Getting nervous

Posted on 05/19/2009 by Soccerdad

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post reported that two accused Lebanese spies for Israel and their families fled to Israel.

Two Lebanese citizens suspected of spying for Israel have fled the country and crossed the heavily fortified border into Israel, a senior Lebanese security official said Monday.

The official said the men, one of them a 49-year-old mathematics teacher, entered Israel Monday morning through a gate at the border fence near Kibbutz Bar Am. Each man was accompanied by two of his children, according to the official.

The account suggests that they may have coordinated their escapes with Israel, but doesn’t say so explicitly. Still I share Israel Matzav’s skepticism that they really were spies. There have been a number of Lebanese accused of being spies for Israel lately. No doubt a part of the reason has been Israel’s secret war against Iran. Ronen Bergman lists a number of episodes:

On July 12, 2006, thanks to precise intelligence, the Israeli Air Force destroyed almost the entire stock of Hezbollah’s long-range rockets stored in underground warehouses. Hezbollah was shocked.

In July 2007, another mysterious accident occurred in a missile factory jointly operated by Iran and Syria at a Syrian site called Al-Safir. The production line — which armed Scud missiles with warheads — was shut down and many were killed.

In September 2007, Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor built by Syria and aided by North Korea in Dir A-Zur — despite Syria’s significant efforts to keep it a secret. With indirect authorization from a very high ranking Israeli official, the CIA published incriminating pictures obtained by Israel of the site before it was bombed. These photos convinced the world that the Syrians were indeed attempting to manufacture a nuclear bomb.

In February 2008, Hezbollah’s military leader, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in Damascus. In August of that year, Gen. Mohammed Suliman, a liaison to Hamas and Hezbollah who participated in the Syrian nuclear project, was assassinated by a sniper.

In December 2008, Israel initiated operation Cast Lead, which dealt Hamas a massive blow. Most of its weapons were destroyed within days by Israeli air strikes. (Israel also knew where the Hamas leadership was hiding, but since it was in a hospital Mr. Olmert refused to authorize the strike.) In January 2009, Israeli Hermes 450 drones attacked three convoys in Sudan that were smuggling weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip.

(I’ve been skeptical that Israel killed Mughniyah, but Bergman knows more than I do.) Bergman though writes:

These are all excellent achievements, but did they change reality? Mostly not.

I won’t give him any argument on this point, but these hits are making Iran and Hezbollah nervous.

UPDATE: Tom Gross points out that Bergman is very well connected and believes that the article may have included a message:

In addition to alerting people outside Israel, Bergman’s piece may well have the Israeli leadership in mind. In this respect it performs a similar function to a recent article in Ha’aretz by that paper’s intelligence correspondent Yossi Melman (who also has excellent contacts in Israeli intelligence). Both pieces serve as a warning from the Israeli intelligence community to Prime Minister Netanyahu, urging him not to give in to Obama’s pressure and back away from taking decisive action on the Iranian issue.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Netanyahu charms Obama; Arab world fuming

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Toldja so. Here are some of the things that leaped out at me during the news conference: Bibi noticeably did not declare that he would work towards a Palestinian state. Obama mentioned the Road Map and “discussions at Annapolis,” but did not mention the Saudi plan. Obama said that the Arab states have to start showing movement instead of making the same demands over and over again. He said that Iran must not be allowed to get nuclear weapons. Netanyahu mentioned that Obama said no options are off the table, which is exactly what George W. Bush said.

Right now, lefties all over the world are picking their jaws up from the floor. The Iranians and Arabs are fuming. Obama has signalled quite clearly that there will be no major shift in America’s policy on Israel.

Today was a good day for U.S.-Israel relations. It was a really bad day for the Stephen Walts of the world.

Posted in Israel, The One | 4 Comments

Bibi – dishonestly and honestly

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Soccerdad

Scott MacLeod judges Binyamin Netanyahu based on Aaron David Miller’s memoirs. Frankly, I think his account says a lot about Miller and ex-President Clinton – and little of it good. (Nor do I think much of MacLeod who takes Miller at face value.)

