But the administration also is guilty of missteps. Rather than pocketing Mr. Netanyahu’s initial concessions — he gave a speech on Palestinian statehood and suggested parameters for curtailing settlements accepted by previous U.S. administrations — Mr. Obama chose to insist on an absolutist demand for a settlement “freeze.” Palestinian and Arab leaders who had accepted previous compromises immediately hardened their positions; they also balked at delivering the “confidence-building” concessions to Israel that the administration seeks. Israeli public opinion, which normally leans against the settler movement, has rallied behind Mr. Netanyahu. And Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, which were active during the Bush administration’s final year, have yet to resume.

Naturally J-Street’s MJ Rosenberg (via memeorandum) started name calling:

Of course, the Washington Post is not an Israeli paper so its defense of even the most indefensible Israeli policy — the refusal to freeze settlements — is just weird. Fred Hiatt (the editorial page editor), neocon hero Charles Krauthammer and columnist Bill Kristol consistently defend Israeli policies with a zealousness they last demonstrated when pushing for war with Iraq.

Where was Rosenberg six months ago when the same Hiatt was questioning whether Israel ought to be fighting a war of self defense or giving op-ed space to Hamas apologists? I realize that Rosenberg considers anyone who isn’t as reflexively anti-Israel as he is to be pro-Israel and out of the mainstream. However the Post’s measured criticism of the President can hardly be considered a sign of it’s being pro-Israel.

If the Post’s editors are taking this stand, I think that a lot of it has goes back to their meeting Mahmoud Abbas two months ago. AS Jonathan Tobin recalls:

As Mahmoud Abbas, the supposedly moderate head of the Palestinian Authority, recently told the Washington Post, he has no intention of dealing with Israel. Instead, he will sit back and wait for Obama to keep applying the screws to America’s only democratic ally in the region.

Jennifer Rubin extrapolates:

Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Perhaps others in Congress and those still spinning so furiously for Obama (Alan Dershowitz included) can at least concede that whatever Obama thought he might be able to achieve by alienating our ally has proven to be counterproductive. He has lost the trust of the Israelis and encouraged intransigence among Palestinians and Arab states.

Israel Matzav adds that the President has lived down to expectations.

The editors of the New York Times, though, are all in favor of President Obama’s approach. Though initially concerned with Abbas’s performance, they seem to have gotten over it. Today they applaud the President’s pressure and beg him to keep it up in The Settlements Issue.

Mr. Obama and his negotiator, George Mitchell, have focused on settlements after prying loose a commitment — highly caveated — from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a two-state solution. The Palestinians insist they won’t return to talks until all construction halts. The Americans have decided that a freeze is needed to show Palestinians and other Arabs that Israel’s conservative government is serious about peace.

Given the makeup of the “moderate” Fatah party that Israel is supposed to make peace with, focusing on whether PM Netanyahu said the magic words seems to be a bit of misdirection. The following paragraph lets us know how dishonest the editors of the Times are:

Less visibly, but we hope just as assertively, the administration is pressing the Palestinians and other Arab leaders to take concrete steps to demonstrate their commitment to a peace deal. Those must clearly contribute to Israel’s sense of security.

“[W]e hope just as assertively…” If the pressure was “visible,” it could be just as assertive. The fact that it’s being applied privately (if at all) shows that it is clearly not as assertive. And as the editorial itself acknowledges towards the end, it hasn’t been effective at all.

President Obama and Mr. Mitchell claim they are making progress, but so far there is little sign of it. Saudi Arabia, which has pushed Washington hard to revive negotiations, has been especially resistant. Mr. Mitchell would do well to remind them that a prolonged stalemate will only feed extremism across the region.

So the Times supports the President’s “visible” pressure on Israel even though it acknowledges that the policy is yielding no diplomatic benefits. The editorial conclude:

Israeli leaders do not often risk being at odds with an American president, but polls show broad support for Mr. Netanyahu’s resistance. President Obama, a skilled communicator, has started a constructive dialogue with the Islamic world. Now he needs to explain to Israelis why freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is clearly in their interest.

The broad support is for PM Netanyahu’s policies so far which represent the views of the majority of the Israeli electorate.

Obama is a skilled (if overrated) orator. He is not a skilled communicator as he often does not listen to others. He hasn’t started a “constructive dialogue with the Islamic world,” as much as he as assured them and demonstrated to them that he intends to pressure Israel to accommodate their demands, while paying only lip service to the demands he makes on them. Naturally that has led to a hardening of their positions.

President Obama doesn’t need to explain to Israel why “freezing settlements and reviving peace talks is to Israel’s benefit. Plenty of diplomats, politicians, journalists and academics have been explaining things to Israel for the past 40 years. Since 1993 has heeded most of this advice only to see its security undermined and its diplomatic position in no way enhanced.

Perhaps what the President needs to do is to use his vaunted communication skills to convince the Arabs that they have more to gain by making peace with Israel even if Israel doesn’t accede to every demand of the Palestinians.

