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January 18, 2007

Heroes and Villains

Leave a Comment / Torah /

Brian Wilson penned the Beach Boys song “Heroes and Villains” during a turbulent, paranoia-filled time in his life, according to his biographers. Wilson had people
whom he trusted in the business, and others whom he felt were out to get him.

We all instinctively identify and label the heroes and villains in our lives, and Judaism supports the need for iconic heroes.

In Hollywood’s early days, the traditional villain was the hunched-over, mustachioed scofflaw sporting a black cape, while the hero was the pumped-up, 6-foot-3 blond hunk with gleaming-white teeth. And while today’s Hollywood has been mixing things by portraying schlubs as heroes (think “Shrek”), the Talmud states that a Torah scholar must be impeccably dressed. Furthermore, God will only allow prophecy to rest on someone who is “wise, strong, wealthy and tall.” In order for God to be well represented to his people, the messenger has to look like a mensch.

Moses didn’t appreciate this idea. When God first dispatched him to speak to the Jewish people, Moses tried to get out of it. He felt that no mortal could aptly represent God, and so God should represent Himself.

God disagreed. He taught Moses that the gap between man and God was too great at the outset of Jewish history. The people at the time were unsophisticated slaves who instead needed a heroic Moses as their icon of salvation.

God won the argument.

In last week’s portion, when Moses first spoke to the Jews about how God had sent him (the good guy) to defeat Pharaoh (the bad guy), they were very receptive and they believed him. But in Parshat Vaera, after Moses again complains about having to be the messenger, God teaches him a lesson.

“Therefore,” God says, “say to the Jewish people, ‘I am Y-H-V-H'” (Exodus 6:6).

God was saying: Moses, this time tell the Jews that the omnipotent and unknowable God will be taking them out of Egypt, and that it’s no longer about you, the hero, defeating Pharaoh, the villain.
And the second time out the Jews did not accept Moses’ words. “They did not listen to Moses from shortness of breath” (Exodus 6:9). They lacked the depth to appreciate a direct and ethereal encounter with God, sans the very tangible heroes and villains.

Therefore, it’s a bit surprising when the Talmud states that in the future, the Jewish Messiah will be a “poor man, riding on a donkey,” just as he is described in the book of Zachariah (9:9).
If it was so important during the Exodus that there be iconic heroes and villains, why is it now OK for the Messiah to look like such a nebbish?

Apparently, the Talmud feels that by the time the Messiah is ready to appear, the world will no longer be suckered in by external appearances. We will have evolved to a more mature appreciation of greatness, and our saviors will not have to look like Errol Flynn.

The Talmud also records a dialogue between the sage Shmuel and a powerful Persian ruler. The Persian asked Shmuel why the Jewish Messiah would be riding on a donkey.

“Allow me to provide him with a well-groomed Persian horse!” he mocked.

Shmuel responded, “Do you have a horse of a hundred colors?”

Shmuel says this because according to the Persian ruler’s superficial values, there is no horse in the world that would befit our leading man, the Messiah. So Shmuel’s doesn’t need the ruler’s horse or any other horse because when the Messiah comes we’ll be able to recognize him for what he is even without the clichéd symbols of heroism.

As human beings, we need icons to help us relate to God and the forces of good and evil. This, according to Moses Nachmanides, was why the Jews made the golden calf. Once they thought that their leader Moses was dead, they immediately had a need for a new intermediary icon to lead them through the desert.

Without black-and-white icons, life sometimes becomes too confusing and we lose our way. But, ultimately, we are meant to rise above the external images. We are to eventually become sophisticated enough to be able to recognize goodness and salvation even from the not-so-obvious sources.

So don’t be surprised when you meet the Messiah and discover “a poor man, riding on a donkey.” Or, maybe he’ll be short, bald and beardless, like Natan Sharansky. Who knows? I just hope I’m wise enough to recognize him when the time comes.


Daniel Korobkin is rabbi of Kehillat Yavneh and director of community and synagogue services for the West Coast Orthodox Union.

