In a season in which there is very little "peace on Earth" and even less "good will towards men," it is a particularly tough time for Jews, who may be finding it more and more difficult to tell who their real friends are.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta fired an unusually harsh salvo across the Israelis bow. In a speech at a Brookings Institution forum, he urged Israel to get to the "d--n table" for peace talks. It must have escaped Panetta's notice that the Palestinians are the ones refusing to come to the "d--n table" unless their unacceptable demands are met. These include, depending on the day, the cessation of construction projects, even on pre-1967 Israeli land, the so-called "right of return" of "Palestinian refugees," a concession by Israel to re-draw its borders to 1967 lines -- though such borders would be completely indefensible against an inevitable attack -- and the re-division of Jerusalem, which Israel rightly sees as its capital. Meanwhile, the Palestinian side concedes almost nothing and fulfills none of its promises. Neither is it held accountable for its behavior.

The killing of Osama bin Laden on Sunday has reignited the debate over so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. Early reports (information is still coming out) indicate that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed released vital information about bin Laden's courier, who eventually led American intelligence forces to the compound where they both were killed. But it's not clear exactly which interrogation techniques led to that information, since it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate out the different interrogation methods and claim that a single piece of informaiton was obtained through this method, but not that one.

Hence the blanket claim that waterboarding did not produce intelligence that led to bin Laden's death is simply un-provable, as CIA Director Leon Panetta, recently tapped by Obama for Secretary of Defense, illustrated in this exchange with Brian Williams:

There was a tell-tale moment during Ed Schultz's repugnant rant on today's Morning Joe. In the course of alleging that Dick Cheney wants Americans to die in a terrorist attack, Schultz boasted: "I got a lot of support when I said that on the Ed program, I got a lot of support overnight when I said it again." [H/t reader Melody and Mitchell Blatt.]

Translation: the ratings-starved Schultz will say pretty much anything if it garners him a few more eyeballs on the paranoid-lefty fringe.

Here's Schultz spewing his bile . . .

CIA Director Leon Panetta and Pres. Obama at the Central Intelligence Agency, April 20, 2009.

President-elect Barack Obama is bringing back yet another Clinton retread. While many question former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta as the best choice to head up the CIA, due to his lack of experience in the world of intelligence, the Washington Post's David Ignatius has nothing but praise for Obama's pick.(my emphasis throughout:)

Here's the message, according to Obama's advisers: Panetta is a Washington heavyweight with the political clout to protect the agency and help it rebuild after a traumatic eight years under George Bush, when it became a kind of national pincushion.

"Leon is not going to preside over the demise of the CIA," explains one member of the Obama transition team. "The CIA needs to have someone who can represent them well."