The recent do on the border with Lebanon couldn’t have passed without the inimitable Fisk checking in with a totally idiotic opus in the captive Indy. Since fisking Fisk is too nineties (simply put - you do not fisk anyone senile to that degree), I shall leave it to you, dear reader. It is quite a sample of gutter-low journalism.

But then there is low and there is low. And no one gets lower than some “assaJew” anti-Zionists. In this case it is the notorious, although much less notorious as he would like to be, Mark Elf. In his latest opus (search for yourself for Jews Sans Frontiers, we here don’t link to such dreck) he is advocating for Kuntar:

Now, if Quntar did what he was accused of, then he is no doubt a monster. But did he? The facts leave ample room for doubts. Quntar maintains he did not kill either of his two alleged victims.

Should I comment? Nah…

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.

The world news is depressing, but the kitty news is nothing but good. Tig and Gracie continue their path towards becoming friends, although it has its pitfalls.

In this picture, Tig is trying to play with Gracie. They’d already had a session or three a bit earlier, and Gracie pretty much had enough. What I didn’t catch was Gracie telling Tig in no uncertain terms that she was tired of him. That being said, I have woken up the past two days with both cats in my new bed. I think they really like the bed. I do, too. It’s a Eurotop, which is the new name for a mattress that has a foam pad sewn on top of it, and it’s extremely comfortable without the price of a full foam bed. I found out just before they delivered it that my full/queen bed set only has a full frame. So rather than have them take it back and wait for a frame, it’s on the floor. (Which may add to the cat’s liking to be on the bed so much now that it’s lower.)

Mom’s coming into town today. We’ll go shopping for a new frame, and Sarah has volunteered to help me put it together (I really do suck at simple handy things like that, but you also need help moving mattresses). Meantime, it’s Tig’s playground, and Gracie is back where she belongs.

Yesterday, I woke up with Gracie at the foot of my bed in her old spot, and Tig sleeping on my shins. Today, Miss Gracie was up on the pillow next to me and Tig was sleeping on my feet again. Actually, he was awake and chirruping. Then he wended his way up to me while Gracie exited.

I really like having a two-cat morning again. I’m still pretty shocked that she’s accepting him, and even playing with him. I thought she was going to hate him until the day she died. All of you who told me to give them time were right. All of you who told me that bringing a young cat into a house with an old one rejuvenates the old one are right. Gracie is playing like a kitten again.

And speaking of playing like a kitten:

That’s him, on my new bed, with a rolled-up paper ball. And he just came to me for his morning snug while I was writing this post. Today will be exciting—Mom’s coming in, and he’s not quite used to people yet. But he’s getting better at it. Air Conditioner Guy came over yesterday, and Tig did come close enough to check him out. I expect he’ll be just fine with Mom by tomorrow.

She’s hoping to get one of the cats to sleep with her. I’m thinking she’s out of luck on that one. Now that Gracie has reasserted her property rights in my bedroom, she’s probably going to stay with me. And that’s just fine by me.

via memeorandum

Time Magazine reports on the Middle East expert who will be accompanying Sen. Obama to the Middle East next week Obama’s Conservative Mideast Pick: Dennis Ross.

Though he served under James Baker in the Bush 41 administration I’d hardly characterize Ross as conservative.

As a practical matter the article recommends Ross because:

In one way, the message is simple: Ross, a career foreign service officer, was lead negotiator on Israeli-Palestinian issues for Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he got the two sides as close as they’ve come to a peace deal before stepping down after the 2000 election.

And was the Middle East safer after the 2000 election? The Clinton administration’s failure to hold Arafat to any of his commitments was undoubtedly one of the factors that gave Arafat confidence that he could get away with launching an intifada after the Camp David talks collapsed.

“[C]lose as they’ve come…” simply means that Israel conceded a lot more territory and history at Camp David before Arafat - with the backing of even Arab “moderates” - rejected the offer.

