Israel Can't Avoid the Settlement Talk Anymore

In his inimitable fashion, U.S. President Donald Trump has succeeded in beginning a national conversation about immigration. It is not the nuanced, cerebral discussion about the value of migrants versus the danger of terrorists that Americans need to have, but despite -- or perhaps because of -- the horribly amateurish rollout of his immigration executive order, the U.S. is at least beginning to talk.

That is more than can be said of Israel and its policy in the West Bank. This was a bitterly painful week, as Israelis watched hundreds of police and security personnel forcibly remove residents of the illegal Amona settlement. Israeli media broadcast images of men and women weeping as they were removed from their homes, of troops ramming open the doors of a synagogue to evict those barricaded inside, and of some of the security personnel overcome with emotion and grief.