Oh, this is too funny: A group of pro-Palestinian Israelis wanted to hold a demonstration at sea against the Gaza seige, but a Herzliya captain refused to take them on board until they dumped their kaffiyehs and Palestinian flags. They refused. End of protest.

Left-wing activists were left stranded on the shores of Herzliya Monday, after a floating protest against the siege on Gaza went awry due to one boat-owner’s refusal to set sail. The captain was hired by the leftists to take them out to sea, but he declined to do so when they arrived wearing keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags.

The leftists’ boat was to set sail simultaneously with some Gazan fishermen’s boats leaving from the Strip. “The boat owner and captain refused to set sail until the Palestinian flags were removed and the demonstrators took off their keffiyehs,” Gush Shalom spokesman Adam Keller told Ynet.

A vocal conflict erupted between the two sides and police were alerted on the claim that the activists were trespassing. “In the end we couldn’t hold the solidarity regatta because we refused to take down the flags and the keffiyehs. Therefore we remained on the beach and held a protest in the marina, during which we spoke on the phone with the Palestinians sailing opposite the Gazan shore,” Keller said.

Just picture it: Instead of being on the water, waving their flags in solidarity, they were on cell phones, essentially holding the “Wish You Were Here” protest—left high and dry.

Score one for Israeli common sense, and realize that Gush Shalom represents a very small percentage of the Israeli population.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is crowing victory over Israel. And why not? Israel is retreating in the face of PIJ rockets.

“The decision to evacuate recruits from the Zikim base is yet another victory for the Palestinian resistance. Yesterday Erez, tomorrow Zikim – what will be next? I leave that decision to the Israelis,” a spokesman for the al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad, told Ynet on Monday.

The spokesman, Abu Ahmed, said the new victory proves the Palestinian strategy is working, and that Israelis cannot bear the incessant attacks.

“This is the kind of decision we have never seen before, and this is a massive achievement for the resistance,” he said.

This is the evacuation he’s talking about:

The army is preparing to remove all new recruits from the Zikim base near Gaza within several short months, Ynet has learned.

IDF officials said the decision is unrelated to the threat of Qassam rockets from the Gaza Strip, even though the Zikim base has already been struck in the past. Other troops will be stationed at the base, the army said.

The final decision on the matter was made several days ago in a meeting chaired by IDF Deputy Chief of Staff, Major-Genral Dan Harel. The proposal to stop training recruits at Zikim is part of a wider program seeking to minimize the number of younger soldiers in the ‘archetypal’ recruit bases.

The new policy would see soldiers being assigned directly to their designated units immediately after being drafted, and those units would also be responsible for their basic training.

It’s easy enough to see why PIJ would use this as a sign of victory. Even the Israelis think the IDF is retreating. Olmert is granting Hamas a truce that doesn’t include the return of Gilad Shalit, that won’t stop Hamas from stockpiling weapons, and will open the borders. Olmert is talking about giving murderer Samir Kuntar his freedom in exchange for two Israeli prisoners that we don’t even know are dead or alive. And another kassam hit Ashkelon today, wounding another Israeli civilian. The Gaza War of Attrition continues, and the Palestinians are currently winning.

“Zikim was chosen because it’s the biggest basic training base, and relocating its recruits directly into their corps will realize the program’s goals. The IDF is not running away form the Gaza vicinity,” added the source.

The meeting that led to the decision to pull the recruits out of the base, it appears, made no mention of the September 2007 incident in which Qassam landings in the base rendered 67 soldiers wounded. Following the incident, the IDF began fortifying the base – a project which has coast about NIS 5 million (approx. $1.46 million) to date.

The decision, however, was perceived as puzzling by the base commanders. “How can this be?” wondered aloud one of the officers stationed in Zikim; “They told us that us staying here, with the recruits, close to the citizens who live under fire, was of the utmost importance.”

The IDF action gives the impression that it’s leaving civilians to be the front line between Israel and Gaza. Is it any wonder that both Israelis and Palestinians think the IDF is in retreat?

