Yourish.com

I read the editorial “Reckless in Gaza” in today’s Forward with a growing sense of disbelief. Then I reached this paragraph.

Now, however, the whole deal may be off, including Shalit’s freedom. Among the dead in the Gaza incursion was the 24-year-old son of Muhammad Zahar, a leader of the hawkish wing (yes, there is one) of Hamas. Zahar is now gaining stature along with sympathy, strengthening Hamas opponents of cease-fire and accommodation.

“[Y]es there is one”!?!?!? There’s a “hawkish wing” to Hamas? Really? Why, I never knew.

I can’t quite grasp the naiveté of that line. Do the editors mean to imply that there’s a “dovish wing” to Hamas or are they assuming that such is true? And what does “hawkish” mean in this context. In the context of a legitimate government it would refer to those who would more readily resort to force. But given that Hamas is a terrorist organization, by definition it’s “hawkish” in that it believes in the use of force against civilians.

What’s the gist of the editorial? Israel ought not to fight back. Fighting back is counterproductive. Earlier the editorial informs us:

In the past two years, Israeli forces killed 810 Palestinians in Gaza, as the director of the Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, told a Cabinet meeting last week. Of the total, about 200 were not clearly linked to terrorist organizations — that is, bystanders. A separate study by the Ha’aretz newspaper found that the civilian toll was actually higher, totaling about 360, of whom 152 were under age 18, including 48 children under age 14.Israel’s death toll from terrorism in 2007, reported this month by the human rights group B’Tselem and confirmed by the military, totaled 13, including seven civilians. That was the lowest toll since 1999. The toll that year, the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

For all that, the Palestinian war against Israel “is not being checked, but is actually intensifying,” the internal security minister, Avi Dichter, reported at the same Cabinet meeting. Dichter, a former Shin Bet chief, estimated that there are some 20,000 Palestinian fighters in Gaza, of whom Israel has killed about 5%. He said the army should shift gears and step up its efforts. It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

I find it fascinating that the editorial states that

the last full year that the Oslo accords were in effect, was zero.

Are the editors implying a causal relationship here? Make peace and there will be no terror? Well how do they explain the terror of 1994, 1995, and 1996?And it’s interesting that 1999 was a year of no terror. For half the year Binyamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister. But terror started up again the next year, with a vengeance, when Ehud Barak was Prime Minister. Netanyahu was widely vilified (especially by folks sympathetic to this sort of mushy-minded thinking) as hurting peace. But under his leadership – when he actually had the gall to demand compliance from the Palestinians – terror actually dropped. It picked up when his successor, Barak tried to make peace. Hmm. Is there a correlation?

Let’s go the last paragraph. Minister Dichter estimates that Israel has killed 5% of 20000 terrorists in Gaza. So how does the editorial respond.

It wasn’t clear how much killing he thought would suffice.

What shortsightedness! My guess is that if 95% of Gaza’s terrorists survive, then there aren’t nearly enough of them are scared of Israel yet. Need Dichter spell out an estimate? Or maybe we ought to just let Israel continue fighting Hamas as it needs to. Killing the significant leaders of the organization might also have a positive effect on terror as we’ve seen in the past when Israel killed Sheikh Yassin and Dr. Rantisi as Elder of Ziyon observed.

I could go on, but the whole editorial is based on assumptions that have been disproved time and again. Israel must kill those who seek to destroy it. It’s not a matter of bloodthirstiness, but of necessity.

Then there’s a column by Markus Bouillon and Michael Shtender-Auerbach that argues Push for Peace Now, Before Bush and Abbas Step Down

Like no other Palestinian leader, Abbas has been committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and a negotiated, nonviolent end of the Israeli occupation. Reaching back to the 1980s, he was the first and most important proponent of negotiating with Israel. He was a key protagonist during the Oslo years, and in 1995 presented the first-ever draft of an Israeli-Palestinian final status accord with Yossi Beilin.Abbas also spearheaded attempts to reform the Palestinian Authority as its first prime minister, but was pushed out of office by the self-serving Yasser Arafat. Still, when Arafat passed away, it was Abbas who inherited the mantle of the unifying Palestinian leader. There are simply no alternatives to him.

