Let the popular uprising begin: Awesome! Hamas didn’t pay their employees’ salaries for January. Watch Hamas find out that it isn’t the message, it’s the money, that keeps people on their side.

The famous tolerance of UC-Irvine students: Of course UC-Irvine Arab students interrupted Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech. These are the pro-Hamas, pro-terrorist students who interrupt any pro-Israel speaker, including threatening violence when they don’t realize the cameras are on. But it’s not anti-Semitism. It’s anti-Zionism. Don’t forget that.

But Egypt and Israel are at peace! An Egyptian soccer coach said he’d rather die than coach an Israeli player. Awesome peace partners, those Egyptians. Just wonderful people. Ew, Jew Cooties!

That famous Muslim tolerance for other religions: Egyptian Christians are protesting for the right to build churches as easily as Muslims build mosques. If you want to build a new church in Egypt, first you have to get the permit signed by the president. If you want to build a new mosque, you get a community permit. Tolerance! And the AP boilerplate is just awesome:

Ten percent of Egypt’s 80 million are Copts, who complain of being denied equal citizenship rights. Clashes do occasionally erupt.

Those “clashes”? Riots that torched Christian-owned shops, and murdered Christians. But hey, don’t let the truth get in the way of your whitewash, AP.

Juvenile scorn in the JPost: Tony Badran schools the “realists” at Foreign Affairs about Hizbullah. (Tony’s my hero.)

In the end, the IRA was cornered, unable to force a British withdrawal, and, worse, unable to even protect its community from Loyalist gangs. It was not the Brits but the IRA that initiated talks when its armed struggle had reached a stalemate.

This is hardly where Hizbullah sees itself today, either ideologically or operationally. Instead of finding itself cornered by its local rivals, Hizbullah has used its weapons to extract powerful political concessions, neutralize the unfavorable result of democratic elections and impose its priorities on its adversaries and the Lebanese government.

You tell ‘em, Tony.

No, not the burekas! The IDF is cutting out the calories, and the soldiers are losing what makes life worth living: Rugulach and burekas. How is this tragedy not front-page news around the world?

But I thought the Palestinians want peace with Israel: The IDF arrested another nine terrorists, complete with explosive device, in the West Bank yesterday. But hey, they really, really, really want peace with Israel. The bomb was for, uh, wait—give me a minute—I’ll think of a peaceful purpose for a bomb… Nah. I’m empty.

Scottie the Hottie, also a friend to Israel: Here he is, lighting a Chabad menorah. There’s also his position paper on Israel, which is awesome. I liked him even before I knew this. Now I wish he was single.

And the Church wonders why its relations with Jews suck: A Vatican guide to discussions for an upcoming conference blames Jews for Muslims driving Christians out of the Middle East. Of course it’s our fault. We also poisoned the wells in the Middle Ages, caused the Black Plague, and I’m pretty sure something we did caused the earthquake in Haiti. Also, I’m really, really, really sorry, Bostonians, but I think we’re also responsible for the Bill Buckner misplay in the 1986 World Series.

Sending in the clown: George Mitchell says that Lebanon and Syria are the keys to Middle East peace. Say, what do both of those countries have in common? (Hint: It starts with Ir and ends with anian sponsorship). Good to know Obama’s crack Middle East specialists are on the case. We can expect peace to break out anytime this millennia.

Perhaps you would like me to come in there and wash your **** for you? The Palestinians have a great new plan for negotiations with Israel. They want us to do it for them. You can stop laughing now. (A Yo-Prize to the first person who correctly names the movie the quote is from.)

When is a precondition not a precondition? When the Palestinians say it isn’t. Abbas says he’s not insisting on preconditions, but he won’t talk peace until there’s a complete freeze on “settlements.” Uh-huh. Say, if I say a piece of green paper is a twenty dollar bill, think I can convince a cashier to take it?

I hate British Nazis: Apparently, the theft of the Auschwitz sign was done at the behest of a British neo-Nazi. The proceeds of the sale were to go to neo-Nazi hate attacks in Sweden. Boy, was I wrong in thinking it was just really stupid thieves. It was really stupid British Jew-haters.

