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1) The Washington Post of Obama’s trip

Fareed Zakaria uses a guest column in the Washington Post to proclaim Obama appeals to Israel’s conscience:

He starts with condescension:

As a piece of rhetoric, Barack Obama’s speech to college students in Jerusalem was a triumph. He finally convinced Israel and its supporters that “HE GETS US,” as one of them e-mailed me. “In his Kishkas [gut], he gets us!” But Obama also spoke more bluntly about Israel’s occupation and the case for a Palestinian state than any U.S. president has in the past. Oratory aside, Obama has recognized and employed the strongest — and perhaps only — path toward peace and a Palestinian state: an appeal to Israel’s conscience.

I’ve seen the “kishkas” so-called argument before as if President Obama’s problem with Israel was a lack of empathy, not his policies. Obama supporters, who agreed with his stance towards Israel – both in terms of his actual policy and his distance – proclaimed him to be pro-Israel anyway and didn’t understand why people who supported Israel were suspicious of Obama. Now they see Israelis and supporters no longer have a reason to be suspicious. Having established that Israel’s supporters are superficial, Zakaria concludes:

Obama’s speech appealed to this aspect of Israel’s psyche and grounded it deeply in Jewish values: “Israel is rooted not just in history and tradition but also in the idea that a people deserve to be free in a land of their own.” Then, applying that idea to Israel’s longtime adversaries, he said: “Look at the world through [Palestinian] eyes. It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of their own. Living their entire lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements not just of those young people but their parents, their grandparents, every single day.”

Having tried pressure, threats and tough talk, Obama has settled on a new strategy: appealing to Israel as a liberal democracy and to its people’s sense of conscience and character. In the long run, this is the most likely path to peace and a Palestinian state.

Obama will be successful now because he changed his tone! How fatuous.

Charles Krauthammer, on the other hand, explains What really happened in Jerusalem. He begins with a quote from President Obama:

“I honestly believe that if any Israeli parent sat down with those [Palestinian] kids, they’d say, ‘I want these kids to succeed.’ ”

— Barack Obama, in Jerusalem,
March 21

Very true. But how does the other side feel about Israeli kids?

Consider that the most revered parent in Palestinian society is Mariam Farhat of Gaza. Her distinction? Three of her sons died in various stages of trying to kill Israelis — one in a suicide attack, shooting up and hurling grenades in a room full of Jewish students.

…

So much for reciprocity. In the Palestinian territories, streets, public squares, summer camps, high schools, even a kindergarten are named after suicide bombers and other mass murderers. So much for the notion that if only Israelis would care about Arab kids, peace would be possible.

Krauthammer writes further:

So what was the point of Obama’s Jerusalem speech encouraging young Israelis to make peace, a speech the media drooled over? It was mere rhetoric, a sideshow meant to soften the impact on the Arab side of the really important event of Obama’s trip: the major recalibration of his position on the peace process.

Obama knows that peace talks are going nowhere. First, because there is no way that Israel can sanely make concessions while its neighborhood is roiling and unstable — the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt, rockets being fired from Gaza, Hezbollah brandishing 50,000 missiles aimed at Israel, civil war raging in Syria with its chemical weapons and rising jihadists, and Iran threatening openly to raze Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Second, peace is going nowhere because Abbas has shown Obama over the past four years that he has no interest in negotiating. Obama’s message to Abbas was blunt: Come to the table without preconditions, i.e., without the excuse of demanding a settlement freeze first.

I’d add that Abbas rejected that message in his joint remarks with President Obama.

2) The immunity of NGO’s

Hanan Ashrawi is a well known Palestinian moderate. These few paragraphs accurately reflect the prevailing view of Ashrawi in the media.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the PLO could be chastised and disparaged with ease. Its reign of terror against civilian targets across Israel and Europe made it reviled and its name synonymous with bloodshed. Then, out of nowhere, an elegantly dressed woman emerged, fluent in English and able to present the Palestinians and their cause in a whole new light.

In April 1988, Ashrawi was invited to appear on ABC’s highly regarded Night-line news programme, presented by Ted Koppel. Her insistence that a physical barricade be erected between the Israeli and Palestinian speakers was a potent symbol which brought home to the audience watching in the United States the divisions between the two peoples.

What immediately caught the eye was Hanan’s looks, which contrasted sharply with the Western stereotypes of gun-toting Palestinian terrorists – a combination of Western chic and exotic eastern charm, according to Barbara Victor, the author of this book.

