Dura-bull

Posted on 05/21/2008 by Soccerdad

Knowing that the verdict in the Karsenty-Enderlin trial is due today, I looked for some news. But when I googled “Karsenty” I got precisely one result in the news section. It had to do with a talk Phillipe Karsenty gave a few weeks ago.

However when I did a blog search, there were plenty of results.

Israel Matzav explains why the MSM is so uninterested in the verdict:

The bottom line is that the mainstream media outside France is ignoring the case because they know that they are guilty of the same fraud of which France 2 is guilty: They use ‘Palestinian’ stringers rather than their own real reporters in Judea, Samaria and Gaza and in other ‘war zones’ like Iraq.

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Neil Netanel wrote in a similar vein a few weeks ago:

The kind of media manipulation to which the al-Dura incident points is all too common in reporting from the region. Recall the initial Palestinian reports in September 2000 of an Israeli massacre of 3,000 Palestinian civilians in Jenin, broadcast without question by CNN, NPR, the BBC, and others, while the truth turned out to be 52 Palestinians killed, most of whom were armed combatants. (See here and here.) More recently, Hamas has staged and Western media reported electricity shortages in Gaza, replete with candles purporting to provide needed light while, as it turned out, screens blocked sunshine from streaming in through the window.Certainly, some media outlets seem all too eager to transmit reports of Israeli atrocities. But the problem is far broader and deeper than that. Both broadcast and print journalists face tremendous pressure to produce under a highly competitive 24/7 news cycle. At the same time, many news organizations have sharply reduced their staff of foreign correspondents. As a result, they are increasingly reliant on local stringers and camera operators to report on local stories. In areas of conflict, it is inevitable that more than a trivial percentage of local reporters will be partisans and that video footage will be designed or doctored to favor one side or the other.

One hopes that major news organizations are able and willing to weed out the vast majority of questionable reporting, just as CNN refused to broadcast the al-Dura footage. But there are, of course, no guarantees. And, as I emphasized in an ealier post, fact-checking, like quality original reporting, costs a lot of money.

For their part, bloggers do an admirable job of exposing media failures. At the same time, for better or for worse, the Internet serves as an unfiltered outlet for the stories and footage that media organizations deem insufficiently trustworthy to carry.

(BTW, the Jenin libel occurred in April 2002, not Sept 2000.)

It’s not just the general problem of relying on notoriously unreliable (truthwise) stringers, it’s that most of the media was complicit in spreading the al-Dura libel.

The media’s ignoring the Karsenty-Enderlin case shows their lack of accountability for their own actions. They refuses to divorce itself from their “rough draft of history” fantasy; that all they’re doing is acting as stenographers in good faith. But they’re not; they are agenda driven, interested only in advancing causes to which they are sympathetic.

In the al-Dura case the narrative of an Israeli overreaction was too compelling to ignore. They swallowed the story whole, without a second thought. Even now they are too convinced of their on righteousness to have second thoughts nearly eight years later.

The MSM lives on its arrogance. Its declining fortunes is one of the reason for its continued decline.

So why not challenge Clark Hoyt ( public@nytimes.com ) or Deborah Howell ( ombudsman@washpost.com ) to get their papers to cover the trial and take a long overdue look in the mirror?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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

Staying in the center while everyone else moves left

Posted on 05/21/2008 by Soccerdad

Sen. Lieberman on what’s wrong with the Democratic Party:

By contrast, in 2000, Gov. George W. Bush promised a “humble foreign policy” and criticized our peacekeeping operations in the Balkans.Today, less than a decade later, the parties have completely switched positions. The reversal began, like so much else in our time, on September 11, 2001. The attack on America by Islamist terrorists shook President Bush from the foreign policy course he was on. He saw September 11 for what it was: a direct ideological and military attack on us and our way of life. If the Democratic Party had stayed where it was in 2000, America could have confronted the terrorists with unity and strength in the years after 9/11.

Instead a debate soon began within the Democratic Party about how to respond to Mr. Bush. I felt strongly that Democrats should embrace the basic framework the president had advanced for the war on terror as our own, because it was our own. But that was not the choice most Democratic leaders made. When total victory did not come quickly in Iraq, the old voices of partisanship and peace at any price saw an opportunity to reassert themselves. By considering centrism to be collaboration with the enemy – not bin Laden, but Mr. Bush – activists have successfully pulled the Democratic Party further to the left than it has been at any point in the last 20 years.

(This is adapted from the speech he gave at the Commentary Fund Dinner.)

John Podhoretz, yesterday, explained why Sen. Lieberman is not – as some of his critics assert – a hack:

By remaining steadfast on the war in Iraq when others in his party fled their vote and then blamed their inconstancy on the supposed “lies” of the administration. And by refusing to join the jackal-like feast on George W. Bush’s reputation, Lieberman earned the hatred of many fellow Democrats. That hatred caused a hugely rich man in his state to spend millions of his own money to oust Lieberman from his own party’s nomination after serving three full terms as senator.And yet there he remained, and remains, unbending. This is the opposite of hackery. It is the antithesis of hackery. It is the quality everyone says he yearns for in Washington — principled consistency, a willingness to work across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion, and a refusal to kowtow to the loudest voices merely because they are so loud. Last night, at the annual dinner of the Commentary Fund, Lieberman said he remained a Democrat precisely because he believes the strong foreign policy he espouses must have a bipartisan foundation.