We’ve just seen a “teachable moment” in the history of Middle East diplomacy. The editors of the Washington Post seem to have learned something; the editors of the New York Times and the President seem not to.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

We’d call this week’s White House meeting between President Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a draw. Mr. Netanyahu promised to promote Palestinian independence as a basis for a state. Whether or not he mentioned “two state solution” is really irrelevant as even the moderate leaders of Fatah, can’t bring themselves to acknowledge the right of a Jewish state to exist in the Middle East. Mr. Obama promised that his patience with Iran, and its nuclear ambitions, was limited, but aside from promising harsh sanctions if Iran doesn’t restrain its ambitions promised no teeth to prevent Iran from developing these dangerous weapons.

A draw was probably the best that could be hoped for — and far less than is needed. But it is unserious to classify the meeting as a draw. It reflects narrow thinking, which believes that diplomacy is simply a matter of who scored the most points, rather than who presented the best way forward. It’s not clear that the President has done that.

Mr. Obama has concluded that to succeed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the United States must repair its relations with the Muslim world. This is putting the cart before the horse. For too long the Muslim world has used the Arab-Israeli conflict as an excuse for acting against American interests and as a cover for its own failings.

The Israeli leader is not likely to make that easy. His coalition government — which reflects a broad consensus of Israeli society — must be respected. If the Muslim world refuses to acknowledge our democratic ally we must stand by Israel.That will not be politically popular in the Muslim world, but it is in its best interest.

Mr. Obama also needs to rally Arab states to treat Israel appropriately. We don’t agree with every Israeli policy and don’t expect them to. However, whatever mistakes Israel makes, do not render it illegitimate. The Arab world must normalize relations with Israel, and rejecting those who refuse to accept Israel’s right to exist. It’s hypocritical to hold Israel responsible for the Palestinian failure to build the institutions of governance, while denying the right to vote their own populations. Palestinians must do more to prove that they are capable of self-government.

Mr. Netanyahu is, not surprisingly, uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s decision to test Tehran with an offer of negotiations. The Israelis are right that time is clearly on Iran’s side.

The current plan is for the United States to join the Europeans and Russia in talks with Iran, right after Iran’s June presidential elections. There is the possibility of bilateral talks to follow. Mr. Obama said he would assess progress by year’s end. If diplomacy is moving forward, he should resist pressure to shut it down prematurely. We hope he is using the time now to prepare Europe and Russia for the necessity of military action if this effort fails.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet with Mr. Abbas at the White House next week and to give a major speech in Cairo on June 4. Aides are discouraging rumors that he will use that speech to lay out an American peace plan. With so many watching, he must speak honestly and bluntly with the Muslim world, and encourage it to embrace freedom and reject antisemitism as official state ideologies.

George W. Bush, the first president to outline the responsibilities the Palestinians and the Arab world had for creating a state of Palestine never followed through sufficiently. Mr. Obama must do better.

Well, no. That wasn’t the editorial. I kept some of the same words, but this is what they really wrote.

NOTE: I’ve made a few changes to correct the grammar and improve clarity from the original.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

If Mr. Netanyahu is serious about being a partner for peace, he will not get in the way of the militant group Hamas entering a Palestinian unity government with the rival Fatah faction — as long as that government is committed to preventing terrorism and accepts past agreements between Israel and the Palestinians. He will recognize that the United States has its own interests in diplomacy with Syria, Iran and the Palestinians — and allow the Obama administration the freedom to pursue them. He also will not start a preventive war with Iran.

So that’s it, in order to prove that he’s committed to peace, according to the Times, Netanyahu must trust a terrorist organization committed in word and deed to Israel’s destruction to join a governemt with Fatah, which, at least, doesn’t openly call for Israel’s destruction. Why in there world is Hamas assumed to be a “partner for peace?” Does “qassam” mean “peace” in Arabic?

And the absurdity of the rest of the paragraph is unbelievable. Netanyahu would dictate to America? Who wrote this? Chas Freeman? And while the editors of the Times object to Israel starting a “preventive war” against Iran, they apparently don’t object to Iran launching a war of any sort against Israel.

Despite the Times portrayal of Netanyahu’s first term as Prime Minister he withdrew Israel from most of Hebron while Arafat collected foreign aid, arms, organized terror and incited his population against Israel. But somehow it’s Netanyahu who has to prove his commitment to peace?

My Right Word dismisses the editorial with:

If peace is truly the goal and not some unadulterated anti-Israel agenda, well, who cares about the sanctity of a process?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Qaddafi writes:

Jews and Muslims are cousins descended from Abraham. Throughout the centuries both faced cruel persecution and often found refuge with one another. Arabs sheltered Jews and protected them after maltreatment at the hands of the Romans and their expulsion from Spain in the Middle Ages.

I bring this up not because he sugarcoats the experience of Jews in Islamic lands. I bring it up because this implicitly undermines what he writes later.

It is an injustice that Jews who were not originally inhabitants of Palestine, nor were their ancestors, can move in from abroad while Palestinians who were displaced only a relatively short time ago should not be so permitted.

