“Our hands are always on the trigger.” Thus spoke an Iranian Revolutionary Guard officer, Gen. Hossein Salami, in reference to Iran’s two days of missile testing. The Shahab-3, which with its (at least) 1300 kilometer range can reach Israel, not to mention Europe, was among the weapons tested.

It’s a serious threat any way you slice it, but Salami forgot to mention that their other hands are on the mouse, controlling the Photoshop editor. By comparing the three photos below, the world found out that one missile failed at launching; but the Iranians didn’t like the impression that made, so they doctored the photo.

Even a Photoshop amateur like me could have done a better job of faking the fourth missile, so the stupidity of trying such a lame trick was compounded by ineptitude with the mouse as well as the trigger, and Iran can now be doubly embarrassed.

But that doesn’t make this much less of a threat. Iran wants us all to know that its promise to wipe Israel off the map is no idle chatter. It needs two things to keep that promise: the Shahab-3, and the weapons-grade nuclear material that may now be less than a year away.

Amos Harel, an Israeli military expert and the author of a book on the Second Lebanon War, said on the BBC this morning that neither Israel nor Iran wants war, and that seems to be the consensus among those who know. Certainly, neither an atom-armed Iran nor a preemptive strike against its nuclear plants is among Israel’s favorite options for the next year. But if forced to choose, it will not likely choose the former.

In early June, the IDF air command flew and refueled more than 100 war planes far out over the sea, rehearsing an Iran strike and demonstrating its ability to do it. Hardly a peep came out of the international community at that news, so Iran was shocked—shocked—that it was widely condemned just for tossing up a few rockets. But Mom, Israel can do it, why can’t we?

This kindergarten moralizing would play a little better if Iran weren’t denying the Holocaust, vowing to wipe Israel off the map, and preparing a second Holocaust in deeply buried bunkers full of thousands of humming centrifuges, all spinning out fissionable material.

Still, Israel surely wants to avoid striking Iran, and would be delighted to wake up one day and find that sanctions and diplomacy have worked. But there may not be much time left. It will probably not try anything until after our elections, but then its own elections may not be far off. If Obama wins here, Israel may not want to wait for January.

Israel is not asking for U.S. military action—unlike Western Europe, it never does—but it will need diplomatic cover, and that is most likely before Bush is replaced by a liberal Democrat. Let us hope that diplomacy and international pressure do the trick.

Meanwhile, Israel put a fancy spy plane on display near Tel Aviv, flexing a different kind of muscle—intelligence, the ability to know what Iran is doing. Also, Arrow anti-missile-missiles are in deployment. So the exchange of bluster goes on. But Iran is an existential threat to Israel, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that the opposite is the case.

A recent lecture by a retired IDF general summarized current Israeli defense doctrine. He said the country must be prepared for war on three fronts simultaneously, and he sounded quite confident. Israel, at 60, still surrounded by enemies, is readier than ever.

As of today, the Gaza cease-fire is fraying around the edges, but it holds on barely. A prisoner exchange with Hezbollah is in the offing, and may lead to more peace initiatives with Lebanon. Palestinian security forces are doing better in the West Bank. And even peace with Syria is higher on the agenda.

As they say in English, if you want peace, prepare for war. But as they say in Yiddish, A shlekhter sholem iz besser vi a gitter krieg—a bad peace is better than a good war. There are limits to that statement. A bad peace leading to a nuclear-armed Iran might be too bad.

Best of all, of course, would be a gitter sholem–a good peace.

For a change, Monday’s New York Times actually had a few good words to say about Israel. Their lead editorial, “Istrael’s Diplomatic Offensive,” praised Ehud Olmert’s government for bypassing George W. Bush and Condi Rice to make peace with some of its more unpleasant neighbors.

“Israel is increasingly willing to explore conversations with states and groups Washington would prefer to ignore and isolate. In recent weeks it has agreed to a limited, Egyptian-brokered cease-fire with the Hamas authorities in Gaza and is engaged in indirect peace talks with Syria, sponsored by Turkey. It is attempting to start similar discussions with the Lebanese government, despite — or more likely because of — Hezbollah’s growing political influence.”

I guess it’s gauche to point out that some of us have been writing about Israel’s courageous new peace efforts for weeks. To its credit, The Times goes on, “There are clear risks. Hamas may not respect or enforce the cease-fire; there have been almost daily violations. Syria may be as unbudging as it has been in past negotiations. Hezbollah may block talks with Lebanon or use them to buy time to build up its armaments and political leverage.”

Duh. Still, as they say, it’s right to try, even if Olmert is a besieged and weakening leader. Some on the right, both in Israel and the United States, find the peace offensive offensive. Some live with rockets raining down on them from Gaza while the IDF observes a cease-fire that the other side breaks with impunity. Some, Bible in hand, build new West Bank housing in places they believe should stay Jewish forever—even while Olmert’s government moves toward a Palestinian state. And some, of course, prepare to attack Iran.