California Conservative adds his thoughts. One nitpick though: He casts Clinton with other pacifists. Clinton, at least in the case of the NATO war against Serbia was willing to go to war to spread freedom. It was a stance that Sen. Lieberman praised in his speech.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

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War and peace

Posted on 05/21/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Now, I am far from an expert on Lebanon, and I’ve been reading Tony Bey and the others who know a lot more than I do, but I have a suspicion that this cannot be at all good:

Hizbullah strikes another achievement at the end of a particularly severe round of violence in Lebanon : Arab mediators have announced a breakthrough deal between feuding Lebanese factions struck after five days of talks in Qatar to end Lebanon’s 18-month political crisis.

As part of the deal, 11 of the 30 ministers in a national unity government in Beirut will be Hizbullah members, giving the Shiite organization the right to veto any decision. This was one of the main demands made by Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah during the recent crisis.

In other words, Hezbullah seems to have gotten everything it wants since sending its goons into Beirut to terrorize the non-Shia residents.

This is the way of the Arab world. Osama said it years ago: “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”

Sixteen of Lebanon’s current ministers will serve in the new government, and another three will serve on behalf of the president. Hizbullah agreed to compromise on its demand to establish an interim government and hold elections, and had refused at first to settle for only one-third of the government members.

The sides also agreed to appoint Lebanon’s army commander, General Michel Suleiman, the next Lebanese president.

Suleiman ordered the army to stand by as Hezbullah goons burned down opposition TV stations and murdered Sunnis.

Iran has more of a foothold than ever. Syria is supplying Hezbullah with weapons. So what is Israel doing right now?

Talking with Syria.

The Prime Minister’s Office announced Wednesday that Israel and Syria have launched direct negotiations in Turkey.

Ynet has learned that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s associates, Yoram Turbowitz and Shalom Turgeman, have been meeting with senior Syrian officials in Ankara since Monday.

A dramatic statement issued simultaneously in Jerusalem, Damascus and Ankara said that “Israel and Syria have launched peace talks mediated by Turkey.

“The two sides have declared their intention to hold the negotiations in good faith and openly, and hold a serious and continuous dialogue in order to reach a comprehensive peace deal in accordance with the framework set at the (1991) Madrid Conference.”

Following the announcement, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem said that Israel had agreed to fully concede the Golan Heights.

Sources at the Prime Minister’s Office told Ynet in response, “The negotiations are being held on the basis of the Madrid Conference principles. We do not recall an Israeli commitment at the conference to fully cede the Golan Heights.”

The Madrid principles are land for peace. So far, land for peace has proven to be the exact opposite: The Gaza Strip is no longer under Israeli control, and Israel is under daily rocket attack from the Strip. Palestinians in the West Bank still plot and attempt terror attacks on a daily basis, from tossing rocks and molotov cocktails at Israelis in the West Bank to trying to blow up soldiers at checkpoints.

Syria supplies weapons and material to Hezbullah. Syria has treaties with Iran, including a defense treaty. When Syria had the Golan Heights, they were used to bombard Israeli towns.

But that’s not all of it. The Olmert government is also ready to agree to the “truce” with Hamas, giving the terrorists a breathing space and room to re-arm.

Ceasefire in Gaza? Israel has accepted the principle of a proposed truce in the Gaza Strip, a senior official from Egypt, which has been brokering the negotiations, told his country’s official MENA news agency on Tuesday.

“Israeli leaders (have informed us) of their support for and understanding of the Egyptian proposals for a truce,” the news agency quoted the official as saying without giving his name.

Egyptian Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman – who has acted as go-between in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas – conveyed the news to a delegation from the Islamist group which controls Gaza earlier in the day, the news agency added.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli government spokesman neither confirmed nor denied the Egyptian report.

“As far as we are concerned, we can only indicate that contacts are continuing,” said Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

So let’s recap: Hezbullah invades Beirut, causes the deaths of 70 Lebanese, destroys opposition TV stations, and gets what it wants: The man it wants for president, the representation it wants in the government, and veto power over any decisions made by the rest of the Lebanese ministers. Syria supplies Hezbullah with weapons, keeps Hamas headquarters in downtown Damascus, regularly holds terrorism get-togethers to plot Israel’s destruction, sends terrorists into Iraq, and is partners with Iran. Hamas refuses to end its terror attacks against Israel and intends to destroy the Jewish State.

And yet, all three warmongers are getting—exactly what they want.

Terrorism works. Violence works. This proves it.

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We know what’s best for you 2

Posted on 05/20/2008 by Soccerdad

Jeffrey Goldberg nearly breaks his arm patting himself on the back for his op-ed article Israel’s America problem.

My op-ed in the Times has provoked a certain amount of unhappiness in people who believe it to be an attack on AIPAC.

Well actually it was a criticism of AIPAC. I criticized Goldberg because his criticism was unfair.

Apparently, we are all supposed to behave as if Israel has never made a mistake in its 60 years of existence.

