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Mideast Media Sampler – 12/06/2013

Posted on 12/06/2013 by Soccerdad

Getting to “no” with the Palestinians

A few months ago, Secretary of State John Kerry allowed as to how he was worried about Israel’s future if it did not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel’s Prime Minister has played along sending his emissaries to negotiate with Palestinian partners who don’t want to make a deal.

So this week, out of his deep seated concern for the Jewish State, the New York Times reported Wednesday that U.S., Stepping Up Role, Will Present West Bank Security Proposal to Israel:

The presentation is to be made to Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday by John R. Allen, the former American commander in Afghanistan and a retired Marine general who serves as an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry on the Middle East peace talks. …
“It will include many details and specifics,” said a State Department official who asked not to be identified under diplomatic protocol established by the agency. “He will be presenting a piece of what will be a larger whole.” …
State Department officials described the security briefing as an “ongoing process” and not a finished product on which the United States was demanding a yes-or-no vote from the Israeli side.

The Optimistic Conservative reacts skeptically to this last quote:

Sure, because announcing it in advance will put no onus on Israel to respond in a yes-or-no-type manner. This formulation is like an addict pleading that he’s not using, he’s just snorting some coke.

Whether or not Israel agreed to the plan, the Palestinians made the matter moot (at first anyway.)

The Palestinian Authority rejected Kerry’s ideas for security arrangements under a possible future peace accord with Israel, a PA official said, according to Reuters. “The Palestinian side rejected them because they would only lead to prolonging and maintaining the occupation,” according to the official, who refused to allow his name to be used.

However, in a later Reuters report, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat must have realized how damaging the truth would be.

But Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa that report was “completely incorrect”. Erekat stressed Kerry had not presented a final proposal and that talks would continue.

Of course the first report wasn’t “completely incorrect.” Notice Erakat’s qualification that the proposal was not “final.” Implicitly, then, Erakat’s saying that the proposal made by Gen. Allen is unacceptable as it is. (For all we know he was also the anonymous official who rejected the proposal.)

According to a report cited by Israel Matzav, the United States has accepted Israel’s position about its security needs.

So, according to Reuters, how did Kerry deal with this setback? Did he say that he was worried about a future Palestinian state that wasn’t willing to compromise? Well, no.

Kerry said they had discussed “at great length issues of security in the region, security for the state of Israel, security for a future Palestine”.
“I think the interests are very similar, but there are questions of sovereignty, questions of respect and dignity which are obviously significant to the Palestinians, and for the Israelis very serious questions of security and also of longer-term issues of how we end this conflict once and for all,” he added.
Abbas did not join Kerry at the Ramallah media appearance.

Abbas snubbed Kerry at the press conference. Remarkable! Kerry tries to force a security plan on Israel and he can’t even get the Palestinians to cooperate! So what does the Secretary of State do? He doesn’t express his frustration with the Palestinians but offers phony platitudes about both sides having “interests” that “are very similar.”

In his column this week Thomas Friedman wrote:

On the Israeli-Palestinian front, Obama’s job is to make himself as annoying as possible to Netanyahu.

How exactly will American pressure on Israel help, when, as Jonathan Tobin writes, it isn’t Israel that needs nudging:

If the latest round of talks with the Palestinians promoted by the administration is stuck in neutral it is not because of Israel’s positions on settlements or Jerusalem but because, as most serious observers have long understood, for a variety of reasons (including the fact that Hamas rules Gaza) the PA leadership is simply incapable of making peace.

To summarize: The United States presented a security plan. Israel apparently accepted it. The Palestinians apparently rejected it. How long before Kerry is asking for some new concession from Israel?

Bonus Question: Reuters describes the post-disengagement situation like this:

Israel quit Gaza unilaterally in 2005, after which Hamas came to power there. The sides have repeatedly exchanged fire since.

“Repeatedly exchanged fire?” Really?

How about “Since Israel withdrew from Gaza, Hamas has built an arsenal and used it to threaten hundreds of thousands of residents of southern Israel; twice provoking wars?” Anyone out there have a better and more accurate sentence?

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Thursday briefs

Posted on 12/05/2013 by Meryl Yourish

There goes the narrative: Ma’ariv quotes the Jordanians as saying that the Jordan Valley must remain in Israel’s hands in the event of a Palestinian state (Hebrew link). Really, Jordan? Why would you be so anti-Palestinian? What’s that? You’re speaking from experience? (Black September, anyone?) I love it when Arab nations go against the Palestinian narrative. It just proves that we’ve been right all along.

