I'm traveling in Vietnam, and so cannot cast any light on the extraordinary events in Tunisia, but thought some readers might be interested in this excerpt from a letter I just received from a student I taught there in 2006. I wrote her to ask for her reactions to the upheaval. We've exchanged letters over the years but she had never before expressed herself in political terms.

this is a "happy new year", though situation seems sad because a lot of innocents died
but "happy" because we are liberated from our fear, from "big brother is watching you"!!
we have never accepted frailty and oblivion, we were just working and making our way!! we were disconnected from what is going on around! but then one day, he made the greatest mistake of his life: he started killing people in an attempt to quit their call for their rights! that was unbearable for us to see mothers crying! the human being mean nothing to them..we do not trust his government anymore..
let me just tell you one important thing: Tunisian citizens are so peaceful, we have never been terrorists! those who are burning the country are his police right now, they stole cars, ambulances and are shooting on innocent citizens and they burnt the country!!
we are trying to protect each other, the army is there too thank god
solidarity and such a great youthful energy is there! they are trying to clean the country and construct what's been destroyed by the despot!!

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It is now about six months since the world was dramatically warned, in an Atlantic cover story, and by a reporter who claimed unprecedented access to the Israeli intelligence community, that while the Obama administration would not strike Iran militarily, Israel very well might within the year--and who could blame them? That perhaps America should do the job itself, since it would be drawn into war anyway and could do the job better:

More likely [than an American strike], then, is that one day next spring, the Israeli national-security adviser, Uzi Arad, and the Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, will simultaneously telephone their counterparts at the White House and the Pentagon, to inform them that their prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has just ordered roughly one hundred F-15Es, F-16Is, F-16Cs, and other aircraft of the Israeli air force to fly east toward Iran--possibly by crossing Saudi Arabia, possibly by threading the border between Syria and Turkey, and possibly by traveling directly through Iraq's airspace, though it is crowded with American aircraft...

In these conversations, which will be fraught, the Israelis will tell their American counterparts that they are taking this drastic step because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. The Israelis will also state that they believe they have a reasonable chance of delaying the Iranian nuclear program for at least three to five years. They will tell their American colleagues that Israel was left with no choice. They will not be asking for permission, because it will be too late to ask for permission.

The article's author, Jeffery Goldberg, was so widely quoted, his warning so widely debated, and his scoop (based on interviews with " roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers") so widely admired, that he was soon making the rounds from Stephen Colbert to Fidel Castro.

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If anyone was wondering why the Obama administration's policy on Israel-Palestine is such an epic fail, look no further than today's Forward.

Nathan Guttman, one of the best reporters on all matters Middle East/Washington, reveals that the problem is that Dennis Ross -- former chief of AIPAC's think-tank, the Washington Institute For Near East Policy -- has squeezed out former Senator George Mitchell, the President's Special Envoy to the Middle East.

And there's your problem. Mitchell achieved peace in Northern Ireland during a few years as President Clinton's envoy to that war zone. Ross achieved, uh, very little during three administrations as a Middle East peacemaker.

So why is he at the White House? Here is Guttman.

Ross' strong ties to Israel now make him indispensable to the administration. Those ties include his previous role as head of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank founded by the Jewish Agency for Israel. His son, Gabe, is also married to an Israeli. These factors, together with Ross's strong personal sense of Jewish identity, have gained him a reputation of being pro-Israeli.

And this quote from the ADL's Abe Foxman which sums it up.

"Dennis is the closest thing you'll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned," said the Anti-Defamation League's national director, Abraham Foxman, who used the ancient Hebrew term for "advocate."

Think about it.. The lobby considers the guy in charge of US policy toward Israel an "advocate" for Israel, which he is. (Foxman's honesty is a rare delight).

Bottom line. The Obama administration views impeccable AIPAC credentials as a plus in a Middle East "mediator." It doesn't want an honest broker. It doesn't want a broker at all.

It wants, and it has, what former State Department official, Aaron Miller, described as "Israel's lawyer." Except Ross didn't go to law school.

As the country gropes for ways to lower the temperature and make political disagreement less disagreeable, I thought I'd look back to a 2006-07 initiative that brought together a bipartisan group of 20 foreign policy experts. The Stanley Foundation's Bridging the Foreign Policy Divide project was the brainchild of Derek Chollet, who is about to move from the State Department Office of Policy Planning to the White House NSC staff. Together with our our conservative friend and colleague Policy Review Editor Tod Lindberg, we recruited ten bipartisan pairs of co-authors who were commissioned to find points of agreement on different areas of policy.

