Some Positive Trends, for Once

It's always newsworthy when friend-of-Goldblog Bradley Burston writes something optimistic about the future of Israel and the Middle East. Read this week's column, which focuses on a series of positive trends, in full. Here's a sample:

A broad backlash in Israel has greeted a spate of unabashedly racist rulings by state-employed rabbis. In defiant response, the rulings have escalated in intensity. At the weekend, a large paid ad in the Jerusalem Post opposing territorial concessions, cited medieval commentary commanding violating the Sabbath and taking up arms against "marauders" (identified in the ad as "Israel's neighbors") "even if their ostensible aim is merely to steal straw and stubble." The most prominent of the signatories to the ad, addressed to Benjamin Netanyahu and dated January, 2011, was Abraham Shapira, former Israel chief rabbi. Rabbi Shapira died on September 27, 2007.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/some-positive-trends-for-once/69988/