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.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced today that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. has requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret.

I know this is like shooting fish in a barrel, but watch for the left to blame neocons, the Israel Lobby, and, well, Jews in general—even though Freeman’s pro-Saudi and pro-Chinese ties were obvious for anyone who could see past the veiled anti-Semitism of Freeman’s supporters.

I’ve been writing about Jewish and Israeli issues on this blog since the spring of 2002. This is the first time I’ve ever felt troubled about being a Jew in America. It’s bad enough that Jews the world over are being targeted, beaten, bullied, and boycotted.

I’m starting to get very tired of reading in about the Israel/Zionist/neocon control of America in the American media. I expect that sort of crap from Europe and the Arabs. I’m starting to expect it here, now. No, it isn’t “starting.” It’s now in the realm of “So what else is new?”

Seven years this spring, I’ve been writing about Jews, Israel, and anti-Semitism. The only thing that’s changed is how far-reaching the acceptance of Jew-hatred has become.

The category was established here in October of 2005, although I’d been calling it that as early as February of that same year.

Now, if either of you boys were using the term before February of 2005, I will relinquish my claim to fame on that particular nomenclature. (One has to use very big words when one is cross-blogging with Omri; the dude is getting his Ph.D in rhetoric ((which is what I repeatedly tell those people who are silly enough to keep arguing with him: “You’re arguing with a guy who’s getting a Ph.D in arguing?”)), which means you really need to choose your words. Dude.)

But if you can’t find me a post predating mine, well then, I claim “Jew Cooties” for my own. At least until someone sues me for it.

That said, no one imagines Israel is free from fault. But its Government is not creating civil institutions that preach hatred and violence.

By contrast, an entire generation of Palestinian children is being raised on a full diet of hate education, on jihad and anti-Semitism. This is the long-term hurdle to peace in this generation, and the next. Look at the website of Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il) where analysts have long tracked what the Palestinian leadership under Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is doing. Not what is said to Westerners in English or what they tell Israelis in Hebrew.

Look at what Palestinians are teaching their children in Arabic. Look at the geography books for Palestinian children that encourage children to see no Israel, books that feature maps of Israel in the colours of the Palestinian flag, and described as Palestine. Learn about the May 2008 soccer championships for young boys in honour of terrorists such as Samir Quntar and Muhammad al-Mabhuh. Or the July 2008 summer camp held for young girls named in honour of female suicide bomber Dalal al-Mughrabi, who hijacked a holiday bus in 1978, murdering 12 children and 25 adults.

Listen to Fatah-funded children’s television where children are taught to continue the way of the shahids (the suicide bombers) and quizzed about Mughrabi. She is presented as “the beloved bride, child of Jaffa, jasmine flower”. Or quizzes where children routinely identify Israeli landmarks, towns and ports such as Haifa, Ashdod and Eilat as Palestinian. Where children are taught that “Palestine” covers 27,000sqkm; in fact Gaza and the West Bank total 6200sqm. When the next generation of leaders is taught from childhood that Israel does not exist, how is future negotiation possible?

When supporters of Israel are questioned for not demanding that Israel “end the occupation” or failing to criticize the Israeli government for not being more forthcoming towards the Palestinians, this is what’s not taken into account. If the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians were simply an issue of borders, it would have been settled long ago. However, the problem is that the fundamental problem is Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinians are still hard pressed to acknowledge and utilize their civil institutions to deny Israel’s legitimacy.

And this is a problem that’s exacerbated by the Arab world. Egypt’s most prominent cleric, Sheikh Tantawi finds it necessary to deny that he actually touched Israel’s President, Shimon Peres at a recent interfaith conference.

Tantawi, who heads the Islamic Al-Azhar University, told Al-Masri al-Yom that he did not know the octogenarian Peres, who has occupied various positions in the Israeli government since its founding in 1948 and is a Nobel peace prize winner.

Those who published the pictures of the handshake were “a group of lunatics,” he added.

“I shook his hand without knowing what he looked like,” he said. “The handshake was in passing… because I don’t know him to begin with.”

This was at a conference promoting interfaith understanding and Egypt is the Arab state that has had peace with Israel for the longest time. And even under these circumstances, Sheikh Tantawi finds it necessary to say that he didn’t touch an Israeli. (Tantawi has had problems dealing with Jews in the past too.)