In the preface for the resulting book, I explained how the project worked and offered some reflections on foreign policy bipartisanship and the possibility for a more constructive debate about policy. I quote a couple passages after the jump, but if you'd like to read the preface, it's pages ix-xiii at Google Books

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Yesterday was a study in contrast. The day began with Sarah Palin's sadly defensive, yet slickly produced, attempt to preempt the real Presidential address she knew was coming in the evening. The day ended with some of the most soaring oratory of Obama's Presidency, as he appealed to our higher angels to "sharpen our instincts for empathy." As Josh Marshall wrote yesterday, "Today has been set aside to honor the victims of the Tucson massacre. And Sarah Palin has apparently decided she's one of them." By contrast, Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review and a constant Obama critic, wrote "Tonight, he re-captured some of the tone of his famous 2004 convention speech. Well done."

Palin was clearly going for the Presidential look in her address before a fireplace and an American Flag, but all I could think of was Shakespeare's line from Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." But her greatest mistake was to adopt Instapundit Glenn Reynolds unfortunate use of the words, "Blood Libel"in a Wall Street Journal Op-ed from Monday. It is possible that neither Reynolds nor Palin knew the vicious Anti-Semitic roots of that term, but if they didn't what does that tell you about the insular world they inhabit? Let us just say that whatever Palin thought she was accomplishing with her speech, it backfired massively.

Obama, by contrast, succeeded beyond expectations. To begin with, there is always a religious overtone to a memorial service and he got to show the larger nation his comfort with scripture, as George Bush's speechwriter Michael Gerson points out this morning.

Obama made effective, appropriate use of religious references. He quoted Job on the reality of evil: "When I looked for light, then came darkness." He quoted the Psalmist on the reality of hope: "God will help her at
break of day." This is consistent with the long history of American presidential rhetoric. The need for hope beyond tragedy -- for meaning beyond random death -- leads to the language of faith. Not a sectarian faith, but a belief that parting and grief, while terrible, are not final.

Ultimately the President's central exhortation was about moving forward in the great tasks that confront us. In that moment he really was the post-partisan figure we elected two years ago.

If, as has been discussed in recent days, their deaths help usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember that it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to our challenges as a nation, in a way that would make them proud.

"How are we going to retain respect for human life? This is the contradiction, this is the paradox with the whole business. What we've got to avoid is cheapening life and becoming conquerors. We mustn't become expansionists at the expense of other people, we mustn't become Arab haters."

More testimony from soldiers affiliated with Breaking the Silence--you know, the alleged radicals delegitimizing the Jewish state? Actually, this passage is quoted from an extended conversation of elite Israeli soldiers immediately after the 1967 war, famously edited and published by Amos Oz and Muki Tzur; a book called Siach Lochamim ("A Conversation of Fighters") in Hebrew, and published in English as The Seventh Day. It sold something like 100,000 copies in a state of less than three million people in the year after it appeared.

Siach Lochamim also had soldiers rhapsodizing about retaking the Wailing Wall and Temple Mount, speaking of their determination never to surrender the Golan Heights, and so forth. But my point is that no sooner had Israeli fighters conquered the Palestinian territories in 1967 that some significant part of them began to wonder where this would all lead, and especially about the corrupting influences of conquest.

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Governor Palin, or Sarahla, I hope you don't mind if I call you Sarahla, do you? As we all know, Schlameals from the left to the right getting their yarmulkes all up in a bunch because you accused the media of blood libel. Blood libel--the claim that Jews murder Christian babies to use their blood for rituals such as making matzoh--is, of course, a false claim. My matzoh is so to die for it doesn't need condiments anyway, but, moving on. Sure, you're not Jewish, and sure, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is. But Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeyde! (If my grandmother had testicles she would be my grandfather.) As a Jewess, I think it's an absolute shandeh that so many schmucks, be they goys or yids, are talking such drek about you. They have some chutzpah! Feh! All this mishegas over bubkhis, really! I think you have every right to make any statements about us chosen people because you practically are a chosen person yourself. Here is why I officially name you Sarahla Palinksy: an honorary Jew.What's in a name? A lot of Jewishness! Your name Sarah, and your abstinent (almost) only daughter's baby daddy is named Levi. Whoah! How Jewy is that? And I suspect that said daughter is named Bristol because it is a derivation of the word bissel (little) because when she was born she was little. The Jewish Chronicle even "reckon[s]" that your husband is Jewish (though their use of the word reckon puts their own Jewishness into question).
You keep Israel close to your heart... or at least your chest where you place your Israel lapel pin.You have an Israel flag in your office. You once told Israel's president Shimon Perez "The only flag at my office is an Israeli flag...and I want you to know and I want Israelis to know that I am a friend." Well it turns out Israel is one of three flags but who's counting? And it's smaller but that's so it stands out from the bigger framed flags.

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The Oregon Ducks came up short against Auburn this week, but December's lame duck delivered for vets. You may have missed it while buried in a blizzard or trapped in a holiday food coma, but Congress came through big-time for vets during the lame duck session. In a surprising turn of events, when most people left the administration and Democratic leadership for dead, Washington showed some signs of life and made huge progress. As the media focused on issues like tax cuts, nuclear stockpiles and food safety, Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were really the big winners. As the clock was ticking on the 111th Congress, IAVA ratcheted the up pressure in DC to get some critical legislation passed.

