I’m tired of Russian spammers registering bogus user accounts, so registration is going to be closed until I feel like reopening it.
If you’re not a Russian spammer, and not an anti-Israel tool, email me and I’ll see about squeezing you in.
01/31/2009
Venezuela’s anti-Zionism: Sure looks like anti-Semitism
This really doesn’t look like anti-Zionism to me.
“We don’t want Jews here” and “Jews get out” were the slogans daubed on a Caracas synagogue’s walls Saturday.
David Bitan, vice president of the Jewish community in Venezuela, told Ynet that late Friday night a number of assailants broke down the synagogue’s door and threw scripture books on the floor, then proceeded to graffiti the hateful slogans on the walls.
“We found the guard on the floor, he had been threatened with a gun,” Bitan said. “Until 3 am they destroyed the offices, opened the Ark of the Covenant, and threw the Torah books on the floor.”
[...] An Israeli residing in Caracas said images from the ravaged synagogue had been displayed in the local media. He said he had seen that another slogan, “Death to the Jews”, was also sprayed in the synagogue.
Yeah, I’m still not seeing the relevance to protesting Israel’s action in Gaza here. But then, when your nation’s government contributes to the tide of rising anti-Semitism in your country, things like this should be expected. That’s what pogroms are made of: Government support of anti-Semitic acts.
The president of the Jewish community in Venezuela on Monday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of promoting anti-Semitism and giving the phenomenon legitimacy.
Speaking at the World Jewish Congress conference in Jerusalem on Monday, Abraham Levy Ben Shimol said “you probably hear of many anti-Semitic incidents, but where we live, the anti-Semitism is sanctioned; it comes from the president, through the government, and into the media. Since the government is very involved in the day-to-day lives of its constituents, its influence is much more effective.”
Ben Shimol added that in recent days, swastikas have been spray painted on the walls of the Caracas synagogue and a Palestinian flag was waved during a parliament session.
When you demonize the world’s only Jewish state, you encourage the haters in your country to come out and harm the Jews—all in the name of supporting the Palestinians.
On Wednesday the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem announced that it had ordered Venezuelan diplomats in Israel to exit the country by the end of the week. In response, Caracas stated that the country was proud its diplomats had been expelled, and called Israeli leaders criminals.
It starts with words, as someone said quite recently. But it doesn’t end with words. It always ends with violence, and ultimately, the death of Jews.
Shimon Peres at Davos
Charles posted about this video of the Davos panel where Shimon Peres confronted the Turkish Prime Minister on why Israel went into Gaza. Peres comes in at about 39:30, but it’s well worth starting around the half hour mark or earlier to listen to the lies of Amr Moussa and the propaganda of Erdogan.
Peres speaks from the heart, and from experience. He tried to negotiate peace with the Palestinians decades ago and was reviled for it. Now, he defends his nation against the trumped-up charges of the world that ignores the thousands of rockets. Listen carefully to Peres’ stats: He points out that over a thousand Israelis have been killed by terror in the last eight years, a story that the world ignores when they play up recent Palestinian casualties and play down recent Israeli deaths—because the security fence stopped Hamas’ ability to blow up Israelis in restaurants, buses, and shopping centers.
Extra points for Peres for quoting the Hamas charter. I highly recommend you take the time to watch, and learn.
01/30/2009
Why should I CAIR?
In happier times – like two months ago – the FBI considered CAIR a partner in fighting hate crimes. Still, CAIR’s commitment to fighting all manner of hate crime was a little suspect:
In Chicago, four synagogues were vandalized on the Sabbath by Hamas sympathizers. This, after a CAIR spokesman brushed aside complaints about antisemitic material, chiding Jewish leaders for caring less about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza than about words on “cardboard paper.” This was quite a dramatic departure from CAIR’s stance regarding the ink and paper of the infamous Danish Mohammed cartoons.
However, it appears that now, the FBI no longer trusts CAIR. (see more at
I await the articles in the NY Times and Washington Post about this breaking scandal. But then again, any MSM coverage of this would likely take the form of CAIR talking points about it’s been profiled by Islamaphobic bureaucrats.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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Gaza “genocide”: By the numbers
There are some interesting facts in this excellent column in the Jerusalem Post, which calls for the end of the West’s proxy war against Israel. The author calls UNRWA’s support of the Palestinians the problem:
THE CURRENT situation can only get worse. Israel is being pushed into a corner. Gazan teenagers have no future other than war. One rocket master killed is immediately replaced by three young men for whom a martyr’s death is no less honorable than victory. Some 230,000 Gazan males, aged 15 to 29, who are available for the battlefield now, will be succeeded by 360,000 boys under 15 (45% of all Gazan males) who could be taking up arms within the coming 15 years.
As long as we continue to subsidize Gaza’s extreme demographic armament, young Palestinians will likely continue killing their brothers or neighbors. And yet, despite claiming that it wants to bring peace to the region, the West continues to make the population explosion in Gaza worse every year. By generously supporting UNRWA’s budget, the West assists a rate of population increase that is 10 times higher than in their own countries. Much is being said about Iran waging a proxy war against Israel by supporting Hizbullah and Hamas. One may argue that by fueling Gaza’s untenable population explosion, the West unintentionally finances a war by proxy against the Jews of Israel.
And indeed, the West is funding Palestinian terror against Israel, and has been for decades. UNRWA has terrorists on its payroll, and UNRWA aid means that Hamas can channel money into weapons and explosives instead of running Gaza.
But in the midst of the author’s points are these facts that can be used to counter all the idiotic anti-Israel arguments you see. For instance, the actual number of deaths in all of Israel’s wars: 40,000 Arabs.
In the six decades since Israel’s founding, “only” some 62,000 people (40,000 Arabs, 22,000 Jews) have been killed in all the Israeli-Arab wars and Palestinian terror attacks. During that same time, some 11 million Muslims have been killed in wars and terror attacks – mostly at the hands of other Muslims.
Compare that with their own internecine warfare:
Lebanon (150,000 dead in the civil war between 1975 and 1990) or Algeria (200,000 dead in the Islamists’ war against their own people between 1999 and 2006)
On the “genocide” of the Gazans:
Between 1950 and 2008, Gaza’s population has grown from 240,000 to 1.5 million.
As someone else said somewhere: Worst. Genocide. Ever.
On the famous Muslim generosity to their Palestinian brothers:
UNRWA is benevolently funded by the US (31%) and the European Union (nearly 50%) – only 7% of the funds come from Muslim sources.
When you look at these facts, you realize why I keep hammering on the double standard that Israel is being held to. The excuse of “occupation” doesn’t wash, because Gaza was under Egyptian control until 1967, and nobody ever called for an independent Palestinian state there and in the West Bank—until long after Israel took control of the territories.
In the meantime, the numbers prove it: The world has a bad case of Israel Derangement Syndrome.
Sometimes diplomacy is not enough
Martin Kramer explains why Hamas cannot claim to have won its war with Israel:
When Israel launched its operation, Hamas announced a secondary objective: to inflict significant military casualties on the Israelis. For this purpose, it had built up a network of fortifications supposedly on the Lebanon model, which it promised to turn into a “graveyard” for Israeli forces. The military wing announced that “the Zionist enemy will see surprises and will regret carrying out such an operation and will pay a heavy price. Our militants are waiting with patience to confront the soldiers face to face.” This too never happened. The Hamas line quickly folded, its “fighters” shed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. That Hamas failed to fight did surprise many Israeli soldiers, who had expected more. But there was no battle anywhere, and Israel suffered only 10 military fatalities, half of them from friendly fire. Hamas has taken to claiming that Israel has hidden its military casualties, and has thrown out various numbers – a rather precise measure of what it had hoped and failed to achieve.
