But apparently determined to control his image even from his Paris prison cell, he has brought suit against a French production company shooting a documentary film on his life and legend, demanding a say on the final cut.
Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, the lawyer representing RamÃrez, said that RamÃrez is demanding that the Film in Stock production company hand over a master copy of the documentary as soon as it is finished and grant him three months to review the content and impose changes. Anything else, she said in an interview Monday, would violate his intellectual property rights to his name and “biographical image.”
Coutant-Peyre, who is RamÃrez’s wife as well as his attorney, said the documentary, being shot for France’s Canal Plus television network, would likely be a propaganda film unless she and her husband were granted a right to oversee its accuracy. She charged that statements by the producers indicate they plan to portray RamÃrez as the instigator of terrorist attacks for which he has not been convicted, violating his right to presumption of innocence.
Despite the headline Cody actually reports this straight, not romanticizing Carlos in any way.
If I remember the first Bourne novel, correctly, Ludlum had Carlos in an incestuous relationship with his sister. Presumably that’s worse than being accused of terrorist activities that he was never convicted of. I wonder why that didn’t bother him. Is it because he wasn’t yet married to his lawyer?
Fausta wonders if this will have any implications for terrorists being held in America.
Because it’s such an easy language to learn: Arab members of the World Trade Organization want Arabic to be the fourth official language of the WTO. Because three aren’t enough official languages, I suppose. And Arabic is so easy, it’s just like English, Spanish and French. Except that it’s not. Say, what are the GDPs of all the Arabic-speaking nations put together? Think they’d equal Israel’s output if you took away oil? (Yeah, I know, low blow.)
Ding, dong the bill is dead: Which old bill? The healthcare bill. Ding dong, the healthcare bill is dead. Hi ho the merry-o, sing it high, sing it low, this is rich, the healthcare bill is dead!
I know, it’s a shock—no timely Palestinian elections: Of course they didn’t hold new parliamentary elections. Hamas would lose Gaza, at least in name, and the PA wouldn’t do so well in the West Bank. But there is no such thing as an Arab democracy anywhere in the world, so why would anyone be surprised?
Is that the smell of old-fashioned Polish Jew-hatred? Why yes, yes it is. Polish Catholic, no less, and from a bishop, no less. It’s nothing that hasn’t been said before.
Accusing Jews of “intolerable arrogance,” he said they “enjoy good press because they are supported by powerful financial means, enormous power and the unconditional backing of the United States.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time for the Yourish.com mantra: Anti-Semites of the world, just die already. Retired Polish bishops included.
I was looking through a chart of gender ratios. Worldwide, there are about 102 men for every 100 women, but in the Gulf States, that ratio is much higher. Bahrain – 135; Qatar – 307 ; United Arab Emirates – 205 ; Saudi Arabia – 121 ; Oman – 129; Kuwait – 147. Even China with its notorious one child family that leads to the killings of baby girls has only 108 men for every 100 women.
I have to believe that the ratios from the Gulf States are not due to natural variances. It’s funny that for all the talk about women’s rights in the Gulf, it’s usually about being restricted from going out alone or not being allowed to drive. No one protests that large numbers of (baby) girls in these countries are being deprived of their right to life.
Their study is titled: “Association between exposure to political violence and intimate-partner violence in the occupied Palestinian territory: a cross-sectional study.” And yes, they have found that Palestinian husbands are more violent towards Palestinian wives as a function of the Israeli “occupation”– and that the violence increases significantly when the husbands are “directly” as opposed to “indirectly” exposed to political violence.
The gender ratios in Syria, Egypt, “Occupied Palestinian Territories” and even Iran are all reasonable.
I guess when you don’t have a real grievance it’s always easier to make one up and blame the Jews.
UPDATE: As commenter Eric J observed and as Elder of Ziyon pointed out in an e-mail, male guest workers probably account for the excessive number of men found in the oil rich Gulf States.
From each according to his ability, to each his paycheck: The percentage of collectivist kibbutzim left in Israel is now only 28%. Nearly three-quarters of them have turned capitalist. And that number will rise by the end of the year. Oh, the pain, the pain. They even charge for food now! Welcome to the modern world, kibbutzniks.
