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.

There’s something horrifying about the amount of damage that a slight to one man’s ego can do. I’m well aware that there was more to the Goldstone report than that, but nevertheless it appears to me to be a factor that can’t be ignored. The fact is that, his protestations notwithstanding, it’s Goldstone who has made the controversy over this report all about him.

Well that ego has bruised again, this time by Israeli President Shimon Peres (h/t My Right Word):

Richard Goldstone, who authored the United Nations report accusing Israel of perpetrating war crimes in its Gaza offensive earlier the year, is a man devoid of any real sense of justice and is intent on harming Israel, President Shimon Peres told Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during their meeting in Brasilia on Wednesday.

“Goldstone is a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence,” Peres told his Brazilian counterpart, adding that the South African jurist “was on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.”

Goldstone didn’t try to hide his bruised ego:

South African jurist Richard Goldstone lambasted President Shimon Peres on Thursday for a personal attack on him, which the president launched in response to a damning report he compiled on Israel’s winter offensive in Gaza.

“I would say that the President’s comments are specious and ill-befitting the Head of the State of Israel,” Goldstone said in an interview with Haaretz.

“I am content to be judged by my actions over the course of my career both in terms of my professional judicial career and my voluntary service.”

Meryl observes:

His report’s “message” has been addressed, many times, by many sources—factually—and Goldstone’s response, over and over again, is that people can’t attack him on the facts so they attack him personally. He sticks to this defense even in when he is confronted with evidence that directly contradicts his report, seeming shocked that such evidence exists. So Goldstone is either utterly disingenuous, if not outright lying—and he’s been doing this dance since the beginning. The martyr role is getting tiresome.

Since he asked for it, let’s judge the judge.

One of his most damning assessments was the commission’s account of the attack on the Maqadameh mosque.

Col. Jonathan Dahoah Halevi recently reviewed some aspects of the incident. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

The Goldstone Committee also failed by thoroughly examining the data. If Committee members had examined the names of the Palestinians killed at the Maqadmah mosque, they would have discovered that their identities and the membership of many of them in terrorist organizations contradicted the “eyewitness” claims that there were no terrorist operatives in the area, and contradicted as well the conclusions of the Report in that respect.

Seven of the 15 Palestinians killed at the mosque were members of terrorist organizations who had participated in fighting the IDF, most of them members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military-terrorist wing, and a few of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Regarding one of them (Ahmed Abu Ita of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades), it was reported that he had gone to the Maqadmah mosque to meet “friends,” i.e., other armed terrorist operatives.

(This isn’t some sort of post facto analysis. Elder of Ziyon discovered that one of those killed was a Hamas operative prior to the release of the Goldstone report by using publicly available sources.)

Halevi notes elsewhwere that a number of the witnesses the commission to this strike were from the Silawi family, who had an agenda. (Halevi also notes there, that the questions asked of the witnesses were hardly comprehensive.) Yet the commission accepted their testimony uncritically.

The Goldstone Commission’s report is based on many omissions and distortions as shown in this case. Yet Goldstone feels:

Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”
…
“We couldn’t use that report as evidence at all,” Goldstone said. “But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that’s the purpose of this sort of report. If there was an independent investigation in Israel, then I think the facts and allegations referred to in our report would be a useful road map.”

Nevertheless, the report itself is replete with bold and declarative legal conclusions seemingly at odds with the cautious and conditional explanations of its author. The report repeatedly refers, without qualification, to specific violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention committed by Israel and other breaches of international law. Citing particular cases, the report determines unequivocally that Israel “violated the prohibition under customary international law” against targeting civilians. These violations, it declares, “constitute a grave breach” of the convention.

That first paragraph should be chilling. Goldstone feels that Israel is now guilty of war crimes until proven innocent. Is it any wonder that Israel’s president would attack him? Golddstone has declared Israel a pariah, Peres should not have been silent.

Goldstone’s commission – effectively accepting a mandate from the OIC – has set out impossible standards for a democracy, specifically Israel, from defending itself against terror. All of Israel’s efforts to protect civilians were arbitrarily deemed insufficient.

So according to Goldstone, how would Israeli defend itself? And why does he fear debating Alan Dershowitz?

Like another Richard he seems unable to take criticism. Unfortunately he’s so convinced of his own righteousness that he won’t just go away for a few years.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The resolution endorsed the recommendations in the Goldstone report, and recommended that the UN General Assembly “consider” the report in its current session (which lasts until late December, or eventually until next September). It also said that the Israeli restrictions on Gaza — which the HRC resolution says is occupied — is a “siege” that “constitutes collective punishment of Palestinian civilians”.

