After telling a lovely story about his kid’s little-league game, Gil Troy argues that in its “first 320 posts,” Open Zion never features “poetry of the everyday in Altneuland, the Jews’ Old New land.” By ignoring “stories of ordinary life on both sides of the [Palestinian-Israeli] divide,” we have acceded to “Palestinian propagandists” who want us to “believe that Israel and the Palestinian territories are a perpetual warzone.”

Well, I’m gratified that someone other than us has read all 320 pieces. Although apparently Gil’s “quick survey” missed a couple. There’s Gershom Gorenberg’s piece, for instance, about Israeli climber Nadav Ben-Yehuda’s heroism, the Israeli spirit of communal responsibility, and why, in Israel, “a total stranger can run down the street to tell you that your child should be wearing a sweater.” And there’s Yehudah Mirsky’s  poignant, intermingled memories of his father and Jerusalem: “the slant of the sunlight in his old childhood neighborhood near the Mahane Yehudah open-air market, the perfect, limpid Hebrew that flowed from his mouth, and the particular sheen of the rainwater on the asphalt of the Jerusalem streets that I walked obsessively, looking for him, after he died.”

And even some of the harshest criticism of Israel on Open Zion has featured the “poetry of the everyday.” Emily Hauser’s account of why she left Israel comes to mind. Though she calls Israel a society that “produces and indeed rewards hate,” she also wistfully remembers the joys of Jerusalem during Passover season: “people who know why I’m frantic in the lead-up to the Seder, bus drivers wishing me a hag sameah, and neighbors asking ‘where are you for the holiday?’” You can be pretty angry about the direction Israel’s going and still celebrate its people and its everyday life.

Israel’s Tal Law, which in effect legalizes Haredi draft dodging, was ruled unconstitutional by Israel’s High Court of Justice last February. But in a decision seemingly found only in Israel (and other countries whose political system strongly resembles the one portrayed in Woody Allen’s “Bananas”) the unconstitutionality of the Tal Law didn’t mean it had to be discarded immediately. Instead, the court has allowed the law to remain in place for months until it reaches its expiration date at 11:59:59 on July 31. Never mind that the milk is very sour. Israelis are forced to drink it—until it is mercifully gone.

Politicians are spending the last several weeks of this court-ordered grace period trying to come up with a new solution. Haredi leaders insist that no Haredim be drafted and have threatened mass riots, violence and civil disobedience if non-Haredim don’t agree to their demands.

Most rank and file Israelis greatly resent the current reality in which they risk their own lives, send their children out to war, fight and sometimes die to protect the country while Haredim sip tea, discuss a little Talmud and gossip in yeshiva study halls—and collect government stipends and welfare checks to help pay for it.

On Monday, after Mohamed Morsi had been declared the winner of Egypt’s presidential elections, Jeff Goldberg quoted his interview with Morsi from last year, in which Morsi ducked questions about whether the Muslim Brotherhood could support a Christian or woman for president.

From this, Goldberg concluded that, while the Brotherhood’s leaders have “proved somewhat adept at playing politics,” nevertheless the organization rigidly adheres to its creed: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope."

Well, it seems Goldberg’s “somewhat adept” turns out to be a bit of an understatement. Because, you see, on that very same Monday, his policy advisor Ahmed Deif told CNN that the president-elect will appoint a woman as one of his vice-presidents, and a Christian as another. So much for ducking the question.

"Will you be on the list, sir? Will you be, ma'am? Pray that you won't be."
--Maariv commentator Shai Golden responds to Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's remarks yesterday to an Arab MK.

• Foreign Minister Lieberman went to inspect an unrecognized Bedouin village in Israel at the request of a pro-settler advocacy group called Regavim. Regavim claims the village of Al-Zarnog was built on Jewish land. A shouting match ensued between Lieberman and Bedouin Knesset Member Talab El-Sana in which Sana called Lieberman a Mafioso to which Lieberman responded by calling MK Sana a terrorist and telling him "I'll take care of you first." (Haaretz)
• Poll: Barghouti would defeat Abbas and Haniyeh in vote for Palestinian president - Survey finds Abbas' popularity has dropped significantly in the last three months, with just 49% of support compared to 44% for Hamas leader. (Haaretz)
• Netanyahu announces new Jewish 'Nobel' prize - Genesis Prize will grant $1 million to recipients for achievements in arts and sciences. (Israel Hayom)
• Rabbis who urged disobedience now give lectures to soldiers - Rabbis Elyakim Levanon, Shmuel Eliyahu, who in the past urged soldiers to disobey orders pertaining to settlement evictions, invited to give troops motivational speeches. (Ynet)
• Syria: We thought downed Turkish plane was Israeli - Information minister says Syrian forces may have mistaken Turkish jet they shot down for Israeli plane. Adds: We don't want crisis. (Agencies, Ynet)

For the full News from Israel.

