Amos Oz Shoots Down the Doves

Good Sunday morning.

• Last Sunday Candide’s Notebooks published a piece on Amos Oz, one of Israel’s leading intellectuals and leaders of the peace movement, recalling an essay he wrote twenty-four years ago about the divide between Arabs and Israelis, and how to bridge it. On Wednesday, Oz wrote a brief essay for the Los Angeles Times in which he broke from his past criticism of Israeli military action in Lebanon, this time wholeheartedly supporting it because “a defeat of a militant Islamist terror organization may dramatically enhance the chances for peace in the region.” Cecilia Lucas, a graduate student in education at the University of California at Berkley and a new contributor to the Notebooks, responds to Amos Oz.
  

• The Israeli invasion of Lebanon is proceeding apace, with few clear-sighted views to recommend. Here's one of them, by Gideon Levy in Haaretz, who writes: "The war that the IDF has now declared on Lebanon and before it on Gaza, will never be considered another "war of no choice." Let's save that debate from the historians. This is unequivocally a war of choice. The IDF absorbed two painful blows, which were particularly humiliating, and in their wake went into a war that is all about restoring its lost dignity, which on our side is called "restoring deterrent capabilities." Neither in Lebanon nor certainly in Gaza, can anyone formulate the real goals of the war, so nobody knows for sure what will be considered victory or an achievement." See the full column, "Operation Peace for the IDF"...
  

Also:

• We have John Tierney's latest column on the Republican Party as Stem-Cell Poopers, or what Tierney calls "The Church Lady Party"
• Frank Rich Does "The Passion of the Embryo"
  

As always, check the Notebooks' Front Page for rolling updates.