As President Obama holds his first White House meeting with Netanyahu next week, I hope that by now he has read Miller’s frank, brilliant study. One of the things that Miller makes clear is that, although Netanyahu headed the government of a strong U.S. ally, Netanyahu and the Clinton administration did not see eye to eye on the peace process. So much did the Clinton team fear Netanyahu’s potentially destructive impact, Miller writes, that during the runup to the Israeli elections in 1996 “much of what we did during that period was designed to support Peres and in so doing save Arab-Israeli diplomacy.” The night Bibi was elected, Miller recalls, “all I could think about was how we were going to save the Oslo process from extinction.”

If MacLeod thinks that someone with this outlook is worth listening to, he possesses no capacity for critical thought.

First of all, consider that the Clinton administration didn’t just fear a Netanyahu government. It actively campaigned against Netanyahu. When a series of bus bombings that killed over 60 people had the collateral effect of sinking Shimon Peres’s campaign for prime minister, then-President Clinton held a “summit of the peacemakers” including Yasser Arafat whose indifference to (or complicity with) Hamas allowed the terror to escalate. It wasn’t Netanyahu who rendered Oslo extinct, it was the Clinton administration’s indulgence of Arafart’s bad faith that accomplished that.

Natanyahu, for his part, was considered extreme for demanding that Arafat abide by his signed agreements. The Clinton administration abandoned its commitments to Netanyahu when Arafat complained. Never mind that after Ehud Barak defeated Netanyahu, it took Arafat less than a year and a half to show that he wasn’t interested in peace and launched a terror war against Israel.

The mistake Clinton made was the decision to “work with” Netanyahu, in the belief that any progress would require the cooperation of Israel’s prime minister. But in fact American hopes were destined to be dashed for the simple reason that despite the close alliance between the U.S. and Israel as countries, there was a total disconnect between Clinton’s policies and Netanyahu’s: Clinton supported Oslo, and presided over the signing of the accord on the White House lawn, and Netanyahu bitterly opposed it. By “working with” Netanyahu for three years, Clinton effectively cooperated with Netanyahu’s agenda to scuttle the peace process. That indeed contributed to the eventual final collapse of Oslo in 2000, and made an embarrassing mockery of a superpower’s claim to being an “honest broker.”

This is MacLeod and it is fundamentally dishonest. After all it wasn’t Netanyahu who was Prime Minister in 2000. And Clinton didn’t support Oslo as much as he supported leaders who claimed to support Oslo. Since one of those was Arafat who had no interest in making peace, Clinton’s commitment to Oslo was unsustainable.

Jeffrey Goldberg makes a more honest attempt to understand Netanyahu in Israel’s fears, Amalek’s arsenal:

But this is to misread both the prime minister and this moment in Jewish history. It is true that Mr. Netanyahu would prefer to avoid hard decisions concerning the Palestinian issue, for reasons both political (he is not, let us say, sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian self-determination) and strategic (he believes the Palestinians, divided and dysfunctional, their extremists firmly in the Iranian camp, are unready for compromise).

Nevertheless, the prime minister’s preoccupation with the Iranian nuclear program seems sincere and deeply felt.

Goldberg, gets too psychological in explaining Netanyahu. Still it’s a reasonable exercise. And much more honest than the tripe that MacLeod is peddling.

Corssposted on Soccer Dad.

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

War by other means

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Soccerdad

In Mideast Contest of wills, Jackson Diehl outlines the likely priorities of both President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Contrary to what it would like Iran and the rest of the world to believe, Israel would not attack Tehran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. consent. Militarily, it would be next to impossible; politically, it would be suicidal to flout the United States on a matter of such strategic importance. If there is armed action against Iran during the next several years, it will be because Netanyahu somehow persuades or compels Obama to overrule the prevailing judgment of the U.S. government, which is that an attack is not a viable option.

Similarly, there will be no significant progress toward Middle East peace if Obama cannot move Netanyahu off some of his most cherished precepts — not so much the idea that Palestinians will accept something short of full statehood but that a settlement can be postponed indefinitely even as Israel blockades Hamas in Gaza and expands Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Some will advise the administration that there is nothing to gain in pushing the Israeli leader as long as the Palestinians themselves remain divided and unwilling to accept even reasonable offers — as they have been for several years. But the appearance that the United States is accepting of Israeli intransigence could turn opinion against Obama across the region.

Overall this is a pretty fair assessment once one gets past the condescension towards Netanyahu’s (perceived) positions.

