My introduction to Israeli elections came in 1992, when I watched the elderly founders of the kibbutz I was volunteering on cheer the election of Yitzhak Rabin.  I cashed in my meager post-college savings to return to Israel in 1996 to volunteer for the Labor Party and Peres campaigns.  Although the result was a bad one (at least selfishly, and I believe for Israel), I learned an infinite amount about what an election could be for a country, epsecially for Israel.  I remain an outsider, but continue to have the modest hope that the impending election can represent a chance for a national conversation on so many larger issues.    

The "Breaking the Silence" photo exhibition, which created such a stir when it opened in 2004, and again when it to Europe in 2005 and 2006, is finally coming to the U.S. In fact, it’s more than the original exhibition, which focused exclusively on Hebron.  This exhibition features photos and testimonies collected from soldiers who served throughout the Territories. It should be an unforgettable experience, no matter your perspective on the conflict.  

When the interim Winograd Commission report was released in April, indicating there were failures in how the Lebanon War was conducted, I asked these questions:

What does this mean for the American Jewish connection to Israel? What do I teach my sons about where they are this summer, what they are seeing, who they are? Should they be a part of the soul-searching that goes on (at least sometimes) in Israel, or the pretending, congratulating, lining-up and bandwagon-ing that goes on here?  

So let me just ask this, for my sake as a father, and for my sons’ sake as very young American Jews: will the mainstream American Jewish leadership form its own Winograd commission? Will they look at their own actions, their own decisions during that time? Will they examine their overall approach to the strategic issues of how to connect American Jews with Israel, of demanding that that connection always equal full support of the Government of Israel?

Now the Winograd report has announced it will investigate whether war crimes were committed last summer.  That leaves me with so many more questions.

As the Jewish people prepare to commemorate the solemn day of Tisha B’Av (9th day of the Hebrew month of Av), marking the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a host of other calamities, I have been thinking of late about one of the primary lessons from this day.  And I believe that a somewhat revised version of this lesson may provide a useful guide for understanding one of ills of the elites and even the middle classes of our world (and I include myself in this category).  And I am thinking primarily about those in the United States and Israel, the two places I have experience living of late.

We learn on Tisha B’Av that the Second Temple was destroyed because of "sinat chinam," or "baseless hatred" among the Jewish people.  Today, although you will find plenty of baseless hatred among Americans and Israelis, I see the bigger issue facing both societies -- the one that I see as much more likely to result in future tragedy -- as that of a concept I will call "adishut chinam," or "baseless complacency."    

President Bush declared again yesterday that, in essence, the future of the Middle East rests on a "choice" the Palestinians have to make in the coming months.  The choice President Bush sees is that of Hamas (i.e. war, evil) or Fatah (i.e. peace, good).

But, like the notion that Iraqis must simply "choose" democracy and unity and peace and all will be well, so too does this choice consist of more than meets the President's eye.  

What will the President do about all of the individual choices facing Palestinians, whether in Gaza under Hamas or the West Bank under Fatah?  The choices that make up the real lives of the real people whom the President, the Secertary of State, and so many of us tend to discuss primarily in the abstract.  Do we know what those choices are?  Do we understand what role others, like lower-ranking Israeli soldiers, play in those choices?

And then we have to consider the meaning of choice for Raja Shehadeh and Moses...  

At any point in time, it’s important not just to know that peace is missing, but why it’s missing. And that changes over time, and is always somewhat different depending on whether you are talking about political/governmental peace or person-to-person/societal peace. Although the former type is what we spend far too much time talking about, it is the latter that really counts, in my mind.

And that peace, the peace between people, is missing because, when you are in Israel, the Palestinians are missing. Almost entirely.

And when you’re in Palestine (Eastern Palestine, anyway), although Israel is everywhere – in the form of Jewish-only settlements, Jewish-only roads, the Army, the Air Force and the Wall — and although Israeli soldiers and settlers are all around, the Israeli people with whom the Palestinians must make peace are also missing.

And as I experienced recently, nowhere is this more evident than in Hebron.