In 1998, I read Laura Miller’s blistering review of “You’ve Got Mail” and concluded, idiotically, that that was all I needed to know about Nora Ephron.  Miller’s indictment of a sanitized, anaesthetized New York—she titled it “You’ve Got Malls”—soured me on Ephron, I thought, for good.  I’d recently come to the city and I was filled with cynical conclusions of what New York should be and should not be.  “You’ve Got Mail” was a definitive should not.  I’m not proud of this.

Soon afterwards, I found myself fact-checking at New York Magazine and poring through their bound volumes from the 70s.  One night, I turned a page and discovered something I hadn’t known existed:  Nora Ephron, brilliant, personal and scathing reporter, an exemplar of New Journalism (a term she rejected), and I was amazed.  She brought her quizzical and absurdist touch to everything from the Watergate hearings to a pornographer’s “women’s magazine.”  I rearranged my thoughts; in the context of her journalism and other writings, Ephron’s film work was one piece in a mosaic of genius.

And the mosaic doesn’t end.  We remember her journalism mostly for its takes on feminism and for her tales of personal experience.  But she also covered a war.

Alon Liel, former Israeli ambassador to South Africa (1992-1994) recently came out in favor of Zionist BDS.

I can understand the desire, by people of conscience, to reassert an agenda of justice, to remind Israelis that Palestinians exist. I can understand small but symbolic acts of protest that hold a mirror up to Israeli society. As such, I cannot condemn the move to prevent goods made in the occupied Palestinian territory from being falsely classified as "Made in Israel". I support the South African government’s insistence on this distinction between Israel and its occupation...

The simple act of marking settlement products differently to Israeli products pulls the rug from under the refusal to declare a border. It has provoked Zionist outrage because it says: to here and no further. It causes embarrassment because those who claim to want two states cannot morally justify why products from the future Palestine should be marked as "made in Israel".

And Liel’s not the only one. Yesterday, Daniel Zajfman, President of the Weizmann Institute, threatened to boycott the Ariel University Center of Samaria if the institution gains full status as a University as scheduled. Hebrew University President Menachem Ben-Sasson joined the fray, adding that giving university status to a settlement institution “is a strategic threat to the State” and “endangers the next Nobel Prize.”  Is Zionist BDS catching on?

Just days ago the mighty Jerusalem Raiders lost 3 to 1 in the do-or-die Israel Association of Baseball championship game to the Bet Shemesh Chili Peppers. The Raiders—a little league team with players ranging in age from 11 to 14—played their last game on the historic Gezer field, with a fabulous view of Tel Gezer—the archaeological site of the first positively identified Biblical city. The night before, the Audrey Delisse Ballet studio had mounted a full two-hour production of Coppelia with over fifty ballet dancers ranging in age from 3 to 17. That event took place in Jerusalem’s Masorti High School, one of the flagship schools of the thriving TALI educational movement—dozens of schools not in Israel’s religious system committed to teaching about Zionism, Judaism and democracy. Full disclosure: my eleven-year-old son alternated between pitching, catching and playing outfield on the Raiders as my fifteen-year-old coached, and both my ten-year-old and seventeen-year-old daughters danced in Coppelia.

These thoroughly normal moments—despite their dramatic settings—are worth mentioning because thoroughly normal moments should be part of any “new conversation about Israel, Palestine and the Jewish future,” which this Website aspires to launch.  Celebrating the poetry of the everyday in Altneuland, the Jews’ Old New land, is not dodging “the subject”—it should frequently be The Subject. And yet, a quick survey of the first 320 posts of this Website, shows nothing about regular, everyday life in Israel—or Palestine for that matter. I have not read anything that would prepare me for the extraordinarily ordinary and delightful student-faculty interactions I experienced when I visited Al Quds University in Abu Dis or the easy interactions between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim patients and staffers I saw when I was hospitalized last month with a running injury at Hadassah Hospital.

We need to celebrate the normal because it was one of Zionism’s great dreams and is one of Zionism’s greatest achievements. The Jewish people were so marginalized, ostracized, and persecuted in both Europe and the Arab world for so many centuries that many doubted the comfortable, casual interactions that characterize modern Israeli life today would be possible to foster.