Not all of this makes sense—pretty soon, I believe, Israel will have to break faith with certain Jewish Bible-thumpers. But the Middle East is a dangerous neighborhood. Only a fool would fail to prepare for all contingencies, and Israelis are not fools. But finally, the world’s leading newspaper recognized that they are taking great risks for peace.

More typical of The Times are two articles that appeared the previous day in the Book Review. One, “Israel’s Identity Crisis: Proposing an egalitarian democracy unencumbered by Jewish privileges,” was a glowing review of a book by Bernard Avishai.

According to both author and reviewer, Israel has to “develop a national consciousness and identity based not on religion, but simply on being Israeli — to remove all privileges accorded to Jews and make Israel a modern, egalitarian democracy. If all Israeli citizens were simply Israelis, rather than Jews, Muslims or Christians, there would be no ‘demographic threat.’”

I don’t know what world these men live in. Every other nation in the region, and many others throughout the world, would of course continue to be Muslim. No one would presume to deny them that right—least of all The New York Times. But teensy Israel would volunteer to give up its Jewish identity in the interest of spreading true democracy. And all would be well.

I hope Mr. Avishai and his adoring reviewer leave the night-light on when they finish reading this fairy tale to their children. It does sometimes get scary in the dark.

I was struck by the word “unencumbered” in the tag line—“unencumbered by Jewish privileges.” That wasn’t written by either the author or the reviewer, it was written by Times copywriters and vetted by Times editors.

No doubt the first encumbrance to go would be the right of return, then the right of self-defense, and finally the right to survive. The whole idea gives new meaning to the phrase “suicidal left.” Will the last Jew in Israel please turn out the light?

An essay in the same issue describes an old Hebrew novel about the shelling of a Palestinian village to drive the residents out during the 1948 War for Independence. The great Israeli writer A. B. Yehoshua, interviewed for the article, called it a classic. It represents the kind of soul searching many Israelis do, and they are the Israelis The New York Times likes to praise.

But Yehoshua also said that the history of Israel “hasn’t been ‘taking innocent citizens’ and trying ‘to do harm to them…It’s a war between two peoples about the land.’ The Palestinians ‘don’t want us for their own reasons, and we have to be there because we don’t have another place. This is the tragedy.’ Even if the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are ‘evil,’ Yehoshua added, ‘we cannot say that the other side doesn’t want to push us to the sea.’”

“It’s a war between two peoples about the land…This is the tragedy.” One definition of tragedy is an inexorable conflict between two goods. The suicidal left and the liberal press that praises it want to turn the tragedy into a fairy tale in which the Jews do the right thing, save the day, and disappear. Fortunately, the Jews prefer non-fiction.

The other day The New York Times reported on an interesting Israeli military exercise over the Mediterranean. Over 100 warplanes—F-15s and F-16s—flew a long distance west over the sea, far enough to have to refuel. Just far enough, in fact, to have reached Iran’s nuclear facilities had they flown east instead.

In the ‘80s I met a charismatic IDF pilot who was studying at the U.S. Air War College in Alabama, where he sat shoulder to shoulder with Arab pilots. (In those days the Muslim pilots ate kosher meals, since officially halal food was not yet common.) He loved the F-16; there was a glow in his eyes when he talked about it.

He was said to have taken part in the raid on Iraq’s nuclear reactor, destroyed by Israel in 1981. That move was roundly condemned by a world that lived to look back and be grateful. A similar move against a North Korean-built Syrian nuclear facility last fall produced barely a peep out of those countries and widespread diplomatic silence from others.

A move against Iran would be far more complex and risky. Iraq and Syria had one reactor each, above ground. Iran has many, most of which are buried and fortified; hence an exercise deploying 100 planes. Iraq and Syria had no plausible way to respond to those attacks; Iran can reach Israel with its missiles and can launch a campaign of terror using its proxies in Hezbollah and Hamas.

But many think that Iran’s response would be minimal and symbolic; they are too afraid of what Israel might do next. Meanwhile Palestinian terrorists in Gaza known as Islamic Jihad broke the truce begun last week by once again firing rockets at Sderot. Israel had been easing the blockade, but re-imposed it after the truce was broken. As always, the gates remain open to Palestinians needing medical care, which, as always, they will get in Israel’s hospitals, among the best in the world.

Today Tzipi Livni, the brilliant Foreign Minister, called for the IDF to retaliate against the Gaza jihadists. She and Shaul Mofaz, the former Defense Minister, are vying for the Prime Minister’s job when it comes open, and they both have to sound tough. Mofaz said recently that an attack on Iran’s nuclear plants was inevitable.

Yet, at the same time, bold peacemaking is under way. Talks with President Assad of Syria may eventually lead to an agreement that would neutralize this once-implacable enemy. Such an agreement would be good for the world. Syria, which is Sunni and Arab, does not belong in the orbit of Iran, which is Shi’a and Persian; that is just one of Iran’s imperial dreams.

But if Israel can help pry Syria away, it may aid the U.S. and the world by weakening Iran and strengthening the moderate Arab coalition. The boldest peace plan involves water from Turkish rivers. Turkey has far more water than it needs, and has good relations with both Israel and Arab countries including Syria, but it leans toward the West.

