Yourish.com

(h/t Media Backspin)

In Palestinian Security Paradox, David Ignatius writes:

Security is the magic word. No peace deal will work until the Palestinians are able to provide security that Israelis can trust. But right now, people are paying lip service to this idea rather than actually helping the Palestinians build a credible force.If Annapolis is to be anything more than another exercise in frustration, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians should face this problem directly. The peace conference is premised on expectations about security that are unrealistic and can’t be fulfilled. If the Israelis really want the Palestinians to take more responsibility for curbing terror and maintaining order, they will have to allow them the resources and training to learn how. That’s risky, but the alternative is permanent Israeli occupation, which nobody wants.

The new Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, understands that Israelis want evidence of security in exchange for creating a Palestinian state. So this month he deployed 300 members of his National Security Forces to Nablus, the biggest and toughest city in the West Bank. He wants them to impose order, as the Israelis demand. But so far, the Israelis have hindered parts of this effort.

It’s easy for Ignatius to blame Israel for failing to give the Palestinians too much leeway in creating their own security forces. It’s easy, because he doesn’t look at the record.

In the past specially trained Palestinian security forces have been shooting and robbing Israelis. The training they received did nothing to change their motivation to harm Israel. Why a new crop might be more committed to ensuring security for Israel instead of fostering even more insecurity is a very good question.

Given the record, Israel’s caution is prudent.

UPDATE: via buzztracker

Prairie Pundit offers a rebuttal, the key sentences are:

The Palestinians have never demonstrated commitment to stopping other Palestinians who are intent on murdering Israelis. That is why there has never been a real chance for peace.

David Frum writes:

Hey, here’s a wild suggestion: What if we tried the other way around? What if we said to the Palestinians – OK, you want the benefits of peace? A state, a well-paid civil service supported by lavish foreign aid, jobs at the United Nations for the nephews of your president for life? Great. Make peace. Your soldiers want to be trusted? Great. First let them show themselves trustworthy.

It’s a line picked up by Noah Pollak who also wrote:

Arafat’s goons did not work toward establishing a Palestinian state. They didn’t serve the Palestinian people or attempt to impose law and order. These men worked for Yasir Arafat, and only for Arafat, in order that he could more thoroughly solidify his corrupt autocracy. The things Ignatius mentions—Israeli security concessions, or the latest package of aid money, or American support—have all been tweaked and modified and adjusted countless times. A competent security service, be it police or military, must be possessed of a unity of purpose and must show dedication to a mission. It is precisely these cultural components that have been so elusive when it has come to the role that Palestinian security services have played in the many abortive attempts at creating a Palestinian state. The only Arab security forces in recent history that have displayed any such qualities are those of Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizballah.

(Pollak also quotes from and links to Daniel Polisar’s classic “Arafat and the myth of legitimacy” which is well worth reading in its own right.)

One thing these critiques of Ignatius point to is a lack of Palestinian performance when it comes to their obligations towards Israel. Given this lack of performance it’s worth recalling that “the roadmap” was officially called A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

As long as the Palestinians won’t perform, there will be no peace. Changing the terms of the Roadmap, or asking for more Israeli “confidence building measures” or anything else simply avoids the central problem.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

There is precious little coverage of what ought to be considered Watergate for the international media, but yesterday brought some dramatic news. After telling the court that he had 27 minutes of video of the conflict near Netzarim junction the day that Mohammed al-Dura was supposedly killed by Israeli bullets, France 2’s Charles Enderlin produces only 18 minutes.

Last year France 2 successfully sued media critic Philippe Karsenty for libel by claiming that the al-Dura incident was staged. Now during his appeal Karsenty has apparently shifted the momentum by making the actual video shot that day the central focus of the case.

Media Backspin:

There was a dispute over how much footage was to be screened. Was the full video shown? Charles Enderlin submitted 18 minutes of footage. The judge, without any prompting from Philippe’s lawyers, asked what happened to the 27 minutes. Enderlin said on record in court that he had to manipulate some footage that was not relevant to that day. He said he transferred the footage onto DVD for the court. That was amazing. France_2_2So she asked if anyone in attendance had seen the full footage. Luc Rosenzweig was there, stood up , and said he saw a tape that was more than 20 minutes long. Richard Landes also stood up. He saw the footage at Enderlin’s office. He said the timer he saw was at least 21 minutes long. The judge basically let that issue rest, but there was serious doubt hanging over the room that the footage was tampered or doctored.

