Spooks Galore

I'm not certain we'll ever know the full story here, but the idea the Israelis wre collaborating with the Russians against the other Russians against the Arctic Sea in the English Channel is as plausible as any version of the murky story so far offered.

The Staying Power of American Jews

The section of the Bava Batra tractate we covered last week spent more than two double pages discussing various aspects of tsedaka, which is sort of a cross between charity, alms-giving, and philanthropy. (No, they're not all the same - and see also the previous post). At one point the discussion focuses on the case where a prominent non-Jewish woman sought a scholar to manage a donation for her. R. Ami turned her down, while Rava accepted the charge. The Gemara assumes they both knew the same halachic restrictions and stipulations on non-Jews and Tsedaka, but ultimately it seems the differing decisions were a matter of geopolitics. The woman was the mother of a Persian king. R. Ami, living in Eretz Yisrael under Roman jurisdiction, could turn her down, while Rava, living under the jurisdiction of her son, couldn't. (Bava Batra 10b).

Borrowing this ancient story for a very contemporary topic, it should be clear that American Jews and Israelis may have legitimate differences on many issues, even assuming either community ever had unanimity an anything on its own side. Geography matters today, as it did eighteen hundred years ago.

My question regarding this editorial in The Forward isn't about it's thesis, but about it's unspoken underlying quandary. The thesis is that the Birthright program which flies young American Jews to Israel for 10 fantastic days isn't enough to forge a long-term bond with Israel; the main follow-up program, apparently, looks sort of like an attempt to proselytize to orthodox Judaism, and this must be countered.

Fair enough for what it's worth. Yet isn't the real problem, even as described by the editorial itself, that for most young American Jews, short of orthodox Judaism there isn't much of a program or option that's particularly compelling?

The community is far less adept at effectively reaching out to single, unaffiliated Jews in their 20s, who marry and procreate later than their parents, and enter adulthood at a time of limitless opportunities as Americans, including the opportunity to ignore their faith and live outside the tribe. Worrying though the Jewish Enrichment Center is, it fills a void left by the inability or unwillingness of more progressive denominations to engage in the kind of passionate outreach characteristic of the ultra-Orthodox. This dynamic is played out on college campuses, where students flock to the warmth and welcome (and, let’s be honest, the liquor) offered in a Chabad house on a Friday night rather than the more institutional atmosphere of the local Hillel or synagogue.

I'm not being judgmental. The historical evidence is that Jews have carried on longer than any other known group, in spite of more adverse conditions, because they wanted to. On past evidence, then, they'll probably continue carrying on to the extent they have the willpower. Where the willpower is insufficient, so will the staying power be lacking.

Pervasive indifference of American Jews to their Judaism is regrettable for Israel, but not an existential threat. It may be such a threat to American Jewry.

Tsedaka

Rabbi Yehuda says:
Ten elements were created, each more powerful than the next.
Rock is hard, but iron cuts it.
Iron is hard, but fire melts it.
Fire is powerful, but water douses it.
Water is powerful, but clouds carry it.
Clouds are powerful, but wind dissipates them.
Wind is powerful, but living bodies contain it.
The body is strong, but fear breaks it.
Fear is powerful, but wine banishes it.
Wine is powerful, but sleep supersedes it.
And death is more powerful than them all.
Yet tsedaka (charity, good deeds) protects from death, as is said (Proverbs 10 verse 2)
"righteousness delivers from death" [The original Hebrew says Tsedaka, which is not synonymous with righteousness].

Bava Batra, 10a.

This thread began, and is explained, here.

Fly with the Best

When I was a kid I loved flying. These days, though I do more of it, and maybe even ever more, I don't enjoy it. Not only the endless hours of pretending to be a sardine bother me, or sharing germs with 400 strangers. It's also the fragility of the thing. I suppose this reflects the adult understanding of mortality which youth is so blissfully free of.

To the extent possible, if my travel plans enable it, I try to fly with Israeli airlines. In this case, not for patriotic reasons, but for security ones (Israeli planes are hard to hijack), and for safety ones. In America suicidal Islamists used to be able to take flying courses; even assuming they no longer can, lots of other strange folks apparently still can. You walk in off the street and start training. (In Russia the registration may be more restricted, but the maintenance crews use strings and glue). With the Israeli airlines, you know the pilot spent years in the IAF, doing more complicated things, before downgrading to simple craft like Boeings. If you must put your existence in someone's hands, these guys are professionals.

