An easy fast to my Jewish readers. May we be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life for a good and peaceful year.
This will be the last blog post until tomorrow night, after I break my fast. I am as crabby as a three-year-old when I get really hungry. You don’t want to be around me until I’ve eaten. Trust me on that one.
If I have offended or wronged anyone in the last year, I apologize, and ask your forgiveness.
You would think that the AP would give us a break on Yom Kippur.
You would be wrong.
Israel shuts down for Day of Atonement amid fears
Alternate headline:
Israel shuts down for Yom Kippur, amid fears of perceived Iranian nuclear threat
Ohmigod! Israelis are terrified! What, what could possibly be the reason for this headline?
The start of the Jewish Day of Atonement at sundown Sunday marked the beginning of a day like no other in Israel, on which even Israelis with no connection to religion tend to put their normal lives on hold.
This year Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, comes at a particularly somber time following revelations of a previously hidden Iranian nuclear facility and more missile tests by the Revolutionary Guard.
Holy cow! The Iranians are trying to build a nuclear weapon? Did you know that? Did we know that? Did anyone know that? No wonder Israelis are terrified on Yom Kippur! Iran is trying to build a nuke!
“That proves to whoever was still in doubt that Iran is the most serious threat today on the peace of the world and its security,” said Israeli Deputy Foreign Ministry Danny Ayalon, speaking to Israeli Channel 10.
Um… and this is newly scary because…?
When Yom Kippur began at around 5 p.m. local time, TV and radio stations blinked off the air, flights in and out of Israel’s international airport ceased, and nearly all businesses closed. The streets emptied of cars and cities and highways were eerily quiet.
[…] But the holiday’s apparent calm conflicted with many Israelis’ fears about the perceived Iranian threat.
This fearmongering story quotes exactly zero Israelis who say they are scared. Really. Not a single quote. Not one. So I have to ask: What exactly is the point of this article? To being the narrative that a fearful Israel is going to lash out at Iran? Or is it just plain lousy journalism?
I’m thinking the latter.
So, all my fearful Israelis, I hope you have an easy fast, and may you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a good year. Maybe even a less fearful one.
So, gee, ya think maybe there wasn’t a conspiracy to take this Jew-hater down if he, well, hates Jews?
Several days after having lost the vote for UNESCO’s leadership, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni declared Saturday his intention to “launch a culture war against Israel.”
In an interview with Egyptian newspaper al-Masri al-Yaum, Hosni charged that he lost the UN vote because of “radicalism, racism, and the Jews,” who he claied attacked him over his harsh views against cultural normalization vis-Ã -vis Israel.
That’s funny. I thought he swore up and down that he didn’t have a problem with Jews, that he only had a problem with, uh, well—not Jews. He never did say what the problem was. Oh, that’s right. We misunderstood what he said.
Um, no. We didn’t.
Schmuck.
I was going to post something earlier, but then I decided to save it for later. And then I got in my car and turned the key in the ignition, heard a very loud crack, like you hear when a fuse blows in your house, and my car went, very softly, “Rrr, rrr, rrr.” So I called Triple-A and told them to send me the battery truck. Yep. It was the battery.
All I can say is, better now than this morning after shul. And better tonight than tomorrow, 45 minutes before shul. And definitely better now than on the way home from the Outer Banks last week.
Bought the battery from Triple-A, guy who came to check mine installed it, we chatted about the two gun tattoos on his arm and Yom Kippur (I told him that I really needed the car tomorrow, and he asked about the holiday).
That, and the dog ate my homework, is why no Caturday post today. I’ll try to find time tomorrow.
Oh, wait. Tig came out of the garage after Battery Guy left, and was cleaning his paws. Sure enough, he’d stepped in the white powder that got knocked off my battery. I swept up the rest and locked him out of the garage. Yeesh. Acid powder. That stuff can’t be good for him.
I have received a copy of Iran’s letter to the IAEA, revealing the existence of a heretofore undisclosed (don’t you love the word “heretofore”?) nuclear plant that is only a year away from operation. Just remember, even Drudge doesn’t have this scoop!
Dear
suckersesteemed inspectors of the IAEA,Like, we forgot to tell you something on your last visit here. Remember when you asked us if we had anything more to declare, and, we were like, “No way!” and you were like, “Way!” and we were like, “Dudes, no way, and if you don’t stop messin’ with us we’re gonna call the Basij dudes on their bikes and they’re really pissed today ’cause all the hot protest babes are on the other side,” and you were like, “Whoa, Basij, not necessary, bro,” and then you, like, ran to the airport and forgot to give us going-away presents?