But more noticeable than that was her devastating use of the English language to advance her cause. For many years, the former Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, was able to articulate the Jewish people’s cause to Western audiences with an irresistible eloquence. Many presidents and prime ministers were won over by his speeches and carefully crafted arguments. Now the Palestinians had someone who could do the same. For instance, there were her comments about her father, who refused to give up the goal of a Palestinian state replacing Israel in it entirety – “he never gave up the dream until he realised he was perpetuating a nightmare” – or her reference to the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians as “fatal proximity”.

Whatever else Ashrawi is, one thing she is not is an expert in history. Caryle Murphy of the Washington Post wrote a fawning profile of Ashrawi, The Practiced Palestinian, in November 1991.

As spokeswoman for the Palestinian delegation at the Middle East peace conference here, the 45-year-old Ashrawi has been arguing that case with a composure, conciseness and clarity long missing in the bitter Palestinian-Israeli dispute. In the process, she has left many of the outworn cliches and taboos surrounding this conflict cut to ribbons. Take, for example, the man who rose at Friday’s press conference to confront her. A representative of an American Christian broadcasting outlet, he said he “didn’t understand” how Ashrawi could ask Israel “to exchange land for peace,” because “when Judea and Samaria were in the hands of the Arab world, Israel was attacked three times.”

“First of all, I find your reference to ‘Judea and Samaria’ a statement of extreme bias, and rather offensive,” Ashrawi replied, homing in on his use of the biblical names for the occupied West Bank that echoes the Israeli government’s religion-based claim to the land where Ashrawi lives and where the Palestinians hope someday to have an independent state. “I am a Palestinian Christian, and I know what Christianity is. I am a descendant of the first Christians in the world, and Jesus Christ was born in my country, in my land. Bethlehem is a Palestinian town. So I will not accept this one-upmanship on Christianity. Nobody has the monopoly.”

After dismissing the man’s challenge with a deft mini-dissertation, she ended with: “Are there any serious questions?”

How else would the areas have been referred to at the time of Jesus? I would think Judea and Samaria. (Yisrael Medad once noted that even the Christian bible uses the names. Ashrawi apparently doesn’t know her own religion very well either.)

Ashrawi is in the news, (or should be in the news) because an NGO she founded, Miftah, recently perpetuated the blood libel. Elder of Ziyon noticed this yesterday. In response Miftah removed the offending article, but not before Elder of Ziyon captured screen shots of the offending article. Daled Amos tracked the developments of this story.

In a followup, Elder of Ziyon explained Why the Miftah antisemitism story is so important:

The offensive article was not written by a marginal figure or a loose cannon. Nawaf al-Zaru has written other articles for Miftah, and similarly his blood libel article is still visible on major Arab media, today. Not only that, but al-Zaru is regarded as an Arab expert on Israel and Hebrew. He has written numerous articles and books, and was the editor of at least two Jordanian newspapers. Indeed, he had written a more expansive version of the blood libel article in 2009, in response to an earlier Passover seder at the White House.

His viewpoints aren’t an aberration. They are mainstream. I see the same kinds of writings nearly every day in the Arab media, although not always as explicit.

By ignoring the hate, the funders of Miftah are tacitly endorsing it. And people like Hanan Ashrawi will not be called to account for overseeing a publication and website in which such hate can be published, past all the editors and webmasters and other gatekeepers whose salaries are being paid by these NGOs.

NGO’s also get lots of uncritical coverage in the media. Coverage of Israel frequently includes unexamined criticisms by NGO’s as if they are unimpeachable sources.

A recent lead article at Miftah’s website states:

Sidelining the Palestinian cause, Obama invested his time and energy into securing an Israeli apology to Turkey and restoring diplomatic ties between nations. Adding insult to injury for the Palestinians, it turns out Obama scored an accomplishment after all. Unfortunately, Obama’s near silence regarding the Palestinian people’s national rights reflected his poor leadership in this regard and lack of commitment towards resolving this conflict. Hence, he negated himself as an influential peace leader in the eyes of the Palestinians, who saw him more of the stereotypical political pawn.

A graphic on the website refers to UN resolutions 194, not 242 or 338.

Even without the blood libel, Miftah’s website isn’t devoted to any sort of accommodation but to nurturing Palestinian grievances against Israel and the West.