There is something perverse in the notion that Hamas “won” by merely surviving. Robert Malley has said that “for Hamas, it was about showing that they could stay in place without giving way, and from this point of view it has achieved its main objective.” This was not its “main objective” by any stretch of the imagination. Rashid Khalidi has written that “like Hizbullah in Lebanon in 2006, all [Hamas] has to do in order to proclaim victory is remain standing.” But Hamas had a specific objective – lifting the “siege” – which was altogether different from the objective of Hizbullah. This objective Hamas manifestly failed to achieve. It also failed to achieve the secondary objective it shared with Hizbullah: inflicting Israeli military casualties. It defies logic to declare the mere survival of Hamas to be a triumph, given that Hamas openly declared a much larger objective, and Israel never made the military destruction of Hamas an objective.
In “What Israel gained in Gaza,” Michael Gerson gives a slightly shorter version:
Israeli forces, responding to an intolerable provocation, inflicted lopsided casualties on Hamas, which displayed a discrediting combination of cowardice and brutality. Hamas fighters used civilians as shields instead of shielding civilians — and some Palestinians seemed to resent it. Hamas leaders hid in the basements of hospitals while ordering public executions for Palestinian rivals, acting more like members of a criminal gang than a nationalist movement. Allies such as Iran, Syria and Hezbollah provided little practical help to Hamas, probably calculating that its rocket campaign against Israel was suicidal or at least foolishly premature. The international boycott against Hamas is holding. And the scale of missile attacks on Israeli citizens has been dramatically reduced.
And while Gerson concedes that Israel may not have achieved all of its goals, Hamas achieved none of its goals. But Gerson also argues against the prevailing attitude at the Washington Post: the war was not counterproductive from Israel’s standpoint.
According to Daniel Schueftan, a senior research fellow at the University of Haifa, Israel faces a “strategic challenge — a civilian population that lives a few miles from terrorists — for which we don’t have a strategic solution. But we have found some operational answers. In Defensive Shield [the building of Israel's security wall], we brought down suicide bombings by 95 percent, exclusively with coercive force, not politics.”
“It is a fairy tale,” he says, “to say there are no answers through coercive force. The only things in life that have solutions are crossword puzzles. We have not solutions, but answers — operational answers that reduce terror to a tolerable level. It is what we do with crime. It is what we do with terrorism.”
This, of course, goes against the received wisdom of most of America’s foreign policy establishment and editorial boards and ivory towers. But as long as Israel’s enemies think they can get away with murder, there will be no peace in the Middle East.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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Norway’s Anti-Jew status?
The amazing inquiry from Norway with these keywords – “anti jew status update” in full – caused my feverish imagination some overtime. How does it really go in Norway? So here is an imaginary scene:
(Imagine a lonely pub on a snow-covered street of a Norwegian village. Let’s call it “The Polar Bear’s Corner”, for lack of knowledge. The windows are covered by a thick layer of ice – at least the upper halves of the windows that could be seen over the snow. Helgi* dismounts his snowmobile near the pub, shakes off about half a meter of snow accumulated on his monumental shoulders and head, enters the pub. There is no one, absolutely no one in the pub, as usual – only the owner cum barman, Grímr and, at the counter, a permanent fixture of the place, local fisherman Hróaldr). The following discussion develops (for brevity the 5 minute intervals of silence between the sentences are removed):
Helgi: Good evening.
Grímr: Uhu…
Hróaldr: Mmm… (takes another swallow of Aquavit and another bite of lutefisk)
Helgi: It is cold outside. Colder than reindeer’s hoof.
Grímr: Uhu…
Hróaldr: Mmm… (takes another swallow of Aquavit and another bite of lutefisk)
Helgi: So, how was your fishing today, Hróaldr?
Hróaldr: Er… (gestures vaguely, takes another swallow of Aquavit, skips the lutefisk)
Helgi: I see. And how is the anti-Jew status, Grímr?
Grímr (looking at a barometer-like contraption on the wall): Fine… jah… just fine… (pours a glass of Aquavit for Helgi)
Helgi (settling down behind the counter): Mmm…
Grímr: Uhu…
The excitement caused by Helgi’s entry settles down slowly…
Speaking of Norway, a hardly related item:
A Norwegian diplomat stationed in Saudi Arabia sent a mass-distributed email stating that “the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are doing the same thing to the Palestinians, as the Nazis did to their grandparents,” using her official Norwegian Foreign Ministry address.
Couldn’t be related to “anti-Jew status”, could it?
Although, read in Z-Word Blog.
… I claim that the biased actions and positions of this government and part of the country’s elite concerning Jews and Israel are indicative of structural failures in Norwegian civil society.
And direct from Philosemite:
Norway, a country that used to be very pro-Israel, has turned into one of the most anti-Israel countries in Europe today.
So, all in all, I would say that the Anti Jew status in Norway is quite cool. No problems with Anti Jew status in Norway, none at all…
(*) This and other names are really ancient Viking names. Used to protect the privacy of the real people and for fun.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
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Turkish PM: Killing is wrong, when Jews do it
So, killing isn’t wrong when Turks do it (but they didn’t kill the Armenians, and don’t even start in on them about that), but boy, is it wrong when Jews do it. And when Jews defend their actions, well, it causes the Islamist Prime Minister of Turkey to stalk out of the Davos panel where Shimon Peres was defending Israel’s Gaza action, and—awww—it caused his wife to cry
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked off the stage at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, red-faced after verbally sparring with Israeli President Shimon Peres over the fighting in Gaza.
Erdogan was angry after being cut off by a panel moderator after listening to an impassioned monologue by Peres defending Israel’s recent offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Erdogan declared to Peres: “You are killing people.” A finger-pointing Peres told Erdogan at Thursday’s panel that he would have done the same if rockets had been falling on Istanbul.
Say, how many Kurds has Turkey killed? And how often did Turkish forces penetrate the Iraqi border to do it?
In Ankara, Foreign Minister Ali Babacan sought to soothe Iraqi protests and Western misgivings over what was the largest ground incursion into Iraq by Turkey for years.
“The only target … is the PKK terrorist organisation,” he said. “Turkey is the strongest supporter of Iraq’s territorial integrity and political unity.”
Ankara says an estimated 4000 PKK rebels are in northern Iraq and use the region as a springboard for attacks on Turkish territory as part of their campaign for self-rule in Kurdish-majority south-east Turkey
More than two decades of conflict has claimed at least 37,000 lives.
Wow. More than 37,000 have been killed in the last 20 years. That’s, hm, about seven or eight times as many Palestinians. No wonder Erdogan got upset. He has a lot to answer for.
Ergodan brushed past reporters outside the hall. His wife appeared upset. “All Peres said was a lie. It was unacceptable,” she said, eyes glistening.
Really? A lie? Sure seems like a lot of people think otherwise.
Between 1984 and 1999, the PKK and the Turkish military engaged in open war, and much of the countryside in the southeast was depopulated, as Kurdish civilians moved to local defensible centers such as Diyarbakır, Van, and Şırnak, as well as to the cities of western Turkey and even to western Europe. The causes of the depopulation included PKK atrocities against Kurdish clans they could not control, the poverty of the southeast, and the Turkish state’s military operations.[48]
Officially protected death squads are accused of disappearance of 3,200 Kurds in 1993 and 1994 in the so called mystery killings. Kurdish politicians, human-rights activists, journalists, teachers and other memebers of intelligentsia were among the victims. Virtually none of the perpetrators were investigated nor punished. Turkish government also encouraged an Islamic extremist group called Hezbollah to assassinate suspected PKK members and often ordinary Kurds[49]. Azimet Köylüoğlu, the state minister of human rights, revealed the extent of security forces’ excesses in autumn 1994[50]:
But you go ahead and pretend that Israel’s the real bad guy in the Middle East, Erdogan. If that’s what gets you through the night, hey, who are we to point out the truth of Turkey’s history of murder, repression, and genocide?
All in all, I think it was a good day for Shimon Peres, and a good day for Israel.
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01/29/2009
Ignoring your own eyes and ears
Idiots like these California academics, who are trying to start yet another boycott of Israeli academics, insist that it’s the right thing to do, because Israel is being unreasonable. Hamas, they say, is willing to negotiate. Really.
Asked if the group would accept the endorsement of Hamas supporters, Lloyd said, “We have no a priori policy with regard to the membership or affiliation of supporters of the boycott so long as they are in accord with the main aims stated in the press release.”
