The New York Times’ leadership on many MSM memes is dependent on others’ agreement and interest. However, when the New Yprk Times presents an important report that doesn’t fit the wider themes of the Left, they are largely ignored. Indeed, unless fitting some current theme of the Right, they are largely ignored in its alternative media as well.

An example, before proceeding to this Sunday New York Times magazine feature about US treatment of the Hmong.

In August 2006, the NYT’s reported on the “authoritative” report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) deflating the theme that’s haunted Vietnam vets’ reputations for a generation, that PTSD was widespread and long debilitating. Aside from some papers picking up the report via NYT’s wireservice, it was largely ignored. The theme of PTSD becoming a new scourge upon our forces in Iraq continued to dominate.

I wrote about the report here. I, also, had a column about it at Military.com, which elicited many emails attacking me for daring to question those receiving compensation, although the column made clear that the AAAS study found little exaggeration in compensation claims from Vietnam veterans. I haven’t had a column at Military.com since.

The New York Times report of a new study of PTSD, the NYT’s summary remarking the new study is “viewed by experts as authoritative,” knocks the air out of the Vietnam war and Vietnam veteran punching bags that stress disorders among our combatants was especially severe, long-lasting, and extraordinary. This canard is currently used to similarly undermine the U.S. war effort in Iraq, a war similarly often without clear-cut fronts and enemy….

Contrary to the widely reported figure of a third of Vietnam veterans having developed PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, this more careful study reports a, nonetheless serious, occurrence of 18.7% having temporary symptoms and 9.1% having lasting symptoms 10+ years after the end of the war. At the same time, the study points out “the majority of the veterans with high and very high MHM [military historical measure: “probable severity of exposure to war-zone stressors"] did not develop war related PTSD.”…

Another notable result in the study itself is that:
T]he trajectory for most veterans with war-related PTSD that causes substantial impairment is toward amelioration or complete remission. This tendency toward improvement is present even for ~10% [approximately 10%] of veterans who still had impairing current PTSD at follow-up; the impairment most of them showed by this time [10+ years after the end of the Vietnam war] was not severe. The functioning of the veterans who had developed war-related PTSD but who no longer met criteria for the disorder at follow-up differed little from that of veterans who did not develop war-related PTSD.

In April 2006, I had a column in Editor & Publisher (E&P archives not available, so see here) about American media “covering Iraq on the cheap.” Some elements were edited out that raised questions about Iraqi stringers, but most of my draft appeared.

When even the conservative alternative media wasn’t interested in the NYT’s report on PTSD, I wrote a follow-up questioning the “strange silence in the blogosphere.” E&P’s editor Greg Mitchell, ever vigilant to critique the US in Iraq but less interested in debunking the PTSD meme, strung me along for weeks. So, I published it here at Democracy-Project.

It wasn’t until the NYT’s featured the first of its despicably undocumented 4-part series on our “War Torn” Iraq/Afghan war veterans that the blogosphere exploded in indignation, although I think I’m the only one to closely examine all four parts in my posts. (here, here, here, and here)

When the NYT’s could be attacked, the conservative blogosphere did so. Earlier, when the New York Times published good science, it was ignored. This is a pattern that does not reflect to the credit of the conservative side of the blogosphere.

Now, on to this Sunday’s New York Times.

The magazine has a 5088 word recounting of the abandonment and cruel plight of our Vietnam war allies in Laos, the Hmong, and of the weakness of the case against Hmong leader Vang Pao for involvement in a plot for violence against the current Lao government.

There’s a paragraph paralleling the weakness of the case against the Sears Tower plotters. It is gratuitous, and may have been inserted by an editor or the reporter to fit NYT’s anti-Iraq war memes. But, it is irrelevant to the strong factual reporting in the other thousands of words.

The NYT’s, in December 2007, published another strong front-page feature about the plight of the Hmong, hunted like animals by the Laotian government, aided by the Vietnamese. I wrote about it here. The week before, the Washington Post carried an op-ed about their persecution. The Huffington Post has carried several excellent reports by Rebecca Sommer. My posts on the extermination policies and programs against the Hmong in Laos and Montagnards in Vietnam are too many to list, so go to the Search in the left margin and input Hmong and then Montagnard. I even praised Senator Patrick Leahy for taking an interest. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have, also, been forthright in their condemnation of the Hmong’s treatment.

