Mark J. Pelavin is the Associate Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He is one of the Jewish community's leading legislative strategists, and one of its senior lobbyists.

Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert yesterday addressed a special Joint Meeting of Congress. (For the yeckis (sticklers) among you: no, it was not a “Joint Session.” Only a Head of State can address a Joint Session; Israel’s Head of State is her President, not the Prime Minister.)

Olmert spoke powerfully about the impact of terrorism in Israel, about the U.S./Israel partnership, and about this plans for the future. In perhaps the central section of his speech, he said:

Painfully, we the people of Israel have learned to change our perspective. We have to compromise in the name of peace, to give up parts of our promised land in which every hill and valley is saturated with Jewish history and in which our heroes are buried. We have to relinquish part of our dream to leave room for the dream of others, so that all of us can enjoy a better future. For this painful but necessary task my government was elected. And to this I am fully committed.

We hope and pray that our Palestinian neighbors will also awaken. We hope they will make the crucial distinction between implementing visions that can inspire us to build a better reality, and mirages that will only lead us further into the darkness. We hope and pray for this, because no peace is more stable than one reached out of mutual understanding not just for the past but for the future.

The entire speech is well worth reading. The text is available here.