This isn’t even logical. The criticism was that his prescription hasn’t exactly worked as well as he seems to think it has. Consider Max Boot who has the quality of admitting admiration for Goldberg:

How can he argue with a straight face that more territorial concessions on Israel’s part will “buttress” Palestinian moderates when we’ve seen just the opposite happen in the recent past? Israel unilaterally evacuated southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, in the latter case dismantling settlements as Goldberg urged. (I was in favor of this move, too.) The result, as we all know now, was to empower Hezbollah and Hamas–not the “moderates.” Why Goldberg thinks the result of a West Bank pullout would be any different is not readily apparent from his Times essay.

Worse, even as he dismisses those who disagree with him as unthinking Barry Rubin notes that those who hold Goldberg’s views hold them despite years of experience that show them to be wrong:

Given this experience, someone might conclude that concessions didn’t work and that the Palestinians and Syria were not ready for peace. But such a conclusion is not permissible for those wedded to certain notions. Instead, they say: ignore all that because no matter how high the price you must make concessions and take risks in order to survive. Is this obvious nonsense? Yes. But obvious nonsense backed by the New York Times and Maclean’s in Canada, etc., drowns out the point that it is obvious nonsense.Second, of course, this expresses wishful thinking. A lot of people want Israel to disappear and thus feel good in asserting it is going to happen. The line in “pro-Palestinian” circles in the West seems to be that it doesn’t matter that they lose all the confrontations, that their state-building effort has collapsed, and that the movement is more split than at any time in the last forty years. More important, they say, they now have control of the narrative. That and a few bucks will get you a cup of coffee.

There are also some ideological reasons on the left, or what passes for it nowadays, that have invested heavily in the idea of Israel disappearing. One is that nationalism is obsolete.

This is clearly absurd. It might be disappearing in Western Europe–I mean European nationalism, not that of the new immigrants–yet it is not a generalized global phenomenon. Quite the opposite. But the people who think this way want nationalism to die in their own countries very badly and detest those who have pride in their heritage.

And while he isn’t addressing Goldberg’s assertion that Israeli needs American pressure to survive, Rubin makes clear that those who question Israel’s (future) legitimacy aren’t exactly harmless:

It assures radical Islamists and radical Arab nationalists that they will win. Thus it encourages Arabs, and especially Palestinians, to keep fighting rather than to make peace and act moderately or constructively.It promotes terrorism, recruitment to terrorist groups, violence against moderates, and dictatorships. After all, if victory is in sight why stop fighting? If triumph is possible than it follows logically that anyone who wants to make peace is a traitor who should be killed.

Goldberg may congratulate himself on his perceptiveness and sophistication, but it he, not his critics, who unthinkingly prescribes a disastrous policy. And he doesn’t possess the awareness to realize how wrong and counterproductive he is.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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Palestians to Hamas: Don’t recognize Israel

Posted on 05/20/2008 by Meryl Yourish

You know the conventional wisdom that keeps saying that most Palestinians don’t agree with Hamas, and that they want peace with Israel?

Not so much.

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) – The majority of people in the Palestinian Territories are against the militant group Hamas recognizing the legitimacy of Israel as a state, according to a poll by Arab World for Research & Development. 63 per cent of respondents living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip share this opinion.

Do you support or oppose Hamas’ recognition of the state of Israel?

Source: Arab World for Research & Development
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,200 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, conducted from May 3 to May 5, 2008. Margin of error is 3.1 per cent.

Support17.3%
To some extent14.1%
Oppose63.0%
Don’t know / No opinion  5.6%

Right. So to recap: Two out of every three Palestinians think that Hamas should not recognize Israel. I guess that means they’re not nearly as willing to establish “two states, living side-by-side” as some would have us believe.

The problem, once again, is not Israeli settlements. It is the refusal of the Arabs to accept the reality: Israel isn’t going anywhere.

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Israel’s five major threats

Posted on 05/20/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Ha’aretz interviewed director of Military Intelligence Major General Amos Yadlin. Here are his thoughts on the threats Israel faces:

According to Yadlin, Israel faces five threats: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The intelligence picture that Israel has about these threats is not homogeneous, he says. On certain fronts the intelligence is good, on others it is very good. In any event, the intelligence picture is significantly better than it was two or three years ago.

One would have to agree with that, knowing Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor disguised as an ordinary building.

Asked whether a war is likely in 2008, he replies, “The assessment of MI is that there is a low probability, even a very low probability, that the enemy will initiate a war against Israel in 2008.” However, he adds, “The MI assessment also states that even though the enemy will not initiate a war, it is preparing for war. It is preparing for war because it is afraid that Israel will attack it. Accordingly, a mistake in judgment is liable to lead to war. The situation is volatile because both sides are preparing for war and are ready for a war, even though they do not want it.”

Oh, that’s cheerful. And Yadlin pulls no punches on what will happen in that war:

We must not put into the same basket the rockets we remember from the Lebanon War, which for the most part covered only the north of the country, and the steep-trajectory munitions, which can reach Gush Dan [Metropolitan Tel Aviv] and even farther south. The steep-trajectory munitions resemble surface-to-surface missiles more than they do rockets. Here the count is completely different. Hezbollah?s steep-trajectory munitions now cover large areas of Israel.

