The Israel Policy Forum (IPF) this week published a letter they sent to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urging her to find a way to communicate with Hamas.

In a forum conversation at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Ghaith al-Omari, David Makovsky, and Dennis Ross discussed what the US should do about Gaza and all of them considered coming to cease-fire terms with Hamas a favorable option.

A recent poll, widely misinterpreted in many sectors, showed that 64% of Israelis support talks with Hamas.

The former head of the Mossad, a noted hawk, Efraim Halevy has said that Israel must talk to Hamas.

Welcome, all, to the real world.

The misinterpretation of the poll, which some have taken to mean that Israelis support talks on all sorts of matters with Hamas, has largely been on the left, from sectors which have been unrealistically urging Israel to simply accept Hamas' control over first the Palestinian Authority and then Gaza.

This is something Israel cannot do, and it is not what was suggested by the poll. The poll, like the IPF letter, the WINEP forum and the statements of not only Halevi, but also such Israeli security notables as Shlomo Gazit (former head of Israeli military intelligence) and Ami Ayalon (former head of the Shin Bet) is only urging the US and Israel to work out a deal with Hamas for the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit (captured by Hamas in 2006) and for a durable cease-fire...

Among the many words that are commonly heard in connection with the Israel-Palestine conflict is the word "justice." Of course, no lasting peace can possibly be forged without dealing with the question of justice for both sides to some degree, even while it is obvious that any lasting solution will appear unjust to many on both sides. All too often, though, "justice" is merely a euphemism for "vengeance."

Still, it is very important that justice not be completely lost in pragmatism. I am certainly one who considers himself a pragmatist. To me, above all else, a plan or program must be able to work before looking at other considerations.

At the same time, pragmatism does not and must not preclude justice, or, more to the point, ethics. Some of the recent reactions to the murders in the Merkaz Harav yeshiva reflect a complete lack of ethics and, in so doing, also undermine pragmatic goals. In this, they are a reflection of why sensible, progressive forces seeking a solution to this conflict that balances both moral considerations and practical ones face such an uphill battle.

One place where this serious void of ethical guidelines was eminently visible was in some of the statements from so-called "peace groups" reacting to the murders. One in particular that I saw (I can't name the group or link to the appalling statement due to certain personal considerations) began with some crocodile tears for the murder victims and then proceeded to at best mitigate and at...

Last week Israel launched a mid-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip. B'Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights, reported that of the 106 Palestinians killed in the fighting, 54 were non-combatants, including 25 minors. [*]

As had been the case for some weeks, as Israel's siege on Gaza was tightened, peace groups called for a cease-fire while governmental bodies and global institutions called for Israel to try not to harm innocents, but affirmed its right to launch an offensive that would inevitably cause a great deal of harm to civilians.

That response is, to say the least inadequate. It is axiomatic that until strong international action is coupled with strong local action that puts human rights on top of the list of priorities, not second to the right to employ violence, the bloodshed will continue.

On March 6, two Palestinian terrorists entered the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem and slaughtered eight students, all of whom were civilians, and four of whom were minors, according to B'Tselem.

Governments around the world condemned the attack in no uncertain terms. And what did I hear from groups supporting the Palestinians? The responses varied, as they often do. Some were unequivocal in their condemnation. Some condemned the act as immoral, yet asked what is to be expected from a people under an ever-tightening occupation. Some few justified the act.

Many of those responses are, to say the least, inadequate, some graduating into the category of appalling. Ignorance also runs rampant. One commenter on the...

Translation is not the simple act of looking a word up in a dictionary. Cultural connotation and context are often crucial to understanding a translation which might have a very different meaning from the one that was intended.

Such is the case now with the furor that has erupted over the words of Israeli Deputy Minister of Defense, Matan Vilnai. Here is the accurate translation of what Vilnai said that has caused all the furor: ""The more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves."

The key, of course, is the one untranslated word in the sentence: shoah. Many non-Hebrew speakers have heard this word. It is the Hebrew word that refers to the Nazi genocide of Jews in World War II, the Holocaust.

Yet "holocaust" itself must be understood in context. After all, the word existed long before Hitler, and meant a sacrifice consumed by fire, or a massive conflagration that causes great loss of life and property. The word still finds use in that context.

Similarly, "shoah" means "catastrophe, devastation, disaster, or cataclysm," and is also still used in such contexts in Hebrew (it is my guess, though I do not know Arabic and thus cannot be certain, that shoah would be translated in that language, ironically, as naqba, the term which means catastrophe and which Palestinians use for the disaster that befell...

Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi informed us this week that he could not "guarantee" that there would not be a new war in Israel's near future.

Thanks, Gabi, we knew that.

The rising tensions are there for all to see, and everyone seems to be doing their best to raise the temperature. The most obvious sign is the recent assassination of Imad Mughniyeh, once perhaps the single most important figure in Hezbollah. No one has claimed responsibility for his killing, but despite Israel's denial of responsibility, most observers see Israel as the prime suspect.

It is unusual for Israel to pull off such an operation and not take responsibility, which bolsters the case for Israel's innocence. But there seems to be a new strategy for building deterrence in Israel. Where once the idea was to claim these acts as a demonstration of power, the episode in the fall where Israel bombed a Syrian site but would not divulge any details indicates that they are taking a different tack-one where the people who they are trying to intimidate know what happened, but Israel publicly maintains deniability or mystery. This could be a strategy responding to increasing threats to Israel while also recognizing that Israel's image in the world has severely declined.

Mughniyeh's assassination, which was carried out right under the nose of Syrian security, required an extensive intelligence network. First of all, Mughniyeh was expert at remaining hidden. He had been moving from place to place for many years,...