One would think that those on the Right, many of whom served in Vietnam, who are quick to point out the US’s moral obligation to Iraqis who have stood with us and for themselves against our common foes, would be more interested in the US abandonment and lackadaisical treatment of our former Hmong and Montagnard allies. There is no subject I write about more ignored among other conservative blogs. It is quite rare indeed when any notice is taken of these abandoned allies.

Why? Is it because others in media and NGO’s who are usually attacked have taken some interest? Is it because it doesn’t fit a current meme or brouhaha of the day? Is it because the Right blogosphere has lagged in creating original reporting of its own? Is it simple lack of interest?

Regardless, it does not reflect well on the Right side of the blogosphere.

P.S.: I emailed Glenn Reynolds that I couldn't find any posts at Instapundit that contained the word "Montagnard" or "Hmong." Glenn promptly replied with this good post from 2002. (Nothing since then.)

THE WAR CRITICS, as I've noted before, learned nothing since Vietnam. The U.S. military, as Jim Dunnigan notes learned a lot:

During the Vietnam War, U.S. Army Special Forces used the same techniques they applied in Afghanistan. It was in Vietnam that the Special Forces actually developed the tactics that worked so well in Afghanistan. The Vietnam experience was even more dramatic. For most of the 1960s SOG (Studies and Observation Group) Special Forces LRRPs (Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrols) operated in Laos. The Special Forces (and CIA) had organized a 10,000-man army from among the local Hmong tribes in Laos. The LRRPs went in (about 23,000 times) to find North Vietnamese troops and installations, whereupon devastating air strikes were called in. Another 50,000 tribesmen in the central highlands of Vietnam were organized into military units.

Some of these fought in Laos as well. However, the North Vietnamese (and Laotian communist Pathet Lao) troops were more numerous and determined than the Taliban, so the "American Tactics" didn't work out as well in Laos. The technique did work better in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese were not able to capture the Central Highlands until the Special Forces and American air power left. And, OK, they didn't have as many smart bombs in the 1960s, but they didn't need them to do the deed.

Posted 3/26/2002 03:54:30 PM by Glenn Reynolds

On May 7, Senator John McCain delivered the following remarks at Oakland University in Rochester, MI:

Thank you. Last year the world celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the British and American slave trade in 1807. Nearly fifty-six years would pass before Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, signaling the end of slavery in the United States. But the achievement of both countries in terminating the international slave trade and setting into motion the titanic and bloody struggle to close a shameful chapter in the history of our country should be remembered as a turning point in mankind's long and fitful progress toward a more just world. William Wilberforce had struggled for years in the British parliament to strike the lethal blow against the abominable institution that had scarred Western civilization for centuries. He was a humble Christian man, powerfully motivated by his faith, whose example instructs every person born in freedom that we have a moral obligation not to turn a blind eye to assaults on the collective dignity of humanity wherever they occur.

There is a tendency in our age to accede to the spurious excuse of moral relativism and turn away from the harshest examples of man's inhumanity to man; to ignore the darker side of human nature that encroaches upon our decency by subtle degree. There are many reasons for this. Blessed with opportunity, and intent on the challenges of work and family, our own lives often seem too full and hectic to take notice of offenses that seem distant from our own reality. There is also the threat in a society passionate about its liberty that we can become desensitized to the dehumanizing effect of the obscenity and hostility that pervades much of popular culture. It is in our nature as Americans to see the good in things; to face even serious adversity with hope and optimism. And yet, with so much good in the world, for all the progress of humanity, in which our nation has played such an admirable and important role, evil still exists in the world. It preys upon human dignity, assaults the innocence of children, debases our self-respect and the respect we are morally obliged to pay each other, and assails the great, animating truths we believe to be self-evident that all people have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- by subjecting countless human beings to abuse, persecution and even slavery.