Well, like, we kinda forgot to tell you that, uh, yeah, there’s this one more little nuke plant, and it’s, like, near Qom, and it’s like, about a year away from being able to make a bomb, uh, I mean, to power up the holy dudes’ mosques so they can get their mad on at the Zionist Entity every Friday like always. Oh, wait—my buddy Mahmoud just told me to tell you to tell them that it’s just a pilot enrichment program, and it’s barely big enough to make a single—uh, pilot. And anyway, like, we’re only going to enrich it to five percent, and everyone knows that you need to enrich it more to make bombs, and the Islamic Republic of Iran is peaceful, and we don’t want to hurt anyone, except for all you infidels and Zionists and idolators and atheists. And dogs. We really hate dogs, dude.
So, like, this is to let you know that we, like, uh, forgot to tell you—oh, wait, I already said that. Dude. Um, okay, well, then, that’s about it, except, like, death to America and death to Israel, dudes. And we hope you’re not mad that we, like, forgot.
InSincerely,The dudes in Iran who are going to nuke your asses, uh, I mean, be your best friends.
Flash Forward: You know how when Lost premiered, the pilot was so well done, so incredibly gripping, that you knew immediately that ABC had a hit on its hands and that you couldn’t wait for Wednesday to come around?
Yeah, it’s not like that.
Good idea. Lousy execution. I may watch a couple more episodes, but I am not impressed. They’re repeating it tonight if you missed it.
The Good Wife: Julianna Margulies, Christine Baranski, Josh Charles, and the obnoxious kid from Gilmore Girls playing an obnoxious kid on this show—what’s not to like? Actually, this was a very good pilot. Sure, it’s a lawyer show, but it’s a very different twist. This is a woman re-entering the workforce because her husband is in jail on corruption charges, struggling for her job against a kid fresh out of law school and ready to cutthroat his way to the top. And it’s from Ridley Scott! No wonder it’s so good.
Modern Family: The critics are hailing it as the best new comedy of the year. I watched it. Eh. Watched it some more. Okay, that was funny. Watched to the end. Yeah, it’s funny. I think I’ll keep watching.
Cougar Town: Eh. I laughed a bit. It might get funnier. Boy, you can’t watch this show with young kids around, though. When did primetime TV get so adult at 8 p.m.?
And this is the difference between me, and a Judith Warner from the NY Times. I watched the show in the hopes of finding a comedy that would make me laugh. Here’s why she watched it:
I’d watched “Cougar Town†on Wednesday night not because I thought I would like it, not because I was genuinely interested in seeing it, but because I thought I, too, would be able to derive messages from it about the zeitgeist — the pop-culture zeitgeist now permeated with talk of cougars, women over 40 who take up with younger men.
Darn it! I’m just not up on the current pop-culture zeitgeist! How is it that I was cool when I was young, and now I’m so unhip as to be unable to keep up with the New York City zeitgeist-seeking crowd?
Then again, I’ve lived in the ‘burbs most of my life. Uncool. Uncool. (And they wonder why we call them “the media elite.”)
Vampire Diaries: Okay, I admit it. I was bored. It was on. I watched it twice. I did not watch the third episode. Seen all I needed to see to know that it’s basically another vampire romance teen saga, and, well, ew. Vampires must be staked. No exceptions. Wait. Angel. He’s the only exception, because he has a soul. Everyone else (including Spike), boom.
Castle: Yay, it’s back, and it’s still good. It’s the only crime show I’m interested in, and that’s because they don’t generally cut up bodies and try to figure out how they died.
Looking forward to: V. The new series looks excellent. Dollhouse: Premiere tonight. My DVR’s been set since last season ended. Which is a good thing, because it’s on while I’m in synagogue. Bummer that Terminator didn’t make it.
Ehud Barak in an excellent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal recalls:
While such logic eluded Mr. Goldstone and his team, it was crystal clear to the thousands of Israeli children living in southern Israel who had to study, play, eat and sleep while being preoccupied about the distance to the nearest bomb shelter. When I accompanied then-presidential candidate Barack Obama on his visit to the shelled city of Sderot, he said “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. And I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” Too bad the Human Rights Council wasn’t listening.
It’s not just that any country would have the right to defend its citizens, it’s also that no other country would be subject to this kind of scrutiny.
As long as Judge Richard Goldstone doesn’t probe the United States, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka or Turkey, just as he probed Israel, he is not a moral figure. A law is a law only when it applies to everyone and does not discriminate, as Goldstone did.
The message of the Goldstone report is that Israel must not defend itself, and if it dares to do what any other country is allowed, it must be condemned. The double standard has a double standard.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
A few weeks ago the Washington Post reported on the intrigue behind the nomination of Farouk Hosni to head UNESCO.
