For years, news headlines have depicted Israel as a nation at odds with the entire Islamic world—one continually threatened by suicide bombings, rocket attacks and emerging weapons-of-mass-destruction programs. But Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University and one of Israel's leading strategic analysts, strongly disagrees. Challenging conventional wisdom, he believes the Jewish state has built good relations with much of the non-Arab Islamic world as well as with other countries, and has strengthened its military and economic security in the Middle East.

Dismissing terrorism as "the weapon of the weak," Inbar maintains, "We have excellent relations with countries with large Muslim populations, such as India (which has the world's second largest Muslim population after Indonesia), and Muslim countries such as Turkey and others in Central Asia. We're gradually winning against the Palestinian terror campaign, and the technological gap between us and the Arab world is growing."

On November 17 at 7:30 p.m. at Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Chestnut Hill, Mass., Inbar will present his controversial views in a talk called "Rethinking Israel's New World Role." Cosponsored by Mishkan Tefila and the Consulate General of Israel to New England, the event is the third lecture in the Center for Adult Jewish Learning's multi-part Voices from Israel: Beyond the Headlines series, which aims to go beyond the news media's sound bites and images to paint a more accurate picture of unfolding events in the Middle East. Currently a visiting professor at John Hopkins University and the author of four books and more than sixty articles, Inbar served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The second Voices from Israel lecture, "Israeli Culture in Collision: An Outspoken Author Speaks," held at Temple Emanuel in Newton on November 8, features best-selling Israeli author Eyal Megged offering his provocative perspectives on Israel's recent cultural trends and their implications. Admission to all series events is $10 pre-registration, $15 at the door. For more information, visit www.hebrewcollege.edu/cajlevents.

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