But here’s some good news:

Ahead of a possible future confrontation, Hezbollah is preparing a combined deployment of steep-trajectory weapons that will target the Israeli rear, and at the same time trying to create a ground force that will be able to cope successfully with a ground assault, which Hezbollah perceives as the IDF’s central lesson from the war of 2006.

[…] I will say only that some of the changes Hezbollah is undergoing oblige it to move from the form of a terrorist army to the characteristics of a conventional army. This is the case in its deployment, its weaponry and also in terms of command and control. This transition is not entirely advantageous for Hezbollah. It deprives it of some of the advantages it had as an elusive body that strikes at the civilian population and hides behind the back of the civilian population.”

There is much, much more on all five threats. Read it all.

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Palestinian terror in Nablus

Posted on 05/19/2008 by Meryl Yourish

The IDF is about to pull out of Nablus and hand over control to the PA. Meantime, Palestinian terrorists are trying to murder Israelis there.

A 20-year-old Palestinian carrying four pipe bombs was shot dead Monday evening at an IDF checkpoint located south of Nablus in the West Bank.

At around 7 pm soldiers manning the Hawara checkpoint spotted the Palestinian as he was making his way toward them in a suspicious manner with wires protruding from underneath his clothes.

[…] “I identified the explosive devices and yelled ‘explosives in the checkpoint’ and cocked my rifle. Everyone (soldiers) aimed at Palestinian’s head and neck so as not to set off the explosive device,” she said.

Ya’akov said she then ordered him to lift his shirt up. “The Palestinian raised his arms up for two seconds, then pulled them down and reached for the explosive device,” she said. At this point the checkpoint commander shot the man dead.

There’s plenty more here, none of it good. And nothing’s changed in the last two months.

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PA to Israel: By the way, we want an army

Posted on 05/19/2008 by Meryl Yourish

So much for two states living side by side in peace. The Palestinians are demanding a militarized “Palestine.” Gee. Whomever would they need to use that army on, I wonder?

Despite previous understandings that a future Palestinian state would be demilitarized, Ynet has learned that in talks held behind closed doors, the top negotiator for the Palestinian Authority, Ahmed Qureia, is demanding the establishment of a regular army.

High-level Israeli and Palestinian officials confirmed the newly revealed developments on Monday night.

According to the information obtained by Ynet, the new and surprising demand first emerged as the negotiations teams sat down in Jerusalem last Sunday to discuss security arrangements. Qureia told Foreign Affairs Minister Tzipi Livni that the Palestinian state would require a regular army to defend itself.

Livni, though perplexed by the sudden demand, made clear that all previous accords specifically spoke of a demilitarized Palestinian state. A senior Israeli source said that Livni sought to clarify if perhaps Qureia had meant a Palestinian police force, but the latter was reiterated that it was a proper regular army the PA was after.

Watch for the rest of the world to shrug and say “Of course. It’s only natural that a state should have an army.” Watch for it.

A very senior Palestinian source close to Qureia confirmed the exchange. “At the meeting in question we raised the demand for a regular army, meant to defend the independent state,” he told Ynet.

“This isn’t an army intended to launch an attack against Israel. We are not asking for F-16 jets but rather a force that would be able to defend the nation from threat and realize its basic right to exist in security.”

I’m thinking George W. Bush’s insistence on a peace deal by the end of the year is a pipe dream. Of course, I thought that even before I read about this, but hey—I’m a realist. And frankly, I’m rather happy the Pals are insisting on an army. Because even Olmert isn’t foolish enough to let that one get past him. So there’s no chance of being bulldozed into a final status agreement when the Palestinians have yet to end the incitement and Jew-hatred by their government offices. Not to mention terrorism against Israel.

Posted in Israel, palestinian politics | Tagged , | 2 Comments

What makes a pro-Israel president?

Posted on 05/19/2008 by Soccerdad

In Obama and the Jews Thomas Friedman writes:

What does that tell you? It tells me several things. The first is that America today has — rightly — a bipartisan approach to Arab-Israeli peace that is not going to change no matter who becomes our next president. America, whether under a Republican or Democratic administration, is now committed to a two-state solution in which the Palestinians get back the West Bank, Gaza and Arab parts of East Jerusalem, and Israel gives back most of the settlements in the West Bank, offsetting those it does not evacuate with land from Israel.

That of course the final deal that Friedman “knows” everyone accepts. At this point I’d ask what “offsetting land?” If that wasn’t enough to get Arafat to stand down from the Aqsa intifada in early 2001, why should it even be on the table at this point?

But I don’t agree that there’s a bi-partisan agreement. Part of the difference will be what aspects of the peace process will be emphasized. Sure President Bush (as Friedman notes) has complained about Israel building on its own territory. But that hasn’t been his emphasis. I suspect that it would be the emphasis of a President Obama, so emphasis is not trivial, because it will presage how well the President will work with Israel and with how much tension.

President Bush, as Friedman doesn’t point out, did lay out what he saw were Palestinian obligations. These are points that President Bush doesn’t emphasize enough anymore. Peace will not come, as Friedman would have it, if Israel would just stop building “settlements.” There needs to be a change of mindset among the Palestinians that has not happened. Nor is it likely to happen any time soon.