There goes the narrative, part two: French investigators are calling bullshit on the polonium poisoning hoax, saying that Arafat died of natural causes. Of course, the Palestinians are objecting to the French findings. And let’s face it, even the Swiss are calling bullshit:

Some 60 samples were taken from Arafat’s remains in November 2012 and divided between Swiss and Russian investigators and a French team carrying out a probe at his widow’s request.
The Swiss team said the test results neither confirmed nor denied polonium was the actual source of his death, although they provided “moderate” backing for the idea he was poisoned by the rare and highly radioactive element.

But as long as the Palestinians can use this to beat Israel with, they will do so. Schmucks.

A dead terrorist is my favorite kind of terrorist: Aww. He was murdered, and nobody knows whodunit. Of course they’re blaming Israel, but this time, there are many suspects. And if it was Israel, good for them!

Posted in Israel, palestinian politics, Terrorism | Comments Off

Back in the saddle

Posted on 12/05/2013 by Meryl Yourish

I have a computer again, a stopgap system that I’ll use for the next six months or so until I’m out of debt and ready to buy another computer.

Gawd. I forgot I have to re-educate MS Word on all of the names and Hebrew words in my manuscript, as well as taking off that horrible grammar check. My cats can produce better grammar than the Microsoft grammar checker.

And may I say, if you user Firefox and Thunderbird, you should have MozBackup and periodically back up your data. It is so incredibly wonderful to get all of my Firefox data back in a heartbeat, including my favorites and tabs and saved passwords. Plus, all of my email.

If only there were something like that for some of my other programs. I’m going to have to download the Adobe Cloud products all over again, and I’m not happy with the way this substitute laptop gets hot so quickly. I’m going to have to do this all over again on a new computer. That’s going to change the way I use this one, I think.

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Eighth Light

Posted on 12/04/2013 by Meryl Yourish

My personal laptop (as opposed to my work laptop) died. I managed to get another one that will last until I can buy a brand-new one, but it’s going to take a while to get up to speed on the new one. In the meantime: Eighth Light.

Posted in Holidays | 2 Comments

Seventh light

Posted on 12/03/2013 by Meryl Yourish

You know what I want to know? I’ll tell you what I want to know. I bought a box of 44 candles. I lit the correct number of candles every day so far. And I have two extra candles left. There are eleven candles left for tomorrow.

This annoys me.

Posted in Holidays | 1 Comment

Sixth Light

Posted on 12/02/2013 by Meryl Yourish

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That horrible deal with Iran

Posted on 12/02/2013 by Meryl Yourish

You have to stop for a minute and think about exactly how this Obama deal with Iran came about. His administration held secret talks with the Iranians without informing Israel or Saudi Arabia, two of America’s biggest Mideastern allies, both of whom consider Iran a deadly enemy. And rightly so–Iran wants the end of the Saudi monarchy and, well, how many times have I posted about Iran wanting the end of Israel? I’ve lost count. He didn’t ask for input from either ally, and is now clamping down hard on Benjamin Netanyahu for having the nerve to speak publicly about how bad the deal is for Israel. The famously thin-skinned president’s ego notwithstanding, what has this deal with Iran done for anyone but Iran?

The Obama administration is trying to get Congress to ease up on new sanctions. $$ for Iran!

India is exempted from the Iranian sanctions and is looking to expand trade with Iran. $$ for Iran!

European and American businesses are looking to trade with Iran in the coming months. $$ for Iran!

While Western powers have identified a small group of sectors for Iranian sanction relief, a much wider set of European and U.S. companies—from pharmaceutical firms and medical-equipment makers to food companies and traders—also stands to regain lost Iranian trade as soon as relief measures are formally adopted next month.
Western governments singled out Iran’s automotive and aviation sectors for temporary sanction relief, while allowing petrochemical exports and trade in gold and other precious metals. But the fine print of the deal also clears the way for GlaxoSmithKline GSK.LN +0.06% PLC and Sanofi SA, SAN.FR -1.08% for example, to restart selling many of the drugs they had been forced to cut back on because of increasingly stiff financial sanctions. Siemens AG SIE.XE +0.39% , meanwhile, may now also be able to send in more medical devices.

The deal hasn’t improved Iranian threats on Israel in the least. Quite the contrary, the Iranians are emboldened. They have declared victory over the West and says Iran will not dismantle any nuclear sites. And that’s not even the best part. The deal hasn’t yet been finalized, but the Iranians are reaping the profits and we get–promises. No, wait, this is the best part: The Iranians are saying that the U.S. version is incorrect, and they still get to enrich plutonium.