Occupation isn’t occupation when Arabs are doing the occupying: The Dead Sea Scrolls, clearly artifacts of Israel’s Jewish heritage, were recovered from Jordan’s grasp in the Six-Day War. They are currently on display in Canada. Jordan wants Canada to seize them under the Hague Convention, insisting that Israel should hand back the “cultural artifacts” because it is occupying east Jerusalem, and an occupier is not allowed to steal the cultural artifacts of the occupied. This begs the question: When Jordan was occupying the West Bank and took the rest of the scrolls, was it not doing exactly what it now accuses Israel of doing? Of course it was. This is yet another example of the famed projection of Arab nations on Israeli behavior. Read the article in full to see the utter hypocrisy of the PA and Jordan regarding these scrolls of the Torah, a book which the Arabs utterly disdain.

Ew! Jew cooties! An Iranian soccer official resigned because someone in his office sent new year’s greetings to Israel. But it’s not anti-Semitism, it’s anti-Zionism.

Anne Frank’s diary has been censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon following a campaign by the terror group Hezbollah claiming the classic work promotes Zionism.

The row erupted after Hezbollah learned excerpts of “The Diary of Anne Frank” were included in the textbook used by a private English-language school in western Beirut.

Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television channel ran a report slamming the book for focusing on the persecution of Jews.

“What is even more dangerous is the dramatic, theatrical way in which the diary is emotionally recounted,” said the report aired last week and also published on the station’s website.

It questioned how long Lebanon would “remain an open arena for the Zionist invasion of education.”

Got it? Anne Frank’s diary has something to do with Israel. Therefore, Anne Frank was a Zionist, and Lebanese children in a private school should not be learning about how she hid from the Nazis for years and then was murdered in a death camp.

I can only infer that Hezbollah is afraid that Lebanese students might start putting two and two together and figuring out that Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred, whether you call it anti-Semitism or anti-Zionism.

Time for the Yourish.com mantra: Jew haters of the world, just die already. Preferably soon.

The situation in the wake of the Goldstone Report is reminiscent, to some degree, of the international uproar that erupted over the building of the security barrier, particularly the nonbinding ruling of the International Court of Justice demanding that Israel tear down all parts of it that encroached on the West Bank and compensate the Palestinians.

There were no practical implications regarding the judgment, but Israel suffered severely in world public opinion. Barring the unlikely scenario in which the Security Council agrees to turn to the ICC to investigate Israelis on charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity, the damage in this case will be of a similar scope.

And Ron ben Yishai looks at the military implications of the report:

Just as grave is the damage on the legal-military front. The report explicitly rules that the combat methods and armaments utilized by the IDF even prior to Operation Cast Lead, as well as during the campaign, are illegitimate, violate the Geneva Convention, and constitute a war crime. Should the conclusions be adopted by the Security Council and UN secretary general, this will constitute overwhelming de-legitimization to the methods and arms planned by the IDF for future combat should the Israeli home front be attacked with missiles from Lebanon, Syria, or Gaza.

Hence, this marks a first-rate achievement for terror groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas; it may encourage them to keep using the civilian population as a human shield.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer makes a similar argument.

Ben Yishai, also notes that this ruling, if followed might well tie America’s hands when it comes to fighting its war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. This is something that the Obama administration needs to take into account when measuring its response to the commission. This is a point emphasized by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren:

This is an independent judiciary of a democratic country. I think that, once you start establishing the precedent that democratic countries can’t investigate themselves, I think you’ve got a problem.

I think this report creates a problem not just for Israel, but for all free democracies in the world. It’s a victory for terror. It is a major setback for any country, democratic country that is having to face war against an un-uniformed terrorist organization in a densely populated civilian area. I don’t think the United States would like to see a similar report mounted against its conduct of its operations in Afghanistan.

Elder of Ziyon points out specific problems with the report too. For example he notes that the Goldstone Commission made claims that betrayed an ignorance of international law. In other cases he produced videos that contradicted assertions made by the commission.

Melanie Phillips takes aim at other specific assertions of the Commission such as:

Then there is Goldstone’s treatment of the mortar shelling of al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to an UNRWA school. This was the site of the infamous accusation by the UN that Israel had shelled the school itself, killing more than 40 civilians sheltering there. The UN eventually admitted that this was entirely false and the school had not been shelled at all. Israel had instead returned mortar fire at the street next to the school from where firing was still continuing, killing a small number of Hamas terrorists and an even smaller number of civilians who were standing near to the Hamas mortar position.