Friedman then goes on:

The notion that a President Barack Obama would have a desire or ability to walk away from this consensus American position is ludicrous. But given the simmering controversy over whether Mr. Obama is “good for Israel,” it’s worth exploring this question: What really makes a pro-Israel president?Personally, as an American Jew, I don’t vote for president on the basis of who will be the strongest supporter of Israel. I vote for who will make America strongest. It’s not only because this is my country, first and always, but because the single greatest source of support and protection for Israel is an America that is financially and militarily strong, and globally respected. Nothing would imperil Israel more than an enfeebled, isolated America.

And while granting that President Bush’s empathy for Israel is a positive he writes:

But what matters a lot more is that under Mr. Bush, America today is neither feared nor respected nor liked in the Middle East, and that his lack of an energy policy for seven years has left Israel’s enemies and America’s enemies — the petro-dictators and the terrorists they support — stronger than ever. The rise of Iran as a threat to Israel today is directly related to Mr. Bush’s failure to succeed in Iraq and to develop alternatives to oil.

This is convoluted. Two of the things that have led to the growing Iranian influence in the Middle East have been the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon and from Gaza, strengthening both Hezbollah and Hamas two Iranian proxies. These two retreats are policies that Friedman supported without reservation. It would be nice if he were capable of admitting his mistake.

The failure in Iraq isn’t what’s strengthened Iran. It has given Iran a new battleground. Still it was the deposing of Saddam that’s strengthened Iran. At least for now. But would a strong Saddam still in power be less of a threat?

As far as the oil argument it’s totally in the realm of science fiction. No president can decree that alternatives can be found. These are works in progress. Science does not advance in response to fiat.

The first, and most important, is the situation on the ground and the readiness of the parties themselves to take the lead, irrespective of what America is doing. Anwar Sadat’s heroic overture to Israel, and Menachem Begin’s response, made the Jimmy Carter-engineered Camp David peace treaty possible. The painful, post-1973 war stalemate between Israel and Egypt and Syria made Henry Kissinger’s disengagement agreements possible. The collapse of the Soviet Union and America’s defeat of Iraq in the first gulf war made possible James Baker’s success in putting the Madrid peace process together.What all three of these U.S. statesmen had in common, though — and this is the second criterion — was that when history gave them an opening, they seized it, by being tough, cunning and fair with both sides.

What got Anwar Sadat to got Jerusalem? Why it was Jimmy Carter’s efforts to draw the Soviet Union back into the Middle East peace making after Sadat had expelled the Soviets. Jimmy Carter was the beneficiary of his own incompetence.

And James Baker got the Madrid conference going. What exactly did that accomplish? It perhaps set the table for Oslo, which then enabled Arafat to launch terror from immediately on Israel’s borders and eventually to the Aqsa intifada. Again, what exactly did it accomplish?

I don’t want a president who is just going to lean on Israel and not get in the Arabs’ face too, or one who, as the former Mideast negotiator Aaron D. Miller puts it, “loves Israel to death” — by not drawing red lines when Israel does reckless things that are also not in America’s interest, like building settlements all over the West Bank.

I know about the second. That’s been a theme of Friedman’s ever since he’s had an op-ed column (and perhaps even longer.) However he does indeed agree with the former. Here’s Friedman from 1996, putting words into President Clinton’s mouth:

”In the meantime, some free advice. First, surprise everyone: Close the tunnel door. Announce that while Israel is fully within its rights as the sovereign power in Jerusalem to open the new tunnel door, this issue has become so inflamed, and become such a distraction from your real objective of building a secure peace, that you have decided to review the tunnel-door issue and will close it meanwhile. Yes, some of your hard-line colleagues will criticize you, and the press will say you flip-flopped. But the majority will see it as a real act of statesmanship. It will deprive your critics of the argument that you’re out to scuttle peace and it will force everyone to give you a second look.

What had just happened. Netanyahu had presided over the opening of a tunnel in Jerusalem. Arafat had, in response, organized a response of terrorism, known as the “tunnel riots.” According to Nadav Shragai, Netanyahu had cleared the tunnel opening with the Wakf in advance. So Netanyahu took a step, that should have been uncontroversial, Arafat betrayed his commitment to forswear terror and Friedman thought it correct for Clinton to lean on Israel and not get in Arafat’s face.

Back to the present, and Friedman’s conclusion:

It’s a tricky business. But if Israel is your voting priority, then at least ask the right questions about Mr. Obama. Knock off the churlish whispering campaign about what’s in his heart on Israel (what was in Richard Nixon’s heart?) and focus first on what kind of America you think he’d build and second on whether you believe that as president he’d have the smarts, steel and cunning to seize a historic opportunity if it arises.

I’ve been pretty open about my misgivings about Sen. Obama. This so-called “whispering campaign” is simply a new synonym for “criticizing Sen. Obama.”

I don’t know what was in President Nixon’s heart, but when the chips were down in 1973 he did send weapons to Israel. And for all his professed love of Israel, President Clinton in 2000, when Israel responded to the Aqsa intifada signed onto a condemnation of Israel in the UN. Who would I expect a President Obama to be more similar too?