But what’s troublesome is that there’s no sense that preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons could be in America’s (if not the world’s) interests too.

First of all, Reuel Marc Gerecht rejects the consensus that Israel necessarily won’t attack Iranian nuclear facilities without the consent of the Americans.

We shouldn’t be surprised if the Israelis reach a conclusion at odds with Washington’s near-consensus against pre-emptive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. In 1981, Jerusalem certainly surmised that a raid against Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor could make Saddam Hussein furious and that he possessed conventional and unconventional means of getting even. But they went ahead and destroyed the reactor.

The consensus in Israel is just as widespread about the correctness of last year’s strike against the secret North Korean-designed reactor at Dir A-Zur in Syria — a project that may well have had Iranian backing. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered the attack although the Bush administration opposed it. And in 1967, Israelis believed that pre-emptive action saved their nation from an Arab-initiated, multifront offensive that could have proved lethal.

And once one considers Israel’s historically based fears, it doesn’t take much to wonder if the prevailing wisdom – as expressed by Diehl – is a bit optimistic.

The Western advice may be sage: The threat of an Israeli retaliatory nuclear strike might be a sufficient threat to discourage Tehran’s mullahs from using a nuclear weapon directly, or from leveraging its protective nuclear umbrella indirectly to more aggressively support anti-Israeli jihadists. But Iran’s penchant for terrorism, its extensive ties to both radical Sunnis and Shiites, its vibrant anti-Semitism, and the likelihood that Tehran will become more aggressive (as has Pakistan in Kashmir) with an atom bomb in its arsenal doesn’t reinforce the case for patience and perseverance.

Consider: If Saddam Hussein had had a nuke in 1990, would George H.W. Bush have risked war? Consider as well the near certainty that ultra-Sunni Saudi Arabia will go nuclear in response to a Shiite Persian bomb. The prospect of another virulently anti-Semitic Arab state — deeply permeated with supporters of al Qaeda — possessing an atomic weapon cannot comfort Jerusalem. A pre-emptive strike offers Israel a chance that this nuclear contagion can be stopped.

Or as Saul Singer points out (h/t Israel Matzav)

But the real reason for the U.S. to pursue a truly non-nuclear (and non-terrorist) Iran is not to avoid Israeli military action, but to advance American interests and security. The Iranian nuclear prospect clouds the international security landscape like the financial crisis looms over the global economy. Both clouds must be removed for the international community to prosper. Just as the financial crisis also presents opportunities, so does the Iranian crisis. Forcing Iran to back down would be the greatest setback for Islamofascism since the fall of radical regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, if Obama defuses the Iranian nuclear program, the world could experience the greatest advance in peace and security since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Conversely, if Iran does go nuclear or near-nuclear, existing clouds will continue to darken.

One of the most cherished precepts of analysts like Jackson Diehl is that with enough nice words and concessions, there is no enemy who can’t be reasoned with and stripped of his enmity. But reality is a stubborn thing and sometimes enemies see negotiations as war by other means.

Crossposted by Soccer Dad.

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Argentina’s pogroms

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Argentinian Jews celebrating Israel were attacked and beaten by anti-Semitic creeps holding anti-Semitic signs. Not anti-Israel—anti-Semitic.

Police in Buenos Aires, Argentina arrested at least five people after anti-Semitic demonstrators clashed Sunday with Jews marking the 61st anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, police said.

During the Jewish group’s ceremony, demonstrators waving anti-Semitic signs stepped in and violence broke out, and five people were arrested after the scuffle, authorities said.

An anti-discrimination police unit had to escort Israeli Ambassador Daniel Gazit away from the fracas.

According to the organizers, a number of Jews were beaten and required medical attention.

The JTA has more:

“In the middle of the cultural festival, the group attacked with complete impunity. Five police officers who were standing in a corner took a long time before acting. Two people from the public were hurt as well as a policeman. Many of the aggressors ran away but five of them were caught by the policemen and others from the public who chased them,” Aldo Donzis, the DAIA Jewish local political umbrella institution president, told JTA.

Buenos Aires is the site of Hezbollah’s Iranian-directed attack on the Jewish community center.