“[N]ot originally inhabitants of Palestine?” The Jews of Judea were persecuted by the Romans. It’s odd that Qaddafi acknowledges Roman persecution but disconnects it from its historical context.

Surprisingly, Qaddafi gets some things right.

It is a fact that Palestinians inhabited the land and owned farms and homes there until recently, fleeing in fear of violence at the hands of Jews after 1948 — violence that did not occur, but rumors of which led to a mass exodus. It is important to note that the Jews did not forcibly expel Palestinians. They were never “un-welcomed.” Yet only the full territories of Isratine can accommodate all the refugees and bring about the justice that is key to peace.

Here he’s saying that the Palestinian flight in 1948 was largely voluntary. He won’t get any argument from me. But if the flight was voluntary, why is justice dependent on settling those who left? Did he get Efraim Karsh to write that paragraph?

Still, in the end Qaddafi’s argument is that Israel must be dissolved. So the Times considers this a debatable proposition. Worse, the Times gives a platform to a tyrant who denies the right of free speech to his own citizens. Does the Times have any standards?

Slobodan Milosevic didn’t merit an op-ed in the Times. Neither did Joerg Haider.

European tyrants and extremists apparently do not have anything to say that’s worth debating, but Arab ones do. That’s the only conclusion I can draw.

Something’s rotten on 8th Avenue.

UPDATE: Please see Elder of Ziyon’s assessment (and yes, he emphasizeed the same paragraph I did):

It is certainly ghostwritten by someone who understands the Western mindset – it pushes all the right buttons for well-meaning but uninformed people to warm to the idea of a painless way to destroy Israel. It appears, in fact, to be written with a liberal Jewish audience in mind.

via memeorandum.

I also should add that the name Palestine derives from “Palestina” the name given Judea by the Romans after they brutally suppressed revolts by the Jews in the land. Again by acknowledging the Roman persecution of the Jews, Qaddafi is implicitly acknowledging the Jewish presence in the land 700 years before the Islamic occupation of the Middle East and northern Africa.

UPDATE II: Backspin gives six convincing reasons why a one-state solution won’t work. James Taranto points out the hollowness of Qaddafi’s concern for refugees, as he (and his country) was/were responsible for creating thousands of Jewish refugees. (He also references a source explaining all the different spellings of the Libyan dictator’s name.) Fausta notes that Qaddafi’s current entourage is missing 42.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

We agree that Israel had to defend itself against Hamas’s rocket attacks. But we fear the assault on Gaza has passed the point of diminishing returns. It is time for a cease-fire with Hamas and a return to the peace negotiations that are the only real hope for guaranteeing Israel’s long-term security.

Actually the Times believed that the war against Hamas reached the point of diminishing returns, right when it started. In an editorial right after the Israeli offensive started read like this:

Israel must defend itself. And Hamas must bear responsibility for ending a six-month cease-fire this month with a barrage of rocket attacks into Israeli territory. Still we fear that Israel’s response — devastating airstrikes that represent the largest military operation in Gaza since 1967 — is unlikely to weaken the militant Palestinian group substantially or move things any closer to what all Israelis and all Palestinians need: a durable peace agreement and a two-state solution.

In other words, Israel must defend itself, but it won’t help. The editors of the Times were never truly interested in seeing Israel defending itself, the first sentence drips with insincerity. And nothing Gail Collins and company have written since then have shown them to be comfortable with the idea of Israel defending itself.

In “A way out of Gaza” the editors of the Times writes later:

As part of a cease-fire deal, Israel is right to demand a permanent halt to Hamas’s rocket fire. Israel is also right not to rely on Hamas’s promises. Hamas used the last cease-fire to restock its arsenal with weapons ferried in through tunnels dug under the Egypt-Gaza border.

The best protection would be to place monitors on the Egypt-Gaza border to stop the smuggling that is Hamas’s lifeline. The Israelis also must be ready to ease their blockade of Gaza to allow more food and normal economic activity.

Best protection? Well when Israel was trying to hold onto the Philadelphi corridor after withdrawing from Gaza, the Times opined:

Condoleezza Rice has now had her first taste of the Middle Eastern shuttle diplomacy that has drawn in almost every secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. She did a good job, staying up most of the night to extract a sorely needed agreement on moving people and goods in and out of Gaza.

Yet the very fact that Ms. Rice had to lose sleep on something so technical is a reflection of the impasse toward which the Israelis and Palestinians have been headed since Israel withdrew from Gaza.

Got that? Israel’s insistence on holding onto the Philadelphi corridor, and eventually giving into pressure, was just “technical.”

After the fact, Israel Matzav reported that, indeed, Israel fears had been confirmed that the smuggling of weapons into Gaza had gotten much worse. But this result wasn’t so obscure. Gen Doron Almog wrote a year before Israel withdrew, that there were significant dangers to Israel in withdrawing.

