So happy Hanukkah to my Jewish readers, friends, and family.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s also the second night of Hanukkah. And that’s about all the relation is to the two holidays.
SO tired of that word that puts the two holidays together. I am banning it from my blog. Kindly do not be a wiseass in my comments.
Time to clean the menorah.
Lee Smith is a superb Middle East analyst. He’s been moving up in the world of journalism for years, deservedly so. And he has written the most frightening analysis of Obama’s Middle East policy I’ve ever read. According to Lee, Obama has deliberately betrayed America’s allies in the Middle East in order to remake it into a multipolar region–in other words, “fundamentally transforming” the way America deals with the Middle East. This is why Obama was secretly holding talks with Iran for the past two years. Read it in full, but here’s the part that should scare you to death.
Virtually every move Obama made regarding Syria was calculated to keep the Iranians at the table, while he fended off domestic opponents on Capitol Hill and circled traditional allies. The White House engineered an almost two-year long information campaign exaggerating the al Qaeda element in Syrian rebel units to push back against U.S. domestic critics like Sen. John McCain demanding more robust assistance in helping to topple Assad. In the same vein, the White House moved against Gulf Arab allies, like Kuwait, to close down private donors and charities from assisting Salafist groups fighting Assad. Turkey was also told to get in line behind the administration. After several leaks suggesting that Ankara’s intelligence chief Hakan Fidan was reckless and untrustworthy, the Turks showed their willingness to comply with the White House’s pro-Iran policy by firing on Salafist units to whom they’d previously turned a blind eye. What we see now is that the White House’s problem with Salafist fighters in Syria was less with their ideological character than the fact they were instruments—and among the most effective—employed by a Sunni consortium determined to crush an Iranian ally. To show his bona fides to Tehran, Obama not only refrained from assisting rebel units, he prevented others from doing so as well.
After all, the administration collaborated with an Islamist organization every bit as vicious, and much more dangerous than al Qaeda, when the CIA shared information with Hezbollah, Iran’s long arm in Lebanon, to warn of an impending al Qaeda operation against Hezbollah targets. If the White House never tipped off Hezbollah or the Iranians prior to Israeli strikes on convoys carrying strategic weapons from Syria to Hezbollah, they nonetheless repeatedly leaked to the press after the fact that Israel was responsible. Jerusalem was frantic, fearing that broadcasting their military operations might compel Assad or Hezbollah to seek retaliation. But the administration had other priorities than to keep their traditional ally out of war—to indicate to the Iranians that, if necessary, Obama was able and willing to deter the Israelis.
I did not know that the CIA warned Hezbollah it was on al Qaeda’s hit list. Stop and think for a moment. Hezbollah is the terrorist organization responsible for the death of nearly two hundred American soldiers in Beirut. The Obama administration warned them that al Qaeda was going to attack them. And the administration has been deliberately leaking intel on Israeli attacks against Syria–to please its Iranian partners.
This is an unbelievable betrayal of American allies. No wonder Israel is cozying up to China and Russia. Obama is pushing them into other nations’ arms.
This is despicable. And this is what over 80% of American Jews voted for. Are you ashamed of yourselves yet? You voted for the man who is betraying Israel–and the rest of the Middle East.
Those who Don’t Learn from History are Doomed to be Fleeced
In her conference call with the Israel Project last week, nonproliferation expert Dr. Emily Landau raised this general objection (.pdf) to any deal that would be reached with Iran:
The problem is that we have the experience of the early period, the 2003 – 2005 period when Rouhani was leading the nuclear negotiations on the part of Iran. Two very short periods of suspension of uranium conversion activity were achieved in those – during the course of those two years. But what happened in those periods, very short periods – the first was eight months, the second was six months – the activities were suspended, but Iran was also trying to circumvent the deal at almost every turn. And those first eight months and the later six months were spent with the 3 sides haggling and quibbling over every aspect of the very limited deal that they had reached. Who was upholding what and why and what did they really agree upon and just endless arguing, haggling, over these issues. The first suspension period, the eight – month one, ended with the Iranians accusing the Europeans – at the time it was negotiations with the EU-3 – of not upholding their end of the bargain, saying that the Europeans had promised to get the Iranian case off the agenda of the IAEA by June of 2004, and because that was not the case they were ending the suspension. Well, why was it not taken off the agenda of the IAEA? Because Iran was not upholding, in good faith, the provisions of this suspension deal. And that is the kind of dynamic that we can probably expect to see in the next six months with regard to any interim deal.