Confronting evil has never been easy in our age or any other. But the failure to do so affects even those who are complacent with our own blessings and secure in our human rights. Accepting the degradation of values we believe are universal is to relinquish some of our own humanity. America was founded on the belief in the inherent dignity of all human life and that this dignity can only be preserved through shared respect and shared responsibility. We can retain our own freedom when others are robbed of theirs, but not the sense of virtue that made our revolution a moral as well as political crusade, and which recognizes that personal happiness is so much more than pleasure, and requires us to serve causes greater than self-interest.

There is no right more fundamental to a free society than the free practice of religion. Behind walls of prisons and persecuted before our very eyes in places like China, Iran, Burma, Sudan, North Korea and Saudi Arabia are tens-of-thousands of people whose only crime is to worship God in their own way. No society that denies religious freedom can ever rightly claim to be good in some other way. And no person can ever be true to any faith that believes in the dignity of all human life if they do not act out of concern for those whose dignity is assailed because of their faith. As President, I intend to make religious freedom a subject of great importance for the United States in our relations with other nations. I will work in close concert with democratic allies to raise the prominence of religious freedom in every available forum. Whether in bilateral negotiations, or in various multi-national organizations to which America belongs, I will make respect for the basic principle of religious freedom a priority in international relations.

There is another form of human oppression that persists in the world today that demands our urgent attention and should sting the conscience of every good person. Inexcusably, it is a crime that, while prevalent elsewhere, exists within our own borders as well. Human trafficking slavery, by another name exists not just in places like Thailand, Kuwait and Venezuela. It is a serious problem here in the United States. It is a tragic reality that, two hundred years after Wilberforce won his battle to end the slave trade between Britain and the United States, and nearly 150 years after our nation ended the institution here, the practice still thrives in the dark corners of our society. Most of the victims of human trafficking in the United States and in most other places in the world are the most vulnerable among us, destitute women and children who are sold into bondage as sex slaves. A 2004 State Department report concludes that of the estimated 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and children transported across international borders each year, approximately 80 percent are women and girls, and up to 50 percent are minors. The State Department estimates that between 15,000 and 18,000 human slaves are brought into the United States, many of whom are forced into the sex trade every year.

While the past few years have seen increased efforts on the part of the State and Justice Departments and the FBI to combat the human slave trade, we must do more. As President, I'll increase cooperation and communication between all agencies of the federal government by establishing an Inter-Agency Task Force on Human Trafficking, whose purpose will be to focus exclusively on the prosecution of human traffickers and the rescue of their victims. The Task Force will strengthen cooperation between federal officials, state and local law enforcement and prosecutors to ensure that jurisdictional issues are not a barrier to success, and that we have a coordinated international response to this scourge. I will require the Task Force agencies to report directly to me on the status of the problem and the progress we are making to defeat this stain on the reputation and character of the United States. And we will take care to show compassion for victims of this despicable crime against humanity by making sure shelter, counseling and legal assistance is available and accessible to them.

We must also do more to ensure governments that tolerate human trafficking crack down on this modern form of slavery. We can support efforts to change the economic incentives and do more to aid the victims. But we must view this evil form of twenty-first century slavery every bit as important as drug trafficking. All too often the same criminal networks that trade in fourteen-year-old girls also trade in narcotics--and even in materials that can be used by terrorists. Identifying and destroying criminal networks that evade national boundaries is also a matter of our national security.

It is also the appropriate concern of a nation conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all people are equal, to encourage and coax other cultures into abandoning practices that afflict the
happiness and health of women and children, whether they be practices that mutilate their bodies or impose on them marriage before their maturity and without their informed consent. I would insist that our diplomacy actively raise and discourage in our relationships with other countries customs that so degrade and physically threaten people, and explain that the full benefits of friendship with the United States are predicated on a shared respect for the basic right of women and children not to suffer atrocities to their physical and emotional health to protect traditions that should have been ended long ago.

While the Internet has brought many benefits to our society in the form of economic and educational opportunities, political organization and the free exchange of ideas, information and knowledge, there are those who exploit the very pervasiveness and anonymity the medium provides to trade to prey upon our children. I respect those who are advocates for an unregulated Internet in defense of freedom of expression. However, the Internet cannot be used as a safe haven for criminals and predators. The home has traditionally been a safe harbor for families, where children are safe from the dangers of a world that can sometimes threaten their innocence. But with the proliferation of Internet access, come those who would rob them of their innocence through the computers we provide them to learn, to socialize and to explore the world.