1)All that glitters


Politico published an analysis of President Obama’s recent trip to the Middle East by Josh Gerstein, Obama in Israel: 5 takeaways (h/t The Israel Link). While the article isn’t awful, it suffers from a lack of substance. The five takeaways are:

• Bibi and Barack patch it up
• Obama’s new peace strategy: Hug Israel
• Surprise substance: Obama defrosts Israel-Turkey ties
• Urgency of Iran raid decision dialed back
• Obama fears being drawn in on Syria

The first two items are about what is often referred to as “optics.” The substance of the third item has quickly faded as Prime Minister Erdogan has backtracked from his apparently assurance that he had accepted Netanyahu’s apology. The last two seem to based on what people said or didn’t say publicly. the last item could just have been gleaned from paying attention to the administration’s actions over the past two years.

One needn’t have been a political reporter from a major online news site to write the article. It required no specialized knowledge of the Middle East or even much of American politics. A passing familiarity of headlines over the past four years would have provided enough background for a reasonably talented writer to come up with those five takeaways.

Barry Rubin summed up the trip in about five paragraphs that had a lot more substance than Gerstein’s article:

It is not that Obama was nice toward Israel all along; it is that there is a new policy based on his realizing there wasn’t going to be a breakthrough to a comprehensive peace agreement.

There are, however, still two problem areas. First, the president expresses sympathy but not agreement with Israel. His view is:

I understand why you act as you do but you are wrong. You can obtain lasting peace fast if only you aren’t stubborn and suspicious.

This, however, doesn’t matter very much. The second problem is critical. How can you be so nice to a country when you help its enemies? How can you help populate Israel’s borders and neighborhood with those who openly proclaim their goal of committing genocide on its people?

If one asks: Has Obama helped or hurt Israel’s strategic situation the answer is that he has quite definitely hurt it overall. If one asks: Has Obama helped or hurt Israel’s ability to deal with that strategic situation the answer is that he has been about as good–but certainly not better–as several predecessors by merely continuing past U.S. aid and other policies.

Whereas Gerstein portrays Obama’s outreach to Israel as a new strategy, it likely was more a realization that the old strategy failed. Gerstein has no mention of the growing power of the Muslim Brotherhood. Finally, he never acknowledge that good intentions are not enough.

The “five takeaways” suffered from what a lot of reporting suffers from nowadays, the elevation of trivia over substance and the boosting of image above all else.

There is one point that Gerstein makes that’s alluded to Professor Rubin too.

Obama’s second-term strategy became clear during the trip: express such unqualified, heartfelt love and affection for Israelis and the state of Israel that they trust him to have Israel’s back in future peace talks, then coax Palestinians back to the table despite the improbability that Israel will halt settlement construction outside the context of some kind of peace deal.

In the media support for Israel is portrayed as emotional; support for a more “balanced” approach in the Middle East is portrayed as sophisticated. This is an attitude that President Obama seems to believe. The problem with the “balanced” approach is that it takes every charge against Israel at face value and subjects nearly every claim in Israel’s favor to critical scrutiny.

2) Still a mystery

The first report on Prisoner X to appear in the New York Times was Australian Report on Israel’s ‘Prisoner X’ Suggests Melbourne Man Was Mossad Agent by Robert Mackey at The Lede. Drawing exclusively on left wing sources, one paragraph expresses Mackey’s theme.

Concerns about censorship, and the reported secret detention of an Israeli citizen who somehow managed to hang himself in a high-security prison, prompted a stream of questions for Israel’s justice minister on Tuesday in the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, Haaretz reported.

A followup article by the Jodi Rudoren, the paper’s main Israeli correspondent helped foment the paranoia:

Two of Mr. Shai’s colleagues, meanwhile, called for the formation of a parliamentary committee to investigate the case. And many Israelis joined social-media campaigns that are demanding more information.

“No Israeli citizen will be able to sleep comfortably in a country in which an affair such as Prisoner X can take place,” wrote Uri Misgav, a blogger for the left-leaning newspaper Haaretz, in a lengthy post. “The Israeli public deserves to know whether the Israeli prisons are holding on to Prisoner Y and Prisoner Z,” he wrote. “The Israeli public deserves to be told how all of the monitoring mechanics failed and how such a systematic failure will not be repeated.”

But Mr. Netanyahu seemed untroubled by the affair. “I rely completely on the security forces,” he told the cabinet. “I also completely rely on the legal authorities.”

Early reports that Prisoner X, Ben Zygier, had been jailed without informing anyone proved to be false as his family was aware of his imprisonment and he had met with lawyers shortly before his suicide.

Now more details are emerging about the case. Or are they?