He argued that, “on several occasions Hamas has sought direct negotiations with Israel, a pursuit that constitutes de facto recognition of Israel, and has openly discussed abandoning its call for the destruction of the state of Israel conditional on reciprocal guarantees from Israel.”
Really? Because in the AP today, in a story that clearly contradicts itself about halfway through we have this quote from a Hamas legislator:
“We have our hands open to any country … to open a dialogue without conditions,” he said – clarifying that does not include Israel.
That’s in a story titled “Hamas officials signal willingness to negotiate.” The negotiation, of course, is for another “hudna,” not for an actually peace.
How much plainer does Hamas have to be in order for those idiots to understand that Hamas does not, will not, and shall not ever accept the existence of the Jewish State? Even the AP can’t hide it any longer, although the AP has learned how to pass along Hamas’ lies—and to try to place the blame for lack of progress on Israel.
The notion of engaging Hamas is anathema to Israel.
“A dialogue with Hamas as a terror organization would be a strategic mistake, because Israel advocates dialogue with the moderates and displaying toughness against the extremists,” Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told the Maariv daily this week.
Israel’s position is based on the fact that Hamas refuses to recognize its right to exist. However, the three Hamas leaders interviewed said they would accept statehood in just the West Bank and Gaza and would give up their “resistance” against Israel if that were achieved.
“We accept a state in the ‘67 borders,” said Hamad. “We are not talking about the destruction of Israel.”
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. It needs all sincere efforts. It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.
Yes, they are. Especially when they’re not talking to the Western media and Eurofools and diplomats who insist that Hamas only wants to rule a Palestinian state—utterly igoring their charter, which calls for an Islamic caliphate on all of “Palestine.”
I doubt this boycott will get off the ground, and of course, the academics will be able to trumpet the huge risk to their careers they are taking by standing against Israel (yawn). In the meantime, I suspect that an academic boycott is probably illegal, as joining the Arab boycott is illegal in this country. Watch for this boycott to be mostly ignored.
The other side of the Northern Ireland Analogy
Ben Cohen publishes in Z-Word Blog a series of three articles under a common title “The Limits of the Northern Ireland Analogy” by Henry McDonald, who has covered Irish politics for the Observer and Guardian newspapers. It is a compelling read for an outsider, and I am waiting for the last, the third installment.
So far Henry McDonald is “examining the flaws in the frequently-drawn comparison between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Islamist terror groups like Hamas.” There is another side of the NI conflict that could be examined, although I know that it irks all my British friends who, quite rightly, point out the inherent danger of looking for analogies in history. But what the heck – there aren’t that many other good ways to learn from history.
Anyway, at least at first glance and, I dare say, also at second glance there are too many common features in the NI history and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to be easily disregarded.
To start with, about 400 years ago the enforced population of Northern Ireland (already populated by Irish Catholics) by Protestant settlers was initiated by Britain. It continued for a long time, resistance notwithstanding. The conflict ended (hopefully) only recently by an enforced peace agreement, and it’s good that the centuries of the mutual bloodletting are over.
So: we have a foreign colonial power, we have the settlers, we have the land grab, we have four centuries of killing and, eventually, we have some semblance of peace – brought forth under enormous international pressure.
There is one slight catch: you see, the settlers and the settlements in NI, after all, remained where they were planted…
Now explain this away, please.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
The real danger to speaking out on Israel
The past few years have been filled with person after person proclaiming how risky it is to take a stand against “the Israel Lobby” or just plain against Israel. Jimmy Carter proclaims it even as he sells his latest book, goes on his latest talk show tour, and gives his latest interview. Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer have most famously parlayed their pretend-fear of being silenced into a book, a lecture tour, and now separate magazine jobs where they get to—that’s right—bash Israel some more, and talk about how now it’s finally “safe” to do so without risking their careers. Because they oh-so-bravely spoke out against the feared Lobby, and survived.
In the meantime, we have the true career-ending move, and it’s not speaking out against Israel. It’s speaking out in support of Israel. In Norway, for instance, politicians are receiving death threats for supporting Israel.
Toje is a staunch advocate of Siv Jensen, chairwoman of the main opposition Progress Party, who has recently come under fire for her pro-Israel stance. Following her appearance at a pro-Israel rally in Oslo on January 8, Jensen began receiving death threats, and is now under 24-hour security supervision.
“I have never experienced this kind of hatred in Norway,” said Toje, who was present at the demonstration. “There were people throwing stones at and spitting on rally-goers. Afterward, people carrying Israeli flags were randomly attacked in the streets.”
In Sweden, a Muslim mob attacked pro-Israeli demonstrators, who started their demonstration with a song known as “Hinei ma tov”—a song about brotherhood. The police removed the pro-Israel demonstrators, who had a permit—and left the Muslims, who did not, but who did throw eggs, rocks, and fireworks at the pro-Israeli crowd.
Funny, how the people who whine the most about the scary Israel lobby never seem to have to surround themselves with 24-hour police protection—but those who stand up for Israel, well, they’re in danger all over the world.
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01/28/2009
The further adventures of Meryl’s germs
So, to continue from last week’s brush with cat scratch fever—I got over it, mostly. I was pretty much recovered by the weekend, except that now my allergy meds weren’t working. So I called the allergist and asked for new meds, and instead, he prescribed a week’s worth of prednosone, which made me think of Gracie, who got that for her IBD last year. And after a few days (and many jokes about looking like Ah-nuld after working out at the gym), I discovered that steroids help suppress the immune response, which the allergist must have figured would give my meds a chance to kick back in. And the way I discovered this was by discovering extreme fatigue on Sunday and Monday. It wasn’t babysitting two energetic boys that wore me out—it was a virus I picked up, either at the gym, or at Synagogue on Friday night, or somewhere else in my travels while the steroids were suppressing my immune system.
So I have been working all week with a below-normal temperature. It’s up from the 95.6 range and back within a degree of normal today, but the exhaustion is not leaving. I work for a few hours. Then I nap for an hour. Then I work a few hours. Which is why I’m downloading 149 images from the server at work while I post this, to make up for the nap I took late this afternoon.
I really, really, REALLY want my health back. I am tired of being tired. Being sick makes me stupid. I was so stupid today that I moved an entire directory from a live website at work, realized I did it, moved it back, and then moved it AGAIN, before finally deciding it was time to step away from the computer and get back to it when I could think again.
On the other hand, I fixed a mystery that I thought would take me a lot longer and more research, and discovered how to use a search engine in your site that is not Google. I guess the stupidity comes and goes. I would like it to go and not come back, please. Because I’m not even sure this post is making sense.
The no-state solution
Seven years ago, Thomas Friedman took on a second job. His first job was columnist for the New York Times. The second job he took on was as unpaid PR flack for the medieval Saudi kingdom. He wrote a column about how he had proposed a “peace plan” to Saudi Arabia then-Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah and how Abdullah had warmly embraced Friedman’s ideas. I don’t believe for a moment that Abdullah had any such idea in his mind. He just saw an opportunity to take advantage of a credulous columnist. After all Friedman has an undeserved reputation as a great columnist, and Abdullah knew he could count of Friedman to do his bidding if it meant casting Israel in a negative light.
The problem with the Friedman/Abdullah plan is that it is a series of demands on Israel and offers no specificity of the rewards Israel’s concessions would bring from the Arab world. Another important but missed point about the plan is that Abdullah altered it after it was first presented. After Friedman dutifully published his column and one or two follow ups and after the NY Times published “news stories” based on the column, Abdullah went around the Arab world to drum up support for the plan. He went to Syria and Syria insisted that Abdullah demand that Israel withdraw from Lebanese territory. The problem was that by then, Israel had already withdrawn from Lebanon in accord with the United Nations. This was too blatant even for the UN’s Security Council and it refused to endorse the Saudi plan. (See more here.)
