And may it be a sweet New Year to you, the one that coincides with back-to-school and other habit-based forms of marking the march of time. Courtesy of my friend Joy Engel, here’s a suburban New York congregation explaining the meaning of Rosh Hashanah. I’m going to give blogging a rest for the next day. [...]

I can’t find a linkable transcript, but PM Netanyahu’s remarks last night at the White House to inaugurate the renewed peace process were really commendable. President Abbas, you are my partner in peace. And it is up to us, with the help of our friends, to conclude the agonizing conflict between our peoples and to [...]

Helene Cooper, if I may say: This is priceless. If the two sides get beyond Sept. 26, tough issues will remain. It’s a good piece, though! Either the U.S. shepherds the process to some settlement-moratorium compromise beyond September 26; the Palestinians cave completely on the settlement-freeze precondition; or the process fails entirely. (And chances are [...]

So as best as I can understand the Obama administration’s framework for a final-status agreement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — as reported by Yedioth Ahronoth — it’s to get the contours of a deal in place and then flesh out the implementation of the deal “within a number of years, apparently up to ten years [...]

Heeb is no longer publishing a magazine anymore. I’m glad to hear that heebmagazine.com will continue on. Not to be insensitive, but the internet-journalism supremacist in me inclines me to say: tribes(wo)men, you guys are going to keep doing great stuff online, freed of the formatting and financial burdens of print. I have a soft [...]

Dave Weigel just got a copy of something called The Arab Lobby, blurbed by the Anti-Defamation League. I haven’t heard of the book. But how I look forward to Walt/Mearshimer haters tying themselves in knots to explain how this Very Serious Expose of an insidious and distorting foreign influence on our politics needs to be [...]

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — For an excellent and succinct exploration of how slim the hopes for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians are in advance of the forthcoming direct negotiations, read this Ethan Bronner piece. I’m tempted to quote everything here, particularly about the mutual reinforcement between Abbas’ domestic weakness and Netanyahu’s disinterest. That [...]

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany — I know, I know. This is hopelessly tribal. Unless you count the day I spent three weeks ago at Ramstein, I’ve never been to Germany. Now I’m at the Barbarossahof hotel, an elegant 150-year old inn about 20 minutes outside the base, a short drive on the Autobahn — all it’s cracked [...]

Just wrapped a Danger Room wrap-up of Gen. Mattis’ confirmation hearing. One thing I didn’t think was particularly Danger Room-y was his support for a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Asked for his thoughts on a subject that got Gen. Petraeus needlessly and bizarrely attacked for saying nothing remotely controversial, Mattis obliged. From my [...]

Turkey is threatening to cut off ties to Israel over the flotilla raid. (Apparently back-channel talks aimed at repairing the breach in the Israel-Turkey relationship didn’t get very far.) But through Marc Lynch’s twitter feed, we learn: Bashar al-Asad: Turkey cutting ties with Israel would harm stability, peace in the region Marc’s source for that is [...]