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Federation fires chief fundraiser Craig Prizant

Leave a Comment / Community /

Less than a month before Super Sunday, the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ biggest annual money-raising event, Craig Prizant, chief fundraiser for the organization since 2004, was relieved of his job. Sources who asked not to be named said that on Friday, Jan. 12, Prizant, looking shaken, told his staff that he was surprised by the turn of events.

Prizant had served as executive vice president of financial resource development at the Federation and had worked closely with major donors. Prior to that, he worked for nearly five years as the Federation’s senior vice president for marketing and communications. Prizant could not be reached for comment.
In an internal e-mail announcement to staff sent Friday, Federation President John Fishel wrote, “We want to thank Craig for the work that he has done during his time with the Federation.”

Fishel gave no reason for Prizant’s sudden departure or any details about the terms of severance. Fishel will assume Prizant’s duties in the interim.
“As CEO, I will be working with the campaign management team to oversee the campaign during this transitional period,” Fishel told the staff in the e-mail.
An official statement on Prizant’s departure was released to the press by the Federation on Wednesday, Jan. 17.

“The Federation will continue its development of a new annual fundraising business plan, and increase its focus on building the Federation’s Endowment Fund,” Michael Koss, chairman of the Federation board, said in the release.
Fishel and Koss declined to comment for this article.

The announcement comes as the Federation is ramping up its fundraising efforts for several major events that are always held during the first few months of the year. The dates are arranged to avoid competition with beneficiary agencies, most of which schedule their events later in the year.

On Jan. 17, for instance, the Federation held the Chai/Emerald/Zavah Luncheon, the Women’s Campaign’s largest fundraiser. On Feb. 11, the Federation will hold its annual Super Sunday mega-fundraiser, which last year raised $4.4 million, or about 9 percent of the Federation’s total 2006 annual campaign.

The timing of Prizant’s sudden exit could affect relations with donors as well as morale among lay leaders and staff who worked closely with him, some insiders speculated Wednesday.

In other news, longtime Federation executive Jack Klein will step down on June 30 as chief operating officer and executive vice president of finance and administration. Ken Krug, treasurer of the Rand Corp., will replace Klein as COO. Krug, a longtime Federation volunteer, officially joins the organization May 1.

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The fab fundraising fifth-grader

Leave a Comment / Kids & Teens, Philanthropy, Up Front /

Many people took it upon themselves to raise vast sums of money for Israel during the conflict with Lebanon this summer, but how many were still in elementary school?

Ten-year-old Shira Bouskila was. The Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy fifth-grader raised $24,000 for the children of Shlomi, a northern border town of about 5,000 people hit by Katyushas from Lebanon.

Bouskila first learned about Shlomi when she visited the town during a summer 2005 trip with her father, Rabbi Daniel Bouskila of Westwood’s Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel. That same year she and her friends decorated spoons with Israeli flags and sold them to buy Chanukah presents for Shlomi’s children.

“When the war broke out, we were watching Israeli television and Katyushas landed on Shlomi. Shira was quite frightened because she knows the kids, and she wanted to go there and be with them,” Rabbi Bouskila said.

“It’s not the right time,” he told her.

“They were really going through hard times — they were in bomb shelters all summer, and I felt really bad for them,” Shira said.

So Shira decided to raise money for the town instead.

She and her friends made and sold High Holiday cards and solicited donations from her friends, school and synagogue. (The temple held two separate campaigns, which raised about $200,000 each, for Israeli towns in the north and south.) Donations to Shira’s campaign exceeded expectations — instead of sending in $18 dollars, some people sent in $180.

Rather than sending the money directly to Shlomi, Shira wanted to do something special for the kids.

“I really thought about ‘what would I want to do?’ I’m just a kid like any other kid,” Shira said.
She decided to take them to “Festigal,” the December Israeli rock festival for children that features a roundup of Israeli pop stars. The show is the largest stage production in the country, featuring 80 concerts in nine different cities.