Augean Stables:

Today Charles Enderlin presented in court the “rushes” of Talal abu Rahmah which the Judge had requested from him. And he presented an edited version in which he took out at least three minutes, and several scenes that I distinctly remember seeing. In the United States that’s called tampering with evidence, obstruction of justice, and perjury. In France, we’ll find out what it’s called.

Melanie Phillips:

The drama of today’s hearing was enhanced by the appearance of Enderlin himself, who until today had not graced this case with his presence. As the film was shown to a packed and overheated (in every sense) courtroom, Enderlin and Karsenty offered rival interpretations of the images on the screen. If Enderlin thought he would thus demonstrate the inadequacy of Karsenty’s case, he was very much mistaken. On the contrary, parts of his commentary were so absurd that the courtroom several times burst into incredulous laughter.

(h/t Yid with Lid)

Al Jazeera:

Although the actual moment of Muhammad’s death wasn’t caught on film, Mr Enderlin is convinced that the boy was killed that day.

Nidra Poller:

Charles Enderlin came to court personally today to defend the images shot by his trusted cameraman Talal Abu Rahma at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip on September 30, 2000. The cameraman had declared under oath that he filmed 27 minutes of the ordeal of Mohamed al Dura and his father Jamal, pinned down by Israeli gunfire. France 2 turned over to the court a CDRom certified as an authentic copy of the raw footage, of a total duration of 18 minutes. Despite those statements the pertinent al Dura scenes contained in the rushes lasted one short minute. Nothing more.

Daled Amos has interviews with 3 observers and Philippe Karsenty.

Solomonia has an excellent round-up including pre-trial impressions.

FresnoZionism –

The judge will render her decision of February 27. But whether justice will be done and Enderlin will lose his case, or not — Enderlin is very well-connected, an acquaintance of Jacques Chirac — the case illustrates the power of the media and the importance of the information war. It also illustrates the cynicism of many in the media, who understand the Palestinian fake news industry, but exploit it anyway because it provides sensational footage.

Though things sound good right now, In-Context (in an e-mail, but whose site is down right now) warned that despite how things seem right now, it’s no foregone conclusion that the judge will rule in Karsenty’s favor. Still one would have to assume that France 2’s credibility (and the credibility of everyone who relied on them) has taken a big hit.

Even though nearly every media organization covering Israel used the al-Dura image, few seem much interested in this trial. Don’t they care about their own credibility?

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Before I started blogging. (OK before there were blogs.) I was a letter writer. When I didn’t like what I read in the newspaper I’d write a letter to the editor.

Well 10 years (and 2 days) ago, I had one of the highlights of my letter writing career. I had a letter published in the NY Times. The topic of my letter was a Thomas Friedman column, With allies like these … in which Friedman complained how different countries were hurting American efforts to contain Saddam. One of those countries he criticized was Israel.

(Israel is another ally that should take stock. Unlike the Europeans, Israel knows exactly who Saddam is. Israel has a fundamental interest in the coalition’s holding firm against him, particularly the Arabs. The ability of Arab leaders to do so will be influenced in part by public opinion, and already Saddam is playing on that, saying the U.S. wants to bully him but won’t lift a finger to pressure Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Netanyahu doesn’t have to give the Palestinians a state tomorrow, just to satisfy the Arab street. But he could buy the U.S. a lot more room to maneuver — and therefore improve Israel’s overall strategic situation — by implementing the long-delayed redeployment of Israeli forces from the West Bank in return for Palestinian concessions.)

To which I responded (it was published Nov. 12, 1997)

During the Persian Gulf war, President George Bush made sure that Israel didn’t defend itself lest an Arab state drop support for the anti-Iraq coalition. In the wake of Iraq’s eviction from Kuwait, the Arab world didn’t show much gratitude for American protection. And when President Bush led the effort in the United Nations to rescind the ”Zionism is racism” resolution, not a single Arab state voted to repeal. Even though past behavior may not be predictive of future actions, this record hardly suggests that further concessions to the Palestinian Authority will improve Israel’s strategic position.