So what’s the end result of all this? Iran is going to pull back its nuclear program, right?

Wrong.

Coming off its deal with the P5+1 powers in which it secured $7 billion in sanctions relief, Iran will build a second nuclear reactor at Bushehr.
“Based on our estimates, the second nuclear power plant will be built in the same province (Bushehr) and I hope that we can use the facilities of this province,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told Fars over the weekend.

Has Obama reacted publicly with outrage to this news? Of course not. Iran is an enemy, not an ally. Why would Obama treat him badly?

Let us not forget, over 80 percent of American Jews voted for Obama. And just look what that got you.

Posted in Iran, Israel, The One | Comments Off

Fifth Light

Posted on 12/01/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Posted in Holidays | Comments Off

Europe’s bigotry on the rise

Posted on 12/01/2013 by Meryl Yourish

The pebble is rolling down the hill, and it’s not affecting only Jews. The global rise in anti-Semitism is being accompanied by a global rise in fascism–just like last time. Hungary’s Jobbik party is anti-Jew and anti-immigrant–and it’s gaining adherents. All over Europe.

Mark Steyn has written that Europe is finished because it won’t stand up to Islamists, whose birth rate exceeds Europeans. He wrote an entire book on it. I’ve been saying for years that Europe will remeber its bloody history and rise up again in all of its savageness–against the immigrants. The rise of neo-Nazis is proving one of us right.

A Slovak politician, known for wearing a Nazi-style uniform and calling Roma “parasites,” was elected to head one of eight regional governments in the eastern European country.
Marian Kotleba won 56 percent of the vote in the Banska Bytrica region, beating incumbent Vladimir Manka, a member of Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party, according to results posted on the website of the Slovak Statistical Office. Smer party candidates won in six districts, while the opposition SDKU retained the post in Bratislava.
Kotleba, 36, has praised Jozef Tiso, president of the Slovak fascist satellite state during World War II, a regime that sent tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi concentration camps. Originally a high school computer-science teacher, Kotleba has been repeatedly detained by police for supporting fascism and stirring racial hatred. Charges were later dropped.

The Roma make up only seven percent of the Slovak population. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, the EU has decided to remove the working definition of anti-Semitism, probably because it was working against anti-Semitism.

Earlier this year, the EU’s ”Working Definition of anti-Semitism” was used in Britain in a complaint relating to the BBC coverage of comments about Israel made by a British member of te Parliament, David Ward. The BBC Trust, the public broadcaster’s governing body, first upheld the definition in characterizing Ward’s comments as ‘anti-Semitic’ but later reversed its ruling following the removal of the Definition from FRA’s website.
In a communication to BBC last month, a press officer at the FRA explained that the ‘’Working Definition of anti-Semitism’’ was a ‘’discussion paper’’ which ‘’was never adopted by the EU as a working definition, although it has been on the FRA website until recently when it was removed during a clear out of “non-official” documents.

Jews in France are still being forced to withdraw from public life for safety concerns.

Most French Jewish parents enroll their children in private schools because of anti-Semitism, a leader of France’s Jewish community said.
Anti-Semitism “affects Jewish families very seriously and is the main reason there are so few Jewish children in public schools,” Roger Cukierman, president of the CRIF umbrella group of French Jewish communities, said Tuesday during a symposium on anti-Semitism at the European Parliament. “Most of them go to Jewish or Christian private schools.”

They’re unveiling statues to the mass murderers of Jews in Hungary, and “mainstream” politicians are defending Hitler. Kosher slaughter has been banned in Poland and other European nations, circumcision is under attack, and, well, daily Jewish life keeps getting more and more difficult on the continent that murdered two-thirds of their Jews.

Steyn is wrong. Europe has a vicious, bloody past, and there will be violence there again. They only start with the Jews. We’re the canary in the coalmine. And Europe–psst–the canary is having a tough time breathing right now.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, World | Comments Off

Fourth Light

Posted on 11/30/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Turns out I never took a picture of the fourth night last year. Hm. Just snapped this a few minutes ago, since we went to a play tonight and I don’t like leaving the menorah burning while I’m gone.

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Third Light

Posted on 11/29/2013 by Meryl Yourish

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Double decker kitties

Posted on 11/29/2013 by Meryl Yourish

Tig and Meimei are now playing regularly, so much so that I have to wonder if the screeches I hear are real or play screeches. Sometimes, Meimei gets a beat-down from Tig.