The United States has to shift its perspective on this issue. The smuggling and infiltration network should be regarded as part and parcel of the global terrorism network, and the battle against it as part of the global war on terror. Smuggling constitutes a strategic convergence between the Palestinian terror apparatus in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and global militant Islam. It is a reflection of the strengthening of militant Islam in post-9/11 Egypt and in the post-Saddam Middle East. The border will only become the “border of peace” envisioned twenty-five years ago, if and when the United States realizes many of its broader goals for Egypt and the Arab world–goals that include profound political and economic reforms and the triumph of secular democracy over militant Islam.

Until that happens, there is no alternative to a border regime that rests on forceful deterrence, active interdiction, and swift reprisal. And that means that there is no alternative to Israel’s continuing presence at this crucial point on the regional map.

Acceding to American pressure and relinquishing control the Philadelphi corridor was a risky action. The consequences of doing so were predictable. When Israel agreed to do so, the Times, though, dismissed it as something technical.

Now the Times claims that placing monitors on the Gaza border with Egypt is essential to preventing arms smuggling. Its position would be a lot more convincing if it showed any concern for the dangers involved in failing to secure to the border in the past. In fact, it’s pretty clear that Times had no interest in Israel pre-emptively protecting itself three years ago. The concerns cited the other day by the Times can’t be taken seriously. (The concerns are real, though it’s not at all clear that the editors of the Times appreciate their seriousness.)

One final observation about the Times’s editorial: there’s no mention of Gilad Shalit.

There is nothing sincere in the Time’s editorial about its concern for Israel’s security. No thought went into it. The only thing the editors of the Times believe is that negotiating with terrorists alone can bring peace. They still have not learned the lesson of the past 15 years.

Barry Rubin, in a preview of an article to be published shortly in the Jerusalem Post writes about what Israel needs for the war against Hamas to be successful.

–A seriously effective regime of inspection and blocking smuggling must be put into place on the Egypt-Gaza border. This means Egyptian forces helped by a force which will really act to block tunnels and stop arms from coming in, not just sit and watch the contraband go by. If more weapons get in, that will bring another war.
–Israel has the right to maintain sanctions, which means that while humanitarian and necessary goods for Gaza’s society it can keep out items that have military applications.
–Aid money to rebuild in Gaza and sustain Palestinian society must be kept out of Hamas’s hands. Not only would Hamas use such funds for military purposes, it would also steal them from being used for real relief. For example, Hamas cries there is not enough fuel but that is because it diverts gasoline from civilian purposes for its own use.
–Gilad Shalit, a hostage seized by Hamas in a cross-border raid into Israel, should be released unconditionally. It is bad enough to reward terrorists for their crimes; it is ridiculous to do so after they have been thoroughly defeated after launching an aggressive war.

David Horovitz writes of the terrible job Israel did of informing the United States of the scope of the problem.

The US Congress was already deeply concerned by the scale of the smuggling. The foreign aid bill it sent to President George W. Bush that month, unprecedentedly, conditioned $100 million of the $1.3 billion in Egyptian military aid on Cairo’s efforts to crack down on smuggling into Gaza and improve its human rights record. But the incontrovertible filmed evidence of how profoundly Egypt was failing itself, Israel and indeed Gaza by enabling Hamas to significantly bolster its military capability, evidence painstakingly compiled by the Israeli security establishment, was denied the US legislators.

On December 24, 2007, at a meeting of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the Likud’s Yuval Steinitz directly challenged Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on the issue, asking why her ministry had intervened to block distribution of the tape. “Israel could have scored a major victory with the US Congress, and persuaded them that Egypt is incapable of defending the border,” said Steinitz.

Livni was unmoved. Egypt’s “performance on the Gaza border is awful and problematic,” she acknowledged. “The weapons smuggling lowers the chances that pragmatic factions in Gaza and the West Bank will regain control.”

But some things are “done behind the scenes,” she declared. “Every move needs to be calculated. To take an extreme scenario, would you sever relations with Egypt over weapons smuggling?”

LIVNI’S COLLEAGUES in the security establishment were clearly not suggesting that Israel move anywhere near the extreme scenario of breaking ties with Egypt. They were, rather, desperate to raise awareness of the scale of the danger, and thus to ratchet up the pressure on Egypt to thwart it.

This does not bode well for the possibility that israel will be able to sustain its gains from Operation Cast Lead.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The longer the Israeli incursion, the more casualties mount (550 Palestinians and 5 Israelis have died so far); the more Hamas’s popularity grows among its supporters; the more moderate Arab states, which have correctly blamed Hamas for ending a six-month cease-fire, are alienated; and the more regional instability is fueled.

It will also make it harder for President-elect Barack Obama to pick up the pieces of peacemaking when he takes office on Jan. 20.

Yes, job #1 for Israel is to make things easier for President Obama to make peace. actually job #1 is to protect its citizens from terror attacks. And I suspect that Hamas’s popularity actually declines when its leaders are shown to be cowards. Question: when Israelis are subject to rocket attacks is “regional instability fueled”?

The Times also has another concern:

Israel must immediately allow foreign journalists access to Gaza, as the Israeli high court ruled on Dec. 31. As in every war zone, reporting by journalists — and human rights monitors as well — can discourage abuse and is essential to full public understanding of the conflict.