Arabs criticize Arab [non-]response on Haiti:By the numbers, even.
If you compare the numbers, there are more than 130 dead in the Haiti earthquake for every Palestinian who died in the Gaza war. And there are more than 200 homes that the earthquake destroyed for every for every home that the Israelis destroyed in Gaza.
Something to remember next time you hear about the “humanitarian disaster” in Gaza. I wonder how often the new UNRWA head will use that phrase.
Yes, Palestinians are still trying to kill Israelis: Funny how it never gets mentioned in the wire services that Palestinians are trying, on a daily basis, to kill Israelis. But they sure do go nuts every time Bibi says he’ll never turn Ma’ale Adumim over to the Palestinians.
Watch them blame the Jews: More than 100 Russian Orthodox Christians were hospitalized after drinking holy water taken from wells in and around the church. So, if Russian water is undrinkable (as the article says), how stupid were these people?
Trash picks up the trash: A neo-Nazi group adopted a highway in Colorado. Yeah, those adopt-a-highway campaigns are like the best. ever. marketing tools. I can remember the names of all 753 groups and companies I’ve seen on those signs. Suckers!
Israel’s recent aid to the earthquake ravaged country of Haiti has once again made people focus onIsrael’s humanitarian missions. But Israel’s aid to Haiti isn’t an isolated incident it is part of ongoing series of humanitarian missions carried out by the Jewish State.
They honed their skills after earthquakes in Mexico and Armenia, bombs in Argentina and Scud missile attacks at home in Israel. Now world experts at rescuing the living from rubble and recovering the dead, Israeli soldiers are running a round-the-clock effort to dig Kenyans out of the ruins left by a terrorist bomb.
“You are heroes,” a Red Cross volunteer shouted at the Israelis on Sunday.
“We are not heroes. We are only working,” Maj. Ofer Pomeranz answered with a modest shrug.
“Yes, but you know what you are doing,” she said.
Israeli know-how is saving lives–at least three since the team arrived Saturday afternoon. In turn, the operation in Kenya is boosting Israel’s prestige and earning goodwill toward the Jewish state at a time when much of the world is blaming it for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
1. The MASHAV relief mission which provided medical assistance to the victims of Hurricane “Mitch” operated in Honduras and Nicaragua between November 10 and 26, 1998.
2. The relief mission, composed of 10 people (9 doctors and a nurse), was split up into sub-groups. Use was made of medical equipment flown in from Israel, in addition to local equipment.
3. A large quantity of medical equipment was flown in to Guatemala, San Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. This included first aid materials, antibiotics, transfusions, pain killers and other materials. In addition, the medical teams made use of extra equipment which they brought with them in their personal baggage.
4. At the same time, an Israeli expert provided epidemiological advice (infectious diseases) to the Dominican Republic.
August 1999 – Israel sends 50 tons of supplies and sends rescue teams to Turkey after an earthquake. Their efforts included this miracle.
(Jerusalem Post, August 22) – Defying all odds, the Israeli rescue team in Cinarcik early yesterday rescued nine-year-old Shiran Franco, who had been buried under seven floors of rubble for over 98 hours. Shiran’s twin brother Arieh, who was asleep in the same room as she was when the earthquake hit Turkey Tuesday morning, was found dead.
Eight babies have been born here since the quake. One boy was named Israel, and one girl is called Ziona. Their names are symbols of how firmly the earthquake has sealed the alliance between Israel and Turkey.
”God bless the Israelis,” said one new mother, Serap Balcioglu, whose child was born blue and seemingly lifeless but was revived by an emergency team at the hospital. ”They’re taking beautiful care of me. What would we do without them?”
January 2001 – Israel sends aid to El Salvador after a quake strikes that country.
In January 2001, the Israeli Foreign Ministry dispatched a medical team and a shipment of medicines and medical supplies to assist the victims of the earthquake in El Salvador. Leading the delegation were the Director of the Foreign Ministry’s Latin America Division, Mr. Alex Ben-Zvi, and the Director of the Schneider Hospital Trauma Center, Dr. Yehezkel Waisman.