Posted in Anti-Semitism, World | 2 Comments

Jolly Roger

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Soccerdad

Roger Cohen, who has spent the last several months arguing that Iran is moderate because only 75% of its Jews chose to or were able to leave, is at it again ahead of President Obama’s meeting with Prime MInister Netanyahu. In Arabs, Persians Jews he writes:

American interests are, however, another story. They are not served by having no communication with Iran, the rising Mideast power; nor by the uncritical support of Israel that has allowed West Bank settlements to grow and peace to fade; nor by relationships with Arab states that comfort stasis.

With opinion writers of a certain ilk, the growth of “settlements” – not terror – has been the biggest impediment to peace in the Middle East. Shmuel Rosner, though, points out that a settlement freeze isn’t as clearly defined as many seem to think.

The problem is the phrase “settlement freeze.” As a slogan it’s catchy, but in practice the discussion between the U.S. and the Israeli government is much more nuanced. There’s the “freeze” on new settlements (Israel doesn’t build any); there’s Israel’s commitment to remove illegal outposts (and the sub-issue of who determines what’s illegal); there’s the issue of building within existing settlements – those that are part of “settlement blocks” (which will presumably remain in Israeli hands according to the 2004 “Bush letter to Sharon”), and those that aren’t part of the blocks; there’s the issue of building only for “natural growth”; there’s, of course, the question of building in greater Jerusalem.

For the Arab League a settlement freeze would mean Israel even giving up the Ramat Eshkol, Amot and Gilo neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Even under the most conciliatory Israeli government that isn’t going to happen. But when politicians, diplomats, academics and journalists say “settlement freeze” they are effectively supporting the most extreme interpretation of “settlement” and giving further fodder to Israel’s enemies.

And as far as the failure to engage Iran has been a failure, what did those who did engage Iran determine?

Yet as Thérèse Delpech, a leading nonproliferation expert at France’s Atomic Energy Commission, warned last October at a Brookings Institution lecture, “We [the Europeans] have negotiated during five years with the Iranians . . . and we came to the conclusion that they are not interested at all in negotiating, but . . . [only] in buying time for their military program.” In those five years, she also noted, Tehran never implied that if only the Americans were at the table the clerical regime would be amenable to compromise.

I realize that being wrong doesn’t bother Roger Cohen. Read the rest if you want.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Iran, Israel | Tagged | 1 Comment

Obama on Israel: Get ready for my toldjaso

Posted on 05/18/2009 by Meryl Yourish

It’s looking more and more like Obama is going to be pretty reasonable when he meets with Bibi today.

Exhibit one:

But analysts and officials in both governments said it is in neither man’s interest to have a public spat.

“For different but complementary reasons, both Obama and Netanyahu do not want this meeting to fail,” said Daniel C. Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign.

[…] In its Arab-Israeli policy, the Obama administration appears eager to coax small but symbolic confidence-building measures from all sides, especially Arab states, to build up a sense of momentum. In a speech this month before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel group, Vice President Biden declared: “Now is the time for Arab states to make meaningful gestures, to show the Israeli leadership and the people that the promise of ending Israel’s isolation in the region is real and genuine. They must take action now.”

Exhibit two:

US President Barack Obama will not rush to press Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their upcoming meeting, a close associate of Special Mideast Envoy George Mitchell said Sunday.

“No winning strategy begins with a punch in the nose,” the source said, adding that Netanyahu can expect a “business-like meeting, highlighting the common” between the two countries.

Do I think that Obama is a friend of Israel? No. Do I think he’s going to be good for Israel? No. Do I think he’s going to be worse than his predecessors? No.

It’s very sexy to play up a major tiff between Netanyahu and Obama. But Netanyahu, at least, is an experienced leader, and has a fair bit of charisma of his own. I think he will charm Obama, and we’ll see friendly statements on both sides.

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Skunk’d

Posted on 05/17/2009 by Soccerdad

Barry Rubin identifies two types of unrealistic realists

This is explained by saying that the practitioners weren’t good enough–“I’m smarter or more charming than they were,” which today seems to be what President Barack Obama is saying–or didn’t try hard enough–how could anyone have tried harder than President Bill Clinton? Or perhaps there’s some brilliant solution that will make the conflict over east Jerusalem go away and somehow square quite a lot of circles.

These are the moderate peace processers.