But Goldstone concludes:

Par 688… The Mission notes that the attack may have been in response to a mortar attack from an armed Palestinian group but considers the credibility of Israel’s position damaged by the series of inconsistencies and factual inaccuracies.

So the fact that Israel was the victim of an incendiary libel by the UN, which said falsely that its school had been hit and inflated the number of casualties — a lie that went round the world inciting hysteria and violence against Israel and Jews — is totally ignored; instead Israel is pilloried for its (undoubtedly) chaotic response as it gradually pieced together what had actually happened.

Reading a number of Goldstone’s statements, it’s clear that he needed to reach certain conclusions and tailored his pronouncements on international law accordingly – whether or not these were correct reading of the law.

Unfortunately, in reports in the MSM, none of these doubts are raised. For example the Washington Post reports:

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said the fact-finding mission lacked legitimacy because its mandate was biased against Israel and because it disregarded Hamas’s strategy of using Palestinian civilians as cover during war. Israel refused to cooperate with Goldstone’s panel or to allow its researchers to interview witnesses in southern Israel or Gaza. Researchers, however, were allowed into Gaza through Egypt.

This is a general rebuttal. The Post’s reporter would not have had to dig too deeply to find problematic claims made in the report. Instead he took his role to be that of a mimeograph machine rather than a reporter.

The New York Times does worse:

The Israeli government said it was studying the report, but Gabriela Shalev, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, quickly rejected it, saying it failed to take into account that the operation was in “self-defense.”

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said it had refused to co-operate with the mission, calling it biased from the start.

In Gaza, a spokesman for Hamas said it fired the rockets at Israel to try to defend itself. “We did not intentionally target civilians,” said Ahmed Yousef, a Hamas adviser. “We were targeting military bases, but the primitive weapons make mistakes.”

Palestinian armed groups have launched about 8,000 rockets and mortars into southern Israel since 2001. During the conflict, the report said, they killed 3 Israeli civilians and a soldier, and injured over 900 people.

I suppose that last paragraph might have been meant as a rebuttal to Yousef’s claim, but an explicit rebuttal that Hamas considers all Israelis to be military targets was in order. Furthermore the Times reports:

The panel rejected the Israeli version of events surrounding several of the most contentious episodes of the war.

Israel’s mortar shelling near a United Nations-run school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, which was sheltering some 1,300 people, killed 35 and wounded up to 40 people, the report said.

The investigation did not exclude the possibility that Israeli forces were responding to fire from an armed Palestinian group, as Israel claimed, but said that this and similar attacks “cannot meet the test of what a reasonable commander would have determined to be an acceptable loss of civilian life for the military advantage sought.”

But on what grounds did Goldstone dismiss the Israeli claims? As Melanie Phillips pointed out, the initial claims against Israel – made by UN personnel – were disproved. So Goldstone accepted a libel instead of the results of an investigation.

There’s more than a little chutzpah in Goldstone’s recommendation then, that Israel must conduct an investigation within six months. Given the standards that he based much of his report on, the only legitimate investigation will reach the same conclusions he did, regardless of the facts.

Goldstone’s daugher pathetically claims that her father is a Zionist, but if his concern for Israeli Jews is so great why was he uninterested in testimony about the terror they were under? More generally why, then, did he accept a mandate to defame Israel that was so blatant the even Mary Robinson refused the job?

Daled Amos and Israelly Cool! provide roundups of critiques of the report.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Am Yisrael Chai: The Jewish people live. That’s what the Benjamin Netanyahu said in Wannsee yesterday. That’s the place where the Nazis planned the destruction of the world’s Jews.

Ew! Jew cooties! Hamas is denying having participated in European workshops with Israelis. Because, you know, Jew cooties.

Note to self: No more putting purse on the back of chairs in restaurants. Ben Bernanke’s wife’s purse was stolen from the back of her chair at a Starbuck’s, begging the question: Didn’t she feel the thief take it? The media’s making this out to be a major ID theft case, but the details being given out make it seem like, uh, the thief stole her checkbook and tried to cash a check. Unless there’s more to the story, it’s typical media overhype.

Um, what’s the point of an Israeli suing a Swedish paper in a New York court? An Israeli lawyer (not one of the brighter ones if you ask me) is suing the Aftonbladet for libel in a New York court. Why not in Sweden? Am I the only one that thinks this is moronic?

