It is horrific to contemplate what Gilad Shalit and his family have been subjected to for over three years. Not only has he been imprisoned but the ups and downs of the prisoner exchange negotiations must be torture for his family (and for Gilad himself if he knows what has been going on).

But most maddening is, in my opinion, the racial implications of the Shalit saga. It does not matter that Israelis and Palestinians are racially indistinguishable. The fact is that the Israelis are "white" in terms of their status in Israel-Palestine and the Palestinians are not.

The Shalit story is reminiscent of the way Americans become obsessed with crimes committed against whites while generally indifferent to identical crimes committed against people of color. The media will devote endless hours and days of coverage to the tragedy of a white woman gone missing while ignoring similar disappearances of black women. The same applies to stories of child kidnappings and other crimes of violence.

We tend only to care if the victim is white.

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It seems that the folks in power have a hard time doing anything that doesn't end up making the Wall Street boys even richer. We are constantly told that they simply could not think of any way to rescue the economy that didn't involve making Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and the rest of the crew incredibly rich. Of course the rest of the economy didn't especially get rescued (10.2 percent unemployment and 2 million foreclosures a year is pretty damn bad), but Wall Street is doing just great.

In this context, it is worth thinking about efforts to push mortgage modifications that ostensibly have the purpose of keeping homeowners in their homes. The government is using up to $70 billion of TARP money for this purpose. Effectively, the government is handing money to banks to get them to reduce monthly mortgage payments and/or principle.

This a lot of money to be handing banks. This is an actual gift from the government to the banks.

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Benjamin Netanyahu's announcement "falls short" (in George Mitchell's words) on so many dimensions, reasonable people will conclude that it is simply a piece of theater, meant to appease the Obama administration, and public opinion around the world, particularly in the wake of the Goldstone report:

The freeze allows for the completion of 2,500 partially-built housing units and the construction of 492 new apartments. It does not apply to buildings like schools and synagogues. It does not take into account that the actual drivers of new settlement are not in the government, but fanatic settlement organizations that have been acting more or less independent of government decisions for years, and which the state does not have the manpower (or the army, the stomach) to confront with military force. The freeze does not apply to East Jerusalem, a greatly expanded zone (70 square kilometers) in the heart of the West Bank--historically, Palestine's biggest city, commercial hub, and the site of the mosques. Oh, and it last only ten months.

In effect, Netanyahu has followed the route of Sharon and Olmert before him on "Judea and Samaria," running like Menachem Begin and governing like Golda Meir: at first refusing to budge, then offering to take a five foot leap over the eight foot pit. No wonder the PA's Saeb Erakat announced almost immediately that the Israeli government's step was "unsatisfactory." No wonder, almost immediately, Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Reshet Bet early this morning, "the response of the Palestinians is the last consideration the Israeli government's order of priorities." The point, he said, was mainly to attend to relations with Israel's friends, the (so he says) "17 countries" around the world that supported Israel about the Goldstone report but have been drifting into hostility. (When you have Lieberman in the government, leaks are superfluous.)

AND YET LIEBERMAN'S admission is precisely what should get our attention.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu today announced a partial 10-month settlement freeze. And, understanding that Netanyahu's freeze is meaningless, the far right is backing him 100%.

According to the New York Times, "A statement from Mr. Netanyahu's office said the moratorium would be in Judea and Samaria, the biblical names of the West Bank, meaning it would not include Jerusalem, and would not apply to new residential building, so existing construction would continue and public structures like schools and community centers would be unaffected." (And, I'd guess, also parks, hospitals, day care centers, bakery cooperatives, Weight Watchers centers, synagogues, more synagogues, Arthur Murray's dance studios, aviaries, fine restaurants, zoos, etc).

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Jim Carroll's column (or poem, or blessing) for Thanksgiving. It is too lovely to link to. Here are his words in full:

THANKSGIVING IS THE preferred American holiday not just because it is free of commercial pressures, denominational exclusiveness, and the insatiable longing of children. A month shy of the winter solstice, it is also less prone to inflict seasonal affective disorder, but that does not explain its appeal either. Nor does its distance from the frenzy of New Year's. Thanksgiving's place at the center of national good feeling might seem to derive from the sweet, if ahistorical, morality tale of amity between Pilgrims and native peoples. As the universal occasion of family reunion, what else is needed to account for its sanctity?