One of the key issues surrounding the “nuclear dispute” as media folks like to call it – but is really more a case of Iran’s nuclear cheating – was whether Iran would accept the IAEA’s “additional protocol.” The “additional protocol” was a more intrusive inspection regime that Iran signed onto in 2003.
In his statement hailing the P5 + 1 deal with Iran President Obama referenced the 2003 deal:
For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back. Iran has committed to halting certain levels of enrichment and neutralizing part of its stockpiles.
Diplomats and journalists have cited the 2003 agreement as a precedent for current negotiations with Iran. For one thing it was the first nuclear agreement between Israel and the West. Furthermore, Iran’s lead negotiator then was Hassan Rouhani, now Iran’s president.
While that may have been the first nuclear deal reached with Iran; the lessons from it may not be ones that the cheerleaders for the P5 + 1 deal have in mind.
As I mentioned, in 2003, Iran committed to the IAEA’s “additional protocol.”
Here’s how the New York Times reported Iran’s Pact: ‘Full Cooperation’ on October 22, 2003:
Having received the necessary clarifications, the Iranian government has decided to sign the I.A.E.A. Additional Protocol and commence ratification procedures. As a confirmation of its good intentions the Iranian government will continue to cooperate with the agency in accordance with the protocol in advance of its ratification; While Iran has a right within the nuclear nonproliferation regime to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes it has decided voluntarily to suspend all uranium enrichment and processing activities as defined by the I.A.E.A.
According to the I.A.E.A. Iran signed the additional protocol December 18, 2013.
Nearly a year later, on September 20, 2004 the New York Times reported Iran Rebuffs U.N. Agency on Atom Issue:
Mr. Rowhani, however, strenuously objected to the order to end enrichment.
“They cannot force Iran to suspend enrichment through the resolution,” he said. “The Europeans also know that if there is a way, that way is through negotiations.”
He added a threat, saying, “I believe that Iran will stop implementing the additional protocol if its case is sent to the Security Council, and Parliament will probably demand from the government to drop out of the nonproliferation treaty.”
Remember, the signing of the additional protocol was unconditional. A year later, Iran was saying that it was conditional.
A few months later the New York Times reported, Nuclear Accord Eludes Iran and Europeans:
Among the ideas presented by the Iranians, participants said, was a phased approach including enhanced monitoring and technical guarantees devised to allow Iran to again enrich uranium, a process used in producing nuclear energy and nuclear bombs. But the Europeans reject that approach, arguing that Iran’s nuclear activities are so suspicious that the country should never again be allowed to enrich uranium. …
The meeting on Wednesday was the first by the negotiating teams since the Bush administration softened its position to allow the Europeans to offer broader economic incentives to Iran. In exchange, the United States has extracted a pledge from the Europeans to refer Iran’s case to the United Nations for possible censure or penalties, if the negotiations fail.
One of the points to remember here, is that the reason Iran was dealing with E3 (Britain, France and Germany) was because the United States (under President George W. Bush) was deemed to unreasonable. Yet even the E3 concluded that “Iran’s nuclear activities are so suspicious…” that they should not be allowed to enrich uranium. A year and a half after after signing an agreement to affirm “its good intentions” Iran had played so many games that its partners no longer trusted it.
One of the tokens to prove its good intentions was agreeing to the additional protocol. According to the IAEA the additional protocol never came into force for Iran. Iran signed an agreement and never implemented it. (Click on image for larger picture.)