Where have these journalists been as Hamas has built up its arsenal over the past three years? There are practical reasons too for not allowing journalists in. But the Times’s concern for journalistic oversight seems a bit late. (h/t Backspin)

There is little chance of restraining Hamas without dealing with its patrons in Syria and Iran. Mr. Obama will also have to move quickly to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza need to see that there is another way out of their misery and that Hamas and its rockets are not the answer.

Actually maybe the editors of the Times just need to read Richard Cohen.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

In the first, the reporter describes the efforts Hamas has made to upgrade its arsenal to threaten (and attack) Israel.

For Hamas, a group largely confined to a sliver of land along the Mediterranean Sea, attacking Israeli cities with a rocket barrage has proved an effective strategy to reduce the advantage of Israel’s expensive arsenal of fighter jets and warships.

That strategy was used successfully by Hezbollah militants against Israel in Lebanon in 2006, although Hezbollah had access to missiles and rockets far more sophisticated than those being used by Hamas. Israeli officials said that Hamas was still relying on unguided rockets, rather than guided weapons like the Iranian-made C-802 cruise missile that Hezbollah used against an Israeli ship during the summer of 2006.

Notice how the first paragraph quoted first starts with describing Hamas’s limitations and then tells us that the terrorist group has come up with “an effective strategy.”

Hamas and other militant groups have lobbed thousands of rockets into Israel since 2001. The difference now, officials said, is that Hamas is using more of the imported Katyusha rockets, which have a longer range than the crude, homemade Qassam rockets it relied on in the past. Officials say the group has been emboldened to improve its arsenal since it routed its rival, Fatah, in 2007 and assumed control of Gaza.

“Lobbed,” I suppose, is an improvement over “nagged,” but “fired” would have been more accurate. And “fired thousands of rockets at civilian targets” would have more accurate still. “Lobbed” is what you do to a baseball when throwing to a young child.

An American counterterrorism official said it was rare for Hamas to try to smuggle complete weapons systems into Gaza. More frequently, he said, rocket parts were taken through the tunnels and assembled inside Gaza by Hamas munitions experts.

For years the Israelis have complained that Hamas has been smuggling in weapons and most of the media report but pay little attention to those claims. Well they’ve been pretty well confirmed now, haven’t they?

Israeli officials have said their objective in carrying out airstrikes on Gaza is to end Hamas’s ability to carry out further rocket attacks. But analysts said that goal could require Israeli ground troops to strike into Gaza, in operations that could run the risk of fighting an entrenched guerrilla war in a densely populated area.

“The problem you have to consider from an Israeli perspective is that you score most of your victories from the air in the first 48 hours. Afterward, you get into punitive damage,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

So the Times gets an expert who claims that all the Israseli attacks are now “punitive.” (The second day of the war Sunday.) This is important for the second story about the toll Israel’s attacks have taken on civilians in Gaza. But notice in this article about Hamas’s weaponry there’s not a word about the damage done to civilians in Israel. The article remains dry and technical and vaguely admiring of Hamas. No personal touches like in the other article.

In April, the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center released a report saying Hamas had been engaged in a military buildup since the group took control of Gaza in June 2007. The report cited data by Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, asserting that Hamas had smuggled at least 80 tons of explosives into Gaza since then, and that the group had obtained advanced antitank weapons.

A senior Hamas leader called the report an “exaggeration” intended to scare Israelis.

Even now that Israeli claims about Hamas’s weapons smuggling are being confirmed the Times avails itself of an opportunity to get a denial from Hamas and leaves it at that.

As I noted this first article is rather dry and technical, the second article, the one about Israeli damage to Gaza is not.

The day before, Dr. Madhoun, a general practitioner, was in an ambulance responding to an Israeli strike at the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza. Another missile hit the ambulance. The driver, Muhammad Abu Hasira, died instantly. Dr. Madhoun lingered for a day, dying of his wounds on Wednesday in the intensive care unit of Shifa Hospital, where hundreds of people have been brought since Israel began its heaviest assault on Gaza in three decades.

The dentist cried.

“He was just doing his work,” said the dentist, who would not give his name. “He’s a doctor, and I can’t understand why Israel would hit an ambulance. They can tell from the cameras it’s an ambulance.”

All we have here is the claim of the dentist. Do we know that Israel targeted the ambulance? Or was the ambulance in the wrong place when Israel attacked a legitimate target? But to set the tone of the report, we learn that Israel killed a doctor who was helping save others.

It has always been this way, over years of conflict here, that civilians are killed in the densely populated Gaza Strip when Israel stages military operations it says are essential for its security. But five days of Israeli airstrikes have surpassed past operations in scale and intensity; the long-distance bombardment of the Hamas-controlled territory has, however well aimed at those suspected of being militants, splintered families and shattered homes in one of the most densely populated places on Earth.

Israel “says” that its attacks “are essential for its security.” Left unsaid, is that the reporter doesn’t think so. And of course he ends with the idea that Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, a claim that is convenient but dubious.