Parents of a premature baby born in the Israeli field hospital established by the Israel Defense Forces in the wake of last week’s earthquake in India named their child Yisraela after the State of Israel, MA’ARIV reported. Yisraela’s condition is improving daily.
January 2005 – Israel sends experts to help find survivors and identify victims of the tsunami.
At the same time, Southeast Asian governments have turned to Israel to request aid in areas in which Israel has acquired a reputation for excellence.
Jerusalem was asked – and agreed – to send trauma experts to help survivors of Sri Lanka cope with the tragedy, while Thailand’s government turned to Israel’s forensic experts for help in identification of thousands of victims.
Israel is currently providing aid to some countries with which it does not have diplomatic relations, such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia.
This week, an El Al plane carrying 60 tons of aid landed in Indonesia – a country which has the largest Moslem population in the world, and no ties with Israel.
There’s some more (if outdated) generalinformation about Israel’s relief efforts.
Perhaps Israel’s greatest rescue was that of some 36,000 Ethiopian Jews in the early to mid 1980’s and integrated them into society.
In addition to these governmental efforts, private Israeli concerns are very involved in helping others internationally. For example the late Dr. Amram Cohen founded Save a Child’s Heart. Of the 2200 children treated by this incredible program, 1000 have been Palestinians.
Currently children from all over the world are being treated in Israel through this program.
I am certain that when it comes to emergencies, United States contributes more; but Israel is almost always there regardless of the race or religion. Almost? Well though Israel would help prevent enemies from dying, the Iranian regime declared “We’ d rather die first.” rather than accept aid from Israel (via Mideast Web).
So why, despite the loss of 40,000 lives in the Gilan earthquake of 1990, had nothing been done? The same question was being asked back in the queue outside the clinic. Fariba Hemati told the Guardian what she thought of official efforts, “Our government is only preoccupied with slogans: ‘Death to America’, ‘Death to Israel’, ‘Death to this and that’. We have had three major earthquakes in the past three decades. Thousands of people have died but nothing has been done. Why?”
As she was queueing Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, spokesman for Iran’s interior ministry, was denying that a team from Israel was coming to help. “The Islamic Republic of Iran,” he told the press, “accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organisations, with the exception of the Zionist regime.” The Israelis, of course, have some reputation for rescue work, but it was ideology rather than humanity that was at stake here
.
Sri Lanka, was little better, refusing Israeli workers but allowing Israeli material aid.
Israel’s profile is not of on oppressor, but that of a rescuer. Sure Israel fights; but it does so in self defense. The hypocrisy inherent in the spectacle of Israel standing accused of crimes against humanity by the very same nations who protect Omar Bashir is beyond belief. The hypocrisy is magnified by the fact that Israel’s expertise in search and rescue missions is a response to the terror war it has been fighting since its founding as a modern state in 1948. The persecution of Israel reveals its enemies’ immorality.
While the harshest critics of Israel’s morality, the countries that have done their best to smear Israel, did not lift a finger to help Haiti. Israel, a land smaller than New Hampshire, sent hundreds of emergency workers, one of the largest contingents. When other countries started packing, Israeli said they will stay there at least another month.
Israel’s demonizers will concoct sinister reasons for Israel’s good deeds. You can count on that. Israel’s response to Haiti’s plight shows the country’s true face — a face its enemies don’t want you to see.
It’s the Chicago Way: Obama’s now trying to bribe the middle class. Hell, it worked to get him 60 votes for the Obamacare crap sandwich, why wouldn’t he think it will work on us? (P.S. to Obama: Who’s going to pay for all these tax breaks to the middle class? Oh, yeah—the middle class!).
No coup for you: A Belgian minister was refused entry to Gaza. Deputy FM Danny Ayalon is refusing to allow Hamas any propaganda coups. The Belgian minister is, of course, upset. Talk to the hand, Charles.