The choice of Ross is being played as a sop to the Jewish (or pro-Israel) community and the reporter notes:

After he left government, the 59-year-old diplomat headed up a hawkish pro-Israel think tank in Washington, and signed on as a Fox News foreign affairs analyst. A former colleague, Dan Kurtzer (an Orthodox Jew and former U.S. ambassador to Israel who also supports Obama), published a think-tank monograph containing anonymous complaints from Arab and American negotiators saying Ross was seen as biased towards Israel and not “an honest broker”. Ross has been hawkish on Iran, but he agrees with Obama’s pledge to start talks. “We need to work hard to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear state,” Ross says, “but the Bush approach isn’t working.”

Not an honest broker because he was biased towards Israel? What baloney! Ross wasn’t pro-Israel. He is a peace processor, which means that he’s genetically disposed to believe that if Israeli cedes just enough territory he might get a Palestinian leader to say insincerely that he’ll accept the deal and stop the terror.

And yet he went to work for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy but not everyone there is “hawkish” (or realistic, in my view) and Ross is clearly on the “unrealistically dovish” end of the spectrum among those at the Washington Institute.

Still, it is somewhat surprising to see Ross emerge as an official member of Obama’s team. (Neither Ross nor the campaign would comment on his role in the still-unannounced trip, but several sources in the campaign confirmed details for TIME.). When Ross left the State department in 2000, he was so critical of Yasser Arafat that some friends thought he was considering working for George W. Bush, who cut ties with the late Palestinian leader. “At the beginning of the Administration he hadn’t excluded the possibility of working for a Republican again,” says one. Ross supported the Iraq war, though he opposed some of the Bush Administration’s policies for post-war reconstruction.

Ross was so critical of Arafat because he saw Arafat turn down an overly generous offer (though Ross probably didn’t consider Barak’s offer overly generous) from Israel and subsequently launch a terrorist campaign against Israel. In any case, Bush didn’t cut ties with Arafat until some time later, so this paragraph is more than a little misleading. In fact Bush’s first major pronouncement on the Middle East was that he supported the idea of a Palestinian state. So Ross’s aversion to Arafat, likely put him at odds at President Bush at the start of his term.

At the end Time’s reporter writes:

After all, the process orchestrated by Ross for the Clinton Administration failed

Well, duh. But did it fail for the lack of Ross’s efforts? Or because the premise that the Palestinians had changed to the point that they’d accept Israel’s right to exist is false.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In emphasizing criticisms of the trade Israel made to get the return of the bodies of Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, I’ve ignored a certain constituency: that of an Israeli soldier.

Simply Jews, an ex-soldier writes:

As an ex-soldier, I can safely say in the name of most of us that our unshakable belief that IDF and, indeed, the nation, will get us back from captivity, alive or dead, makes the service bearable. Without this belief IDF will not be what it is. The army that does not take care of its POWs is not worth serving in and the nation that forgets it sons is not worth fighting for.

After acknowledging the problem

It is not an easy vote to justify–but it is one that Israeli politicians have been forced to make time and again. Israel released convicted murderers in exchange for hostages in 1985, it returned live prisoners in exchange for body bags in 1996, it has repeatedly negotiated with terrorist organizations for similar purposes. The problem is not that the current deal creates a new precedent but, rather, that it reinforces a well-established weakness: When it comes to the return of hostages, Israel tends to throw all strategic considerations out of the window. The famous example of Entebbe–when Israeli commandos raided a Ugandan airport 32 years ago and liberated dozens of hostages in one of the most heroic forays of the Israel Defense Forces–was the exception, not the rule. The truth is that in most cases, Israel will pay any price to get its soldiers back.

Shmuel Rosner offers a similar answer:

But these are false distinctions. Israel is a society in which everyone knows everyone, in which every soldier’s fate matters to every citizen. It is a society that demands that every young man and woman perform military service, a society in which a state of war is a 60-year habit, in which national solidarity is always an existential question. For such a society, looking into the eyes of the father or wife of a kidnapped soldier and telling them that the price is just too high is something no leader is able to do. So, in the case of Israel–a country with a never-ending need for public trust in the military–the “emotional” can be the most “calculated” approach of them all.

I can’t say that I’m totally satisfied with the answer, but I’m not the one on the line.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Recently Daled Amos observed that When Weak Leaders Need To Be ‘Bolstered,’ Israel Is The Go-To Guy.

PM Olmert was counted on to boost Siniora in Lebanon, who is planning to welcome back Samir Kuntar tomorrow,

But Olmert’s own weakness may be working against a “peace prospect.”

