Wednesday, March 17, 2010
From an email from Barbara L. This is a little visual on what it's like to be a minority in a Muslim land [Update: Yes, this is actually in Israel itself]. Where are the Western Churches?:
From a friend visiting Israel: One marked point I noticed was the intolerance of the Muslims in Nazareth... their banners boldly proclaiming that Allah is God and that he has no "begotten son" across the Church of the Annunciation there. If we dared to state that Jesus was the last prophet from God near a Mosque there would be WWIII. It's so biased. I am glad that I can see first hand how small the nation of Israel is, the land mines the Syrians planted in the Golan (Our guide is a Jewish lady from Russia that shared how a child recently had his foot blown off from the mines the Syrians had planted there.)
A Palestinian youth throws a petrol bomb at Israeli soldiers during clashes at Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem on March 16, 2010. Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem and the West Bank as tension boiled over Israel's announcement last week of plans to build 1,600 new Jewish settler homes in mainly Arab east Jerusalem, while a senior Hamas leader called for a new 'intifada,' or uprising.
Palestinian demonstrators prepare to battle Israeli border policemen during clashes in the Shuafat refugee camp on March 16, 2010. Hundreds of Palestinians clashed with security forces in east Jerusalem as tension boiled over in the city and a senior Hamas leader called for a new 'intifada,' or uprising.
I've been getting quite a few emails on this little confrontation, as Chris Matthews pulls out the race card...no, that's not quite right, he hints, and the New York Times' Ethan Bronner gives him what he wants... CAMERA's Andrea Levin has an excellent post on the subject, with video of Bronner's appearance. Honestly, these guys really need a new storyline, the whole "racism" thing is getting so old: NYT's Bronner Smears Israel as Racist on MSNBC
BRONNER: I would say that there is some level of prejudice about the fact that he had some Islamic background through his stepfather. But I think it has to do more with the fact that when he came into office a year ago, he wanted to recalibrate the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world. And the easiest and clearest way of doing that was to put some distance between the United States and Israel, and he did that. And that made people nervous. I think there's also some sense here that--some degree of racism, to be perfectly honest.
The problem here is that the left is still worshiping Obama to such an extent, and is so ill-informed as to what his critics are saying -- that, or they tend to write it off so quickly that is never registers -- that they look for the irrational where the rational does just fine. In fact, as Levin notes, Israelis were fine with Obama...up until he got into office and they experienced him in actions:
...On what does Bronner's "honest" allegation of racism rest? Are there polls to show Israelis are less favorable toward the president because he's African-American?
There are polls - but they reveal something very different. Multiple polls in Israel before Obama's election showed him the favorite over John McCain. In July 2008 a Maagar Mohot Survey found 37% preferred seeing Obama elected, compared to 28% for McCain. In November, just after the election a Shvakim Panorama poll found 63% said they were not concerned about the election of Barack Obama.
In May 2009 a poll by the Begin-Sadat Center found Israelis remained positive about the U.S. president, with 38% perceiving he had a friendly attitude toward Israel and just 7% an unfriendly view. Similarly, despite expressing uncertainty about his possible policies, a full 60% expressed favorable opinion about the president.
A Smith Research poll found a similar number of 31% in May perceiving Obama being friendly toward Israel. These attitudes plummeted though in June, by which time only 6% of Israelis considered Obama friendly. That dropped even further by August 28 when 4% found him favorable to Israel.
What happened between May and August? On May 18, at a joint White House press conference with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama appeared to sidestep the Oslo Accords saying: "Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward." Responding later to questions about this, Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said: "The issue of settlements is a final status issue, and until there are final status arrangements, it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities."...
One group of merchants is doing just fine: the gold merchants:
GAZA CITY -- Gaza's borders are closed and its economy in shambles, but the glittering alleys of the territory's centuries-old gold bazaar are packed with young brides to be.
The market has experienced an unlikely renaissance in recent years as Gaza's Islamist Hamas rulers have championed weddings and Israeli closures have crippled the local economy, making gold an attractive investment.
"Not only have we not been hurt by the Israeli blockade, but our business has actually gotten better," gold merchant Iyad Basal says as people cram into his crowded family-run shop.
"We have not stopped working since the blockade because the gold comes to us through smuggling and Hamas encourages marriage," he adds...
Yossi Klein Halevi has a very good piece at TNR worth reading in full, but here's a significant taste (let me know if you can't see this behind a subscription wall and I'll see what I can do):
...not even the opposition accused Netanyahu of a deliberate provocation. These are not the days of Yitzhak Shamir, the former Israeli prime minister who used to greet a visit from Secretary of State James Baker with an announcement of the creation of another West Bank settlement. Netanyahu has placed the need for strategic cooperation with the U.S. on the Iranian threat ahead of the right-wing political agenda. That's why he included the Labor Party into his coalition, and why he accepted a two-state solution--an historic achievement that set the Likud, however reluctantly, within the mainstream consensus supporting Palestinian statehood. The last thing Netanyahu wanted was to embarrass Biden during his goodwill visit and trigger a clash with Obama over an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood.
