Queers for Palestine: They’re on the wrong side

Posted on 10/28/2009 by Meryl Yourish

So, let me get this straight—a gay Palestinian, who has been living in Israel with an Israeli partner for years, gets denied entry to Israel, can’t go back to his home town because he’s already been tortured by the Palestinian “police” and will be murdered if he returns, so he is currently living with—a religious settler in the West Bank? What’s that? A devout Jew is saving the life of a homosexual Palestinian?

“I can’t go back to my home in Israel; I can’t enter the village. The only option left for me is to hide out in a settlement, in a home that accepts me in a humane way,” said T. on Tuesday.

I think the gay community that is so stridently against Israel is working for the wrong side.

Granted, it seems like the defense forces are screwing this poor guy, and yes, things like that really do suck for the Palestinians. But the reasons for the checkpoints and the suspicion have been borne out by the many terror attacks, and even more attempted terror attacks. Just the other day, a Palestinian woman stabbed an Israeli soldier manning a checkpoint.

But—reverse the situation, and the gay guy dies. Gee, I wonder if Sullivan will bother to cover this story. Probably not without much hand-wringing about how evil Israel is preventing the Palestinian from getting back in.

Posted in Israel, palestinian politics, Religion | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Ignoring a decade

Posted on 10/28/2009 by Soccerdad

Matthew Yglesias (via memeorandum):

I was debating with Jon Chait at a J Street panel this morning on the subject of “what does it mean to be pro-Israel?” As expected, we disagreed on a number of points, most of which I was right on and he was wrong on. But one thing he said in his opening remarks that I really disagreed with was that there was an ambiguity running through the J Street constituency as to whether the group was or should be pro-Israel at all.

That just struck me as kind of nuts. My J Street button said “Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace.” It’s not a subtle aspect of the messaging. But when we moved to the Q&A time it became clear that a number of people in the audience really were quite uncomfortable self-defining as “pro-Israel” in any sense and that others are uncomfortable with the basic Zionist concept of a Jewish national state. I was, of course, aware that those views existed but it had seemed to me that it was clear that that wasn’t what J Street is there to advocate for. Apparently, though, it wasn’t clear to everyone.

So Yglesias was surprised that folks who came to J-Street’s conference didn’t want to be considered pro-Israel? Why would that be? Here’s Spencer Ackerman’s view on the topic:

I don’t really have any interest in affixing a label to people that they don’t embrace themselves. But I think the answer is that it would be shortsighted to view them outside the “pro-Israel” community. If Israel doesn’t get out of the West Bank soon, demographic realities will force Israel to make the most painful existential choice of its life: whether to abandon Jewish democracy or whether to abandon Jewish statehood in favor of a binational homeland. Both of these options, in fundamental ways, represent the end of Israel. Not from an Iranian nuclear weapon. Not from a super-empowered Palestinian intifada. But from political failure and international diplomatic failure, the end of Israel can, actually, be achieved.

In other words, then, it is pro-Israel to demand that Israel make concessions to an enemy who still denies its right to exist. But this is what’s really problematic with Ackerman’s formulation: Israel’s legitimacy rests on the ability of the Palestinians to create a state. Worse, there seems to be no test for the legitimacy of Palestine. For Ackerman the creation of an Islamist Palestine would not have to answer the same “existential” question as Israel would. In other words Israel’s legitimacy would be defined by its enemies; Palestine’s legitimacy is a given.

Perhaps Ackerman would have an argument twenty years ago, but since Israel has abandoned Gaza and the major cities of Judea and Samaria, there is no demographic threat. There is only a Palestinian failure to create a state. Ackerman prefers to put an impossible onus on Israel. That’s not “pro-Israel” by any definition.

In Yglesias at JStreet David Bernstein writes:

I perfectly understand the difficulty that one could have with these ideas, because when in my twenties, I remember arguing with members of the older generation that they were too paranoid about anti-Semitism, that Israel needs to be much more flexible to achieve a peace accord, and that the murderous rhetoric about Israel emanating from the Arab world and elsewhere would go away once the parties all recognized their rational self-interest and came to a peace deal. It took many years, and, among other things, an intifada that involved a remarkable number of “progressive” Western intellectuals apologizing for, or even justifying, blowing up kids in pizza parlors in response to a serious peace offer from Israel, and a series of modern-day blood libels in Europe during Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 to realize that I had been extremely naive. It’s not that I’ve given up hope; but I learned to take what seemed to a younger me like pure craziness that couldn’t possibly be serious-such as the continuing popularity of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Muslim world-very seriously.

This is an excellent synopsis of the past decade. And yet, there are those who don’t accept it. Yes the J-Street crowd pretends that none of this happens and that Israel is at the heart of the failure to achieve peace in the Middle East. Never mind, for example, that the Palestinians still don’t accept a Jewish right to a state.

Bernstein’s generous to the J-Streeter’s and their fellow travelers. He doesn’t think that they are anti-Israel. I don’t see how someone could witness the events in the Middle East since 2000 and still put the onus of compromise on Israel and still be pro-Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time | Tagged | Comments Off on Ignoring a decade

The PA’s torturers: Made in the U.K. (and USA?)