I guess that the last sentence has, unfortunately, been confirmed by recent events. And it’s also interesting that supposedly now, part of the impetus for the Annapolis conference is to help the United States contain Iran.

Some things don’t change much, even when they failed the first time.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Taint by Association by Clark Hoyt

The bigger question is whether The Times should be publishing him at all. But why would the Times give a spokesman for a terrorist organization a platform to promote Hamas? If he wanted to write about the inner workings of a terrorist organization to give the military and law enforcement agencies a better understanding of how to fight them, that would be one thing. But each time the newspaper uses Yousef as it has, it is conferring greater legitimacy on him.The deal works two ways. The Times’s luster may help Yousef and Hamas. But some of their taint rubs off on the Times.

Right, that’s what I didn’t read in the Times. The paper’s public editor was writing about former Wall Street star, Henry Blodget.

The bigger question is whether The Times should be publishing him at all. Like Nocera, I believe in second chances, and Blodget seems to be doing fine establishing a new career. But why would The Times give a former analyst who lied to investors a platform to write about financial markets? If he wanted to write about how investors can spot phony reports by analysts, that would be one thing. But each time the newspaper uses Blodget as it has, it is conferring greater expert status on him.These deals work two ways. The Times’s luster may help Blodget. But some of his taint rubs off on The Times.

This is how he actually defended the op-ed written by Hamas spokesman, Ahmed Yousef.

THE op-ed page of The New York Times is perhaps the nation’s most important forum for airing opinions on the most contentious issues of the day — the war in Iraq, abortion, global warming and more.“We look for opinions that are provocative,” said Andrew Rosenthal, the editor of the editorial page. “Opinions that confirm what you already thought aren’t that interesting.”

But some opinions provoke more than others. Two very different columns by guest contributors, one last week and one last month, caused enormous reader outcries and raised important questions. Are there groups or causes so odious they should be ruled off the page? If The Times publishes a controversial opinion, does it owe readers another point of view immediately? And what is the obligation of editors to make sure that op-ed writers are not playing fast and loose with the facts?

So let’s get this straight, a guy who represents (and defends) a group who fires rockets at civilians is not too “odious” to appear on the op-ed pages of the Times, but a guy who misled investors but paid his debt to society it too “odious” for the hallowed op-ed pages of the Times? And that’s even though the former is writing propaganda meant to help the rocket launchers and the latter is offering expertise to help the readers? Is the value of being “provocative” really that cleansing?

It reminds me of Alice’s Restaurant when Arlo Guthrie is informed that he can’t be a soldier due to his conviction – for littering.

I mean I’m sittin’ here on the Group W bench, ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enought to join ther army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a litterbug.”

(No, I don’t share Arlo Guthrie’s view of the army.)

By Hoyt’s standards, then, cheating is worse than shooting rockets at innocents, even if the cheating is in the past and the rockets are still flying. Glad to know that the public editor of the New York Times has such a sensitive moral compass.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

via memeorandum

This is not news, but there’s another academic concluding that terror is not a function of poverty. In this case it is Alan Krueger who explains What makes a terrorist.

Claude Berrebi, now of the RAND Corporation’s Institute for Civil Justice, wrote his dissertation at Princeton on the characteristics of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who were involved in terrorist activities. For example, he compared suicide bombers to the whole male pop­ulation aged 16 to 50 and found that the suicide bombers were less than half as likely to come from families that were below the poverty line. In addi­tion, almost 60 percent of the suicide bombers had more than a high school education, compared with less than 15 percent of the general population. Jitka Malecková and I performed a similar study of militant members of Hezbollah, a multifaceted organization in Lebanon that has been labeled a ter­rorist organization by the U.S. State Department. We were able to obtain information on the biogra­phies of 129 deceased shahids (martyrs) who had been honored in the group’s newsletter, “Al-Ahd.” We turned translations by Eli Hurvitz at Tel Aviv University into a data­set and then combined it with information on the Lebanese popu­lation from the 1996 Lebanese Ministry of Social Affairs Housing Survey of 120,000 peo­ple aged 15 to 38. These deceased mem­bers of Hezbollah had a lower poverty rate than the Lebanese population: 28 percent versus 33 percent. And Hezbollah members were better educated: 47 percent had a secondary or higher education ver­sus 38 percent of adult Lebanese. This is also the case, apparently, with al-Qaeda. Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) case officer, has written a book titled Understanding Terror Networks. He found that a high proportion of mem­bers of al-Qaeda were college educated (close to 35 percent) and drawn from skilled professions (almost 45 percent). Research on members of the Israeli extremist group, Gush Emunim, that Malecková and I conducted, also pointed in the same direc­tion. Perhaps most definitively, the Library of Congress produced a summary report for an advi­sory group to the CIA titled, “The Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” which also reached this conclusion—two years before 9/11.