Nor is it likely that there was a deliberate provocation from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which runs the interior ministry that oversees building procedures. Shas, which supports peace talks and territorial compromise, is not a nationalist party. Its interest is providing housing for its constituents, like the future residents of Ramat Shlomo; provoking international incidents is not its style.
Finally, the very ordinariness of the building procedure--the fact that construction in Jewish East Jerusalem is considered by Israelis routine--is perhaps the best proof that there was no intentional ambush of Biden. Apparently no one in the interior ministry could imagine that a long-term plan over Ramat Shlomo would sabotage a state visit.
In turning an incident into a crisis, Obama has convinced many Israelis that he was merely seeking a pretext to pick a fight with Israel. Netanyahu was inadvertently shabby; Obama, deliberately so.
According to a banner headline in the newspaper Ma'ariv, senior Likud officials believe that Obama's goal is to topple the Netanyahu government, by encouraging those in the Labor Party who want to quit the coalition.
The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. Indeed, Israelis' initial anger at Netanyahu has turned to anger against Obama. According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62 percent of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20 percent blame Netanyahu. (Another 17 percent blame Shas leader Eli Yishai.)
In the last year, the administration has not once publicly condemned the Palestinians for lack of good faith--even though the Palestinian Authority media has, for example, been waging a months-long campaign denying the Jews' historic roots in Jerusalem. Just after Biden left Ramallah, Palestinian officials held a ceremony naming a square in the city after a terrorist responsible for the massacre of 38 Israeli civilians. (To its credit, yesterday, the administration did condemn the Palestinian Authority for inciting violence in Jerusalem.)
Obama's one-sided public pressure against Israel could intensify the atmosphere of "open season" against Israel internationally. Indeed, the European Union has reaffirmed it is linking improved economic relations with Israel to the resumption of the peace process--as if it's Israel rather than the Palestinians that has refused to come to the table...
Related: David Rothkopf at Foreign Policy: The fake U.S.-Israel crisis: Obama's flawed response to an ally's gaffe
A big win in California (from Divest This):
On Monday evening, the forces of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) were handed a major defeat when the Davis Food Co-op, located in Davis California, turned down demands by BDS activists to put a boycott of Israeli goods to a Co-op wide vote.
While this story may not be big enough to hit the national press, the details surrounding the decision make this as significant an event in the continuing annals of BDS failure as the Presbyterian Church's 2006 decision to abandon divestment altogether (a decision which changed the threat level of BDS from "potential issue" to "serious loser").
As backdrop, the Davis Food Co-op is a highly successful, member-owned cooperative with a nearly forty year history and over 9000 member-owners. Given the nature of the organization, the institution takes understandable pride in its progressive values and responsiveness to members needs, connections to the community that have contributed to its decades of success.
Sadly, it was these very qualities that made the organization a target for the local branch of the BDS movement, a movement whose two major tactics involve: (1) dressing up their mission of de-legitimization and demonization in a progressive/human-rights vocabulary; and (2) abusing the openness of organizations like the Co-op for their own narrow, political ends.
The Co-op recently reduced the number of members needed to put an issue to a Co-op-wide ballot from 15% to 5%, which gave local BDS organizers the impression that less than 500 signatures were needed to put their proposed ban on Israeli food products to a vote. And so their project kicked off with ongoing "tabling" at the Co-op featuring petitioning backed up by the usual context-free, anti-Israel propaganda (where Israelis were assigned the role of bullying tyrants, the Palestinians that of pristine victims, and the rest of the Middle East and all of history dumped down the memory hole).
Fortunately, large numbers of Co-op members chose to not take this challenge lying down, organizing their own tabling to educate members about the issues, and working with the leadership of the Co-op (with help from the local Jewish community) to inform the Co-op about the true nature of BDS.
What happened next was an exact replay of what's gone on whenever the boycott project tries to insinuate itself into an open-minded organization. This included all of the bitterness and divisiveness of the Arab-Israeli conflict spilling out into the community, forcing neighbors to take sides in one of the world's oldest and most complex disputes lest they be accused of betraying their progressive values.
The key to understanding the decision that was taken on Monday is that the Co-op by-laws require that member initiatives must be based on requests that were of a "lawful and proper purpose," a clause that they agreed would be more "stringently interpreted and enforced" once the threshold for a membership vote was reduced from 15%-5%.
Early in the debate over the proposal, the Co-op's board focused primarily on the "lawful" part of that phrase, seeming to reject the ballot request due to potential that it might place the organization in legal jeopardy. Now I've written before on the issue of whether or not BDS could be considered illegal based on current US anti-boycott legislation, concluding that the matter is murky (or, at least, open to interpretation).
Had the Co-op chosen to nix the boycott on the ground of potential legal risk alone, this would have been within their rights, and certainly would constitute a win over the boycotters. But the Co-op decided to do more than that. Much more.
If you look at the response they released on Monday, (click on the March 15, 2010 Resolution link of this Wiki) their entire reasoning for rejecting the boycott proposal was based on whether the proposal fulfilled the requirement regarding "proper purpose." And in over a dozen "Whereas-es" (some multi-part), the organization's leaders made it clear in no uncertain terms that a boycott does not come close to meeting that threshold.