The sparring between the United States and Israel has begun, and that’s a good thing. Israel’s interests are not served by an uncritical American administration. The Jewish state emerged less secure and less loved from Washington’s post-9/11 Israel-can-do-no-wrong policy.

At the time of 9/11, Israel had been under assault in the course of the so-called “Aqsa intifada” for nearly a year. The Aqsa intifada had resulted from seven years of acting as if Yasser Arafat could do no wrong. It was a period when Arafat and the PA received legitimacy, money, arms and territory and built a terror infrastructure with which to attack Israel. After Arafat rejected Ehud Barak’s offer in 2000, he launched the intifada using the resources he had received, uncritically over the previous seven years. Israel was condemned for fighting back. So at 9/11, Israel was less secure and less loved from President Clinton’s Arafat-can-do-wrong policy. Not as Cohen would have it.

From that start, Cohen goes on to other flights of fancy.

The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.

Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.

Desolate? Try punctuated with Arab-owned mansions! And let’s not forget, much of that “humiliation” is the result of Israel defending its population against terror.

Cohen’s also impressed by this.

Clinton also indicated an important shift on Hamas, which the State Department calls a terrorist group. While stressing that no funds would flow to Hamas “or any entity controlled by it,” she argued for keeping American options open on a possible Palestinian unity government between the moderate Fatah and Hamas.

So long as a unity government meets three conditions — renounces violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and abides by past agreements — the United States would be prepared to deal with it, including on $900 million in proposed aid, Clinton indicated. Washington does business with a Lebanese government in which Hezbollah controls 11 of 30 seats, although Hezbollah is also deemed a terrorist group.

As I would point out when a news article uses such weaselly language. No one “calls” or “deems” Hamas and Hezbollah terror groups. That’s what they are by definition. And while Cohen considers the American shift on Hamas important; it’s important for the wrong reason. Likely what we will see, is that if Hamas and Fatah agree to power sharing, the administration will conclude that Hamas has met the necessary conditions for engagement. Just like Clinton’s husband did in in the 90’s with Arafat. I think that Cohen knows this and that’s why it’s important. The conditions are a fig leaf. If Hamas and Fatah come to terms, the administration will happily accept that as proof of Hamas’s “moderation.”

Such a changed U.S. policy makes a lot more sense than the previous one, which insisted on Hamas itself — rather than any Palestinian unity government — meeting the three conditions. No peace can be made by pretending Hamas does not exist, which is why advancing Palestinian unity must be a U.S. priority.

This sensible shift will anger Israel, although it deals indirectly with Hamas through Egypt. Israel’s de jure stand on Hamas — that it must recognize Israel before any talks begin — is wildly at odds with Israel’s de facto methodology since 1948.

Actually, peace cannot be achieved by pretending that Hamas does not mean what it says. Cohen’s ludicrous formulation here is so patently false, it cannot be simple ignorance. He can’t use ignorance as an excuse when he is so motivated by malevolence towards Israel.

When Israel’s ignored threats – such as the one from Arafat and Fatah starting in 1993 – it assumes great risks. Recognition is a simple thing to demand. If Israel’s enemies cannot acknowledge its right to exist in a straightforward manner, why should we expect them to do anything more difficult that is required for peace?

So it’s a week in which I cheer Clinton, although her reference to “crippling sanctions” against Iran if the proposed rapprochement fails was a mistake. Sanctions haven’t worked and won’t.

Tehran will not come to the table if it sees Obama’s extended hand as just a deceptive prelude to “crippling” measures. My advice to Tehran: watch what Obama says. He’s driving Iran policy.

Let’s see what happened when President Obama reached out unconditionally to Iran. An American journalist was then convicted of espionage (though she had been arrested for purchasing alcohol) and Iran’s President Ahmadinejad led the UN in an orgy of antisemitic declarations. The generous approach proved a boon for Iran’s hardliners. But why does Cohen assume that it’s the United States that must show its good faith towards Iran? Why not require anything of Tehran? Is there any terrorist or tyrant who is not reasonable to Roger Cohen?

Obama’s doing it in a way that means the Israeli-American friction evident in Clinton’s remarks will be a theme of his first year in office. As Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, told me: “Initiatives are underway that show the United States is going to have some major differences with Israel.”

He also said Netanyahu is “a little more flexible than maybe he’s given credit for.”

