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Today President Obama stunned the world by saying this:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

The New York Times reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “reacted icily.” The American right wing, by contrast, has been sent into a near frenzy. You’d think it was the end of the world.

This is one of the reasons why the Israel-Palestine issue is so difficult to deal with for those of us who haven’t followed its every nuance for the past 30 years. I mean, this has been the basis of every peace negotiation in the Middle East for the past three decades, hasn’t it? Most recently it was the basis of Wye River, Camp David, and Taba. Whether it was stated in precisely that way or not, every proposed deal has involved two states, with borders to be negotiated based on the facts on the ground that Israel has so assiduously built up since 1967. In other words, “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

And yet, for some reason, actually saying what’s been obvious for decades sends everyone into a tizzy. All because of some minuscule change in wording that, to ordinary ears, means nothing.

Somebody help me out here. Pretend I’m five years old and you have to explain things in words of one syllable. Why is Obama’s formulation worthy of anything more than a yawn, let alone widespread outrage?

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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