Posted on 10/27/2009 by Meryl Yourish

The proponents of peace have declared for years that if only the Palestinians had western-trained security forces, the terrorism would stop. But they didn’t seem to notice that their millions of dollars per year to fund the Palestinian police force was going to a force that uses torture on a regular basis.

The horrific torture of hundreds of people by Palestinian security forces in the West Bank is being funded by British taxpayers.

An investigation by The Mail on Sunday has found that the forces responsible get £20million a year from the UK.

The victims – some left maimed – are rounded up for alleged involvement with the militant Islamic group Hamas, yet many have nothing to do with it.

I will be waiting for the UN to denounce this. But first, the Daily Mail, being the British press, must blame Israel for it somehow.

Not only are PA forces carrying out torture, the authority ignores judges’ orders to release political detainees. Last month at least 30 journalists, teachers and students were arrested – as the crackdown on Hamas was praised by a senior Israeli defence official as a necessary ‘iron fist policy’.

Say, do you think the Brits are aware that the Palestinians are using their money to pay torturers?

A British diplomat in Jerusalem said: ‘Obviously we are very aware of problems with the Palestinian security forces. We are working hard to improve their standards across the board – including human rights standards.’

This is some of what the Brits’ £20 million pounds per year is paying for:

The commonest ‘mini’ method, known as ‘shabah’, involves hanging up shackled victims by their arms. The teacher told how he was held in a cellar at Jenaid prison last month.

‘First they shackled my hands behind my back, tied a rope round the shackles and looped it over a beam. They pulled until I was standing on tiptoes, just still able to take some weight on my legs. Then they jerked the rope so it all came on to my arms and held me there until I was on the point of passing out. They were laughing, saying it would dislocate my shoulders. They did it over and over for five or six days.’

Sometimes sharp-edged sardine cans were placed under his heels, so that when weight came back on his legs, they inflicted deep cuts. Two other victims independently described this, too.

The Brits are now going to send intelligence officers into the West Bank to teach the PA torturers to stop torturing. Their initial budget? £100,000.

Interestingly, none of the wire services have managed to find this story worth picking up and spreading. Apparently, only Israel can be guilty of human rights abuses. Just imagine the number of headlines around the world media if it were the Israeli police forces that were abusing prisoners like this.

What time is it, kids? That’s right. It’s Israeli Double Standard Time.

Posted in Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias, palestinian politics | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Temple Mount clashes

Posted on 10/27/2009 by Soccerdad

In its report on the violence in Jerusalem, the Washington Post reports:

Israeli police firing stun grenades faced off Sunday against masked Palestinian protesters hurling stones and plastic chairs outside the Holy Land’s most volatile shrine, where past violence has escalated into prolonged conflict.

This doesn’t quite give the whole picture, as Barry Rubin recently explained:

The salient fact is that 80 years after the 1929 riots the same scenario has prevailed of demonization and lies about Jews, deliberately inflamed by Arab political and religious forces, has led to massive Arab violence.

(For details behind the 1996 riots read this.)

The New York Times also reported on the recent violence. And Meryl recalls some relevant history that the newspapers won’t.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Wear the label proudly

Posted on 10/27/2009 by Soccerdad

David Bernstein offers some friendly advice to J-Street. I certainly agree with his advice. However, I disagree with one of his premises.

Second, from approximately 1988 to Fall 2000, I held views on the Arab-Israeli conflict that would put me comfortably in the mainstream of the JStreeters. Events in the Summer and Fall of 2000 led me to change my views, but I understand where many JStreeters are coming from, and I don’t think their views should be dismissed as “anti-Israel.”

This is significant. In the fall of 2000, the policies advocated by the Israeli peace camp were shown – by events – to be mistaken. Prof. Bernstein, when he witnessed the same events – the so-called “Aqsa intifada, Hezbollah’s cross border attack – and adjusted his views accordingly. The J-Street folks did not and now still believe that the only the thing that prevents peace in the Middle East is Israeli intransigence. If after 2000, someone still figures that Israel is mostly or even largely to blame for the failure of the peace process, he is no friend of Israel.

And even if I weren’t calling J-Street “anti-Israel,” the organization has a knack for demonstrating its true leanings. Yesterday at the supposedly unaffiliated J-Street bloggers panel, a pro-Israel attendee was thrown out by security. So much for J-Street’s claim that it is looking for debate.

Stavis, a paid conference attendee (after all, Jeremy Ben-Ami stated that they welcome those who disagree), was in the back of the room filming (as were many others). Some time in, apparently recognizing a member of his enemies list, Silverstein springs up and can be seen in the video crossing the room to get security. He then approaches Stavis, who is doing nothing and causing no disruption whatsoever, to tell him security is going to kick him out.

He is then approached by a J Street official, Amy Spitalnick, Press and New Media Associate, who can be heard telling him he has to leave. The video ends at that point as, Stavis tells me, she grabbed at the camera.

