Israeli

James W. Dale makes a welcome point in his commentary about the divestment campaign against Israel ("Choosing to stay engaged: Anti-Israel measures like divestment are not the best way to seek justice for Palestinians," May 4). It is, as he says, vital that mainline churches, including his own Presbyterian Church, understand that anti-Israel "divestment" campaigns render their proponents destructive and deny them a voice at the table. "Divestment" echoes both the Nazi boycott and impoverishment of German Jews and the Arab League's economic boycott of Israel.

An Israeli defense electronics firm has opened a Howard County location, where it plans to create 100 new jobs, the state Department of Business and Economic Development said Wednesday. ETLA North America, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd., leased space in Maple Lawn, where it plans to grow to 25,000 square feet as it expands its staff and begins manufacturing there. The state has approved a $300,000 loan to the company, and Howard County has offered a property tax credit.

Ross Singer's recent commentary revealed a truth that so many on either side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict refuse to acknowledge ("Friend or foes? Oct. 17). When we get to know people as human beings, regardless of the side with which they identify, we learn that simplistic generalizations and platitudes about the "other" don't fit. The events leading up the establishment of the state of Israel and its aftermath require a much more nuanced reading than political and religious leaders on either side would have us believe.

Stewart D. Nozette of Chevy Chase was a gifted scientist privy to America's top secrets. On Wednesday, he admitted trying to sell those secrets to a foreign government. With his guilty plea to attempted espionage, the astrophysicist was rebranded a would-be traitor. Nozette, 54, stood in an orange prison jumpsuit in the District of Columbia's federal court as he conceded that he had accepted $11,000 in cash in 2009 in exchange for passing classified materials about U.S. satellite defense systems to a person Nozette believed was an Israeli intelligence officer.

The most surprising aspect of President Barack Obama's speech Thursday on U.S. policy in the Middle East may have been his strongly worded call for a two-state solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on Israel's boundaries before 1967. Observers had been speculating for weeks about whether Mr. Obama would offer his own plan for a Mideast peace agreement as the White House scrupulously declined to comment on the subject. Yet the outline for peace unveiled by the president Thursday was surprising not so much because it was anything new but because, as the president acknowledged, everybody has known all along that's what ultimately has to happen - even though they've spent decades pretending otherwise.

On April 3, Judge Richard Goldstone, chairman of the fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2009, published an op-ed in The Washington Post reconsidering one of the allegations in the report: that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians during the assault. Judge Goldstone's co-authors, Hina Jilani, Christine Chinkin and Desmond Travers, sharply disagreed with him in a statement issued in the Guardian on April 14. In it, they stood by the report in its entirety, saying "there is no justification for any demand or expectation for reconsideration of the report as nothing of substance has appeared that would in any way change the context, findings or conclusions…" The report was the final product of an independent, international fact-finding mission established during the assault to investigate violations in connection with the conflict.

Julian Schnabel broadens his canvas for his fourth film, "Miral," turning his lens on multiple protagonists and a half-century of Middle East strife. On the face of it a bold undertaking, the Jerusalem-set feature plays out with an awkward staidness, the results not so much prismatic as fragmented. The story of four Palestinian women, "Miral" is no political tract but a melodrama, emphasis on heartache, selfless sacrifice and often lush visuals. The painter-turned-director knows how to manipulate his widescreen images to create a rarefied atmosphere too. But while style had an illuminating power in "Basquiat," "Before Night Falls" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," here it feels as self-conscious as the script's simplified history lessons.

The Sun recently shed light ("3 youths among 8 dead in Israeli reprisal strikes," March 23) on the tragedy and consequences of war. However, I find it appalling that the previous week an Israeli family with "3 youths" including a 3-month-old infant were stabbed to death in their sleep. The 3-month-old was decapitated. In Gaza, Arabs celebrated by giving candy to their children. Somehow, your newspaper must have missed this atrocity as I didn't see any photos of the funeral attended by 20,000 mourners in Israel including the remaining 12-, 8- and 2-year-old distraught orphans.

"It's definitely a milestone for me," said cellist Amit Peled about his debut at the Kennedy Center on Sunday, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society. "When I saw who else was on the WPAS season brochure, I freaked out. " WPAS President and CEO Neale Perl had no hesitation about adding the tall, long-haired, 37-year-old Peabody Institute faculty member to the organization's starry roster. "He reminds me of [Gregor] Piatigorsky," Perl said. "Amit has the same imposing physical stature and a tremendous stage presence.

In what is at least his 27th anti-Israel letter in the past six years, Ray Gordon ("U.S. should cut Israel off," December 17) erroneously charges: • "Israel doesn't want a peace settlement with the Palestinians, today or ever. " In that case, why did Israel propose a West Bank and Gaza Strip state, with eastern Jerusalem as its capital, to Palestinian leadership in 2008, 2001 and 2000 — only to be rejected, with no counter-offer each time, and with violence on the earlier two occasions?