(NEWS) ADL Downgrades Swastika As Jewish Hate Symbol

"The painting of a swastika — that dark, ubiquitous signature of hateful vandals everywhere — is no longer automatically considered an act of anti-Semitism under new guidelines for recording attacks against Jews announced this week by the Anti-Defamation League.

The most prominent Jewish defense agency in the country, perhaps in the world, announced on Tuesday that it has revamped its guidelines for recording anti-Semitic incidents in its annual survey for the first time in 30 years, taking a more conservative approach.

'We know that the swastika has, for some, lost its meaning as the primary symbol of Nazism and instead become a more generalized symbol of hate,' said Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, who was a hidden child during the Holocaust in a statement. 'So we are being more careful to include graffiti incidents that specifically target Jews or Jewish institutions as we continue the process of re-evaluating and redefining how we measure anti-Jewish incidents.'"

(BLOG) A Third Lebanon War?

"There has been a steady and disturbing barrage of reports lately prediciting another war, sooner rather than later, between Israel and Hezbollah, the militant Islamic group that controls most of southern Lebanon and is firmly entrenched in the Lebanese parliament.

As you may recall, the 2006 cease-fire resulted in UN Resolution 1701, which prohibited Hezbollah from rearming. But as Daniel Kurtzer, the former U.S. Ambassador to Egypt and Israel, reports in a comprehensive 'contingency planning memorandum' for the Council on Foreign Relations, 'Hezbollah's arsenal is more potent in quantity and quality today than it was in 2006.'"

(BLOG) How Liberalism, Zionism Reinforce Each Other

"The increasingly popular claim that Zionism and liberalism are incompatible misreads contemporary Israeli politics, modern Zionism and liberalism itself.

Zionism, like Americanism, is a form of liberal nationalism, one of the world’s most constructive, successful ideologies. Liberalism and Zionism remain not just compatible but mutually reinforcing.

Like George W. Bush’s America, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel is a diverse democracy, with its current conservative government vigorously opposed politically and within civil society. Israel has a powerful left-leaning judiciary, an outspoken left-leaning press, and an influential left-leaning intelligentsia. In Israel today, women’s legal rights to an abortion are rarely questioned. Gays serve openly in the military. Israel’s labor federation, the Histadrut, remains formidable.

Moreover, in the last 15 years, as Israel ceded control of most major Palestinian population centers to the Palestinian Authority and left Gaza, most Israelis accepted the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism. Netanyahu’s government has endorsed a two-state solution, dismantled checkpoints and nurtured the West Bank economy. By contrast, most Arabs continue to repudiate Jewish nationalism, meaning Zionism. The Israeli peace consensus, which has consistently supported territorial compromise, is currently stymied because the recent concessions triggered violence, followed by international condemnation when Israeli defended itself.

While Israelis quarrel about how to achieve peace, the systematic campaign to delegitimize Israel combined with Israel’s continuing control over millions of Palestinians has helped make Israel politically poisonous to many liberals."