Netanyahu as Begin the peacemaker? It’s not impossible. Nor is Obama to Tehran. Provided the president pushes on the two fronts at once.

This is so condescending to defy belief. Begin could make (a cold) peace because he had a Sadat to conclude a deal with. Who does Netanyahu have? Abbas, a Holocaust denier with no power? Meshaal, a terrorist living in Damascus? Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier on the world stage?

And, of course, Cohen’s idea that outreach to Iran is part of a peace strategy is absurd. Here’s Barry Rubin on the topic of Ahmadinejad’s acceptance of a two-state solution.

So in effect Ahmadinejad just said that he would never accept a two-state solution but why put that in clear words when the dumb Westerners can be left to interpret it as they wish.

Roger Cohen, dumb Westerner. I like that.

Israel Matzav addresses the point about “humiliation:”

I moved to Israel in 1991 and I live in Jerusalem not far from the former dividing lines between the eastern and western parts of the city, and between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. When I moved to Israel – 24 years after Judea and Samaria had been liberated by the IDF – there were no road blocks between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. The ‘Palestinians’ were free to cross the ‘green line’ at will and many of them did so daily to work at jobs within the ‘green line.’ Many Israelis used to travel to Bethlehem and Ramallah and other cities across the ‘green line’ to hunt for bargains. What changed everything was terrorism that took a new and dangerous turn in Israel during the post-Oslo period. And the first Israeli leader to place roadblocks between Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria was none other than that mythical peacemaker (and ‘friend’ of Clinton’s philandering husband), Yitzchak Rabin.

via memeorandum.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

So I knew I would find Cohen annoying at best, but I had no idea how boring he would be. He began by saying he would make some brief remarks before taking audience questions. Those remarks ended up filling the better part of an hour and were as predictable as they were lecturing. There was hardly a word the columnist said that surprised, even if you could give him plaudits for having the courage to say them in front of an audience of Iranian Jews who clearly voted against his views with their feet. They left the country.

Cohen’s opening statement ended, also predictably though inappropriately, with an impassioned defense of diplomat Charles Freeman, allegedly just pushed out of potential government office by that evil omnipotent cabal of AIPAC, right wing bloggers, etc. No word, of course, on Freeman’s execrable defense of the Chinese government in the face of the pro-democracy movement in that country and the student massacre at Tiananmen. This display of what Orwell might have called “objectively pro-fascist” behavior by Freeman apparently does not dismay Cohen, despite murmurings about China I heard all around me from a predominantly Jewish audience. In fact, Cohen didn’t have half the grace of that audience who actually gave a polite round of applause to his deadening speech.

Cohen’s own account of the talk in LA shows no more self-awareness.

I have, in a series of columns, and as a cautionary warning against the misguided view of Iran as nothing but a society of mad mullah terrorists bent on nukes, been examining distinctive characteristics of Persian society.

Iran — as compared with Arab countries including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt — has an old itch for representative government, evident in the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. The June presidential vote will be a genuine contest by the region’s admittedly low standards. This is the Middle East’s least undemocratic state outside Israel.

Notice how he can’t even avoid a dig at Israel. Not calling it the most democratic state in the Middle East, but the “least undemocratic.” He doesn’t point out that the only candidates who run, are those who are approved. True, it’s more open than Egypt but to compare it to Israel, is a mark of intellectual dishonesty, not an indication of sober reflection.

While Bernard Lewis, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs, posits an epochal clash between “Islamic theocracy and liberal democracy” whose outcome will be decisive, I don’t see any victor in this fight. Rather, a variety of compromises between the two forces will emerge, as in Iran.

It is therefore in America’s strong interest to develop relations with the most dynamic society in the region. What autocrats from the Gulf to Cairo fear most is an Iranian-American breakthrough, precisely because it would shake up every cozy, static regional relationship, including Washington’s with Israel.

I’m glad to know that Cohen disagrees with Bernard Lewis. Lewis is, in fact, out of favor with the current trends in Middle East scholarship. Of course that’s more a reflection on the state of the scholarship than on Dr. Lewis. And given Lewis’s six or more decades of serious study, I don’t give much credence to the guy who just acted as a shill for the Iranian government who disputes hm.