Der Spiegel and the Sydney Morning Herald have launched a joint investigation into Zygier’s story. According to this version, Zygier after an unsuccessful stint in the field was assigned a desk job. Before taking a leave of absence from the Mossad, he made contact with a source with connections to Hezbollah in Europe and unintentionally fed him information that compromised two Israeli spies in Lebanon.

There are problems with this story. There are a lot of details that would seem to be classified. Does the reporter know these to be true or did he speculate? Though a number of sources are quoted, the significant ones are never named. In other words as Isabel Kershner reported:

Most of the details of Mr. Zygier’s case remain subject to a strict, court-ordered blackout in Israel, and the story could not be independently verified.

One detail about the story also rings false.

Homsi, says General Ashraf Rifi, the head of Lebanese intelligence, was one of the most important catches his agency had ever made. Homsi was later sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor.

If Homsi was such an important “catch” why was he only sentenced to 15 years in prison?

The Der Spiegel/Sydney Morning Herald would explain the harsh treatment accorded Zygier, but it stretches credulity. On the other hand it could be the basis of an exciting new spy novel.

Michael Ross, a former Mossad agent who previously wrote about the case is skeptical.

+ 1 K RT “@tcgriffin: Not sure the latest version of the Ben Zygier story adds up. smh.com.au/national/how-l…compare: abc.net.au/news/2013-02-1…”

— Michael Ross (@mrossletters) March 25, 2013

Ross, in a followup article adds an important caution:

I encourage readers of articles on intelligence matters—and especially concerning the Mossad—to remember that journalists can only write what they are told, not what they are able to find out.

One final question: given that the Spiegel/Herald story could not be verified, why did the New York Times report about it?

3) Priorities

Last week the New York Times published an inflammatory cover story in its magazine written by Ben Ehrenreich. I wrote an e-mail to the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, that read, in part:

This is how the magazine identified Ehrenreich:

Ben Ehrenreich won a 2011 National Magazine Award in feature writing. His most recent novel is “Ether,” published by City Lights Books.

Chemi Shalev of Ha’aretz noted something else about Ehrenreich.

In 2009, Ehrenreich published a direct attack on Zionism in the Los Angeles Times entitled “Zionism is the Problem”. In the article, Ehrenreich castigates not only the “deplorable conditions in which Palestinians live and die in Gaza and the West Bank” but “the Zionist tenets on which the state was founded “as well.
“The problem is functional”, Ehrenreich writes. “Founding a modern state on a single ethnic or religious identity in a territory that is ethnically and religiously diverse leads inexorably either to politics of exclusion or to wholesale ethnic cleansing. Put simply, the problem is Zionism.”

(Here’s a link to that article.)

In other words, Ehrenreich is hostile to the existence of the Jewish state. The New York Times had an obligation to inform its audience that its reporter had significant baggage and leave it to its readers to decide if he is telling the complete story; or just selecting those parts that advance his own views.

Sullivan, in her latest, mentioned a previous issue with Middle East coverage.

Twitter and Facebook can be dangerous places for journalists. I wrote about two cases in which problems arose: a sexist Twitter message from the Times magazine freelancer Andrew Goldman to the author Jennifer Weiner, and eyebrow-raising Facebook and Twitter messages by Jodi Rudoren as she began her new post as the Jerusalem bureau chief.

The Times dealt with the situations in quite different ways: by suspending Mr. Goldman from his column for a few weeks and by assigning an editor to work with Ms. Rudoren on her social media efforts. A deputy foreign editor, Michael Slackman, told me that Ms. Rudoren’s social media presence eventually fell off as she dug into her new beat and that she uses it now “primarily to cover the news and far less as a public journal.” When she does post on Facebook and Twitter now, the messages are no longer vetted by an editor, according to the foreign editor, Joseph Kahn, but are “monitored,” as are those of other reporters.

What was important to the New York Times is whether its Israel correspondent might have tweeted something that was deemed insensitive to Palestinians even if it had no impact on her reporting. That was something that the paper dealt with. But to acknowledge that an anti-Zionist wrote a major story is apparently beyond the scope of the paper’s responsibility to its readers.

1) The apology

The Washington Post reported Obama ends Israel visit by brokering end to dispute with Turkey:

Prodded by President Obama, Israel and Turkey agreed Friday to end a three-year rift caused by a deadly Israeli commando raid on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza, a rapprochement urgently sought by the United States to help contain spillover from the worsening fighting in Syria.