Even if Abbas was convinced to run again, in the absence of a true peace process or signaled agreement, he would most likely lose. Worse still, as of now it is entirely unclear who might succeed him.

Even assuming that this columns portrayal of Abbas as a moderate is correct, what does it say when even now, 14+ years since Oslo, he’s the only Palestinian of political importance who is dedicated to coexistence with Israel. Clearly, he hasn’t built a constituency for these views. If there’s no one who could carry the mantle of coexistence in negotiations, there is also no one could do it maintain peace once Israeli concessions were agreed to and implemented. Even if Israel could come to an agreement with Abbas as head of the truncated PA, whose left to carry on those peaceful policies. When you’re only choice with the necessary “street credibility and popular appeal” is a man convicted of multiple counts of murder, you realize that the problem isn’t the failure to make peace but the absence of anyone to make peace with.

The Forward ought to be a bulwark against such dangerous nonsense, instead it promotes it.

In a different (but parallel) context, Asaf Romirowsky writes:

A disturbing variable in the equation, which complicates the situation further, is the unwillingness of many American Jews to take a strong stand on the Arab-Israeli conflict. In particular, rabbis and Jewish educators — no matter where they stand on the political spectrum — often behave in an apologetic manner when it comes to Israel, rather than make assertive arguments from a Zionist point of view.This unwillingness to confront the pro-Palestinian propaganda being nurtured by Middle Eastern-studies departments is one of the major sources of confusion among Jewish students. For example, so long as liberal American Jews fail to speak up about the issue of post-1948 Jewish refugees from Arab lands, and instead, merely allow the discussion to center on a Palestinian “right of return,” Jewish students will be on the defensive.

If pro-Israel advocates on campus are discussing the Jewish state only in terms of “Israeli oppression,” rather than in debunking such notions, the result is always going to favor the anti-Israel forces. That is why college campuses today have become podiums for those who denigrate Israel, as is apparent from the different human rights, anti-globalization and anti-imperialism groups that have adopted the Palestinian cause.

Here we have a Jewish newspaper, that instead of fighting the propaganda undermining Israel’s right to defend itself (and to exist) contributes to the cause of its enemies in the name of phony humanitarianism.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Still Waiting to Seize the Moment – Editorial from the New York Times.

Despite longstanding pledges, the Israelis are refusing to stop expanding settlements while the Palestinians aren’t doing enough to halt violence against Israel.

A Middle East Commitment – Editorial from the Washington Post

So far U.S. prodding has failed to induce Mr. Olmert and Mr. Abbas to take initial confidence-building steps they have repeatedly promised, such as the dismantlement of illegal Israeli outposts in the West Bank or a campaign to stop incitement against Israel by Palestinian media and schools.

It’s come to the point where this hackneyed boilerplate passes for analysis. The halting of terror was a premise of the whole peace process. There is no equivalence between terror that is encouraged and perpetrated by the PA and Israel building more homes for its citizens. The former violates every premise of peacemaking and yet it’s treated as a “confidence building measure.” On the latter, I’m reasonably certain that if Israel stopped building everywhere else but continued building in places like Gilo, Ramot and French Hill, that these august newspapers would still fault Israel.

Getting back to the NY Times:

For the first time, Mr. Bush did say that Israel must compensate Palestinians who left or were driven from their homes in what is now Israel. He also warned both sides that they are going to have to make difficult compromises on their borders.

Why is Israel responsible for Palestinians who left their homes? And why is there no mention of Jews who were driven from their homes? And as Amb. Dore Gold pointed out yesterday in a conference call of bloggers, Israeli territorial compromises are not just difficult but, based on past experience, dangerous too.

As bad as the NY Times editorial is, the Washington Post’s is worse.