Would you buy a used camel from this man? Osama bin Laden says the Christmas bomber was his guy. Um, well, first, we kinda knew he was from al Qaeda after he, like, told us he was from al Qaeda. Secondly, dude, shouldn’t you be claiming successful attacks? Because this just makes you look pathetic. And last, well, we kinda think you’re lying, because last year you tried to claim the Fourth of July fireworks across America until you found out that nobody gets blown up in them.
The real far right: Okay, I may not like Rahm Emanuel so much anymore, but these guys are over the top. They’re calling him a Hellenist? Because, hello, we’re still fighting the Greeks or something? Back away slowly if any of these people approach you. They’re a little scary. (Frankly, I don’t think Rahm is whispering anti-Israel nothings into Obama’s ear. I think Obama was anti-Israel before he met Rahm.)
It was bright and sunny yesterday, although cold, and so I went to Sarah and Larry’s house to practice lacrosse with Nate because it was supposed to rain today. And you know, at my age, my muscles don’t recover as quickly as, say, an eleven-year-old, extremely active boy. So I looked forward to doing pretty much nothing today.
And then I got a phone call from Nate at 12:30. “Aunt Meryl, would you like to come over and practice lacrosse with me because it’s not raining?”
I hadn’t even showered. (I told you, a do-nothing day. I was so looking forward to thinking of ways to blow off going to the gym.)
An hour or so later, I was in the back yard, shooting the ball at the goal while Nate (the would-be goalie) tried to block them.
Well, the good news is that lacrosse is way better exercise for me than 30 minutes on the stationary bike. My back likes it better, too. It’s amazing to me how much better I feel after these sessions with Nate. And the rain held off until the football game, which was the signal to end practice and my signal to head home to get back to doing nothing, albeit a little better-exercised, more tired, and slightly more sore than before.
It’s so hard to say no to a child. Darn it.
Posted inLacrosse, Life|TaggedLacrosse|Comments Off on Sunday night sore muscle thread
Israel, which had refused to cooperate with the investigation, at first dismissed the report as unworthy of attention. But the government quickly found that the world took it quite seriously and found itself accused of premeditated war crimes. It now considers fighting that charge a priority.
“We face three major strategic challenges,†Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently. “The Iranian nuclear program, rockets aimed at our civilians and Goldstone.â€
The rebuttal will be given to United Nations officials in the coming weeks and its contents will remain under wraps until then.
Overall the report isn’t bad. A couple of paragraphs, I think are especially good.
Maj. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit, the Israeli military advocate general, said in an interview that those assertions went beyond anything of which others had accused Israel.
“I have read every report, from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Arab League,†he said at his desk in the military’s Tel Aviv headquarters. “We ourselves set up investigations into 140 complaints. It is when you read these other reports and complaints that you realize how truly vicious the Goldstone report is. He made it look like we set out to go after the economic infrastructure and civilians, that it was intentional. It’s a vicious lie.â€
Another senior military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity following regular military practice, said that neither the military command structure nor the government wanted to invade Gaza in December 2008, but felt that the continual rocket attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians forced their hand. The war, he said, followed the least aggressive of three contemplated routes — conquer Gaza and occupy it again as was done in the West Bank in 2002, retake Hamas’s weapons supply routes and hold them to dry out the organization’s arsenal, or attack the Hamas military and state infrastructure and leave. It was the third that occurred.
However, there are a few omissions that are worth mentioning. Bronner reports:
The report stated that “the destruction of food supply installations, water sanitation systems, concrete factories and residential houses was the result of a deliberate and systematic policy by the Israeli armed forces.†It added that Israel waged “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity both to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability.â€
However this goes beyond anything Goldstone could possibly know. While he quotes Gen. Mandelblit in response, it behooved Bronner to point out that Goldstone didn’t prove his allegation that Israel’s attack was “deliberately disproportionate” something that’s unknowable; he simply made the reckless charge.
Goldstone himself acknowledged that his conclusions would not stand up in a court of law. So while Bronner gets bogged down in the minutiae of whether Israel’s response accords with the requirements of the Goldstone report, he doesn’t observe the implication: Goldstone presumed Israel guilty.