And while J-Street (or specifically Jeremy Ben Ami) denied any connection between the organization and the bloggers’ panel, Michael Goldfarb observed:

The “independent” blogger panel at J Street’s conference can only be described as clownish. The panel consisted mostly of crackpots and self-described anti-Zionists and “one-staters” (J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami calls the one-state solution a “nightmare,” but it seems to be the dream of many of the organization’s supporters). Though J Street tried to distance itself from the panel by describing it as an “unofficial” and “independent” event, the bloggers used one of the rooms otherwise reserved for conference events, a podium in the front had a J Street placard on it, and a J Street banner hung on the back wall of the room.

And if it wasn’t enough that J-Street was promoting a group of unapologetic anti-Zionists, one of the organizations affiliates has decided that it will officially do away with the “pro-Israel” label. (h/t Elder of Ziyon)

“We don’t want to isolate people because they don’t feel quite so comfortable with ‘pro-Israel,’ so we say ‘pro-peace,'” said American University junior Lauren Barr of the “J Street U” slogan, “but behind that is ‘pro-Israel.'”

Barr, secretary of the J Street U student board that decided the slogan’s terminology, explained that on campus, “people feel alienated when the conversation revolves around a connection to Israel only, because people feel connected to Palestine, people feel connected to social justice, people feel connected to the Middle East.”

Martin Peretz wonders about the possible political repercussions J-Street will suffer.

Well, they did invite J Street, and now they are stuck with the damage. The J Streeters went around identifying themselves as Obama’s people in the crowd. I suppose that was good for them. But it was not good for Obama. The fact is that, by this past weekend, when J-Street launched its D.C. fest, it was already seen in the public mind as a bunch of nut cases and very much anti-Israel in the very substantive sense. It was callous about Iran’s nuclear threat to Israel, was against sanctions, supported negotiations with Hamas, which even the E.U. disdained. Moreover, it refuses to recognize that one obstacle to a two-state solution is that neither the Palestinians nor the other Arabs can even contemplate security guarantees to Israel.

Mr. President: You courted a friend. Now you have him. Woe is you.

My advice to J-Street, is: if you still insist that Israel is largely or mainly at fault for the failure of the Middle East peace process, if you give a platform to an anti-Zionist group and if you feel that calling yourself “pro-Israel” will hinder your recruitment efforts, you are anti-Israel. It’s your label. Wear it proudly.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome | Tagged | 1 Comment

The non-moderate Hamas: All of Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim

Posted on 10/26/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Jimmy Carter, the EU, and various American State Department officials (as well as presidential aides for the last two administrations) all insist that Hamas will moderate. That Hamas will work with Israel to reach some form of agreement. That the radical talk is just that, talk.

Really?

Following a day of clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday evening stated that the fate of the capital would be determined by force, not negotiations.

“The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables,” Mashaal said in a speech, according to Channel 10.

“The Israelis want to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is not all. They want to hold their religious ceremonies in the mosque … in preparation for demolishing it and building their temple there,” he reportedly said.

In case you were thinking that perhaps he just meant “traditionally Arab” east Jerusalem (which is not; the Jewish Quarter is in “traditionally Arab” east Jerusalem, well, he didn’t. Emphasis mine.

“Jerusalem is all of Jerusalem, not only [the east Jerusalem neighborhood of] Abu-Dis. The Arabs and Muslims are [the city’s] residents, and the Zionists have no claim over it,” he said.

And of course, he didn’t call it Jerusalem. He called it “al-Quds.”

And here’s your hypocritical laugh-line of the year:

“Jordan, out of its historical responsibilities in being the custodian of the holy places in Jerusalem, is extremely worried about what is taking place and warns against going ahead with this provocative behavior on the part of Israeli troops,” he reportedly added.

This is a picture of the Jordanian protection of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967:

The destroyed synagogue

And this is the synagogue after Israel captured east Jerusalem and restored the desecrated Jewish holy sites:


The rebuilt synagogue

Methinks the Jordanian omitted the word “Muslim” before “holy places” in that line. Because Jordan may have been the custodian of the holy places for nineteen years, but it certainly wasn’t a good guardian of Jewish sites. And it wasn’t good for Christians, either.

But hey, let’s not let an opportunity to bash Israel go by unheeded. It’s almost as good as the AP calling the rioters “protesters” in every news story they write about the Temple Mount riots. Check out that incredibly provocative picture at the link. What are they protesting, exactly?

Posted in Hamas, Israel | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Weymouth interviews Netanyahu

Posted on 10/26/2009 by Soccerdad

In the Washington Post the other day,
Lally Weymouth interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu. The first page of the interview was on the subject of the Goldstone commission report. Netanyahu was emphatic.

Q: What did you think of the Goldstone report?

A: I thought there were limits to hypocrisy but I was obviously wrong. The so-called human rights commission accuses Israel that legitimately defended itself against Hamas of war crimes. Mind you, Hamas didn’t commit just one type of war crime. It committed four. First, they called for the destruction of Israel, which under the U.N. Charter is considered a war crime — incitement to genocide; secondly, they fired deliberately on civilians; third, they hid behind civilians; and fourth, they’ve been holding our captured soldier, Gilad Shalit, without access to the Red Cross, for three years.