The plan involves diverting water toward Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, going through the Golan Heights. In a crowning irony, Arab countries that once threatened to strangle Israel by cutting off the Jordan River—a 1960s cartoon from a Saudi Arabian

daily promoted the idea—might actually become agents of peaceful cooperation providing unprecedented water supplies for Israel and others.

Of course, in this deal Israel would have to give up most of the Golan, captured from Syria during the 1967 war. If you have stood, as I and many others have, in a former Syrian bunker on the Heights, where you can look and easily shoot down on a playground in a Jewish settlement below, you will know why capturing those heights was important.

Yet most Israelis are willing. Military advances allow Israel to monitor enemy army movements moment to moment with or without full possession of the Golan. Still, minorities have a way of controlling events for a long time, so it is not clear that this very bold plan will come to fruition.

And perhaps it shouldn’t; that’s for Israelis, not me to decide. But I do know that while boldness in war has protected Israel from its enemies, boldness in peace has neutralized some of them as well. A cold peace with Egypt and a warmer peace with Jordan both have allowed Israel to focus on other enemies and other domains of life.

Boldness in war will continue to enable survival, but boldness in diplomacy may yet enable peace.

Tuesday night—actually the Wednesday morning driving hour there–I was on the Tovia Singer Show on Israel National Radio. He has three million listeners, many in the United States. He himself lived here until a couple of months ago, when he got a good deal on an apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City and immediately bought a one-way ticket. Now he lives a stone’s throw from the Kotel—the Western Wall.

When I was a boy it was called the Wailing Wall, because religious Jews made perilous pilgrimages from throughout the world—many died en route—to at last wend their way through Arab streets, touch the wall of the ruined Temple, pray, and weep.

Now they pass through Jewish security, enter a grand sunlit plaza, and pray in joy and freedom. Devout Muslims look down from the Temple Mount above, but there is no immediate danger. There are still the occasional tears, but they are not tears of grief shed because Jerusalem belongs to others. Some chinks in the wall bloom with hardy plants, others are crammed with tightly folded paper bearing heartfelt prayers.

Tovia disarmed me at the start of the interview by telling me that in the photo of my children on this website they are climbing the stairs past his new apartment. Tovia’s views are more hawkish than mine, but there is a bigger difference. The last time I was on his show, he lived in safe America. I brought my children up those stairs, and I took them to pray at the Wall, but Tovia Singer lives there now, and to me that means his opinion trumps mine.

Tovia wanted to talk about Jimmy Carter. I flatter myself that I am Carter’s nemesis, but I have to get in line for that honor. I’ve written a series of editorials on Carter since his biased, sloppy screed against Israel came out in 2006, but he’s increasingly irrelevant.

I recently told my wife that if I were McCain’s advisor, I would say “Carter-Obama” every time Obama says “Bush-McCain.” Whenever he says McCain is running for Bush’s third term, I would say Obama is running for Carter’s second. She replied, “Obama supporters don’t even know who Carter is.” Jimmy may yet be the poster boy for the Republican Jewish Coalition, as his desperate quest for attention makes him ever more outrageous. But at the moment he’s like a malevolent five-year-old: you don’t want to encourage him by watching.

“Is the 39th president of the United States an anti-Semite?” Tovia left me and his listeners with this cliffhanger before breaking for ads and news. I said we should use this term carefully; if Carter is one, what do we call Ahmadinejad?

But during the ruckus over his shoddy book he verged on classic anti-Semitic canards–like the Jewish lobby suppressing debate by controlling the media and the Congress. He chose his words carefully, to preserve deniability, but the anti-Semitic white supremacist websites loved them.

If there was a smoking gun, it was a note in his handwriting, on taxpayer-subsidized Carter Center stationery, accusing Rabbi Marvin Hier of spreading falsehoods to raise funds. When you accuse the distinguished leader of a revered Jewish institution of lying to get money, you are straddling the line.

Another line is the ever-blurrier one between being anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. Do we think that classic European anti-Semitism vanished after the Holocaust? Please. A potent vintage of that old sour wine in the new bottles of “legitimate” criticism of Israel is often brought out of the cellar and drunk with a large dollop of Arab vitriol.

The English used to say that an anti-Semite is someone who hates Jews more than necessary. Well, if you pop the cork of unfair, one-sided, grossly exaggerated criticism of Israel–and I’ll be the first to say it does deserve some criticism–you can smell the old sour wine, and Carter has been drinking it for years.

Meanwhile, other Christians—Christians United for Israel—sent me their weekly parsha, Isaiah 62:6-7:“I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth."

There is a new wall in Jerusalem, and although it has saved hundreds of Jewish lives it has garnered her anything but praise. But while watchmen are figuratively posted on that wall, others are trying bravely to transcend it. Carter may toy with his make-believe diplomacy, rebuke Israel, and issue dark hints about Jewish power. But his effect on the real peace process is: zero, at best.