Among the total dead — between 320 and 390, according to the United Nations — Palestinian medical officials say that 38 were children and 25 were women. The United Nations agency that helps Palestinian refugees said 25 percent of those killed had been civilians. Israel said it knew of 40 civilian deaths but that it was still checking.

Now the math here is pretty sketchy. If the death toll so far is the lower number, 320, then 63 dead is less than 25 percent of, but the reporter doesn’t tell us that the percentage is wrong or even leave it out. And of course if the possible number of dead range from 320 to 390 it says that the count isn’t very accurate. Elder of Ziyon noted on Tuesday a somewhat lower number of women and children killed. And of course that doesn’t take into account that a 17 year old with a weapon might still be classified as a child. (It’s an observation I’ve seen elsewhere, but don’t remember the source. UPDATE: The source is here. I’m embarrassed!)

On the issue of civilian casualties, Israeli officials maintain that they do not take aim at civilians and do everything possible — like using precision-guidance systems, up-to-the minute intelligence, leaflets and phone calls to targeted areas — to avoid hitting them.

They say killing and wounding civilians only undermines their primary mission: to stop Hamas from firing rockets into civilian areas of Israel.

“I haven’t seen too many tears shed in Paris, London or Berlin over the fact that we have hit Hamas targets,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert. “So we have many reasons, both moral and political, for doing the utmost to make sure that our strikes are as surgical as possible.”

Further complicating matters is that fact that Gaza is the size of Detroit, with one and a half times as many people. The military and government facilities of Hamas are intertwined with buildings where Gaza’s civilian population lives and works. Israelis say Hamas fires rockets at Israel from civilian neighborhoods.

Left out of this discussion is any mention that the Geneva conventions explicitly declare that placing military resources in civilian areas does not render them immune from attack. And while it’s true that the Geneva conventions are contradictory on this point, doesn’t the Hamas tactic of locating its military facilities in civilian neighborhoods warrant a judgment of some sort?

Finally, of course, Israel doesn’t just “say” that Hamas fires from civilian neighborhoods, that’s a fact that’s been confirmed. Again the reporter weasels out of reporting by reducing it to an Israeli claim.

In the debate over civilian casualties, there is no clear understanding of what constitutes a military target. Palestinians argue that because Hamas is also the government in Gaza, many of the police officers who have been killed were civil servants, not hard-core militants. Israel disagrees, asserting also that a university chemistry laboratory, which it claims was used for making rockets, was a fair target in an attack this week, even if it could not show conclusively that those inside the laboratory at the time where engaged in making weapons.

This debate is between a terrorist organization and a lawful government and the Times, of course, introduces nuance when there is none. Why should Israel have to show that a laboratory was being used for weapons production at the time it was it?

The report contains two more stories of civilans who were killed or injured in Israeli attacks, so you know which side of the debate the reporter and paper are on. Recall too, that the report about Hamas’s upgrading its weaponry didn’t focus on any Israeli who was hurt or killed by Hamas’s attacks.

Taken together these two reports perfectly illustrate the bias that is rife in so much of the reporting from Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Following up on his paper’s poorly argued editorial criticizing Israel yesterday, Jackson Diehl weighed in with Olmert’s Final Failure:

Israel’s new battle with Hamas in Gaza means that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be remembered for fighting two bloody and wasteful mini-wars in less than three years in power. The first one, in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, punished but failed to defeat or even permanently injure Hezbollah, which is politically and militarily stronger today than it was before Olmert took office. This one will probably have about the same effect on Hamas, which almost certainly will still control Gaza, and retain the capacity to strike Israel, when Olmert leaves office in a few months.

It’s astonishing that anyone, presumably as informed as Diehl – who was once the Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief – could write something so unserious. (Richard Boudreaux of the LA Times highlights a number of differences between Israel’s justified attack against Gaza with its justified attack against Hezbollah. via memeorandum)

Israel struck at Gaza not for some frivolous reason, but because the situation was intolerable. Wtih roughly 250,000 of its citizens in rocket range from Gaza and Hamas having used a ceasefire to improve its ability to strike at those citizens, Israel had to act. The point of the attack isn’t to force another ceasefire – that would be frivolous as the failure in Lebanon turned otu to be – but to significantly degrade Hamas’s abilities. I expect that part of what Israel will need to do before it stops is to kill the likes of Haniyeh, Zahar, and Abu Tir.

The end of the op-ed is disturbing too. In the next to last paragraph, Diehl writes:

Worst of all, Abbas followed in a long tradition of previous Palestinian leaders by reacting to a far-reaching Israeli offer with an uncourageous demurral. Olmert has never publicly disclosed the terms he discussed with Abbas, but sources say he went well beyond what Israel agreed to at the Camp David talks of 2000, previously the closest approach to a deal. I’m told Olmert offered to support the groundbreaking concession of allowing thousands of Palestinian refugees to “return” to Israel over a period of years; he also agreed to divide Jerusalem between Israel and Palestine. Abbas, like Yasser Arafat at Camp David, refused to sign on to a compromise that the world would have hailed.