And in the deal signed Saturday night there’s this commitment from Iran.
Fully implement the agreed transparency measures and enhanced monitoring. Ratify and implement the Additional Protocol, consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Majlis (Iranian parliament).
To paraphrase Charles Krauthammer, Iran has sold the West the same rug again.
But as the New York Times now explains in A Step, if Modest, Toward Slowing Iran’s Weapons Capability:
At the beginning of Mr. Obama’s presidency, Iran had roughly 2,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium, barely enough for a bomb. It now has about 9,000 kilograms, by the estimates of the International Atomic Energy Agency. A few thousand centrifuges were spinning in 2009; today there are 18,000, including new models that are far more efficient and can produce bomb-grade uranium faster. A new heavy water reactor outside the city of Arak promises a new pathway to a bomb, using plutonium, if it goes online next year as Iran says it will.
True rollback would mean dismantling many of those centrifuges, shipping much of the fuel out of the country or converting it into a state that could not be easily adapted to bomb use, and allowing inspections of many underground sites where the C.I.A., Europe and Israel believe hidden enrichment facilities may exist. There is no evidence of those facilities now, but, as a former senior Obama administration official said recently, speaking anonymously to discuss intelligence, “there has never been a time in the past 15 years or so when Iran didn’t have a hidden facility in construction.”
Despite sanctions Iran’s nuclear weapons program has progressed and, as the headline makes clear, the P5 + 1 deal doesn’t roll it back but slows it down. There are, of course, many other problems with the deal including the language “comprehensive solution would involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures,” effectively affirming the rogue regimes “right” to enrich. The secret facilities aren’t addressed in the P5 + 1 deal either.
There are many reasons to mistrust Iran or doubt that the deal would be effective. However, the story of the additional protocol is easy to follow. It is a case of Iran reneging on its commitments and defying binding Security Council resolutions. It also will be the story of the coming six months and longer.
Let’s say sometime in the future a secret Iranian nuclear facility is discovered or Iran is found to be cheating on some other part of the deal. Let’s say then the United States that it is re-imposing some of the sanctions it loosened. Will Iran, chastened, come clean about the extent of its cheating and submit to the sanctions? Or will Iran summon all the outrage it can muster and claim that the West changed the terms of the agreement and then refuse to abide by even the minimal terms it agreed to? The story of the additional protocol answers that question.
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to be out-bargained in Geneva.
This is what Meimei looked like at ten o’clock this morning.
I had to take her to the emergency vet, but first I had a book reading/signing at a local synagogue. I took Meimei around 1:30. It was a horrible day for the emergency vet. After an hour, I gave up and took her home, because there were three or four cats and dogs that had been hit by cars (one in surgery) as well as a dog that had had a seizure ahead of Meimei. I relaxed, met Sarah and the twins at the theater and saw the second Thor movie (the second half makes the movie worth going to, the first is too slow and boring), and then brought Meimei back. It only took two more hours to discover that it was blunt trauma to the eye and she needed drops, unless the eye got worse. Well, she’s been acting like her normal kitten self all day, except while stuck in the carrier at the vet’s. So I’m not too worried. It cleared up pretty quickly. This is how she looked when I took her back to the vet:
You can see her eye started clearing up on its own. And if it doesn’t, well, damn. There’s an animal opthalmologist three doors down from the emergency vet. Richmond is a great little city, with all of the modern conveniences and none of the traffic or crowding.
Meimei is currently driving Tig crazy. He wants her to play the way he wants her to. She’s staring at him trying to decide what she wants to do. Yep. Normal.
The Obama administration, so desperate to make a deal, any deal with Iran, has managed to make a deal that the Iranians want. They don’t have to get rid of their centrifuges. They’re not shutting down and nuclear plants. So what’s the big deal to dump their current stock of fissile material? They can just make more, in very little time. So, Iran gets sanctions lifted for six month and the verification that they’re holding up their end of the bargain? Well, Iran cheated before. And word is they’re building a couple more nuclear plants in tunnels under the mountains.
