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We don't have to give up on the Holocaust - it
is our history and holds central lessons for all human beings - but we
have to stop using it as a justification for Israeli policies.

As this week draws thankfully to a close, we
are all suffering from a severe Bibiobamal overdose. Before we allow
ourselves to switch off and hopefully begin to forget these historical
speeches, just one question: What did we learn over the past week?

Four speeches in Washington sought to
redefine the history, present and future of the Middle East, the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the strategic alliance between Israel and
the United States and the Jewish People as a whole - but aside from
marveling once again at the rhetorical brilliance of Barak Obama and
Benjamin Netanyahu, which we knew about anyway, everything is still
depressingly the same: Two failed messiahs delivering empty promises and
no chance of deliverance from the cycle of violence, which is turning
to another round of almost inevitable bloodshed come September.

Netanyahu
and Obama are more eloquent and telegenic than their predecessors,
Yitzhak Shamir and George Bush the elder, but it is as if we are back in
1991 and Shamir is saying on the eve of the pointless Madrid
Conference, "the sea is the same sea and ... >>>