Then there are those who think that it has been Israel or U.S. support for Israel which has stopped the Arab states that desperately want to solve the issue. This urgent effort has been sort of hard to find but a blend of ignorance, avid reading of Arab propaganda, wishful thinking, and anti-Israel (or anti-Jewish) thinking in wildly differing proportions makes the mirage take on three dimensions.

These are the extremists who often end up as allies, or at least enablers, of radical Islamist movements and terrorists.

The essay, World Watches for U.S. Shift on Mideast by Helene Cooper fits into the latter category. The essay is mis-titled because, for Cooper, the world really has gotten much smaller. Cooper interviewed four people for the article, Aaron David Miller, Daniel Levy Ali Abunimah, and Charles W. Freeman. Given Miller’s demonstrated antipathy for PM Netanyahu and the dislike the other two have demonstrated towards Israel, I’d hardly consider their views to be representative of the “world.”

Miller, perhaps unsurprisingly, gives a pretty diplomatic answer describing what Netanyahu has to consider going into his meeting with President Obama. Levy expresses his hope:

“… But what I think might be different is a familiarity that I think President Obama almost certainly has with where the Palestinian grievance narrative is coming from.”

Abunimah expresses skepticism that President Obama will deviate from the American pro-Israel positions of the past. And Freeman expects the President Obama will eventually change adopt a more pro-Palestinian position, but that it may not be immediately.

Cooper refers to Freeman’s aborted nomination and ascribes it to opposition based on Freeman’s “…irrational hatred of Israel.” Was that the reason for the opposition? Surely he was a poor choice because he is anti-Israel. But he also had unusually strong ties to Saudi Arabia and China that might have compromised his objectivity. An investigation into some of dealings was pending when Freeman withdrew, suggesting that it wasn’t his anti-Israel leanings that sunk his appointment. Still Freeman’s recollection of his failed nomination is kind of jarring, ungracious and unprofessional:

“You can’t really tell anything by what happened to me and the fact that he didn’t step forward to take on the skunks…”

“Skunks?” Maybe his antipathy towards Israel really is irrational. That hardly seems like good form for someone who was considered for a top intelligence post.

Clearly Cooper believes that the Palestinian grievances haven’t gotten enough attention in American policy before now.

Glenn Kessler, for his part provides a more dispassionate preview of the Obama-Netanayahu meeting. In other words he avoids giving exclusive attention to the “pressure Israel for peace” crowd in Obama and Netanyahu to meet at White House. Kessler, for his part, also mentions that Netanyahu suffered politically for his handling of the budget. As far as the talks with President Obama go, he writes:

Although Netanyahu has hesitated to commit to the diplomatic code of a “two-state solution,” his government has reaffirmed its support of the “road map” that would result in a Palestinian state. Netanyahu has also stressed his interest in improving the Palestinian economy and institutions, arguing he can do more on those fronts than his predecessors did. The Obama administration appears willing to pocket those ideas as a down payment for more sustained peace efforts later, assuming Netanyahu’s government survives through the year.

Iran’s nuclear program will be the other major issue on the table. Netanyahu has spoken of the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program in almost apocalyptic terms, disputing milder U.S. assessments of Iran’s progress. But he has also indicated a willingness to let Obama experiment with engagement as long as there is a firm deadline for ending diplomacy and moving toward more aggressive actions.

Obama is unlikely to agree to any such deadline, fearing it would hamstring diplomacy. But U.S. and European officials have privately said that if Iran fails to begin serious talks by September or October — the period when the U.N. General Assembly meets — the administration and its allies will shift direction and seek to impose tough sanctions on Iran. For Netanyahu, that may be good enough, especially if his aides can leak to the media that Obama had that type of timetable in mind, Lewis said.

Of course the weakness in both presentations is that the considerations of the Arab world – outside of pressuring Israel – aren’t taken into account. Rubin writes:

–And for the revolutionaries, the Israel issue has been of great benefit. But the problem here is that they win either way. If the relative moderates demonize Israel and justify the conflict, the masses are being prepared further for the radicals’ message. And they can ask: Why haven’t the regimes wiped Israel off the map?

But if the regimes move toward peace, the revolutionaries declare them to be traitors and have an even better chance at overthrowing them. Certainly, at least, that’s what the rulers believe.