And who gets accused of criminal behavior at the end of the day? Israel that sent thousands of text messages and made tens of thousands of cellular phone calls to Palestinian civilians [to warn them to evacuate]. This inversion of justice is patently absurd.

The next answer is also of note:

People here appear to feel the Goldstone report is very unfair, but some have called for an internal inquiry. What is your position?

We’ve had 26 allegations investigated. Not because of the U.N. decision but because this is our procedure. We’ve investigated people for wrong behavior. We’ve put people on trial in the past because we’re a functioning democracy. We’ll do it in this case too. But what the Goldstone report actually accuses Israel of is deliberately targeting civilians, which is patently false.

Recall Goldstone’s own assessment of his report:

For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”

He recalled his work as chief prosecutor for the international war crimes tribunal in Yugoslavia in 1994. When he began working, Goldstone was presented with a report commissioned by the U.N. Security Council based on what he said was a fact-finding mission similar to his own in Gaza.

“We couldn’t use that report as evidence at all,” Goldstone said. “But it was a useful roadmap for our investigators, for me as chief prosecutor, to decide where we should investigate. And that’s the purpose of this sort of report. If there was an independent investigation in Israel, then I think the facts and allegations referred to in our report would be a useful road map.”

Before Goldstone convened his commission, did he ask to review the proceedings of the Israel investigations and see if they met his standard? (That’s a rhetorical question. He did not; he assumed that Israel was incapable of handling such matters fairly.) He simply proceeded from the assumption that Israel did not carry out any adequate investigations. In other words, despite the mantle of righteousness that he wraps himself in, Goldstone assumed Israel’s guilt. His goal, then, was not to investigate Israel, but to convict it. (This wasn’t the only instance where Goldstone blurred the law to support his foregone conclusions.) This presumption of guilt is a good reason for Israel not to launch any investigations of its own based on Goldstone’s report.

There’s a lot more to the interview (via memeorandum) and well worth reading.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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The whiner that roared

Posted on 10/25/2009 by Soccerdad

You may not be aware, but the NJDC just had a conference. It was attended by many Democratic legislators, an advisor to the President and even, yes, Ambassador Michael Oren. But if you didn’t know about it, you won’t read about it in the Washington Post. Despite my disagreements with the NJDC, it is a real organization and doesn’t need phony PR to be something that it really isn’t.

J-Street is different. Its viability is dependent on its relevance. But it has no real constituency and it is premised on a phony belief that AIPAC is “too right wing.” But a few rich, self-promoting and politically connected Jews got together and figured that they were too important to be ignored and called themselves a “pro-Israel, pro-peace” alternative to AIPAC. They got some sympathetic mentions in newspapers and but as a commenter at Jeffrey Goldberg’s blog noted:

Who, of the Israeli electorate, does J-Street represent? They occasionally find themselves agreeing with Meretz, representing the leftmost 3% of all Jewish voters, but who did they represent when they spoke out against Cast Lead, a defensive war that even Meretz was in favor of?

In other words J-Street has no real constituency in Israel. And while Jews, in general, approve of President Obama’s handling of the Middle East, I doubt that, position by position they’d much approved of J-Street’s. Unless J-Street designed the polls themselves.

So with J-Street bleeding legislators and rejected by the Israeli ambassador, what does J-Street leader, Jeremy Ben Ami do? He finds another sympathetic journalist to whine to, in this case, Dan Eggen of the Washington Post who writes in Israel conference to open amid controversy:

J Street, an advocacy and lobbying firm created 18 months ago, is holding its first annual conference beginning Sunday, with participation from about 150 Democratic members of Congress, many current and former Israeli politicians and U.S. national security adviser James L. Jones, who will be giving a keynote speech Tuesday.

But the self-described “pro-Israel, pro-peace” group has been rebuffed in its attempts to get Israel’s U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren, to speak at the gathering. In a statement explaining the refusal, the Israeli Embassy accused J Street of endorsing policies that “could impair Israel’s interests.”

I suppose that this report is a bit of self-promotion on Ben Ami’s part. It allows him to complain for example:

He said the group has been the victim of “thuggish smears” by conservatives who favor more hawkish policies in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, and said he had hoped that Oren would have accepted an invitation to speak at the conference.

“I am extremely disappointed that this is the reaction of the government of Israel to an organization that is looking to expand the base of support in this country for Israel and is deeply concerned about its future,” Ben-Ami said.

“Thuggish smears?” Look, were the reports accurate?

