Copycat

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current prime ministerial candidate Binyamin (Bibi) Netanyahu's website is identical to Barack Obama's.

Israelis for Obama

Israeli far-right near revolt?

Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea is worried about the increasing violence of the Israeli far-right.

The new Palestinian strategy

It was inevitable (emphasis mine):

Now, with hopes fading for an agreement on statehood by the end of the year, leading pragmatists in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the last bastions of Palestinian secular nationalism, are calling for a fundamental reassessment of their leadership's strategies and goals.

A growing number propose dismantling the internationally funded Palestinian Authority as a first step to expose the reality of Israel's continued occupation of territories it conquered in the 1967 war and to make Israel bear the direct responsibility and cost until a political solution is found.

Prominent mainstream Palestinians are increasingly warning that if they fail soon to achieve the kind of state they want - sovereign and independent, with East Jerusalem as its capital - they will favor instead a one-state solution based on a long-term fight for equal rights within the state of Israel, along the lines of the South African struggle.

I've always thought, if the Palestinians had been smart about their goals from the beginning, they would have done this from the 60s and never engaged in terrorism to begin with. Well they lost half a century of opportunities. But they're finally seeing the light. And the Israeli right, which insisted for so long that this peaceful strategy would never come about, and which continues to push for settlement expansion in the West Bank despite all common sense demanding a Palestinian state in that territory, will soon find out what it's like to truly be on the wrong side of the issue.
If the Palestinians finally give up terrorism, and shift their resources to a non-violent demand for full rights within the State of Israel - meaning voting rights, meaning (because of pure demographics) no more Jewish state - then there's no way Israel can win this one. The strategic shift won't happen overnight, but it will happen sooner or later. And then it'll be impossible for moderate Americans, or moderate Israelis for that matter, to support Israel's continued existence as a Jewish state.
In a way, this is what the most radical anti-Israel leftists have always wanted - and Israel walked right into the trap. It's very sad.

Weird story, bad photo

MSNBC headlines a story on Israel's shutting the doors to further Ethiopian immigration with a photo of Jerusalem policemen violently subduing an Ethiopian protester. The photo seems inappropriate in the context. The story is about complex issues of identity and assimilation. The photo has nothing to do with the story, but instead tries to provoke the American audience's gut reaction of white men subduing a black man. The issue is far more about the Ethiopian immigrants' primitive backgrounds, rather than race; assimilating thousands of people who have never used a flush toilet into a modern society is bound to be complicated.
Maybe the MSNBC editors are simply asking whether Israel's "right of return" is itself racist. A fair question, but why not just ask it straight out?
Or maybe there's something wrong with the American do-gooders who set up these camps for Ethiopians to prepare for moving to Israel. The scene in Charlie Wilson's War of evangelical congressmen in Pakistani refugee camps comes to mind. Or Kipling's poem about the "white man's burden." If Ethiopian villagers need modern conveniences so much, wouldn't it make more sense to simply donate those, rather than pressure another country to adopt them?

He Stole My Shtreimel!

A friend sent me this funny-if-it-weren't-insane article from Israel's YNet:

The conflict among the two opposing camps in the Viznits Hasidic community in Bnei Brak doesn’t include stealing money or ideological arguments; instead, the Hasidic way of quarreling entails “swiping” shtreimels and bartering their return.

The shtreimel is a fur hat worn by many married haredi Jewish men belonging to the one of the various Hasidic sects on Saturdays and holidays. The hat is usually made out of a young fox’s fur, and a single hat requires 30 of them. A Hasidic man buys one or two expensive shterimels throughout his life for a price range of $2,000 to $4,000.

The shtreimel is worn without fastening, a significant factor in the latest street fights in the Viznits neighborhood. Those looking to humiliate a Hasid snatch his shterimel, forcing him to return home with a lowered head sporting on his yarmulke.

In recent weeks, the brawls between the camps have intensified, with both sides snatching each other’s shtreimels. During the peacemaking, each camp returns the other’s goods stolen in the last strife. ...

Viznits Hasidism is divided between the “Yisraelists” following Rabbi Yisrael and “Mendelists” supporting Rabbi Menachem Mendel. The walls in Kiryat Viznits are filled with defamatory posters. Rabbi Yisrael controls the synagogue and the community institutions while Rabbi Mendel reigns over the neighborhood.

Until about six weeks ago, the status quo between the two camps had the Mendelists come to pray at the central synagogue of “Torat Chaim” only on Fridays. They would stand on their seats during the tish (a Hasidic gathering of Hasidim around their Rabbi) held by the ailing Rabbi.

But then the visiting Mendelists’ seats were broken down, and the Yisraelists prevented their entrance to the synagogue. In response, the Menedlists tried to stand on the Yisraelists’ seats, waging war once again.