Both articles work from an assumption that it is changes made by Israel that are necessary to make peace. (The Kessler article at least acknowledges that Arab regimes could play a role in encouraging Israel.) In truth it isn’t Israel that needs to change, but the Arab regimes that must change. Since 1993 they haven’t changed regardless of what Israel’s done. There’s no reason to assume that they will change now.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Jewish/Israeli Blog Carnival #217

Posted on 05/17/2009 by Jack

If you want to get a sense of what sorts of issues, thoughts and ideas are buzzing through the Jewish/Israeli blogosphere you need to go check out our blog carnival.

It is called Haveil Havalim and is one of the oldest blog carnivals around. This week we are pleased to announce the 217th edition.

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Obama won’t be throwing Israel under the bus, part I

Posted on 05/17/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Here’s where I stick my neck out and look either brilliant or moronic, but I don’t think that Obama is going to sell out Israel. Here’s another reason why:

United States President Barack Obama has said he cannot tell Israel not to fear Iran’s nuclear ambitions, in comments published Saturday ahead of a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I understand very clearly that Israel considers Iran an existential threat, and given some of the statements that have been made by President Ahmadinejad, you can understand why,” Obama told Newsweek. The magazine will publish the full interview on May 25.

“Their calculation of costs and benefits are going to be more acute,” he added. “They’re right there in range and I don’t think it’s my place to determine for the Israelis what their security needs are.”

Is Obama going to push Bibi for a Palestinian state? Yes. But so did George W. Bush who, you may remember, was the first U.S. president to promise a Palestinian state in so many words. Is Obama surrounded by anti-Israel lefties? Not nearly as much as people think he is, or at least, they don’t have the influence that people fear they do. But yes, it’s going to be a hard slog.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu landed in Washington Sunday afternoon a day prior to a meeting with US President Barack Obama. The atmosphere among the prime minister’s associates was tense on the trans-Atlantic flight.

Although they expect a warm reception, senior Israeli officials have no doubt that the United States intends to press them hard on the topic of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in general and on the issue of settlements, specifically.

Which is about par for the course. The Bush administration did the same. So did the Clinton and Bush 1 administrations. And now that we have the Heinz Ketchup (57-State) Solution being offered, expect even more pressure on Israel. And none, of course, on the Palestinians. Who are, as usual, accusing Israel of not wanting peace.

I won’t be up late tonight worrying about what will happen tomorrow. Obama has stepped back on many of the policies that he criticized George Bush for. I think he’ll stay the course with Israel as well.

Posted in Israel, The One | 5 Comments

Buying a gas stove

Posted on 05/16/2009 by Meryl Yourish

I’m buying a gas stove to replace the hated electric stove that came with my condo. I have gas heat, a gas fireplace, and an electric stove. I’ve already got a quote on what it will cost to run the gas line down to the stove, and the contractor is including installing the stove with his estimate.

I’ve been looking at stoves online and in stores and will be going to more stores to look at more stoves.

My question is: Have my readers got any preferences for make and model? I don’t want to spend a lot, but neither do I want to buy the cheapest stove on the market. I’ve just discovered the joy of sealed burners, so that’s now a requirement. I want self-cleaning, don’t need convection but could be convinced if the stove is in the price range, and would like a decent broiler. Thirty-inch stove that fits in between my counters.

Home Depot has a sale on a Maytag that seems to meet all my needs (MGRH752BDW). I’m heading off to Sears later to look at some more stoves, and probably Lowe’s, too.

Any suggestions?

Posted in Life | 4 Comments

Sleep is unfair

Posted on 05/16/2009 by Meryl Yourish

You know, it’s bad enough that I’ve been having lousy dreams and nightmares. I think it’s really, really unfair that I had a dream where I was actually speaking French to a Frenchwoman, and she had the nerve to insult my French in the dream.

I mean, sure, that would probably happen in real life, but please—there was more than enough going wrong in that dream that I didn’t have to be insulted about trying to be helpful, too.

Le plume et le papier, my ass.

Stupid Frogs.

Posted in Meanderings | 3 Comments

News Snarks

Posted on 05/16/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Hamas is refreshing its weapons supply. Egypt opened its Gaza border for “humanitarian” purposes. I wonder if one of those is picking up the weapons cache in the Sinai that the Egyptian army found. I also wonder if the world will finally remember that Egypt also borders Gaza, and keeps the border closed, but then the fever broke, so I stopped wondering.

