Judging from voting trends during the past three decades, Democratic President Barack Obama can rest assured that he will receive a majority of Jewish votes in the 2012 presidential election. Obama will undoubtedly continue to enjoy wide support among American Jewry. But it is a sobering thought, as the US celebrates July 4, that this does not mean his Mideast policies will be good for Israel.

The shift to online media, and in particular, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, represents the growing trend of people turning to online sources for news and world events. This presents a unique opportunity for Israel's public diplomacy to penetrate global public opinion.

Dan Diker, secretary general of the World Jewish Congress, said that creating a common voice among Jewish parliamentarians was one of the most important public diplomacy objectives for Israel and the Jewish world.

Israelis studiously track public opinion in the United States and Europe, and Israel's military has taken to using YouTube, Twitter and bloggers to disseminate real-time updates around the world, sometimes in the middle of battle.

UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and global education advocate Shakira visited the Max Rayne ‘Hand-in-Hand’ School for Bilingual Education in Jerusalem yesterday, meeting with students to talk about the power of education.

A computer application called “The 3rd Intifada” has been removed... from App Store for iPads and iPhones.Israel's Minister for Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs, Yuli Edelstein, had sent a letter to Apple, pointing out that the application called for an Arab uprising against the State of Israel and asking that it be removed.

With support from the Israeli Ministry of Education, the Abraham Fund’s Language as a Cultural Bridge program is paving the way toward mandatory Arabic classes for all Jewish students in public schools.

...[previously] I posited that historical attitudes reaching back to the dawn of the Zionist movement provide a context, if not a continuous mode of thought, lying behind Israel’s inability and unwillingness to construct a public diplomacy program that directly engages newly empowered Arab publics.