I’m finding Daily Beast’s Open Zion - actually not bad.

(While +972 magazine - turning out to be just another Electronic Intifada, just with better site design.)

But I’m completely perplexed too because I really can’t believe that US audience (even Jewish or Israeli expats) can follow these - really snappy posts.

Hope they can keep it real like this, but today usually there is no time for educating/training readers. So probably this fun, prime ‘launch/honeymoon period’ is going to end soon. 

Or it might persist?

Let’s see how persistent and sticky he (Peter Beinart) can be. (Though, American Jewry’s lefty parts aren’t that open to new materials, new perspectives and new kind of creativeness - but some Palestinians are changing (nonviolence in West Bank etc) - so there could be - there could be something really new emerging from this kind of attempts.)

As Beinart approaches to the real questions - that how Israeli society has to change, can change - and for that what paths can be tried. It may become - something.  (Or he can remain inside of rather - his uninformed, detached, American Jewish perspective.) 

Mofaz will brag that it was his, and Kadima’s, initiative that should be credited with bringing revolutionary change. But he merely set the table for Netanyahu’s machinations and hastened Kadima’s demise. Netanyahu is already taking the credit for change, even as he is preparing a process that will impede a public conversation, and legislation, in which real change may be entertained. I argued here before that, in adding Mofaz to his coalition, Netanyahu gave himself more room to play off Global Israel forces against Greater Israel ones. The point is, it is Netanyahu who will remain in control. “Mofaz is not an Alpha-animal,” a columnist friend of mine lamented.

Remember, one quarter of Israeli first graders are in Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox schools, and another quarter are Arab. Resignation would have gestured toward an electoral fight for civil society that is not just plural but pluralist, in which ultra-Orthodox would not be materially privileged and segregated, and Arabs would not be excluded and legally discriminated against. If reform is skewed to bring more ultra-Orthodox into service, but keep Israeli Arabs on the margins, its most lasting effect will be to reinforce Greater Israel nationalism in the army, and alientation in largely segregated and boxed-in Arab towns.

Everybody understands it could take a generation (and, at least some understand, a rekindled peace process with Palestine) to bring this civil society into relief. With Mofaz folding himself back into the bosom of the Likud, it is hard to see just what change is getting started.