How professional? Look at this story and embedded video. An IAF F16 took off today with a young (22-year-old) pilot, and an older navigator behind him. Right after taking off there was aproblem with the engine. The control tower told them to bail out, but the expereinced navigator said there was no need. They flew to a high altitude, shut the engine off completely, and glided back to base. The film looks just like any other plane coming in to landing - except this one has been flying with no engine. Moreover, as they come in to land you can hear the tower and two crewmen talking. The tower is giving instructions about all the preparations they've made for a crash; the navigator is saying everything is going just fine, and the pilot is concentrating.

Awesome.

PS. Yes, I know that pilot in the Hudson did the same. I try to fly with him as often as I can't fly with one of ours.

The Ongoing Farce of Mixing Law With Politics

Regular readers will know I don't have a high opinion of the popular trend to use legal perspectives and tools to interfere with political processes. But here's a cute example.

It seems some canny lawyers have maneuvered the High Court into demanding the government explain why the ratio of demolishing illegal Palestinian homes is so significantly lower than that of Jewish homes in the illegal outposts. Interestingly, all sides to the discussion agreed about the facts themselves: very few Palestinians who build homes on land they can't prove ownership of, need fear the homes will be demolished.

Now I understand that lots of folks will be rolling their eyes at this point in deepest frustration: Don't you understand, Yaacov, the entire Occupation is illegal! The State of Israel is illegal! Zionism is the abomination!

Ah, but that's exactly my point. Two points, actually. The first is that the realm to resolve political disputes is politics, not courts. The second is that these people don't care about law, international or otherwise, unless they feel it says what they wish it to say. Were someone to prove otherwise, they probably would reject him (or her) as a Neocon or a fascist or an AIPAC-stooge; but it wouldn't make any difference anyway, because were the legal pillar of their argumentation to be seriously weakened they'd simply abandon it and move on to other arguments.

This is the way it always was with antisemites. Personally, however, I feel it's worth the effort to neutralize those of their arguments as may be neutralized. Not because their hatred will disappear, but because we need to keep them moving along.

Norwegian Sanctimony

A Norwegian investment fund has divested from Elbit, a large Israeli hi-tech company, for its participation in the security barrier. That's the barrier that has demonstrably saved thousands of lives since its construction began in 2002.

So what's the story?

Apparently the Norwegians sold shares, which means someone else bought them, and none of the reports mention the price falling steeply, so Elbit is probably unaffected.

Is it antisemitism? Probably not, given that the same Norwegian fund is still invested in some 40 other Israeli firms.

So what is it? According to this report (sorry: Hebrew only), the fund has a Board of bleeding hearts, whose task is to finger all sorts of evil companies the fund should never invest in, or must divest from if already invested. The list includes BAE, Boeing, Honeywell, Northrop, EADS (that's the parent company of Airbus), Lockheed-Martin, Rio-Tinto, and even... Wallmart. And alls sorts of others, too.

Besides the honorable company Elbit now finds itself in, it appears the Norwegians don't much like airplanes, miners and supermarkets. It also seems that in this case we really aren't dealing with antisemitism. Merely sanctimony.

Palestinians and the Blood Libel

Part of what made the story in Sweden's Aftonbladet so starkly antisemitic was that the science was simply wrong. You can't shoot people in the torso in a village and then send them somewhere else and harvest their organs. This wasn't even worth mentioning at the time, because no-one really contested that the story was antisemitic - except the antisemites, of course, but since the demise of Nazism that's standard. Auschwitz gave antisemitism a bad name, and even people who were once proud of their sentiments thereafter pretended they'd never had them.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), however, isn't a Swedish hate rag. It's the Palestinian government. Its President is scheduled to meet with Barack Obama later this month and perhaps re-start direct negotiations with Israel's government. The PA are the moderates, the peace partners, the hope for the future and all those fine sentiments.

Well, today they set up a high-level commission to investigate the veracity of the Aftonbladet story (which was cooked up, we remember, by some Palestinian villagers).

Secretary-General of the Palestinian Cabinet Hassan Abu Libda said the commission will be made up of the interior, health and foreign ministers. The PA will decide whether or not to pursue action against Israel in the international legal arena once the investigation's findings are revealed, he said. "Should the suspicions prove to be true, our position will be unequivocal, because (organ theft) is not only a violation of human rights, it goes against all values and creeds," said the secretary-general.

