That’s it. No more for me.

Ten years ago, I planned to have that particular milestone party in San Diego, at my favorite aunt’s home. She was sick with pancreatic cancer, but we were hoping and praying that she’d make it, as she’d already lasted many months longer than they’d predicted. No such luck. She died right around this time of year, and although we still held my party, there was a long shadow cast over it by her absence.

My mother popped out her hip again. That’s the second time in less than two months. She just had the operation a few weeks before she popped it out the first time. The doctors don’t want her getting on a plane. It’s not likely she’s going to be there.

I am not feeling particularly cheerful tonight.

Upate: She’s home from the hospital. Her hip was popped back into place. She had an appointment with her orthopedist on Friday already scheduled. The hospital told her to take it easy and see what the doctor says to do. I suggested she ask if she can attend if she stays in a wheelchair instead of walks. We shall see what he says.

Palestinian Arabs aren’t the only ones who are treated like dirt by the Arab world. There is also a large population known as Bidoon, short for Bidun jinsiya which means “without nationality” in Arabic. Most are Arab.

There are between 110,000 and 120,000 stateless Bidoon in Kuwait. Many have lived in Kuwait their entire lives, but Kuwait reserves full citizenship rights for those who established residence in the country prior to 1920. In some cases, residence prior to 1920 was not sufficient for acquisition of nationality…

The Bidoon in Kuwait are not allowed to work or to receive welfare services. Security ID had been taken from the majority of them leaving them no access to public health care. They are banned from travel. Bidoon children may be denied birth certificates needed to attend school.

(In Saudi Arabia), stateless Bidoon are not given passports.

The UAE also has a population of a roughly estimated 100,000 stateless Bidoon. Despite the fact many of these individuals were born in the U.E., they are not considered to be citizens.

Bahrain, to its credit, did naturalize most of their 15,000 Bidoon in 2001.

The only possible reason we don’t hear about the Bidoon is because they haven’t embarked on any terror campaigns against Western targets. If they would try to fight for their rights in the lands that they came from they’d be destroyed without anyone really caring - a couple of hundred thousand Arabs being killed by other Arabs is hardly newsworthy. There are no UN committees that condemn Kuwait or the UAE for their “apartheid” against fellow Arabs, no outraged editorials pretending to care about these Arabs’ civil rights, no international campaigns for allowing basic human rights to these Arabs. And of course there are no UN refugee camps for these people providing free food and education.

Because the oppressors are Arab, which means that the victims don’t really matter.

(crossposted on Elder of Ziyon )

In the Deal on the Table Jackson Diehl makes the tired argument

Between the end of the last serious Israeli-Palestinian talks, in January 2001, and their resumption this month, more than 4,000 Palestinians and Israelis have been killed in the conflict. Yet as soon as the talks began again, negotiators on both sides found themselves making pretty much the same demands and hinting at the same concessions that they did when President Bill Clinton tried to broker a deal. The second Palestinian intifada, which began seven years ago this fall, represented Yasser Arafat’s way of avoiding the surrender of a Palestinian “right of return” to Israel. But in private meetings with Israelis and Americans, Abbas now acknowledges — as he has before — that there will be no such return. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who took office in early 2001, made a series of bold moves — from invading the West Bank and destroying Arafat’s Palestinian Authority to unilaterally evacuating the Gaza Strip — aimed at redrawing the territorial map that Israeli negotiators had agreed to. But his successor, Ehud Olmert, has already suggested that Israel is ready, once again, to give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and accept a border close to that of 1967.

This is typical Thomas Friedman. Everyone “knows” what a deal must include and it’s only political weakness keeps a deal from being concluded. The people who have died over the past seven years have died because of a failure of political will.

However as Evelyn Gordon illustrates, the Palestinian side hasn’t accepted the basic premise that Israel has a right to exist.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert voiced one such delusion at an October 7 cabinet meeting: “For the first time, there is a Palestinian leadership … that recognizes that Israel is a Jewish state.”Were that true, it would indeed constitute a breakthrough. Unfortunately, neither Mahmoud Abbas nor Salam Fayad has ever recognized any such thing. Neither has ever uttered the words “Jewish state;” neither has ever abandoned the “right of return,” which would eliminate the Jewish state demographically by flooding it with 4.4 million Palestinian refugees and their descendants; neither has ever acknowledged the Jews’ historical link with this land, which is a vital component of Jewish statehood.

Indeed, Abbas has consistently opposed these ideas. After George Bush called Israel a “Jewish state” at the 2003 Aqaba summit, for instance, senior aides to Abbas were furious, declaring that such a definition was unacceptable and that Bush had “ambushed” the then prime minister. Abbas never dissociated himself from these statements.