During an airport meeting with Obama at the end of his two-day visit to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

Bowing to a long-standing Turkish demand, Netanyahu apologized for the deaths of nine activists aboard the Turkish ship and promised to reach an agreement on compensation to their families, according to a statement from his spokesman.

A flattering news analysis in the New York Times Obama Shows Talent for Arm-Twisting, and Raises Hopes on Peace Effort reads in part:

Mr. Obama’s success in persuading Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to apologize to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, healing a rift between the countries, is the kind of person-to-person deal-making that has eluded him with Republicans in Congress.
But Mr. Obama kept prodding Mr. Netanyahu, senior advisers said, raising the importance of a makeup phone call every day he was in Jerusalem. He also worked on Mr. Erdogan, a prickly politician with whom Mr. Obama has cultivated a relationship since entering office.
By the time they agreed to talk, Mr. Obama had fully embraced the role of Middle East mediator, warming up Mr. Erdogan before handing the phone to Mr. Netanyahu, who expressed regret for the deadly actions by Israeli commandos during a 2010 raid on a Turkish ship that was trying to breach a blockade of Gaza.

Of course the New York Times sees President Obama’s success as a first possible step in a peace process with the Palestinians.
The Times of Israel reported that some of the commando on the raid had mixed feelings about the apology.

“I don’t feel we did anything wrong,” one of the commandos, who for security reasons requested to identify only by the initial “N”, told the Hebrew daily Maariv on Sunday. “We did the right thing, I’m not ashamed of it, and we have nothing to apologize for.”
Nine Turkish citizens were killed after they attacked the commandos, who sought to commandeer the vessel that was attempting to bypass Israel’s maritime blockade of Gaza. The incident led to a freezing of ties between the two former allies, a relationship which was said to be on the path to normalization following a phone call between Netanyahu and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an.
Despite N’s firm belief that his actions were justified, he was reluctant to criticize Netanyahu directly, stating that, from a diplomatic standpoint, reconciliation may actually make sense. “Although on the personal level there is no need to apologize, on a national scale it might have been a good idea,” he said.

There’s much more about the apology at memeorandum. Prime Minister Netanyahu’s statement is here.

Most of the reporting on the apology focused on the deteriorating relations between Israel and Turkey over the Mavi Marmara incident and fail to acknowledge that Turkey under Erdogan had been increasingly hostile to Israel. The Mavi Marmara was the pretext Erdogan had for breaking off relations with Israel but it should also have been portrayed as a hostile act against Israel. Most news reports underplayed Erdogan’s extremism – note that the New York Times called him “prickly” as if he were easily annoyed.
Barry Rubin argues that this wasn’t much of a surrender for Israel.

Now, a compromise has been reached, apparently with some help from President Barack Obama. The agreement, which includes restoring normal bilateral relations, has been portrayed as some sort of Israeli surrender.
That is simply not true. The agreement is much closer to Israel’s position. There is no change on Israel’s strategic policy toward the Gaza Strip at all. While the word “apology” appears in Netanyahu’s statement, it is notably directed at the Turkish people, not the government and is of the sorry-if-your feelings-were-hurt variety.
Moreover, Israel denied that it killed the Turkish citizens intentionally, a situation quite different from what Erdogan wanted, and offered to pay only humanitarian assistance to families.
Should Israel have expressed regret when it should instead receive an apology from the Turkish government for helping to send terrorists to create a confrontation? On purely moral grounds, no. Yet as I pointed out Israel did not abandon its long-standing position on the issue. It does not want an antagonism with the Turkish people nor one that will continue long after Erdogan and his regime are long out of office. Perhaps this was undertaken to make Obama happy and in exchange for U.S. benefits. But what has happened is far more complex than onlookers seem to be realizing.

A year and a half ago, the New York Times reported Israel Says It Won’t Apologize to Turkey for Deadly Flotilla Raid.

A diplomatic source, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject, said the American request for such an apology was reiterated on Tuesday in a phone call between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Turks kept adding conditions for a reconciliation, raising uncertainty in Mr. Netanyahu’s government over whether they were sincere and whether they would consider the case closed even if a deal were reached.
As a result, Israel’s security cabinet refused on Wednesday to endorse a package of understandings with Turkey that would have included an Israeli apology for any operational errors during the commando raid and agreement to pay into a compensation fund for the victims in return for a Turkish commitment not to pursue legal action against Israeli soldiers.

(Emphasis mine.)

This was less than what Turkey had been demanding at the time:

Turkey has demanded an official apology, compensation to victims’ relatives and a lifting of the blockade on Gaza as conditions for normalizing its heavily strained relations with Israel, formerly an important ally.