The agreement calls for Iran to stop its production of near-weapons grade nuclear fuel—which is uranium enriched to 20% purity—and for the removal of Tehran’s stockpile of the fissile material, which is estimated to be nearly enough to produce one nuclear bomb.
Iran, in return, will gain relief from Western economic sanctions that U.S. officials believe will provide between $6 billion and $7 billion in badly needed foreign exchange for Tehran over the next half-year.
The agreement reached in Geneva is an interim deal for about six months that will allow international powers to try to strike a permanent pact, an effort experts said would be the true test of Iran’s new government, headed by revitalization-minded President Hasan Rouhani.
Once again, the Iranians don’t have to destroy anything that will actually prevent them from making nuclear weapons.
The first-stage deal also takes no steps to force Iran to ship out or destroy the roughly 19,000 centrifuge machines it is amassed to produce nuclear fuel.
U.S. lawmakers and key American allies have said Iran will only abandon its nuclear program if international pressure is increased.
This is a terrible deal. In return for the lifting of sanctions, Iran gets to jump back into creating nukes at the drop of a hat. But hey, Obama gets to say he’s accomplished something. And John Kerry gets to use this in the primaries against Hillary. (Hey, I hope the Dems are stupid enough to put Kerry up. He’d be eminently defeatable.)
Elections have consequences, and over 80% of American Jews voted for this administration. Good work, guys. Obama just made the world a much more dangerous place for Israel.
I’ll let Jonathan Tobin have the last word.
By devoting so much effort to sell the world on the notion that Iran is moderating and wants to deal, the administration hasn’t just tried to create a constituency for engagement with Iran but has, in effect, normalized a rogue, anti-Semitic, terror-supporting regime that richly deserved the opprobrium that had been directed at it in the last decade. In doing so, they have not only handed Tehran an undeserved victory without getting anything in return. They have also rendered it even less likely that the international community will be able to muster the strength to restrain an Islamist government whose violent intent is not in doubt.
This one is almost unbelievable. Almost.
In a he-had-it-coming-to-him-moment, the self-proclaimed father of suicide bombing appears to have been injured on Tuesday in Beirut, where the Iranian embassy was targeted by an Al-Qaeda faction, The Times of London reported.
It’s just too bad he wasn’t killed. But there was collateral damage to his own family. I wonder if he’ll feel any responsibilty for it.
The Times said 67-year-old cleric Issa Tabatabai is a close ally of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a key go-between for Iran and its Lebanese proxy militia, Hezbollah. It cited website Ayandeh as reporting that the cleric’s wife and daughter were also wounded, and that all three were in hospital in Beirut.
Mind you, I’m not in any way celebrating a bombing that killed 23 and injured many more. But you have to think that at least one of the injured deserved it.
Tabatabai has championed suicide bombing, or “martyrdom operations,” and bragged that he helped to cement the notion. He was involved in several lethal attacks during Lebanon’s civil war, including the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy that killed 63 people and marked the beginning of Islamist attacks on American targets, The Times said.
But I’m sure there will be no soul-searching on his behalf. If he cared at all about it, he would never have started murdering innocents in the first place.
John Kerry is trying to bull forward and create a deal with Iran so that his boss, Barack Obama, has something, anything, that he can brag about to the world as being a peacemaker. The Obama administration doesn’t seem able to comprehend that Iran wants the destruction of Israel, nothing less. And it’s not because of Zionism. Khameini hates Jews. The WSJ can’t bring itself to put the full quote in an article. You have to go to the Arab or Jewish press to find the fullest accounts of this garbage.
Khamenei rejected claims that Iran and its nuclear work posed a threat.
“The enemies of Iran sometimes and particularly the rabid dog of the region — the Zionist regime — malevolently claim that Iran is a threat to the entire world,” Khamenei said.