Another distinctive characteristic of Iran is the presence of the largest Jewish community in the Muslim Middle East in the country of the most vitriolic anti-Israel tirades. My evocation of this 25,000-strong community, in the taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate, has prompted fury, nowhere more so than here in Los Angeles, where many of Iran’s Jewish exiles live.

At the invitation of Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple, I came out to meet them. The evening was fiery with scant meeting of minds. Exile, expropriation and, in some cases, executions have left bitter feelings among the revolution’s Jewish victims, as they have among the more than two million Muslims who have fled Iran since 1979. Abraham Berookhim gave me a moving account of his escape and his Jewish uncle’s unconscionable 1980 murder by the regime.

“Unconscionable?” Cohen throws out the word as a glib attempt to show outrage. But it doesn’t fit with the rest of rosy words to describe the Iranian regime. And while he derides the “taboo-ridden world of American Middle East debate,” Cohen is remarkably silent on the 75,000 Jews who left Iran in the past thirty years. He has studiously avoided mentioning that, focusing instead on the 25,000 who remain as if their presence is a testament to some great openness. In fact it is a reflection of how difficult it is for them to leave.

Pragmatism is also one way of looking at Iran’s nuclear program. A state facing a nuclear-armed Israel and Pakistan, American invasions in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and noting North Korea’s immunity from assault, might reasonably conclude that preserving the revolution requires nuclear resolve.

What’s required is American pragmatism in return, one that convinces the mullahs that their survival is served by stopping short of a bomb.

And no doubt it’s pragmatic to threaten a nearby state with annihilation with those very weapons. Come on, is there anything that Iran does that Cohen doesn’t see as a sign of pragmatism?

Cohen argues that the Iranian nuclear program is a sign of its pragmatism. A couple of Iranian dissidents argue that the very fact that the Iranian regime is so extreme is a reason not to trust it with nukes. (I don’t know if I agree with their argument in its entirety.) But here’s the gist of their argument:

Tehran’s nuclear ambitions must be viewed in context. The free world does not fear a nuclear Iran because of the bomb; the world is full of nuclear bombs. People fear a nuclear Iran because of the radical Islamist ideology of those who would be the holders of such a bomb. Nuclear power can embolden a government, and Iran’s ruling mullahs, regardless of their factions and infighting, are united in wanting to stay alive. The “Islamic bomb,” as the so-called moderate Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has proudly called it, can help ensure the survival of the regime.

Those in power in Iran are responsible for terrorist attacks throughout the Middle East, not to mention in Buenos Aires, Paris, Vienna and Berlin. They are fundamentally opposed to liberal democracy and its ensuing individual rights. They still imprison the young for having parties and listening to music and stone women to death for extramarital sex. In the name of God, they persecute religious minorities and imprison mullahs who speak of freedom. They still chant “death to America” at the official sermon every Friday and force children to do the same as part of the school curriculum. Drug addiction is common among large swaths of society. The regime’s oil-rich apparatus is rotted by extremes of corruption and unaccountability. Like communist totalitarian regimes of the past, it seeks to maintain a facade of revolutionary idealism for the outside — particularly for the liberation-hungry Arab world — while its people endure the bitter realities of life under an ideological state.

Since 1979, successive U.S. administrations have “engaged” the Iranian government in negotiations while maintaining a myth of no talks. All the while, Tehran has avoided any real change in behavior. It has amassed greater military might and regional influence, and escalated its repression of the Iranian people and its patronage of Lebanese Hezbollah and anti-Israeli, anti-American Islamist ideology throughout the Muslim world. And along the way, it has managed to convince some on the European and American left of its harmlessness, and even of “Islamic” progressiveness.

Put in that context, Iran’s government doesn’t sound nearly so “pragmatic,” does it? And why do these dissidents live abroad? Is it perhaps because they fear the “pragmatism” of the mullahs?

But in the end (as Roger Simon) noted, Roger Cohen comes back to the same thing. The real extremists are the people who objected to the appointment of Chas Freeman.

That, in turn, will require President Obama to jump over his own bonfire of indignation as the Mideast taboos that just caused the scandalous disqualification of Charles Freeman for a senior intelligence post are shed in the name of a new season of engagement and reason.

For Cohen engagement = reason. But when dealing with unreasonable regimes that equation is non-existent. But no matter how discredited Cohen’s premises are, he persists. He defends tyrants with tiresome but irrelevant platitudes.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.