The irony is that Israel is often called a colonialist power. In some sense, the charge is true. But the ones with the true colonialist mentality are those who think that Arabs cannot be held to Western standards of decency. So, for this reason, Hamas is apparently forgiven for its treatment of women, its anti-Semitism, its hostility toward all other religions, its fervid embrace of a dark (non-Muslim) medievalism and its absolute insistence that Israel has no right to exist. Maybe the blockade ought to end — but so, too, should anyone’s dreamy idea of Hamas. It’s not just a threat to Israel. It’s a threat to the eventual Palestine.

It’s refreshing to read a liberal who acknowledges that Arabs are held to no standards. When attacks on Israel for denying the Palestinians their rights come from regimes who offer few, if any, rights to their citizens the hypocrisy is rampant. Unfortunately, such charges are repeated uncritically rather than getting the scrutiny and scorn they so deserve.

As far as Cohen’s insistence that Israel must end the blockade of Gaza, Barry Rubin provides some answers:

2. Would leaving the blockade in place have eventually resulted in the collapse of Hamas control in Gaza?

Answer: It is impossible to say but perhaps Hamas would have been brought down. At least there was a chance for doing so. Remember that in this as in other cases sanctions had three purposes other than “persuading” the other side to change its policy:

A. Minimize the resources they have for waging war and maintaining political control;

B. Signal to factions to become more moderate or to quarrel among themselves while giving the masses an incentive to overthrow the regime (both because it wasn’t delivering the goods, because it was weaker, and because they felt that they had international support for a revolt.

C. Signal to others that this is a losing side and they should not support it also lest they, too suffer from sanctions.

On the other hand, other critical elements for bringing down Hamas were missing:

A. Israel was not allowed to achieve victory.

B. International support for a “rollback” policy was lacking.

C. There was not a strong and determined opposition effort by Fatah to help bring down Hamas.

The blockade is not a gratuitous attack on the civilians of Gaza but a reasonable attempt to weaken Gaza, if not politically, then, at least militarily. Why this is so hard to understand is beyond me.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Cohen points out that Jews, in the past, have wanted to go back to the lands where they came from, but they weren’t always welcome.

In the Polish city of Kielce, on July 4, 1946 — more than a year after the end of the war — rumors of a Jewish ritual murder triggered a pogrom in which 42 Jews were killed. All were Holocaust survivors. The Kielce murders were not, by any means, the sole example of why Jews could not “go home.” When I visited the Polish city where my mother had been born, Ostroleka, I was told of a Jew who survived Auschwitz only to be murdered when he tried to reclaim his business. In much of Eastern Europe, Jews feared for their lives.

The best paragraph, though, is a quote from a European Jewish refugee:

“I want to go to Palestine,” Kalk told members of a U.N. investigating committee. “I know the conditions there. But where in the world is it good for the Jew? Sooner or later he is made to suffer. In Palestine, at least, the Jews fight together for their life and their country.”

If history has shown anything, it’s that the Jews can’t trust many of their hosts. It wasn’t just the Holocaust. Before that there were pogroms. And the Jews in Arab lands found themselves ethnically cleansed when the state of Israel was founded.

If Jews are to survive, they need their own country. When people say “we don’t want Jews in the Middle East,” they really are saying, “we don’t Jews.”

The last refuge of the Jews, is Israel.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

To far more people than we would like to admit, the mystery of James W. von Brunn, the alleged shooter at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, is not that he held such weird and depraved views about Jews and the Holocaust, but that those views are considered weird and depraved. In vast parts of the Islamic world, too many people not only deny the Holocaust but embrace the thinking that made it possible.

In addition, Cohen deserves credit for highlighting the work of MEMRI.

That anti-Semitism is now a part of Middle Eastern culture. It has infiltrated textbooks; it is recited in mosques. It is aired on television — for instance, the broadcast of a play produced at Gaza’s Islamic University in which Jews were portrayed as drinking Muslim blood. “You must drink from the blood of Muslims,” a father tells his son, according to a transcript provided by MEMRI. “Okay,” the son says, “but just one cup, because I’m full.”

Such views are routinely espoused by religious figures. MEMRI quotes an official of the Egyptian Ministry of Religious Endowment as saying that all Jews are descended from pigs and can therefore be slaughtered. This particular statement was rebutted by other religious officials — such sentiments do not always go unchallenged — but it remains remarkable and scary that they are aired in the first place.

Cohen, later on, gives too much credence to the Palestinian grievances against Israel. At least though he rightly highlights the antisemitism that is so much a part of the Arab and Muslim political culture.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Today, Cohen has an op-ed that is both serious and accurate – qualities lacking from his 2006 op-ed – A war Hamas caused. I know that I’d disagree with Cohen on many things concerning Israel still, but this op-ed is just about perfect. He starts off with his own experience and blasts Daoud Kuttab.

Nearly a year ago, I was in the southern Israeli city of Sderot, where, on almost any day, you could see the current war coming. “The next Middle East war may start over Sderot,” I wrote back then. I came by my prescience the hard way — in a bomb shelter. That day, three Qassam rockets had hit the city. It took no genius to see the imminence of war. It takes real stupidity to blame it on Israel.

On some days, dozens of rockets fell on Sderot. A blimp hovered over the town, and when it electronically spied an incoming rocket, the sirens went off. In Sderot, the sirens were virtually a single, long wail on some days. Everyone took shelter because shelters are everywhere — a constant reminder of the nearness of death or, at the very least, destruction. Even a dud can bust through the roof of a house.

I get the impression that Israel is expected to put up with this. The implied message from demonstrators and some opinion columnists is that this is the price Israel is supposed to pay for being, I suppose, Israel. I am informed by a Palestinian journalist in a Post op-ed that Israel is trying to stop “amateur rockets from nagging the residents of some of its southern cities.” In Sderot, I saw homes nagged to smithereens.

Two paragraphs in the middle are just about perfect in expressing what should be obvious to anyone who is capable of comprehending world events.

Three years ago, Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip. Good, the world said. Next, pull out of the West Bank, the world said. But then Hamas, which has vowed to destroy Israel, won the election in Gaza. Sderot soon became hell. The West Bank is controlled by Fatah, the moderate Palestinian organization, which once had control of Gaza, too. If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, will rockets come from there? If you lived in Tel Aviv, a spit from the West Bank, would you take the chance?

Anyone could have seen this war coming. The diplomats and demonstrators who are now so engaged in the problem and the process were nowhere to be found when rockets began raining down on southern Israel. The border between Gaza and Egypt is riddled with tunnels — some for food, some for weapons. The international monitors that are so evidently needed now were just as evidently needed then.

Maybe Israel needs to be in charge of the border between Egypt and Gaza as opposed to international monitors. But why are there so few advocates of disengagement who say, “Look we were wrong, Hamas’s war is a result of disengagement?” Cohen has the courage to say that and he deserves a lot of credit for acknowledging that.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.