Needless to say, the boycotters complained that, unlike matters of legality, what constitutes "proper purpose" is undefined, and thus open to the interpretation of the organization's leaders. But that is exactly why the decision made by the organization is so significant.
In this case, "proper purpose" meant the organization deciding which matters were in the community's interest and which were not. It meant grappling with the core values of the organization, and determining which issues need to be debated in the context of a cooperatively owned supermarket and which didn't. It meant looking at the obligations the organization owed not just to its membership at large, but also to the wider world. And in each and every case, the institution explained in clarifying detail why BDS did not belong at the Co-op, and why individual choices (like whether or not to buy Israeli oranges) are best left to individuals, not be subject to a majority vote.
All of this is, needless to say, incomprehensible to those behind the boycott attempt since a lack of propriety (i.e., a willing blindness to what constitutes "proper purpose" for themselves and others) is one of the key weapons of anti-Israel activists, giving them license to insert their political project (under various guises) into all manner of civic organization, regardless of what pain or damage this might cause to the institution they are trying to infiltrate.
But on Monday night, the leadership of the Davis Co-op laid down the law in terms that cannot be interpreted as anything other than a sweeping rejection of BDS.
Does this mean that Davis has suddenly become a hotbed of Zionism? Of course not. Political opinions on the Middle East vary within the Davis community on this and other issues as much as they've always done. But in making their decision, the Co-op was not making a statement on the Middle East conflict, but was instead taking a stand (based on their own rights and principles) to not be dragged into that conflict just because a group of single-issue partisans tried to exploit the organization's openness for their own ends.
No doubt, the BDSers who put so much time and effort into this project saw the Davis Co-op as one of the few institutions in America that might be vulnerable to their boycott calls, and hoped to be able to leverage success there to bring the message generated by this debate to other food co-ops and potentially other food retailers across the country.
And in this one case they were absolutely correct that the message from Davis must travel far and wide, warning similar organizations across the land of what happens to an organization when BDS comes knocking.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
As Max Boot relates, Mark Perry's big scoop of a supposed Petraeus briefing that lead to the big blow out between Obama and Bibi and promised a subsequent ushering in of the great Age of Aquarius where anti-Zionist academics, Arabist diplomats, and Jewish Lobby paranoiacs strode the planet like Philosopher Kings...well, that day is looking to be disappointingly (for them) still remote. It's much ado about not very much: Is General Petraeus Behind Obama's Dressing Down of Israel?
...I further queried this officer as to whether he had ever heard Petraeus express the view imputed to him by Mark Perry -- namely that Israel's West Bank settlements are the biggest obstacle to a peace accord and that the lack of a peace accord is responsible for killing American soldiers. This officer told me that he had heard Petraeus say "the lack of progress in the Peace Process, for whatever reason, creates challenges in Centcom's AOR [Area of Responsibility], especially for the more moderate governmental leaders," and that's a concern -- one of many -- but he did not suggest that Petraeus was mainly blaming Israel and its settlements for the lack of progress. They are, he said, "one of many issues, among which also is the unwillingness to recognize Israel and the unwillingness to confront the extremists who threaten Israelis."...[More.]
Boot also links to this Josh Rogin piece at Foreign Policy which would seem to be another straw putting paid to Perry's fantasy: Petraeus: I never formally asked for command of the Palestinian territories
Perry allowed himself to be made a fool, and it's been pretty obvious from the start, as I said in my first post on the subject. The story was just too perfect, designed to market directly to a certain mindset just waiting to consume this type of tale.
A U.S. service member directs a landing craft, air cushion carrying Marines and equipment onto the beach in Djibouti on March 4, 2010. The Marines, who are assigned to Battalion Landing Team, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment and Combat Logistics Battalion 24, attached to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are in the area to conduct training and live-fire ranges. DoD photo by Sgt. Andrew J. Carlson, U.S. Marine Corps. (Released)
[The following, by Bataween, is crossposted from Point of No Return.]
The house on Rehov Graetz
With thanks: bh
In 1948, Munir Katul, now a retired Oregon urologist, lost his house on what is now Rehov Graetz in the German colony in Jerusalem: his is a sad story of displacement resulting from the Arab-Israeli conflict, repeated many times over in the region. The Jerusalem Post waxes lyrical:
Before he left his one-story, stone house for the last time, he looked down at the Persian rug lining the formal living room where he had played with his brother, George, 18 days earlier, as his father, Jibrail, huddled over the console radio, listened to the UN General Assembly vote on the partition of Palestine.
As he walked from the now empty living room, across the colorful tile porch, and passed the green-shuttered windows to the waiting taxi, he studied the pine trees and green gardens around him in the German Colony.
He remembered how he loved to get lost in all that backyard greenery, with his best friend, Leila Itayyim. After school they played tag and hide-and-seek, built dirt castles, raced their pet turtles and helped his father tend the garden. He took one last look at his favorite tree, where he loved to hide high up in the branches to see everything without being seen, and wished he was sitting there instead of leaving.