 We are endangering the next Nobel Prize."
--Hebrew University President Menachem Ben-Sasson on the possible decision to give an Israeli college in the West Bank university status.

• Three ultra-Orthodox men arrested for vandalizing Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial (Haaretz)
  
• 4 rockets fired at Netivot; 2 interceptedDespite calm, rocket fire continues as four Gaza rockets fired at Israel. Two intercepted by Iron Dome, two hit open areas; no injuries. (Ynet)
  
• Last known gay Jewish Holocaust survivor dies - World War II resistance fighter Gad Beck dies in Berlin at 88. (Ynet)
  
• More than 100 Orthodox leaders protest recognition of Conservative, Reform rabbis - Some 130 Orthodox rabbis, as well as right-wing MKs, participate in meeting aimed at foiling state's decision; non-Orthodox rabbi stage protest of their own outside rabbinate. (Haaretz)
  
• Israel among world leaders in e-Government - Swiss ambassador holds auction to help sick kids. (Ynet)
  
• 'Zionists to blame for world drug trade' - In blatantly anti-Semitic speech Iranian VP Mohammad Reza Rahimi says Jews, Talmud incite global narcotics trade. 'Jews think they're a superior race,' he blasts. (Ynet)
  
• Fierce anti-Israel critic loses Brooklyn congressional primary (JTA, Haaretz)
  
  For the full News from Israel.
  

No matter how he performs at the Olympics this August, Abu Rmeidah, a Palestinain Judo fighter from Jerusalem's Old City, has already made history.  Rmediah is the first Palestinian to qualify (rather than receive an honorary invitation) to compete in the Olympics. He'll compete in the same weight class as Israeli Ioseb Palelashvili. (Can anyone say "tension in the locker room"?) Abu Rmeidah may still be stateless, but on July 30th, he could face off with his Israeli opponent on an equal playing field. Click here for a well-reported story on Abu Rmeidah.

Supporters of the two-state solution are often told that this vision is unrealistic and has become unachievable. Young, idealistic seekers of justice and equality are increasingly offering what they claim is a more "realistic" solution: a single state for all Israelis and Palestinians, including refugees.

Here are ten questions that might help these single-staters think through the feasibility of the project they have in mind:

1- How do we negotiate, implement or impose a single state in “Israel-Palestine”? Would it require a UN Security Council or General Assembly resolution dissolving the State of Israel? Does it need the voluntary dissolution of the State of Israel? Negotiations without negotiators? A military solution imposed by the international community or by the armed forces of Palestine and neighboring Arab countries?

Over at +972, Ami Kaufman takes issue with those of us who advocate for an end to occupation, support Israel’s social protest movement, and marshal as one of our arguments the fact that occupation and settlement are pretty expensive endeavors (an argument I made here).

Kaufman writes:

Every once in a while you’ll hear someone say that the occupation costs us so much money. Money that could have gone to health, education, infrastructure and whatever.

Well, the question in itself is, how to say…stupid.

"From kindergarten to old age we feed our children hatred, suspicion and disgust toward the stranger and the other, and especially toward the Arabs."
--Renowned Israeli author Sami Michael calls the State of Israel one of the most racist in the world.

• Haaretz poll: Decisive majority (69%) in favor of resuming (social justice) protest. 
• Israeli policeman charged with death of Palestinian child: If you don't act, they think you're weak - Police officer indicted in May 2010 for causing death by negligence, and the closing arguments of his trial began last week. (Haaretz)
• Turkey accuses Syrian forces of firing at a second jet - Turkey to urge NATO to consider downing of jet as an attack on the military alliance; NATO envoys to convene on Tuesday. (Agencies, Haaretz)
• EU approves embargo on Iran oil, warns of future sanctions (Agencies, Haaretz)
• Did IDF troops aid Sinai drug smugglers? - IDF soldiers, career officers suspected of warning smugglers about army patrols along border. (Ynet)

For the full News from Israel. 

The good news is that Egypt has just elected its first civilian president in its modern history. The bad news is that a religious fanatic has won. And both the good news and the bad news need to be taken in their broader political context, because neither are straightforward.

The good news is indeed encouraging. Egypt's Presidential Election Commission, to all appearances, played it straight, even though their four-day delay in announcing the results gave rise to an enormous amount of speculation that some kind of chicanery might be underway. In the end, they announced results that almost all observers agree are credible, although their outgoing chairman, Farouk Sultan, made the country and the world sit through an interminable and very defensive preamble.