In comments below, my co-blogger Daled Amos had a very sensible way of looking at the candidates:

I agree that McCain is preferable to Obama, but I would not go so far as to say that McCain “loves” Israel–I would not even go so far as to say that he is a friend of Israel. McCain is pro-Israel to the degree that he sees that the interests (and existence) of Israel dovetails with the interests of the US. That is the most that we can expect of any US candidate/President.

That’s a lot more realistic and honest that anything Thomas Friedman wrote:

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, palestinian politics | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

We know what’s best for you

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Soccerdad

Jeffrey Goldberg know what ails Israel and tells us in Israel’s America Problem:

When I spoke to Mr. Olmert a few days after his meeting with the Conference of Presidents, he made only brief mention of his Diaspora antagonists; he said that certain American Jews he would not name have been “investing a lot of money trying to overthrow the government of Israel.” But he was expansive, and persuasive, on the Zionist need for a Palestinian state. Without a Palestine — a viable, territorially contiguous Palestine — Arabs under Israeli control will, in the not-distant future, outnumber the country’s Jews.“We now have the Palestinians running an Algeria-style campaign against Israel, but what I fear is that they will try to run a South Africa-type campaign against us,” he said. If this happens, and worldwide sanctions are imposed as they were against the white-minority government, “the state of Israel is finished,” Mr. Olmert said in an earlier interview. This is why he, and his mentor, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, turned so fiercely against the Jewish settlement movement, which has entangled Israel unnecessarily in the lives of West Bank Palestinians. Once, men like Mr. Sharon and Mr. Olmert saw the settlers as the vanguards of Zionism; today, the settlements are seen, properly, as the forerunner of a binational state. In other words, as the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy.

Except what this ignores is that every effort to separate Israel from the Palestinians has succeeded in strengthening those who deny Israel’s right to exist.

First of all, now that Israel has cut all ties with Gaza the demographic problem – if it exists – has been put off some. Israel is not responsible for Gaza. But the “disengagement hasn’t helped Israel. More of Israel is subject to frequent rocket fire. Israel is condemned for defending its citizens and Hamas has been strengthened. Exactly what has Israel gained by this set of consequences?

Israel has long ago ceded control of Bethlehem, Jericho, Tulkarm, Qalqilya, Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus and most of Hebron to the PA. Ceding control of those cities to the PA led to the increase in terror in 1996 and made the “Aqsa intifada” possible. Again, it’s hard to see why Israel is responsible for these areas anymore. That the Palestinians have failed to create a functioning government is not Israel’s responsibility.

So all this talk about “apartheid” Israel is not out of concern for Israel, but rather to blackmail Israel into ceding territory to its enemies, not just in the name of a chimeric “peace” but also to save its soul; regardless of the cost to its body.

PM Olmert certainly is being dramatic when he accuses some American Jews of seeking to “overthrow” the Israeli government. American Jews have been involved in Israeli politics for a long. time. Nor would I be surprised if Mr. Olmert also had plenty of support from American Jews in one fashion or another. (I don’t believe that it’s legal for foreigners to donate directly to Israeli campaigns, so this help – financial and otherwise – is not necessarily direct. But then PM Olmert is no doubt familiar with what’s legal and what isn’t.)

Goldberg goes on to show his sophisticated grasp of the issues facing Israel:

This is an existentially unhealthy state of affairs. I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state — publicly, continuously and vociferously — to create conditions on the West Bank that would allow for the birth of a moderate Palestinian state. Most American Jewish leaders are opposed, not without reason, to negotiations with Hamas, but if the moderates aren’t strengthened, Hamas will be the only party left.And the best way to bring about the birth of a Palestinian state is to reverse — not merely halt, but reverse — the West Bank settlement project. The dismantling of settlements is the one step that would buttress the dwindling band of Palestinian moderates in their struggle against the fundamentalists of Hamas.

So why won’t American leaders push Israel publicly? Or, more to the point, why do presidential candidates dance so delicately around this question? The answer is obvious: The leadership of the organized American Jewish community has allowed the partisans of settlement to conflate support for the colonization of the West Bank with support for Israel itself. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, in their polemical work “The Israel Lobby,” have it wrong: They argue, unpersuasively, that American support for Israel hurts America. It doesn’t. But unthinking American support does hurt Israel.

Since 1993 Israel has been openly (longer still if one counts the preliminary negotiations conducted in contravention to Israeli law at the time) involved in a “peace process” with the Palestinians. Since that time we have seen Fatah strengthened, then Hamas. (Hezbollah too, if indirectly.) We saw more and more terror result from Israeli concessions until Israel fought back in 2002 and reduced the terrorist infrastructure created by the “moderate” Fatah movement.

The position of the Israeli government now is quite a far cry from the Israeli government of twenty years ago. What was then a vision of the far left wing group, Peace Now, is now the mainstream view in Israel. No Israeli government will refuse to negotiate with Fatah even though the group never disavowed the terror that was to be a precondition for its achieving legitimacy. And it’s hard to say that this softening of Israel’s position has made it more secure or accepted.