(I don’t know why Gush Emunim is thrown in. It is not a terror group.) Another observer, Scott Atran, came to a similar conclusion a few years ago, however his policy prescription leaves much to be desired.

Shows of military strength don’t seem to dissuade terrorists: witness the failure of Israel’s coercive efforts to end the string of Palestinian suicide bombings. Rather, we need to show the Muslim world the side of our culture that they most respect. Our engagement needs to involve interfaith initiatives, not ethnic profiling. America must address grievances, such as the conflict in the Palestinian territories, whose daily images of violence engender global Muslim resentment.

But as Noah Pollak showed, Israel’s “show of military strength” has likely eroded the Palestinian capacity for conducting a terror campaign in the manner of the “Aqsa intdifada” of 2001 – 2003.

Israel’s victory involved several key elements: the killing and imprisonment of large numbers of the Palestinian corps of jihadists, especially the terror leaders; the construction of a security wall that today makes Palestinian penetration of Israel immeasurably more difficult; and a revolution in Israel’s intelligence-gathering and military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. By way of everything from checkpoints and electronic surveillance to the cultivation of networks of informants and the deployment of undercover operatives, the Shabak (the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and counterintelligence agency) and IDF dramatically have curtailed the ability of Palestinian terror groups to organize themselves and attack Israel. You wouldn’t know much of this living in the U.S., where the daily heroics of the Israeli security services largely go unnoticed. A lot of people—such as Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl—apparently believe that the suicide bombings of the “second intifada” no longer occur because the Palestinians gave up the tactic, or decided to halt their offensive, or no longer wish to use terrorism to kill Jews. Diehl and his ilk seem to think that such attacks can be resumed at any moment. But they are badly misguided. Anyone who doubts this should read the Israeli press on a daily basis, where stories of suicide bombings thwarted in the West Bank—as opposed to stories of suicide bombers detonating themselves in Tel Aviv—are regular occurrences.

Atran, and those like him look solely at motive, not, as I argued earlier, on means and opportunity. Krueger, is correct when he writes,

To under­stand who joins terrorist organizations, instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose an extrem­ist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead, they are people who care so fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it.

It’s an observation that matches that of Daniel Pipes from a few years ago.

Islamic Jihad, which along with Hamas trains the suicide killers, explains: “We do not take depressed people. If there were a one-in-a-thousand chance that a person was suicidal, we would not allow him to martyr himself. In order to be a martyr bomber, you have to want to live.” The same strange logic applies for Hamas, which rejects anyone “who commits suicide because he hates the world.” Convincing healthy individuals to blow themselves up is obviously not easy, but requires ideas and institutions. The process begins with the Palestinian Authority (PA) inculcating two things into its population, starting with the children: a hatred of Jews and a love of death. School curricula, camp activities, TV programming and religious indoctrination all portray Israelis in a Nazi-style way, as sub-human being worthy of killing; and then deprecate the instinct for self-preservation, telling impressionable young people that sacrificing their lives is the most noble of all goals.

Unfortunately Krueger didn’t look at indoctrination and concluded that a lack of freedom plays a significant role in terrorism. He may have a point. But I don’t think that he’d agree with my view that this is probably one factor in explaining the increase in Palestinian terror against Israel since the Oslo Accords. The Palestinians were freer when occupied by Israel than when ruled by Arafat. (Atran elsewhere has argued that occupation is the root of all terror.) The indoctrination served to direct the terror against Israel.

I still think that the indoctrination is more important. Palestinian terror has worked because it’s been successful. It’s made otherwise rational people say, “I may differ with their methods, but they have a legitimate grievance.” Political support for a state of Palestine grew out of such sentiments that became pervasive in the diplomatic world. Unfortunately a view that “If these are their methods they undermine even a legitimate grievance” never took hold. If it had, it may have created enough disincentive for the Palestinian to engage in terror. Even now there’s still a view that Israel must accommodate Hamas even though it has shown no reciprocal interest and even though it has never moderated its actions (or words) towards Israel.

