I can’t even imagine the agony of these families not knowing where their relatives are and if they’re alive or dead. In our own family, we have all t… - Peter Beinart

I wrote this book because of my grandmother, who made me a Zionist. And because of Khaled Jaber, who could have been my son.

America has to use its considerable leverage to get the Israeli government to do something to show Palestinians that it has — that there is a way for them to fight for their freedom, that Israel and the world will offer them; otherwise, we are going to have round after round after round of this hideous killing on both sides...only Palestinian freedom in the long run will ensure Israeli Jewish safety.

older American Jews generally came of age in an era when a Jew-no matter how secular-was still barred from full entry into the non-Jewish world. That era is gone. As a result, secular Jewish culture has become less distinct from broader American culture. From food to language to comedy to politics, young secular Jews are abandoning the less translatable elements of Jewish ethnicity, and America is assimilating the rest. Thus, Jews rarely eat bialys anymore, but McDonald's now serves bacon, egg, and cheese bagels. Few Jews still speak Yiddish, but in 2011, Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, an evangelical Christian, accused Barack Obama of "chutzpah" (which she pronounced "choot-spa") for refusing to cut government spending. Borscht Belt humor is gone, but for much of the 1990s, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David produced the most popular comedy on TV. The socialist and militant labor politics that Jews brought with them from Eastern Europe is a distant memory, but in the 1980s, a young Barack Obama read Saul Alinsky on Chicago's South Side.