So the Egyptian people have had their say, and it has been respected. This is, by any interpretation, a major step forward in the struggle for democracy. But the new president will inherit an office that has been stripped of many key powers by the recent supplemental constitutional articles issued by the military. The power of the Parliament has also been constrained. The generals appear to be trying to carve out a decisive role for themselves; equivalent to that once enjoyed by the Turkish military.

The notion of ahavat yisrael, "love for the Jewish people," is lovely, but let’s be frank: As a people, we Jews haven’t all loved each other since roughly the Golden Calf.

We’re a people like any other. We split along ideological lines, family lines, class lines—witness the anger emanating from Israel’s ultra-Orthodox over the possibility of state recognition for a small number of non-Orthodox rabbis, or the mere vision of women praying in public (or even riding the bus with men).

And you know what? That’s cool—I don’t much like ultra-Orthodoxy either. I have a lot of very powerful opinions about how that community interprets Scripture and what those interpretations ultimately mean for many of their number. I don’t need them to like me and mine, and I certainly don’t need their approval to know that I’m a good Jew.

What’s not cool, however, is that unlike any other Jews, Israel’s ultra-Orthodox actually have the power to legislate and enforce their value judgments. The problem isn’t the Jewish people’s fissures, or the opprobrium of one side for another—the problem is that in the Jewish state, one very narrowly defined community of Jews is paid out of state coffers to lord their version of Judaism over everyone else.

Ever since Benjamin Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech in 2009, in which he declared himself ready to work toward a demilitarized Palestinian state, his defenders in the United States have justified the collapse of any dialogue with the Palestinians in terms of Israel’s understandable caution. “There is no partner for peace,” we hear again and again, which suggests a number of things at once.

First, that the Fatah leadership is disingenuous about recognition of Israel, and that even if Mahmud Abbas and his Ramallah brains-trust are moderate in their means, their ends remain maximalist. The proof is their unwillingness to recognize Israel as “a Jewish state,” or (what is often assumed to be the same thing) renounce the Palestinian right of return.

Second, even if the Fatah leadership is sincere about recognition, or would compromise on the modalities of return, it cannot be trusted to hold on to power, not with Hamas dogging them. Given a free election—so the argument goes—Hamas would win again, as in 2006. (Just look at how Islamists now triumph in Egypt!) The only hope for peace is some kind of interim solution, in which we all build slowly toward a more peaceful future, a generation or two from now.

How will things with the Brotherhood work out? I certainly don't know and doubt anyone else does. A pet argument in some policy circles is that assuming power moderates Islamists. That has yet to be proven anywhere. Once in power ideological purity does have to make some room for realpolitik, but realpolitik is not moderation.

Secular nationalist pan-Arab regimes have in the last year and a half been shown for the mere carapaces that they were, and the deeper currents of religion, and ethnicity, are reasserting themselves as organizing principles throughout the Middle East (and in some ways in Israel too). Indeed, the monarchies are, weirdly enough, looking to be among the most stable entities around. The abiding quality of ethnicity and religion should remind us of other abiding truths: that political cultures come into being slowly, that basics like the rule of law, respect for the rights of minorities and for human dignity have to be worked for, cultivated, intepreted, preserved and when necessary, fought for, over and over again, with each new generation even as the immediate, Hobbesian challenges of preventing violence and maintaining order crowd the foreground and concentrate our minds.  Those are lessons for us, and for others, the orienting horizon as we stumble down this new and very uncertain stretch of the road.

"I shamefully admit that even when a Molotov cocktail was hurled at a children's room in Hawara and I presented a condemnation resolution at the Yesha Council, I was told, 'We do not condemn the harming of Arabs.'”

--Yesha settler council chairman Danny Dayan and others make rare criticism against violence in their camp

• Palestinian prisoners arrested in PA sweep report torture, mistreatment - Over a hundred Palestinians were arrested in recent weeks following an assassination attempt on a PA official, many of them with no connection to the crime. (Haaretz)
  
• Film festival posters depicting a drawing of a woman vandalized in Jerusalem (Haaretz)
  
• U.S. consulate claims diplomatic immunity, ignores labor court ruling - Consulate insists that Israeli courts have no jurisdiction over its affairs.(Haaretz)
  
• Israel cancels visit by Hungarian who honored Nazi sympathizer (Ynet)

For the full News from Israel.