The problem with Diehl (and Friedman) is that they assume that the only thing between the current situation and peace is the ceding of land and the release of terrorists. What they miss is that Palestnian nationalism has not changed in its basic premise. It’s not about creating a new state, but about denying an existing one.

When Arafat agreed to the declaration of principles in 1993 he supposed forswore violence as a means of achieving his national aspirations. But he never did. When Diehl writes ” The second Palestinian intifada, which began seven years ago this fall, represented Yasser Arafat’s way of avoiding the surrender of a Palestinian “right of return” to Israel.” he ignores that Arafat started the “intifada” because he knew it would cost nothing to return to violence as he had done whenever it suited him during the previous 7 years.

And while  it might be that Abbas occasionally talks about giving up the “right of return” in private, it’s clear that he does not believe that and won’t say it publicly. It’s not a matter of political weakness (alone) it’s a matter of a deeply held belief. To believe otherwise is to delude oneself.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

According to William Safire “walking back the cat” is a technique used to determine dissent in an otherwise closed government.

Intelligence analysts have a technique to reveal a foreign government’s internal dissension called ”walking back the cat.” They apply what they now know as fact against what their agents said to expect. In that way, walkers-back learn who ”disinformed” or whose mistake may reveal a split in a seemingly monolithic hierarchy.

While I don’t pretend I have all the information a real intelligence analyst would have and I’m not trying to show dissent, two recent news events in the Middle East lend themselves to this sort of analysis. On Sept 6 Israeli planes attacked a target in Syria. Originally there was speculation that the site could have been a nuclear site.

Initially, I rejected that explanation because there was no previous evidence of a Syrian nuclear program. In the past few weeks, it seems that my instincts were wrong as the few details that emerged confirmed that the initial fears were correct and that the site was a nuclear site.

Two weeks ago the Syrian government showed journalists an agricultural research center that had been photographed by Israeli journalist Ron Ben Yishai to “prove” that there had been no Israeli raid and no nuclear facility. The denial was important as Ben Yishai claimed that he had seen - but not photographed - craters behind the center that would be consistent with bomb damage.

Last week there were two important follow ups to the story. The Washington Post reported on Friday that Syria was cleaning up the site that was bombed.

Syria has begun dismantling the remains of a site Israel bombed Sept. 6 in what may be an attempt to prevent the location from coming under international scrutiny, said U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the aftermath of the attack. Based on overhead photography, the officials say the site in Syria’s eastern desert near the Euphrates River had a “signature” or characteristics of a small but substantial nuclear reactor, one similar in structure to North Korea’s facilities. The dismantling of the damaged site, which appears to be still underway, could make it difficult for weapons inspectors to determine the precise nature of the facility and how Syria planned to use it. Syria, which possesses a small reactor used for scientific research, has denied seeking to expand its nuclear program. But U.S. officials knowledgeable about the Israeli raid have described the target as a nuclear facility being constructed with North Korean assistance. The bombed facility is different from the one Syria displayed to journalists last week to back its allegations that Israel had bombed an essentially an empty building, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity because details of the Israeli attack are classified.

What’s interesting here is that the article essentially confirms the Israeli fear that Syria had been building a nuclear facility and that most administration officials believed that too. The argument is about how immediate the threat was to Israel and if working through the IAEA was a better way of dealing with it.

But also by reporting that the facility was not the same one shown to journalists the week before, it shows that Ron Ben Yishai’s claims were false. One possibility is that he was eager for a scoop so he claimed to see bomb damage. The other possibility was that Ben Yishai was bluffing. He knew it wasn’t the site of the Israeli raid, but he figured that if he mad the claim it would force certain aspects of the story into the open. I’m guessing the latter. And if so, he was correct.

Because ABC News last week also reported something incredible: Israel possibly had a spy inside the targeted facility, who provided photographs of the target.

But the hardest evidence of all was the photographs. The official described the pictures as showing a big cylindrical structure, with very thick walls all well-reinforced. The photos show rebar hanging out of the cement used to reinforce the structure, which was still under construction. There was also a secondary structure and a pump station, with trucks around it. But there was no fissionable material found because the facility was not yet operating. The official said there was a larger structure just north of a small pump station; a nuclear reactor would need a constant source of water to keep it cool. The official said the facility was a North Korean design in its construction, the technology present and the ability to put it all together. It was North Korean “expertise,” said the official, meaning the Syrians must have had “human” help from North Korea. A light water reactor designed by North Koreans could be constructed to specifically produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Usually when Israel makes a claim against its enemies, we’ll see a lot of bureaucratic infighting as to how accurate Israel’s intelligence is.