Here's how new vets came up big in the lame duck:

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Paul Krugman joined a debate on the morality of markets, arguing that the United States has not met the fundamental condition of equality of opportunity that libertarian conservatives agree is necessary for fairness. While this is true (only in loon tune land does a kid growing up in Anacostia have the same opportunity as a kid growing up in Chevy Chase), this argument wrongly cedes the main point to the right.

It is ridiculous to argue that the inequality in the U.S. is simply the result of free markets. Markets are structured by governments, and the rich have used their control of the government to structure the market in ways to make themselves richer.

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Before stepping into this thicket, I'll begin by reviewing the apparent ground rules for discussing political rhetoric and whether it has anything to do with the tragedy in Tucson. The acts of a mentally unbalanced man bear no connection to the political climate around him. Once you draw any such connection, then you are hurling accusations of incitement. Any critique of American political discourse must paint the excesses at both ends of the political spectrum as equal. And as soon as you try to rein in political excesses, you immediately raise problems of political correctness and abridging free speech.

But if these are the parameters for our discussion of the assassination attempt against Representative Giffords, then we're merely refusing to confront the uncomfortable realities of American political discourse in 2011. Of course Sarah Palin didn't mean to incite horrific violence. Couching political competition as mortal combat isn't the heart of the problem. Taken by themselves, crosshair images and "have at 'em" pep talks are long traditions. As I say, this isn't the real issue.

It's true that we can't enact limits on political speech or drain all the emotion out of politics. But nor are we unable to draw certain lines -- not legal limits, but boundaries of civic responsibility -- or distinguish between "spirited debate" and corrosive toxins. Some of the most prominent critiques in contemporary American politics cast our own federal government as inherently oppressive, taxation and regulation as illegitimate, and political leaders as threatening to our way of life.

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It appears that Arizona is ground zero in a right-wing war against the democratic process.

Rep. Giffords was on Sarah Palin's "target list" of twenty 2010 incumbents, a list which featured a graphic showing the crosshairs of a gun. Giffords' office was was one of those vandalized by the right-wing in March 2009 in a protest against national health care bill. [Judge John Roll, killed in the incident, also was subject to significant threats due to his positions on immigration.]

As recently as June 12, 2010, leaflets appeared in Giffords' district proclaiming: "Get on Target" and help remove Gabrielle Giffords, "Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly."

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On Saturday night, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked someone on the scene in Tucson if anti-Semitism played any role in Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' shooting. His response was "no." It is well known that Giffords is Jewish, but anti-Semitism per se did not seem to be a contributing factor in the shooting of Giffords and 17 other victims in front of a Tucson shopping center.

That seems right, although all weekend I received emails from Jews indicating a special fear that, on some level, anti-Semitism played a part in Saturday's events. This is probably nothing more than the natural response of any minority group to an attack on a very prominent member of the community.

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Friday afternoon in Bil'in. I have to say I left the demonstration feeling more perplexed than inspired, given the many deaths the cause has occasioned. I left, that is, wondering if I had not just participated in something so highly ritualized, in which each of us was playing to form, knowing that it will all be the same next week--in short, something so connected to a kind of political theater, played out for a half-paying-attention international press--that fatalities on the site seem all the more horrible and preventable.

We are dealing here with a case that is even more cut and dried than what is going on in Sheikh Jarrah. The Israeli Supreme Court has already ruled that the route of the security wall, which separates the town of Bil'in from hundreds of dunams of its agricultural land, must be moved to restore this land to the town. So the Defense Ministry, in effect, is brazenly violating a decision of the Supreme Court by not complying. One activist leader told me that much of this land has already been tendered to contractors, in order to expand local settlements, so the government is also feeling pressure from private financial interests not to implement the court ruling.

The case, in other words, is appalling in a way a great many Israeli liberals could understand; and it is indicative not only of the ways the occupation corrupts the state but also of the caution with which the Supreme Court now proceeds, especially in confrontations over Arab rights, in order not to provoke a backlash against its dwindling power. But all of this also means that the weekly Bil'in demonstration could just as effectively be held, not at the site of the wall, but at the the Defense Ministry in downtown Tel Aviv. For the dozens (or in Friday's case, hundreds) of democratic activists who drive and climb and march to the town for weekly confrontations with army troops--most of them painfully young under their riot gear--the demonstration feels a little like yelling at the person who answers the phone at a call center when your bank has failed to credit your account.

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When it comes to health care, Republicans should be careful what they wish for.

Their upcoming vote to repeal the health-care law will be largely symbolic -- they don't have the votes to override President Obama's certain veto. The real thing happens later, when they try to strip the Department of Health and Human Services of money needed to implement the law's requirement that all Americans buy health insurance. This could easily precipitate a showdown with the White House--and a government shutdown later this year.

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