(An “apology for operational errors,” is not the same thing as an “official apology.”)
It’s worth noting that for all President Obama’s much lauded newfound skill in deal making, Erdogan backtracks on understandings with Netanyahu:

Erdogan said Saturday it was too early to cancel legal steps against Israeli soldiers who took part in the raid on the Mavi Mamara.
According to the Hurriyet daily, Erdogan also said the exchange of ambassadors between Israel and Turkey would not take place immediately.
“We will see what will be put into practice during the process. If [the Israelis] move forward in a promising way, we will make our contribution. Then, there would be an exchange of ambassadors,” Erdogan was quoted as saying, in remarks at an opening ceremony for a high-speed railway line in the central Turkish province of Eski?ehir.

So exactly how will Erdogan’s latest be reported? Or will it be reported?

Others writing about the apology include CAMERA, Elder of Ziyon, Israel Matzav, Fresno Zionism, Legal Insurrection, Meryl Yourish, and Daniel Pipes.

2) Not as bad as the usual Thomas Friedman column

When I saw the title – Israel – Bits, bytes and bombs – of the latest Thomas Friedman column, I cringed. In the end about half of it was quite good and the other half was typical Friedman.

It’s impressive and necessary because Israel is the only country in the world today that has nonstate actors, armed with missiles, nested among civilians on four out of five of its borders: the Sinai, Gaza, southern Lebanon and Syria. Beyond them lies a hinterland of states consumed by internal turmoil, and Iran. Yet Israel has managed to juggle bits, bytes and bombs — with high walls that neutralize its enemies and high-tech that nourishes its economy.
But there is a fine line between keeping danger out and locking fantasy in, between keeping your people alive and keeping crazy dreams alive. Israel is close to crossing that line.
…
Indeed, the crazy dream Israel is keeping alive is that it can permanently occupy the West Bank, with its 2.5 million Palestinians, to satisfy biblically inspired settlers, who now hold major cabinet positions, like the housing portfolio, in Israel’s new government. With nearly 600,000 Israelis now living in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the window for a two-state solution “is slowly vanishing from the earth,” notes the Hebrew University philosopher Moshe Halbertal. Amazingly, polls still show a majority on both sides for a two-state deal, “but there is a deep trust problem” that has to be overcome — fast.

Of course Friedman, trying to sound reasonable asks that Abbas get back to negotiating without preconditions – something Abbas pointedly refused to consider in his joint press conference with President Obama. (Will that defiance earn Abbas a “Driving drunk in Ramallah” column?)

Friedman can cite all the doomsday quotes he wants, but the occupation mostly ended in 1995. Furthermore he ignores, what Barry Rubin terms “the day after issues,” such as:

• What is a deal with the PA worth when it won’t include the Gaza Strip, where Hamas would redouble its efforts to attack Israel and work hard to undermine any such agreement?

  – What reason is there to believe there won’t be cross-border terrorism across the new international frontier, and that the government of Palestine will do anything about this terrorism?

• What about the likelihood of the Palestine government inviting in the armies of other countries, or at least getting advanced weapons from them?
• How is Israel going to deal with the PA’s passionately held demand that millions of Palestinians be allowed to come and live in Israel?
• Why should Israel believe in any guarantees and assurances from the United States and Europe when such promises have been repeatedly broken — including ones made by Obama himself?

Furthermore Friedman asserts Israel needs to test Abbas. Is Abbas really the moderate Friedman seems to believe?

Obama: Israelis have true peace partner in Abbas. Abbas: We have the same policies as Hamas. Hamas: Killing Je… bit.ly/11xnIXw

— BadBlue News (@BadBlueNews) March 23, 2013

For the first part of the op-ed, Friedman seems to give serious consideration to the fact that Israel is an island of normalcy in a sea of turmoil. Unfortunately, in the second half he reverts to his “Israel is in mortal danger” trope. I guess I could say that this column isn’t half bad. But I wouldn’t mean it as a compliment.

1) The President talks to the Israeli people

Barry Rubin summarizes President Obama’s message to the young people of Israel whom he addressed at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem yesterday.