UPDATE: Heh. Elder of Ziyon has more about Tantawi.

And of course, there’s a world that, as Jeff Jacoby observes is all too willing to offer its moral support for this unremitting hatred in the UN’s Obsession with demonizing Israel.

Like so much of what takes place at the UN, the obsession with demonizing Israel and extolling the Palestinians is grotesque and Orwellian. More than 1 million Israeli Arabs enjoy civil and political rights unmatched in the Arab world – yet Israel is accused of repression and human-rights abuse. Successive Israeli governments have endorsed a “two-state solution” – yet Israel is blasted as the obstacle to peace. The Palestinian Authority oversees the vilest culture of Jew-hatred since the Third Reich, and wants all Jews expelled from the land it claims for itself – yet Israel is labeled an “apartheid state” and singled out for condemnation and ostracism.

Jacoby doesn’t stop there. He identifies the underlying problem.

Make no mistake: In likening Israel to apartheid-era South Africa, the UN is engaged not in anti-racism but in anti-Semitism. In the 1930s, the world’s foremost anti-Semites demanded a boycott of Jewish businesses. Today they demand a boycott of the Jewish state.

One would think that in our enlightened times, when nearly every ethnic slight is actionable, it wouldn’t be acceptable to hate Jews for being Jews. But that hatred persists. Yes, the more sophisticated practitioners of antisemitism use the fig leaf of “anti-Zionism.” However when you scratch the surface, it’s clear that objection to Israel or its behavior are pretexts. What Israel has done (or is perceived to have done) in no way justifies the depth of the hatred directed towards it.

Israel the world’s only Jewish state is hated not for occupation but for its existence. The longer the world justifies the hatred, the longer it will be before there is finally peace in the Middle East.

UPDATE: David Hazony concludes a post comparing two attitudes of hatred: one towards terrorists; the other towards Israel:

No two hates could be further in their nature from these: In one case, hatred is in the service of a moral standard, it is a reflection of the depth of our human response to evil; in the other, it is completely disconnected from any moral standard, in fact it appears as inherited, as an unalterable fate, in other words a repudiation of moral standards in general.

The hatred of Israel (and Jews) is the latter and too many people in the world accept the excuses that justify it.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.

We’ve got to come to terms with these crazy conspiracies, is Slackman’s view. However Barry Rubin rejects this kind of thinking:

The only solution is to set different goals and interpretations of the world through rethinking, reform, and education. Western glorifications of the Middle East’s status quo-these are customs which must be preserved, how dare you criticize people’s beliefs and offend their sensibilities?-will merely ensure another century of bloodshed, dictatorship, and poverty.

And in fact Rubin argues that the willingness to accept these conspiracy theories speaks of the dysfunction of the societies that promulgate them, not the West.

Wild conspiracy theories were spread precisely because to confront the tragedy’s implications would require examining real problems “which Arab societies have been so assiduously avoiding.” The more Middle Eastern terrorism spread globally, “the greater was the rush to look the other way.” Five years later, that statement is all the more true.

We hear endlessly that the problem is the West doesn’t understand the Middle East. The truth is the exact opposite: the Middle East doesn’t understand the West and, by the same token, doesn’t understand what it needs to do to get out of the hole it has dug for itself.

The more the Arab/Muslim world lives in a state of denial the worse off it will be.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

An Iranian vice president said in rare comments that Iran was a friend of Israeli people, newspapers reported on Monday. “I say for a thousandth time that we are a friend of all people in the world, even Israelis and Americans,” the daily newspaper Etemad quoted Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, the vice president for tourism, as saying.

So why didn’t the Iranian swimmer compete against the Israeli?

However, IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the IOC was satisfied that Alirezaei withdrew because of an illness.

“The athlete withdraw because of a sickness,” she said.

“He confirmed this in writing to the swimming federation. We also spoke to (Iranian association). And they have underlined to us that all athletes competing here are in the right spirit to compete against athletes of any nationalities.

“We take both the athletes and the NOC had their words on this.”

“Sickness?” My guess is cooties. Remember an Iranian had contact with an Israeli national at the games already.

I’m assuming that Mohammed Nikkhah came down with cooties after shaking David Blatt’s hand. Afterwards it couldn’t be assumed that it was safe for Iranians to be in close proximity to their good friends, the Israelis.

Just a hunch, of course.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.