Recent years have seen an explosion both in the proliferation of child pornography and in child sexual exploitation cases involving the use of the Internet and email as a means for predators to stalk and lure children. I have worked aggressively over the years to promote the safe use of the Internet and to craft legislation designed to ensure that children are secure as they use this transformative technology. Child pornography is a terrible crime involving the abuse of children and the trafficking in images of this abuse. Child exploitation in any form must be stopped and those responsible must be punished to the maximum extent of the law. The FBI and Justice Departments, as well as state and local law enforcement, have worked aggressively in recent years to arrest and prosecute those who traffic in child pornography over the Internet, and who prey upon our children on-line or by other means. Progress has been made.

Just last month, for example, South Carolina's Attorney General Henry McMaster announced that the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force had arrested its one hundred and twenty first child predator. Aided with funding from the Justice Department, the South Carolina task force has made significant progress in tracking down, arresting and prosecuting child predators in South Carolina. Such federal, state and local cooperation is a model for success that we must build on because, sadly, across our nation crimes against our children continue to rise. This is an abomination, and I am firmly resolved to fighting these crimes with all the means at our country's disposal.

As President, I will move to clear obstacles to cooperation between federal agencies and their state and local counterparts to ensure maximum cooperation in the pursuit and prosecution of child predators. At the same time, I will elevate the importance of international cooperation in our relations with other countries to ensure that criminals who traffic in images of child abuse find no haven or quarter in other countries.

Today, because of the anonymity and global reach the Internet provides users, we must adapt our law enforcement efforts accordingly. For example, companies that provide Internet access and forums for content and communications also have responsibilities as corporate citizens. Consequently, I believe we must expand the range of companies required to report the existence of child pornography when they become aware of its existence and impose higher fines and criminal penalties on companies that do not report child pornography. Furthermore, I believe those convicted of preying upon our children should not be allowed to hide behind the anonymity of the Internet, which is why I am pleased to hear the Justice Department, consistent with legislation I have been pushing, will soon require convicted sex offenders to register their e-mail and instant message addresses with the Department's national registry.

This approach has been endorsed by several social networking websites which will to use the registry information to "scrub" their sites for convicted sex offenders, making their sites safer for children. This registry information can be used by parents to check e-mails and other information to ensure that persons interacting with their children are not convicted sex offenders preying on them.

Our nation, whose founders sacrificed for the belief that we would be an example to the world, has long appreciated that our freedom confers responsibilities on us all, and among them, is our respect for the freedom of others. Ours is not a perfect history. But it is a history distinguished by our pursuit of this ideal. We have always been a country of hope and of ideals, even of audacity in our belief that all good things are possible here and wherever the Rights of Man are respected. As we pursue greater individual freedom and economic opportunity, as we take advantage of new technologies and explore a world more accessible to more people than ever before, we must be diligent in our support of those rights, and in our active opposition to the enemies of human dignity in our own society and in all the dark corners of the world. We must remember that our freedoms are not only defended by our diplomacy and military power but, very importantly, by the decency and respect with which we treat one another, and by our belief that as we our dignity is entitled to respect so are we obliged to respect and defend the dignity of others. Ours is a nation with a conscience, and thank God we are. As William Wilberforce said so many years ago, "When we think of eternity, and of the future consequences of all human conduct, what is there in this life that should make any man contradict the dictates of his conscience, the principles of justice, the laws of religion, and of God?"

The New York Times had the following coverage of this speech, calling human trafficking a priority that resounds on the "right." This is despite the fact that the first Trafficking Victims Protection Act was signed by none other Democrat President Bill Clinton and championed by none other than the late Democrat Sen. Paul Wellstone and late Democrat Rep. Tom Lantos.