First: Obama’s big theme is that — and I’m not being satirical here — peace is good. He tried to make the students understand that peace is better than continued conflict and has many advantages. Of course the students think peace is good — they are the ones who have to serve in the military and risk their lives, not to mention know that they and their loved ones are the targets of terrorism and war.
Can Obama possibly not comprehend this? I believe he doesn’t, that he seriously thought he was bringing new ideas to his audience that they had never thought about before nor heard about for years.
Second: he did not deal with a single one of “the day after” issues. Assume that there is a peace agreement between Israel and the PA. Well, how do we know Hamas won’t take over the PA, or that more radical forces won’t come to power that will not recognize the deal?
…
Third: Obama has not made one serious mention of the changed regional situation except to say that the United States wants democracy in the Arabic-speaking world and will try to work for that and for Egypt’s continued adherence to its peace treaty with Israel.
Yet he is still backing Islamists seeking or holding power.

Professor Rubin credits President Obama for referring to Israel as a Jewish state when he had his joint press conference with President Abbas. But he also notes that Abbas, even after being urged to negotiate by the President, said that he would not negotiate without a new settlement freeze. (“Hence, it is the duty of the Israeli government to at least halt the activity so that we can speak of issues.”)

(It wasn’t only the President’s statements that showed that he didn’t necessarily understand the implications of his actions.)

Lori Lowenthal Marcus contrasts the different tones between (some of the) President’s remarks to the Israeli students and his remarks with President Abbas.

In other words, Obama believes virtually every one of the points of the false narrative that have been spun since Arafat was brought back from Tunisia: the Arab Palestinians are the sole native people, Israeli “settlers” commit violence and that violence goes unpunished, Arab Palestinian farmers are prevented from farming “their” land, the movements of Arab Paelstinians are restricted for no reason other than Israeli arrogance and greed, Arab Palestinians have been unfairly expelled from their land and they live under a state of Occupation in their own land, and, ultimately and completely, the land belongs, always belonged and must belong to the Arab Palestinians.
When in Ramallah, the U.S. president did not mention any responsibilities for peace owed by his listeners. Instead, he talked about the recent release of U.S. funds “to help the Palestinian Authority bolster its finances.” The only discussion of terrorism when speaking in Ramallah was directed at Hamas. As recently as last month, however, a PA terror group claimed responsibility for a rocket attack on Israel from Gaza.
Just as the U.S. president told the Israelis that the Arabs deserve their own state and that it is the responsibility of Israelis to give it to them, he made the same points to the Arab Palestinian audience gathered in Ramallah.

While most of President Obama’s speech to the Israeli students was positive, he did make a point of encouraging his audience to pressure their political leaders.

Elder of Ziyon notes the subtle but noticeable difference in the way the President describe Hezbollah and Hamas.

The US still officially considers Hamas a terror group. Yet, in this speech, Hamas is considered capable of renouncing violence and recognizing Israel, while Hezbollah is considered irredeemable.
This is even more jarring because on the very same day that Obama made this distinction, the “political arm” of Hamas – not the Al Qassam Brigades, but the “pragmatic” Khaled Meshal – issued a major policy document that re-affirms Hamas’ commitment to terrorism and to never accept Israeli sovereignty over a single square inch of land.
Obama is doing no one any favors by being conciliatory towards Hamas. On the contrary, he should have made it clear to Abbas that any unity agreement between Fatah and Hamas would put Fatah in the same terrorist category – because, if Obama was clear-sighted, he would know that Hamas’ principles are far stronger than Fatah’s quasi-acceptance of Israel is, and it is not possible for Hamas to ever change.

This failure to classify Hamas properly is especially egregious because Abbas had earlier said:

We are also serious in ending the division and achieve the Palestinian reconciliation, which constitutes an additional source of power for us to continue our march towards making peace, security and stability in the region.

Whether intentionally or not, the President didn’t rebut Abbas, which is unfortunate because as Elder of Ziyon noted, if there’s a merger, Fatah is a lot more likely to adopt Hamas’s stands than the other way around.
Whatever flaws there were in the President’s speech, he did say some very important words that has the Arab world seething.

JUXTAPOSITION: Israelis sing and cheer for America, Obama while Palestinians spit venom and riot goo.gl/vCqfh

— Adam Kredo (@Kredo0) March 21, 2013

The New York Times was predictable in its editorial ‘I speak to you as a friend.’