Having gotten so much positive press from the last time he played “peacemaker” Friedman has decided to have another go at it. Today he published “Abdullah II: The five state solution.” And of course a lot has happened since then as Friedman tells us pretending to be KIng Abdullah:
I wish Mitchell could resume where he left off eight years ago, but the death of Arafat, the decline of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war in Lebanon, the 2009 Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, the continued expansion of colonial Israeli settlements and the deepening involvement of Iran with Hamas and Hezbollah have all created a new reality.
I’m not sure how much of this is meant to be Abdullah’s voice and how much Friedman’s voice, but the term “colonial Israeli settlements” is jarring. I’m sure Abdullah feels that way, but does Freidman also? Anyway this has things exactly backwards. The most important thing is what Abdullah mentions last: the deepening ties of Iran between the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah has been made possible by the Israeli withdrawals from Gaza in 2005 and southern Lebanon in 2000. Those withdrawals, having strengthened the terrorists, emboldened them to threaten Israel ever more seriously until Israel was forced to defend its citizens. And Fatah’s decline in Judea and Samaria didn’t occur in a vacuum either. It was the result of Operation Defensive Shield, which, like Israel’s defensive wars against Hezbollah in 2006 and Hamas last month, was launched to protect Israeli citizens from a terrorist organization that had been given freedom to operate with impunity. Another factor in Fatah’s decline was that it was corrupt. Once it was no longer capable of killing Israelis, Palestinians (and the rest of the world) were shocked to learn that most of the foreign aid it had received had gone to Arafat’s favored cronies, rather than to building a coutnry. Again, I don’t know if the order is supposed to be Abdullah’s view alone or Friedman’s endorsement of Abdullah’s views, but it reveals a dishonest view of recent history.
So how would Friedman or Abdullah recommend making peace given these changes?
1. Israel agrees in principle to withdraw from every inch of the West Bank and Arab districts of East Jerusalem, as it has from Gaza. Any territories Israel might retain in the West Bank for its settlers would have to be swapped — inch for inch — with land from Israel proper.
2. The Palestinians — Hamas and Fatah — agree to form a national unity government. This government then agrees to accept a limited number of Egyptian troops and police to help Palestinians secure Gaza and monitor its borders, as well as Jordanian troops and police to do the same in the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority would agree to five-year “security assistance programs” with Egypt in Gaza and with Jordan in the West Bank.
With Egypt and Jordan helping to maintain order, Palestinians could focus on building their own credible security and political institutions to support their full independence at the end of five years.
3. Israel would engage in a phased withdrawal over these five years from all of its settlements in the West Bank and Arab Jerusalem — except those agreed to be granted to Israel as part of land swaps — at the same pace that the Palestinians meet the security and governance metrics agreed to in advance by all the parties. The U.S. would be the sole arbiter of whether the metrics have been met by both sides.
4. Saudi Arabia would pay all the costs of the Egyptian and Jordanian trustees, plus a $1 billion a year service fee to each country — as well as all the budgetary needs of the Palestinian Authority. The entire plan would be based on U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338 and blessed by the U.N. Security Council.
Note how items 1 and 4 contradict. The first item insists that all land captured by Israel in 1967 must be abandoned to the new state of Palestine or Israel must cede an equal amount pre-1967 land in a swap. But 242 and 338 only specified that Israel withdraw form “territory” not “all territory” that it captured in 1967. Besides Abdullah never made exceptions for Ramat Eshkol, Gilo or the Etzion Bloc. So Friedman in proposing a land swap is giving Abdullah credit for flexibility that he has never displayed. (I still think it’s a bad deal for Israel.) After 15 years of bad faith there’s no reason the Palestinian ought to expect the same deal they could have gotten in 1993.
The idea that a national unity government between Fatah and Hamas would help achieve peace is, of course, absurd. Hamas doesn’t even pretend to accept Israel’s right to exist and would thus have veto power over any overt Fatah attempts to compromise. Contrary to the naive view of many, the responsibility of governing didn’t cause Hamas to moderate.
Friedman also gives Egypt too much credit. One of the causes of Israel’s war with Hamas was that Egypt – which has a peace treaty with Israel – failed to police its border with Gaza. Would Egypt finally decide to assume responsibility for the border?
And of course it’s very generous of Friedman to commit the Saudi to billions of dollars of foreign aid. History shows that Arab regimes have regularly underperformed their commitments to development monies for the Palestinians. There’s no reason to believe that the Saudis will change.
Friedman concludes
President Obama, too much has been broken to go straight back to the two-state solution. It would be like trying to build a house with bricks but no cement. There’s no trust and no framework to build it. Israelis and Palestinians need the kind of cement that only Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan can provide. It would give Israelis security and Palestinians a clear pathway to an independent state.
I hope you will give careful consideration to the five-state solution.
If Abdullah really believed this, there would already be Palestine. But he didn’t. Friedman, as he did seven years ago, gives him too much credit.
But if a lack of trust is such a big problem, why doesn’t Friedman even begin to address the fundamental reason for a lack of trust? The refusal of the Arab world to accept Israel as a legitimate state.
As you might recall three years ago with much fanfare the International Committee of the Red Cross voted to accept a Red Crystal as an alternate symbol to the Red Cross or Red Crescent. Israel’s Mogen David Adom would be allowed inside the crystal so that Israeli medics would have international protection. Though the ICRC claimed that it couldn’t accept new symbols, the excuse was pure bunk. The real objection was that the MDA would offend the Muslim world.
But look at the signatories on the new protocol. Other than Turkey, not a single Muslim nation signed on. Not Indonesia. Not Egypt. Not Jordan. Not Saudi Arabia. Not even the ICRC’s subterfuge convinced them that Israel deserved the same protections afforded every other nation of the world. In other words despite bending over backwards not to offend Muslim sensibilities the ICRC could not address their hatred towards Israel.
Even as Friedman is advocating peace in the Middle East, the Arab world has taken over control of the Durban II conference. And of course the purpose of that conference is to delegitimatize Israel once again.
What if, instead of making demands of Israel, King Abdullah said, “Enough of this. Israel is as legitimate as any state in the world Saudi Arabia leads the world in the call to the ICRC to promote the Mogen David Adom as a symbol equal to the Red Crescent and Red Cross. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia calls on the participant in Durban II to focus on real discrimination instead of singling out Israel for condemnation?” What if?
Well of course he wouldn’t. Such declarations and follow ups would cost King Abdullah nothing and they would demonstrate, at least symbolically, a willingness on his part to co-exist with Israel. But such declarations are beyond him, because he has no interest in co-existence. While Friedman proposes a “five state solution,” the Saudis are stuck on the no-state (of Israel) solution.
Friedman can construct all the fancy scenarios he wants, but until the Arab world accepts Israel, there will be no peace. And as long as he fails to hold them responsible for the hatred towards Israel the Saudis foment, he is responsible for perpetuating the hatred and postponing peace.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
UN bashes—Hamas?
Look around you for flying pigs, people. A UN official is actually noticing that Hamas is committing war crimes.
United Nations Humanitarian Affairs Chief John Holmes blasted Hamas Tuesday for its “cynical” use of civilian facilities during recent hostilities in the Gaza Strip.
“The reckless and cynical use of civilian installations by Hamas and indiscriminate firing of rockets against civilian populations are clear violations of international humanitarian law,” Holmes told the UN Security Council.
[...] Holmes added that Hamas must not interfere with the movement of humanitarian supplies and urged Israel to reopen the border crossings to allow large quantities of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip.
Will this change anything?
No. This is also the guy who said that the Darfur refugees should suck it up and go home rather than live their entire lives in refugee camps. I don’t believe the irony of his words (regarding UNRWA) ever struck the man.
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Hamas propaganda aim: Achieved
The AP has a sad, sad story about how Gaza hospitals are ill-equipped to deal with the results of the war.
The tumor was advanced and without quick intervention Abdullah would likely have died, said Dr. Ismail Mehr, an anesthesiologist from Hornell, N.Y. Doctors in Gaza didn’t have the expertise to operate on him and Abdullah’s father had been unable to get him transferred quickly to Israel or Egypt.