In December, Shira went with her father to Israel to throw a party for the Shlomi children, and sponsored 350 third- to fifth-graders for a day at the festival in Haifa. The remainder of the funds will go to sponsoring more “days of fun” for the kids on Tu B’Shevat, Purim and Yom Ha’Atzmaut.

“I’m extremely proud to see a 10-year-old girl have such a strong love for Israel and particularly have a connection to kids and care about their well-being,” said Rabbi Bouskila, who is planning a February trip to Israel with some members of his synagogue.

Shira is happy she could bring joy to the kids of Shlomi, and she said she’s learned a lot about her own life in the process.

“I learned I’m so lucky to have a community that helps me have everything I have,” she said. “I have so much, and the kids that I did this for really aren’t as lucky as I am. I feel more appreciative of everything more now.”

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Fated to Meddle

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman, Worldwide /

So like every other red-blooded, terrorist-hating American I know, I spent some of this weekend watching the premiere of the new season of “24.”

It’s a four-hour thrill ride — three hours and change with TiVo — and whenever the hero, Jack Bauer, appears, my eyes make like Velcro to the screen, and a geopolitical satori blossoms within me. I allow myself to feel, for those precious moments, something I so rarely feel these days: No matter what, we are going to kick their butts.

Then I read Michael Oren’s new book.

At 604 pages, “Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present” (Norton, 2007) will take you a bit more than four hours. But it is worth it — in fact, it’s a critical read for anyone who wants to understand how America can face the challenges arising from that region of the world.

The book is the first comprehensive history of American involvement in the Middle East. Its title gives the central thesis away: Our involvement has largely revolved around the quest for financial, military and diplomatic power, the impact of religion and the pull of fiction and fantasy (did I mention “24”?).

In other words, if your take on our role in the Middle East is limited to just oil, or just freedom and democracy, or just imperialism — Oren’s meticulously researched and grippingly narrated book will school you.

Take the first major foreign crisis our founders faced. “Prior to the revolution,” writes Oren, “the only major threat to America’s vital Mediterranean trade came from the Middle East. Styling themselves as mujahadeen warriors in an Islamic holy war, Arabic speaking pirates preyed on Western vessels, impounding their cargoes and enslaving their crews.”

After the revolution, the inevitable confrontation with these North African Barbary pirates led directly to the raising of the U.S. Navy, to the creation of the Constitution — a document that could secure the national unity necessary to fund and fight a foreign war — and thus to America’s first war on foreign soil — that soil being in the Mideast.

The alternative to war was to pay a $1 million tribute to the pasha of Tripoli, whose representative warned Thomas Jefferson in London, “It was … written in the Koran that all Nations who should not have acknowledged their [the Muslims’] authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon whoever they could find … and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.”

Oren uncovers the kinds of patterns that historians live to expose and the rest of us live to repeat. But he also provides examples where America acted benevolently, out of expanded self-interest. Following the Civil War, American expertise and largesse helped build the foundations of a modern army and a civil society in Egypt.

To read Arab propaganda today, you’d think America’s only Mideast offspring was the State of Israel. But Oren provides a fascinating account of how, following World War II, President Harry S. Truman provided crucial support for the independence of Libya, Syria and Iran.

Granted, the latter measures were designed in part to thwart Soviet power and ensure American oil supplies, but as Oren points out, “….The United States emerged from World War II as … an advocate for [Middle East] development and a defender of its freedom.”

These political developments interacted over the years with America’s deep religiosity, which held the Middle East as sacred soil. Americans were Zionists before Zionists existed.

In 1819, Protestant missionaries sailed from Boston determined to restore Palestine to the Jews. In the 1840s, one of their leaders was a Hebrew scholar at New York University named George Bush, forebear to two presidents. Later waves of American missionaries created institutions, including modern universities, that reshaped the Middle East.

And through it all, Oren argues, fiction and fantasy, from “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights” to “State of Siege” have shaped our perceptions (He neglects to mention “24,” a correction due for the next edition). Nineteenth- century travelers to the region took only one book as their literal guidebook: the Bible. In search of Abraham and King David, they were inevitably disappointed.