Eggen also informs us:

The organization also abruptly canceled plans for a “poetry slam” at the event after conservative activists and bloggers unearthed writings by two participants that compared the suffering of Holocaust victims to that of Palestinians in Israel’s occupied territories.

and

Some conservatives have also criticized J Street for accepting donations from individuals connected to organizations doing Palestinian and Iranian advocacy work. In addition, conservatives have attacked the conference for including Salam al-Marayati, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, who apologized in 2001 for suggesting on a radio show that Israel should be considered a suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The tone of the article, crediting (or blaming) “conservatives” with the criticisms of J-Street blunts the fact that these two events alone would put off most American Jews – if they knew about them. I also am baffled by framing al-Marayati’s rant in terms of his “apology.” Most people aren’t politically involved but they’d reasonably conclude that an organization that is willing to give a platform to someone who would blame Israel for 9/11 or compare Israel to Nazi Germany is not exactly pro-Israel. This isn’t a matter of conservative or liberal; it’s just common sense.

Eggen gets an excellent quote from Roberta Seid of Stand With Us:

Roberta Seid, research and education director for StandWithUs, said she views J Street as “outside the mainstream,” and that broad support for Obama among American Jews does not mean agreement with the administration’s Israel policy.

“American Jews seem to love Obama; American Jews are liberal,” Seid said. “But they are much firmer in their support of Israel and opposed to viewing the conflict as equally Israel’s fault. I think they draw the line there.”

Incidentally, Jeffrey Goldberg also gave Ben Ami the opportunity to whine. Goldberg generously linked to my account of J-Street’s blogging panel, asked him about it:

JG: On another subject, you’re giving some space at your conference to a group of bloggers who range from the anti-Zionist Max Blumenthal to the anti-Zionist Helena Cobban.

JB: There’s a lunch. They’ve asked us that, since there is a lunch, can we have a room where we who are bloggers on this issue can sit and talk to each other? I mean, give me a break, I’m not giving them any approval whatsoever, and there’s no sanction to their beliefs. I’m just saying, sure, there are seven free rooms on the floor, use one. I’m not going to say, “No you can’t eat lunch together.” I mean really.

So Ben Ami minimizes this “lunch.” Fine.Ben Ami concludes:

I believe that we are at the center. The Marty Peretzes and the Michael Goldfarbs and the Lenny Ben-Davids are on the right, to the far right, and there are people to our left, and we are in the middle trying to put forward a thoughtful, moderate, mainstream point of view about how to save Israel as a Jewish home.

It’s hogwash, of course. J-Street is pretty far to the left as it refuses to acknowledge the many concessions Israel has made over the past 16 years. But even if we take him at his word. Notice how casually he dismisses someone like Martin Peretz, who, if anything, is close in ideology to the Labor party of Israel. Is someone like Peretz really “to the far right?”

But even if we eschew political labels, what would Jeremy Ben Ami answer if he were asked who his own view coincided with more: Martin Peretz or Helena Cobban? He never explicitly makes the choice, but I think you can draw a reasonable conclusion from the interview that he identifies more with Cobban, the anti-Zionist, Hamas booster, than with the Zionist, Peretz. I do not understand how people could read Eggen’s article or Goldberg’s interview and believe that J-Street could be classified as “pro-Israel.”

For more J-Street reading please check out JoshuaPundit and the Hashmonean.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel | Tagged | 3 Comments

The unbiased media, part the next

Posted on 10/25/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Say, take a look at this headline and tell me what kind of images it conjures up:

Israeli police storm Jerusalem’s holiest site

Holy crap! Israeli police stormed the Temple Mount? Really? Let’s see what
the Israeli media have to say. First, Ynet:

Jerusalem: Temple Mount riots resume
Nine police officers were lightly injured Sunday stones and Molotov cocktails hurled at forces stationed at the Temple Mount as part of the high state of alert in the area. A female Australian reporter was lightly injured by stones in the Old City.

Forces patrolling the area also noticed oil poured on the floor, apparently in order to cause the officers to slip and make their activity in the area more difficult.

A police force entered the Temple Mount compound in order to catch the stone throwers, using shock grenades. More than 18 people were arrested on the Mount and in its surroundings, including senior Fatah member Khatem Abdel Kader, who is charge of the Jerusalem portfolio in the Palestinian organization.

JPost:

9 cops, reporter lightly hurt in J’lem
Nine police officers and a foreign reporter were lightly hurt Sunday in clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in the capital.

Police were forced to storm the Temple Mount twice during the the day of fierce rioting, and were met by a hail of rocks and a firebomb.

And Ha’aretz, the Israeli paper most quoted by the New York Times:

Israel Police battle Arab rioters on Temple Mount; PA official arrested
Stone-throwing Arab youths wounded three policemen on the Temple Mount on Sunday as Jerusalem police, firing water cannons and stun grenades, raided the holy site in a bid to quell repeated bouts of rioting. At least 18 Palestinians were wounded over the course of the day.

Police stormed the compound twice; the first time was in response to Arab youths who pelted officers with rocks and poured oil on them.

Later Sunday morning, about 100 Arab youths renewed rioting at the Temple Mount, after which Border Police and regular policemen raided the site again, using stun grenades to disperse the rioters.

In other words, Arabs rioted on the Temple Mount and were throwing stones below at Jews, a life-threatening action. Israeli police moved in to stop the stone-throwing and rioting. And how does the AP portray this?

Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem’s holiest shrine Sunday, firing stun grenades to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinian protesters in a fresh eruption of violence at the most volatile spot in the country.

A wall of Israeli riot police behind plexiglass shields closed in on the crowd, sending many protesters – overwhelmingly young men – running for cover into the black-domed Al-Aqsa mosque. The mosque is one part of the compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

After several rounds of clashes, dozens of protesters were still holed up inside the mosque at midafternoon, occasionally opening shuttered doors to throw objects at police. The Israeli forces did not enter the building and police said they had no plans to do so. There were no serious injuries.

You know what you didn’t see in the AP? Any stories leading up to the events that happened today. It was all over the Israeli press that Arabs were calling for rioting at the Temple Mount again. But the AP puts none of these facts into its article.

The Jerusalem Police will bolster deployment throughout the Old City, east Jerusalem and Temple Mount compound Sunday, following recent calls by both Arab and Jewish elements to arrive at the compound on Sunday.

The Islamic Movement announced it will make buses available for worshipers who wish to arrive at the mosque Sunday.

The movement’s spokesman Zahy Nujeidat said the flyer calling Arabs to protect the area was issued “in response to those who try and desecrate al-Aqsa.”

Instead, the AP puts this as the fourth paragraph:

Israel’s national police chief, David Cohen, accused a small group of Muslim extremists of trying to foment violence – echoing a charge made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu two weeks ago.

Note the attempt to blame it on Netanyahu and make it seem like a false accusation, when it is absolutely true. Also notice that the lead calls them Palestinian “protesters,” when, in fact, they are rioters. What are they protesting? Are there signs? Is there a cause? No. They are responding to the lies that Jews are going to “attack” al-Aqsa. It is incitement—not the “charge” of incitement. But those facts would affect the narrative, and so, they don’t wind up in the story.

Typical. That’s why I have an entire category titled “AP Media Bias.”

Posted in AP Media Bias, Israel, Religion | 4 Comments

Compare and contrast

Posted on 10/25/2009 by Meryl Yourish

This is why Israel has more Nobel prize winners than the entire Arab world combined.

Lebanese chefs prepared a massive plate of hummus weighing over two tons Saturday that broke a world record organizers said was previously held by Israel — a bid to reaffirm proprietorship over the popular Middle Eastern dip.

“Come and fight for your bite, you know you’re right!” was the slogan for the event – part of a simmering war over regional cuisine between Lebanon and Israel, which have had tense political relations for decades.

Lebanese businessmen accuse Israel of stealing a host of traditional Middle Eastern dishes, particularly hummus, and marketing them worldwide as Israeli.

“Lebanon is trying to win a battle against Israel by registering this new Guinness World Record and telling the whole world that hummus is a Lebanese product, its part of our traditions,” said Fady Jreissati, vice president of operations at International Fairs and Promotions group, the event’s organizer.

Yeah, you really have to concentrate on what’s important. Don’t try to break Israeli records in things like numbers of Ph.D’s per capita, or tech companies, or scientific innovation. Instead, let’s concentrate on what’s really important:

A similar attempt to set a new world record will be held Sunday for the largest serving of tabbouleh, a salad made of chopped parsley and tomatoes, that Lebanon also claims as its own.

Way to go, Lebanon. That’ll show ’em.

Posted in Israel, Juvenile Scorn, Lebanon | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Lessons from teaching

Posted on 10/24/2009 by Meryl Yourish

This weekend was Brandon and Brittany’s b’nai mitzvah. In my six years of teaching fourth grade, I had four sets of boy-girl twins. I was always struck by both the bond between them, and their attempts to hide it because, after all, ew, it’s a girl, and ew, it’s a boy. Brandon and Brittany were always particularly bad at pretending they didn’t like each other all that much.

I hadn’t seen them in about a year. They are tall and pretty, and tall and handsome, and still the same cheerful, happy children they were three years ago. They did a magnificent job. Services today were like old home week for me—there were ten of my students from two different years there, as well as their parents. The kiddush lunch was a great time to catch up with everyone, and solidified my decision to have a daled class reunion Chanukah party this year.

I miss teaching. I really miss the kids. It was nice to find out that they still think of me, as well. The twins’ father told me today that they told him I was their favorite Hebrew school teacher. And that’s three years after they were my students.

Those six years were sometimes extremely difficult, sometimes a lot of fun, but overall, I think the six years I taught Hebrew school were a gift. To me, not to them. Jamie told me last night that she and Zack, one of the twins’ classmates, were bored and trying to figure out what game to play. “Let’s play Daled ball!” Zack said. That’s a game I made up three years ago to try to keep bored fourth graders learning while also giving them recess. We’d stand in a big circle and toss the ball. You had to say something that had something to do with Judaism or you couldn’t pass the ball. It could be a Hebrew word, a letter, the name of a holiday, the name of a prayer, almost anything. And the fact that three years later, Zack still wanted to play it—well, like I said. It’s a gift.