In the past few days Israel’s government has taken bold steps: discussing a grand scheme to bring water from Turkey’s rivers to Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan through the Golan Heights, and, in exchange for that hard-won piece of land, turn Syria away from Iran and toward the West; announcing direct talks with Lebanon; continuing peace talks with the Palestinian Authority; and, through Egypt, brokering a cease-fire with Hamas that just this morning silenced the Gaza rockets—at least for now.

Israel’s watchmen can never and will never rest, and these efforts may not work. But the time may yet come when she is again the praise of the earth, and she will have earned a new motto:

Israel: Bold and victorious in war, bold and prosperous in peace.

That’s the translation of Shavuot, the holiday that began at dusk on Sunday. Among other ways, I was reminded of it by an email from Jerusalem—but from a rather odd source.

It came from the ICEJ, the self-styled International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. I say self-styled not as an insult but because it only represents a minority of Christians: those evangelicals who are strong supporters of Jews and Israel. I’ve written about my own experience at one of their pro-Israel rallies (“With friends like these…”) and I know some Jews are wary of their support.

I am too, but much, much less than I was before I got to know them. They really mean it, and they (unlike some other Christians) have no desire at all to convert the Jews, at least not until the end of days. Since I don’t believe in the end of days (nor do any Jews in the sense that evangelicals mean it) I’m not worried.

Now I find myself, having been raised as an Orthodox Jew, being reminded of Shavuot by evangelical Christians. They call it Pentecost, and their director, Rev. Malcolm Hedding, summarizes its meaning, under these headings:

A Day of Longing (for God’s Spirit), A Day of Instruction, A Day of Maturity (you grow by combining the Spirit with the Word), and “A Day of Gratitude. Pentecost reminds us of the uniqueness of Israel. From this nation came the Word of God which, when empowered by the Spirit, has transformed our lives…Truly, we owe this people a great debt!” He goes on to thank his readers “for your continued faithfulness in standing with the people of Israel.” The Spirit, he believes, came especially after Jesus, but far from suggesting replacement, Rev. Hedding honors our priority and our enduring value.

For observant Jews, Shavuot is the culmination of the grain harvest in ancient Israel, beginning during Passover with barley and ending with wheat after seven weeks—seven sevens—of counting. The fiftieth day is the festival (hence the Greek name Pentecost) and the ancient Israelites marked it with pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem, where they brought their first fruits as offerings.

During the seven weeks, the first to ripen of each of the “seven species”—barley, wheat, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates—were marked by having a reed tied to them, and then were harvested and on the holiday carried to Jerusalem. Today, Jews still bring plants, flowers, and leafy branches into home and synagogue; even for secular Israelis it’s a great day for flowers.

Another custom has religious Jews up all night in study, because Shavuot also celebrates the giving of the Torah to Israel at Sinai. The Jews, by tradition, have loved study ever since, and show it through a sleepless night brightened by lively discussion and culminating in a prayer service at dawn. I have done this, and it is very moving.

One thing always read on Shavuot is the book of Ruth, one of five short books each tied to a specific holiday. Esther is another, read on Purim. I said in a blog around then that Esther’s is the ultimate Jews-and-others story–she saves the Jews by being married to a non-Jewish king.

But Ruth is a close second. She and another Moabite–enemies of Israel–are married to two Jewish brothers, and when they die in Moab their mother, Naomi, returns to Israel, releasing her daughters-in-law from any further obligation. One takes her tearful leave, but Ruth says words that have echoed through millennia:

“Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest I will go…thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God. Whither thou diest, there will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.”

Her loyalty is rewarded; this supposed enemy of Israel is thoroughly embraced. Through a fine seduction orchestrated by Naomi, Ruth wins a rich and noble Jewish husband. Hearing the story from others, he praises her kindness and courage in leaving the land of her birth, to “come unto a people which thou knewest not…a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.”

And later she is welcomed by what seems almost a ceremonial conversion: “And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses. The Lord make the woman that is come unto thy house like Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel.”

Ruth the Moabite could hear no more welcoming blessing, and it comes true: Not only does she make a marvelous marriage, she becomes almost a matriarch herself. Her great-grandson is David, Israel’s greatest king. And Jewish tradition holds that from David’s line the Messiah will come—Mashiach ben David—Messiah, son of David. Or, you could say, grandson of Ruth the Moabite.

The story speaks for itself on the subject of Jews-by-Choice. This one was welcomed with open arms and hearts, and the result, for Jews, was magnificent.

I’ll explain my odd title, but first: I am reading an absolutely marvelous book, by an old friend. It’s called The 28th of Iyar, and it’s by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, but it’s just “Emanuel Feldman” on this one. It’s not a religious book in the usual sense, and yet it is deeply so.

The Jewish date of the title is now Yom Yerushalayim, which commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem under Jewish rule in 1967—for the first time in nineteen centuries. And the book is a diary of Feldman’s life with his very American family in Israel in the days leading up to and during the Six-Day War.