At the end of the article Bronner observes that even Israeli critics of the IDF think that Goldstone was unfair.
While many here think that the Goldstone report failed to expose of the practices of Hamas, they are more concerned about their own army’s conduct. Still, virtually no one in Israel, including the leaders of Breaking the Silence and the human rights group B’Tselem, thinks that the Goldstone accusation of an assault on civilians is correct.
“I do not accept the Goldstone conclusion of a systematic attack on civilian infrastructure,†said Yael Stein, research director of B’Tselem. “It is not convincing. But every incident and every policy has to be checked by an independent body because the military cannot check itself. They need to explain why so many people were killed.â€
It’s a shame that Bronner didn’t also mention that some people have been investigating that very thing, though not in the way the B’Tselem spokeswoman means.
Even though I haven’t been spending too much time lately on looking for more dead Gaza “civilians” who were actually terrorists, other people (notably PTWatch) has been diligently digging through Arabic websites and we keep adding to the list.
As of right now, we have identified 358 terrorists who were categorized as “civilians” by the PCHR. Add together the rest of the police and the “militants” that PCHR counted, and we have 667 dead Gazans who were legitimate targets, quickly closing in on half of the dead not being civilians.
So many were killed because they were legitimately targeted combatants or civilians victimized by Hamas operating nearby. The work Elder of Ziyon did was based on informaitonn that was publicly available that any reporter or human rights investigator had access to; had they been so inclined.
Finally, while only tangentially related the Washington Post is reporting (via memeorandum) that Hezbollah’s rearming since 2006 is quite extensive.
The United Nations is confident that the dense presence of its troops in the comparatively small area is helping lower the risk of conflict and minimizing Hezbollah’s ability to move weapons across southern Lebanon, but analysts in Lebanon and Israel say the U.N. mission is almost beside the point.
In other words, if Israel is again forced to go to war against Hezbollah, the UN will have been responsible for allowing an intolerable threat to grow on Israel’s northern border.
If the UN which passed resolution 1701 is “besides the point” when it comes to enforcing that resolution to protect Israel, why should any branch of the UN be trusted to judge Israel’s compliance with international law? Furthermore, Israel’s response to Goldstone as opposed to Hezbollah’s disregard of 1701 points to another problem with the UN and international law in its current state: international law applies to those countries who take it seriously, but it can be disregarded by those who don’t with no real consequence.
The Associated Press is proud of its reputation. When you go to the AP website, this sentence starts the second paragraph in the “About us” page:
AP’s mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.
And yet, in today’s news analysis about the Democrats bad week, Charles Babington wrote, and his editor let stand, this insult to the Tea Party movement that has swept America:
Also, it’s not clear that Republicans can tame and harness the volatile “tea bagger” activists. The fiercely independent conservatives helped Brown win in Massachusetts, but they triggered a damaging right-wing split in a special House race in New York last year.
The fact that they put the epithet in quotes indicates that they know full well that “teabagger” is a vulgar term. I never knew it existed before the so-called objective media types (we mean you, Anderson Cooper) were calling Tea Party activists “teabaggers.” It is a deliberate insult. It is not the way an objective news organization should describe the millions of Americans from all walks of life who attended rallies and town halls to protest the expansion of government by this administration and congress.
The AP owes the Tea Party movement a retraction and an apology. And I really think that the people who don’t like the Tea Partiers (see, that wasn’t too hard to call them, was it?) should stop mainstreaming “teabagger.” It’s childish and reflects more poorly on those that use the word rather than on those they are insulting.
Act like an objective news organization, AP. Don’t mainstream “teabagger.”
Update: Looks like the editors replaced “tea bagger” with “tea party.” No correction out there that I can see, just an updated story across the wires.
While the article points to a few op-eds expressing pride at Israel’s efforts (and dismay at the worldn’t cynical criticisms of Israel), Bronner inexplcably quotes from Larry Derfner and Akiva Eldar to demonstrate the “mixed feelings” felt by Israelis. I understand that moral grey areas are all the rage in newspaper reporting, but Derfner and Eldar are hardly representative of the Israeli population. To present them to “balance” the pride Israeli feel towards their country’s achievement is dishonest.