How then should the UNHRC respond to this?

Saudi Arabia on Tuesday imposed a naval blockade on the Red Sea coast of northern Yemen to combat Shiite rebels along its border, an adviser to the government said, in the latest escalation of fighting in the southern Arabian Peninsula.

An interesting observation follows:

The Saudi offensive has raised concerns of a proxy war in the Middle East between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally. Shiite Iran is thought to favor the rebels in Yemen, while Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni, is Iran’s fiercest regional rival.

The concerns are about a “proxy war,” and not about the siege that is impoverishing Yemen? Taken together with the Saudi “apartheid wall” on the border with Yemen and Saudi occupation of the Yemeni territories of Najran, Asir and Jizhan, we need a commission to declare Saudi Arabia in violation of international law with all the requisite resolutions and condemnations.

I really don’t care if Saudi Arabia is fighting an Iranian backed terror organization, the UN has an obligation to act according the standards it just established with the Goldstone report! This is collective punishment and must be treated as such! This is a Saudi Cast Lead.

(Not that Yemen deserves much sympathy as it is chasing its remaining Jews away.)

Crossposted on Yourish.

Speaking on France Inter radio, Kouchner made clear he was not expecting any swift break through in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

“What really hurts me, and this shocks us, is that before there used to be a great peace movement in Israel. There was a left that made itself heard and a real desire for peace,” Kouchner said.

“It seems to me, and I hope that I am completely wrong, that this desire has completely vanished, as though people no longer believe in it,” he added.

Huh. You’d almost think that Israel withdrew from Gaza and was then subjected to a constant barrage of rockets and mortars into her territory. Or that Hamas would have taken over in a bloody coup from Fatah and started turning Gaza into an Islamic terror state. Or that Mahmoud Abbas would refuse to negotiate seriously, calls for the end of the “Judaization” of Jerusalem, and refuses to compromise one whit on Palestinian demands. Or that the security fence actually helped stop terror attacks on Israel.

Say, Bernard? Fu vous.

62. The tactics used by Israeli military armed forces in the Gaza offensive are consistent with previous practices, most recently during the Lebanon war in 2006. A concept known as the Dahiya doctrine emerged then, involving the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to
civilian populations. The Mission concludes from a review of the facts on the ground that it
witnessed for itself that what was prescribed as the best strategy appears to have been precisely
what was put into practice.
63. In the framing of Israeli military objectives with regard to the Gaza operations, the concept of Hamas’ “supporting infrastructure” is particularly worrying as it appears to transform civilians and civilian objects into legitimate targets. Statements by Israeli political and military leaders prior to and during the military operations in Gaza indicate that the Israeli military conception of what was necessary in a war with Hamas viewed disproportionate destruction and creating the maximum disruption in the lives of many people as a legitimate means to achieve not only military but also political goals.
64. Statements by Israeli leaders to the effect that the destruction of civilian objects would be justified as a response to rocket attacks (”destroy 100 homes for every rocket fired”), indicate the
possibility of resort to reprisals. The Mission is of the view that reprisals against civilians in armed hostilities are contrary to international humanitarian law.

More here:

1191. In its operations in southern Lebanon in 2006, there emerged from Israeli military thinking a concept known as the Dahiya doctrine, as a result of the approach taken to the Beirut neighbourhood of that name.578 Major General Gadi Eisenkot, the Israeli Northern Command chief, expressed the premise of the doctrine:
What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every
village from which Israel is fired on. [...] We will apply disproportionate force on it
and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not
civilian villages, they are military bases. [...] This is not a recommendation. This is a
plan. And it has been approved.579

Here:

1683. In this respect, the Mission recognizes that not all deaths constitute violations of international humanitarian law. The principle of proportionality acknowledges that under certain strict conditions, actions resulting in the loss of civilian life may not be unlawful. What makes the application and assessment of proportionality difficult in respect of many of the events investigated by the Mission is that deeds by Israeli forces and words of military and political leaders prior to and during the operations indicate that as a whole they were premised on a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed not at the enemy but at the “supporting
infrastructure.” In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population.

And here:

1691. The Mission has noted with concern public statements by Israeli officials, including senior military officials, to the effect that the use of disproportionate force, attacks on civilian population and destruction of civilian property are legitimate means to achieve Israel’s military and political objectives. The Mission believes that such statements not only undermine the entire regime of international law, they are inconsistent with the spirit of the United Nations Charter and, therefore, deserve to be categorically denounced.
1692. Whatever violations of international humanitarian and human rights law may have been
committed, the systematic and deliberate nature of the activities described in this report leave the Mission in no doubt that responsibility lies in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.