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Both Anne Applebaum and Dan Drezner have pinpointed Barack Obama's overarching foreign policy problem: sitting at the apex of the international pecking order brings a lot of headaches and apparently very little camaraderie. Neither of them quite hits the mark, however, for how the United States should handle this strategic loneliness.

Applebaum thinks Obama will have to swing the pendulum back toward unilateralism, and Drezner says the US should start to take its hands off the wheel and see if the free-riders move up to the front. I'm sympathetic to both of their frustrations and believe the spirit of their approaches can and should be incorporated into the strategy of engagement.

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This is definitely worth reading. But this piece by Steve Clemons of New America Foundation is even better.

I have been in Washington since I volunteered for the McGovern campaign. Gregory Craig -- who was essentially dumped for trying to make the administration live up to its campaign pledges on Guantanamo and other civil liberties issues -- is the rare Washington insider I have never heard anything bad about.

On the contrary, everyone I know who knows him says that he is a dedicated liberal, a policy wonk, and a guy with no hidden agendas. Unlike 90% of the people in this capital (including pretty much the entire Congress with a few sterling exceptions) he puts country over personal aggrandizement.

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Despite President Obama's soft-pedaling the time frame for his goal of a world without nuclear weapons, announced in his April Prague speech, it may be quite possible during his lifetime, though certainly not within his presidency. Whatever the timeline, charting the course all the way to zero is too complex to try at this point. The early moves in this direction, on the other hand, are quite clear. One of the most significant, the Nuclear Posture Review that determines the policy and strategic basis of US nuclear forces, is currently being prepared for the president's signature.

In fact, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is probably the most important bureaucratic process you've never heard of. (Find more details in Martin Butcher's background paper or Joe Cirincione and Andrew Grotto's report for CAP.) Important because the resulting documents will determine the purpose of America's nuclear arsenal, which in turn will send a clear signal to the rest of the world. And unless the review sharply curtails the function of nuclear weapons purely to deter others from nuclear attack (aka a pledge of no first use), that signal could land with a diplomatic thud and undercut the Obama administration's credibility.

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Anyone who still doubts the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis (that the lobby tries to squelch debate on Israel-Palestine) should check this out.

It is a piece by Rabbi Brian Walt who was scheduled to participate on a panel called "Palestinian Human Rights: Your Involvement" until Goucher's President banned the session from taking place.

According to the college newspaper, Sanford Ungar, President of Goucher, put the kibosh on the session, saying: "We don't want Goucher to end up on a list of schools with a reputation of bringing vehemently pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli speakers to campus. I don't think it would be good for enrollment."

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The Jerusalem chapter of Search for Common Ground, along with the Washington Post's "On Faith" section, asked me to contribute 800 words on how Jewish values animated participants in J Street's October conference in Washington. So--not without hubris--I did:

During the first night of the J Street conference, when delegates were just getting settled, a half dozen speakers -- activists, rabbis and students -- unexpectedly poured their hearts out. The 1,500 people in the hall, the speakers insisted, were not only gathered to represent the majority of American Jews who think U.S. policy should put its weight behind bringing about a two state solution. We were gathered also to redeem "Jewish values." You heard a good deal of the phrase "Tikkun Olam," the repair of the world, that night. And I confess to cringing at times. Was social improvement a peculiarly Jewish desire? Could Tikkun Olam, a kabalistic concept turned into a leftist cliché, cancel out the fact that the Occupation is advanced by zealots of Jewish law, or that rightist, neoconservative ideas are particularly strong (so polls show) among the quarter of American Jews who attend synagogue at least once a month?

And yet something in the claim of these J Street speakers seems vaguely true. After all, 78 percent of American Jews voted for Barack Obama. Why, as the neoconservative Commentary Magazine complained in 1969, do Jews not just vote Republican and advance their class "interests?" Wasn't McCain a more avid "supporter of Israel?" Sure people who have been pushed around as much as Jews might be expected to be for the underdog, including Palestinians under occupation. But suffering, though ingrained in Jewish literature, is not uniquely Jewish either; nor does it necessarily make you peaceful or empathic. Are we to believe then that this desire for social improvement springs from Jewish tradition and if so, can it be redeemed by, of all things, J Street's American liberalism?