This is Olmert’s failure. How could he go further than Camp David? The Palestinians would be rewarded for their refusal to accept the terms of Camp David if Abbas had had the guts to accept Olmert’s offer. But Diehl whitewashes what went on. If this report is correct, Abbas “refused” to make peace. That’s hardly Olmert’s fault. It doesn’t occur to Diehl that even the “moderate” Palestinians might not be committed to a peaceful resolution of their conflict with Israel. Finally Diehl concludes:

So Olmert, like Ehud Barak eight years ago, will end his term as prime minister by bombing rather than liberating Palestinians. He will be remembered for his wars — but it may be many years before Israel again has a leader as willing to make peace.

If the current fighting leads to an actual victory over Hamas then Olmert will get a small measure of credit in an otherwise dismal record. But Diehl ought not to mourn the lack of an Israeli leader willing to make peace, when he has noted that it was Abbas who refused Olmert’s stupidly generous terms. The lack of peace doesn’t result from the lack of (misplaced) Israeli efforts.

It’s a measure of how awful and ill-informed Diehl’s op-ed was that it was endorsed by anti-Israel and antisemitic pundit, Helena Coban.

But the Post isn’t done. Today it features an op-ed by Palestinian “moderate” Daoud Kuttab, Has Israel revived Hamas?, Kuttab starts with:

In its efforts to stop amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities, Israel appears to have given new life to the fledging Islamic movement in Palestine.

“Nagging?” What an immoral declaration. OK, this fellow was “nagged” to death. The Post ought to stick to allowing terrorists op-eds instead of phony “moderates.” Kuttab’s all too predictable argument is that by attacking Hamas Israeli has succeeded in making Hamas more popular. Maybe he spoke too soon. The question is whether Israel will fight to win or not. If Israel fights to win, then Kuttab would do well to remember:

Take, for example, Israel’s targeted assassination of Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, and Ismail Abu Shanab in 2004. With its top leadership eliminated in a span of only a few months, Hamas was in utter disarray. Specifically, after Yassin’s death, Hamas never found a religious leader to fill the void. His death made Hamas increasingly vulnerable to the widely held perception that it was simply a group of violent terrorists with no religious mandate.

Israel can defeat Hamas if it kills the right people and sufficiently degrades Hamas’s offensive capabilities. Kuttab isn’t serious, but he served the needs of the Post’s editorial staff by adding one more voice of objection to Israel defending its citizens.

The editors of the Post, unwilling to leave bad enough alone, have added an unsigned editorial to their campaign against Israel, Divided on Gaza.

If the Lebanon war is any indication, the bloodshed in Gaza — which is being endlessly looped on Arab satellite channels across the region — will strengthen the Iranian camp at the expense of the secular Sunni forces. Thousands of people joined pro-Hamas rallies in Beirut, Cairo and Amman, Jordan, yesterday. Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader whose popularity soared after he survived his battle with Israel, delivered a fiery speech in which he demanded that Egypt open its border with Gaza “and help Gazans in their struggle.” The weak and unpopular government of President Hosni Mubarak allowed some aid deliveries yesterday and will find it hard to resist further concessions if the fighting continues.

Of course allowing the Iranian camp to declare victory strengthens it. As I argued yesterday, the Post should be using its reportorial abilities to expose the Iranian threat and leave the fighting to Israel. (The Post can’t even bring itself to mention that Israel, too, is allowing emergency deliveries into Gaza and treating the wounded in Israeli hospitals.) If Israel defeats Hamas and kills some of its leaders, those street demonstrations will prove nothing.

Israel was offering upbeat assessments of its air offensive yesterday even while warning that it could continue for some time and possibly expand to ground operations. Yet, as in Lebanon, no decisive military victory is likely: Israel will not be able to topple Hamas unless it fully reoccupies Gaza, and it will probably not be able even to stop the rocket attacks on its cities without some kind of political settlement. For that, Israel will need the mediation of Egypt, Saudi Arabia or other Sunni states. Israel must be careful not to allow its military campaign to undermine its own diplomatic end game — or to hand another political victory to an Iranian regime that remains a far greater threat to Israel than Hamas is.

Maybe no decisive military victory is possible. But my guess is that Israel has some specific goals in mind and that when it achieves them – and only then – will it stop. Even it achieves its goals would the Post grant Israel the victory? My guess, based on its current offensive, is that it won’t. Maybe the Post’s editors ought to stop shedding so many crocodile tears. Based on the editorial’s they’ve run and the op-ed’s they’ve commissioned, it’s clear that they object to Israel defending itself.

The New York Times has finally weighed in too with War over Gaza. Surprisingly, it’s marginally less hostile to Israel than the Washington Post has been. Still it suffers from its own bit of silliness:

We hope he does not mean a ground war. That, or any prolonged military action, would be disastrous for Israel and lead to wider regional instability. Mr. Barak and Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, both candidates to succeed Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in elections set for February, must not be drawn any further into a competition with the front-runner, Benjamin Netanyahu, over who is the biggest hawk.