In modern Israel’s darkest hours in 1948, about 3500 international volunteers -- including non-Jews -- came to Israel from 43 countries to fight for its existence, and were crucial to that success. Some, like Dr. Jason Fenton, are still fighting. They are known as Machal, a transliterated Hebrew acronym for Volunteers From Outside Israel.

Having myself been through the three-decade battles To Set The Record Straight, the first hand testimony of these veterans is fundamental to getting at the truth. Those alive are now in their late 70’s or 80’s or more. (I just spoke on the phone with one who is 86.)

Here’s Dr. Jason Fenton's comment on the revision of history of 1948 that is so popular among the Left.

I fought in Israel’s War of Independence 60 years ago as a 16 year-old Machal volunteer from England. Now, this may not sit well with some, but the sad fact is that much of this anti-Israel rhetoric and subsequent demonization that you allude to originated in Israel’s esteemed universities. One of these anti-Zionist historians, Benny Morris of the University of Beer Sheva, wrote in his book 1948 and After, that "Israel was born in original sin," and that we [the IDF soldiers] were guilty of "looting, rape, and murder."

If there were excesses in the heat of battle, and there probably were some, they didn't happen in my unit or in any other unit that I know of, but these "new historians" are highly selective, for while those of us who fought for Israel's very existence in 1948 are now accused of committing these terrible acts, there is not one mention of the barbaric treatment routinely meted out to captured Jewish soldiers and civilians by enemy soldiers and local Arab gangs. Morris, along with revisionist Israeli historians Tom Segev, Eyal Naveh, and others, whose rabidly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel polemics are are now being quoted by the likes of Edith Garwood, Bill Slavick, and others in the news media and on our campuses to demonize Israel and put into question Israel's very legitimacy and right to exist as a Jewish national homeland. Israel may not be a perfect state--but she’s a damn site more perfect than most!
Posted by: Dr. Jason Fenton at Apr 15, 2008 10:04:08 PM

I am trying to track Fenton down now. He may be in Israel at the Machal reunion. He is retired Prof (English) at California’s Saddleback College. He is also author of a book on Machal, excerpt here and active in founding Machal museum in LA.

There’s also a bibliography at the Machal site (at the excerpt link above), and how you can order Fenton’s 500-page book, with many photos from the personal collections of others in Machal.

For a setting the record straight of Benny Morris, see Ephraim Karsh’s in the current Commentary.

UPDATE: Just connected with Dr. Fenton. He's not retired, and is still teaching. He is also speaking about Machal in the LA area. And, his book has grown to 765 pages. That's a fighter!

UPDATE 2: Since 2000, over 1000 young people from outside Israel have volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, via a renewed Mahal 2000 organization.

150 paratroopers from around the world are in Israel, for a mass jump to salute the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) during its 60th anniversary celebrations. Countries represented include the US, , England, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Canada, Greece, Italy and Switzerland.

Several have special ties to Israel:

A Dutch paratrooper, Jesper Nels, who is the grandson of Righteous Gentiles, will plant an olive tree next to the memorial and will meet the family of the man who was saved by his grandfather….
One of the participants, a French Foreign Legionnaire named Yoni, is named after Yoni Netanyahu, the commander who was killed in the legendary Entebbe rescue operation.

During the visit:

Israeli paratroopers in the "Oketz" unit then briefed their foreign colleagues on the capabilities of their group.

And showed them. See this video of the rehearsal by the IDF. (The embed is disabled, so go to the YouTube link, click, and hold your breath.) http://youtube.com/watch?v=5li0TUsVNgA

Last week, I posted an email exchange between Tammy Rossman-Benjamin, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC-Santa Cruz, and UCSC's chancellor, George Blumenthal, concerning anti-Semitic graffiti at Oakes College of UCSC.

Her latest email to the chancellor, in which she implores him to take a stronger stand against anti-Semitism on campus, is below.

Dear Chancellor Blumenthal,

Last year, when anti-African American messages were found on a bathroom wall at the Baskin School of Engineering, you issued the strongly worded statement below, in which you said: "I want to communicate in the strongest terms possible that this type of hateful vandalism deeply disturbs many in our community and we will not tolerate such behavior...As a campus, we must reject and denounce these offensive activities." This was an extremely important and effective message to transmit to the campus community. I believe a similar statement, which condemns the anti-Semitic graffiti discovered at Oakes College last week and reaffirms that our campus community will not tolerate such behavior, would be equally important and effective.