I saw Zack today. He had a big grin and a wave. And he talked me into getting him some chocolate cake from the grownup’s dessert table. (I’ve always had a soft touch, and they all know it.)

The children have, over the years, taught me at least as much as I taught them. And now they’re growing up into amazing young men and women. My first class is in their junior year in high school. They’ll be off to college soon.

I think it’s time to go back to teaching, at least as a substitute. I can’t take Tuesdays off from work any more, but I don’t think I’d mind being around children on a Sunday morning, teaching them to read and write Hebrew. Especially now that my little ones are growing up.

Posted in Teaching | 4 Comments

You know you’re a redneck when…

Posted on 10/23/2009 by Meryl Yourish

You get charged with a DUI in a motorized La-Z-Boy.

A Proctor man driving a motorized La-Z-Boy lounge chair hit a parked vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

There’s a picture at the link.

Anderson claimed he was driving the chair fine until a woman jumped on it and knocked the chair off course. He has one prior DWI conviction. He couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Proctor Deputy Police Chief Troy Foucault said the chair was powered by a converted lawnmower with a Briggs & Stratton engine. It has a stereo, cup holders and other custom options, including different power levels.

Happy Friday, folks. I have a twin b’nai mitzvah to attend tonight and tomorrow. My ex-students are all growing up. Hopefully, none of them will grow up into anything like this guy.

Posted in American Scene, Humor | 4 Comments

Soupy Sales: No more pie in the face

Posted on 10/23/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Soupy Sales died yesterday. A childhood icon is no more.

His greatest success came in New York with “The Soupy Sales Show” — an ostensible children’s show that had little to do with Captain Kangaroo and other kiddie fare. Sales’ manic, improvisational style also attracted an older audience that responded to his envelope-pushing antics.

Sales, who was typically clad in a black sweater and oversized bow-tie, was once suspended for a week after telling his legion of tiny listeners to empty their mothers’ purse and mail him all the pieces of green paper bearing pictures of the presidents.

I used to watch Milton Supman every day. He was a mainstay of my childhood. Now, I guess he’s launching pies at the angels.

Posted in Pop Culture | 4 Comments

Briefs

Posted on 10/23/2009 by Meryl Yourish

The delegitimization of Israel continues: San Francisco idiots interrupt Ehud Olmert’s speech with repeated cries of “war criminal.” Best protester line: “I’m not against free speech, but this is not free speech.” Got it? His interruptions are free speech. Ehud Olmert speaking? Not free speech. Cell phone video at the link. Also moans and groans of the free speechnick protester, who is probably charging the police who walked him out with brutality.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt: George Mitchell says it’s too early to say that the Obama administration’s attempt to bulldoze Israel into giving concessions to the Palestinian—er, I mean, peace negotiations—has failed. You know, it’s really not.

Oh, yeah, like that’ll work: Don’t think that the truth means a thing in the world’s bias against Israel. Bringing foreign journalists into the tunnels under the Western Wall to prove that Israel isn’t digging under the wall to destroy al-aqsa? Feh. Who are you going to believe, them or the Palestinians’ lying mouths?

Egypt bans Israeli doctors, then un-bans them: It’s so good to know that Egypt is at peace with Israel, because then they’d never do anything as stupid as ban Israeli researchers from a long-planned breast cancer conference in Egypt. Oh, wait. They did. However, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure pushed until the Egyptians un-banned Israelis. Good for them. (Not the Egyptians. They’re asshats.)

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias | Tagged , | Comments Off on Briefs

Gaza report’s author is really full of himself

Posted on 10/23/2009 by Soccerdad

Today the New York Times reports Gaza Report Author Asks U.S. to Clarify Concerns. The article is flawed for what it gets wrong and for its failure to scrutinize any of Justice Goldstone’s self-aggrandizing claims.

What’s wrong with the first paragraph?

Richard Goldstone, the lead author of a United Nations report that found evidence of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during last winter’s Gaza war, challenged the Obama administration in an interview broadcast Thursday to explain what it has called serious concerns about his report.

Except as Hamas observed, the Goldstone commission did not explicitly mention that Hamas was guilty of war crimes. Besides, even if the report did mention Hamas, the mention of war crimes committed against Israel was negligible. The balance suggested in the news story was in no way reflected in the report.

The report found evidence that some Israeli soldiers had intentionally killed Palestinian civilians during the three-week conflict in violation of the laws of war. It described the Israeli military assault on Gaza as “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.”

It also said there was evidence that the Palestinian militant rocket attacks on towns in southern Israel constituted war crimes.

How Goldstone could conclude that Israel’s goal was to “punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population” is beyond me. That is precisely the behavior that Israel was responding too. After eight years of provocation. (h/t OyVey Blog) And especially after Israel no longer occupied Gaza. But of course, one of the flaws, of the report was to ignore the provocations of Hamas. If he really needs an Obama administration to explain that, his willful blindness is beyond belief.

As far as evidence that “rocket attacks” against Israel are war crimes, none is needed. The action is self-evidently a war crime.