Last week’s Washington Post and ABC stories suggest that Israel’s intelligence has convinced the administration of the Syrian efforts to build a nuclear facility. The split in the administration was how immediate the threat was and what the best course would have been. Israel, of course, mooted that discussion by destroying the facility.

The other fantastic story to emerge from Israel last week was that Prime Minister Olmert was the target of a Palestinian assassination plot by elements within the “moderate” Fatah party. Initially reports suggested that PM Olmert was targeted when he actually visited Jericho in August.

However what’s emerged is that the attack was planned for his originally scheduled trip there in June. The plotters were jailed but then reportedly released, leading PM Olmert to be quoted saying that he felt “discomfort” over the Palestinian reaction. (Yes the term “discomfort” has been removed from the Jerusalem Post’s website with no explanation, but it had been there earlier.)

So the question is why did Israel wait so long to release information about the planned hit on its leader? After making it clear that Olmert wanted the information out in the open the Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon writes:

Olmert and his office had nothing much to say about the revelations on Sunday. But then again, they didn’t need to. Once the information was released that Fatah officers had tried to kill the prime minister and that the Palestinian Authority then let the suspects go, nothing more needed to be said - the story took on a dynamic of its own. Voices were immediately raised - from NU/NRP’s Zvi Hendel on the Right to Labor’s Danny Yatom in the Center - calling for Olmert to call off the Annapolis meeting, arguing that this incident showed that not only was Abbas’s security control of the West Bank tenuous, but that the revolving door policy whereby security prisoners were picked up for show and then released shortly thereafter was not a memory from the Yasser Arafat days, but was alive and kicking in Abbas’s new and improved PA. Furthermore, the argument was made that if Abbas’s security forces didn’t know about this plan, what did it say about those forces, upon which any agreement with the Palestinians would be based? Also, if Abbas didn’t know that the men were released from jail, what did that say about his control? In short, the whole episode raised serious questions about the astuteness of the entire Annapolis process, and the wisdom of placing the country’s eggs in Abbas’s basket.

Keinon concludes

Revelation of the plot now provides Olmert with a precious commodity in his negotiations: room to maneuver.

But if Keinon views this revelation as a shrewd move on the part of PM Olmert, Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel of Ha’aretz see mistakes all around.

Nobody comes out of this story looking good - not the Palestinian Authority, members of whose security forces planned to assassinate Prime Minister Ehud Olmert; not Israel, which decided Sunday to air a four-month-old affair, perhaps to score points ahead of Olmert’s European tour and the Annapolis conference; not Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who appears to have given the cabinet a partially erroneous report. Not even the assassins themselves, who were hoping somehow to pierce the prime minister’s armored car using 7.62-caliber bullets.

It’s unclear in the article what exactly Diskin got wrong or how Israel comes out looking bad. Apparently what Diskin got wrong was that the plotters were not far along in their plot.

The assassination itself was evidently nipped in the bud. Olmert’s June visit never took place, for unrelated reasons. By the time he visited Jericho in August, the five cell members were jailed, three in the PA and two in Israel. And while the security service men had professional knowledge of the travel route and security arrangements, they did not have a plan that would put Olmert in real jeopardy (as Public Security Minister Avi Dichter conceded Sunday).

As far as the release of the plotters, Harel and Issacharoff raise doubts if it happened. (Members of the Ha’aretz staff were granted a request to see the plotters in jail on Sunday.) But in the end they strongly suggest that the re-incarceration of the plotters may well have been for show.

When Dichter headed the Shin Bet, he was fond of an anecdote that demonstrated the revolving-door policy: British intelligence agent Alistair Crooke was invited by the PA to Bethlehem in the fall of 2001 to debunk Israeli allegations about murderers being released. Crooke visited a Tanzim terrorist, Ataf Abiat, at the Bethlehem offices of the security services. But after his visit Crooke lurked at an observation point  and within a short while saw Abiat coming out of “detention” and continuing on his way (the wanted gunman was liquidated by the Shin Bet a few days later). Did the PA play the “Crooke trick” on Haaretz staff on Sunday? Only a few minutes elapsed between the request to see the detainees and the jail visit - and numerous Palestinian sources confirm that two cell members were rearrested last Friday. Yet Sunday evening Israeli defense officials could not say whether and when the two had been rearrested.