In 2001 he disparaged and quickly abandoned President Bill Clinton’s personal attempt to broker a final peace settlement between Israelis and Palestinians during his final months in office. Seven years later, ending his first visit to Israel as president, Mr. Bush set a goal of finishing that peace treaty during his own final months; said he would personally involve himself in pressuring both sides; and, like Mr. Clinton before him, laid out his own parameters for a deal.The only significant difference between the two sets of presidential ideas was that Mr. Bush was unwilling, unlike Mr. Clinton, to discuss a solution for Jerusalem, where the largest concessions will have to come from Israel. Instead, he mainly sketched the painful sacrifices required from Palestinians, including the surrender of some West Bank territory and the payment of compensation rather than the “return” of Palestinians who fled Israel in 1948. Still, none of what the president said was novel. Mr. Bush’s statement merely confirmed that seven years of bloodshed, unilateral actions and diplomatic stasis, during which both Israelis and Palestinians sought to change the terms suggested by Mr. Clinton, have been a tragic waste of lives and time.

I won’t disagree that the past seven years there has been a tragic waste of lives, but it isn’t due to the president’s disengagement. It’s worth noting that the terror war waged against Israel that was going on when President Bush took office, occurred in the wake of the some of the most intensive diplomatic efforts ever undertaken in the Middle East. In fact it’s incredible that the editors don’t acknowledge that the the violence of seven years ago took place despite the Clinton parameters. This shows that the terror war was not a function of the lack of an agreement.

It’s also an amazingly ignorant argument given that during President Bush’s term in office Israel withdrew from Gaza. That led not to greater compromise and understanding but strengthened Hamas and put Israelis living in “non-occupied” Israel at risk from Qassam missiles. There hasn’t been “diplomatic stasis” over the past seven years, diplomatic progress has been made; it just has produced the exact opposite results that the Post’s editors assumed that it would.

In Here we Go Round the Mulberry Bush, Barry Rubin lays out a summary of the past seven years based on observation not wishful thinking.

In 2000, a seven-year-long peace process was due for completion. The Gaza Strip and much of the West Bank had been turned over to the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Yasir Arafat. The PA had been given billions of dollars and military equipment, becoming a virtual client of the United States. Despite these efforts, there was anarchy in the PA-ruled territory, constant incitement to violence against Israel on the official news media, no psychological or ideological preparation of the Palestinians by their leadership for peace, and a massive wasting of funds.Later, some analysts would explain away the failure by saying it was a mistake to force Arafat to the negotiating table for a decision. At the time, though, all one heard was how Arafat needed progress or he would lose control of his people and that the window of opportunity was closing. The U.S., Israeli, and European governments also wanted diplomatic progress for interests of their own. The result was not only the Camp David summit but also, and in some ways even more important, the Clinton plan that followed. The Palestinian leadership rejected both and instead opted for war.

Bush’s new policy may be a big change for him but, after all, he is merely making the same analysis and offering the same terms as his predecessor. It was an understanding of what went wrong with Clinton’s thinking and his generous bid–in part taught them by Clinton itself–that explains the Bush administration’s lower level of effort for most of its time in office.

The problem then isn’t the lack of American involvement, but the lack of a Palestinian commitment or ability to make peace.

Even if there was a Palestinian leader able to transcend all those pressures he would still restrained by knowing that to make a deal might not only be personally fatal but–far more certain–would destroy his reputation and career. Nobody will act like Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in making peace with Israel because look what happened to him (reviled, boycotted by the Arab world, and assassinated).Nor do Palestinian leaders feel a need to run such risks. A far easier, successful policy is to take billions of Western aid dollars while doing nothing and blaming everything on Israeli intransigence and U.S. mistakes.

Calls for more American involvement in the peace process are based on a false belief that American pressure can help make peace. American involvement, instead, seems to have accomplished just the opposite. It has created an atmosphere that rewards (Palestinian) intransigence in the chimerical belief that enough foreign aid can somehow change deeply held beliefs.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.