: Jimmy Carter with his wife, Rosalynn. Credit: Associated Press.
Usually, the tone of the reporters' voice is enough. Radio phrases such as "fierce combat," "heavy exchange of fire" or "grave incident" are harbingers of trouble. Long-trained in reading between the lines of journalistic nuances, Israeli ears quickly note the omission of the "no casualties among our forces" and know this can only mean one thing: A soldier has died.
American soldiers in Iraq fight and die thousands of miles from home, but Israel's front lines are on its doorstep. And for all its fragmentation, Israel remains a small country with small-town-like family and social ties. Most get their daytime news from one of two radio stations, and bad news travels fast in a country where nearly everyone knows someone in the army.
So, military fatalities are not formally announced until the immediate family has been informed. Information is withheld temporarily, not for "Good Morning Vietnam" kind of reasons, but to spare families from learning this from the media. "The family has been notified" is the familiar media phrase that spells reassurance for many; but the final public relief, or grief, comes with the publication of the name.
Wednesday was one such day. The 7:00 radio reports raised suspicion, by 10:00 there was little room for doubt. At 11:51 it was cleared for publication that three soldiers had been killed in Gaza. Then came the news flashes with the first name at 13:31, the second at 16:34 and the third at 17:39. An Israeli-born demanding a combat assignment-or-bust, a Bedouin tracker and an ideological new immigrant; "the story of Israel at 60," said Minister Yitzhak Herzog. This morning, Hadassah Uvdati spoke on Army Radio of her son Matan, among yesterday's dead. 24 hours, full circle.
Prominent Israeli novelist David Grossman's new book, "Isha Borahat Mibesora," (Woman flees tidings), is the story of a mother who has a bad premonition about her soldier son and embarks on a journey throughout the country rather than being tormented by the anguish of awaiting the bad news at home. Grossman had a wish that the book he was writing would protect his sons during their army service. It didn't. His son Uri was killed in 2006 on the last day of the second Lebanon war.
—Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
Amid dire warnings of impending attacks, up to 50,000 Israeli tourists are expected to flood into the Sinai Peninsula for Passover vacation, which technically starts Sunday but realistically began about two days ago for many Israelis.
Sinai, which was occupied by Israel from 1967 to 1982, remains close to the hearts of many Israelis, who still frequent the many tranquil huts-on-the-beach campsites and scuba diving hot spots along the western Sinai coast. Depending on how a customer looks, shop owners in Sinai resort towns like Dahab will occasionally bust out some Hebrew, especially during peak Israeli vacation times like this.
The Israeli fondness for Sinai has withstood not only generally hostile feelings toward them on the part of many Egyptians but a series of terrorist attacks in Sinai towns like Sharm El Sheikh and Taba. Even when all the American and European tourists were scared away from Egypt for months at a time, a certain percentage of the Israelis kept on coming.
Which is why the current crop of Sinai attack warnings probably won't derail many Israelis' Sinai vacation plans. Egyptian officials say they are searching for several carloads of armed militants seeking to attack tourists, and Israel issued a travel advisory warning of an "imminent" attack threat on Sinai tourists. Knowing that many people simply won't heed the warnings, some Israeli politicians have even suggested simply sealing the Taba border crossing into Egypt.
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: Sinai's many pristine beach continue to draw Israelis even when their government is warning them to stay away. Credit: Public domain
A week before Israelis and Jews will mark Holocaust Remembrance Day early May, Armenians throughout the world will be commemorating their own tragedy.
Armenians say 1.5 million people, one third of the ethnic nation, were massacred by the Turks in 1915-1916. Turkey maintains that between 250,000 and 500,000 Armenians were killed during the minority's struggle for independence, and a similar number of Turks. The Armenians are relentless in their push for recognition of the killings as genocide, while an uncomfortable Turkey counters these efforts with international pressure.
In this bitter dispute, Israel finds itself in both a moral and diplomatic hard spot.
