Jewish State

"W hat happened," asks Michael Oren, "to Israel's reputation?" The Israeli ambassador to the United States , a noted historian, combat veteran, and bestselling author, raised that question in a Wall Street Journal essay last week. Writing on the 64th anniversary of Israeli independence, Oren began by quoting from Life magazine's salute to the Jewish state on its 25th birthday in 1973 — a 92-page special issue that honored modern Israel, an island of enlightened democratic courage flourishing against all odds amid a sea of Arab hostility and violence.

Recent rapes blamed on African migrants have ignited a political and emotional backlash against their ballooning numbers, with Israelis and their leaders stridently — and in an alarming new development, violently — calling for their expulsion. Israel, bound by an international refugees treaty it ardently promoted, doesn't seem to have that option, and the gap between rhetoric and reality threatens to send simmering social antagonisms boiling over into open conflict. It has raised questions, relevant all over the developed world, about how much is owed to the impoverished migrants...

Matti Friedman, an Associated Press reporter, thought he'd found the perfect human interest story. Perhaps the most authoritative manuscript of the Jewish Bible, the Aleppo Codex, called the Crown, had been annotated by Maimonides himself and safeguarded by the Jewish diaspora for millennia. Nearly destroyed when rioting mobs set fire to the grand Aleppo synagogue in 1947, it was rescued and delivered to Israel a decade later, to be proudly displayed in the institute of then-president Itzhak Ben-Zvi for posterity.

"W hat happened," asks Michael Oren, "to Israel's reputation?" The Israeli ambassador to the United States , a noted historian, combat veteran, and bestselling author, raised that question in a Wall Street Journal essay last week. Writing on the 64th anniversary of Israeli independence, Oren began by quoting from Life magazine's salute to the Jewish state on its 25th birthday in 1973 — a 92-page special issue that honored modern Israel, an island of enlightened democratic courage flourishing against all odds amid a sea of Arab hostility and violence.

NEW YORK - Tens of thousands of supporters of Israel crowded New York's Fifth Avenue yesterday as part of the annual parade celebrating the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. This year's parade also commemorated the centenary of the city of Tel Aviv. One contingent wore I (heart) Tel Aviv T-shirts, and another group rolled a giant birthday cake up the avenue. Tel Aviv's mayor, Ron Huldai, was an honorary grand marshal and donned a pair of "100" glasses in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Israel's largest city.

IN HIS Sept. 21 op-ed column "No to statehood," Jeff Jacoby states clearly and succinctly why statehood for the Palestinians has not happened, even though there have been myriad opportunities. My frustration is that many who continually find fault with Israel, including American Jews, base their knowledge of the situation on what they hear on 24-hour news cycles and what they garner from sound bites, often from people with not only little knowledge of the region's history but with a misguided view of the missed opportunities for peace.

EARLY IN the last decade, when campaigns to divest university funds from Israel arrived at Ivy League schools, Larry Summers, then-president of Harvard University, took an important stand saying, "Not on my watch. " He explained that any effort to compare democratic Israel to apartheid South Africa was abhorrent and deserved to be rejected out of hand. The campaign soon died at Harvard as well as other campuses. Now a new manifestation of extreme anti-Israel activity is coming to Harvard.

An upcoming conference at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on the "one-state solution" to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is drawing ire from organizations who believe it promotes the elimination of Israel. The "One-State Conference," which will take place this weekend at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, is meant to investigate the feasibility of a creating a unified Israeli-Palestinian political state as a potential solution to war in the region. But the event has caused some to criticize the Kennedy School for failing to adequately distance itself from the conference's...

As Jewish forces advanced on their village during the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948, the Palestinian Faour family piled children and belongings into donkey carts and fled, hoping to return home when the fighting stopped. Only some of them got back, and the family is still divided. Some are in the Lebanese city of Sidon as stateless refugees. Others are 80 kilometers (50 miles) away as Israeli citizens in their village of Shaab, across a fenced and hostile border.

NEW YORK — Fifth Avenue was awash in the blue and white of the Israeli flag for yesterday’s Celebrate Israel Parade, the mood of which reflected rising tensions in the Mideast this year. “We’ve always been saying, we’re ready to negotiate,’’ said Yuli Yoel Edelstein, Israel’s minister of information and diaspora and the grand marshal of this year’s march. “But the Palestinians have a unilateral approach. This is not the way you reach statehood.’’ The thousands of marchers who stepped off at 57th Street...