Actually, this begs the question, not of who is a Jew, but what is a tradition.

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I'm glad to see that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) has launched a site with a petition calling on Harry Reid to lower the cloture number required to stop a filibuster from 60 to 55. Moderates ought to approve: It's a moderate move.

I don't think Harry Reid can pull this off by himself, but it's good to know that there's some buzz on the progressive side in the Senate to change the Senate rules so that majorities can legislate. That would seem a small accomplishment. It's going to be a major one. It will take years of work.

Let's get to work.

White House, this means you.

P. S. The estimable Ed Kilgore clinches the point about how much is at stake:

Since the Senate already has a built-in red-state bias, a supermajority requirement would basically represent a death sentence for progressive initiatives in the near future.

The meteoric ascent of Sarah Palin as a celebrity puzzles many Americans. Why, her detractors ask, did a presidential candidate choose an inexperienced and inarticulate former beauty queen who had governed the state of Alaska for two years as his vice-presidential running mate? Why were right-wing Americans not disillusioned when Palin simply decided to quit her position as Governor after only two years of service? Why is Sarah Palin on the cover of Newsweek in the United States this week, in short shorts, and athletic gear, holding several Blackberry phones, as she prepares to exercise her rather amazing body in a gym? Is this the image she intends to use as she pursues her ambition to run for president?

If the rest of the world finds this bizarre celebrity puzzling, so do many Americans who know there is little beneath her alluring exterior. This week, Sarah Palin is everywhere, on dozens of talk shows, flogging her new book, Going Rogue, and quite frankly, she's a huge embarrassment to many people in this country. And yet, her new book is already a best seller in the states.

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There are more than 15 million people unemployed and almost 2 million people set to lose their homes to foreclosure this year. But there is good news: the Wall Street banks are as profitable as ever and set to give out record bonuses this year. The taxpayer bailouts worked.

Congress is now debating a financial reform bill that is supposed to prevent this sort of disaster from ever happening again. Leaders in Congress are promising us tough measures that will put an end to "too big to fail" institutions and the other implicit and explicit subsidies that allow the Wall Street crew to get incredibly wealthy at our expense.

It's still an open question as to whether this reform effort will just be a pointless source of greenhouse gas emissions.

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The lead story in the New York Times this morning carries the breathless headline "Wave of Debt Payments Facing U.S. Government". It could have been written by the head of the government bond trading desk at Goldman Sachs, and yet the byline contains the name Edmund Andrews, supposedly one of the savvier economists writing for the Times. Here again, the Establishment lackeys in the Press are carrying the water for Wall Street and the big bond holders (PIMCO's Bill Gross is quoted talking about storing nuts for the winter). Not until the 12th paragraph of his story does Andrews drop this little morsle.

So far, the demand for Treasury securities from investors and other governments around the world has remained strong enough to hold down the interest rates that the United States must offer to sell them. Indeed, the government paid less interest on its debt this year than in 2008, even though it added almost $2 trillion in debt.

The government's average interest rate on new borrowing last year fell below 1 percent. For short-term i.o.u.'s like one-month Treasury bills, its average rate was only sixteen-hundredths of a percent.

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The Pentagon, which favors a surge in US troops to Afghanistan knows how defense bidding goes. They've seen enough of it from the large defense contractors to know that you bid low and reconcile at a multiple of two or three times higher than the contract later.

That is what the Pentagon seems to be doing by suggesting that each new troop addition that the United States sends to Afghanistan will cost about $500,000. The White House is suggesting the price tag will be double that amount - or $1 million per new soldier per year.

And can I add that these figures do not seem to include the long term health costs that the US commits to with our soldiers -- nor other ongoing benefits.

That means that a surge of 40,000 troops will cost approximately $40 Billion on top of the $65 billion/year the US is currently spending on its military deployments.

$105 billion.

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