Dershowitz presents plan to restart peace talks

By SAM SOKOL, JPOST

Alan Dershowitz presented a new plan to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians on Sunday at the Jerusalem Post Conference in New York.

It would be a terrible mistake to begin talks based on the 1967 lines, Dershowitz said during a panel discussion on the topic of two states for two peoples. “That puts the Kotel in the hands of the PA at the start of negotiations,” Dershowitz said.

Dershowitz told the audience that he had spoken with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and suggested that a new basis for negotiations be agreed upon in which construction would continue in the settlement blocs but not in any areas in which there is “reasonable disagreement.”
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www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

By Ted Belman

Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon makes it clear:

The government committee weighing the “equal burden of service” issue is unfairly focusing on hareidi-religious Jews while ignoring the Israeli Arab community, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) has accused.

Danon told Yisrael Hayom that he and other members of Likud and Yisrael Beytenu will not support a proposal “that deals with just one community and leaves the Arabs alone.”
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Diplomacy: Taking a more nuanced look at Israel

By HERB KEINON, JPOST

Israel’s consul-general in New York Ido Aharoni advocates shifting Israeli advocacy on campus from angry confrontations on the quad to showing Israel’s relevance in students’ lives.

NEW YORK – Spend any time at all in the US speaking with pro-Israel American Jews and one theme constantly emerges: Israel is losing the campuses.
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Stanley Fisher, Bank of Israel Governor, Assesses Israel’s Economy

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
Straight from the Jerusalem Boardroom #178, April 26, 2013, bit.ly/11KNmFG

The following summary of the April 23, 2013 address by Stanley Fisher, Bank of Israel Governor, highlights economic indicators which reflect the relative strength of Israel’s economy during the global economic meltdown.  These indicators have enhanced global confidence in the long-term viability of Israel’s economy. Far from being isolated, Israel has become an attractive partner for global trade, an exciting site for astute investors and giant high tech companies.  Israel’s economic performance is praised by the three leading global rating companies and the International Monetary Fund.  Read more…

By Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO

So now, the next necessary deception in the campaign is to convince you that — all together now — “the system worked.” In reality, the civilian justice system did not work, and that is because it cannot work — not if the objective is the swift acquisition of vital national-defense information.

It could not be more obvious to an objective, rational person that if the aim is intelligence collection, it is far better to interrogate a terrorist without limitations on time and subject matter, without the interference of a defense lawyer, and without empowering the detainee by giving him plea-bargaining leverage to trade for information. The Obama administration, however, is telling you, with a straight face, that the imposition of civilian due process will produce intelligence just as effectively, if not better.
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By MATTHEW KAMINSKI, WSJ

Donald Kagan is engaging in one last argument. For his “farewell lecture” here at Yale on Thursday afternoon, the 80-year-old scholar of ancient Greece—whose four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War inspired comparisons to Edward Gibbon’s Roman history—uncorked a biting critique of American higher education.

Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” By “our” he means Western.
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BY MARTIN SHERMAN, JPOST

Into the fray: The unilateral two-state initiative endorsed by INSS this week is clearly not a ‘creative’ pro-peace measure but a demonstrably anti-settler one.

Azerbaijan’s long history of tolerance is a model for modern times

With Syria mired in open revolt, several other Middle Eastern and North African countries still reeling from the Arab Spring, and Iran at loggerheads with the United States over its nuclear program, it was astounding to hear Israel’s president refer to a Muslim country this week not as a problem but as part of the solution. Read more…

One single episode of dogged determination can overturn all gloomy forecasts and literally change the course of history.

It didn’t seem that way, but this day – April 26 – exactly 65 years ago was pivotal in yet-to-be-born Israel’s history. Its little-celebrated and hardly remembered events remain central for debunking the lies about the circumstances of the Jewish state’s inception. Its trials and tribulations tell a unique story of individual courage and defiant daring quite literally against all odds.