Two aspects are striking about Munir's story: the first is that his Greek Orthodox parents and grandparents were born in Lebanon and came to Palestine because of the greater economic opportunities, thus giving the lie to the idea that Arabs have always lived in Palestine since 'time immemorial'. Munir's family fled back to Lebanon, yet the component of Munir's identity most important to him today is 'Palestinian'. Even today, aged 72, he chooses to line his hallway with photographs of the house on Rehov Graetz. Is this normal, or has Munir made a fetish of the 'wrong' Israel committed against him? It means that he can never feel at home anywhere else: he is not prepared to abandon his goal of repatriation to his old home in Jerusalem (although, to be fair, he also recognises this might be impractical):
Continue reading "Jews Still Owed Lion's Share of Lost Property"[This entry, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from the GLORIA Center. I was going to include it in the link round-up below, but decided it was so good in a general sense it needed to be pulled out on its own.]
General David Petraeus is a smart guy, one of the smartest in the U.S. government at present. But he's no Middle East expert. Let's examine two remarks he made in his congressional testimony. Before we do, though, promise me you will read paragraph 17 because there's a very explosive point made there you won't find anywhere else. Agreed? OK, let's go.
Please note, by the way, that what he actually said is far milder than earlier leaks claimed. In addition, of course, Petraeus has to support White House policy, whatever he really thinks or knows. The Defense Department's recent Quadrennial review, also written to please the White House, contained not one mention of Iran's drive to get nuclear weapons or the threat of revolutionary Islamism. And he also has advisors who tell him the wrong stuff.
Statement One:
"A credible U.S. effort on Arab-Israeli issues that provides regional governments and populations a way to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the disputes would undercut Iran's policy of militant 'resistance, which the Iranian regime and insurgent groups have been free to exploit."
On the surface this makes a lot of sense. But let's examine it closely. Let's assume there is a comprehensive settlement to which the Palestinian Authority (PA) agrees. It isn't going to happen but this is for demonstration purposes.
Continue reading "Barry Rubin: Why What General Petraeus said is Wrong about the Middle East (or is it just being misinterpreted?)"An awful lot of electrons have been sacrificed in the name of the Jerusalem/DC spat. I thought I'd do another roundup of links.
First a few impressions: Something of a consensus is emerging that, whatever the mistakes made in Jerusalem, the Obama Administration has badly overstepped by continuing to push the matter with what is increasingly being called a disproportionate response. They are responding in a way to mimic a strong man, but in fact is more the behavior of a wounded tiger. Weak friends are often more dangerous than strong enemies, and Obama has behaved in the manner of a weak man overcompensating for something. Almost everyone in the mainstream is calling for everyone to stand down.
Obama is weak. My Israeli friends should know that this matter is a tempest in a tea pot on the American scene. The ongoing self-immolation of the Democratic Party over Health Care is the issue of the moment and is sucking all the air out of this controversy...literally. I listened to talk radio all day yesterday, and even hosts like Prager and Medved, who usually have no hesitation discussing Middle East issues mentioned not one word of this. The Boston Globe, which usually never misses an opportunity to cast Israel in a bad light had one article on something like page five with a headline along the lines of Netanyahu Tries To Calm Situation (sorry, too busy to look for it now, but that's the idea). [Update: Exception: Fox has been horrible on this in their few news mentions.]
Why? Because even his friends know that this is a no win for Obama. So worry not my Israeli friends, and understand very well that any of your own pundits who are still at this late date blaming Netanyahu for the continuing trouble are not doing real analysis and are simply pushing their own agenda.
On to the links:
The Washington Post comes out questioning Obama's actions:
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S Middle East diplomacy failed in his first year in part because he chose to engage in an unnecessary and unwinnable public confrontation with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Over the past six months Mr. Obama's envoys gingerly retreated from that fight and worked to build better relations with the government of Binyamin Netanyahu. Last week the administration finally managed to strike a deal for the launching of indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks. So it has been startling -- and a little puzzling -- to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state...
Monday, March 15, 2010
[Crossposted from JStreetJive.]
Jewish Housing - As Dangerous as Iran's Bomb?
Q: What is J Street's definition of other Jews wanting to start new families and exercise their right to live in peace anywhere they want?
A: "A Slap in the Face", "An Affront", "Provocative", and "Arrogant"
And so, Jeremy Ben Enemy, in typical sing- song imitation of his boss, Obama, is still smarting from the incredible slap in the face.:
Israel's recent announcement of 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem wasn't just a slap in the face to Vice President Joe Biden.
It was a wake-up call to us all that business-as-usual peace processing is bringing us no closer to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And now it may derail or delay the proximity talks just announced by Special Envoy Mitchell...
Clearly reveling in the moment, Axelrod declared on ABC's This Week, "Well, look, what happened - there was an affront. It was an insult, but that's not the most important thing. What it did was it made more difficult a very difficult process..."
Picking up on Axelrod's cue, ABC's Senior White House Correspondent, Jake Tapper, went even further: "I hate to say this, but yes or no, David, does the intransigence of the Israeli government on the housing issue, yes or no, does it put U.S. I believe that that region and that issue is a flare point throughout the region, and so I'm not going to put it in those terms.troops lives at risk?"
