Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd.

A friend went to Jimmy Carter's book-signing in Pasadena the other day. 3200 books, all snapped up weeks before, then signed by an aloof former president, who did not shake hands but was flanked by two phalanxes of security. Everyone who came in was X-rayed, or wanded.

My friend tells me Carter had a focused forward expression, he was on a mission. "Do you think someone is going to try and knock him off?"

The concern reflects a couple of realities. At 82, Carter would seem to have found a spiritual model in one of the heroes of his book, Anwar Sadat, who, at Carter's urging, took on the orthodoxies in his own culture to sign a historic peace agreement, and who gave his life to do so. Carter is taking on the orthodoxies in his own culture, with the same sense of all or nothing.

The venom he is encountering on the Jewish right is staggering. Even I'm surprised. Marty Peretz has called him a Jew-hater. Shmuel Rosner, the Haaretz correspondent who not long ago rated American presidential candidates on the degree to which they ignored the Palestinian issue, with obliviousness being a positive, has branded him a likely antisemite. And in doing so, subscribed to the most parochial formulations offered by neoconservative Iraq-warrior Eliot Cohen.

When will the Jewish universalists in American life come forward? That is the great threat Carter poses to the parochial: that others will start to care. And a policy that has been commandeered by a small set of interests will at last become the business of the American people. A bestseller with the word "apartheid" in the title—we're getting closer and closer to the Elian Gonzales moment, the moment when the American people wake up and realize that a fanatical lobby is not representing America's best interest.

Again the real journalistic responsibility here is not to repeat the smears of the Rosners and Peretzes, but to examine the simple question: Is what Carter is saying of the Occupied Territories true? Having been there, I say it is.

I caught Lieberman on Meet the Press today. The guy is an amazing politician. He's always been a great politician, this time he outdid himself. He knows how to talk to people, he knows how to build a coalition, he is creative and synthetic and articulate. Hat's off to him for the political Lazarus job he pulled off since August 8.

He is also intellectually corrupt. When he says that America's biggest job is to reach "hearts and minds" across the Arab world and says that this is to be achieved by imposing democracy in Iraq, he has learned nothing from a bloody and horrifying experiment that has weakened America. He knows better. There's one thing that America can do tomorrow to reach hearts and minds across the Arab world, and that is to listen to what those Arabs say they want: for the U.S. to commit itself to a peace process in Israel/Palestine that will end the humiliation of the Palestinians and end attacks on Palestinians and Israelis. That commitment by American leaders might even help in the eventual stabilization of Iraq, indeed in reforming Islamic dictatorships.

Per Haaretz, the recent election has resulted in there being 13 Jews in Lieberman's club, our nation's most elite club, the Senate. That is 10 times the national percentage of Jews, 1.3 percent. This in spite of dire warnings from Gabriel Schoenfeld and Abraham Foxman about the return of anti-Semitism. These guys are simply wrong. The truth is that Americans like Jews in power, trust them with power. The great challenge to Jews in power is to recognize a reality in the Middle East that goes against the ideology of mainstream American Jewry, the Israel lobby, and most of the money that helped Lieberman rewin his seat: Palestinians have been too long denied the right to self-determination. (And the destruction of their hopes is corrupting Israel's soul...)

Even as the Washington Post continues its effort to blackball Walt and Mearsheimer as antisemites, how interesting that their ideas gain wider and wider circulation. Later this month the giant issue they raised, the Israel lobby, will be the subject of a debate, sponsored by the London Review of Books, in the great hall at Cooper Union in New York on Sept. 28.

Something else about this debate is the roster. On one side are the inevitable Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk. Joined now by Shlomo Ben-Ami, former Israeli foreign minister, who in his fine new book on the Arab-Israeli "tragedy" acknowledges the Zionists' "expulsions and atrocities" that resulted in ethnic cleansing of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948.

