InDepth

It was even before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by Yigal Amir that the Israeli Left, led by the Haaretz newspaper, chanted in unison what has become one of its fundamental political axioms: political violence is a congenital inclination of the Israeli Right and is committed exclusively by right-wingers.

Editor's Note: Monday, April 19 (5 Iyar), is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. To mark the occasion, we've excerpted portions of an address by then-Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban to the UN General Assembly's Special Political Committee on November 17, 1958.

The New York Post called him "the nation's foremost journalistic expert on terrorism." Richard Clarke, former White House counterterrorism chief, called him the "Paul Revere of terrorism." For 16 years, Steven Emerson has been conducting research, reporting, writing, speaking, and testifying before Congress on the threat of radical Islam.

For American taxpayers, the devil is in the details of the new health care law. But for the Jewish people and the State of Israel the devil is in the comparison between Barack Obama's steamrollering of health care legislation and his developing Middle East policy.

Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt was certainly not thinking about Israel's national security when he wrote these words in A Dangerous Game, but his argument still fits perfectly in understanding the Jewish State's prospects for survival. Indeed, and not without considerable irony, unless Israel soon begins to fashion its essential strategic doctrine with a view to including various absurdities, it will never be able to find real safety in the Middle East. There, in what is arguably one of the world's very worst "neighborhoods," unreason often reins triumphant, and chaos is never far away.

Instead of explaining its own position, Israel explains the position of its enemies. When is the last time you heard an official Israeli representative simply state that this is our land - without ifs, ands, and buts? Simply put, "The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish nation, period." Has the prime minister made such a statement? Any minister? Perhaps an ambassador?

It was evident, in the years preceding World War II, that humanity had no desire to throw a saving rope to the drowning Jewish people.

As the son of former Lehi leader Israel Eldad, Knesset Member Dr. Aryeh Eldad (National Union) is no newcomer to Israel's political wars.

While it's not too early for Republicans to start feeling optimistic, they need to realize this kind of resurgent mood isn't unlike the ebullience of markets bouncing off a bottom. As market pundits like to say, even a dead cat will bounce when it's tossed from a great height. After having fallen so low in public esteem during the last days of the Bush administration, it only makes sense Republicans' spirits would surge at an impending reversal of fortune.

Israel's prime minister, Benamin Netanyahu, wants peace and is interested in negotiations with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu government enjoys popular support because a large majority of Israelis agree with this view. All polls show Israelis deeply desire peace and this influences their voting behavior.

Noam Chomsky, who spoke at Boston University's Jacob Sleeper Auditorium on March 2 as part of the noxious Israel Apartheid Week and a guest of Students for Justice in Palestine, clearly lives in an academic netherworld of political fantasies, conspiracies, and intellectually imbecilic distortions of history and fact. As a result, the MIT professor emeritus of linguistics has become a widely known, eagerly followed superstar of the Israel-hating, America-hating Left.

Anyone who has been to Israel is familiar with the countless religious, spiritual, and aesthetic attributes the land holds. The country is rich in Jewish tradition and historical significance abounds. There are awe-inspiring sights that leave indelible marks in our minds and souls. Israel is a land that has a special place in all of our hearts.

Growing up, I was taught the value of self-reliance. Dire straits may force a person to ask for financial assistance from his family, friends or community, but ordinarily, a self-respecting individual should not accept charity. "Better that one's Shabbos meals resemble one's weekday meals than to rely on others for help," the Talmud quotes Rabbi Akiva as saying (Shabbos 118a).

The list of PA violations of Oslo goes on and on. There is the incontestable failure to prevent incitement (codified at Annex 1, Art. II, 35); harassment of suspected former collaborators (codified at Art. XVI); failure to provide information on Israeli MIAs (codified at Art. XXVIII of the Interim Agreement and at Art. XIX of the Gaza-Jericho Agreement); the failure to change the PLO Covenant (codified at Art. XXXII), a failure that means that the PA (let alone Hamas) has still not renounced its intent to annihilate the Jewish State; the abuse of human rights and the rule of law (codified at Art. XIX); the failure to control PApolice activity in eastern Jerusalem (codified at Annex I of both agreements - the Gaza-Jericho Accord and the Interim Agreement - which carefully delineate the areas in which the Palestinian security forces may operate).

In 1947-1948 I lived in Boro Park where, against parental and rabbinic advice, I joined a Zionist group. By 1950 I was packing machine-gun parts for Israel in a home not far from the Young Israel. But what I did as a child does not compare to what my friend and colleague David Gutmann did for love of Zion at that very time on the dangerous open seas.

I consider the Obama administration's recent actions against the Israeli government to be outrageous and a breach of trust.

They're usually especially friendly and charming. They often do plenty of public acts of chesed. This is done in order to look good and gain respectability and positions of authority - and unquestioned access to potential victims. And the fact is, they can do really nice things because they may actually be kind and intelligent people in some ways. But not in other ways.

Let's face it: it's unusual and even somewhat bizarre nowadays to encounter a family with more than two children. It is almost as if a war is launched against the unborn after a "red line" of two or three children has been reached.

Soap opera-like debacles have stunned, stupefied, and dismayed our community. We have witnessed a prime minister, governors, and men of stature plummet to the depths of scandal and ignominy. Especially disconcerting and the epitome of paradox is when revered men, charged to exemplify God's Word, purportedly disgrace His Word instead. Why do great men fall?

Very soon we will sit around the Seder table and tell the story of the Exodus. We have arrived at Z'man Cheiruseinu, the Season of our Freedom. The Children of Israel are about to leave Mitzraim. What a story. But it's not a story. It's reality.

Late last year in Oslo, a team of three American, British and Israeli scientists received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work that was done at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. This isn't a case of geographic happenstance, but rather a symbol of the remarkable success we've seen from the bilateral scientific collaboration programs that exist between the United States and Israel.

The Obama administration reaches out to some of the world's worst regimes in the name of its engagement policy.

Last summer, Alan Dershowitz wrote "Has Obama Turned on Israel?" in The Wall Street Journal, a defense of Barack Obama's policy toward Israel and, by extension, the numerous Jewish Democrats who had supported the president's election and stuck by him despite a rocky first few months in office.

Last month, Israel lost a very close friend in Alexander Haig. During his confirmation hearings in January 1981for the position of secretary of state, Haig reiterated his commitment to the existing U.S. policy of not dealing with the PLO or other Palestinians opposed to Israel's existence.

Several years ago the Monitor recommended a bunch of books on U.S. presidents and the Middle East. The following is an updated and expanded listing for anyone interested in filling some hours during the upcoming Pesach holiday that otherwise would be spent sitting in a hotel lobby or zoning out on the couch at home.

In the 2554 years between 587 B.C.E. and 1967 C.E., Jerusalem was conquered more than twenty times, and, as part of many empires, was ruled from different and distant capital cities. Only for the Jews (for more than 650 years), for the Crusaders (for 188 years), and for the State of Israel (since 1949) has Jerusalem served as a capital city.

Two weeks ago, President Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

Two weeks ago, President Obama opened a diplomatic war on Israel. The proximate cause of his offensive was the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Board's decision to approve the future construction of 1,600 housing units in northern Jerusalem.

Have you read the blog Jewminicana? If you have, you are already familiar with Aliza Hausman, a recently converted Dominican-American blogger. She blogs about her childhood, upbringing, conversion, and a wide range of other topics. She and her husband, a semichah student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, also speak about life as a religious interracial couple.

The latest round in the broader canvas of debates about the approach of Modern Orthodoxy to the role of women in communal life has focused on the issue of learned Orthodox women receiving some form of rabbinic ordination and serving as rabbis or clergy.