After Sept. 11, CNN analysts turned to spy novelist Tom Clancy for insights into Arab terrorism, an indication, to Oren, of “the degree to which fantasy and fact remained blurred in America’s Middle East perceptions.” The disappointment persists.

Oren, a Yale-trained historian who lives in Jerusalem, ends his book with Operation Iraqi Freedom — another George Bush, another confluence of power, faith and fantasy.

“The debate over the essential nature of the Middle East and its relations with the United States,” he writes, “shows no signs of waning.”

True. And that’s what makes this particular book such a crucial textbook for the next generation of policymakers. I called Oren at his home and asked him what the lesson for these people would be.”Nuance,” Oren said. “I keep coming back to that word. I hope they come to see that American involvement is far more nuanced than they may believe or have been led to believe.”

“On balance,” he said, “the good America has done in the Middle East has outweighed the damage it might have caused. The picture is far more multidimensional.”

An American-born Israeli, Oren is not a man without opinions, but his book lays out “the background and context” by which Americans can make their fateful decisions. “I was very careful not to be prescriptive,” he said.

Still, in reading the book, the lessons leap out. One is that America’s fate is strangely tied to the fate of the Middle East. Like it or not, that has been our lot since the founding. Another is that most of what Oren points to as our successes in the Middle East have to do with economic and political building and development, not war and confrontation (Oh, now he tells us).

Oren points out that the Civil War general, George B. McClellan, who made a post-bellum semiofficial trip up the Nile, wrote that education and widening exposure to the West could gradually transform the region.

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D-A-T-E is just a four-letter word

Leave a Comment / California, Singles /

I’m not sure why this never made any of the 2006 year-end lists, but it seems that — at least for singles — the most confusing question of the year wasn’t “How do you
pronounce ‘al-Zarqawi?'” but the more mundane “How was your date?” To be specific, the confusing part would always be the word “date,” as in, “Was I even on one?”

Because in today’s modern world, a guy and a girl looking for love can make plans, rush home from work, wash extra carefully in certain areas, put on nice clothes, spend three hours in flirtatious conversation at the local sushi joint, say a warm good night and still come home wondering whether what they just experienced was a date or two people who wanted to be on a date but were instead simply “hanging out.”


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I’ve lost count of how many times in the past year I’ve innocently asked friends — male or female — “So, how was your date?” only to get the response, “Well, I’m not sure it was a date…” followed by some analytical drivel I can’t quote here because I wasn’t really listening to the nonsense that came between “And then he said … ” “So I said … ” “But then he acted like … ” “So I couldn’t tell if he thought….”

As a single mom whose social life in the first half of 2006 was as nonexistent as sleep, I couldn’t understand why everyone had suddenly become so squeamish about using the word “date.” Why wouldn’t anyone call a date a date anymore? Like other neutral words that became linguistic pariahs (“Well, I’m not sure I’d call myself a feminist”) had the word “date” acquired a negative connotation during the time I’d been parked in a rocking chair breast-feeding and reading back issues of Parenting magazine?

Then, as soon as I started wearing a bra and reading The New Yorker again, I asked a guy out and the semantic “date” problem became utterly clear. We met for dinner, shared some calamari and banter, and took a quick walk before ending up at my car. I thought it was fairly obvious that there was some platonic but not romantic chemistry between us, which I guess is also why I thought it was fairly obvious that when I hugged him goodbye, it was the same hug I give to all of my friends and even some random strangers.

Admittedly, he did say, “I’d like to take you out again,” which under other circumstances might suggest the words “on a date,” but this is a guy whose neighbor is one of The Beatles. I mean, with that kind of financial picture, I thought, maybe he takes everyone out.

Sort of like the way I hug everyone. In any event, I assumed he knew that although we’d indeed gone on a date, if we got together again, we would be “hanging out.”

Just in case, though — and believe me, I’m not proud of this — when we did make plans the following week, I felt the need to explain that while I was definitely interested in him, I wasn’t interested interested in him. In other words, we’d be setting a date but not going on a date date.