I’ve been saving it to read during this year’s anniversary of the war, and I am savoring it without disappointment. It is by turns ethnographic, elegiac, proud, sad, alienated, emotional, spiritual, painterly, and—as always if you know Rabbi Feldman—laced with a delicious delicate wry humor even in this most ominous moment.

Make no mistake, it was. I keep slapping my forehead to remind myself: You know the outcome, but they didn’t! In fact, there was little reason to believe that Israel would survive.

I also found on the internet a booklet, called “Israel Must Be Annihilated,” which by coincidence just arrived from a second-hand bookstore on the 28th of Iyar. It holds cartoons from the Arab pressand other Arab sources compiled by the Zahal

Information Office in July, just after the war.

The title represents the explicit Arab goal. President Nasser of Egypt said, “Our objective is the destruction of Israel…the liquidation of Israel.” President Atassi of Syria said in May 1966, “We are looking for a total war which will not recognize any bounds.” Damascus Radio screamed, “More battles! Kill them! Butcher them! Wash your weapons clean of their blood in the waters of Jaffa, Acre, Haifa!” But if a picture is worth a thousand words, the cartoons speak many thousands.

Still, Feldman’s words profoundly evoke the day-to-day of the crisis. Two weeks before the war, call-ups began. Men left B’nei B’rak, the Feldmans’ Orthodox neighborhood, in large numbers, even on Shabbat, boarding military buses while still in shtreimels—their traditional fur hats—and carrying duffel bags, with the Rebbe’s dispensation. An officer came to one family’s door during Kiddush and waited. The cup passed to all lips, including the officer’s. Then the father grabbed his own bag and followed him.

In the parking lot of Bar Ilan University where he was teaching Feldman saw his students boarding buses. “My students. Off to war. To be killed, to be maimed…my boys. I had not realized I had become attached enough to them to become maudlin…All the tensions and fears of the past week well up within me, and I sit in the car in silence, watch them load up, and weep. It is such a bright, crisp, blue morning. They might be going off to a football game, so carefree do they seem.”

The world is not there for them. France wants Arab oil and stays neutral. The U.S. stalls “and issues platitudes. And England—lovable England…sends its well-groomed diplomats with their carefully trimmed mustaches all over the world…See my diplomat. Watch him fly. Here he is. There he goes. See his nice clothes. Hear him speak.

“Let’s face it…the free world is going to be quite content to sit idly by and fold its hands and allow another two and a half million Jews to be slaughtered. Al tivtichu bindivim, do not trust in princes. And the Catholic Church…so ecumenical, so repentant…so embarrassed over their silence in World War II—what are they saying now? An ominous, deathly silence thunders forth from the Vatican.”

        Thousands of resident Americans clamor for the exits, but the Feldman family stays. Israeli acquaintances are first baffled, then grateful. The rabbi, lightly mocking himself, tries to convince them that God still has a role. “God knows we need tanks,” one skeptic finally says.

On the world’s calendar, today, June 5, marks the day the war began. So why my title? Yesterday’s paper arrived with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gritting his teeth and staring out at me. Speaking at the U.N. food security summit (where else?) in Rome (where else?) he said that Israel will “certainly” cease to exist. On his way there

he said that the “satanic powers” of the U.S. will be “uprooted” and that Israel is “about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene.”

I showed my wife his angry face juxtaposed to the Israel-Must-Be-Annihilated cartoon book of 1967. “Oh,” she said. “I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket.” She calls him that with fine contempt, just as Winston Churchill used to say “Nar-zees” instead of Nazis. “Sure, he’ll eliminate America and Israel at the same time.”

She’s right, of course. He’s a tin-pot dictator banging on himself and sounding hollow. Now. If he gets nuclear, though, he still won’t be a match for America’s powers, but he will be able to annihilate Israel.

Today, June 5, 1967–the 26th of Iyar in that year–with war imminent, Israel destroyed the air forces of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan while the planes were on the ground. Had they not, Israel would not have existed a week later. The Feldman family, B’nei B’rak, and the rest of Israel’s neighborhoods would have been decimated. The vision in the Arab cartoons and speeches would have been realized.

Now President I’m-a-Dinner-Jacket, a couple of years away from nuclear arms, promises to destroy Israel. Soon, he can. What will Israel do? I don’t know; any course is gravely perilous. I am not there and I will not decide. But I do know this: The threat to Israel’s existence—and of another genocide—is far from over, and I will support what they decide.

I have a lot of problems with Obama, and I’ve written about Jewish opinion for and against him. But the flap over his Holocaust gaffe is no issue at all. What did he say? That he had an uncle who as an American G.I., was involved in the liberation of Auschwitz. What was true? That he had a great-uncle who as an American G.I. was involved in the liberation of Buchenwald.

Okay, there is a difference. Theoretically he should have known that Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviets. Also theoretically, he should have given the exact degree of genetic relatedness between himself and the aging liberator.