Priorities

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think that Boston University is the best school in its town. There are two or three others that rank a bit higher. Yet perhaps that's a purposeful decision, to excel in other ways.

This way, for example.

I suppose I could say someting profound about priorites, entitlement and other such matters, but given the fine view, who'd want to listen? Anyway, I'm off topic. Gotta get back to the depressing things of life.

Sick

In the previous post I quoted a comment left by one anamolousNYC at Modoweiss. So then I went to look at who this guy is. He doesn't have a blog, he's got a Fliker set of photos, but he argues with some of his commenters.

I'm not going to argue with him, that would be totally purposeless. The man (if he's a man: how are you supposed to know with these annonymous folks?) is stark raving mad. He's got a set of beliefs, and there isn't even the tiniest crack through which reality might penetrate. Where I to argue with him, the only thing I'd ask him would be what theoritical set of facts could change his mind. As long as there is such a set of facts, it's still possible that we're having a discussion about empiric findings. If there are no such facts, then we're in the realm of mystics. This fellow is deep in the sick end of the mystic cesspool.

And yet: when you read him it becomes obvious he's intelligent, rather well read, and he writes cogently. I'll bet if you ran into him on the street (in NYC, I suppose) he'd look as normal as the next fellow. Hatred-filled souls needn't look crazy or frothing at the mouth. They don't even have to be victims of great injustice, real or percieved. Some of them are regular people, who lead regular lives, and melt into the regular background until you notice their particular deformity. It's not some objective curcumstance that makes them what they are. It's a decision of theirs to be that.

Uri Avnery and the Boycott

Victor asks my opinion about this article, in which Uri Avnery talks with Desmond Tutu about boycotts and what they can achieve.

Avnery starts by asking Tutu how effective the boycott was in bringing down the Apartheid regime, and Tutu tells that it was crucial. Which would be fine if we were still in 1993, asking for journalistic impressions. But we're not. By now, given the passage of time, the question needs to be answered not by asking a protagonist but by looking for hard evidence. I don't know the rules of South African archives, but if one could look at the deliberations of the decision makers of the time, for example, that would be helpful. Tutu wasn't one of them.

Mostly, however, Avnery explains that Israeli isn't South Africa, and a boycott won't work; he eventually says, in so many words, that it oughtn't be tried:

Neve Gordon and his partners in this effort have despaired of the Israelis. They have reached the conclusion that there is no chance of changing Israeli public opinion. According to them, no salvation will come from within. One must ignore the Israeli public and concentrate on mobilizing the world against the State of Israel. (Some of them believe anyhow that the State of Israel should be dismantled and replaced by a bi-national state.)I do not share either view - neither the despair of the Israeli people, to which I belong, nor the hope that the world will stand up and compel Israel to change its ways against its will. For this to happen, the boycott must gather worldwide momentum, the US must join it, the Israeli economy must collapse and the morale of the Israeli public must break.How long will this take? Twenty Years? Fifty years? Forever?

This is an essential part of the Avnery story: for all his (long) life-long contrarianism and insistence that the Palestinians will fall in our arms if only we'd be nice to them, still he remains an Israeli. He remembers escaping Nazi Germany as a child, and fighting for the newborn country as a young man. (Did you know he's the author of the anthem of the Samson's Jackals anthem, which is still played from time to time? Shuala-a-av shel Shimshon.... One of our first commando units, for those who don't recognize the name). I don't know if he can still be called a Zionist in any meaningful use of the term, but he's in no way an antisemite. He wishes the best for Israel, at least according to his rather unusual lights.

Don't belittle this. As any visit to the Guardian will demonstrate, many of Israel's critics blur the line, cross it regularly, or even hate Israel because it's Jewish, irrespective of its actions. Here, see how Mondoweiss responded to Avnery's article. Of course they were disappointed, but some of them consoled themselves with the thought that maybe it was inevitable:

