Watchwords: Tuesday, June 16

A memorandum that ends nothing is being sold as peace, and the side still doing the disarming is already being cast as the one breaking it.

There is no signed deal, Israel is not a party to it, and the one clause everyone is fighting over is the one Tehran wrote to fold its own proxy into the bargain. This week you will be asked to defend Israel as the obstacle to a peace that does not exist — the move is to refuse the noun before you argue the verb. Inside: the five claims you will hear, why each one sticks, the lines to say, and the traps to avoid — from Geneva to a synagogue door in Edgware to a boarded-up booth in Paris.

You will be asked this week to defend Israel as the obstacle to a peace that does not exist.

The Israel Brief is the Mitzpe Institute's read on Israel and the region — most mornings, Sunday through Thursday. More at mitzpe.org.