Come on, folks, if this is the kind of thing you have to jump on to beat the guy, those who oppose him are in deep trouble. How many Jewish Americans know who liberated Auschwitz? How many knew Obama had made a mistake before the attack dogs raised the flag over it? As for relatedness, how many Americans of any stripe are precise enough to say “great-Uncle Fred” instead of “Uncle Fred” when referring to a much-loved family member?

Consider also the context: He was trying to make the point that he understands returning soldiers who are psychologically crippled by their devastating experience. Why? Because after his great-uncle got home, the poor guy spent six months holed up in the house—partly in the attic—because he was shattered by what he had seen.

Obama has every right to be proud of his great-uncle for two reasons: he didn’t shirk the duty to fight and risk his life for (among other things) the closing of the gas chambers; and he didn’t take in stride the hideous cruelty he saw.

This is not the Obama gaffe that we should worry about.

The one to worry about is the one about meeting with Ahmadinejad, who has sworn to destroy Israel and who supports those who kill Jews throughout the world. (Also, the tinpot dictators of Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela.)

Or the one about how Hillary’s threat to obliterate Iran should it do the same to Israel is some sort of wacko warmongering. Or the one about how Bush’s reference to appeasement in his Knesset speech was nothing but political positioning.

And how about the one about how he could never disown the man who was like an uncle—Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who over the twenty years that Obama was regularly in the pews of his church, preached anti-Israel, anti-American, and nearly anti-Semitic sentiments from the pulpit.

Those are the kinds of gaffes that may reveal the kind of President Barack Obama would be. Those are the gaffes that, should he stick by them, could get Israel wiped off the map, just as Ahmadinejad promises to do. Those are the gaffes that could lead to a repeat of the worst things that have happened in Jewish history.

Suppose Obama had been President instead of Roosevelt when millions of Jews were being murdered. Do we know what he would do? I don’t. Suppose he had been in the White House instead of Harry Truman when Israel declared its independence? Would he have gone smack dab against Arab and world opinion and recognized Israel eleven minutes later? I wonder.

Last week Obama gave one of his reassuring speeches to an adoring liberal Jewish audience at a Boca synagogue, B’nai Torah. He said all the right things. He always says all the right things to those kinds of audiences.

But as one congregant said, “It's very easy to come down here to south Florida to a synagogue and preach to the choir about how much you love Israel. But I want to see him say that in Dearborn, Michigan, before a hall full of Muslims. Then he will have my attention.”

Another made reference to his long friendship with Rev. Wright: “When you're indoctrinated for 20 years, 99 percent of the time it will leave an impression on you.”

Obama has been backpedaling on some of these very serious gaffes. But he has a lot more convincing to do if he wants the usual automatic Democratic share of the Jewish vote. And he needs to do more than talk.

He needs to pick a running mate with a real record of support for Israel and tough-minded foreign policy. And he needs to announce some possible candidates for Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, National Security Advisor, and United Nations representative who can be relied on to protect the Jewish state.

Other heroes (like Shimon Waronker) notwithstanding, Melissa Fay Greene and Donny Samuel get this year’s Jews and Others Award (which I just invented) for the Bar Mitzvah of the decade in Atlanta, where four of their five adopted children (three from Africa, one from Bulgaria) were called to the Torah in one morning as the fifth and their four older, biological children joined in and beamed proudly.

Each of the five adoptees was plucked out of orphanhood in a poor country and plunked down by Melissa and Donny into a stimulating and comfortable middle-class urban American life. And because their parents are very Jewish (without being remotely Orthodox)

all nine of the kids are too.

You can learn much more about this amazing family on Melissa’s web site, but I’m going to say things about the couple here—all good—that you won’t hear from her. While the rest of us watch remote suffering on TV and feel sad, they turn their lives inside out to offer deprived children from the other side of the world a wonderful life.

I met them in the ‘80s, when we were neighbors with small children who had recently settled in Atlanta. My wife and I shared pizza with them at a local place and heard about Don’s law practice—he’s now the best-known criminal defense attorney in these parts. We also heard Melissa was writing a book. To my credit, I was very supportive. I always am. But I walked off thinking, that’s nice, local mom aspires to authorship.

The book was Praying for Sheetrock, a lyrical and moving account of small-town race relations in seventies South Georgia. It was nominated for the National Book Award and listed as one of the 100 most important journalistic works of the twentieth century by The New York Times. Three other award-winning books followed, including The Temple Bombing, about the episode in the fifties when Atlanta’s leading Reform synagogue was attacked because its rabbi supported integration, and most recently There Is No Me Without You, about an Ethiopian woman who adopted over a hundred AIDS orphans.

Compared to that selfless lady, Melissa will readily tell you, she doesn’t think she’s done much, but to me, she and Donny are practically saints, and the results of all they have done were on display last Saturday, when these extraordinarily generous people took over a camp in North Georgia and Rabbi Hillel Norry (head of Atlanta’s Congregation Shearith Israel, largely moved north for the occasion) led a service in which four kids who had started life in Ethiopian or Bulgarian orphanages came to maturity as American Jews.