I’m always perplexed by this attitude people have about Avnery. He’s a venerable
force, truly an inspiration. But he’s still a zionist, and zionism is racism. So
OF COURSE he doesn’t support sanctions. Of course he doesn’t support the idea
that Israel should abide by international law. Of course he believes that jews
are special, that Israel is special, that Israel should be permitted to act
outside the law in whatever way it likes, provided that it declares to be in the
racial interests of Jews. Of course he rejects the right of return. His entire
life of incredibly courageous political advocacy was dedicated not to human
rights, but to Jewish rights, and to zionism. He’s a racist in the way that
every advocate of zionism is a de facto racist, and he speaks to and for
racists, which is why people like Richard Witty declare “Avnery makes sense.”
I’m not saying that in a shallow, flaming way. We have to be able to make these
distinctions which allow us to see the whole spectrum of Jewish racism, which
includes the Israeli “left” and much of what passes for the “extreme left”, and
not just the hideous mess on the far right, which is so patently, horrifically
racist that it boggles the mind. Jewish exceptionalism is the problem. I am a
great fan of Avnery and think of him as something of a hero, but the fact
remains that Avnery, and Avnery’s zionism, are part of the problem. Zionism is
not going to produce the solutions and answers to Zionism – they are just going
to perpetuate zionism by iterating a superifically prettier version of this ugly
ideology: Something like “ethnic cleansing Lite.” (Comment 14, posted by
anamalous NYC, whoever that may be).

Interesting, isn't it. The vestiges of patriotism Avnery still has are what make me grudgingly accept that he's part of our discussion. The same vestiges are what make this fellow condemn him, in spite of admiring many of the things he's said over the years. I'd be fascinated to know which of us Avnery himself prefers. Yaacov the Zionist who disagrees with much of his positions, or Anamolous and his hatred. We already know the answer when posed to the Mondoweiss gang. They prefer the antisemites.

Boycott With A Twist

Filmmaker Ken Loach and some others have an article at CiF justifying their boycott of Israel. It doesn't look like a very compelling case to me, and I'm mostly linking for future use.

And also because of the cute coincidence that on the same day they published their screed, Haaretz tells of an Israeli research team which seems to have found an innovative new way to discover lung cancer cheaply and effortlessly at an earlier stage than heretofore possible. (Actually, the news item comes from Reuters, not Haaretz, which means The Guardian also had access to it. Heh). The discovery may yet save thousands of lives, and also reduce some costs of the healthcare system. Not the kind of claim one might make about, say, an artistic film.

So far, so banal. If you don't like Israel, you'll never let the facts confuse you. The funny part about the item is the name of the head of the Israeli research team. One Hossam Haik. I don't know the man, but it doesn't sound like a typical name from the shtetl to me. Hossam: now doesn't that have the ring of an.... Arab name?

Life can be so confusing. What's a poor filmmaker to do?

Health Care Summary

Each time I touch the issue of health care in America I get all sorts of responses from otherwise passive readers. It has been gratifying to see that this blog attracts a diverse bunch of visitors, with all sorts of opinions and positions. I must also say that some of the comments have been as educative as anything I've read in mainstream publications or ueber-blogs.

My lesson, however, has been to stop using the issue as a foil for other topics, since it's too radioactive. Foils need themselves to be mildly interesting or easily recognizable, but shouldn't be major bones of contention - because if they are, they overpower the attempt to wield them.

The folks having the discussion are free to continue at it, of course. If I don't censor our in-house agitator Fake Ibrahim, I certainly won't bother them.

Just for the record, here's my basic position on health care, unencumbered by rhetoric tricks for other purposes.

Any reasonably wealthy country ought to have a system that ensures that all citizens have access to reasonable health care. Everyone having access means the illnesses we accumulate as we age need to be covered, otherwise the system is meaningless. And, yes, the electorate needs to define how they're going to pay for the system.

Beyond that - if it's national, or private, or hodgepodge; who decides, who adapts, who tweaks; what is the level of "reasonable" and what needs to be paid for separately; and all the other fiendishly complex questions - these need to be hammered out by the particular electorate, according to their particular conditions, mores, traditions, and abilities. Nor are the decisions of the past eternally correct: what worked well before may no longer work so well after; the compromises made by a previous generation may not seem such a good idea to a latter one - unless they actually do.

Sometimes there are issues where one side is right and the other is wrong. Eastern Europe's communist regimes foiling the aspirations of their nations, for example; the present Iranian regime suppressing freedom. Rarely, you'll even find crass moral imbalance within a democratic discussion. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s is a fine example. Most of the time, however, discussions in democracies tend to be more about interpretations or differing legitimate values, rather than clashes between good and evil. Hard as it may be for the Americans among you to see, this one seems to be of the former type.