Some Palestinian officials cast doubts on the Israeli charges. For example:

In an interview with Al Kuds, published in east Jerusalem, Tirawi blamed Israeli officials of blowing the case out of proportion in an attempt to hide Israel’s actions and plans regarding the Palestinians and the peace process.

It’s hard to tell here if the Israelis are overstating the case. It would seem that the main Israeli concern is not the plot, but the Palestinian reaction to the plot. (Say the men had been accused of helping Israel kill a terrorist leader. They’d have been taken from jail and lynched by now. Instead they have been in - and out of - jail with little to suggest that there’s been any sort of an investigation or that legal proceedings have been begun against them.)

Isabel Kershner’s report in the NY Times seems to confirm that Israel was less concerned with the plot than the release:

The time of the original arrests was unclear, but they were apparently made near the time of the planned meeting, perhaps even before it was to take place. The episode, obviously embarrassing for Mr. Abbas, had been kept quiet and might not have been disclosed at all had it not been for the Palestinian Authority’s early release of the suspects. The chief of the General Intelligence Service of the Palestinian Authority, Gen. Tawfiq Tirawi, said in a statement that the Israeli reports should not be considered a “pretext” for suspending the Israeli-Palestinian talks. Mr. Regev said that Ms. Livni had already raised with American officials “the issue of the revolving door.” He was referring to what Israel said was the Palestinian Authority’s practice of taking suspects into custody at Israel’s request and quietly releasing them soon after.

So what do we have? Apparently Syria was in the early stages of constructing a nuclear facility with North Korean help. Israel destroyed that facility in September. And in June a plot to assassinate PM Olmert was discovered. Israel hid the revelation so as not to embarrass Presdient Abbas, until now, when it suited Israel to help its negotiating position in Annapolis next month.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I didn’t know that

…for a few months, between late 1974 and early 1975, there was also a violin, in the darkness on the edge, adding heartrending poignancy to ballads like the debut album’s sparse “Lost in the Flood,” the sprawling “Incident on 57th Street,” the gangland drama “Jungleland,” and the ever-mutating take-a-chance-on-me saga that became “Thunder Road.”

It was a violin played by Suki Lahav, a young girl in a flowing white dress from Kibbutz Ayelet Hashahar in the Upper Galilee, barely out of the army, barely married.

“Yes, I went from kibbutz harvest music to rocking with Bruce,” Suki Tzruya-Lahav reflects wryly now, from a 32-year distance, from the Germany Colony in Jerusalem, where she’s since raised her two sons, written several acclaimed books, taught creative writing and penned lyrics for much of Israel’s musical big league - Rita and Yehuda Poliker and Gidi Gov and Rami Kleinstein and Ricky Gal and Yehudit Ravitz.

And how did it start?

Her first husband, Louis, she recalls, switching sunglasses for spectacles with pretty floral frames, was the sound engineer at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York, favored by the likes of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Melanie, Janis Ian and Springsteen’s early ’70s manager Mike Appel. So Bruce and the band recorded their first album there and were working on the second. “They worked nights; they were the main event in our musical lives. We were all young. He wasn’t the big star. Not yet. Just a unique artist.”

Springsteen had hired a church children’s choir for a song called “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” but they didn’t show. “And I was around. And I had this high, pure clear voice. So that was my first time,” says Lahav - singing, uncredited, on the track that appears on the second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Then Springsteen decided he wanted a violinist on stage with him, to complement the guitars, the sax and the keyboards. “Louis sent me along to audition. There were others. Surprisingly, he took me.” Surprisingly because, she says disarmingly, “I didn’t think I was very good… You have to practice for hours a day. I was never a big practicer. But maybe,” she allows, “maybe I did have my own thing…”

Others in the band were changing too. She auditioned with Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan, drummer and pianist with Springsteen to this day. And there then unfolded seven glorious months on the road and in the studio with “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” as his career ascended from small clubs to stadia, en route to what would become, a few months after Lahav left, his grandiose heralding as “the future of rock and roll” with simultaneous cover stories in Time and Newsweek on October 27, 1975.

The irony is that Suki Lahav’s real love was writing, not playing, music.

Springsteen has recently brought a violinist back into his band but Lahav, the original, never touches the instrument anymore. Never. “It’s not like a piano, which sounds fine even if you really can’t play. The violin played badly sounds awful. They were doing a show of my songs three years ago in Tel Aviv, and I thought ‘wouldn’t it be great if I picked up the violin again and played on a couple of them.’ So I took it out at home, and it was awful. My husband pretended he was asleep. My older son, who’s a musician” - a jazz guitarist - said, ‘Go for it.’ My younger son said, ‘Stop, it’s painful.’”

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.