The above paragraphs contain four of the five mentions of “disproportionate force” mentioned by the Goldstone commission. (The fifth was a footnote.)

Note a few things. I’ve faulted the Goldstone commission for cherry picking evidence. In these paragraphs we see something else. There’s an effort here to define a term of international law, that is nowhere nearly as clear as the Commission presumes and uses it to condemn Israel.

Furthermore, the commission engages in a huge reversal. Look at the final section of paragraph 1683:

What makes the application and assessment of proportionality difficult in respect of many of the events investigated by the Mission is that deeds by Israeli forces and words of military and political leaders prior to and during the operations indicate that as a whole they were premised on a deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed not at the enemy but at the “supporting infrastructure.” In practice, this appears to have meant the civilian population.

One of Israel’s defenses for the collateral damage inflicted upon civilians is that Hamas hid among civilians and used civilian facilities for military purposes. With the two sentences above, the Goldstone commission takes away that justification.

Yet it is part of the Commissions lead-up to 1692:

1692. Whatever violations of international humanitarian and human rights law may have been committed, the systematic and deliberate nature of the activities described in this report leave the Mission in no doubt that responsibility lies in the first place with those who designed, planned, ordered and oversaw the operations.

In other words, the commission’s personal opinion has now been substituted for settled law and it draws the conclusion that Israel’s military planners are responsible.

This conclusion of the Goldstone report appears to be the opinion of the commission, not a legal conclusion in any way. Worse by substituting their judgment for sound legal reasoning, the commission stacked the deck against any independent Israeli investigation. If an Israel investigation would consider Israel’s military doctrine sound and in accordance with international law, Goldstone (and those who support and rely on him) would say that the Israeli conclusions were dishonest. In other words, the Goldstone commission is ensuring that any Israeli investigation would find Israel’s military leaders guilty of war crimes or that Israel was protecting its military brass.

In a paper for the U.S. Army, Jonathan Keiler argues that proportionality is a concept that really had been defined but rarely used – before the Israel war against Hezbollah in 2006.

The 2006 Israel-Lebanon war generated the first large-scale and systemic references to a heretofore mostly ignored law of war concept, the doctrine of proportionality. Occasional references to proportionality are found in accounts of the Iraq War and in histories or scholarly works of the last century. In general, prior to Israel’s 2006 campaign the proportionality
doctrine received little scholarly interest and even less attention among the governing classes and international media.1 In all likelihood, critics of American action in Iraq or Afghanistan would have more thoroughly employed this doctrine in their efforts to end or limit US military involvement had they simply thought of it. But by 2006, when the doctrine was widely known, the major battles in Iraq and Afghanistan were finished.

One important point that Keiler makes is:

A year before the Gaza offensive, in February 2008, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined a reporter’s invitation to label Israeli retaliatory action as “disproportionate.”3

This is a sound policy that the Obama Administration would be well advised to follow. Though American military action in Afghanistan or Iraq has not yet received comparable condemnation (at least on grounds of “disproportion”), it is only a matter of time before this occurs, as soon as a fight is significant enough to warrant it. There is little difference in the operational
practices used by the Israeli and American militaries, which not only share many weapon systems but also elements of tactics and training.4

In other words the idea of declaring a war “disproportionate” is an attack on a country’s ability to defend itself by nullifying part of its military doctrine. If this standard is applied to Israel, it’s only a matter of time before it’s applied to the United States.

Keiler writes further:

The problem with the proportionality rule is its frequent and remarkable misinterpretation. The extent of this confusion is so great as to severely limit the utility of this law of war concept as presently structured. As both the Lebanon and Gaza campaigns illustrate, the doctrine is subject to distortion to the degree that applying it is actually harmful to the conduct of lawful and legitimate military campaigns.7 As a practical matter, invoking the doctrine confuses important issues and undermines respect for the law of war. Michael Walzer, one of the most prominent ethicists of war and its consequences, notes that false claims of disproportion typically have the effect of justifying excessive violence, which he characterizes as a “dangerous idea.”8 This article will propose the elimination of proportionality as a law of war concept, at least by the American military. Existing doctrine, standards, proscriptions, and ethical guidelines are more than sufficient to govern proper conduct in combat without descending into the semantic, legal, and ethical miasma of proportionality.