On the other side John Mearsheimer is joined now by the eloquent Rashid Khalidi and the redoubtable Tony Judt, who in a brilliant piece in Haaretz last spring described Israel as an indulged adolescent that refuses to grow up. (Though, witness Haaretz, the discourse on these issues in Israel is at a much higher level than ours). Expect the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis to be textured and expanded by the addition of an Arab and a Jew. To gain the psychological and geographical dimension that the authors, realist political scientists, were not able to supply. Their achievement in breaking the seal last March will only be magnified in this way. An event not to be missed!

HAIFA—Cpl. Michael Mizrahi’s Merkava tank crew had given up.  read more »

The Forward has a great editorial this week that makes the 1973 analogy. The humiliation to Israel of the 1973 Yom Kippur war led to the peace treaty with Egypt, and the humiliations to Israel of this latest war might prepare the ground for peace. Gideon Levy made the same point in Haaretz last week: Israel is a better loser than a winner.

(I felt the same way about Israel when I read a leading politician's comments in the Jerusalem Post about why Israel turned down Syria's offers to make peace over the last few years: "'Why should we negotiate with the Syrians and give up territory when they are too weak to threaten us?' was the understandable reasoning behind our refusal to answer Bashar [al-Assad]'s repeated offers to sit down with us and negotiate peace." Israelis like to say Arabs are sore losers. Well Israel is a sore winner.)

The Forward editorial ends by boldly taking on the Israel lobby, saying that the U.S. has got to apply pressure for a regional peace. "Bush has been convinced by self-appointed spokesmen for Israel and the Jewish community that endless war is in Israel's interest," the Forward says. Well-said. The U.S. needs to wake up.

Bob Herbert had a breathtaking column in the Times today, condemning Israel for going overboard in its (just) retaliation for the Hezbollah strike, and faulting the U.S. for allowing it. "Neither Israel nor the United States can kill enough Muslims to win the struggle against terror," he writes, and says the United States should have been a friend to Israel and told it "the carnage has to cease."

The piece echoes other critiques of Israel-U.S. relations in the last few months: the Walt-Mearsheimer bombshell on the Israel lobby, and Tony Judt's attack in Haaretz on "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up."

Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal.

The shock is that Bob Herbert is now saying something along these lines on the Times Op-Ed page, a place given to Tom Friedman's explanations of all Israel's choices and David Brooks's construction of camouflaged bunkers for fleeing neoconservatives. I admire Herbert's courage and hope he stays on message. Many Americans are confused and disturbed right now, and share his instincts. Herbert has done what a columnist should do, and told them how to think.

Three weeks ago, Tony Judt, a professor of European studies at N.Y.U., published a devastating piece in the Israeli daily Haaretz. Titled "The Country That Wouldn't Grow Up," it argued that Israel's contempt for world opinion of its actions had caused it to lose touch with reality.

the State of Israel remains curiously (and among Western-style democracies, uniquely) immature. The social transformations of the country - and its many economic achievements - have not brought the political wisdom that usually accompanies age. Seen from the outside, Israel still comports itself like an adolescent: consumed by a brittle confidence in its own uniqueness; certain that no one "understands" it and everyone is "against" it; full of wounded self-esteem, quick to take offense and quick to give it. Like many adolescents Israel is convinced - and makes a point of aggressively and repeatedly asserting - that it can do as it wishes, that its actions carry no consequences and that it is immortal.

The piece generated enormous comment in the Israeli daily. Then yesterday it was published in the Financial Times in England. A provocative argument by an eminent professor (himself Jewish), which includes an extensive passage about American opinion of Israel—has it been published in the United States? I emailed Judt to ask him.

Yes, we did try to place it in the US. I'm not sure I should publish the names of the outlets that passed on it, because in a couple of cases the editor in question would have liked to take it but for the usual considerations. But you could correctly write that various US periodicals (weeklies, monthlies) were asked and declined. It is, by the way, about to appear in Switzerland and Spain.

The Swiss, the Spanish, the English and the Israelis themselves are capable of hearing this argument. Not Americans. For "the usual considerations." If Israel is the country that hasn't grown up, we're the parent who's in denial.

Here's another vote of confidence in Freddy.

"I am planning to run for Mayor in the 2009 elections," Adolfo Carrion tells the Israeli daily Haaretz.  read more »

Later in the piece, he does say he's backing Ferrer this year.