Axelrod: "I believe that that region and that issue is a flare point throughout the region, and so I'm not going to put it in those terms."
Well, I guess that was a "yes" from Axelrod. Now the stage is set. The next time a U.S. soldier is shot by a Sunni fanatic in Kandahar or an Iranian mob calls for "Death to America", we can lay the blame at Israel's door. But why stop there? Obviously, when a Jordanian devotee of Shari'a law kills his sister, it's Israel's fault. When a Jihadi blows up a jetliner over America, it's Israel's fault. If only all those offensive Israeli Jews could learn to be Citizens of the World like Jeremy Ben Ami.
Continue reading "J Street is Slap Happy. [Hillel]"So says The Sun: Megrahi can live for FIVE YEARS
THE Lockerbie bomber was at the centre of a fresh row last night after it emerged he is taking a cancer-busting drug that could keep him alive for FIVE more years.
Terminally ill Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was prescribed chemotherapy treatment Taxotere after returning to Libya.
But yesterday reports claimed Megrahi wasn't given the drug while he was in Greenock prison - amid claims he could have been kept behind bars if he had taken the medication.
Last night Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken demanded answers from Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill.
He said: "Was the existence of a drug which is reportedly now extending the life of the Lockerbie bomber included in any of the reports Kenny MacAskill read before making the decision to release him?
"Alex Salmond's government is still refusing to publish the independent advice upon which they based their decision."
Megrahi - sentenced to life for the 1988 jet bombing that killed 270 people - was freed on compassionate grounds seven months ago and returned home to Libya.
Yesterday it emerged the prostate cancer sufferer's condition has now stabilised.
A source close to the 57-year-old said: "After his treatments, he can be unwell for two or three days but then enjoys a period when he's quite well."
[h/t: Fred]
[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]
As David Axelrod might put it, this is an insult and an affront. Visit the online route map of EgyptAir, the airline owned by the same state which signed an historic peace agreement with Israel in 1979, and you will see, once you click on the "Middle East & Gulf" section, that Israel has, well, disappeared.
The area between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan has been divided down the middle - shades of a "Greater Syria" fantasy here, now that I think about it - and Amman appears to have moved several hundred miles to the west. No Tel Aviv, no Eilat, no Haifa. It's like they never existed.
Perhaps that's the point. Meanwhile, I wonder what impact this will have on relations between Egypt and the country that provides it with around $2bn annually in assistance.
The JPost has the story of a new independently done report responding to the Goldstone Report: 'Hamas used kids as human shields'
Hamas gunmen used Palestinian children as human shields, and established command centers and Kassam launch pads in and near more than 100 mosques and hospitals during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip last year, according to a new Israeli report being released on Monday that aims to counter criticism of the IDF.
The detailed 500-page report, obtained exclusively by The Jerusalem Post, was written by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (Malam), a small research group led by Col. (res.) Reuven Erlich, a former Military Intelligence officer who works closely with the army.
The IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) cooperated with the report's authors and declassified hundreds of photographs, videos, prisoner interrogations and Hamas-drawn sketches as part of an effort to counter the criticism leveled at Israel in the UN-sponsored Goldstone Report.
Work on the Malam report began immediately after former judge Richard Goldstone issued his damning report of Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip in September...
Robin Shepherd has a take on the new report: New report shows Hamas used more than 100 mosques and hospitals to fire rockets during Cast Lead
...Well, it will be interesting to see how extensively this report is covered in the western media. At the time of writing this article, the BBC website did have a report up on the use of human shields in Gaza...about Israeli soldiers allegedly using Palestinians as human shields.
Amazing. Some clarity on the issue of Arab rejectionism.
Read it all.
And note: this rejectionism isn't a "past tense," but continues to this day and has made real progress - settlements or no settlements - just impossible when it comes down to it.
Let's assume a best case scenario, in which the PA and Israel agree to a mutually satisfactory deal.
What about the factions that just plain refuse to accept Israel's existence period?
Note I don't think this means we shouldn't try but it's hard not to be pessimistic especially in view of the several good offers and even the spectacle of Gaza, where Jews where literally dragged out of their homes, even out of their graves - this could have been a real beginning for Palestinian statehood and self-determination and instead resulted in a disaster, and the bloody takeover of the Strip by Hamas, the attacks of Israel and ultimately Cast Lead which killed and harmed so many Palestinians and also damaged Israel, perhaps irretrievably, in the world's eyes.
Meanwhile I think this is an important observation by Yglesias who is quoted in the Goldberg piece:
...Well...I don't want to re-litigate Camp David (I'm sure you know the back-and-forth on this as well as I do) but suffice it to say that they had a much better offer on the table from the UN 60 years ago and rejecting it clearly wasn't part of some bargaining strategy...
Here's a position I think we'll agree on: One of the key psychological/political impediments to a deal is the unwillingness of Arabs today to embrace any kind of regret about the position they took on the partition plan. The "naqba" narrative, as conventionally presented, is a form of regret that the Arabs lost the war. You're never going to get Arabs to celebrate Israeli independence day, but I think it's plausible and necessary to have the disaster understood as one that was in large part of their own making...