Over his career, Hosni has accumulated a long record of opposing exchanges with Israel, repeatedly saying normalization must await resolution of the Palestinian issue and warning that opening up to Jewish culture would be dangerous for Egypt. But his most notorious sally came in May last year, when he told an Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament that he would personally burn any Israeli books found in Egyptian libraries.
Hosni apologized for the remark three months ago, as his campaign for the UNESCO post gathered speed. In a statement published in Paris, he attributed it to a hot temper and an Arabic-language metaphor that sounded worse than it was. But for his opponents, particularly Jewish activists and intellectuals, the evocative image of book-burning would not go away, and they said it disqualified him for the job.
Note the way the reporter Edward Cody frames the opposition as “Jewish activists,” as if no one else ought to be offended about such declarations.
(At least on the op-ed page the Post published an essay opposing his appointment, even though it minimizes Hosni’s antisemitism.
About the same time the New York Times featured an op-ed by Roger Cohen telling us:
Hosny stands at the crux of the cultural challenges confronting us. Let’s get him inside the tent rather than stoke the old anti-Western, anti-imperialist flames — reminiscent of what led the United States to abandon Unesco between 1984 and 2002 — by rejecting him.
And then, with the big U.S. contribution to the Unesco budget as leverage, let’s press him relentlessly to fight the anti-Semitic bigotry poisoning young Arab psyches; favor dialogue; open Arab minds to science and education; and embrace the peace that Unesco was set up to foster by draining the poisonous well from which his own now-regretted venom was drawn.
In both the case of the report by Edward Cody and the op-ed by Roger Cohen there are disconcerting efforts to play down Hosni’s antisemitism: either its something that only bothers Jews or it’s something that can be overcome with a little leverage. The fact that Hosni’s antisemitism is a reflection of his society’s feelings 30 years after making peace with Israel, doesn’t register with either.
Anyway, as you now know Hosni didn’t get the job. And, of course, who did he blame? Do you have to ask? The real scandal is that the antisemitism of the Arab world continues to be underplayed, rationalized or dismissed rather than taken seriously. And it shouldn’t just be “Jewish activists” who are concerned. And Mr. Cohen, if he’d gotten the job, he’d have used his new perch to promote antisemitism, he would have resisted an pressure to change his world as unwanted interference from New York Jews.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
Exhibit A: The Egyptian minister of culture lost his bid to become the head of UNESCO, after a campaign that showed his viciously anti-Israel feelings, which he insisted weren’t anti-Semitism. How does he respond? By blaming “New York Jews.”
“There are a group of the world’s Jews who had a major influence in the elections who were a serious threat to Egypt taking this position,” he said.
The Arab media, of course, carries the party line, and blames Jews and “the Zionist media” for the failure of their candidate.
Exhibit B: The Supreme Leader of Iran calls Israel “the deadly cancer of Zionism” while his hand-picked president denies the Holocaust and then tells the world he is proud of his Holocaust denial. He repeated the same filthy Jewish conspiracy accusations he raised last year in this year’s speech, and although this year a few Western nations walked out, Sweden (among others) felt that the following was not enough Jew-hatred to make their delegates leave:
The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a miniscule minority, they have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. It is deeply disastrous to witness that some presidential or premiere nominees in some big countries have to visit these people, take part in their gatherings, swear their allegiance and commitment to their interests in order to attain financial or media support.
This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will.
The Swedish government also cleared the Aftonbladet of anti-Semitism over their lie-filled article about the IDF killing palestinians for their organs.
Neither am I surprised that the only place you can find the above lines is in articles with the full text of the speech. The media ignored Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitism last year as well.
Exhibit C: Spain disqualified an Israeli college team from an international solar power contest, not because the team broke the rules—but because the college is located in the West Bank. Apparently, global warming is an urgent cause, but the Palestinian cause is more important than even saving the earth from itself. (No, I don’t believe global warming is happening. But these people do. The Exception Clause reigns.) And of course, we heard only a few days ago that anti-Semitism in Spain is on the rise.
What do all these things have in common? They are claimed to be anti-Zionism. And yet, they resemble nothing so much as anti-Semitism.
You can put a wig and a fancy ball-gown on a pig, add earings and make-up, and yet, in the end, you still have a pig.
Yes, it’s anti-Semitism. Let’s stop pretending that it’s not.