On the Palestinian side we’ve seen no softening of positions. Oh sure Arafat would say just enough to be awarded, legitimacy, army and money, but his actions never comported with hits professed declarations of accepting Israel.

No, the single biggest impediment to a Palestinian state is the Palestinian rejection of the Jewish one and the attendant terror. Mr. Goldberg’s mantra about settlements has been repeated for decades, but what happened when Israel abandoned Gaza? (Asked and answered above.)

Palestinian nationalism isn’t about self determination or freedom. It’s about destruction. The failure of the Palestinians to create a functioning society to live in peace beside Israel has nothing to do with a lack of contiguity but a lack of interest in building such a society.

The unthinking supporters of Israel, as Goldberg would have it, were right about Arafat. They were right about the Palestinian commitment to peace.

Finally there’s another question that Goldberg begs. He accuses AIPAC of not pushing Israel to dismantle settlements. But every action for peace that Israel has engaged in, AIPAC has been supportive. AIPAC supported Oslo. AIPAC supported the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon. AIPAC supported disengagement. Exactly how has AIPAC’s agenda differed from Goldberg’s over the past fifteen years is a mystery.

The people of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning, and their work in strengthening the overall relationship between America and Israel has ensured them a place in the world to come. But what’s needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel. Barack Obama and John McCain, the likely presidential nominees, are smart, analytical men who understand the manifold threats Israel faces 60 years after its founding. They should be able to talk, in blunt terms, about the full range of dangers faced by Israel, including the danger Israel has brought upon itself.But this won’t happen until AIPAC and the leadership of the American Jewish community allow it to happen.

So Goldberg considers it important for AIPAC to lecture Israel, to tell Israel what it must do. (Even if the past fifteen years have shown those policies to be counterproductive to peace.) Goldberg’s honest about his arrogance: I know what’s better for you than you do, and AIPAC ought to understand that too. I don’t know if that makes him pro-Israel. (In fact I dispute it.) It does make him (and his J-Street allies) a smug know-it-all.

Related thought (with different targets) at YidWithLid.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Posted in Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Israeli Double Standard Time, palestinian politics | Tagged , | 9 Comments

Haveil Havalim is up

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Meryl Yourish

This week: The MommyBlogger edition.

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Olmert to release murderers for Shalit?

Posted on 05/18/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Now this, I believe.

Israel has agreed to release 71 Palestinian prisoners “with blood on their hands” as part of a deal for kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, a senior Hamas source told Ynet on Sunday.

These prisoners were included on the list of 300 Palestinian murderers Hamas has demanded that Israel release in the framework of a future prisoner exchange deal.

A senior official in Jerusalem said Israel is not giving out details on the ongoing negotiations, which are being conducted with Egyptian mediation.

According to the Hamas, Shalit was mentioned by the Israeli government during the talks on a possible ceasefire with Palestinian factions in Gaza only to “appease the Israeli public”.

“The Israelis are not really working to release him and are hoping that Hamas and the organizations that abducted him will give in and accept their terms, but this will not happen,” the source said. “If the current situation persists, Shalit will be our guest for many years to come.”

And if this is true, then Israel will once again prove that terrorism works. However, on the positive side, Hamas refuses to actually negotiate. They’re trying to force Israel to release only the prisoners they demand, no negotiations, and I think that Suleiman has no real influence over them. So I expect this deal to fail, as have all the others.

Meantime, residents of southern Israel who are under bombardment are insisting there should be no truce without Shalit’s return.

The petition is expected to be presented to Defense Minister Ehud Barak later in the day. The initiative was launched by members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza following the death of 48-year-old Jimmy Kdoshim, who was killed on May 8 when a mortar shell fired from Gaza hit his house in the kibbutz.

Copies of the petition were distributed in nearby communities and sent via email to residents of the south. The kidnapped soldier’s father, Noam Shalit, gave his blessing to the intiative.

Kfar Aza resident Batia Holin said “we will not agree to a truce without (the return of) Gilad Shalit. We prefer to continue and suffer from the Qassam and mortar fire than accept a ceasefire agreement that does not include Gilad.”

That’s funny. I thought Israeli morale was broken. I thought this was a beaten people. I thought the daily rain of rockets and threats were causing depression, angst, and lack of patriotism among all Israelis. At least, that’s what I keep reading in all those 60th anniversary articles saying that Israel is nearing the end of its existence.

Looks like even those lefty kibbutzniks still have that gumption that made a desert bloom, and a thousands-year-old country come back to life.

Reports of Israel’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

Posted in Gaza, Hamas, Terrorism | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Caturday night

Posted on 05/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

It’s Caturday night.

Tig discovered the bathroom wastebasketbucket.

Tig in a bucket

Tig and his little bunny friend. Six-year-old Rebecca donated him. And no, she won’t be the least bit unhappy that Tig is beating up her bunny. I told her what I wanted it for.

Tig and his bunny

An action shot: Tig in mid-leap. Look ma, no strings!

Tig in mid-leap

And last (for now), Tig3 on his scratching post, playing his “Tig Kong” game. He’s up there a lot.

Tig on his scratching post

I’ll have more pictures for you later, after I get some with his new toys (thanks again, Herschel!).

