Amy Levin: Given that today and tomorrow mark two extremely important national holidays in Israel beginning with Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance for Israeli soldiers, followed by Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s independence day, it seems fitting to bring the timeless debate over Zionism to the virtual table. This week, Huffpost Religion is publishing daily columns as part of a series called “Liberal Zionists Speak Out.”

The GOP cites Leviticus as just cause for a one-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

Paul Mutter:  Mitchell Plitnick reports that in a closed meeting in January, the Republican National Committee (RNC) adopted an official resolution supporting “united Israel governed under one law for all people.”  What?

Yes, according to the resolution, “the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.” The justification for this position begins with the words, “Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament.”

It seems that the bible–as Barbara Lerner expressed in the National Review,”restore what God gave Abraham’s people”–is the basis for Congressional Republican policy. So too is Rick Santorum’s telling gaffe. Christian Zionism is riding high as the 2012 elections approach. Brothers all are we?

Amy Levin: Rick Perry says it’s America’s war on religion, but a subset of the ultra-orthodox in Israel might beg to differ. Perry’s concerns have more to do with school prayer and re-sanctifying Christmas, but many of Israel’s ultra-orthodox are concerned with feminism, or what most feminists would simply call gender equality. Clashes between so-called religious and secular Israelis are nothing new, but a recent spur of incidents has caused a stir in the past few months.  For instance in December an 8-year old Israeli modern orthodox girl, Naama Margolese, was spit on and called a prostitute on her way to school by ultra-orthodox men –apparently her fully covered arms and legs were still considered immodest.

Amy Levin:  They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, that’s debatable. Due to a recent Israeli government-sponsored television ad campaign meant to persuade Israeli ex-pats living in America to return “home,” the geo-political sea between Jewish Americans and Israelis may be expanding, and Moses won’t be here to part it.

In response to the vitriolic condemnation of the ads which were said to offend both American Jews and Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu suspended the ads, which had circulated on Israeli television and American media outlets.

The ads were launched by Israel’s Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, featuring culturally salient themes – namely, that Israelis loose their Israeli identity in the assimilating nature of America. In one advertisement (watch here), a young Israeli woman returns to her apartment with her American (debatebly Jewish, more on this later) boyfriend who sees her Yom Hazikaron (Israel Remembrance Day) candle and embarrassingly (for his girlfriend, and me for that matter) misinterprets the candle as a “heated” gesture. Waw-wawww.

Some of the best reads from the past week, right here, still hot.

Examine what is said, not him who speaks. – Arab Proverb

According to The Forward, it’s tough times for City University of New York trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, the man who opposed awarding winning playwright Tony Kusher an honorary degree last week.  But Wiesenfeld, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who grew up on the Bronx streets getting bullied by the Irish and Puerto Rican kids, is tough.  After much noise and embarrassment CUNY reversed their decision, though Wiesenfeld remains opposed.  ”There are people who don’t like the fact that there are tough Jews,” says one of Wiesenfeld’s friends, Hank Sheinkopf, about the Kushner affair.

Another of Wiesenfeld’s recent shandas:  his service as chair of Stop the Madrassa:  A Community Coalition, a group formed to oppose a dual-language Arabic public school in New York.  “Taking the point of view that he was really anti-Arab is absurd and ridiculous. What he was opposed to was Shariah law,” Sheinkopf said. “He was opposed to the madrassas because he felt that Shariah law would be imposed.”

At Tikkun, Ralph Seliger re-examines the legacy of Hannah Arendt, the Jewish-German philosopher often shorthanded as an ardent anti-Zionist.

by Matthew Berkman

This article is reposted in whole from Foreign Policy.  The original article can be found here.

This week, in response to the highly publicized murder of a Jewish family in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, a group of 27 U.S. senators signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to press Palestinian leaders to end “incitement directed against Jews and Israel within the Palestinian media, mosques, and schools.” According to the letter, the grisly killings in Itamar (for which no suspects, Palestinian or otherwise, have been identified), “is a sobering reminder that words matter, and that Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israel can lead to violence and terror.”

As evidence for the allegation of pervasive anti-Jewish incitement in Palestinian society, the letter cites a recent, official ceremony honoring Delal Mughrabi, a perpetrator of the 1978 coastal road massacre in Israel, as well as a payment of financial compensation made by the Palestinian Authority to the family of a deceased terror suspect.

Such actions are deserving of condemnation. But if it is indeed the case that “words matter” -and if the elimination of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric is, as the letter says, “critical to establishing the conditions [for] a secure and lasting peace”-then what can explain the senators’ silence on the veritable carnival of hate and racist incitement against Arabs and Palestinians that has lately engulfed Israeli society?

Elizabeth Taylor, who died this week at the age of 79, was an ardent friend and supporter of Israel writes WaPo’s Nathan Burstein.

One storyline that’s making the rounds in the wake of ongoing protests in Egypt is that an applicable comparison can be made to Iran’s “green revolution” of 1979.  Ayaan Hirsi Ali has an op-ed in today’s New York Times titled, “Get Ready for the Muslim Brotherhood” that states as much, warning the U.S. that it [...]