Hallelujah.
There's some very interesting and disturbing news in this Haaretz story. While Netanyahu has been trying to cool things off, the Obama Administration appears to be trying to push the crisis for all it's worth: Israel envoy: U.S. ties at their lowest ebb in 35 years
Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has told the country's diplomats there that U.S.-Israeli relations face their worst crisis in 35 years, despite attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office to project a sense of "business as usual."
Oren was speaking to the Israeli consuls general in a conference call on Saturday night...
...Netanyahu consulted Sunday with the forum of seven senior cabinet ministers over a list of demands that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made in a telephone conversation Friday.
Clinton harshly criticized the announcement last week of plans to expand the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in East Jerusalem while U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel.
Haaretz has learned that Clinton's list includes at least four steps the United States expects Netanyahu to carry out to restore confidence in bilateral relations and permit the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians.
1. Investigate the process that led to the announcement of the Ramat Shlomo construction plans in the middle of Biden's visit. The Americans seek an official response from Israel on whether this was a bureaucratic mistake or a deliberate act carried out for political reasons. Already on Saturday night, Netanyahu announced the convening of a committee to look into the issue.
2. Reverse the decision by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee to approve construction of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo.
3. Make a substantial gesture toward the Palestinians enabling the renewal of peace talks. The Americans suggested that hundreds of Palestinian prisoners be released, that the Israel Defense Forces withdraw from additional areas of the West Bank and transfer them to Palestinian control, that the siege of the Gaza Strip be eased and further roadblocks in the West Bank be removed.
4. Issue an official declaration that the talks with the Palestinians, even indirect talks, will deal with all the conflict's core issues - borders, refugees, Jerusalem, security arrangements, water and settlements...
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Palestinian Authority whistleblower Fahmi Shabaneh has now had his home "effectively" siezed by the people who set him out on his job: PA takes whistle-blower's Jericho house
Palestinian Authority security personnel over the weekend seized a house belonging to Fahmi Shabaneh, the former Palestinian intelligence official who exposed a series of scandals that have seriously embarrassed the PA leadership.
Shabaneh told The Jerusalem Post that the security forces raided his house in Jericho, destroyed furniture, knocked down walls and confiscated equipment and personal items.
He lives in Jerusalem and holds an Israeli ID card like all permanent Arab residents of the city.
Shabaneh said that the raid was carried out by a joint force belonging to the PA's General Intelligence Service and the Civil Police.
Until recently, Shabaneh, a lawyer, was head of the anti-corruption unit in the General Intelligence Service...
...The PA issued an arrest warrant for Shabaneh last month after he exposed a sex scandal involving Rafik Husseini, director of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's bureau. The PA has accused Shabaneh of "high treason" and "collaboration" with Israel although he served in the Palestinian security services for nearly 15 years...
Oh, but wait, this part is reaaalllly interesting:
...Shabaneh, meanwhile, has threatened to expose a new scandal involving Sheikh Tayseer Bayoud Tamimi, chief judge of the Islamic Courts in the PA.
Shabaneh told the Post that he has issued an ultimatum to Tamimi, the highest-ranking Islamic figure in the PA territories, to resign within a week or else he would publish allegations of sexual misconduct against him.
Shabaneh said that when he was still in his job he received a number of complaints against the sheikh and other judges working in the Shari'a courts in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
He also released a recording of a phone call from last week in which Tamimi pleads with him not to expose details of the scandal he's allegedly involved in.
"After I publish the case against Judge Tamimi, he will be forced to resign because he has brought shame on the Islamic courts in Palestine," Shabaneh said. "His fate will be similar to that of Rafik Husseini, whom we filmed naked in the bedroom of an Arab woman from Jerusalem."
Shabaneh added that he also had incriminating material against a former PA minister who lives in the Jerusalem area. "He will be the next in line," he said. "This minister has also been begging me not to expose his file."
Tamimi is a scum-bag of international proportions (See, for instance, here and here, among many others). It would be a thing of beauty to see him go down ugly.
I thought this description of the visit of Navi Pillay to the Italian Parliament was very interesting. Here in full, slightly edited for format: Fiamma Nirenstein: A strange encounter with human rights
Dear friends,
This morning Mrs Navanethem Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, spoke before the Permanent Committee on Human Rights of the Foreign Affairs Committee, where I sit as Vice President.
I would like to voice my surprise for what I heard from Mrs Pillay - a feeling that I expressed very clearly to her - still thanking her for her informative visit. The Commissioner interpreted the meeting as an opportunity to harshly criticize Italy's policies on immigration and what she considers as the criminalization of illegal immigration.
She voiced the same criticism on the policies concerning the Roma people and invited the Members of the Chamber of Deputies to justify themselves, indeed to clear themselves. This request was rejected by both the right and the left wing. Indeed, many members felt the need to ask the Commissioner some questions about the Organization where she serves, because it is deemed to be extremely problematic for its poor performance and its intolerable partisanship.