“No! The threat … is the Zionist regime and some of its supporters,” he added angrily, as the Basij crowd burst into cries of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
He also launched a verbal attack on Israeli leaders. “The title of human is not worthy of the leaders of the Zionist regime,” Khamenei added.
And oh yeah–John Kerry and the Obama administration aren’t condemning Khameini’s hateful words. Because, gee, we said some bad things about Iran, or something.
A senior U.S. administration official said that inflammatory rhetoric by the Ayatollah Khamenei on Wednesday was “uncomfortable” but did not condemn it as unacceptable, as the French have done.
“Of course I don’t ever like it when people use rhetoric that in any way talks about the U.S. in ways that I find very uncomfortable and not warranted whatsoever,” the official told reporters assembled in Geneva to cover Iran nuclear talks this week.
“I do hearken back to what President Obama said at the UN General Assembly however. There are decades of mistrust between the United States and Iran,” the official said. “We certainly have had many people in our society say difficult things about Iran and Iranians, and not always necessarily made a difference between governmental decisions and culture and people — this is a very difficult terrain, is I guess my bottom line here, because there are these decades of mistrust.”
Funny, the French President condemned the words. Kerry utterly ignored the hate speech.
I cannot tell you how much I have come to loathe this administration. Every time I think they can’t make me angrier, they find a way.
Back to work full-time means conferences and full schedules. I didn’t get home until nearly 9:30, although I did stop at Wegman’s to get my fix of Hebrew National corned beef for dinner. (Bought enough for a few sandwiches, too.)
Here, let me post a picture of Meimei. I’m too tired for anything else.
AHAHAHAHAHAHA! The BDSholes [(c) Israelly Cool] are using Israeli software for their anti-Israel BDS websites. Also, they probably all use the IM technology that Israel designed, and their computers probably use the Intel chips that were designed in Israel. But sure, yeah, boycott Israel. Just don’t tell anyone you’re using Israeli tech.
Too anti-Jewish for Brandeis: Even the liberal Jews at Brandeis have decided that a parade featuring Palestinians using the Nazi salute and armed with fake weapons to destroy Israel are a bit much for their “sister” university, Al Quds U. Was it just the parade and Nazi salute that did it? Nope. It was the supposed “moderate” Sari Nusseibeh’s response that clued them in.
Unfortunately, the Al-Quds statement is unacceptable and inflammatory. While Brandeis has an unwavering commitment to open dialogue on difficult issues, we are also obliged to recognize intolerance when we see it, and we cannot – and will not – turn a blind eye to intolerance. As a result, Brandeis is suspending its partnership with Al-Quds University effective immediately. We will reevaluate our relationship with Al-Quds based on future events.
Yeah, they could have saved themselves the time and trouble by just reading a few Zionist blogs to see what an anti-Israel demagogue Nusseiebeh is.
No Jews allowed: The UN does what it does best, discriminates against Jews, and revokes the invitations of only a Jewish NGO from the execrable “UN Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People”. What was the horrific NGO? Why, it was Birthright Israel.
Today, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will pay a visit to Auschwitz where he will make a show of concern for the demonization of Jews in the past century. However, at the very same time his UN staff is actively discriminating against Jews at UN Headquarters in the here and now.
Anne Bayefsky apparently doesn’t know about Israeli Double Standard Time. But don’t worry. It only occurs on days that end with a “y”.
For Thomas Friedman “Brutally Honest” Means Leaving out Essential Information
In a speech he gave a few months ago Thomas Friedman said you have “every bit of knowledge available to you” from Google. It’s a bit of an overstatement, but his point is essentially correct.
One particular effective use of Google is fact checking writers like Friedman, who make unsubstantiated claims. In Friedman’s case, it happens quite a bit. He has a habit of taking great sounding ideas and turning them into columns. But that doesn’t mean that he’s right. Often he leaves out critical information.