The recent street fights – mainly during weekends – included more than 100 participants hitting each other and trying to grab the shterimels. One brawl follows another, sending dozens of people to hospital.

This would all be wonderful theater, except for the fact that the ultra-orthodox are Israel's fastest-growing demographic.
Maybe if they'd stop wearing foxes on their heads, their brains would stop melting under the heat. They're in the f*ing desert, for God's sake.

The same friend who sent me this informs me that word has now gone out in Jerusalem from leading ultra-orthodox rabbis, forbidding their followers from renting apartments to secular tenants. And so the great city falls.

Sadly True

From Andrew:

"It's not unique to the Jewish community - but there is a McCarthy-ite tendency among some people in the Jewish community. They operate not by arguing but by slandering, vilifying, demonizing. They very promptly wheel out anti-Semitism. There is an element of paranoia in this inclination to view any serious attempt at a compromised peace as somehow directed against Israel," - Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former U.S. national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter.

Obama on Israel

Jeffrey Goldberg (author of Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew across the Middle East divide, as well as the recent Atlantic article about Israel's future) has an interview with Barack Obama on his blog today. I'm reading Obama's autobiography (Dreams From My Father) now, and I don't doubt his sincerity on this issue. I also fundamentally agree with his approach. Quote:

Goldberg: Do you think that justice is still on Israel’s side?

Obama: I think that the idea of a secure Jewish state is a fundamentally just idea, and a necessary idea, given not only world history but the active existence of anti-Semitism, the potential vulnerability that the Jewish people could still experience. I know that that there are those who would argue that in some ways America has become a safe refuge for the Jewish people, but if you’ve gone through the Holocaust, then that does not offer the same sense of confidence and security as the idea that the Jewish people can take care of themselves no matter what happens. That makes it a fundamentally just idea.

That does not mean that I would agree with every action of the state of Israel, because it’s a government and it has politicians, and as a politician myself I am deeply mindful that we are imperfect creatures and don’t always act with justice uppermost on our minds. But the fundamental premise of Israel and the need to preserve a Jewish state that is secure is, I think, a just idea and one that should be supported here in the United States and around the world. ...

Goldberg: Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don’t know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it.

Obama: I find that really interesting. I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions. ...

Goldberg: Do you think that Israel is a drag on America’s reputation overseas?

Obama: No, no, no. But what I think is that this constant wound, that this constant sore, does infect all of our foreign policy. The lack of a resolution to this problem provides an excuse for anti-American militant jihadists to engage in inexcusable actions, and so we have a national-security interest in solving this, and I also believe that Israel has a security interest in solving this because I believe that the status quo is unsustainable. I am absolutely convinced of that, and some of the tensions that might arise between me and some of the more hawkish elements in the Jewish community in the United States might stem from the fact that I’m not going to blindly adhere to whatever the most hawkish position is just because that’s the safest ground politically.

I want to solve the problem, and so my job in being a friend to Israel is partly to hold up a mirror and tell the truth and say if Israel is building settlements without any regard to the effects that this has on the peace process, then we’re going to be stuck in the same status quo that we’ve been stuck in for decades now, and that won’t lift that existential dread that David Grossman described in your article.

The notion that a vibrant, successful society with incredible economic growth and incredible cultural vitality is still plagued by this notion that this could all end at any moment -- you know, I don’t know what that feels like, but I can use my imagination to understand it. I would not want to raise my children in those circumstances. I want to make sure that the people of Israel, when they kiss their kids and put them on that bus, feel at least no more existential dread than any parent does whenever their kids leave their sight. So that then becomes the question: is settlement policy conducive to relieving that over the long term, or is it just making the situation worse? That’s the question that has to be asked.

Another argument against missile defense

Israel's latest concern with Iran's nuclear development highlights a point not unique to Israel, but rather another reason why the U.S. missile defense development is stupid: cruise missiles can evade ballistic missile shields. Iran is allegedly working on nuclear-capable cruise missiles based on a Soviet design. If the U.S. finishes setting up an operational anti-ballistic missile shield, we can be sure Iran will have many buyers for the technology. It's only a matter of time before long-range cruise missiles make ballistic missiles obsolete. So why is the Bush administration still spending so much money and precious political capital, to the point of risking a new arms race with Russia, to build an obsolete Cold War system? They just don't know how to cut their losses and move on.

The solution is in front of everyone's nose

From a McClatchy column on Israel's 60th anniversary:

To Jeffrey Goldberg and a long list of Israeli pragmatists, the choice is clear: Hang on to the West Bank and effectively absorb a growing Arab minority that would eventually overtake Zionism's founding mission of creating a Jewish state. Or let go of Israel's Biblically-founded claims to the West Bank and remove recalcitrant Jewish religious settlers so that the land can become a scaled-back version of the Palestinian state once envisioned by the United Nations.