There. That ought to satisfy even Rahel for the moment.

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Olmert to concede to Hamas

Posted on 05/17/2008 by Meryl Yourish

Once again, Ehud Olmert is ready to accept Hamas surrender terms. The only difference this time is that he’s trying to force the issue by finally—two years after his capture—demanding the freedom of Gilad Shalit.

Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman has warned deputy Hamas politburo chief Moussa Abu Marzouk that if kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit is not released Israel will launch a major offensive in Gaza, the Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar reported Saturday, quoting Palestinian sources.

According to the sources, Suleiman said that the Israel Defense Forces would carry out severe attacks against the Hamas movement and the other Palestinian factions in the Strip, should they refuse to sign a prisoner exchange agreement, which would include the release of the abducted Israeli serviceman.

The only reason I’m not too worried about this deal is that I know Hamas is going to demand the release of far too many murderers.

The newspaper also reported that Hamas is inclined to relax its conditions in order to complete the deal, but objects to the prisoner lists submitted by Israel.

Olmert knows that his government will fall if too many things happen at once. Oh, sure, it can take a corruption scandal or three, and the regular rocketing of southern Israeli towns. It can take a terror attack on Nahal Oz and still continue to pump fuel into Gaza. But it won’t be able to take all of them at once. At least, I hope not, because it does seem like the Israeli public doesn’t give a damn that its leader had made Israel appear weaker now than at any time since Israel’s inception. The sharks are circling, and they smell blood.

“The Palestinians and the Arabs have crushed the Jews’ assumption of supremacy… The Zionist legend of invincibility has been destroyed.

“Now more than ever I tell you – will never recognize Israel… We will form the Palestinian state on all of Palestine’s territories and the sun of liberty will burn the Zionists. To them I say – you will lose. You will leave and we will keep hounding you. The blood of our slain sons will haunt you forever,” he said.

That’s Mahmoud al-Zahar, the supposed peace partner that Jimmy Carter says Israel should talk to. To find out his “opinions.” I think they’re rather evident.

But again, this is why I think the “lull” deal will fail:

Hamas spokesman Aliman Taha said that his movement was “not interested in holding on to Shalit forever.” He added, “If Israel accepts the resistance’s demands, we will release him immediately.”

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the factions behind Shalit’s abduction, said that his group was “ready to tie the lull issue to the Shalit deal,” but only if Israel accepts the factions’ demands, particularly the release of the prisoners whose names appear on the list submitted by the organization.

The terrorists have always been their own worst enemies. May they stay that way forever.

Posted in Hamas, Israel | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Krauthammer on Israel’s 60th

Posted on 05/16/2008 by Soccerdad

Interestingly Charles Krauthammer starts his column about Israel’s 60th birthday (or here) on May 14th (well the English date anyway) by recalling an event that preceded the Lewis and Clark expedition that started May 14, 1804.

Before sending Lewis and Clark west, Thomas Jefferson dispatched Meriwether Lewis to Philadelphia to see Dr. Benjamin Rush. The eminent doctor prepared a series of scientific questions for the expedition to answer. Among them, writes Stephen Ambrose: “What Affinity between their (the Indians’) religious Ceremonies & those of the Jews?” Jefferson and Lewis, like many of their day and ours, were fascinated by the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and thought they might be out there on the Great Plains.

The point is to illustrate a rule …

They weren’t. They aren’t anywhere. Their disappearance into the mists of history since their exile from Israel in 722 B.C. is no mystery. It is the norm, the rule for every ancient people defeated, destroyed, scattered and exiled.

and its exception

With one exception, a miraculous story of redemption and return, after not a century or two, but 2,000 years. Remarkably, that miracle occurred in our time. This week marks its 60th anniversary: the return and restoration of the remaining two tribes of Israel — Judah and Benjamin, later known as the Jews — to their ancient homeland.

He also nicely demolishes the narrative of today’s “nuanced” foreign policy sophisticates.

During its early years, Israel was often spoken of in such romantic terms. Today, such talk is considered naive, anachronistic, even insensitive, nothing more than Zionist myth designed to hide the true story, i.e., the Palestinian narrative of dispossession.

(LGF has been cataloging the many nakba celebrations going on this week. For a term that didn’t come into wide usage until about a decade ago, it’s getting quite a workout.)

Finally Krauthammer shows how the new “history” of Israel’s founding is matched by tendentious reporting today:

Israel prevailed, another miracle. But at a very high cost — not just to the Palestinians displaced as a result of a war designed to extinguish Israel at birth, but also to the Israelis, whose war losses were staggering: 6,373 dead. One percent of the population. In American terms, it would take 35 Vietnam memorials to encompass such a monumental loss of life.You rarely hear about Israel’s terrible suffering in that 1948-49 war. You hear only the Palestinian side. Today, in the same vein, you hear that Israeli settlements and checkpoints and occupation are the continuing root causes of terrorism and instability in the region.

However, Krauthammer didn’t mention the dispossession of Jews from Arab countries that affected a similar number of people.

Finally though, Krauthammer gets to the point of it all.

One constantly hears about the disabling complexity of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Complex it is, but the root cause is not. Israel’s crime is not its policies but its insistence on living.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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