Now let me see. Where did I put that helmet? It was right over there....

Tsores

Earlier today the next-door neighbor was kvetching. A few months ago her driver's license was revoked, and now she has to use cabs all the time. Worse, this was done to her on her birthday.

Her 95th, she added, and grinned.

Condemning Antisemitism

The only way I read this article is that Franco Frattini, Italy's Foreign Minister, essentially agrees with the Israelis on the issue of the scandalous article in Aftonbladet. He seems to be saying that while governments can't stop newspapers from saying things, they certainly can condemn the worst things that get said. The Aftonbladet blood libel needs to be condemned. Moreover, he may even be saying the Swedish government agrees, and is seeking a general EU condemnation that will give them a face-saving opportunity to condemn the libel without being specific.

Looks like a reasonable vindication of the official Israeli response to me.

I had an interesting conversation the other day with some friends. None of us had voted for Netanyahu, and all of us felt he's doing a reasonable job. This is very unusual for us, as our natural condition is to revile our government, no matter who they are. Since it looks like he's going to be in office for a while yet, here's hoping he keeps on doing a reasonable job.

Hamas is Horrified

Yes, there are things that scare Hamas. The mere rumour, most likely quite unfounded, that the UN may try to teach the children of Gaza that there once was a Holocaust. I don't see why anyone would take such a rumour seriously; it's quite unlike anythng UNRWA might think up; still, the Jew-hating thugs of Hamas were swift to condemn the mere thought.

Yehoshua Bichler, RIP

My friend Yehushua Bichler died earlier this month, age 80.

His friends from his own generation called him Robino, from Robert, but I felt that would be disrespectful of me so I called him by his Israeli name, Yehoshua. I first met him in a graduate seminar about the SS, in the winter of 1982 I think. He was not a particularly good speaker, and he had trouble focusing what he wished to say into concise paragraphs, so when Prof. Yehuda Bauer anounced one week that the following week Yehoshua would take over for as long as he needed, we were puzzled. We remained puzzled for the first 20 minutes of the next class, too, until it dawned on us that Yehoshua was telling a story none of us had ever seen in the history books.

In a nutshell, we all knew that the Nazi murder policy began with the invasion of the Soviet Union in summer 1941, and it was carried out by the infamous Einsatzgruppen, in which there must have been a few thousand men at most. Bichler, however, had uncovered documents that told of SS Brigades no-one had ever noticed, numbering in the tens of thousands, who had also been part of the operation. They were subordinate to a different part of the SS, their logistics were supported by different units, and their existance changed the picture of general complicity in the murder program.

I recognize this isn't that important to most people, but in all the years since I've never again run into a historian who was able single handedly to rework the outlines of the accepted story in such a clear way. Yehoshua was aware of the stir he was creating, but it didn't go to his head. Perhaps the fact that he himself had been at Auschwitz, had watched the death of his father, and had lost 57 (fifty seven) members of his family, tempered his perspective on things.

A few years later I became the head of archives at Yad Vashem; Yehoshua ran the archives at Givat Haviva, a small research center dedicated to the Zionist youth movements. So now we were colleagues. I came to my task with the energy of youth and lots of big ideas; Yehoshua ran a smaller place and knew every file; he also knew many of the people, places, and the events, in a way I never could. We were friends, but in a very unequal way.

If you ever have two or three spare days, you should go to Yad Vashem and watch Yehushua's 8-hour video testimony about Slovakia, and Auschwitz, and death marches. It's a tape of a man in his sixties, with the mein of a confused and uncomprehending boy, unable to understand the story he was telling, or unable to believe it, or make any sense of it. This, from the man who had uncovered an entire branch of the SS.

Offhand, I don't think I ever saw him not smiling, in an unassuming, slightly embarrassed way.

Nucho Eden, may he rest in peace.

Clarity on Iran's Nuclear Program

Well, perhaps not.

The IAEA has just published its semi-annual report. Apparently, it doesn't say anything.

It is no secret that there are disagreements over the report, and Haaretz has reported more than once that ElBaradaei's deputy, Olli Heinonen, would like the reports to state unequivocal facts. However, as is common in an international bureaucratic organization, efforts are being made to maintain the impression of unity, with differences being kept under wraps.

Gaza: Is It Starting Again?