It was a rather unfortunate e-mail, one that still makes me blush with mild regret and severe mortification. Especially since it ultimately turned out that he had zero interest in me — “as a friend” or otherwise. Date schmate.

I realized, in retrospect, that there were good reasons for my never having asked a guy on a date before (or since).

Unconsciously, even before my friends started substituting the verboten words “going on a date” with “having a drink,” “meeting for brunch” or “doing a hike,” I must have known that regardless of whether you used that four-letter D-word, the concept alone could get you into all kinds of trouble. For instance, if I asked a guy out on an explicit date, and he wasn’t interested, he’d have to find a tactful way to reject the offer — and as a woman, I know what an oxymoron “tactful rejection” can be.

On the other hand, if I made a more casual offer, how would he know it was a date? Would he interpret “Want to come to this party on Thursday night?” as “with me” or “to meet other women”? Even worse, what if he knew it was a date and I realized midway through the evening that I just wanted to be friends (or never see him again)? How could I convey my lack of interest in dating him (other than not returning his calls, which he’d interpret as me “playing hard to get,” since I, after all, was the one who expressed interest in the first place)?

My friend Kevin (a friend friend, no dating) said that to avoid this kind of confusion, he goes on what he likes to call “stealth dates.” As he put it, “Most women don’t know I’m asking them out, and 70 percent of the time, they won’t know I’m on a date with them. But I’m having a lovely time.”

It’s an interesting strategy, but my wish for 2007 is that we singles return to the real thing. We may be looking ahead toward a brand new year, but I’m already nostalgic for a good old-fashioned romantic d-a-t-e. If only somebody would be bold enough to unambiguously ask me on one.

Lori Gottlieb is a commentator for NPR and her most recent book is “I Love You, Nice To Meet You” (St. Martin’s Press). Her Web site is www.lorigottlieb.com.

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Reading ‘Jewish’

Leave a Comment / California, David Suissa, Opinion, United States /

I heard recently that some people have complained that this column is too “Orthodox” — that there’s too much focus on the frum and kosher side of Judaism. Since thiscolumn is about an Orthodox neighborhood, that’s like complaining that a hockey writer spends too much time writing about hockey, but nevertheless it got me thinking about how Jews read about other Jews.

This was on my mind when I walked into Delice bakery the other day and saw a copy of Jewish Life magazine. Jewish Life is a monthly published by The Jewish Journal to appeal to religiously observant Jews. I’m not here to critique it or promote it, but it struck me that the magazine is like a microscopic view of the world that I write about every week.

If you think this column is too religious, wait until you see Jewish Life. If I snorkel into observant Judaism, then it goes deep-sea diving. If this column is “the hood,” then Jewish Life is the hood on steroids.

Take the latest issue. At first glance, it looks like another general-interest magazine with a self-help cover story: “Why Aren’t We Happier?” But open it up and you’ll see the kind of things that matter most to observant Jews.

On Page 4 of the first column (Ask Dr. T, a parenting advice column), a reader worries about the “chronic” problem of what her children should do with their Chanukah gelt. (Dr. Sara Teichman gives a six-paragraph answer to this “complex” problem).

In the next column, Marriage Matters, a “lovely single girl in her 20s” laments her single status:”The wait is killing me. It feels never ending and hopeless. Isn’t there something I can do? I mean, I know I have to daven hard, network with people and hope for the best, but isn’t there any more?”

Below the article is a little section on a new book titled, “Shidduch Secrets,” which includes practical advice on using one’s time productively while waiting for one’s beshert.

On the next page is a column called Shirmas Halashon with the headline, “Beware: Words Can Hurt” and this announcement right below: “With this column, Jewish Life begins our regular column on Hilchos Lashon Hara.” Below the announcement are these untranslated words: “Lilui Nichmas Masha Ruchama bas Shmuel.” The author of the column — across from an ad for Frumster.com that has a picture of a happy-looking newlywed couple (“Idith and Eli, match No. 93”) — is the dean of Valley Torah High School.