Ive read someplace that a group of South Africans have recommended that Israel carry out an investigation of its military operations in response to the Goldstone report. But the nature of this investigation would be to compare Israeli actions in Gaza to American and NATO actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The point would be to show how Goldstone manufactured a standard and then applied it only to Israel. There may be some wisdom in that suggestion.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In addressing this vexing issue, the Goldstone Report uses a rather strange formulation: “While reports reviewed by the Mission credibly indicate that members of the Palestinian armed groups were not always dressed in a way that distinguished them from the civilians, the Mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from the attack.” The reader of such a sentence might well wonder what its author means. Did Hamas militants not wear their uniforms because they were inconveniently at the laundry? What other reasons for wearing civilian clothes could they have had, if not for deliberately sheltering themselves among the civilians? [...]

But how does it work in the field? How, for example, can you know intent? Col. Ben Zion Gruber, (who recently talked to Mona Charen) gave an example at a recent talk (h/t Media Backspin) :

Further evidence of the IDF’s combat dilemma was revealed in what Gruber said was rarely seen news footage.

As the camera focuses on a wounded Arab man with a Kalashnikov rifle lying by his side, an arm is suddenly seen removing the smoking weapon. This, said Gruber, is a media-savvy tactic that, if the camera had not captured the gun being removed, makes it appear as though the IDF has injured a civilian.

The cluelessness repeatedly demonstrated by Goldstone in focusing on the effects of Israel’s war against Hamas, while failing to acknowledge the causes or context of that war inevitably taint the report. I think that Goldstone’s cherry picking of what he would consider and what he wouldn’t means that even had Israel participated, the outcome would have been no different. I think that criticisms of Israel on this count are misplaced.

What was misplaced was the American choice to get involved with the tarnished UN Human Rights Council. As Barry Rubin writes:

President Barack Obama made a controversial decision in deciding to have the United States participate in the radical-run UN Human Rights Council, reversing Bush administration policy of boycotting the group. Moreover, the president has gone out of his way to talk about how useful the UN is as a force, sometimes it seems to be in his eyes the most important force, to keeping the world peaceful and making it more so.

The new administration argued that by participating it could moderate the course of a body that never defends human rights in a long list of dictatorships (many of which are members and even leaders of it) but just focuses on bashing Israel.

But now that the point about the Council’s function as a propaganda organ for extremist dictatorships is proven, what does the United States do? Its ambassador isn’t going to the discussion in the General Assembly that’s discussing using the ludicrous Goldstone report as a basis for punishing Israel.

If you need to know just one thing about the Goldstone report, here it is: the commission did not investigate anything. It heard a lot of Palestinian and some other anti-Israel witnesses; wrote down what they said; and put it into the report without verifying anything.

Now, having implicitly given the American imprimatur of legitimacy to a corrupt organization, the Obama administration will now have to veto the results of the council’s labors. Goldstone is .clueless about his own role in this venal project, will the Obama administration come to terms with the results of its own cluelessness?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

He seems particularly unable to understand why everyone doesn’t just see that he changed the original mandate (the one that ordered only investigation into “Israeli war crimes,” and the one that was never officially adopted by the Human Rights Council), that the Goldstone Report is not biased against Israel, and that he implicated Hamas as much as he blamed Israel for the civilian deaths in Gaza. When confronted with facts that contradict this worldview, he insists that he did everything right, he is being slandered by people who don’t like the report, and all Israel had to do was take part in the Goldstone Commission’s investigation, and then everything would have been all right.

Last night he repeated the same allegations against Israel made in his report, because Goldstone reiterates the same major points at every stop: The report did condemn Hamas, the 36 incidents cited were proof of Israel deliberately targeting civilians, and the proof of that is the destruction that was wreaked, especially of infrastructure.

Point number one: The report never actually condemns Hamas. Not once. It does, however, keep mentioning “Palestinian armed groups” as responsible for some of the crimes (for example, the rocket launching). There is a reason, Dore Gold said, why Hamas accepted the report. Because it didn’t implicate them at all.

Point numbers two and three: Those 36 incidents were incidents that Goldstone said proved Israel was guilty of deliberately targeting civilians. But the report could find “no evidence” of Hamas booby-trapping buildings or using human shields. The report quoted Palestinian eyewitnesses, but did not interview anyone in the IDF. One of the student questioners asked Goldstone how the report could possibly be unbiased when it did not interview a single soldier. He insisted that it was unbiased. You know, when I was a child, the “Because it is” defense never really worked with my mother.

The IDF found plenty of evidence of Hamas war crimes. Dore Gold brought videos and evidence of booby-trapped houses to the debate, and Goldstone seemed flabbergasted. But that didn’t stop him from continuing with his usual points.