Even after the surgery, Abdullah’s prognosis is uncertain. He’ll need followup treatment, including advanced chemotherapy or radiation, which are not available in Gaza. But it’s been difficult for Gaza patients to get out, ever since Israel and Egypt closed the borders in response to the violent Hamas takeover of the territory in June 2007.
The closure also dealt a further blow to Gaza’s underdeveloped health care system, which lacks sophisticated equipment and key specialists. Hospitals often operate on generators because of disrupted power supplies, and spare parts for some machines are unavailable.
On the eve of the war, Gaza’s hospitals had run out of 250 of the basic 1,000 health care items, and were short on 105 of 480 essential drugs, including some cancer medications and anesthetics, said Mahmoud Daher, a representative of the World Health Organization.
Missing from the article is any context. There are no reports, for instance, of Hamas hijacking UN aid trucks, stealing hospital supplies, and oh yeah—hiding in bunkers in the basements of hospitals, knowing full well that Israel won’t bomb them.
Also missing from this report is the clinic that Israel set up at the Erez crossing specifically to help Palestinians wounded in the war. It’s been shut down, because Hamas told Palestinians not to go, on pain of their lives.
The Health Ministry and Magen David Adom have decided to close the emergency clinic at the Erez crossing, which was set up to treat Palestinians who were injured during the IDF’s three-week offensive in Gaza, Ynet learned Monday night.
The clinic, which opened its doors just 10 days ago, is expected to be shut down this week due to the low number of Palestinian patients, which was the result of a direct order by Hamas not to transfer the wounded to Israel.
Israel initially set up the clinic due to the collapse of Gaza’s health system, but Hamas instructed civilians not to seek treatment there.
Meanwhile, Jordan on Monday began building a field hospital in Gaza to replace the Israeli clinic. The Jordanians entered the Strip with weapons for personal security.
As always, the Israeli and Arab press can find these facts—but not the AP.
And then you get to see insult added to injury: One rights group told Israel: “Ur doin it wrong”:
Physicians for Human Rights-Israel said the clinic was the wrong solution to begin with. “Israel opened the clinic for propaganda purposes. The injured must be allowed to leave Gaza and receive treatment at Israeli hospitals,” the group said.
Gall. Unmitigated gall. You would think that PHR would be more interested in healing Gazans than in slandering Israel’s purpose for helping wounded Gazans. You would be wrong.
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So who broke the ceasefire?
I don’t consider this point to be of any particular importance, for reasons I’ll go into later, but it is much used and abused in a lot of Israel-bashing articles, so it is worth addressing as a separate item. As a sample of that “impartial reporting”, here goes a clip from CNN:
“The reality and the truth is that … the side that broke the ceasefire was Israel” – says Mustafa Barghouti branded by CNN “independent Palestinian legislator” (what a joke…). In fact, this is all he says on the subject, continuing with the usual litany of Israeli misdeeds. No proof, no corroboration, but nevertheless it is worth screening.
Probably feeling that Barghouti’s statement needs a bit more substance, the (guest? I am not sure, I rarely watch CNN) commentator eagerly displays additional proof, such as quotes from some newspapers, including Guardian (yeah, well). All this supported by a (quite unusual for normally immovable TV anchors) feverish movements of hands, head, the whole body – quite extraordinary by itself, and the commentator is not looking into the camera, which is a telltale sign. Hatchet job if I ever seen one.
As all the other sources before CNN, the main reference to the event that supposedly broke the ceasefire points to November 4, 2008. IDF, acting apparently at will, entered the Gaza strip and killed six Hamas fighters. (At least no one disputes that these six nice folks were Hamas thugs.)
The circumstances leading to this vicious act by IDF are left unexplained in most cases, in a few cases there is a muted reference to a tunnel, but it could as well have been 6 Hamas engineers working on a segment of the future Gaza subway, as far as most of the Western sources are concerned.
Now to that bit about the circumstances:
For the first time since the ceasefire took effect in June, IDF forces operated deep in the Gaza Strip Tuesday night in a bid to collapse a tunnel located 250 meters (273 yards) from the border – and which terror groups intended to use for kidnapping Israeli soldiers. Palestinian sources reported that six gunmen were killed in the clashes that ensued during the operation, and that several others, including a female bystander were injured.
So this special kind of subway was only 250 meters from the border. Probably it was just a part of preparations for a Christmas surprise gift-bearing visit or somewhat in this vein.
But again, this case is just an example of the methodology developed for “analyzing” the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It is really simple: disregard the history and take a snapshot of what is going on at the moment, if the moment is convenient to your narrative. Israeli tank shell devastating a Palestinian family – cool, it’s an excellent snapshot. 50 Qassam rockets flying in the other direction a day before – who cares, it was yesterday. An Israeli unit crossing the border and killing six gunmen (let’s call them simply Palestinians, it makes the snapshot that much clearer) – good, it shows the IDF for what it is – a killing machine. The side fact of the tunnel these “victims” were busy digging under the border – forget it, it confuses the issue.
However, the big picture is there, for many to see. And here we come to the reason I said that I am not totally overwhelmed by the issue of who was first in this case. The so called “ceasefire” was a sham to start with. What kind of ceasefire it is when Qassams and mortars keep being launched, albeit with a lesser frequency? Ceasefire, incidentally, is defined as “A state of peace agreed to between opponents so they can discuss peace terms“. Surely you would expect a state of peace not being broken even by a single bullet, not to speak about rockets and mortars? Surely you would expect that in case of every breach of ceasefire the other side will be not only entitled to respond but will indeed respond?
Apparently not when the freedom fighters of Hamas are concerned. For some obscure reason, the Western media seems to be completely at ease with Hamas frequent breaches of ceasefire, but is willing to accept what CNN and other media outfits define as Israeli violation of it.
Of course the miracle of ceasefire is another point that is frequently mentioned and used by the media. As if it was all sunshine and happiness. As if the border crossings weren’t attacked, as if bullets, mortar shells and Qassams weren’t flying.
As if the whole world was deaf and blind.
Selectively.
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
01/27/2009
Sri Lankan civilian deaths: Who cares?
The world’s double standard on Israel is in sharp relief today.
The Red Cross reports that hundreds of civilians have been killed and wounded, and over 250,000 civilians are trapped in the fighting. Aid workers have been hurt as well.
An estimated 250,000 people are trapped in a 250 square-kilometre area which has come under intense fighting. They have no safe area to take shelter and are unable to flee.
Does that sound a little bit familiar to anyone who followed the Gaza war?
So you would expect cries of outrage from the international community, right? The EU, the UN, all of the people who protested the Gaza war—they’re all on the case, as it’s defenseless civilians being murdered by an army with superior weaponry using disproportional force, right?
The AP put out an article, but strangely, it hasn’t been picked up by all the major news outlets. Definitely not by the thousands that pick up every story on Israel when it fights back against Palestinian terror.
At least 300 civilians were wounded and scores feared killed by Sri Lankan army artillery shells fired into a designated “safe zone” for ethnic Tamils trapped by fighting between the military and Tamil rebels, a health official alleged Tuesday.
The shelling comes as the rebels continue to fall back, pulling their forces and civilians into the last remaining areas of dense jungle still under their control and leaving behind ghost towns.
TamilNet, a pro-rebel Web site, said more than 300 civilians were killed by the shelling on Monday. The military denied firing into the zone.
The Red Cross said Tuesday that “hundreds” of people have been killed in Sri Lanka’s northern Vanni region.
“People are being caught in the crossfire, hospitals and ambulances have been hit by shelling and several aid workers have been injured while evacuating the wounded,” said Jacques de Maio, the International Committee of the Red Cross’ head of operations for South Asia in Geneva.
And there’s not a “disproportionate” to be found in the article. And here’s the AP boilerplate to explain the war to its readers:
The Tamil Tigers have fought since 1983 to create a separate state for minority Tamils, who have suffered decades of marginalization at the hands of governments controlled by the Sinhalese majority. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war.