As you continue flipping through Jewish Life, you see these kinds of headlines: “What Exactly Is Mussar?” (Hint: it’s a system of ethics, not a new kosher hair gel), “The Advent of Chasidism” under the column History L.A. and in the society gossip column is the headline “A Tzadik Pays a Visit,” about Rav Yitzchak Grossman’s visit to Los Angeles.

In the food section, there’s a “Grateful Letter From a Duncan Hines Fan,” thanking my former employer (Procter and Gamble) for bringing back Duncan Hines pareve cake mixes (“They are a great resource for us here in the Orthodox Jewish community”), and a recipe called “Nat’s Brownies/My Frosting.”

In the Kashrus Concerns column, you’ll find a series of announcements from the Kosher Information Bureau, such as: “Salad Mate Salad Dressing is no longer under CRC certification,” “Flora Foods Italian Breadcrumbs bears an unauthorized OU,” and “Sandy Candy Co. now produces cotton candy sugars certified by the Star-K.”

The last section, Kosher Road Trip, is on travel, and here you’ll see a column by a homemaker and mom named Cinnamon Shenker on winter trips, with the headline: “Grab Your Sled and Head for the Hills.” She even quotes Tehillim to help make her point that it’s “a glorious thing that we can experience snow and ice first hand, rather than just look at pictures.”

So you can see I’m not kidding when I tell you that Jewish Life is the Jacques Cousteau of Orthodox Jewish reporting in Los Angeles. But there’s another side to this story.

If you read Jewish Life without any preconceptions about Orthodox Judaism — out of simple curiosity, for example, or even a desire to learn something helpful and interesting — it will probably surprise you.

For example, once you get past the annoying absence of translation in the beginning of “Beware: Words can Hurt,” you can’t help but be moved by the life-changing possibilities of the message, whether you are ultra-Orthodox, Reform or even a Zen Buddhist.

The same can be said for several articles in Jewish Life, like the idea of “living in the moment without acting on impulse” in the cover story on happiness, or the universal system of ethics developed by our very Orthodox sages, called Mussar.

Even the reader’s question on the “chronic” problem of what kids should do with Chanukah gelt — which I poked fun at — actually led to an incisive take on the complicated relationship between people and money.

That’s why I’m ambivalent about this whole notion of having different publications for different Jews. There is so much we can learn from each other, why can’t we all read the same paper?

The marketing side of me — the one that learned at places like Procter and Gamble the importance of “market niches” — understands why having different publications makes good business sense. People like to read about themselves.

But the “Jewish unity” part of me would love to see Jews of all denominations show more curiosity towards one another, whether it’s nonobservant Jews reading about Orthodox ideas, or Orthodox Jews reading things that have nothing to do with Orthodoxy, but that are still very much part of the Jewish experience. It’s like the interest you would show toward a beloved family member who has a completely different lifestyle from your own.

And of course, the self-absorbed part of me would love to see every Jew read this column, even if it’s a little too, you know, Orthodox.

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is the founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

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Palestinian remarks generate cheer and gloom

Leave a Comment / Israel, Judea Pearl, Opinion, Worldwide /

Cheerful news reached us last week from Damascus. Hamas’ political chief, Khaled Meshal, told Reuters in an interview on Jan. 10 that Israel is a “matter of fact,” and that Hamas
might consider recognizing Israel once a Palestinian state is established.

Don’t misjudge me. I am not particularly thrilled with the content of Meshal’s statement, especially after learning that one hour later a Hamas spokesman denied any change in Hamas’ refusal to ever recognize Israel. What I do find refreshing, though, is that Reuters asked the question, dozens of linguists and analysts were busy interpreting the answer and news channels from China to Africa were eager to report the results.

What made me cheerful was seeing that the fundamental question of whether the Palestinians would ever recognize Israel, the key to any peace settlement in the region, is back on the table and can be discussed in good company without fear of dismissal or ridicule.

Let me explain. Five years ago, if you were to ask this question among Middle East analysts, you were sure to be scolded by an army of well-meaning conflict-resolution experts for being a spoiler of peace or ignorant of the latest polls from the West Bank.