Daniel arrived only last year from Africa. Fisseha (aka Sol) has been here longer, while Helen (also from Ethiopia) and Jesse (the Bulgarian) have been here six or seven years. But all said the blessings over the Torah. Jesse and Helen read a hilarious skit in English, basically a riff on the Torah portion of the day, which said you have to take care of your brothers. (It means, said Jesse, if all of us are poor and move in with you, you can never kick us out!) Daniel read a translation of the Torah portion in Amharic.

But as the boys would freely tell you, diminutive, lovely, brilliant Helen, just shy of twelve, carried the largest liturgical burden. In impeccable Hebrew she read from the Torah about the Jubilee year—”Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof!” which is carved on our Liberty Bell, is in this portion–the Haftorah (a linked long excerpt from Jeremiah chanted in a different mode), and the entire service following the Torah reading.

When we first came to Atlanta we rejected this congregation because our daughters would not be treated equally. Now, under a new, liberal, young rabbi, not only a girl but a former African orphan whose mother died of AIDS was standing on the bima leading two hundred people in Jewish prayer, doing more at her Bat Mitzvah than most boys born Jewish in America ever do. So the Jewish Liberty Bell might have rung for Helen.

And of course, they all come from racial backgrounds that once would have tested the tolerance of most American Jewish congregations. But here and now they were tearfully welcomed into the Jewish fold, praised to the skies, and at the end of their great accomplishment showered with the traditional rain of candy, to link Jewish learning with all the sweetness of life.

Of course, not all that is Jewish is sweet. Daniel and Yosef, the ten-year-old whose Bar Mitzvah is still in the future, were circumcised recently, which can’t have been fun at their age. On the way home, Daniel reportedly said in his still halting English, “Mom… doctor…very dangerous…very dangerous!” But by the day of the huge sibling triumph, they were fully recovered and having a wonderful time.

During his remarks on the Torah portion, the deeply spiritual Rabbi Norry said, “Donny and Melissa asked me not to say anything about what they have done, so I won’t.” In the second or so of silence before he went on to praise the children, everyone—certainly every parent—there created in his or her own mind a moment’s monument to their sacrifices. When I mentioned it later to them separately, they each said, “It’s not about us.”

Well, maybe that wasn’t, but this is.

Harry Truman, who made “feisty” a White House press corps cliché, was the most important single non-Israeli who made its birth possible. On this day sixty years ago the delivery was announced, and Harry was the midwife. He defied British allies, marshaled American good will, and ordered his reluctant UN representative to support partition, knowing Arab rage and a war of attempted extermination would follow.

Truman took all of 11 minutes to make the United States the first nation to recognize Israel. He later explained a how he got there, talking about his long-term friend, fellow WW I soldier, and partner in the Truman & Jacobson Haberdashery in Kansas City:

“This man…was Eddie Jacobson, one of the finest men I ever had anything to do with. And, he and I completely understood each other. And we offset each other. He was one of the best buyers that I ever came across. And I was one of the best salesmen that he ever had to be associated with.” One day Jacobson visited the White House.

“He came in, stood around, didn’t say very much, was as quiet as he could be, and I finally said, ‘Eddie, what in the world’s the matter with you? Have you at last come to get something, ‘cause you never have asked me for anything since I’ve been in the White House and since we’ve been friends.’ And then he told me that he thought that I ought not to keep Dr. Weizmann out of the White House. He thought I ought to see him.

“And I told him that I would see the doctor, but he’d have to bring him in the side door—I didn’t want any propaganda started on the thing. Dr. Weizmann’s first name was C-H-A-I-M, and I didn’t know how to pronounce it, so I called him “Cham”—called him that to his face—and he liked it. He was a wonderful man, one of the wisest people I think I’ve ever met. He was a leader—one of the kind you read about and seldom see.

“Dr. Weizmann came to see me. We had a long, long conversation, and he explained the situation from his viewpoint, and I listened to him very carefully, and at the same time I sent for Eddie Jacobson and they both sat down and talked to me for a long, long time. When we were through, I said, ‘Alright, you two Jews have put it over on me, and I’m glad you have, for I like you both.’

“On my desk at the White House, I used to keep a quotation from Mark Twain, which said, ‘Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest.’” Truman astonished the world, as the envoy declared at the UN, “The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the new State of Israel.”

Today, exactly sixty years later, George W. Bush addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, the culmination of a two-day conclave of heads of state, Nobel laureates, and other distinguished friends of Israel, convened by President Shimon Peres, who at 84 is the most prominent Israeli who was an adult in 1948.

Now, I’m no fan of Mr. Bush, but when, in the outdoor welcoming ceremony, the Stars and Stripes were raised between two blue Stars of David on fields of white, and heard an Israeli military band strike up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” I was moved–and then amused, remembering a T-shirt in Jerusalem: khaki-colored, with the outline of an F-16 and the words, “Don’t worry America, Israel is behind you.”