That’s a theme with Goldstone. All evidence brought to the contrary appears to astound him. But then he recovers and starts accusing Israel of war crimes again.

Why destroy the infrastructure if not to collectively punish? Etc., etc., yadda yadda, QED, there’s your proof. He did not interview the commanders who made the decisions to fire on those areas, but he knows they did it for collective punishment. His report found no evidence of human shields and booby-trapped houses, but he knows that the IDF destroyed all of those homes deliberately and for no military reason. He touched on the IDF’s military bulldozers destroying Palestinian farmland. That would be because the roads into Gaza were booby-trapped, so the IDF made its own roads into Gaza, destroying whatever was in its path to prevent the deaths of soldiers. That, according to Goldstone, was a war crime. According to the rules of war, it’s damned good strategy.

Goldstone utterly disregards charges of bias. But when asked by a student how the report could possibly be unbiased when Christine Chinkin, member of the Commission, signed a letter accusing Israel of war crimes in the first week of the Gaza operation, he insisted that was not relevant. He said that if it had been a judicial investigation, then yes, she should have recused herself, but that since the commission was not judicial, it didn’t effect the investigation. The fact that he sees absolutely no cognitive dissonance in admitting that she was biased enough to be thrown off a judiciary investigation, but not a UN investigation, seems astonishing—but not when you consider that Richard Goldstone will brook absolutely no criticism of his efforts. He is right, Israel is wrong, and we are wrong for not accepting uncritically the Goldstone Report.

The hubris of this man is unbelievable. And the damage his report has done is yet to be seen.

The present crisis began on 6 November when the government attack on Bouaké also killed nine French peacekeepers. The French president, Jacques Chirac, ordered the destruction of the Ivorian air force. In Abidjan Gbagbo’s supporters promptly turned on the expatriate French community.

None of this settled anything, but it did clarify the nature of the conflict. This was the first time in 40 years of postcolonial apprenticeship that the lives of French citizens in Africa had been so threatened. Everyone had been happy to watch Africans kill each other, but television images of tearful French evacuees stepping off planes outside Paris were another matter – almost enough to make viewers forget that French forces had killed Ivorian civilians and destroyed a sovereign state’s air force to reassure 15,000 compatriots and to avenge the deaths of nine soldiers.

[...] On 7 November 2004 there were minor skirmishes between Fanci, Ivory Coast’s national armed forces, and French Operation Unicorn soldiers. Although these were of no military significance, it would be unwise to underestimate their symbolic importance. Even before these confrontations, and despite the fact that it was operating under a UN security council mandate, Operation Unicorn was perceived as an occupation force. The disproportionate nature of its response confirmed this, sending a signal not just to Ivory Coast but to other client states in France’s sphere of influence. It is easy for the weight of history to give young soldiers the impression of being stuck in an isolated garrison on the remote tribal fringes of the empire. Although African heads of state – all fervent democrats, of course – sided with France, there was fierce condemnation in French-speaking countries of what had become a bloody colonial adventure.

There were no UN resolutions or worldwide outrage that the French were using disproportionate force on a former colony. There was no call for investigation of the deaths of civilians. There were no charges of war crimes. There was only the expectation that since French citizens were being attacked, France had the right to defend them with all means at her disposal.

Funny, isn’t it, how the French can get away with this, yet Israel cannot defend herself against eight years of missile attacks on her civilian population without raising the anger of the collective world community—including the hypocrites in France?

What time is it? That’s right. Israeli Double Standard Time. But don’t worry, it only occurs on days that end with a “y.”

Update: Found this after I posted. The hypocrisy is even worse.

UN and US back French intervention in Ivory Coast
France has received international backing for its intervention in its former colony, Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) where a civil war has been raging for five months. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that “welcomes the deployment of Ecowas (Economic Community of West African States) forces and French troops” and endorses the peace agreement signed by both the government and rebels in the current civil war.

A UN resolution backing France’s action. Wow. Words just fail.

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.

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

I will be waiting for the UN to denounce this. But first, the Daily Mail, being the British press, must blame Israel for it somehow.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

Say, do you think the Brits are aware that the Palestinians are using their money to pay torturers?

A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’

This is some of what the Brits’ £20 million pounds per year is paying for:

The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

The Brits are now going to send intelligence officers into the West Bank to teach the PA torturers to stop torturing. Their initial budget? £100,000.

Interestingly, none of the wire services have managed to find this story worth picking up and spreading. Apparently, only Israel can be guilty of human rights abuses. Just imagine the number of headlines around the world media if it were the Israeli police forces that were abusing prisoners like this.

What time is it, kids? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time.