Regardless of what causes terrorism, what stops it is clearly force. (Even if it doesn’t work immediately.) Wishing for change that is not there only serves to promote more terror, rather than appease its practitioners.

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

Earlier I critiqued Jackson Diehl’s column, “If this peace process fails.” Now, (via Daled Amos) I see that Noah Pollak has critiqued the column from a different perspective.

The 2000-2005 terror war was not an outpouring of political or social frustration, but rather an attempt at so thoroughly terrorizing and intimidating the Israeli public that the Israeli government would concede almost anything to make the suicide bombings stop. For its success the terror war required political, military, and religious leadership and organization, arms supplies (remember the Karine A?), and funding—and it also required an enemy that was caught off-guard by the suddenness and depravity of the attacks. None of these factors exists today, primarily due to the total defeat of Arafat’s terror offensive. Israel’s victory involved several key elements: the killing and imprisonment of large numbers of the Palestinian corps of jihadists, especially the terror leaders; the construction of a security wall that today makes Palestinian penetration of Israel immeasurably more difficult; and a revolution in Israel’s intelligence-gathering and military operations in the West Bank and Gaza. By way of everything from checkpoints and electronic surveillance to the cultivation of networks of informants and the deployment of undercover operatives, the Shabak (the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service and counterintelligence agency) and IDF dramatically have curtailed the ability of Palestinian terror groups to organize themselves and attack Israel.

In the past I’ve written that the MSM is usually obsessed with the motives for Arab terror rather than the means or opportunity. Here Pollak is arguing that a violent response from the Palestinians is unlikely because Israel has greatly reduced their means and opportunities for carrying out terror. That is true and something I hadn’t considered.

I still expect some terror attempts in the wake of a failure at Annapolis. The Palestinians will need to put up a good front that the failure has caused them despair and that the despair has led to increased terror attempts.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Barry Rubin writes about what is being done and why it needs to be done regarding the Iranian nuclear threat. (or here) What’s being attempted.

…it is the last moment for three other things:

* If international terms, if diplomatic and economic pressure is going to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons it has to be intensified right now or it will be too late to generate the needed non-military threat to Tehran.

* In technological terms, Iran is right on the verge of being able to build nuclear weapons all by itself without any more foreign help or equipment.

* In political terms, if Iranian leaders and people aren’t worried about the country’s isolation and the nuclear program’s high costs, they will more likely keep in power the regime’s most extreme faction—and the ones most likely to use nuclear weapons in the future. So in several real ways it is truly a moment of now or never, not because of an imminent attack but due to the fact that this era gives the last chance to avoid one.

President Bush isn’t war mongering when he talks about the possibility of World War III, he’s warning what could be if Iran isn’t stopped. But Prof Rubin goes on to argue, that nuclear weapons in the hand of Iran may be more effective as a looming threat than as actual means to attack enemies.

# Appeasement: Frightened by Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons and uncertain of Western protection, Arabic-speaking states will rush to meet Iran’s demands.

# This means they will be afraid to cooperate with U.S. policy or provide facilities for Western efforts to contain Iran. And that development will make them even less able to protect themselves against Tehran, further reinforcing the effect.

# Given Iran’s rejectionist stance, no Arab state or the Palestinian Authority would dare move toward peace with Israel. Even if you believe such a thing is possible now, forget about it for 20 or 30 years.

# Since Iran always favors higher oil prices (with Saudi Arabia, which already has lots of money, holding them down), the combination of Iranian pressure and heightened regional insecurity will send the cost of petroleum sky-high, far above anything hitherto dreamed.

# Intoxicated with a belief that Islamism is on the march to victory, tens and perhaps hundreds of thousands will join radical Islamist groups, either clients of Iran or independent ones.

He lists more possible consequences but these five are scary enough. And yet there are countries that are undermining even the American diplomatic efforts aimed at stopping the development of the Iranian nuclear bomb. Are they already being cowed by Iran? Or do they figure that they’ll be spared Iran’s wrath if they betray the United States now? Or have they simply not thought about the future?

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.