Read on »
Former President Jimmy Carter visited the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Monday and decried the rockets launched regularly by militants in the nearby Gaza Strip as "a despicable crime."
Carter, who penned the 2006 book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," has received a decidedly mixed response in Israel. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was too busy to meet with the Nobel Peace Prize winner and one Sderot resident reportedly yelled at Carter, "Mr. President, we are not apartheid here!"
But the day's events were somewhat overshadowed by reports that Israeli security had refused to coordinate with Carter's Secret Service detail.
The issue quickly developed into dueling denials, with nameless Israeli officials claiming no request for security cooperation was made and nameless U.S. officials saying the request was made but ignored.
Meanwhile, the stateside reaction continues to build to Carter's Middle East tour -- particularly his plans to meet with leaders of the militant group Hamas in Damascus later this week.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said he opposes meeting with Hamas officials, but said it wasn't his place to criticize Carter. Republican presidential candidate John McCain issued a statement calling the idea "a grave and dangerous mistake."
— Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: U.S. President Jimmy Carter, right, listens to police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, center, as he looks at homemade rockets that were fired at Israel at the police station in the southern Israeli city of Sderot today. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter deplored Palestinian militants' attacks on Israel as a "despicable crime" as he toured a rocket-battered town on Monday. Credit: Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
The Jimmy Carter Middle East Goodwill Tour continues to generate pretty much the opposite of goodwill among supporters of Israel.
Carter arrived in Israel today for several days of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Carter acknowledged that he plans to meet with senior leaders of the Palestinian militant group Hamas this week in Syria.
That prospect has the blog-o-sphere at a full-boil, with perspectives running from supportive to outraged to surrealist.
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Barbed wire, cement and negotiations may not be enough to stop a flood of Palestinians if Hamas decides to again breach its Gaza border with Egypt. The Egyptian government is reportedly sending troop reinforcements to the northern Sinai to prevent a possible replay of January’s chaos when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crossed into Egypt.
Tension around the border intensified recently when Khalil Al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader, said: “I expect that what will happen next will be greater than what happened before, not only against the Egyptian border but against all the crossings.”
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said it was "astonished" by such comments.
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For a man generally regarded as one of the nicest people ever to hold the office, former President Carter has developed a talent for getting people angry. Carter became persona non grata among supporters of Israel when his “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” was published in 2006.
 Carter arrives in Israel Sunday as part of a controversial Middle East diplomacy tour. After several days of meetings here with Palestinian and Israeli politicians, he moves on to Damascus, Syria, amid growing speculation that he will break a major U.S. and Israeli taboo by meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.
The Carter Center hasn't confirmed the meeting, but a Hamas official told the Associated Press that Carter's representatives had requested the appointment.
Either way, the response has been swift and harsh.
Read on »
For the record: The Obama campaign said the Hebrew-language blog is a private project and is not an official campaign blog. The Obama advisor quoted in the item never contributed to the blog and did not provide the quote attributed to him, it said. The campaign only sent the blogger copies of the candidate's speeches and position papers. The Obama advisor's last name is spelled Lynn, not Lin.
The perception that Barack Obama might be friendlier to the Palestinian cause than his rival presidential contenders probably won’t win him too much support in Israel.
Regular assessments in the Israeli press of each candidate's support for Israel consistently show Obama trailing John McCain and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are regarded as basically tied.
Perhaps mindful of that dynamic, Obama’s camp has begun a push for Jewish and pro-Israeli votes, including the unveiling of a campaign blog in Hebrew.
"It is very important to the candidate, Barack Obama, to form a relationship with the Israeli public and give it his messages without intermediaries in order to show his great support for the State of Israel, said Obama’s adviser for Middle Eastern affairs, Eric Lin, in an introductory posting.
A commentary published in the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said Obama's efforts prove that “now more than ever, the battle for the United States presidency passes through the State of Israel.”
—Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem
Photo: Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, addresses a rally at South Bend Washington High School Wednesday April 9, 2008 in South Bend, Ind. Credit: Joe Raymond / Associated Press
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