I reminded the Commissioner that the UN Human Rights Council, which reports to her, stems from the discredited Commission on Human Rights. This Commission from 2003 was also chaired by a human rights champion such as Libya and was dissolved by Kofi Annan in 2006 after having devoted much of its work to defend almost all dictators in the world rather than dissidents.
Here's some more on the "spat." (Previous: Is Israel a Banana Republic with a Banana History? Obama Seems to Think So.)
Power Line has a pair of good posts: Obama's latest pretext for attacking Israel and Condemn This. Lots of links in those, but I wanted to emphasize a couple that make points I also wanted to highlight.
First Rick Richman makes the point that the neighborhood in question, Ramat Shlomo, is going to be a part of Israel in any conceivable future (or proposed past) peace plan, revealing the entire exercise as a worthless farce, and Carl goes on to note the extremely strategic nature of the are.
Robin Shepherd notes that in order to continue with this farce, the media must be complicit with their stilted coverage: The rationale behind censorship: "Moderate" Palestinian leadership honours mass terrorism as Joe Biden leaves town. And the BBC's response is? Here is the type of extreme incitement that media of all stripes has been complicit in covering up and thus removing ALL CONTEXT from what's going on: PA calls Arabs to 'defend al Aksa' That's the kind of thing that gets and is intended to get, people killed, and the Palestinian Authority is doing it itself without a word of protest from Washington. Off to the slaughter in silence.
Related is Bruce Kesler's piece involving the Hurva Synagogue: Netanyahu is being Sharoned by the Obama Administration
Also, at Z Word: Meanwhile, in Ramallah...
Update: Via Soccer Dad, Mark Perry says it all started with a briefing from our military: The Petraeus briefing: Biden's embarrassment is not the whole story. Mark Perry is the ultimate name-dropping insider, and this is just the type of story he'd love to show how in the know he is, but I would question whether this was really something all that unusual. This can hardly be the first time someone told an administration that appeasing Arabs was the new direction we should be taking. So the questions are: Did it "take" this time? Why? Did this briefing really happen and was it as significant as Perry makes it out to be, or is someone just using Perry to circulate another manipulative rumor? Far more data is necessary.
Jeffrey Goldberg, declaring a moratorium on responding to the ranting of Andrew Sullivan, also makes this remark:
...There is another benefit to disengagement. As Goldblog readers know, I'm deeply distressed by many currents in Israeli society and politics, the continuing, disproportionate power of the settlement movement being chief among my concerns. But I find myself hesitant to criticize Israel these days because my words are inevitably used by people who don't have Israel's best interests, or the best interests of American Jews, at heart. So I want to find a new way to write about these issues...
Well, that becoming attitude is what separates mainstream left commentators like Goldberg from the nuts on extreme.
This article is full of ironies, not least of which is the fact that there are only a handful of Jews left in Egypt:
...Egypt's Jewish community, which dates back millennia and at its peak in the 1940s numbered around 80,000, is down to several dozen, almost all of them elderly. The rest were driven out decades ago by mob violence and persecution tied in large part to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Egypt and Israel fought a war every decade from the 1940s to the 1970s until the 1979 peace treaty was signed.
Despite that treaty, Egyptian sentiment remains deeply unfriendly to Israel, and anti-Semitic stereotypes still occasionally appear in the Egyptian media...
So, it's nice that holy sites are being restored, now that the Jews are gone and the Copts are under attack.
I'm also glad to see this article, which mentions the Egyptian Jews. Hooray. This subject receives so little attention and it's actually very significant to any discussion of the Arab/Israeli conflict.
Martin Solomon adds: And look who's still at the center of things -- Zahi Hawass. See also Point of No Return: Egypt finds excuse to cancel Maimonides ceremony.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
[The following, by Barry Rubin, is crossposted from the GLORIA Center.]
In 1994, Israel asserted, and the PLO accepted, that construction would continue on existing Jewish settlements. For the next 15 years, negotiations were never stopped by that building.
In January 2009, the Palestinian Authority (PA) stopped negotiations because Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip and Israel defended itself. Of course, Hamas is also the PA's enemy and the PA would be delighted if Israel destroyed that group. But for public relations' purposes, the PA had to pretend inter-Palestinian solidarity.
Then came President Barack Obama who demanded a stop to all construction on settlements in 2009. Israel finally complied but announced that it would keep building in east Jerusalem. The United States accepted that arrangement and even highly praised Israel's policy as a major concession.
But the PA refused to return to negotiations. Why, because the construction offended it? No, because the PA's radical forces don't want to make a peace deal because they believe they can win total victory and destroy Israel. The more moderate forces are too weak to make a deal because of Hamas and their own radicals, though they also have some problems with mutual compromise.
Continue reading "Barry Rubin: The Palestinian Authority Walks Out of Talks with a Big Smile on Its Face"This guy in Malmo has his head in the sand...no, that's too kind...he's a willful ignoramus: Swedish Mayor Ilmar Reepalu Lied About Having No Knowledge of Antisemitism in Malmo...
