News cycles surf the constant ebb and flow of fickle public fascination. Last week, it was the tragic shootings in Wichita and at the Holocaust Museum. There was a lot of huffing and puffing about hate in the hinterlands, white extremist violence, yadda-yadda - a whole lot of folks who should know better seemed convinced yankee Hitlers were about to pop out of their pantries. Then the fever broke.

The week before, topics were Sonia Sotomayor and her alleged "racism" - whatever that arbitrarily defined term currently means. This silly meme was hammered hard by the shock-jock commissariat, that loose, loop-headed network of gas-bags self-assigned to spotlight whatever molehill masquerades as Mountain of the Moment. Frankly, Rush Limbaugh spouting in high dudgeon about his own race grievance is virulent hypocrisy as hazardous as any variety of bird-shit flu.

Then, the story faded.

Maybe, at some point, there'll be some action - and news - on issues we really care about, like healthcare reform. Or maybe some dealing with real American problems. I, for one, don't think the signal crisis of this country is "hate"; I think it's violence. Let's see the huffers and puffers tackle possible solutions to drive-by bloodbaths that so mark American neighborhoods - especially mine. It's complicated, as issues go, that's for certain. And something tells me answers to this very real, very tragic scourge won't be found in our bibles of political correctness. There are times - actually, most ot the time - when simplistic dogma pushing discredited agenda fails us... miserably.  

Now an old familiar topic comes down the pike - the Mideast and its constant, never-ending travails. Iran re-elected as president the always zany Ahmedinejad... or it didn't... or the election was stolen... or it wasn't. There's some rioting, some news agencies have accused the Iranian regime of interrupting their transmissions, the opposition is under house arrest. And on and on...

For better or worse, the incumbent, known for his inflammatory rhetoric baiting the West, had genuine popularity among Iran's electorate. But Ahmedinejad also had some real, solid support over here in the U.S. The neocons were on his side, hoping his return to office would sustain their portrayal of the Persian giant as the fount of all things evil. For years, the Israel Lobby has been trying to coax the U.S. to bomb Irans nuclear facilities ( Israel has threatened to do so itself, but why dirty-up all-but-free, American-supplied warplanes when its big stooge may jump in. )

Iranian voters may have been more that a bit put off by our suspiciously timed sanctions getting the fast-track in Congress, antagonism backed by AIPAC ( of course ). H.R. 1327, among other things, authorizes State and local governments to divest from Iran; as of now, at least 10 States have enacted Iran divestment legislation. Economic penalties under consideration include sanctions on refined petroleum products.

And could it be that opponent Mir Hussein Moussavi's campaign bumbled by choosing green as a theme color? Or, more to the point, choosing a theme color at all. A "green revolution" is just too damn close to all the color-coded "revolutions" that broke out across Eastern Europe and South Asia a few years ago, and have proven as durable as one of those millisecond-duration elements that are by-products of slamming electrons together in particle colliders. Backed by interests as shadowy and suspect as George Soros and the publicly funded, truly creepy National Endowment for Democracy, these "crusades for democracy" always had more to do with economic self-interest than Jeffersonian ideals. Know what? If I was an Iranian voter, I'd have some second thoughts myself about this "reform candidate".

The Middle East's other big news - if you can call it that with a straight face - is Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's offer to recognize a Palestinian state - as long as this theoretical "Palestine" in turn recognizes Israel and reduces itself to demilitarized, pea-shooter status. The prime minister, in his second term in Israel's top spot, knows the proposal will never fly, and that's the idea. The Palestinians will reject it, giving Israel another excuse - "we made a generous offer and look what happened" - next time the IDF rampages through Gaza or the West Bank, reducing infrastructure to neolithic levels and killing "terrorists" as young as three years of age.

This is a delaying tactic, an attempt to create the illusion a serious proposal has been offered, when, in reality, no serious proposal has been offered. It's an old, tired story in that part of the world, so crucial to world peace, and so far away from any tranquility itself.

Another tiresome issue - this one Israeli settlements in the West Bank - revived of late. President Obama, distinguishing himself from a succession of "see-no-evil" presidents over the past few decades, has come down hard on limiting Israeli encroachments in this most contested of territories.

Aaron David Miller, a former senior U.S. negotiator in the Mideast, says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's closely watched speech on June 14 "was less about pursuing Arab-Israeli peace and much more about pursuing the U.S.-Israeli relationship." Miller said Netanyahu's first-ever reference to a "Palestinian state," with conditions, was meant to assuage U.S. President Barack Obama, after new U.S. pressure on halting Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Miller says the Obama administration now faces the daunting task of coming up with a strategy for how to bring about "meaningful negotiations between an empowered Israeli government and an empowered Palestinian national authority." 

Notice: It's the responsibility of America to make that happen. Ooo-eee. That's some privilege for you.

Speaking of privilege, the new "active term", pro-settlement, seems to be "natural growth", long a staple of hair-replacement and penis-enhancement products of spurious effectiveness. Assuming the Jewish state's right to grow, naturally, easward, our domestic Israel Lobby has picked up the phrase:

"On the American side, there needs to be acknowledgement [sic] and appreciation that Netanyahu is taking political risks by dismantling the illegal outposts," (ADL president Abraham) Foxman wrote. "Also, more needs to be done to make clear that, while America is asking certain things from Israel, that Israel is our great ally and that we never want to leave the impression that we are weakening ties with Israel in order to win over the Muslim world. Finally, the U.S. must understand Israel's issue with natural growth, with room for compromise on the issue."

OK, translation: The settlements will be maintained. The settlements will be expanded. Nothing will change. Forget it, Obama, and just to drive the message home, we're coming after one of your best, least "interventionist" team members.

All this playing for time has a point, of course. And it's becoming obvious to even the most partisan of Israel's proponents: Israel must, someday, end its Zionist foundation enterprise and re-establish itself as a true, open democracy. A modern state, if you will. To maintain itself as a "Jewish state" is to militantly sustain itself as an apartheid state; there is no legitimate argument, no contraposition to that "fact on the ground".

Is the existence of Israel fundamental to the existence of the Jewish people? No. Jews live and flourish everywhere, with little or no persecution. They maintain their culture and identities in environments sometimes actively antagonistic toward faiths outside that of the dominant society - as in Muslim countries of the Middle East.

Policy must be predicated primarily on the "here and now" - not on historical narrative regardless how aggrieved or triumphant. The future of the world is multicultural, whether we like it or not, and Israel freezes itself in time - a stubborn, violent anachronism - at the price of world peace. At some point, the world's patience will run out with this tiresome, dangerous stalemate.

Israel's worst enemy? Demographics. There will simply be more Arabs than Jews in the region - in Israel itself - in the future.

When your worst enemy is people, your only solution is massacre.

Or change.