Come on, @Newsweek. This headline? "Progressive Jewish Groups, Palestinians Call Out UAE Normalizing Ties With Israel: 'Nothing to Do With Peace'?" The PLO is not "a progressive Jewish group."

But J Street, which is, spoke to you on the record, it seems, and said--

"J Street welcomes today's announcement that Israel is suspending plans to annex parts of the West Bank and that the United Arab Emirates and Israel are taking steps to establish more normalized ties.

"This decision by Prime Minister Netanyahu signals a major retreat from repeated threats to carry out de jure annexation and indicates that efforts to oppose annexation—in Israel, the U.S. and around the world—have achieved significant success."

Calling out? I'd say not.

The quote "nothing to do with peace" was a Tweet from Rabbi Alissa Wise, the deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, tweeted. That's a progressive Jewish voice, to be sure,

but you must have had to put in overtime to find an American Jew who denounces Peter Beinart *from the left.* You put her quote in the headline, even though it is *not* reflective of the sentiment of the most influential "progressive Jewish group" in the US--

--and didn't bother to ask "progressive Jews" in Israel at all, nor did you ask any Jew in Israel, of any political persuasion, for his or her opinion, even though "Newsweek reached out to the Palestinian National Authority government for further comment."

If your editorial line is so hostile to Israel that you can't see the way that the normalization of ties between Israel and the UAE has "something to do with peace" (such an agreement is, after all, known, in popular parlance, as "a peace agreement"),

it might be verging on the ludicrous. I won't say "on the anti-semitic," because that's a very strong charge, but certainly, on the absurd, childish, petulant, and retrograde. In a world bursting with sin and sorrow and bristling with armed conflicts,

ravening hatreds, and religious bigotry, it is a cause for joy when former antagonists lay down their swords for ploughshares. One of the wealthiest and most advanced countries in the Arab world just agreed to normalize relations with Israel--

that is to say, to recognize that Israel has a right to exist, open direct flights, open embassies in both countries, shake hands and live as friends, and in cooperation, with Israel. Might the motivation for this have been something less than brotherly love? Sure.

But who cares. It is a step that allows genuine bonds of affection to arise. Now Israelis and the citizens of the UAE will have a chance to meet each other, and perhaps they might even genuinely like each other.

This is the best news we've had in the world in quite some time.

If it's your hostility toward Trump that forces you to declare "peace has nothing to do with peace," you've become what you hate.

And if it's your hostility to Israel that causes you to say that, you were probably what you claim to hate all along.