InDepth

If the UN should decide to recognize a "State of Palestine" in the biblical homeland of the Jewish people it would endorse a bizarre irony. Why?

The last couple of columns, both of which focused on Jewish voting habits in presidential elections, inspired some spirited responses from readers.

WASHINGTON - Call Joe Lieberman the unlikely evangelist. The Independent senator from Connecticut - and the best-known Orthodox Jew in American politics - is probably more cognizant than most of his Jewish congressional colleagues about rabbinical interdictions against encouraging non-Jews to mimic Jewish ritual.

Editor's Note: On July 30, the firm of Lewin & Lewin, LLP, filed in the Supreme Court its brief in Zivotofsky v. Clinton, No. 10-699, on which the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in early November. The constitutional issue in the case is whether Congress had the authority to enact a law in 2002 that directs the Secretary of State to permit U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to record their place of birth in their passports as "Israel." Because the State Department has consistently refused to recognize any part of Jerusalem as being in Israel, the government has refused to implement the 2002 law, claiming it violates the President's constitutional authority to "recognize foreign sovereigns." This is the Introduction to the Zivotofsky brief written by Nathan Lewin, followed by a Summary of Argument.

The traumatic shock experienced in Norway is in many ways similar to the enormous, numbing sense of pain the residents of Jerusalem felt in the days and weeks leading up to the churban of our Second Temple.

Israel's persisting legal obligation to abrogate the Oslo Accords, as we have seen, stemmed from certain peremptory expectations of international law. Israel, however, also has substantial rights of abrogation here that bind its behavior apart from any such expectations. These particular rights derive from the basic doctrine of Rebus sic stantibus.

Who caused Israel's housing shortage? The Left. That sounds demagogic, but here's the reason why:

An Associated Press report on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the 1948 Armistice lines understandably created quite a stir. Mr. Netanyahu's public confrontation with President Obama over this very issue remains vivid in everyone's memory, as does the enthusiastic and virtually unanimous bipartisan support for Mr. Netanyahu's position expressed by Congress.

The Jewish Press has regularly noted the efforts of the politically correct crowd to place concerns about Muslim fundamentalism beyond the reach of normal discourse. Thus we had something to say about New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's claim that any questioning of the efforts to build a mosque at ground zero was ipso facto bigoted and violated the sponsors' right to free speech.

It's a well-known cliche that Jerusalem is "holy to the three main religions" - and in truth, it is not surprising. After all, the city was first holy to the Jews - and so it was inevitable that the rest of the world would ultimately jump on the bandwagon.

The two despicable terror attacks in Oslo and on the island of Utoya carried out by Anders Breivik propelled Norway onto center stage. Norway is a country that normally draws little attention - even Swedes and Danes who can read Norwegian are generally uninterested in what happens there. The only annual event that regularly generates publicity for Norway is the awarding of the Noble Peace prize.

There are so many events about which one ought to write. So much is happening on a daily and even an hourly basis. Slaughter in Norway, unrelenting turmoil in the Middle East, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, revolutions and the threat of a nuclear apocalypse emanating from the maniacal regime in Iran.

The Gaza flotilla and the flytilla may have been failures, but they were also missed opportunities for Israel. It's no secret that a portion of Israel's tourist trade comes from "protest tourism" - philosophy students and poetry Ph.D.s who want a chance to visit the Holy Land, throw some rocks at a soldier and have their pictures taken with AK-47-wielding terrorists. And it's time the Israeli tourist industry took their business seriously.

As reported last week in the Jerusalem Post, "Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel and the U.S. were working on a document saying the parameters for returning to negotiations with the Palestinians would be based on the speech U.S. President Barack Obama gave at AIPAC in May, and spelling out in greater detail what Obama meant by a return to the 1967 lines, with mutual agreed swaps."

Recently I had the opportunity to hear about those effects firsthand from a group of Jewish women who were willing to share their stories.

Five thousand evangelical Christian supporters of Israel from throughout the U.S. and Canada filled the halls of the Washington, D.C. Convention Center July 18-20 for the sixth annual Washington Summit of Christians United for Israel.

The explicit application of codified restrictions of the laws of war to noninternational-armed conflicts dates back only as far as the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. Recalling, however, that more than treaties and conventions comprise the laws of war, it is also clear that the obligations of jus in bello (justice in war) comprise part of "the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations," and bind all categories of belligerents. Indeed, the Hague Convention IV of 1907 declares, in broad terms, that in the absence of a precisely published set of guidelines in humanitarian international law concerning "unforeseen cases," the preconventional sources of international law govern all belligerency.

The decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in the matter of Mustafa Dirani (sometimes spelled Durani) has once again shown the world that Israel's judicial system is a clear and present danger to the country.

Two weeks ago, in a column on Jewish voting patterns, the Monitor pointed to the 1984 electionas evidence "that a Republican presidential candidate, whether incumbent or challenger and no matter how strong his record on Israel, will always lose among Jewish voters when the alternative is a liberal Democrat without any pronounced or well-known hostility to Israel."

A recent article in The Jewish Week brought to light something that has been afflicting the Orthodox community for some time now: teenage texting on Shabbos. The practice is becoming increasingly prevalent, especially but in no way exclusively, among Modern Orthodox teens.

A surefire way to gauge the generation in which a person was raised is to have him or her fill in the following sentence: Where were you when ?" Baby Boomers would ask, "When President Kennedy was shot?" Thirtysomethings would respond, "When the space shuttle exploded?" Today's teenagers would reply, "On 9/11?"

We are now in the Three Weeks, a time of national mourning for the Jewish people. Of the numerous tragedies that occurred throughout history during this period, the central one we grieve is the destruction of both Temples; they were destroyed on Tisha B'Av, the culmination of the Three Weeks.

It's been a bumpy road for the Palestinians lately. Recent staged spectacles that were supposed to whip up sympathy for them and put Israel in a bad light again - the Nakba Day (May 15) and Naksa Day (June 4) marches on Israel's borders, the flotilla, the flytilla - have been disappointments at best, if not outright flops. And the Palestinians' long-hyped independent-statehood bid at the UN in September is meeting growing opposition from the West.

In March 1941 - nine months before the attack on Pearl Harbor impelled America to enter the Second World War - one colorful American hero already had joined the battle: Captain America.

The Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO have always been in violation of international law. Israel, therefore, has always been obligated to abrogate these non-treaty agreements. A comparable argument could be made regarding PLO/PA obligations, but this would make little jurisprudential sense in light of that non-state party's antecedent incapacity to enter into any equal legal arrangement with Israel.

When the recent spontaneous protests against the arrests of Rabbis Dov Lior and Yaakov Yosef gave way to official spin, the provocative initiators from the Attorney General's office likely breathed a sigh of relief. Once again, the "enemy" had painted himself into a patently irrelevant corner, and the partisan justice system - growing public disgust with it notwithstanding - remained the only show in town.

Many unanswered questions remain surrounding the fire that broke out in the Jerusalem Forest on Sunday, burning 40 acres and sending four people to the hospital.

Not many Jews lived in Baltimore during the eighteenth century; by 1796 the entire Jewish population of the city consisted of about 15 families. As late as 1825, Solomon Etting, one of the first Jewish residents of Baltimore, estimated the Jewish population of Baltimore to be about 150.

Are we created in the image of God or are we grasshoppers?

As Israel's leadership digs in its heels in the face of escalating Palestinian demands for statehood, the Jewish state faces a new, rapidly changing dynamic. The Palestinian Authority's intent to seek United Nations recognition of a new Arab state based on pre-1967 borders, coupled with reconciliation between the PA and Hamas, further complicates the issue.