“It does not matter what the Palestinians think about recognition or legitimacy,” was the standard answer, “what matters are conditions on the ground.”

“The road to peace is incremental,” repeated all the headlines.

Remember Peter Jennings, the legendary ABC News anchor? When he interviewed Hanan Ashrawi on his show and asked her about Israel’s right to exist, she hushed him with: “Chairman Arafat has recognized Israel in 1988,” and this kept poor Peter meek and timid for the rest of the interview.

When the Syrian Ambassador spoke at UCLA in 2005, and I asked him whether he personally recognizes Israel’s right to exist, my learned colleagues were quick to rebuke my question as impertinent — “What further proof would Israelis want to convince themselves of Arabs’ intentions?” they asked.

In other words, the question of Arab intentions, the mother of all questions and the key to all solutions, has been locked in the closet for 10 good years, and it is only Hamas’ victory in the Palestinian election, together with financial sanctions by Israel and Western governments, that have brought it back to the spotlight it deserves. Moreover, now that Hamas is recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, Hamas’ official stance toward Israel has given Western observers a crisp and reliable thermometer to gauge the Palestinian vision of peace, many times more reliable than the ambiguous polls and speeches we have been reading about in the past.

The emergence of such a reliable thermometer now provides valuable new insights into Middle East affairs, especially for those who believe that honesty and clarity are prerequisites to peace. True, we owe this progress to Hamas, but we have never denied credit where credit is due.

However, before we gloat, I should note that my friends in Israel have been consistently skeptical of all polls and speeches since the outbreak of the second intifada, and they have paid no attention at all to those who debate whether Hamas truly represents the heart and mind of Palestinian society.

Most Israelis today have become resigned to some version of the “salami theory,” according to which the vast majority of Palestinians, Fatah and Hamas alike, will never accept Israel as a legitimate neighbor and no matter what agreement is signed, will continue their struggle to “liberate Palestine” in incremental stages (“shlavim” in Hebrew.)

The current fighting between Fatah and Hamas is viewed by most Israelis as a confrontation between two tactics aiming for the same goal, one calling for dismantling Israel in stages, using diplomacy, international isolation, demography, deceit and occasional terror and attacks, the other calling for open warfare.

This gloomy view, depressing as it is, rests on some hard evidence, which even moderate Palestinians have not been able to dispel. Aside from Arab’s century-long rejection of Jewish sovereignty on any part of Palestine, well funded Palestinian organizations have recently intensified their anti-Israel campaign in Europe and on U.S campuses, aiming not at ending the occupation but at undermining the legitimacy of Israel as the historical homeland of the Jewish people.

Another indicator viewed with alarm by Israelis is that the subject of “comprehensive peace,” including hopes, images and responsibilities of state ownership, is not being discussed in the Palestinian street. While Palestinians do lay conditions for peace, they refrain from discussing its parameters, even behind closed doors.

Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem, is the only leader who dared remind his countrymen that compromises on the refugees “right of return” must be made if peace is to be given any chance at all. But all discussions of such compromises are considered taboo by the rest of Palestinian society, for whom “peace” has always meant a return to Jaffa, Haifa and Ramlah.

Finally, Palestinian intellectuals have been a great disappointment to Israeli peace activists. In an unprecedented candid exchange between two of the Middle East’s most respected journalists, Salameh Nematt, an Arab, and Akiva Eldar, an Israeli, Eldar writes (Ha’aretz, December 2006): “The Jewish minority, which calls for the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and steals their olives, is my enemy. I will do everything legally possible in order to protect my Arab neighbors from the obnoxious attacks of this racist minority.

“But Israelis need to know that Arabs who call for the expulsion of Jews from their [Jewish] land and deliberately murder their children are enemies of yours, and that there are many among you willing to defend my family against those who deny my right to a secure existence in my own country.”

Those familiar with Eldar’s record as a peace activist and a champion of Palestinians’ rights and statehood would appreciate his readers’ disappointment — after 30 years of intense outreach efforts, Eldar is still begging his Palestinian friends to acknowledge his “right to a secure existence in my own country.”

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