...the city council of Malmö that Reepalu heads, had been informed about the rise of antisemitism on repeated occasions, beginning with a motion submitted by Karlsson in January of 2008, November of 2009 and as recently as this January of 2010. Reepalu was seated in a meeting where the SD representative brought the matter up. This exposes Reepalu not only as a liar, but also as a totally unreliable politician that cannot be trusted to seriously address the growing problem of antisemitism in his city...
Much more. Europe is sinking and some of the people in the lifeboats are pretending not to notice the other folks floating in the water and waving their arms.
Could the people who have been complaining about the "timing" of the Israeli announcement of 1600 new Jerusalem apartments -- which includes pundits on both left and right -- please now adjust their commentary? We've now found that the Obama Administration is continuing to hammer the Israelis over, not the timing of the announcement, but the substance of Jews building living space. I supposed there's something positive in that. It's illuminating, liberating even. Let's get down to substance and skip the cosmetics and the diplomatic dance. Good! Unfortunately, what it says about the direction the Obama Administration is taking is nothing good.
Like the living death of the never-ending Health Care forced march, the Administration decided early on that peace in the Middle East lays through Israeli concessions and constant pressure on Jerusalem (Israel's capital, right?) and they are proceeding down that road no matter the results or the consequences.
Let's review. Pressure and demands on Israel have produced...? Increased Arab demands and complete intransigence, including a simple refusal to come back to the table. So we should continue this...why?
So now we have some pissant in the State Department using language like, "undermined trust and confidence in the peace process, and in America's interests" to condemn Israel. That last bit is very loaded language, straight out of the Walt and Mearsheimer/Buchanan/paleo-con school. Very intentional stuff there. And George Mitchell is running around thinking he can dictate to the Israelis like they were some banana republic, which we've been reminded before, they are not. And -- pay attention people, this is for those who are thinking we should have voted for the lady -- this includes Hillary.
Our government is unconcerned with the Palestinian Authority naming public places for terrorist killers. Why? They don't take that seriously. They think that won't matter when finish drawing lines. They still think it's just about drawing lines on maps, when all they're doing is drawing the starting lines for the next Arab-initiated attack.
And even the EU is getting in on the act -- a bit of insanity that could be written off in the past, but must be taken more seriously now. They can't manage a thing against Iran, but Israel they can threaten with trade sanctions.
I'm glad to see Foxman's ADL speaking out. That ought to be something of an antidote to what I'm sure is J Street's despicable cheerleading: Administration's Dressing Down of Israel is a 'Gross Overraction'
We are shocked and stunned at the Administration's tone and public dressing down of Israel on the issue of future building in Jerusalem. We cannot remember an instance when such harsh language was directed at a friend and ally of the United States. One can only wonder how far the U.S. is prepared to go in distancing itself from Israel in order to placate the Palestinians in the hope they see it is in their interest to return to the negotiating table.
It is especially troubling that this harsh statement came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly and privately explained to Vice President Biden the bureaucratic nature in making the announcement of proposed new building in Jerusalem, and Biden accepted the prime minister's apology for it. Therefore, to raise the issue again in this way is a gross overreaction to a point of policy difference among friends.
The Administration should have confidence and trust in Israel whose tireless pursuit for peace is repeatedly rebuffed by the Palestinians and whose interests remain in line with the United States.
Politico's Laura Rozen, on the other hand, is stuck on yesterday's stupid with Martin Indyk.
For better, see Jennifer Rubin here and here, and Noah Pollack has a very disturbing take on things, here.
Obama, not Netanyahu, is busily driving US/Israel relations to new lows (and, incidentally, more personally responsible for the Republican/Democrat opinion divide on support for Israel than any other single factor). Now we have the spectacle of Netanyahu staying away from the re-opening of Jerusalem's Hurva Synagogue -- a seminal event in the history of the Jewish People in the Holy Land -- for fear of insulting the Americans (in fairness, I have heard conflicting reasons for this). This is a shameful moment for the history books.
Update: More Jennifer Rubin with more Congressional criticism of the Administration and this note:
...And let's not kid ourselves: the rest of the world is watching, just as other nations looked on as we shoved the Hondurans under the bus when confronted with a lackey of Hugo Chavez, and just as we did to the Czech Republic and Poland in an effort to ingratiate ourselves with the Russian bear. This administration has an unseemly habit of trashing our allies so as to prevent conflicts with our foes. In the end, we will be low on allies and our foes will be emboldened. As for our standing in the world, I suggest it's about to reach Jimmy Carter-like depths. That's what happens when friends come to regard the American president as untrustworthy and motivated by personal pique. (So much for the president with the "superior temperament.") Let's see if the administration can undo the mess it has made. It won't be easy.
Exactly right. This is becoming another example in the egregious list of bullying or slighting allies and coddling enemies. It's bully behavior. Shoving around friends is risk of blood-free. Not so with enemies.
See: US State Department summons Ambassador Michael Oren
See also Barry Rubin, on the quality of media coverage: How Bad is the Quality of Media Coverage? A Small Example
And, a little levity from Pillage Idiot: Joe Biden works his magic in the Middle East
Update: Is Bibi as vulnerable this time as he was with Clinton? Don't bet on it.
or Monthly Archives:
, p.39