My husband and I have previously communicated to you our concerns about the egregious anti-Israel bias and political advocacy of some UCSC faculty in classrooms and at departmentally sponsored events, and our fears that these could lead to anti-Semitic discourse and behavior. I'm sure that as a founding member of Oakes College and a champion of diversity and multi-culturalism, you understand how destructive anti-Semitism is to our University and its core values of community. Please do not remain silent about this morally reprehensible and deeply offensive behavior.

Sincerely,

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
Lecturer in Hebrew

From: Carolyn Lagattuta
Date: March 16, 2007 9:53:04 AM PST
To: (UCSC Community)
Subject: CAMPUS MESSAGE: Hate/Bias Incident on Campus
Unit Managers: Please post a paper copy of this message (and any linked documents) for people in your area who do not have regular access to a computer.

March 16, 2007

To: Campus Community
Fr: Acting Chancellor George Blumenthal
Re: Hate/Bias Incident on Campus

I am saddened to report that on March 12, offensive and racist messages were etched on a bathroom wall at the Baskin School of Engineering. We do not yet know who is responsible for this incident.

However, I want to communicate in the strongest terms possible that this type of hateful vandalism deeply disturbs many in our community and we will not tolerate such behavior. This incident is one of several similar acts of vandalism on campus this academic year, including the recent defacement of a poster at Porter College promoting a religious event.

As a campus, we must reject and denounce these offensive activities, refocusing our commitment both to a diverse community that embraces and promotes a climate of inclusion and to a community that respects students, staff, faculty, and guests of all races, ethnic groups, traditions, backgrounds, and cultures. These values are clearly articulated in our campus's Principles of Community:
http://www.ucsc.edu/about/principles_community.asp

I call upon all of us to join our colleagues and friends in discussions on how to challenge racism and racist incidents. I encourage you to consider participating in conversations, trainings, or other gatherings to discuss the impacts that these incidents can have on our community.

Furthermore, if you have any information about this incident, or if you wish to report any such incidents in the future, I strongly urge you to contact one of the following offices:

* University Police - Emergency, 911/Reporting, 9-2231

* Student Judicial Affairs - Doug Zuidema, 9-4447, dzuidema@ucsc.edu

* EEO/AA - Patti Hiramoto, 9-2349, hiramoto@ucsc.edu

Hope is deeply ingrained in the Israeli consciousness, along with resilience, creativity, progress, democracy, self-criticism, and decency. There is sometimes unavoidable friction among them, but cumulatively they make Israel a unique modern miracle among nations. May 8, the 60th anniversary, offers the lesson of Israel’s experience to the world.

Israel’s Left and Right argue and re-argue about how to relieve Israel of the burdens and threats from Gaza and the West Bank, and Iran. These arguments, however, are largely subsumed by hope, hope without much evidence to support it. There’s quite a difference between constructive optimism and potentially lethal leaps. Still, the strengths of Israel's other national characteristics are what makes hope possible.

For example, Colette Avital, a Labor Party Knesset member, argues:

At the end of the decade, the traditional disagreements between left and right have lost much of their relevance, as a majority of Israelis support the end of occupation and the creation of a Palestinian state. Moreover, the debate on the path to follow seems to be over, too. Unilateralism is largely discredited as an option. Our negotiating partner is our partner, however imperfect. Israelis may be less hopeful than they were, but they are more realistic in their demands. They know the limits of military power. What’s more, they know that time is running out. It may just be that sense of urgency that will make an agreement possible at the end of 2008.

One may be excused for dismissing this hopefulness. But, it must be realized it is deeply felt by a broad range of the public in Israel and the US, and comes more from strength than from weakness of spirit.