A peaceful conversation between Israel and Syria. Baby Assad: I want peace, but there’s no one in Israel who does. Danny Ayalon: AHAHAHAHA, funny, dictator-dude! (Actually, the best quote was this one: “He does not want peace. For peace he would have to offer normalization and openness, and this may result in the collapse of his regime.”) Danny, you rock.

Ha’aretz to Israel: Give up now, we’re doomed. You know, it’s like Ha’aretz really is the New York Times of Israel, with all the defeatist, doom-and-gloom, Israel’s always wrong talk. Read this article and you will believe that Iran will not only get the bomb, but that Israel will be totally screwed, forever and always, by the Iranians. And if you make it to the very end of the scenario and still don’t get it, don’t worry—the author is going to lecture you on why Israel shouldn’t even think nasty thoughts about Iran.

David Harris spam worth reading: Okay, the AJC (which I keep thinking is the Atlanta Journal Constitution) sends me far too much spam, but this is one that Harris wrote that’s worth reading. It’s the “If Only Israel” syndrome, explained.

Posted in Gaza, Israel, News Briefs, Syria | 2 Comments

The UN finds another club to use on Israel: Phantom torture facility

Posted on 05/15/2009 by Meryl Yourish

Did you know the UN had an anti-torture committee? You’d think that maybe they’d be checking out the handiwork of places like Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, various South American dictatorships, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, and, gee, pre-2003 Iraq. But no, of course not. The UN anti-torture committee knows who the real villain is: Israel.

The UN Anti-Torture Committee Friday called on Israel to release information on any secret detention facilities and to close such interrogation centers. The state has so far refuted claims that such centers exist.

During their examination of Israel, the 10 experts presented allegations that Israel was running a “Facility 1391” in an “undetermined location within Israel which is not accessible to the International Committee of the Red Cross or detainees’ lawyers or relatives.”

In conclusions published Friday, the committee said Israel should “investigate and disclose the existence of any other such facility and the authority under which it has been established.”

In a written reply, Israel denied that it was operating the facility or using it to interrogate suspects.

“For several years now, the ISA (Israel Security Agency) is not involved in any way in operating that facility, and no ISA interrogations are conducted there. Furthermore, since September 2006, the facility has not been used for detention,” said the Israeli authorities.

So, the UN says Israel should disclose the existence of the facility. Israel says it’s not being used for detention, let alone torture. And the UN says, “Nuh-uh!”

Business as usual. Ignore the real criminals, and go after Israel. Because you have to justify that budget to American taxpayers, somehow.

Can we please get out of the UN now?

Posted in Israel Derangement Syndrome, United Nations | 1 Comment

The coming confrontation?

Posted on 05/15/2009 by Soccerdad

For now I’m going to persist in my illusion that Binyamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama are not headed for a major showdown next week when they meet.

Steve Rosen wrote:

The commentariat and the blogs are full of predictions that Obama and Netanyahu are headed for a clash when they meet on May 18, or soon after. These predictions are coming from pundits on the left, who imagine that U.S. pressure on Israel is the magical key to peace, and many on the right, who think the Obama team is dominated by the naive left and Arabists who know and care little about Israel’s security.

I am betting against all of them. My prediction: while Obama and Netanyahu will have differences on the margins, they will find common ground on the main elements of a coordinated strategy for an initial period of 12-24 months.

I know that I’m at odds with a number of bloggers I’m friendly with. But isn’t Obama surrounded by advisers who aren’t especially fond of Israel? Yes, that’s true. Doesn’t the President come from a background that’s hostile to Israel? Yes, that’s true too.

And didn’t the President just send a humiliating message to Israel demanding that Israel not strike Iran without informing him first? That I’m not so sure about. But it was reported in Ha’aretz! I’m not convinced that the message is as clear as Aluf Benn reported.

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu’s envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.

Obama did not wait for his White House meeting with Netanyahu, scheduled for next Monday, to deliver his message, but rather sent it ahead of time with his envoy.