Bush’s presidency leaves much to be desired, but somebody wrote him a great speech. He mangled some ad-libbed Hebrew: “Yo-hem…A…Hatzmut” was his reading of “Yom Ha’atzma’ut,” but then “nucular” remains his idea of “nuclear.” A guy who’s still struggling in English can’t be expected to say “Happy Independence Day” in Hebrew. Then too, Harry said “Cham”—“ch” as in “Chuck”–instead of “Chaim.” He opened his heart to “Cham” and helped give life to Israel.

George saluted the ex-leaders in the audience and said, “Save a seat in the ex-leaders’ club.” For many, the day he takes that seat can’t come too soon. He also saluted Truman, whose feistiness he wants to emulate. And his sweeping sixty-year overview was superb. Unfortunately, this nice speech includeded a thinly-veiled swipe at Obama, which has dominated the news. (For my take on Obama, click here.)

Bush has been a friend to Israel, but was very late in trying to bring it peace. Still, better late than never, and if peace is delayed, Israel will take care of itself. Truman said that he would not send half a million troops to help Israel; he instead sent the number Israel asked for: none. The same is true of every single US president since.

As Peres recalled yesterday, John F. Kennedy once asked David Ben Gurion what he could do to help Israel. “Ben Gurion replied, ‘Be a great president of the United States of America.’” Bush is not that, Truman perhaps was, but Ben Gurion’s wisdom stands. What Israel needs most from America is America’s own strength, dignity, and freedom; this is automatically good for Israel and the Jews.

Israel is celebrating her sixtieth, a year and a half after I celebrated mine. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know and care about her. I grew up in Brooklyn among Zionist orthodox Jews; given how great the grief was after the Holocaust, and how high the elation at Israel’s founding, her name could easily have been among my first words. I grew up loving America, idolizing my uncles and my teachers who had fought in America’s wars; I was even named after my mother’s favorite cousin, who went down with his B-25 during World War II.

But if America was my mother—the water I drank, the air I breathed—Israel was my first crush, my love, my dream. I was twelve when I read Exodus—I can still picture myself lying prone on my bed flipping the pages of the floppy paperback, which had suffered from the intensity of my reading. It’s not that I owe my love of Israel to Leon Uris— my grandparents, my parents, my beloved rabbi, and many others set me up for it. But that story of Israel’s fight to be born from the ashes of the Shoah, beset by Arab enemies as hateful and numerous as the Germans (although fortunately less resourceful) took over my heart and mind. I never recovered, and I’m glad.

Israel was then just ten years old, and its survival was constantly in question. Now, at sixty, it is almost as old and creaky as I am—less idealistic than we used to be, alas, but on more solid ground. We’ve both accumulated a lot of baggage over the years, and more than a few regrets. We’ve had joys and suffered losses, we’ve seen friends come and go, we’ve changed our view of ourselves and realized that things have not turned out quite the way we hoped. Nevertheless, looking back, warts and all, we’ve had a good run. We’ve accomplished less than we dreamed but more than enough.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool American and likely to remain so. But, to mangle the beautiful words of a twelfth-century poet, part of my heart is in the Middle East. Each time I go to Israel—eight trips so far—I think, “I belong here.” But then I don’t, really. Call me a dreamer, but I believe in America at least as much, in different ways for different reasons, and America is my place.

Israel is a homeland for a people shattered and almost destroyed by history. I am proud to be a part of that people. But America—again, warts and all—is an idea and an ideal for all humanity. As with Israel, I wish with all my heart that America lived up to its own dream of itself. But it’s the best damn idea for a country ever invented, and I am proud to be a part of that idea.

Last night at Israel’s birthday bash in Atlanta, I stood and chatted and ate and drank and sang among other people like me—longing at times for their Jewish homeland but living in their American one. There is no contradiction, but there is that pull. For Jews, including Americans, who make aliya—the ascent—the more power to them. I will be visiting as often as I can, and I hope the visits will be longer and deeper as time goes by. But I will stay down here in the practical mess of America’s melting pot, reaching constantly for the American idea.

Last evening’s highlight for me was a short speech by Reda Mansour, Israel’s extraordinary Consul General for the southeastern region. He is a gifted young man with a bright future, the author of three books of poetry in Hebrew, soon to earn a doctorate in history from Haifa University. He speaks five languages. He said that he is the third generation in his family to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and that in three years his oldest son will be the fourth.

Oh, did I mention that Reda Mansour is not Jewish? He is a Druze—a branch of Muslims something like Unitarians—who have often been persecuted, but have thrived in Israel. He has devoted his life to two causes: defending Israel and promoting tolerance. He says that Israel’s greatest accomplishment is peace, and that that accomplishment is still ahead of her. But he also says that Israel, at 60, is already a beacon of tolerance and democracy in a region fraught with hatred, tyranny, and strife.

In other words, like me and Reda, Israel too is reaching for the American idea.

Reda’s grandfather, who lived to be over a hundred, praised the Jews for their tolerance and achievements; the grandson is living out the dreams of his family and his people. In today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Reda wrote, “Israel will prove that the victory of peace over hate is inevitable.” As my grandfather would say, fun zayner munt tzu Gottes eyer—from his mouth to God’s ear.