Matti Friedman, an Associated Press reporter, thought he'd found the perfect human interest story. Perhaps the most authoritative manuscript of the Jewish Bible, the Aleppo Codex, called the Crown, had been annotated by Maimonides himself and safeguarded by the Jewish diaspora for millennia. Nearly destroyed when rioting mobs set fire to the grand Aleppo synagogue in 1947, it was rescued and delivered to Israel a decade later, to be proudly displayed in the institute of then-president Itzhak Ben-Zvi for posterity.

Palestinian officials on Sunday dismissed a new Israeli proposal for restarting peace talks, saying the document falls short of their long-standing demands. The cool reception bodes poorly for hopes the resumption of peace talks between the Palestinians and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who fortified his ruling coalition last week by bringing in the main opposition party. Netanyahu's alliance with the centrist Kadima Party raised speculation that he might make a more generous proposal to the Palestinians now that he no longer has to rely on hardline nationalists to keep...

As Jewish forces advanced on their village during the war that surrounded Israel's creation in 1948, the Palestinian Faour family piled children and belongings into donkey carts and fled, hoping to return home when the fighting stopped. Only some of them got back, and the family is still divided. Some are in the Lebanese city of Sidon as stateless refugees. Others are 80 kilometers (50 miles) away as Israeli citizens in their village of Shaab, across a fenced and hostile border.

Israel's leaders marked their country's 64th year of independence on Thursday with a ceremony in Jerusalem, singing classical Hebrew songs and honoring outstanding soldiers. "Israel does not threaten its region, does not seek to rule another people, and does not wish ill for any other nation," President Shimon Peres said. "Israel, despite its strength, prefers bridges of peace over fences of hostility. " Israelis flocked to beaches and thronged parks for barbecues across the nation, filling the air with the scent of grilled meat and charcoal.

Italy's newest prime minister says he is concerned Iran could take advantage of new talks with the West to gain time and deceive the world about its nuclear ambitions. Mario Monti's delivered his comments Sunday at a meeting with Israel's prime minister, giving a boost to the Jewish state on the Iran issue. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with Germany, are to begin talks Friday with Iran. Many in the international community, including Israel, suspect Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.

WHAT DIVERGENT but ineffective op-eds the Globe published Feb. 29. Abraham H. Foxman uses quotation marks around the word occupation, and concludes his argument against a one-state solution by describing it as an "assault on the Jewish people. " Using that kind of language is not helpful to achieving a two-state solution. It does not promote the communication and understanding necessary for peace. In favor of one state, Diana Buttu makes a weak argument. Her conclusion, that Palestinians and Israelis are "fated to live together," does not convince the average...

IN ASSESSING issues hindering a peace settlement in the Middle East, James Carroll sidesteps whether Palestinians are finally willing, after more than 60 years of refusals, to concede Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. Nor does he seem willing to ask Palestinians to explicitly abandon their demand that all of the refugees be allowed to return to Israel proper. Given that a great many Palestinians are still far from ready to take these steps, Carroll instead asks Israel to unilaterally confirm statehood upon a people still very much at war with itself (Fatah...

The prime minister of Israel is accusing Turkey's leader of incitement for saying the Jewish state uses the Holocaust as an excuse to kill Palestinians. Relations between the once-close allies have deteriorated dramatically since Israeli commandos raided a ship of activists trying to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip last year, killing nine Turks on board. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a TV interview Sunday that Israel behaves "as if they are the victims all the time.

I WAS interested to read the two op-eds about a conference at Harvard exploring the possibility of a one-state solution in the Middle East ( "Israelis, Palestinians under one flag?," Feb. 29). My father was brought to this country as an infant in 1911. The village his parents emigrated from was, at the time, part of Syria; but as a result of post-World War I mandates, it became part of Lebanon. Shifting borders are nothing new in the region. Years ago, a cousin showed me a tattered old map of the region from around the turn of the 20th century.

Republican US Senator Scott Brown is calling on Harvard's Kennedy School of Government to cancel a conference on a "one-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "I want to condemn in the strongest possible terms Harvard's sponsorship of a conference exploring a ‘one-state solution' to the Israel-Palestinian conflict," he said in a statement. "This is dangerous thinking that gives comfort to Israel's enemies who view the ‘one-state solution' as a euphemism for eliminating Israel as a Jewish state.