Hope is what Israel is, ultimately, about. Israel’s national anthem is Hope, Hatikvah. That Hope is based upon the diaspora’s return to Israel to live in peace and progress. This video has Hope and some images that tell that story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6WMtyuAazc&feature=related

Daniel Gordis, from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, writes about that Hope and "The Future", among other notables discussing the other aspects of unique Israel At 60:

What is our vision for the Jewish future? Today, any one of us could wax eloquent about what we envision for the Jewish people in the years to come. Yes, there are clouds on the horizon and the next decade is likely to be difficult for Israel. But the Jewish people pulses with a confidence about its future.

American Judaism has an optimism and self-confidence that would have been unimaginable just half a century ago. Jewish life is reborn and is beginning to thrive in Moscow and in Warsaw. Berlin is one of the world's fastest-growing Jewish communities. And in Israel, despite all the challenges facing the Jewish state, Jewish life thrives as it can nowhere else in the world.

The Jewish ability to imagine a future is the greatest contribution of Israel to date. In 1946 or 1947, the mere notion of a Jewish future would have been difficult to conjure. The vast majority of Europe's Jews had been murdered, while most of the rest of the world either participated or stood by idly. Many of those who had survived were then living under a repressive Soviet regime. In the United States, American Jews had a much more tentative sense of being fully American.

In Palestine, the shores were still closed by the British and many Jewish refugees were being turned away. Arab armed resistance to Jewish immigration and nation building was growing, and in 1946, though the yearning for statehood was palpable, it was anyone's guess when, or if, that dream might be realized.

Just two years before the creation of Israel, the mere mention of a Jewish future could well have been met with a smirk or a tear. The Jews had had an often-glorious past - but a future?

What changed that, more than anything, was the State of Israel. The image of Jews huddled around their radios on Nov. 29, 1947 - the day on which the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine - remains etched in our minds because it captures beautifully the sense of a life in abeyance, the scales suddenly tipping toward the possibility of life and recovery.

That day at the U.N. and several months later on a Friday afternoon in Tel Aviv, when David Ben-Gurion declared independence, gave Jews a new lease on life. Israel permitted Jews to believe in hope, rather than in despair. Even under the lingering shadow of the Shoah, it presented Jews everywhere with a project of rebuilding so dramatic and massive that it mustered their energies and galvanized a people that months earlier had been scattered and largely disoriented.

Though Israel's incessant wars have been one of the most tragic dimensions of Israeli life, the creation of a Jewish army and the "opportunity" for survivors of the death camps to take up arms and defend their fledgling state was a dramatic shift in the fortunes, and the image, of the Jew. Some of those escapees from Europe died on the battlefields of the nascent state. But they died defending themselves, rifles in hand, not in the gas chambers that were operating at full throttle just a few years earlier.

And most didn't die. They lived, created families, studied and worked. They built universities and hospitals, roads and factories. They wrote novels and edited newspapers and plowed the fields of a land they called their own. They imagined a future radically different from the Jewish past. And all this, they knew, was possible only because Jews had a state. It is thus no accident that Israel's national anthem is called HaTikvah, or "The Hope." For hope is the central contribution of Israel to the Jewish people. The prophet Ezekiel, in the Vision of Dry Bones (37:11), had written "our bones are dried up" and "avdah tikvateinu," "our hope is lost." But Israel's anthem purposely misquoted Ezekiel. "Od lo avdah tikvateinu," the anthem insists: "our hope is not yet lost."

To be sure, the coming decade, as Israel moves from 60 years of independence to 70, is not likely to be easy. Iran threatens from afar, and the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas menace from much closer. The world has turned on Israel, and many Jews, both in Israel and beyond, have begun to wonder if the enterprise might be faltering.

The answer must be a definitive "no." Because what is at stake is not simply Jewish sovereignty, but Jewish hope and the Jews' ability to believe in a future. The optimism of American Judaism and the newfound vitality of Judaism in Europe would not survive the loss of the Jewish state. Ensuring Israel's future and her thriving is about more than nationalism; it is about the hope that 60 years after statehood, the Jews still want to believe that their greatest days lie ahead.

For a delightful, very today, view of the vibrancy and faces of that Hope, take this youthful tour:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuX5Ef2B3GA&feature=user

Judith Klinghoffer offers her favorite, a contrast to Mark Twain:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HpFhKpS67DQ&feature=related"