Syrian analysts told Haaretz that Assad senses that he is currently in an advantageous position and has no intention of relinquishing his preconditions regarding the framework of the talks.

“The indirect negotiations will continue so long as there is no American partner. Assad will also not make, at this stage, any gesture of good will to the Israeli prime minister, not even a handshake, because there is no reason to grant such a gesture to a weak prime minister,” a Syrian official said.

So Olmert’s called on to strengthen other leaders. Other leaders refuse to strengthen him, so how do we interpret Olmert - The closer to indictment the closer to peace?

It appears that this march to “peace” is simply a matter of Olmert surrendering more and more until he gets to “yes.”

And what would be a good caption here?
“Wouldn’t it be funny if I gave him a shove? Just a little one?”

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Lynn reminded me of an article from a few weeks ago detailing how the IDF pronounced Eldad and Goldwasser killed in action.

“During the incident and the injury, the (first) missing soldier was wearing the examined bullet-proof vest… The damage caused to the car and to the bullet-proof vest is compatible with the firing of RPG bombs… Therefore, it should be concluded that the injuries to the missing soldier’s body were caused by a hollow explosive device.

“When the damaged bullet-proof vest was worn by a man whose body structure is similar to that of the missing soldier, we discovered that the injury was caused to the upper part of the chest… The injury caused to the missing soldier could be extensive loss of blood, direct damage to the organs and minor injury from shrapnel.

“Such an injury, as described, is a grave injury in any given situation, which requires urgent and complex surgical treatment. The chance for a person to survive such an injury without receiving immediate complex medical treatment, which requires specialized surgical skills (namely, in an operating room) are close to zero.”

[...] As for the second captive, the report said that “his blood was found on the doorsill, on the ground and on the equipment tossed outside. This goes to show that the missing soldier was injured inside the car.

“In addition, the blood stains found on the side of the equipment compartment on the left point to shots fired from a weapon with high muzzle velocity as the soldier was standing outside the vehicle. The soldier is believed to have lost a lot of blood inside the vehicle. The large amount of blood near the vehicle points to the place where he collapsed. This indicates massive bleeding, apparently from a large blood vessel.

“A double injury (by RPG and high-speed bullets) to the upper part of the body is a serious injury in any given situation and requires urgent and complex surgical treatment. It is uncertain whether the missing soldier survived the initial attack, and if the shots were fired at his chest, the chances he survived are very small. Therefore, the missing soldier was at least seriously injured, and his condition may be even more critical.”

This is information the IDF has had for two years, and presumably, that Olmert has been privy to for two years. This is not new information. Why weren’t the Regevs and Goldwassers given this information two years ago? Why wasn’t the Israeli public given this information two years ago? Why did Olmert and the IDF sit on this information for two years, all the while negotiating for the bodies?

This exchange would have been very different if the Israeli public—and the soldiers families—knew that the soldiers were dead.

The rabbi was also presented with “highly confidential” intelligence information received after the war. Ronsky, who was one of the very few people to receive access to this information, was deeply impressed by what he was presented with.

The rabbi told his associates that the medical opinions regarding the first missing soldier were enough, and that the profoundness and depth of the intelligence information were enough to bridge the certain doubt regarding the second captive. He concluded that it was possible to declare Regev and Goldwasser dead.

Sources in the Military Rabbinate said that Ronsky was enraged over the fact that the intelligence information, which is not new, was only brought to his attention last week.

Who in the Israeli government thought that withholding this information was in any way good for Israel? And how is it that nobody seems to have complained about this information being withheld from the families, and from the public, since the summer of 2006?

Perhaps one of my Israeli readers can enlighten me on this topic. Because I think it borders on a coverup that helped only Israel’s enemies in this deal. Karnit Goldwasser wouldn’t have gotten nearly the response she got if her husband was declared KIA and the evidence released to prove it. And Nasrallah would not have gotten the deal that he did, which is encouraging Hamas to hold out for the release of all the prisoners on their list.

Israel is going to be paying the bill for this for a long, long time. And I have one burning question: Why was this information not released? Who ordered it withheld?

Olmert has much to answer for.