This week Friedman did this once again. In Something for Barack and Bibi to Talk About, he prefaces his main point with:
Given this situation, I can think of no better time for a good book about Israel — the real Israel, not the fantasy, do-no-wrong Israel peddled by its most besotted supporters or the do-no-right colonial monster portrayed by its most savage critics.
As one of Israel’s “besotted supporters,” it’s clear that Friedman is pretty close to the Israel is the “do-no-right colonial monster” crowd. The omission in his column here makes that clear.
The book about the “real Israel” that he cites, is Ari Shavit’s latest. Shavit is columnist for Ha’aretz. For Ha’aretz, he is a model of probity and self awareness. But that is setting the bar pretty low for those qualities.
So what is so essential for Barack and Bibi to talk about?
But this miracle also produced a nightmare. There was another people there when the Jews returned, who had their own aspirations: the Palestinian Arabs. In a brutally honest chapter entitled “Lydda, 1948,” Shavit reconstructs the story of how the population of this Palestinian Arab town, in the center of what was to become Israel, was expelled on July 13th in the 1948 war.
“By noon, a mass evacuation is under way,” writes Shavit. “By evening, tens of thousands of Palestinian Arabs leave Lydda in a long column, marching south past the Ben Shemen youth village and disappearing into the East. Zionism obliterates the city of Lydda. Lydda is our black box. In it lies the dark secret of Zionism. … If Zionism was to be, Lydda could not be.”
Shavit wrestles with this contradiction, arguing that it is vital for every Israeli and Zionist to acknowledge Lydda, to empathize with the Palestinians’ fate. “But Lydda does not make Zionism criminal,” he insisted in an interview. History has produced many flights of refugees — the Jewish refugees of Europe were one such wave. Israel absorbed those refugees. European countries absorbed theirs. For too long, the Arab world kept the Palestinians frozen in victimhood. “It is my moral duty as an Israeli to recognize Lydda and help the Palestinians to overcome it,” said Shavit, by helping them establish a Palestinian state that is ready to live in peace with Israel. But, ultimately, “it is the Palestinians’ responsibility to overcome the painful past, lean forward and not become addicted to victimhood.”
In other words, Israel is a “do no right colonial monster.” Clearly, what Friedman means about the importance of Shavit’s book is that Netanyahu should be more forthcoming and give the Palestinians everything that they demand to make peace, because, in truth, Israel is truly responsible for the Palestinians’ suffering.
However, the story of Lydda (now called Lod) is not so simple. The residents of Lydda were not summarily expelled. The expulsion was a response to a massacre of Israeli soldiers, after the town had agreed to terms of surrender.
Maurice Ostroff interviewed a soldier who fought in that battle:
Mike Isaacson, who now lives in Pretoria, South Africa, served as a Mahal volunteer in Dayan’s battalion. This is how he described his experience to me:
“On July 10 when the battalion attacked Lydda, the Arab leadership surrendered. Lydda’s leaders were told they could continue to live in peace, provided they surrendered their arms and accepted Israeli sovereignty. They agreed. “Leaving only a few soldiers as guards, the battalion left Lydda to return to Ben Shemen. However, when two Arab Legion armored cars appeared on the horizon the next day, giving the impression that Legion reinforcements were arriving, the Lydda Arabs reneged on their agreement. They didn’t give the Israeli soldiers in the town the choice of being expelled. They slaughtered them. “In the meantime, the battalion was surprised to find itself in Ramle sooner than intended. Instead of taking the road to Ben Shemen, the leading vehicle, driven by Jimmy Kantey, had in error turned towards Ramle at the crossroad…. “As a consequence of the massacre of the Israeli soldiers, the troops on returning to Lydda could not accept a fifth column in their midst and forced thousands of families out of the towns during the next three days.
Note too, why Lydda was so important strategically:
It is located in what is now Israel’s narrow “waistline.” Losing Lydda would likely have cut the nascent country in two.
Alex Safian of CAMERA adds some more details.