“People generally don’t like to be accused of criminal activity, so it didn’t surprise me that there was criticism, even strong criticism, and it has come from both sides,” Mr. Goldstone said in the interview. “But I do regret the extremes to which some of the criticism has gone and the fact that it has been so personalized.”

He then lashed out at his detractors, saying, “I’ve no doubt, many of the critics — I would say the overwhelmingly majority of the critics — haven’t read the report. And, you know, what proves that, I think, is the level of criticism doesn’t go to the substance of the report. There still haven’t been responses to the really serious allegations that are made.”

As noted above, there wasn’t strong criticism from Hamas. Hamas loved the report. Goldstone is being disingenuous here. And of course, the “personalized” nature of the attacks has been in response to the smug self-righteousness he wraps himself in.

Enough time has elapsed since Goldstone released his report for plenty of substantive critiques to have appeared. Presumably, he is computer literate enough to do some searches and find those critiques and respond. The way Goldstone has wandered from media outlet to media outlet feigning outrage that someone would not take his word as gospel and asking others to point out the flaws in the report, positively begs for mockery.

And I take exception to his conclusion that many of his critics haven’t read the report. I have not read the whole report. I’ve read sections. And I’ve concluded that Goldstone drew his conclusions before his investigation and tailored the narrative to fit those conclusions. Frankly I’m offended that Goldstone’s been too lazy to seek out and respond to the substantive critiques that he – falsely – laments do not exist.

But the most damning critique of Goldstone, came from Goldstone himself. This is what he told the Forward.

For all that gathered information, though, he said, “We had to do the best we could with the material we had. If this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven.”

Goldstone emphasized that his conclusion that war crimes had been committed was always intended as conditional. He still hopes that independent investigations carried out by Israel and the Palestinians will use the allegations as, he said, “a useful road map.”

Goldstone himself said that he proved nothing – nothing that could stand up in court – and yet he demands that Israel take his accusations as convictions that must be disproved. That Goldstone simultaneously refuses to stand by his report and demands that it be taken seriously makes his position untenable.

Finally, let’s take read a section of the Goldstone report. (.pdf) It is the part about whether Israel provided sufficient warning to civilians to get out of harms way. And nearly every single one of Israel’s efforts were deemed insufficient.

535. While noting the statements of the significant efforts made by the Israeli armed forces to issue warnings, the sole question for the Mission to consider at this point is whether the different kinds of warnings issued can be considered as sufficiently effective in the circumstances to constitute compliance with article 57 (2) (c).

536. The Mission accepts that the warnings issued by the Israeli armed forces in some cases encouraged numbers of people to flee and get out of harm’s way in respect of the ground invasion, but this is not sufficient to consider them as generally effective.

537. The Mission considers that some of the leaflets with specific warnings, such as those that
Israel indicates were issued in Rafah and al-Shujaeiyah, may be regarded as effective. However, the Mission does not consider that general messages telling people to leave wherever they were and go to city centres, in the particular circumstances of this military campaign, meet the threshold of effectiveness.

538. The Mission regards some specific telephone calls to have provided effective warnings but treats with caution the figure of 165,000 calls made. Without sufficient information to know how many of these were specific, it cannot say to what extent such efforts might be regarded as
effective.

539. The Mission does not consider the technique of firing missiles into or on top of buildings as capable of being described as a warning, much less an effective warning. It is a dangerous practice and in essence constitutes a form of attack rather than a warning.

540. The Mission is also mindful of several incidents it has investigated where civilians were killed or otherwise harmed and met with humiliation and degrading treatment by Israeli soldiers, while fleeing from locations about which some form of warning was issued. The effectiveness of the warnings has to be assessed in the light of the overall circumstances that prevailed and the subjective view of conditions that the civilians concerned would take in deciding upon their response to the warning.

On the other hand Col. Richard Kemp a military commander with actual experience in urban combat, reviewed Israel’s procedures for warning civilians and concluded.

The truth is that the IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza civilians notice of targeted areas, dropping over 2 million leaflets, and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have taken out Hamas military capability were aborted to prevent civilian casualties. During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy’s hands is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. But the IDF took on those risks.

Despite all of this, of course innocent civilians were killed. War is chaos and full of mistakes. There have been mistakes by the British, American and other forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq, many of which can be put down to human error. But mistakes are not war crimes.

More than anything, the civilian casualties were a consequence of Hamas’ way of fighting. Hamas deliberately tried to sacrifice their own civilians.

Mr. President, Israel had no choice apart from defending its people, to stop Hamas from attacking them with rockets.

And I say this again: the IDF did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.

(emphasis mine)

Faced with a choice of using their own judgments to condemn Israel, or take the word of an expert and exonerate Israel, Goldstone’s commission chose the former.

The chutzpah of this self-important man to claim that his critics have not read his report or addressed its substance is amazing. Those of us who have read it – or even parts of his report – are amazed at how flimsy his proofs are in contrast with the importance he and his allies attach to his shoddy work.

It’s almost as if he didn’t read his own report.

See this takedown of a similar Goldstone sobfest.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time | Tagged | 3 Comments