Note what’s going on. While I don’t know if this is standard diplomatic protocol, it appears that both President Obama and PM Netanyahu had an advance man going over the particulars of their meeting. Note that the message was apparently a concern that was “revealed” by the administration’s advance man.

I don’t think that the administration’s advance man leaked the message to Benn. So that means that he heard it from someone on the Israeli side. So would the Israelis have complained that they were dressed down by the President in advance of the meeting with Netanyahu next week? I’m skeptical. More likely, in the course of discussing the meeting with Benn, one of the Israelis commented that the possibility of an Israeli strike against Iran clearly concerned the administration. (How much someone from the advance team could reveal is unclear.) Benn worded the information he got in the most spectacular way, but the actual information that he learned was a lot more pedestrian.

Why do I think that it wasn’t the administration leaking the supposed message that Aluf Benn reported? Because if it came from the United States why didn’t either the NY Times or Washington Post report it? If the President issued a major rebuke to the PM, wouldn’t that be newsworthy here? Yet neither reported that an Israeli paper reported this rebuke. (The Jerusalem Post, from what I can tell didn’t report it either.)

The NY Times even had an article on the upcoming meeting, Israeli Leader to Meet Obama as U.S. Priorities Shift about the likely differences between Israel and the United States, especially regarding Iran and it didn’t mention the warning. The article is worth looking at for a number of details, but it doesn’t confirm Benn’s report at all.

The last time Benjamin Netanyahu met an American president as Israel’s new leader, in 1996, it did not go well. Mr. Netanyahu lectured President Bill Clinton about Arab-Israeli relations, aides recalled, driving Mr. Clinton into a profane outburst after his guest left.

Mr. Netanyahu is likely to avoid a repeat of that when he meets President Obama at the White House on Monday. But the underlying relationship between Israel and the United States has become more unsettled since Mr. Obama took office.

Left unmentioned is that during the Israeli campaign, Clinton held a “summit of the peacemakers” as a way of bolstering Shimon Peres’s campaign against Netanyahu. Obama didn’t interfere as blatantly in the recent Israeli elections.

The Times reports further:

Two weeks ago, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, held a quiet meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Israel asked the United States for benchmarks to demonstrate that its diplomatic campaign was working.

The Israeli government, officials said, has assured the United States that it will not take military action against Iran without first consulting Washington. But it has also signaled that it will give the United States only a year or so to show that its good-will approach is getting results.

This would appear to cover the ground about the differences between the United States and Israel regarding Iran. (It also appears that Iran doesn’t have a year to convince the Americans, but only about five months.)

Even Robert Malley is quoted by the Times:

“There is potential for greater tensions than have existed for some time, certainly,” said Robert Malley, another veteran of Middle East peacemaking efforts. “But a collision is not inevitable.”

Presumably he’s somewhat aware of the administration is planning and he doesn’t necessarily see a conflict coming.

So why isn’t a confrontation as likely this time around as it was thirteen years ago?

1) Netanyahu is more popular at home than he was in 1996.
2) American support for Israel against Iran is pretty strong.
3) Nearly sixteen years of bad faith since Oslo has rendered the IOI syndrome InOperatIve.
4) Despite Obama’s leftist background, lately his foreign policy moves have belied his background as Victor Davis Hanson observes:

Consider also the dexterous Obama administration’s own about-face. It still finds it useful to damn the old Bush government’s embrace of wiretaps, military tribunals, and renditions — even as it dares not drop or completely discount these apparently useful Bush policies, albeit under new names and with new qualifiers.

Maybe the administration will see an advantage to showing Israel more sympathy.

Still J-Street thinks that peace won’t be achieved without American pressure (h/t My Right Word) And J-Street’s partners in undermining Israel, the IPF, has gotten the names of several ambassadors attached to a letter (.pdf) they’ve written urging Israel to, among other things, get rid of superfluous checkpoints and urge the Palestinians to stop terror. Of course they also recommend rebuilding funds for Gaza, which will only serve to strengthen Hamas. But then this letter is recommended by someone who considers M. J. Rosenberg, one of the “best Middle East analysts,” so take the recommendation with a grain of salt.

I hope I’m right that there will be no major friction between President Obama and PM Netanyahu. Obviously there is reason to expect differences. Hopefully despite their differing visions they will see the American-Israel alliance as more important than those differences.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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