Until two days ago, I hadn't spoken with Yishai Fraenkel since last August. I had just published a Forbes magazine cover story about Israeli-Palestinian joint ventures in high-tech (as well as efforts to bring Israeli Arabs and ultra-orthodox Jews into the sector), and had interviewed Yishai for it. As the general manager of the design and development center at Intel's headquarters in Jerusalem, the 44-year-old is spearheading those integration efforts for the company.

He gave me a tour, and made others available to speak about the initiatives. Almost instantly, I was struck by his grace, warmth and brilliance. That Intel- the world's #1 chipmaker-is the key player, along with Cisco Systems Israel, in these programs is monumental. The company is Israel's largest private employer (9,855), as well as the nation's largest-single industrial exporter ($3.8 billion; a 10% market share). Intel has invested about $10 billion in Israel over the past few decades, and in April announced it would spend up to $6 billion for an upgrade of a chip-making facility in the country's south.

But that conversation last August was a painful one for me. Many Palestinian entrepreneurs hated my cover because it crossed the border from development of their high-tech sector into politics-specifically the prospect that such Israeli-Palestinian partnerships could be the best hope for paving the road to peace. Yishai was comforting, and tried to explain why they were upset. "Please continue to cover our region," he wrote. "As you stated, the rays of sun, even if painful, only do good." I've done so, and only last month moderated a panel in Tel Aviv on Israeli-Palestinian ventures for Israel's largest high-tech trade association. (I didn't have a chance to see Yishai this time around, although he was initially going to be a panelist.)

BDS leaders have specifically targeted the churches for co-optation; they hope to capture the churches' moral voice to act as a stalking horse for their cause, which is to dismantle the State of Israel.

The PCUSA, though small in numbers, is being watched by a number of other mainline churches.

"Passage of divestment could signal to these other churches, which have refrained from passing divestment, to move forward on that front." - Yitzhak Santis, chief programs officer and "BDS in the Pews" project director, NGO Monitor

France has the world's third-largest Jewish population after Israel and the United States - about 500,000, according to rough estimates in a country that has outlawed any official documentation of a person's religion since the Holocaust.

Since World War II, France has redoubled efforts to make Jewish families feel welcome. But many say dramatic acts of anti-Semitism coupled with France's stagnant economy - which includes a 25 percent youth unemployment rate, compared with 11 percent in Israel - make a hard choice easier.

Laurie Levy, 26, left in 2013. A native of the southern city of Toulouse, her departure came after attacks by a French-born Islamic radical on a Jewish school and soldiers left seven people dead, including three children and a rabbi. She has given up on a career in French law and left behind her parents and siblings.

In Tel Aviv, she no longer feels the need to hide the Star of David she wears around her neck. But there are other concerns: Her parents are unlikely to uproot themselves and she worries about their future back in France. They, in turn, worry about her, living alone in a different country.

I do hope you will pardon me for refusing to bend my knee before you, dear world. But see, I'm a little tired of your empty promises to pursue ideals like justice and liberty and freedom and all those slogans you like to write about in newspapers, while you, at the same time, deny me the right to be free in my land. And I've got to say, you were really beginning to get to me; my spirit was cast down and my soul grew weary and I was depressed for some time.

Indeed, you had me in a very defeatist mood thinking I was some sort of aberration of a human being. You had me thinking I should somehow put up with your bigoted attempts at defaming my history, lying about my country, libeling my people and slandering my good name.