It’s the Haiti side of Israel that makes the Gaza side so inexpressibly tragic. And more and more, the Haiti part of the national character has been dwarfed by the Gaza part.
This is sophistry. It is the Haiti, ( and Turkey, and India etc.) side of Israel that demonstrates Israel’s good faith as a nation. Israel’s attacks against Gaza are not arbitrary exercises in cruelty as Derfner suggests. Rather they are actions taken in self defense.
Eldar’s despicable column, as reported by Elder of Ziyon, has been reproduced in many anti-Israel websites, including that of Hamas.
In other words, in order to show the ambivalence of Israeli society, Bronner used two extreme leftists to show doubts among Israelis. But neither Eldar nor Derfner is reprsentative of Israeli society. To present them in the way Bronner did was extremely misleading. In his attempt to demonstrate ambivalence in Israel, Bronner effectively showed his own ambivalence about Israel’s right to defend itself.
I’m not even going to bother pointing out the anti-Israel spin. Really. The whole article blames the failure of the peace process entirely on Israel. It’s not worth parsing.
Compare and contrast, Obama version: Let’s take a look at why Obama thinks the peace process is failing, and who is to blame. Although he did admit that he set the bar far too high. Gee. Wonder if it might have had something to do with the Cairo speech, which enabled the current Palestinian intransigence?
… from Abbas’ perspective, he’s got Hamas looking over his shoulder and, I think, an environment generally within the Arab world that feels impatient with any process. … although the Israelis, I think, after a lot of time showed a willingness to make some modifications in their policies, they still found it very hard to move with any bold gestures.
As has been said: From the Arabs, words. From the Jews, deeds. That’s what’s wrong with this process.
The Obama administration backs off Israel, blames Bush: Hillary Clinton followed up the statement above by pointing out that peace is, ultimately, in the hands of the Palestinians and Israelis. And may we congratulate the Obama administration for its (belated) keen grasp of the obvious. However, if America and the EU exerted pressure on the Arabs for a change—well, no. I’m sorry. What was I thinking? Geez. I think I just had a senior moment in public.
The other Islamic terrorist attack on U.S. soil in 2009: The man who murdered a soldier outside a recruiting station in Little Rock last year says he’s a member of Al Qaeda. Of course the AP downplays it and pulls the “lone nutjob” excuse. But how many soldiers have to die in jihadi attacks on American soil before we realize we have a problem?
Ew, Jew Cooties, Part 2:Toldja so. The Iranian is denying touching an Israeli. It’s just a Zionist lie, you see. He never shook hands with a filthy Jew Zionist.Hey, it’s more than just his job at stake. In Mad Mahmoud’s Iran, his life is at stake.
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.
Prof Richard Landes has a two part article critiquing the Goldstone report at the MERIA Journal. In part one Landes mostly criticizes Goldstone’s assumptions an methodology.
As might be expected from this attitude toward the testimony they heard, the report ruled consistently against the Israeli army. While this may not be surprising in the context of its political agenda, it is surprising from the point of view of its mission: fact-finding. As Alan Dershowitz pointed out, had the report restricted itself to collecting testimony and asking questions for further investigation, it could have made a valuable contribution.[59] Indeed, Goldstone admitted on a number of occasions that the evidence they compiled would not stand up in court, that the mission was not “judicial, not even quasi judicial.”[60]
Still, under the category “legal findings” (which follow on from the “factual findings” in which testimony deemed credible established the “facts”), the report repeatedly resorts to judgments not only about what happened, but more significantly, in matters of war crimes, about the intention of the actors. Where facts are concerned, intention is irrelevant (except insofar as one has to gauge the motivations of witness); where judgments of criminality are concerned, intention plays an indispensible role. The most striking feature of the report’s speculation about intention is the ready, even eager willingness of the mission members to attribute malevolent intention to Israelis and their exceptional reluctance to speculate when it comes to the intentions of Hamas, especially in matters of human shields. Indeed, the overall pattern reveals a pervasive eagerness to accuse Israel and exculpate Hamas.