Oh. It’s a civil war. That’s different. It doesn’t matter that 70,000 have died in Sri Lanka, or millions in Darfur. These are civil wars. They’re not wars of “occupation.” So there will be no world outrage. The Stop The War Coalition won’t protest. ANSWER will be staying home. Hugo Chavez won’t break off relations with Sri Lanka. Stephen Walt won’t write articles about the Sinhalese Lobby. President Obama won’t promise to put the crisis in Sri Lanka at the top of his list of things to fix early in his administration. There will not be four op-eds in the New York Times chastising the Sri Lankans for murdering innocent civilians. There will be no op-eds in the Washington Post by the Tamil Tigers, explaining why they’re not really terrorists, but their enemies are.
Dead Sri Lankans? Who cares? Jews didn’t kill them, so they don’t count. Dead Palestinians, now there’s a cause worth shouting over.
Israeli Double Standard Time: It happens every only on days that end with a “y”.
Getting to “no” you
via memeorandum
The New York Times reports that Obama sends special envoy to Mideast
Mr. Obama reined in expectations for Mr. Mitchell’s maiden trip, saying it was intended mainly as a listening and learning exercise. But Mr. Mitchell will also work with the Egyptians, Israelis and Palestinians to fortify the truce in Gaza, which has held for more than a week.
It kinds of reminds me of the Secretary of State’s “listening tours.” But what is he likely to hear from the Palestinians. My guess is “no.” So does Josef Joffee:
But is peace possible? The real message of Gaza may be a bloody and cruel testimony to intractability. How shall we count the ways? Annapolis, Wye, Taba, Camp David, Oslo . . . all the way back to 1947 when the Arabs refused the original two-state solution. Looking at this tale of doom, the proverbial visitor from Mars would ask in all innocence: “Could it be that the Palestinians actually don’t want two states?”
No, not if we listen to what Palestinian leaders say and write, especially in Arabic and with no CNN team around. It’s one state from the “river to the sea,” and the blood-curdling oratory is not just anti-Israel, it is eliminationist anti-Semitic echoing Hitler and Himmler. This is not hyperbole. Just read the daily compilation in English on www.memri.org and recoil in horror. But let’s be statesmanlike about this (”you know, the flowery language of the Arabs”) and look at the strategic games both sides play. Double-statehood is not the first prize in this game, alas.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Swedes: Who cares about old, dead Jews when Gazans died last month?
See if you can follow this logic, because it’s pretty much escaping me. A town in Sweden has decided to cancel its Holocaust remembrance procession because of the Gaza war.
A northern Swedish city has decided to cancel a planned Holocaust Memorial Day torchlight procession due to the recent IDF offensive in Gaza, it was reported Tuesday.
The official reason given for the decision, made by the municipal board and local church in Lulea, was safety concerns, but Bo Nordin, a clergyman and spokesman for the church, cited the war in Gaza.
“It feels uneasy to have a torchlight procession to remember the victims of the Holocaust at this time,” Nordin told Swedish National Radio. “We have been preoccupied and grief-stricken by the war in Gaza and it would feel just feel odd with a large ceremony about the Holocaust.”
I’m sorry, could you please explain that logic to me again? It would feel wrong to remember the victims of the Nazi genocide because Palestinians died in Gaza last month? Do you mean that it would feel wrong to remember people who were killed because they were Jewish because people who were Jewish killed Gazans?
Would someone kindly tell me again how criticism of Israel is not related to anti-Semitism, because I’m really missing that vital blind spot.
The decision drew fierce criticism from various organizations as well as residents of the city, and a defiant group of Lulea locals has decided to hold the torchlight procession anyway.
Good for you. And hey, Bo Nordin, way to show the compassionate side of Christianity—by being unable to feel sympathy for two disparate groups at the same time. You’re some religious leader, all right.
Gaza Revisited
I put together a quick round up of posts about Gaza. It is worth taking a moment to review.
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Ob-eds
President Obama promised that his first trip abroad would be to a Muslim capital. He hasn’t traveled abroad yet, but he chose the Al-Arabiya satellite channel to grant his first interview since assuming office (via memeorandum).
For its part here’s how the Washington Post describes Al-Arabiya.
Obama’s comments came during his first formal television interview as president, with a correspondent from al-Arabiya, the Dubai-based satellite network that is one of the largest English-language TV outlets aimed at Arab audiences.
Very nice and innocuous. Well did anyone bother to check out the content on Al-Arabiya? I checked out the website and opposite the news of the presidential interview, were a number of opinion pieces.
Something I consider very strange, and for which I have no explanation
Something I consider very strange, and for which I have no explanation, was how survivors of the Holocaust and their descendants established the only Nazi state in the world today. A recent public opinion survey in Israel indicated high support for the campaign against Gaza, despite its cost in innocent blood, on the pretext of Hamas’ rockets.
Will anyone be held accountable for turning the Gaza Strip into a giant concentration camp during the siege?
Will a Palestinian state finally be established in the near future?
Will the masses in Arab countries now rise up against their leaders, who actually did very little to support the Palestinians?
Will Muslims finally wake up to the fact that we are one ummah and realize that the struggle of the oppressed Muslims of Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, and the rest of the world is one struggle?
We will survive this latest Nakbah too:
So, listen up dear world. We survived the 1948 Nakbah, and we survived the 1967 war, and we survived the past 60 years of oppression, concentration camps, displacement, and murder, and we will survive this genocide, and we will never cease to exist.
When “Humanity” becomes our entertainment:
Talking to all of these people and taking my neutral observations into account, eventually, I reached a simple conclusion. “Humanity”, not the Palestinians, is subjugated and oppressed by us, the people. We relegate it to our subterfuge, so as to punish those who we don’t like and we elevate it to our “death or life” cause, to benifit those who we like!
There was one pretty benign one that claimed that democracy was an Islamic contribution to the world. But it was written so generally it had no meaning.
The tone of the Washington Post’s article about the interview was laudatory:
But in tone, his comments were a stark departure from those of former president George W. Bush, who often described the Middle East conflict in terms that drew criticism from Palestinians.
By contrast, Obama went out of his way to say that if America is “ready to initiate a new partnership [with the Muslim world] based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.”
And the reporters cast President Obama as sophisticated in implicit contrast to his predecessor.
And he reiterated a point from his inaugural address: He plans to reach out to Muslims around the world who are willing to “unclench your fist” but will go after terrorists who continue to be bent on destruction.
“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries,” Obama said in the interview.
But given the opinion pieces that appeared on the front page of Al-Arabiya’s website, can it really be said that the Muslim world is using a language of respect?
Take this Q & A from the interview:
Q: President Bush framed the war on terror conceptually in a way that was very broad, “war on terror,” and used sometimes certain terminology that the many people — Islamic fascism. You’ve always framed it in a different way, specifically against one group called al Qaeda and their collaborators. And is this one way of –
THE PRESIDENT: I think that you’re making a very important point. And that is that the language we use matters. And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations — whether Muslim or any other faith in the past — that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith’s name.
And so you will I think see our administration be very clear in
distinguishing between organizations like al Qaeda — that espouse violence, espouse terror and act on it — and people who may disagree with my administration and certain actions, or may have a particular viewpoint in terms of how their countries should develop. We can have legitimate disagreements but still be respectful. I cannot respect terrorist organizations that would kill innocent civilians and we will hunt them down.But to the broader Muslim world what we are going to be offering is a hand of friendship.
Apparently then President Obama believes that there is a disconnect between people who espouse extreme ideas and who act on them. So the vicious op-eds are something he need not concern himself with. The problem is that the broader Muslim world is accepting of this hatred. It would have been appropriate for President Obama to speak out against it. Instead, by his silence, he effectively validates it.
Crosspsosted on Soccer Dad.
Hamas “lull” kills one, wounds three soldiers, AP blames Israel
The much-trumpeted ceasefire is doing what all Palestinian ceasefires do: Killing Israelis.
An IDF non-commissioned officer was killed on Tuesday morning when a roadside bomb planted by Gaza operatives along Israel’s border with the Strip detonated under the army vehicle he was traveling in.
Another officer was seriously wounded and two soldiers were lightly hurt in the incident near the Kissufim crossing, the army said.
And of course, Hamas blames Israel.
It was not clear if the bomb had been planted after the cease-fire took hold, or whether it was an older device.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but Mushir al-Masri, a Hamas leader, said Israel was to blame for continuing to fire into Gaza. Al-Masri said his group had not agreed to a full cease-fire but only to a “lull” in fighting.
“The Zionists are responsible for any aggression,” he said.
So what’s the AP angle on this story? “Retaliation.” Of course. This is the latest update:
Hamas militant hit by Israeli airstrike in Gaza
The Islamic Hamas movement says one of its members has been wounded in an Israeli airstrike in the southern Gaza Strip.The airstrike comes hours after a roadside bomb along Israel’s border with Gaza killed an Israeli soldier and wounded three others.
The original story and headline?
Deadly roadside bombing threatens Gaza truce
Palestinian militants detonated a bomb next to an Israeli army patrol along the border with Gaza on Tuesday, killing one soldier and wounding three in the first serious clash since a cease-fire went into effect more than a week ago.Israeli soldiers briefly crossed the border in search of the attackers, and Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, called an urgent meeting of Israel’s top defense officers, saying Israel “cannot accept” the attack.
“We will respond, but there is no point in elaborating,” Barak said in comments released by his office.
The explosion jolted the calm that has largely prevailed since Israel ended a devastating three-week offensive on Jan. 17. Since withdrawing its troops, Israel has threatened to retaliate hard for any violations of the truce.
Just in case the AP isn’t presenting Israel as bloodthirsty enough, they follow that lead up with this:
The flare-up came as Gazans struggle to resume normal life after the fighting, and as international donors discuss how best to help the territory rebuild.
Oh, and the AP is refining its boilerplate about the number of Palestinians killed in the war.
The Israeli offensive killed 1,285 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, according to records kept by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were also killed during the fighting.
A few days ago, it was “according to UN rights organizations” or some such thing. Somehow, the AP can’t manage its independent tally, the way it does with the daily Iraq body count.
As of Monday, Jan. 26, 2009, at least 4,236 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
Why is that, I wonder?
No, I really don’t. That was rhetorical.
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Jeopardy tryouts
If you want a chance to appear on Jeopardy, there will be online tests starting tonight based on your geographic location in the United States. Register here. Three years ago I think I got about 40 of the 50 questions, but last year, I did somewhat worse. I really haven’t kept up with my knowledge of popular culture. The online test is tonight for the east coast, tomorrow night for the Central and Mountain time zones and Thursday night for the west coast, Alaska and Hawaii.
This is only a preliminary test. If you do sufficiently well and you’re randomly chosen you still have three more steps to go through to become a contestant.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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Lynch-ing Israel
At Foreign Policy Marc Lynch asks, How badly did Gaza poison the well? (via memeorandum) Needless to say, Lynch opposed Israel’s effort to defend its citizens. But here’s one of his conclusions:
There’s no question that Gaza has weakened the hand of moderates and strengthened more extremist voices across the political spectrum.
No question? This is a mantra, supported by absolutely no evidence. It’s just an outgrowth of the “there’s no military solution to terrorism” faith.
Noah Pollak wrote in his Gaza post-mortem:
The political fallout among the Palestinians remains to be measured, but there is some anecdotal evidence that people in Gaza aren’t feeling terribly proud of the resistance as they wade through the rubble.
He also presents two reports that buttress his view.
Backspin links to a Der Spiegel story where it wasn’t difficult for the the reporter to find Palesitnians who were critical of Hamas in Gaza.
So there is a question as to whether Hamas and other extremists were helped by Israel’s war against Hamas. Remember Hamas that had boasted of its power, was powerless against Israel. Apparently even Hamas is now conceding its impotence.
Martin Peretz recently observed that in the Fatah controlled areas, the Palestinians have been successfully building a civil society. That wasn’t possible before the destruction of Arafat’s suicide factory by Israel’s Operation Defensive Shield.
There won’t be peace in the Middle East as long as terrorist groups are tolerated and accommodated. So Lynch rejects an action that has worked to reduce terror and instead advocates a policy that would strengthen Hamas.
If the Gaza crisis exposes the myths and vain hopes of the peace processors, it could push towards new approaches with a better chance of actually tackling the issues on the ground. That’s going to have to involve dealing with Hamas at some point, as most reasonable people increasingly recognize.
There’s nothing reasonable about his position. Like so much analysis of the Middle East, Lynch falls back on a few platitudes and ignores any evidence to the contrary.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
To the Jews of Europe: It’s time to leave
Economic troubles. War. Unrest. The world in turmoil. And, as always, the world’s scapegoat: The Jews.
The signs are all over.
To some extent I thought I was inured. I grew up in postwar apartheid South Africa where a subtle undercurrent of anti-Semitism was a fact of everyday life. So while I was disturbed by manifestations of mob anti-Semitism, I was also less vulnerable to shock.
[...] But my sanguine state ends abruptly when I am out walking on Saturday. A hundred yards from my front door, I encounter the slogan, freshly painted in yellow, across the pavement: ‘Kill the Filthy Jews’.
It is once again sanctioned by governments.
Ben Shimol added that in recent days, swastikas have been spray painted on the walls of the Caracas synagogue and a Palestinian flag was waved during a parliament session.
The words are reminiscent of the beginning of the Nazi years:
The week-end before, some people wrote, “We will kill you” on the door of one of the biggest synagogues in Izmir resulted in the closing down of synagogues. Near Istanbul University, a group put a huge poster on the door of a shop owned by a Jew: “Do not buy from here, since this shop is owned by a Jew.” A group put posters on his wall saying that: “Jews and Armenians are not allowed but dogs are allowed.” Some young people are even threatening others with violence if they are seen as pro-Israel in social networking websites such as Facebook and Hi5.
People call today for Jews to “go back” to the ovens …
“Go back to the oven,” she shouted, calling for the counter-protesters to die in the manner that the Nazis used to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust.
“You need a big oven, that’s what you need,” she yelled.
as if Jews ever got out of the ovens of the death camps, once they went in.
And they chant for the death of Jews today by poison gas, under the guise of Palestinian “solidarity”.
“Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”
Not Israelis. Not Zionists. Jews.
Meantime, there is a difference. In the 20th century, the League of Nations did not aid and abet the vilification of the Jews. The same cannot be said for its successor, the United Nations. The Durban II conference barrels down the mountain, its message being crafted by the state that regularly calls for the destruction of Israel, and denies the Holocaust.
Israel attacked Hamas, and the rest of the world attacked Jews. Not Israelis. Not Zionists. Jews.
The number of anti-Semitic attacks around the world during Israel’s three-week military operation against Hamas in Gaza was up more than 300 percent compared to the same period last year, reaching a two-decade high, according to figures released Sunday by the Global Forum Against Anti-Semitism.
[...] The violent assaults included attacks against both synagogues and Jewish communities, as well as vandalism of privately owned Jewish property, the report said.
The number and intensity of anti-Semitic incidents during the Gaza assault were “unprecedented” in the last two decades, said Jewish Agency official Amos Hermon at a press conference at Jerusalem’s Jewish Agency headquarters, where the report was released.
Yesterday, I learned a new slogan from reader Mike S., who sent me the story of the South African Jew in the beginning of this post. “Strong argument for “For every Jew a .22″ he wrote.
It is a strong argument. But only in America, where you can fairly easily get a .22, even in places where handguns are hard to find. It’s harder in Europe and Australia. In South Africa? In Muslim states? Please.
And that’s where Jews are most at risk—where they can’t defend themselves.
This Jew has her .22. And her .38, and will likely have more as the years go by. But I’m not really afraid that I’ll need to defend myself from the haters here. This is America. We didn’t let a crowd of bigots march on a mosque in Chicago after 9/11. We won’t let a crowd of bigots march on Jews anywhere in this country. And our police will absolutely not retreat the way the police of London have been taught to do before angry crowds.
But here isn’t where the problem is.
They’re coming for Europe’s Jews again.
At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to America, Canada, Australia, Israel . . . ‘They say they can’t leave me, but I tell them: “Go, get out. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe.”’ There is an unbearable desperation in her plea. But she has a point.
It’s time to leave.
One of the women had just returned from Amsterdam where she found herself in the middle of one of those militant pro-Palestinian demonstrations with masked demonstrators (some native European) shouting “Hamas! Hamas! Jews to the gas!” To say she was upset was an understatement, but both she and de Winter expressed some optimism about the situation in Holland. Well, maybe it was more Leon. The public and politicians, he said, unlike the ritually-leftist media, increasingly understood what was really going on and were beginning to react accordingly.
Don’t believe it. It’s time to leave. The world has never yet lied to us when it has promised to murder Jews.
Do you know what day the UN has chosen to open its Durban Conference on Racism?
April 20th.
The anniversary of Hitler’s birthday.
It’s time to leave.
The 20.000 people demonstrating in Paris were not in the streets to claim peace but to shout that Israel should be destroyed. Israeli flags were burned, the support was for Hamas, not Fatah (as you know, this organization has betrayed his own people), and you could see giant pictures of Nasrallah. One of the sentences you could hear, repeatedly, was “Death to the Jews and the Zionists”. This was going on in Paris among other places. Two weeks ago the demonstrators stopped Place de l’Opera, shouted Allah is great and prayed [to] Allah. This is a fact, not bad science-fiction. In Mulhouse, the demonstrators wanted to end the day at the synagogue, and destroy it. The police prevented it.
It’s a pretty bad time right now to pray in a synagogue in the eastern part of France — bombs are being thrown once in a while, let’s say once a week — or in a Parisian suburb.
It’s time to leave.
01/26/2009
Jimmy Carter: Stooping to new [moronic] lows
Hamas can be trusted. Really. Just ask Jimmy Carter.
Hamas can be trusted, former US President Jimmy Carter said Monday, in an interview on NBC’s ‘Today’ show. Carter spoke with NBC’s Meredith Vieira about his perspective on the Middle East conflict, and his new book, “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land.”
According to the former president, Hamas never deviated from their commitments as per the ceasefire agreement. He said that, during his meetings with Hamas leaders in Damascus and Gaza, he was promised that Hamas would honor agreements between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israel, as long as they were supported by public referendum.
Hamas did bad things. I’m not defending them. But they did adhere to the ceasefire fully, Carter maintained.
So, firing rockets and mortars at southern Israel can be counted as maintaining a ceasefire where you’re supposed to not fire rockets at Israel?
Those links, by the way, are from the first days of the truce. The first days.
Jimmy Carter repeatedly ignores proof that Hamas lied to him when its leaders said they would accept a two-state solution. He consistently ignores statements by Hamas leaders in the Arab press that say they will not stop until Israel is destroyed and replaced with an Islamic caliphate. And he utterly ignores the actions that prove they mean what they say.
Jimmy Carter is a senile, doddering old terrorist-enabler. He has proven, by words and deeds, that he is no friend to Israel. He’s been in the pocket of the Saudis since at least the Carter Administration (go look up the BCCI scandal). I think he’s an anti-Semite.
What I don’t understand is why anyone, anywhere, thinks he’s relevant.
And now he’s written another book, doubtless with more than enough blame-Israel rhetoric to go around. Jimmy, hurry up and take your final bow, please. The Yourish.com mantra includes you, too.
Ging-ho
A Reuters headline reads War boosted extremists in Gaza, says U.N. official. Quoted is John Ging head of the UNRWA
“The extremists here — there are more now at the end of this conflict than there were at the start, that’s the product of such conflict — are very confident in their rhetoric that there should be no expectation that justice will be delivered through the rule of law. Now we must prove that wrong,” he said.
The investigation had to examine “legitimate allegations” on both sides, as Israeli civilians had also suffered, he said.
He may well be right, but I doubt it. Hamas was shown to be unable to stand up for those it governed. They’re not up to the task of fighting Israel. Noah Pollak concluded based on anecdotal evidence:
The war certainly will not convince many Palestinians that terrorism against Israel is wrong (I don’t think anything could do that); but it might show them that it is unwise and dangerous, and that Hamas is a poor vehicle for their ambitions.
Stories of Gazans critical of Hamas surfaced during the war too. I found them convincing given that the penalty for disagreeing with Hamas could be very high.
The idea that a UN official would lie, is well established.
I think that Ging needs a heave-ho.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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Israel’s legitimacy is debatable; Hamas’s is not
I already blogged about Muammar Qaddafi’s op-ed in the NYT, but Yaacov Lozowick emphasizes a point that’s well worth remembering:
The editors of the paper will trot out the standard boilerplate about giving a platform to all opinions including the ones they really don’t like, so that their readers can judge for themselves etc. etc. None of which can change the fact that the most important newspaper in the United States has published an article calling for the destruction of the Jewish State.
It is all too common among the foreign policy sophist-icate-s to consider the legitimacy of Israel a debatable proposition. The degree to which this aids Israel’s enemies is disturbing. Any member of Hamas (or Fatah) can trot out some deep thinker who supports their views of Israel’s illegitimacy. Of course the Hamas enablers couch it in terms of freedom and self-determination and allow Hamas (or Fatah) to appropriate such admirable terms when, in fact, they are advocating the destruction of the Jewish state.
So it should come as little shock that an op-ed in this week’s Washington Post, finds Hamas to be perfectly legitimate. Yousef Munayyer of the Arab American pro-discrimination against Israel Committee wrote in A new Mideast Approach:
Rather than seeking to bolster the moderates in this conflict, the Obama administration should focus on moderating the extremists. The idea of eliminating Hamas could not be seriously proposed by anyone with any knowledge of domestic Palestinian politics. The notion that Hamas is a primarily militant organization based in Gaza ignores the movement’s vast support in the West Bank and elsewhere.
Dealing with Hamas and groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Islamic Jihad in arenas of legitimacy, such as elections, negates the possibility that outside parties will spoil peace negotiations.
Those who would resolve the conflict must understand that such parties and groups, often labeled rejectionist, are not primarily ideologically based and are not monolithic. They, like most political parties, are beholden to a constituency.
What constituencies is Hamas beholden too? Despite denials by Hamas (or, for that matter, the UN), Hamas has made extensive use of civilian facilities in order to wage its war against Israel.
The IDF’s spokeperson’s office has issued photographs illustrating the way that Hamas used civilian structures. A number of them are all collected here. (.pdf) These illustrate a terrorist organization acting with no regard for its constituency. So that claim is bogus.
So the Washington Post not only allowed Munayyer to question Israel’s legitimacy, they allowed him to propagandize for Hamas. While they’ve done so in the past, I still find the spectacle of purportedly respectable publications allowing their pages to be used for shilling for terrorists to be unsettling.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
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BBC impartiality: Sort of like a virgin hooker
The BBC is making a laughable attempt to pretend that they’re impartial when it comes to Israel—by refusing to run ads for a Gaza disaster relief appeal advertisement. At first, none of the British networks would run the ad. Then ITV, Channel 4, and Five said they’d accept the ad. Sky News will not run it either.
Really, though—how does not accepting a single ad make them impartial when the BBC bias is so clear that they’ve refused to release a study commissioned to see if they are biased against Israel?
An independent panel in May found the BBC’s reporting from Israel did “not consistently constitute a full and fair account of the conflict but rather, in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture.”
However, the 38-page report commissioned by the BBC’s governors to “assess whether the BBC’s coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict meets the required standards of impartiality” found that apart from “individual lapses” there “was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias” in its reporting.
The panel found that BBC reporting displayed “gaps in coverage, analysis, context and perspective” and failed to “maintain consistently the BBC’s own established editorial standards, including on language.”
They recommended a senior manager be appointed to oversee BBC coverage of the Middle East, that its reporting provide a “full and fair” account of the “complexities” of the conflict, that its complaints procedure be revised, and that it reform its use of language.
It’s a joke.
More at Adloyada, including a bad case of anti-Semitism anti-Zionism from England’s most embarrassing archibishop ever.
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