Mr. Obama invoked values and dreams shared by Americans, Israelis and Palestinians, including the idea that “people deserve to be free in a land of their own.” He also spoke bluntly about what’s at stake if the status quo persists, given that the Palestinian population on the West Bank and international frustration with Israel are both growing and the Arab world is in turmoil.
Will Mr. Obama also take the risks that will be needed to be a credible mediator and nudge the parties forward? His new secretary of state, John Kerry, is eager to begin and will be in Israel this weekend, but will he have the space to conduct real diplomacy? And is there a sense of urgency on anyone’s part? In recent years, Israel has built so many settlements that the options for finding a two-state solution are dwindling.
Mr. Obama spent four years tweaking his relationship with Israel. On Thursday, he said “peace is possible.” The question is: How much will he, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority invest to make it happen?

After the President urged direct negotiations, Abbas made his comment about insisting on a settlement freeze before negotiating with Israel. That would be a slap in the face to the President, but the New York Times didn’t seem to notice that. There are no risks to President Obama except perhaps to his prestige. But to conclude an agreement that would later be abrogated would be a much more significant risk to Israel.

2) Meeting in the middle?

In disputing Jeffrey Goldberg’s analysis of President Obama’s trip to Israel, Richard Baehr quotes Herb Keinon:

Herb Keinon, writing in The Jerusalem Post, has a different narrative on what has happened in the relationship between the two leaders over the last two years. Keinon argues that the Obama approach to both Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was flawed from the start, and that over time, Obama has moved closer to the Netanyahu position on both issues. The Obama view had been that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict needed to be resolved first, and that would enable the Americans to rally support for action against Iran in the Arab world. Netanyahu argued that the linkage really worked the other way: First, eliminate the threat of a nuclear Iran, and then Iran’s allies in the Gaza Strip (Hamas) and Lebanon (Hezbollah) would be more constrained, and there might be fewer obstacles to block Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
The second disagreement concerned the ability of Israel and the Palestinians to reach an agreement. Obama and his White House advisers seemed to think that the two sides were very close to a deal, and that what was needed was American pressure on Israel (the stronger party of the two) to make a few more concessions to the Palestinians, to move the process forward. This was the Obama redistributionist thinking on the foreign stage. As part of the campaign of outreach to the Islamic World that the administration was developing, distancing the U.S. from Israel was seen as a supporting message to change Arab and Muslim views toward the United States, The president believed that U.S. relations with Arab and Muslim nations had been damaged by the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s close alliance with Israel.
…
Keinon argues that the Obama administration has moved closer to the Israeli position on both issues. There are no longer illusions about the chances for a quick resolution of the conflict, and greater realization that the Palestinians have shown little or no interest in moving forward on a bilateral basis with Israel. Netanyahu has also focused the president on Iran and the shrinking time frame in which to act, despite the president’s effort to avoid any Israeli action in 2012 that might have complicated his re-election effort.

If Keinon (and Baehr) are correct and that, despite his urging of negotiations, President Obama has moved closer to Netanyahu’s views of the Palestinians, two articles about Passive Aggressive President Abbas explain why President Obama has changed.

At the beginning of President Obama’s term in office, Jackson Diehl wrote Abbas’s waiting game:

Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.
Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won’t even agree to help Obama’s envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. “We can’t talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution,” he insisted in an interview. “Until then we can’t talk to anyone.”
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What’s interesting about Abbas’s hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama’s first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.

But by September, 2011, Mark Landler of the New York Times reported Obama and Abbas: From Speed Dial to Not Talking:

Mr. Obama named a high-profile special envoy to the region, George J. Mitchell Jr. He also spoke empathetically about the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza after an Israeli military campaign against Hamas there. And the president’s demand of Israel that it freeze settlement construction cheered the Palestinians, who believed that would remove a stubborn hurdle to a peace deal.
“We hoped a lot that in his administration, there would be real progress,” said Nabil Shaath, who leads the foreign affairs department of Fatah, the main party of the Palestinian Authority. “But later on, disappointment set in,” Mr. Shaath said in a telephone interview from Ramallah on the West Bank. “He really could not deliver what he promised in terms of a cessation of settlement activity.”
When Mr. Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on construction, Mr. Abbas felt let down. And he blamed Mr. Obama for leading him on. In an interview with Newsweek in April, Mr. Abbas said: “It was Obama who suggested a full settlement freeze. I said O.K., I accept. We both went up the tree. After that, he came down with a ladder and he removed the ladder and said to me, jump.”

While the perspective of the article seems to be Abbas’s (which is surprising because Landler often seems to be a cheerleader for President Obama), it shows that Abbas’s stubbornness won him no friends in the White House. If Abbas was waiting for more pressure from President Obama for Israeli concessions that’s hardly Obama’s fault or Netanyahu’s. Maybe Abbas overplayed his hand.