One of the footnoted items above is a reference to an interview that Goldstone gave to the Forward in which he 1) claimed that his commission proved nothing that would stand up in a court of law and 2) that Israel was now obligated to refute the charges in its report or stand condemned of violations of international law. These two views are not consistent, unless Goldstone (and his cohorts) judged Israel to be guilty until proven innocent. Clearly Goldstone investigated with his mind made up about a verdict before he even started.
In part II Landes took a look at the forces that led to Goldstone including one sided reporting and intimidation. Landes here notes another telling remark made by Goldstone.
In a highly revealing moment, Richard Goldstone shared one of his nightmares with the audience at Brandeis: “…three nights before I went [to Gaza] I woke up in the middle of the night after a terrible nightmare, with sweat on my brow, because I had a vivid dream that I’d been kidnapped by, by Hamas, and people in Israel were rejoicing [laughter]. That was the nightmare, based on real fears.”[69]
Goldstone clearly didn’t tell this anecdote in order to reveal the flaws of both his report’s methods and conclusions, but reveal them he did. The nightmare reflects the brutal reality of life in the Gaza Strip, where foreign journalists and critics of the regime face violent sanctions–kidnapping, torture, knee-capping, and death–at any time. The perpetual threat reflects some fundamental aspects of Hamas as a political organization from its origins in the first intifada (during which Palestinians killed almost as many Palestinians as Israelis did),[70] through the second (during which collaborators and reporters were in constant danger of retaliation), and finally (briefly) reaching the public eye when it took over Gaza in a bloody coup in 2006.[71] Moreover, during Operation Cast Lead, as even the Goldstone Report chronicles, Hamas pursued political enemies with remorseless violence (¶1345-72). Goldstone was thus perfectly correct in adding “based on real fears…”
As noted above, I really don’t think that Hamas had to fear what Goldstone would produce. Still it’s interesting to note, that Goldstone suggests that even if he had intended to be fair, he would have been too scared to tell the truth about Hamas.
In an article about Israel’s partial closure of Gaza, Jeffrey Goldberg observes that there’s a lack of background provided by Reuters.
What else is missing from this description? Israel “left” Gaza in 2005. Then what happened? Did Gaza take the billions in aid it received from donor nations and build itself into a new Abu Dhabi? Or did Hamas use the abandoned Jewish settlements of Gaza as launching pads for rocket attacks on civilians inside Israel? Who can know? Certainly not people who read Reuters.
The term “bias†suggests that they report things based on their prejudices. But while that’s often true, I think it’s become clear that they report things based on political calculation, and an effort to deceive.
There’s another point worth mentioning: How much of a blockade is really in effect? After observing that Israel does allow a lot of “basic goods” into Gaza, Israel Matzav notes:
Some ‘blockade.’ The only things they keep out are the things Hamas could turn into weapons.
This is consistent with a quote I found last year.
One man interviewed by Mr. Eranger claims that the Israeli military seems to know the difference between the two kinds of tunnels:
Muhammad al-Zarb said that the Israelis somehow seemed to know which tunnels were commercial and which were run by Hamas, and that they seemed to be selective in their bombing. “If someone has a tunnel for Chipsy, it seems O.K.,†he said. “When a Hamas guy has a tunnel for weapons, they bomb it.â€
One of the reasons Scott Brown plowed over Martha Coakley in his pickup truck on Tuesday is because the signals coming from Washington and the media are all about how Americans are too stupid, too uneducated, too ignorant, or too self-absorbed and childish to understand the matters that concern the political and media elite.
David Brooks‘ column of two weeks ago stated this elitism so clearly that we simply couldn’t miss the tone of contempt from the elite to the rest of us. In his view, apparently, Americans who disagree with his “educated class” are petulant teenagers. The fact that they may have legitimate reasons for disagreement? Pshaw. They aren’t smart enough for that.
The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.
The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way†has risen sharply.