If a ground war defeats Hamas, it won’t lead to greater regional instability. Hamas and other Iranian proxies are sources of instability. Defeating them is a good thing. And Barak, Livni and Olmert are hardly hawks.They are doing what they see as being necessary to defend their citizens. The imputation of cynicism is disappointing if not unexpected.

(The NYT actually had a somewhat sympathetic op-ed towards Israel by Benny Morris.)

What are the antidotes to this editorial poison?

Read Sderot under Siege by David Keyes. David Bernstein’s takedown Glenn Greenwald is excellent. Jack’s got a second roundup and is working on a third. Israelly Cool and the Muqata are still liveblogging. And while not all posts are about Israel, I’ve put together a link to the best pro-Israel blogs through Google Reader here.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There is palpable satisfaction at the moment in the Israeli government and the military because the operation so far is seen as a success. Few have focused on the fact that at this stage in the 2006 Lebanon war, there was the same satisfaction — before things turned disastrous.

True, it could backfire, but let’s go over a couple of things. For one, the current war against Hamas is being run by an actual general not a self-important political appointee. And Israel aware of the role the media plays in handing victories to terror organizations is being more careful in cultivating the media this time. Taken together with apparently careful planning, things are less likely to go wrong this time. Why it almost seems if Bronner is rooting for Israel to fail.

If he were, he wouldn’t be alone.

When you read leftists writing about Israel’s attacks against Hamas there is really only one conclusion you can reach: They support Hamas. Plain and simple.

In a withering attack on J-Street, Mere Rhetoric observes:

So I’m wondering: if you’re objectively more anti-Israel than countries that officially want to wipe out Israel – to the extent that you go out of your way to condemn the Israeli government and the Israeli electorate when they won’t – does that mean that you can’t call yourself a “pro-Israel organization”?

But it’s not just J-Street. Here’s Ezra Klein (via memeoarandum).

There is nothing proportionate in this response. No way to fit it into a larger strategy that leads towards eventual peace. No way to fool ourselves into believing that it will reduce bloodshed and stop terrorist attacks. It is simple vengeance. There’s a saying in the Jewish community: “Israel, right or wrong.” But sometimes Israel is simply wrong.

This isn’t about Israel being wrong, it’s about whether Israel has the right accorded every other nation in the world to defend its citizens. If you don’t believe Israel has that right, you are not just wrong: you support Hamas. That’s it Mr. Klein. Don’t pretend that you mourn for Jews being killed by terrorists. You are using your perch to defend those terrorists. You are wrong and you are anti-Israel. You also hold a view that is morally indefensible.

Q and O follows Klein’s logic to its absurd, immoral conclusion.

Of course the fact that Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel and certainly weren’t lobbing those missiles into Israel as an act of harassment, but as an earnest attempt to kill Israelis, isn’t factored into the condemnation. Somehow, because Hamas has lousy killing machines, Israel must be constrained in their destruction of them and their capability until, I guess, they show marked improvement in killing Israelis. Then, perhaps, Klein and other would find Israel’s reaction “proportional”.

Similarly The Other McCain rips apart Glenn Greenwald and his ilk:

Are there no innocent Israelis, no “numerous children” imperiled by the haphazard Hamas rocket and mortar attacks of recent days? Did not Israel warn Hamas that a continuation of the attacks would not be tolerated? It seems to me that one must either justify the Hamas attacks or else admit Israel’s right to act in self-defense. Greenwald and other critics might argue that Israel had a right to act, but has overreacted. However, in doing so they seek to make themselves arbiters of Israeli defense policy.

Noah Pollak administers the same treatment to Daniel Levy.

Let’s be clear, if you feel that Israel is wrong to defend its citizens, you support Hamas. And at least as Mere Rhetoric suggests, have the common courtesy not to call yourself pro-Israel if you do.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

I’d like to add a few observations.

1) More and more Palestinian independence is defined by their dependence on others.

2) At the end of the editorial, the editors write:

A way must be found to help turn Hamas into a legitimate and acceptable negotiating partner.

And that worked out so well, when the organization in question was Fatah.

3) We’ve been here before. A search yielded this editorial from when the Oslo Accords were anticipated.

Mr. Arafat, the P.L.O. chairman, risks his prestige and his life by standing up to radicals who hold out for the same maximalist demands he himself used to proclaim.

Then, 3 years later, after Binyamin Netanyahu was elected PM of Israel, in large part due to Arafat’s failure to move beyond the rhetoric of his past, the Times had this to say:

By meeting with Mr. Arafat, Mr. Netanyahu showed that he understands that the Likud Party’s fierce animosity toward the Palestinian leader should give way to a more moderate governing posture.

While it’s true that Netanyahu did moderate his “governing posture,” his “animosity” wasn’t the result of arbitrary prejudice as the Times suggested, but it was a reaction to his (correct) observation that Arafat did nothing but take Israeli concessions and then aid his allies fight in the commission of terror against Israel.

The same approach is still in place. Everyone in the world is responsible for creating a Palestinian state other than the Palestinians and that an essential element of that help is to ignore ongoing Palestinian obligations towards Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.