Of all the great Jewish poets of medieval Spain, Judah Halevi was unique in his expressions of dissatisfaction with life in exile, and his yearning for the Holy Land, summed up most famously in his verse, “My heart is in the east while I am in the uttermost west.” Sarah Rindner, having recently left America to settle in Israel—a subject she has written about here—reflects on Halevi’s words, and the response to them of the 20th-century Israeli poet, also bearing the name Yehuda, in light of her own experiences:

In an extensive report on a major survey of Palestinian public opinion, David Pollock sums up his key findings. Above all, the results suggest that large numbers of Palestinians are willing to make compromises with Israel in the short term, but tend to harbor maximalist, even militant, long-term goals: