Afterwards, we resolved to ask the question: what are the rules of British political behaviour that cause the Tory leader,his mass of MPs and parliamentary candidates to flock to the Friends of Israel lunch in the year of the Gaza invasion? And what are the rules of media discourse that ensure such an event passes without even being noticed?

During an investigation lasting several months, we have been able to reach several important conclusions. We maintain there is indeed a pro-Israel lobby in Britain. It is extremely well-connected and well-funded, and works through all the main political parties.

It’s the British version of Walt & Mearsheimer. But here, in my opinion, is the single action that blows “The Israel Lobby” meme in Britain out of the water:

The British government decided it was “in the overwhelming interests of the United Kingdom” to make Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, eligible for return to Libya, leaked ministerial letters reveal.

Gordon Brown’s government made the decision after discussions between Libya and BP over a multi-million-pound oil exploration deal had hit difficulties. These were resolved soon afterwards.

“The Israel Lobby” contributes money to British politicians and supposedly affects the U.K.’s actions toward Israel. Yet the U.K. refused to vote on the Goldstone report, is refusing to sell arms and spare parts to the IDF for certain items, constantly chides Israel regarding the current situation, and British media (particularly the Guardian) regularly excoriates Israel. In the meantime, Muammar Ghaddafi offers BP an oil deal, and the Lockerbie bomber, who murdered 270 people, including 11 people on the ground in the U.K., goes free.

Tell me again how powerful The Israel Lobby is in the U.K., because I could really use a good laugh.

I know it’s really difficult telling the difference between a wall that was built to prevent civilians from being murdered, and a wall that was built to keep civilians from escaping their miserable lives in Communist East Germany, but somehow, people should just slog through and figure out a way to tell the difference. Or they can just draw anti-Semitic cartoons that would be at home in the pages of Der Sturmer, which find their way now into the pages of British mainstream newspapers and magazines (among others).

The frequent kassam attacks return: I guess there’s going to be a Goldstone 2, because if the terrorists keep this up, Netanyahu will likely send in the troops again. The constant drip-drip-drip of rocket fire can only be taken for so long.

Make peace with us or we’ll kill you: It’s the Arab way. The Palestinians threaten it, the Syrians threaten it—it’s only a matter of time before more countries jump on the bandwagon. It’s good to see that the Obama outreach to Syria is also paying dividends—this was in Assad’s speech to the OIC.

Jordan’s “moderate” king: The time for peace is now or never. That is starting to be an absolutely familiar refrain these days. Except I’ve heard it a whole bunch of times. “If we don’t make peace soon, there will not be peace for decades! Or forever!” But here is the most hypocritical piece of garbage uttered by the man whose father destroyed Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem:

“The Israelis must understand Jerusalem’s standing among the Arabs, the Muslims and the Christians, and should not play with fire.”

Like he gives a damn about Christians. Notice what’s missing from that statement, though? A man truly bent on peace and understanding would say something along the lines that Jerusalem is holy to all three faiths and must be adminstered accordingly.

Today, the Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians are clearly not feeling enough pain to do anything hard for peace with each other — a mood best summed up by a phrase making the rounds at the State Department: The Palestinian leadership “wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations” and Israel’s leadership “wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal.”

It is obvious that this Israeli government believes it can have peace with the Palestinians and keep the West Bank, this Palestinian Authority still can’t decide whether to reconcile with the Jewish state or criminalize it and this Hamas leadership would rather let Palestinians live forever in the hellish squalor that is Gaza than give up its crazy fantasy of an Islamic Republic in Palestine.

Don’t get me wrong. I agree with Friedman’s central premise that peace isn’t just around the corner. And he is also correct that the United States ought not to be making the peace process its central focus in the Middle East.

What I object to, is his characterization of Israel as being uninterested in peace. Israel, near as I can tell doesn’t possess the complete “West Bank,” as he calls it, having ceded the major cities there to the Palestinians during the 1990’s. Israel has taken quite a few significant steps for peace since 1993. But let’s go back to the scene of Friedman’s crime. (i.e. what the “Call Barack” line refers to.)

In 1990 then Secretary of State, James Baker expressed his frustration with the Israeli government. His pique was dutifully reported by the then New York Times diplomatic correspondent, Thomas Friedman.

If such new thinking is not forthcoming ”quickly” from Israel, Mr. Baker cautioned, then the Bush Administration is simply going to disengage from Middle East diplomacy. Washington, he suggested, will adopt the attitude that could be summed up as ”call us when you are serious about peace.”

To drive home that point to the Israelis, the Secretary of State gave them President Bush’s White House telephone number.

”I have to tell you that everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-1414,” Mr. Baker said. ”When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

(I believe that I’ve read the Friedman fed Baker the line about calling the White House, but have found no documentation of the charge.)

But continue reading the article.

In its coalition agreement, the new Israeli Government stipulated that Israel would not negotiate directly or indirectly with anyone affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Organization. It also excluded from the negotiations any Palestinians who are residents of Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.

Washington, as well as Israel’s Labor Party, has argued that to get Palestinians to accept negotiations, those Palestinians who are residents of both Jerusalem and the occupied territories should be allowed to take part, as well as those who might identify with the P.L.O. but have no formal affiliation with the organization.

Earlier today, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir added an additional condition: that Palestinian negotiators must formally embrace Israel’s idea that negotiations would be about autonomy for the occupied territories and nothing more, before talks could begin. The American position is that the talks should open with a discussion about autonomy, but then eventually move on to issues of final status.

Understand some things. In 1990, the only people in Israel who were advocating for a Palestinian state were those on the far left. Now even the supposedly “hawkish” Israeli Prime Ministers, Binyamin Netanyahu is working from that premise. In 1990, the discussion as to whether or not to negotiate with Palestinians affiliated with the PLO – there was virtually no one in Israel who, nineteen years ago, approved of negotiating with the PLO itself.

But these taboos have fallen by the wayside. The PLO is in charges of Palestinians living in “the West Bank.” The more extreme Hamas rules Gaza. And Israel is no closer to peace than it was back in 1990. In the name of peace, Israel has given the PLO land, money and even weapons. In the name of peace of the PLO has taken them, but made neither reciprocal nor concrete contributions to the “peace process.”

As Israel ceded territory to the PLO, the PLO under Yasser Arafat used its newfound freedom to create a “suicide factory” in the territories he controlled.

And after rejected Ehud Barak’s peace offer in 2000 at Camp David, Arafat launched a new war against Israel, that killed thousands until Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield to destroy the terror infrastructure Arafat built even whill being hailed as a “peace partner.” But how did Friedman react to the terror war that Arafat launched in 2000? This is what he wrote in “Arafat’s War.”

Mr. Arafat had a dilemma: make some compromises, build on Mr. Barak’s opening bid and try to get it closer to 100 percent ? and regain the moral high ground that way ? or provoke the Israelis into brutalizing Palestinians again, and regain the moral high ground that way. Mr. Arafat chose the latter. So instead of responding to Mr. Barak’s peacemaking overture, he and his boys responded to Ariel Sharon’s peace- destroying provocation. In short, the Palestinians could not deal with Barak, so they had to turn him into Sharon. And they did.

Of course, the Palestinians couldn’t explain it in those terms, so instead they unfurled all the old complaints about the brutality of the continued Israeli occupation and settlement- building. Frankly, the Israeli checkpoints and continued settlement- building are oppressive. But what the Palestinians and Arabs refuse to acknowledge is that today’s Israeli prime minister was offering them a dignified exit. It was far from perfect for Palestinians, but it was a proposal that, with the right approach, could have been built upon and widened. Imagine if when Mr. Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Mr. Arafat had ordered his people to welcome him with open arms and say, “When this area is under Palestinian sovereignty, every Jew will be welcome, even you, Mr. Sharon.” Imagine the impact that would have had on Israelis.

But that would have been an act of statesmanship and real peaceful intentions, and Mr. Arafat, it’s now clear, possesses neither. He prefers to play the victim rather than the statesman. This explosion of violence would be totally understandable if the Palestinians had no alternative. But that was not the case. What’s new here is not the violence, but the context. It came in the context of a serious Israeli peace overture, which Mr. Arafat has chosen to spurn. That’s why this is Arafat’s war. That’s its real name.

Not everything here is wrong or outrageous, but Charles Krauthammer identifies the underlying problem with Friedman’s observation.

We are now at Phase Two. This is the war Arafat has coveted all his life: the war against Israel from within Palestine. He tried first to make war from Jordan and was expelled in 1970. He then tried to make war from Lebanon and was expelled in 1982. And then in 1993, the miracle: Israel itself, in a fit of reckless high-mindedness unparalleled in the annals of diplomacy, brought him back to Palestine, gave him control of 98 percent of the Palestinian population, armed his 40,000 “police” (i.e. army), and granted him international legitimacy, foreign aid, and the territorial base of every city in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yet there are still observers in the West who remain puzzled by Arafat’s war. Taken in by Oslo for the entire eight years, the New York Times’ Tom Friedman, for example, now rationalizes the collapse of his illusions by characterizing Arafat’s war as senseless and self-defeating, “a grievous error” and an “idiotic uprising.”

This analysis is sheer nonsense. The war is the war Arafat always wanted. He has just seen Israel, facing guerrilla war in Lebanon, abjectly surrender and withdraw unilaterally. And now, after a year of his own guerrilla war within Palestine, the balance of forces with Israel has shifted dramatically in his favor.

Why was Friedman surprised? Had he not been paying to attention to Arafat’s perfidies over the previous 7 years? And yet Friedman thought it was conceivable that Arafat would see Barak’s proposal and make a counteroffer. Friedman refused to believe what happened since Oslo. He always figured that if Israel made enough concessions it would achieve peace. He accepted no evidence to the contrary.

Still even after that point, now nine years later, he still argues that Israel isn’t serious in peace. I notice that he didn’t write a column earlier this year after lame duck Israeli Prime Minister Olmert made an offer even more generous Camp David to “moderate” PA President Abbaas that was summarily rejected! Friedman who invested so much ink, pixels and prestige to (then) Crown Prince Abdullah’s peace ultimatum saying that it was significant (though the Saudi was vague about Arab commitments to Israel) refused to acknowledge a concrete Israeli peace offer that still didn’t bring peace.

That’s because no amount of land will satisfy the Palestinians, as long as Israel still exists. That has not changed in the sixteen years since Arafat and Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. Rather than acknowledge the sea change in Israeli politics that has occurred since then, Friedman chooses to retreat into his comfortable “plague on both their houses” approach. Sorry but all Friedman is doing, is validating the continued Palestinian rejection of Israel, ensuring that peace will remain remote.

Maybe one day Friedman will come to his senses. But for now he remains stuck in the glorious past when he was the Secretary of State’s favorite stenographer.

Related: see Meryl tomorrow (11/09/09).

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Israeli scientists have identified a substance that can kill cancerous cells without harming healthy ones, paving the way for more effective cancer treatment.

The findings by researchers at Tel Aviv University and Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, were published in the current issue of the international peer-reviewed journal Breast Cancer Research.

“We actually found the Achilles heel of the cancer cell,” said Prof. Malka Cohen-Armon from Tel Aviv University, who headed the research team. “As soon as you can target cancerous cells without killing healthy ones, you can produce medications that would cause a lot less suffering to the patient. We can even give a much more aggressive treatment without worrying about harming healthy tissues.”

Feel free, Norway, to boycott the possible cure for cancer. Perhaps in turn, Israel will find it hard to ship this medicine to Norway, and to all of the other nations that boycott Israel.

Of course not. Because that’s not what Jews do. That’s what the enemies of Jews do. And I count among the enemies of Jews those nations, companies, and groups that take part in boycotting the Jewish state. It’s not anti-Zionism.

The letter claims that Israeli universities and other institutions of higher education “have played a key role in the policy of oppression” that the signatories claim exists in Israel. It goes on to say that “Israel goes against all the ideals of open universities and academic freedom.”

Really? In Saudi Arabia, men and women are unable to take classes together. In Iran and Egypt, students are arrested and imprisoned for speaking their minds about the current governments. In Israel, Arabs and Israelis work side by side in universities all over the country. It isn’t Israel that goes against the ideals of open universities and academic freedom.

But sure, Norwegians, go ahead—boycott Israeli universities. It’s not like they’re coming up with a cure for cancer or anything like that.

Oh. Wait.

Barry Rubin summarized the administration’s efforts in the Middle East like this:

The president of the United States has said that he wants talks resumed immediately and believes it possible to make a breakthrough. The Palestinian leadership is thwarting him on both points. In other words, they are responsible for the failure of a major U.S. policy.

So when the administration, specifically, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton points this out and it brings howls of protest from the Arab world what is the administration’s response?

The New York Times:

Arab officials expressed alarm that the United States seemed to be easing pressure on Israel after Mrs. Clinton said in Jerusalem on Saturday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal of restrained settlement building was better than anything previous Israeli governments had offered.

Mrs. Clinton said the administration would not stop pushing Mr. Netanyahu to do more. But she said that in trying to revive a stalled peace process, she wanted to offer Israel encouragement for moving in the right direction, even if that movement fell short of what the United States wanted.

“I will offer positive reinforcement to the parties when I believe they are taking steps that support the objective of reaching a two-state solution,” she said here, on the eve of a conference of Arab and Western countries. “I will also push them as I have in public and private to do even more.”

The Washington Post:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to soothe Arab uneasiness Monday over weekend statements she made praising the Israeli government’s offer to “restrain” growth in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying it “falls far short” of the Obama administration’s hopes and is “not enough.”

Reflecting her concern over the Arab reaction, Clinton decided to extend her week-long trip to the region, scheduled to end Tuesday, with a previously unplanned stop in Cairo on Wednesday to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. On Sunday, Egypt backed the Palestinian stance that negotiations cannot resume until Israel stops all settlement construction.

Clinton insisted that the administration still considers settlement activity on disputed territory “illegitimate” and advocates a freeze. But she repeated at a news conference here that Israel’s offer was “unprecedented” and that it “holds the promise of moving a step closer to a two-state solution.”

So faced with Arab displeasure, the administration backtracked. But the Washington Post observed:

Clinton’s comments represented a shift in the dynamics since Obama took office, with initial pressure on Israel giving way over the past several weeks to apparent impatience over the refusal of Palestinian officials to resume peace talks in the absence of a settlement freeze.

And the NYT quoted Arab League Secretary General, Amr Moussa:

Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, urged the administration not to accept what he called a “slap in the face” by Israel. He said he hoped the Americans would “try hard and in a firmer way.”

And how would you characterize the official Palestinian response to Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks in Israel?

“Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?” taunted an article in today’s edition of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, which is controlled by the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.

That’s the “moderate” Palestinian response. And check out the cartoon. The Arab world actually slapped the administration in the face and the administration meekly backs down. The Palestinians, supported by the Arab world, show that they’re uninterested in peace and the administration simply tolerates it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Al Jazeera: The UN’s Goldstone report has been in the headlines in the past few weeks – not without controversy – and has brought to light the conduct of the Israelis and Hamas during the war on Gaza earlier in the year. Does the OIC see this as a step forward in recognising what transpired during that war and in bringing the plight of the Palestinians to the fore on an international scale?

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: Let me first start by completing the story of the history of the Goldstone report. What I would like to put on record is that the OIC was the initiator of this process.

On January 3, during the attacks on Gaza, we convened the executive committee of the OIC on a ministerial level. It was decided that the OIC group in Geneva should ask the Human Rights Council to convene and consider the possibility of sending a fact-finding mission to Gaza.

The OIC was instrumental in getting through this resolution and thanks to the good offices of Ms Pilay, the UN high commissioner, that she formed this fact-finding mission headed by Judge Goldstone.

On October 8, I visited Geneva and had a meeting with OIC ambassadors and the high commissioner. We revived the process again and the Goldstone report has been approved by the rights council.

Now as for the prospects of the Goldstone report, I think the first thing to mention here is that the acceptance and approval of the report by the UN’s human rights council is itself testimony of the world’s public opinion about what happened in Gaza.

This report has certain operative paragraphs which aim to determine who is responsible for the massacres and destruction – illegally and in flagrant violation of humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.

I think now the OIC and the international community should work hand-in-hand to implement the proposals made in the Goldstone report.

The OIC, it should be remembered, opposed the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. In other words, in the view of the OIC international law is war by other means. It is an instrument to be used for its members’ benefit or ignored if inconvenient.

The Washington Post editorialized at the time:

To be sure, some human rights groups have alleged crimes by Israeli forces in Gaza. But, according to Palestinian accounts, 1,409 people were killed during the offensive, of whom a substantial number were armed Hamas fighters. In contrast, the United Nations has reported more than 300,000 civilian deaths in Darfur as a result of the genocidal campaign sponsored by Mr. Bashir. Scores of villages have been systematically burned, and thousands of women systematically raped. Mr. Bashir responded to the ICC’s arrest warrant last month by expelling international aid groups from Darfur. The result has been growing food and water shortages and new epidemics, according to the Enough Project.

Regardless of this blatant hypocrisy, Israel Matzav points out:

But the key figure in this article has nothing to do with Israel: The OIC is the second largest intergovernmental body after the UN. So long as internationalists (like Barack Obama) try to govern the world on the basis of ‘one country, one vote,’ there will always be an automatic majority against Israel and Jews everywhere.

So if someone has ambitions in the milieu of international organizations, playing along is a great way to get ahead. And who better than a Jew, someone who could provide a fig leaf to this ugly conspiracy to vilify Israel?

A number of reports on the Goldstone commission describe Judge Goldstone, as “respected,” but perhaps “ambitious” might be a better description. South African ex-pat Douglas Davis explains (h/t/ Barry Rubin):

‘Oh yes,’ says a former senior colleague who was close to Goldstone for many years. ‘We believed he saw himself as a future secretary-general of the United Nations. At the time Boutros Boutros-Ghali held the post, so it seemed a logical progression for Goldstone to become Richard Richard.’

It might appear unkind to doubt the purity of Goldstone’s motives in joining the human rights industry, poignantly as Israel’s excoriator-in-chief. But he is, it seems, regarded by colleagues who knew him well as an opportunist. And the record suggests they might be right. There is nothing in Goldstone’s biography to imply he was destined to become a hero of the people, let alone a human rights champion. During his career he has executed some canny intellectual and ideological manoeuvres, leveraging past accomplishments to propel himself further up the pole of seniority and celebrity.

While many of his countrymen were fighting against apartheid, Goldstone was loftily administering South Africa’s laws from the bench of the Supreme Court. The impression that he was at least ‘friendly’ towards the Nationalists gained weight when he was elevated to the appellate division.

That’s not to say that he didn’t adapt when he saw change coming.

Then, just as apartheid was reaching tipping point, Goldstone jumped. He became chairman of the South African Standing Commission of Inquiry Regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, a position he used to publicise the evils of apartheid and promote a new African National Congress-friendly persona (he refused to investigate ‘public violence and intimidation’ by the ANC).

Goldstone was on the road to redemption. With Mandela in power, he slid seamlessly onto the bench of the new South Africa’s highest court. Yet this was still not the summit of his ambitions. He was ready to burst onto the international stage, and in August 1994, he was appointed chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for both the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He had become a global brand.

So if Judge Goldstone is really Richard Richard, everything makes sense. Accepting the mission formulated by the OIC, is one sure way to get ahead in the world of unelected international politicians. However many times Goldstone piously claims that it his special responsibility as a Jew to investigate war crimes -

Judge Richard Goldstone, who headed the UN commission that investigated Operation Cast Lead said that he is saddened that Jews around the world feel that because he himself is a Jew that he should not investigate Israel. Goldstone said that as a Jew, he feels that he has a larger responsibility than most to investigate war crimes.

- in accepting his mandate from the UNHRC and OIC, he has violated tenets of Judaism such as judging fairly and standing up to a corrupt majority.

The latest revelations show that the point of the Goldstone Commission was to vilify Israel. Goldstone’s accepting of it had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with advancement.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Don’t worry, it won’t be determined an anti-Semitic attack: Two Jews were shot in the legs inside a synagogue in Los Angeles this morning, but I’m sure it will be determined that it wasn’t anti-Semitism. Violent attacks on Jews in America seem to always be the work of a lone, crazy gunman. I guess we should be happy this guy was not only crazy, but a lousy shot.

But he’s not a Democrat, so no one will care: Gunshots were fired at Lou Dobbs’ home while his wife was standing outside. So, someone who doesn’t like Dobbs’ stance on immigration tried to kill his wife? Nice. This is what you would call a case of domestic terrorism. The gunshot followed a series of threatening phone calls.

Religion of tolerance confiscates bibles: But yes, Islam is tolerant of other faiths. Just ask them. They’re confiscating the bibles because they referred to God as Allah. I’m trying to think if there has ever been a case where Israel confiscated bibles or korans. Hm. Thinking… no, give me a minute, I’m sure I’ll find an example… uh, no. I’m out.

Saudi Arabia joins the seventeenth century: The King had to step in and cancel a medieval punishment, but hey, those Saudis are really modernizing. They’re not going to give a woman 60 lashes with a whip for having worked on a television show where a man talked about sex. Except she had nothing to do with that show. The man, meantime, was sentenced to a prison term, plus lashes. So maybe the Saudis aren’t quite out of the fourteenth century yet. I wouldn’t know… when did Christians flog people for talking about sex in public?

I was debating with Jon Chait at a J Street panel this morning on the subject of “what does it mean to be pro-Israel?” As expected, we disagreed on a number of points, most of which I was right on and he was wrong on. But one thing he said in his opening remarks that I really disagreed with was that there was an ambiguity running through the J Street constituency as to whether the group was or should be pro-Israel at all.

That just struck me as kind of nuts. My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” It’s not a subtle aspect of the messaging. But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. I was, of course, aware that those views existed but it had seemed to me that it was clear that that wasn’t what J Street is there to advocate for. Apparently, though, it wasn’t clear to everyone.

So Yglesias was surprised that folks who came to J-Street’s conference didn’t want to be considered pro-Israel? Why would that be? Here’s Spencer Ackerman’s view on the topic:

I don’t really have any interest in affixing a label to people that they don’t embrace themselves. But I think the answer is that it would be shortsighted to view them outside the “pro-Israel” community. If Israel doesn’t get out of the West Bank soon, demographic realities will force Israel to make the most painful existential choice of its life: whether to abandon Jewish democracy or whether to abandon Jewish statehood in favor of a binational homeland. Both of these options, in fundamental ways, represent the end of Israel. Not from an Iranian nuclear weapon. Not from a super-empowered Palestinian intifada. But from political failure and international diplomatic failure, the end of Israel can, actually, be achieved.

In other words, then, it is pro-Israel to demand that Israel make concessions to an enemy who still denies its right to exist. But this is what’s really problematic with Ackerman’s formulation: Israel’s legitimacy rests on the ability of the Palestinians to create a state. Worse, there seems to be no test for the legitimacy of Palestine. For Ackerman the creation of an Islamist Palestine would not have to answer the same “existential” question as Israel would. In other words Israel’s legitimacy would be defined by its enemies; Palestine’s legitimacy is a given.

Perhaps Ackerman would have an argument twenty years ago, but since Israel has abandoned Gaza and the major cities of Judea and Samaria, there is no demographic threat. There is only a Palestinian failure to create a state. Ackerman prefers to put an impossible onus on Israel. That’s not “pro-Israel” by any definition.

In Yglesias at JStreet David Bernstein writes:

I perfectly understand the difficulty that one could have with these ideas, because when in my twenties, I remember arguing with members of the older generation that they were too paranoid about anti-Semitism, that Israel needs to be much more flexible to achieve a peace accord, and that the murderous rhetoric about Israel emanating from the Arab world and elsewhere would go away once the parties all recognized their rational self-interest and came to a peace deal. It took many years, and, among other things, an intifada that involved a remarkable number of “progressive” Western intellectuals apologizing for, or even justifying, blowing up kids in pizza parlors in response to a serious peace offer from Israel, and a series of modern-day blood libels in Europe during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 to realize that I had been extremely naive. It’s not that I’ve given up hope; but I learned to take what seemed to a younger me like pure craziness that couldn’t possibly be serious-such as the continuing popularity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Muslim world-very seriously.

This is an excellent synopsis of the past decade. And yet, there are those who don’t accept it. Yes the J-Street crowd pretends that none of this happens and that Israel is at the heart of the failure to achieve peace in the Middle East. Never mind, for example, that the Palestinians still don’t accept a Jewish right to a state.

Bernstein’s generous to the J-Streeter’s and their fellow travelers. He doesn’t think that they are anti-Israel. I don’t see how someone could witness the events in the Middle East since 2000 and still put the onus of compromise on Israel and still be pro-Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.