The reaction to Brown’s win? More elitism. Here’s what Patrick Kennedy, Teddy’s son, had to say:
“It’s like in Roman times, they’d be trotted out to the coliseum and the lions would be brought out,†Kennedy said Tuesday night. “I mean, they’re wanting blood and they’re not getting it so they want to protest. And, you know, you can’t blame them. But frankly, the fact is we inherited this mess, and it’s becoming ours.â€
Get it? Americans don’t want to vote for the politicians they feel respond to their needs. They’re just voting against Coakley because they want heads to roll. It’s a reaction, not an action. The fact that voters might be voting for candidates who are giving them what they want doesn’t seem to have entered this entitled, second-generation, wealthy politician’s mind. Apparently, the only Americans who vote with their heads are the elites. The rest of us? Well, bread and circuses, dontchaknow.
Kennedy typifies the Obama crowd: Elitism and a blame-Bush mentality, all rolled into one. And they don’t understand average Americans. Here’s more from Brooks, making you think he may be starting to think twice about the, ah, “uneducated” class:
Go out and say that maybe it’s not a great idea to pass the most complicated and largest piece of domestic legislation in a generation when the American people don’t like it. Show doubt. Don’t show arrogance. If President Obama comes out swinging, it will be his Katrina moment, the moment when the elitist tag will be permanently hung around his neck.
But then he slips right back into elitist mode:
Sometimes you can get away with running directly against public opinion, but it is a very risky maneuver.
Show humility, Democrats, there is some chance that American voters may not be complete idiots.
He’s joking, you say. He’s being sarcastic. Really? I wouldn’t be so sure. Read the part again about why the Tea Party movement is against government health care legislation. We are petulant children. We are against things because they are for them. It’s our lack of “education,” I presume. Or at least, Brooks’ kind of education, which I’m pretty sure doesn’t count my state college (Montclair State, NJ) education.
And there are still more examples. Here’s Terry McAuliffe on why Massachusetts didn’t seat Martha Coakley:
“We have to keep our focus on job creation. Everything we have to do is related to job creation. We have to do a much better job on the message. People are confused on what this health care bill is going to do.â€
Translation: Americans are too stupid to understand the health care bill. And it’s what the Obama administration’s message will be. Let’s hear from David Axelrod:
“We are the party in power, and as such there’s an element of responsibility assigned,†he said. “I think people need to know that their challenges and their concerns are the focus of our work every day.â€
It’s not the message. It’s the fact that they haven’t done a good enough job selling the message. That’s what you’ll be hearing for some time, apparently.
Finally, along comes Anthony Weiner, Democratic Representative from New York, who does understand the message of Massachusetts:
“When you have large numbers of citizens in the United States of America who believe this is going in the wrong direction, there’s a limit to which you can keep saying, ‘Okay, they just don’t get it. If we just pass a bill, they’ll get it.’ No, no. I think that maybe we should internalize that we’re not doing things entirely correctly.”
Representative Weiner gets it. Whether or not his fellow politicians do remains to be seen.
As for Congress and the Obama administration: Will they stop belittling the voters that sent them to Washington?
Of course, they can continue mocking politicians who drive a pickup truck. Americans will keep voting for the truck drivers, and the political elite will finally understand the message that we are sending them. The chant that went up in town hall meetings all over the nation last summer didn’t register with most of our politicians then. But I’m pretty sure Congress is hearing it now. Remember it, politicos, because you work for us.
Andy thought he was going crazy when a talking cat showed up at his front door. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
Goldeneyes is a Catmage – a cat with human intelligence and magical abilities. Andy is an eighth grader who is smart, impulsive, and trying to avoid the school bully at all costs. A prophecy threw them together. There’s just one problem: Goldeneyes can’t stand humans.
The Catmage world is heading toward war. Goldeneyes and Andy must try to stop the enemy from getting stronger. And they must save a powerful Catmage who’s been kidnapped. For Goldeneyes, it’s personal. That Catmage is her grandmother.
Andy and Goldeneyes must try to put aside their differences. If they can’t, the enemy will soon be too powerful to defeat…