The Wall Street Journal – The U.N.’s Anti-Antiterror Report
After a brilliant opening analogy and laying out the sordid histories of the UN’s Human Rights Council and the Goldstone Commission – as well as some of the commission’s blind spots – the editorial nails the main issue:
The Goldstone report includes some pro forma condemnation of Hamas’s behavior, but Hamas leaders quickly endorsed the findings because they know they have nothing to fear from the International Criminal Court or any other special tribunal. Hamas violates the laws of war as a matter of daily routine, not least in the murder of Palestinian dissenters. The U.N. report can only hurt a Western nation like Israel that cares about world, or at least American, opinion.
In the end the editorial brings up the more universal problem: that which applies to Israel could be applied to the United States in its war on terror.
Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren contributed an op-ed to the Boston Globe that starts with that point (though as a hypothetical). In the middle Oren makes this important point:
Despite Hamas’s cynical use of civilians as human shields, the Israel Defense Forces repeatedly called off operations deemed too dangerous to civilian populations and endangered its own troops by warning Palestinian neighborhoods of impending attacks. Yet even the most moral army can make mistakes, especially in dense urban warfare; for every Serbian soldier killed by NATO in 1999, for example, four civilians died. By comparison, more than half of the Palestinian casualties in Gaza were military. Still, Israel launched investigations into some 100 cases of alleged misconduct by its soldiers, 23 of which continue. If found guilty, as one soldier already has been, the perpetrators will be brought to justice under Israel’s internationally respected legal system.
Finally Oren returns comes to his point:
Ironically, the greatest victim of the UN report is not Israel’s ability to wage a moral war but its willingness to make an historic peace. If asked to take immense risks for peace, Israelis must be convinced of their internationally recognized right to self-defense should that peace be broken. Deprived of that right, even after being subjected to years of murderous rocket attacks, an Israeli electorate will understandably recoil from such risks.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
The more assuredly President Barak Obama’s administration settles into its routine and stable mode of operation after a few pretty chaotic months, the more questions about the White House foreign policy are being raised, both by the friends and by the enemies.
I want to be careful, but there is an increasing feeling that the main thread of the foreign policy is favoring extreme caution and even direct “disengagement” steps all over the world where there is a chance of political collision with other major players.
Recently I read an interesting article by a Russian journalist Vladimir Abarinov*, touching on several aspects of Obama’s foreign travails. With the author’s kind permission and with some assistance from Google, I’ve translated the article and am posting it here in its entirety:
It’s unfashionable to recall Barack Obama’s Berlin and Prague speeches today in Washington. Then he needed the sympathy of Europeans and to show Americans aTV picture of the crowd cheering the coming of the messiah. Today it doesn’t matter anymore. In response to the mention of Berlin and Prague’s speeches displeased Obama’s administration officials cringe and blush, as if caught in an unseemly act.
Continue reading
The Washington Post, today, faults the Obama administration for its early forays into Middle East peacemaking.
The administration also concluded, wrongly, that obtaining an unconditional Israeli settlement freeze was an essential first step. In fact settlements are no longer a strategic obstacle to peace; as a practical matter, most of the construction is in areas that will not be part of a Palestinian state. The administration’s inflexible stance, unwisely spelled out in public by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, led to an unwinnable confrontation with Mr. Netanyahu, turned Israeli public opinion against Mr. Obama and prompted Palestinians to harden their own position. The compromise now being discussed between Washington and Jerusalem will differ little from past deals.
While I don’t agree with everything in the editorial it’s a far cry from what I’m used to.
Related: check out Steven Rosen’s take, by itself or with commentary by Barry Rubin and Meryl.
Israel Matzav adds (via memeorandum):
It should be obvious to anyone with a passing awareness of the history of the last 16 years that Netanyahu is highly unlikely to offer Abu Mazen any more than Olmert offered Abu Mazen or than Ehud Barak offered Arafat.
And even if he did, there’s little chance that Abu Mazen would accept either. It’s easier to be the wronged party than it is to govern.
UPDATE: The end of the editorial annoyed me.
Officials say the president pressed the Israeli and Palestinian leaders hard to move forward during bilateral meetings Tuesday. That’s good, but Mr. Obama must also do more to convince average Israelis as well as Arab leaders that his diplomacy is worth investing in. We’re told the president reminded Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas Tuesday of an old diplomatic verity: that the United States cannot want peace more than the parties themselves. That’s a reality that this president, like a few before him, will have to live by.
Israel has to show that it wants peace? What’s been happening for the past 16 years as Israel has ceded territory and received terror in return. I think that Yaacov Lozowick is on target here:
On the contrary: us locals, we’ve long since covered all the options that seem so obvious to the novices, and we understand fully why they’re not real. It’s our lives, and we’re not novices.
The cliche about how we’ve forgotten more about the matter than the newcomers may ever know is reality, not platitude.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