Let's hope not, but I'm noting that the calm isn't total. Also, there are disagreements even about simple things such as if the IDF did or didn't attack anyone:

The Palestinian Maan news agency reported on Saturday that the Israel Defense Force fired artillery rounds at gunmen at the central Gaza Strip. No injuries were reported. The IDF said in response that no such attack took place.

In cases such as this you can't even apply the "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" logic. How would it work? "One man's artillery shell is another man's no-artillery shell"?

How about one man's lie is another man not lying? It sort of lacks the pleasing balance, that one.

Health Care and the Jewish Problem

There has just been a birth in the Californian branch of our family. I called the new father to say mazal tov and he described how at the last moment there had been various complications, but everything is alright. So, he summed up, since you've been mentioning healthcare on your blog, Yaacov, you might want to mention that my vote is for the system. It works well.

(Actually, I think he was talking about the system before it changes, i.e. as it already is, so his point may have been different than he meant - but I really don't think this is the moment in his life to be quibbling about politics. His agenda at the moment is way above politics).

Then there was Dennis who slammed into me last week, going so far as to call a post of mine that mentioned healthcare, a travesty.

You rightly criticize those of us here in the United States for doing not understanding the complexities of the Israel/Arab/Palestinian conflict. But you do the same thing when you say that you are agnostic on "who's right and who's wrong, who's fibbing and who's fibbing more."Don't mean to be harsh, because I read you constantly but you have this wrong.

Ouch.

In between Dennis and the new father, I had a chat the other evening with a fellow who lives here but works as a physician in the States (you'd be surprised how many such extreme commuters there are). He told me that philosophically he's all for revamping the American health system, and would even be willing to take a financial hit if it would be for the general good, but in his opinion nothing being discussed right now will make things any better, and probably they'll get worse, though he expects his income to remain unaffected.

This blog is not about American health care. It's mostly about Jewish stuff, though from time to time I jump around. Yet it occurs to me that the healthcare metaphor really can be useful, precisely because it demonstrates how impossible it is for an outsider to really understand what's going on.

I have no doubt that were I was prepared to spend six solid months studying the matter I could form an educated opinion, unless I'd need 12 months, or 24. If I didn't think so I couldn't be a historian, since historians have the fundamental conceit they can understand times and places they've never been to. Yet short of dedicating oneself totally to really understanding, I'm here to report that following the media doesn't work. These folks swear by their narrative; those folks swear by the opposite one. These chaps admonish that there's an imminent danger; the other blokes shrilly warn of a whole different set of apocalyptic threats. These guys quote statistics; the other ones wave different ones. Somehow there are Nazis involved on both sides of the argument, though I haven't been able to figure that out at all.

Not to mention that the single most important part of the story is not visible through the media at all: what's it like living in the system? I don't mean, which horror stories each side trots out. I mean the regular living part of the story. What's it like right now to live in the present system, what's wrong with it, and how ought it be different. What do you do when your kid has the sniffles? When she has something worse than sniffles? When, heaven forbid, she has something radically worse than sniffles? How does it work? What decisions need to be made, by whom, under which constraints?

This type of understanding cannot be had merely by following the media. Can't.

Which brings me back, unsurprisingly, to the things I do know about, such as living in this conflict-torn land. Or being a Jew. Without wishing to be arrogant, I expect these issues are more complicated than health care in America; they've certainly been around a lot longer... Anyway, you see where I'm going with this...

Modi'in Illit

I had a meeting up north today, and on the way back it occured to me to drop by Modi'in Illit
and do a spot of reporting.

The town was founded in 1990, just over the Green Line, to offer unexpensive housing to large Haredi families from Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. It was originally called Kiryat Sefer. At the end of 2008 it had a population of more than 41,000, making it the largest settlement on the West Bank. The weekly birthrate is 45, or 2,500 babies annually, which makes for a lot of children. A lot of bycicles, too.The annual growth rate is 9.5%, which means that in the six months since Obama demanded that Israel stop building on the West Bank, the population of Modi'in Illit as grown by about 2,000 people. This requires additional housing. The town is wedged between the Green Line to its west, and the security fence on its east; in the long run the growth will have to be westward since there will be no construction beyond the fence. In essence, Modi'in Illit is a border town. Israel may swap its equivalent for land elsewhere, but I don't see any scenario in which the town will be evacuated. Pretending otherwise will not help peace negotiations,which will by definition be based upon false assumptions.