Polls show that most Israelis and Palestinians would accept a two-state solution. But the two sides vehemently disagree on what the borders should look like. And both sides lack a "Nixon-goes-to-China" figure that can break historic taboos.

Everyone knows what has to be done. It's just so damn hard to get there.
I had a frustrating discussion about Israel the other day with a South American Jew who thinks Israel should give the Palestinians the vote and cease to be a Jewish state. That view has long been the conventional wisdom in Europe, and it's catching on in the U.S. too. The Israeli government shoots itself in the foot by expanding the settlements. Time is on the Palestinians' side.

Israel Higher Education Crisis

Another worrying trend for Israel's future:

In July 2007 Prime Minister Ehud Olmert received an official report about the status of higher education in Israel from the Israel Council for Higher Education, headed by former Minister of Finance Avraham (Baige) Shochat.

The council set out to interpret why the universities in Israelhad undergone a "deep structural crisis" during recent years, and to offer solutions. ...

According to Prof. Menahem Yaari, president of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the report was totally ignored. Yaari has even launched a letter to Prime Minister Olmert, Finance Minister Ronnie Bar-On, and Education Minister Yuli Tamir in which he asks, "What happened to the Shochat Report?" ...

"All of the criteria used to measure the quality of higher education – average age of the academic staff, student/lecturer ratio, research budgets, etc. – point to its obvious decline in Israel," Yaari claims. "Israel's government is sitting on its hands while our higher education is being destroyed." ...

Yaari assimilates this to a growing trend evident in the country, which he terms "an anti-intellectual inclination." In his opinion the country's leaders are quick to cast aside higher education on the pretense that army training is enough to create new blood for the high-tech community, which they see as Israel's leading resource. The trend "is the modern Israeli version of the aversion to intellectualism," he said.

Last month the Economist ran a special report on Israel, painting a gloomy picture of a political system that is totally dysfunctional and unable to make the necessary changes to itself or the country's critical problems. The growing anti-intellectual, pro-militarist attitude doesn't help.

Gaza non-strategy

Juan Cole:

The Israelis already have the Gaza Strip under military siege, carefully controlling what and who goes in and out of it. They have now cut off most fuel, and the United Nations has been forced to stop distributing food aid.

This Israeli government action is an unvarnished war crime. It is known as collective punishment. There was already hunger and malnutrition among Palestinian children, which will now be worsened. ...

Cutting off fuel to the Gazans and provoking a cut-off of UN food aid is not only criminal but also stupid. It is difficult to imagine such mean-spirited sanctions against civilians having any policy effect whatsoever, so they are just making Israel look bad.

The Israeli argument is that they need to employ collective punishment to stop the rockets being fired on Sderot. That would only be a legitimate argument if it had any chance of working. But it doesn't. What is will do, besides killing children, is further harden the support for Hamas, as the only viable tactic available. Morally, the number of people that could die in a siege far outweighs the few killed by the rockets; not to mention the people who die slow deaths by malnutrition, absolute poverty, lack of health care, etc; so it's hard to see how Israel has the moral high ground here.
As with so many of Israel's policies, I am left to wonder: where is the wisdom? What's the end game?
(By the way, those who argue that this is all the fault of the disengagement conveniently forget that Israeli soldiers and civilians were being killed on a regular basis in Gaza during the occupation there. I doubt many IDF soldiers regret the withdrawal.)

Missing: Evidence

An "informed reader" of Informed Comment writes about the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor:

What is shocking in this assertion is the lack of physical evidence available for independent inspection, and the apparent complete failure of U.S. authorities to seek international inspection via the IAEA before the Israelis bombed the site in question, despite the fact that the U.S. was apparently aware of Israeli intentions well ahead of time. Syria has been a ratified signatory of the NPT since 1969, making it obligated to accept inspections. If, as the CIA asserts, the Syrian facility has been under construction since 2001, there was more than ample time to inform the IAEA of a signatory's possible failure to abide by the treaty. Repeated unannounced overflights of Syrian territory by Israeli jets in recent years indicates long-term planning of this mission.

Possibilities? The Bush administration might prefer to use this event to imply nuclear weapons production on Iran's part, because it is an ally of Syria, or the claims of North Korean assistance might provide cover for eventually abandoning the six-nation talks involving North Korea and provoking them in some way. Suggestions that the Israelis wanted to use the bombing raid to penetrate and compromise Syria's Russian-built air defenses preparatory to a future attack on Iran are not wholly out of the realm of possibility.