Despite the surrender agreement, and the promise to turn over arms, the Israelis, now numbering only 500 men, had to once again take the town in another desperate battle.
Fighting house-to-house to root out snipers, and this time giving no quarter, within an hour much of the town was once again under control, and an estimated 200 Arabs were dead.
But the Dahmash Mosque, was still fighting, held by an estimated 70 fighters, and with an unknown number of others inside. Rather than launch a costly frontal assault, Lt. Col. Kelman decided to breach the mosque’s walls with an anti-tank weapon, known as a PIAT, and then have a platoon rush the building.
After the PIAT was fired, the men that stormed the building found that the defenders were dead, killed by the effects of the armor piercing projectile in the confined space of the mosque. (Kurzman, p. 515-516)
Dan Kurzman, I would add, was no “besotted” supporter of Israel. His Genesis, 1948, however is one of the classic accounts of Israel’s War of Independence. Is it possible that Shavit was unaware of this? Is it possible that “Middle East expert,” Thomas Friedman was unaware?
As is his wont, Friedman seized upon something that made his case – that Israel is largely at fault for the plight of the Palestinians and must do everything in its power to correct that – accuracy be damned.
It’s as if nothing’s happened in the past twenty years. It’s as if Israel hasn’t given the Palestinians legitimacy, money, territory and even arms in order to make peace and yet finds itself just as ostracized as it was twenty years ago.
Even though Friedman recites “For too long, the Arab world kept the Palestinians frozen in victimhood,” he doesn’t relate it to anything. Why haven’t Palestinians made an agreement with Israel? If they don’t want to be victims, let them agree to end the war even if it means taking less than 100% of what they say they’re entitled to. But with cheerleaders like Friedman insisting that the only way for Israel to make peace is to give the Palestinians everything they want, they have no reason to. But Friedman does more than simply insist that Israel give the Palestinians everything they want, without it Israel cannot “enjoy the support of the world,” as he paraphrases Shavit. To Friedman, it isn’t simply good sense for Israel to make peace, it is essential for its legitimacy.
Friedman cited a much discussed book (it was excerpted in the New Yorker) to prove that he was looking at Israel with “brutal honesty.” Unfortunately, in this case he left out an essential fact that undercut the honesty of his position.
The IDF is in the Philippines, and Filipinos are reaping those rewards. A reporter for NBC is harshing the narrative of the IDF, though.
Smart. Sophisticated. Secure. This was what I had experienced with the IDF before. But now I was impressed with something else: the place they had selected. This wasn’t a site where trauma surgeons were needed — those injuries in other towns were being addressed. What the people of Bogo needed was good, solid medical care. They were already living in poverty when the typhoon decimated their fragile infrastructure.
I asked the IDF Surgeon General in charge why they chose Bogo. He said it was because they were poor and their needs were great. As I left, I walked away in awe of this group of doctors: physician humanitarians, and medicine at its very best.
Oh, come on. They’re brutal, racist murderers who deliberately target civilians. Just ask any Palestinian spokesliar. Who are you going to believe, those who slam the IDF or your lying eyes?
Lt. Col. (res) Dr. Ofer Merin, a heart surgeon who otherwise serves as deputy director of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, said that Israel’s scout team, sent to the country last week, had decided to establish the field hospital in a remote area that lacked medical facilities. “We established our field hospital here, in Bogo City, alongside a hospital that usually has two-three physicians per shift,” Merin said.
The hospital serves a city of nearly 80,000 people and an island of 250,000, and Merin said he had not seen any other international medical teams in the region.
[…] He estimated that the Israeli team would remain in place for a total of two weeks, treating upwards of 2,000 patients. “We will give medical assistance to the most acute cases,” he said, noting that word had spread fast, with dozens of patients lined up outside the hospital at 5 a.m. on Sunday morning. “Unfortunately, in this region, if we stay here for two months, or even for two years, we will have medical work every day.”
The U.S. Marines and Navy are in the Philippines, but I don’t think there’s any other Middle East nation sending rescue teams. And they have so much oil money, too. I wonder why that is.