Ha’aretz’ Akiva Eldar starts his paean to Walt and Mearsheimer with this:

Shaul Mofaz is not the first star to cast Iran in a part in the political game in Israel. Twelve years ago, in May 1996, on the eve of an election, the then head of Military Intelligence, Moshe Ya’alon, voiced an “assessment” that the rulers of Iran were hoping that the Likud headed by Benjamin Netanyahu would take over the government from Shimon Peres. At that time, there were those who assumed that the Labor Party would follow in the footsteps of Yitzhak Rabin, who had set up the goal of extending the circle of peace with the Arabs before Iran was able to complete its nuclear plans. Rabin believed this to be a more sensible policy than the method of simply shouting “gevalt.”

With Hamas in charge of Gaza and a defanged Fatah nominally running affairs in the “West Bank,” not to mention Hezbollah stranglehold on Lebanon, it seems quaint to refer to the “circle of peace.” The circle was a nice thought, but the idea has been thoroughly discredited by events. (Was this the only “assessment” that Ya’alon made? I kind of doubt it.)

If we go back twelve years, we’d also recall that Jordan’s King Hussein at least tacitly preferred the election of Binyamin Netanyahu to the re-election of Shimon Peres. Jordan’s monarch was concerned about the instability that would ensue from having an Arafat led country on his border. That assessment has certainly stood up better.

Eldar’s point, in part is that Iran is just a big bad wolf who no one ought to fear. What ought to be feared is any attempt to rein in Iran. And who supports this view? Why Prof’s Walt and Mearsheimer do!

The compulsive fixation on the Iranian issue ensures Israel’s status in the eyes of creation as the source of trouble. When Israel is perceived as the central factor in the tensions with Iran, it should not be surprised if it is depicted in the world as the major offender in the spiraling cost of oil. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, the two American academics who published an article in the London Review of Books, and a subsequent book, about the Israel lobby in the United States, and who placed a significant part of the blame for the sorry decision to invade Iraq, on Israel and its supporters in the U.S., have been quick to claim that those very same elements are now stirring up the Iranian quagmire.In an interview I conducted with the pair last week in Jerusalem, Walt said that there was no doubt that the Iranian nuclear plan had to be dealt with, but that Israel and sources in the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. were the only ones putting pressure on the American administration to use force against Tehran. Mearsheimer claimed that the growing threat that U.S. and Israel will attack Iran was forcing that country to deter them by deployment of weapons of mass destruction. Both the professors agreed that the bitter lesson of the war in Iraq, as well as the fear that an attack on Iran would cause the price of oil to ascend to new highs, would prevail this time over the war cries of the pro-Israel lobby.

Let’s shorten that to one sentence “Burn Jews not oil.” Thank you Mr. Eldar.

Frankly, I don’t know that it is pro-Israel forces who are advocating an attack on Iran. (The latest surge in the price of oil is not related to the invasion of Iraq.) But when you want to paint someone as a bogeyman, facts are not relevant.

Mearsheimer recalled that he had grown up on the Leon Uris’s novel “Exodus,” from which he learned that the Israelis were the good guys - the cowboys - whereas the Arabs were the “Indians.” The present generation understands that the story is much more complicated. Walt made note of the fact that the Arabic word “nakba” (”catastrophe,” by which the Palestinians refer to the creation of Israel, in 1948), which was virtually unknown to Americans over the past six decades, had begun making its way into discussions and articles in the media during Israel’s 60th-birthday celebrations two months ago.

Huh? Where’s Mearsheimer been living? Popular mention of Naqba goes back ten years. As I noted, the fact that it is based on the Gregorian calendar not the Islamic calendar shows that it is a pro-Palestinian construct, rather than a real commemoration of disaster.

Eldar concludes:

On the day after the election, whether Obama is able to bring the Democrats back to power, or whether John McCain is successful in retaining the White House in the hands of the Republicans, the president-elect will be wearing a suit of stars and stripes. The American public and its leaders are not safely nestled in Israel’s pocket. As the Iranian threat becomes more concrete, Israel will need more of their understanding and support. The Iranian nuclear program is too substantial a threat for it to serve as a tool in the hands of cynical Israeli politicians whose tongues wag too freely.

The reason that the United States supports Israel isn’t due to any improper pressure. It is due to the general confluence of interests of Israel and the United States. This is something that Walt and Mearsheimer can’t see. And it is something that Eldar refuses to see too.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.