As usual, the world media mostly ignores the good that Israel does. This is all I could find from the AP.
Israeli army medics have delivered a baby in the typhoon-hit central Philippines, and the grateful mother named him Israel.
About 150 members of the Israeli Defence Forces Home Front Command set up a field hospital in Bogo city on Cebu Island after Typhoon Haiyan killed thousands of people.
Color me unsurprised. But the Filipinos on that island will be talking about the Israelis for years to come, and remembering them with fondness.
One of the constant refrains of anti-Semites around the world is that the Holocaust was not unique, that others than the Jews were targeted for extinction or mass murder or genocide.
And yet, the more you read about the ruthless, mechanical efficiency of the Holocaust, the more you realize that there was no other quite like it. The Nazis did their best to erase an entire people from the memory of the world.
From 1943 to 1944, nearly 800 Jewish men and women worked — ate, slept, lived — among these objects. Some saw their own possessions or those of family members pass before their eyes, and at that moment understood that they, too, had been slated for internment or deportation.
The contents of each apartment were divided into two groups. Damaged objects or personal ones, like papers or family photos, were burned almost daily in a bonfire at the Quai de la Gare. The other items were sorted and classified by category, rather than source. A saucepan taken from one family would be added to a stack of other saucepans rather than kept in the original set. Stripped of their provenance, items lost their identity. Belongings became goods.
We are still finding caches of items looted from Jews during the Holocaust, and we are still finding disgusting human beings who think that they are the owners of the looted items–and states willing to allow other states to keep the looted items no matter how wrong that is.
The Munich man from whom German authorities confiscated an art trove they believe includes Nazi-looted works broke his silence, saying he isn’t willing to return any of the art to previous owners, including pieces taken from Jews.
“I will not speak with them, and I won’t freely give anything back, no, no,” Cornelius Gurlitt, 80, said to German weekly Der Spiegel of reports that government officials are working to negotiate settlements for many of the works. “When I’m dead they can do with them what they want.”
It’s not his to keep, nor is it his place to negotiate a settlement. Those are stolen artworks, many of them stolen from Jews who were then murdered in the Holocaust. If Germany doesn’t restore every last piece of art, they will be continuing the robbery that was detailed in the piece above.
But the systematic looting and redistribution of everyday goods of little value and often in poor condition suggest a motivation that goes well beyond economic calculation in a time of hardship. Indeed, several Nazi services, including those of Hermann Göring, regularly questioned the financial rationale of Möbel Aktion. If the project endured nonetheless it’s because one of its fundamental objectives was to destroy all trace of the Jews’ very existence.
That was the point of the Holocaust. Hitler failed. His heirs should know better than to allow this piece of trash to keep anything that does not belong to him.
Got up this morning and could barely raise my arms. “What the heck did I do?” I wondered. Oh, yeah. Went shooting. With a heavy AR-15.
I have got to get back into shape.
I had a very tiring week, followed by a tiring (but fun) weekend. I saw If/Then, Idina Menzel’s new show previewing at the National Theater in DC. I loved it, for the most part. Can’t wait to see it on Broadway. Then I went shooting this morning with my friend Stretch, the guy who taught me to shoot all those years ago. Turns out I can shoot a semi-auto 9mm well, too. His AR-15 was too big and heavy for me, but I did all right with it. Found a much lighter and smaller version in the shop that I will be saving up for to buy next year. (Sooner, if they try to ban them.) It was a blast firing with the laser sight on.
Got home late this afternoon, very tired, but happy to be home. Meimei and Tigger were happy to see me, as I’d left them alone overnight. Meimei was locked in the guest room, where she sleeps so I can sleep without having a kitten attack my feet every time I move.
Too tired to dig out any new pics tonight. I’ll put them up tomorrow.
And I’m going to see Idina Menzel’s new play, If/Then.
Talk among yourselves. I have some celebratin’ to do.