It's possible that the Syrians were building a bomb-fuel reactor with North Korean assistance, and imagined, wrongly, that they could escape detection. Certainly, North Korea's economy is so awful that they would be desperate for revenues. But, there's no physical evidence of such activity which has been independently verified, and the Bush administration's record on this sort of thing is, well, dubious, at best. Nor can one discount Syria's previous cooperation with the IAEA, and the necessary evidence would have come from an IAEA inspection. It's also possible that the Syrians were building something military in nature that they wanted kept secret, and which had nothing to do with a nuclear program, but which alarmed the Israelis, anyway, such as an early warning facility, ground-based laser, something along those lines.

The CIA video depends heavily upon computer models, and those models add substantial pieces of equipment not shown in the photos of the "nearly completed" facility. Remember that Colin Powell depended upon artists' renderings of "mobile bioweapons labs" instead of physical evidence, and that Rumsfeld used cartoonish illustrations to show lavish al-Qaeda complexes, replete with living quarters, office space, truck parking and ventilating systems, like the Islamist equivalent of Cheyenne Mountain, buried inside Tora Bora. Those, too, were never found.

One more final consideration: the Yongbyon reactor, from the descriptions by inspectors in 1994, is a real hunk of junk, by contemporary standards. The inspectors could tell from the condition of the spent fuel rods that there were many operating problems and shutdowns because of problems. Nuclear safety at the site was marginal to non-existent. The bomb test using plutonium from it was very likely a fizzle yield. If the Syrians got a duplicate copy of the Yongbyon reactor, as the CIA claims, they were very likely wasting their money.

"Low" confidence and zero credibility

Worth noting:

When the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday rolled out evidence to support allegations that North Korea had helped Syria build a nuclear reactor, officials said they had “low” confidence that Syria was developing the reactor to produce nuclear weapons.

I don't know what to make of the whole story. The White House kept the evidence under wraps for months, telling only a few select members of Congress, and then decided last week, for some clearly political reason, to make it public. Who was the intended audience of the move? Was it to pressure North Korea in the negotiations? To threaten an attack on Syria? (against what? the already-destroyed building?) To interfere with Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations? To warn Iran?

The CIA presentation is here. It's compelling enough except for the little problem, that no one believes a word from this administration, not after a war based on fabricated and cherrypicked intelligence. People still remember Colin Powell's powerful evidence at the UN that turned out to be entirely bogus. So I'm ambivalent.

Chomsky

Yesterday evening I attended a lecture at BU by Noam Chomsky, on American foreign policy. Talking about American imperialism, he said at the beginning, is like talking about "triangular triangles." His facts are always impeccably sourced; it's his interpretation that's controversial (and his facts insofar as they're usually unknown and conflict with conventional "wisdom"). He presents the facts in such a way as to make the interpretation seem self-evident; my own opinion of his perspective is mixed (more on that below).

Anyway, during the Q&A period, I tried to ask a few questions, but I was too late in line (it took me a while to figure out how to phrase my questions), and he tended to be overly verbose with his answers, so the event ended before I had my turn. I emailed my questions to him instead, and he responded very promptly and in detail. He asked me not to quote his response on my blog, however (I guess because he has to write many letters quickly and doesn't want an inadvertent mistake to tarnish his credibility); I will respect his wishes.

I would like to write about one of the issues I asked him about, though. He said in the lecture (the video of which I hope will be online soon) that the chance of Iran attacking Israel with nuclear weapons was like that of Israel being hit by an asteroid. So my first question was asking him to explain why that is. Part of his answer referred to Juan Cole, the Middle East expert whose blog (probably the best source for context and truth about the region) I read frequently; specifically, Cole's translation (or correction of the common mis-translation) of Khomeini and Ahmedinejad's oft-quoted calls to "wipe Israel off the map." Cole wrote in 2006:

I object to the characterization of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as having "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." I object to this translation of what he said on two grounds. First, it gives the impression that he wants to play Hitler to Israel's Poland, mobilizing an armored corps to move in and kill people.

But the actual quote, which comes from an old speech of Khomeini, does not imply military action, or killing anyone at all. The second reason is that it is just an inexact translation. The phrase is almost metaphysical. He quoted Khomeini that "the occupation regime over Jerusalem should vanish from the page of time." It is in fact probably a reference to some phrase in a medieval Persian poem. It is not about tanks. ...

Ahmadinejad defined Zionism not as an Arabi-Israeli national struggle but as a Western plot to divide the world of Islam with Israel as the pivot of this plan.

The phrase he then used as I read it is "The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem (een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods) must [vanish from] from the page of time (bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad)."

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope-- that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

The translation of this quote is important, because the whole question of the threat of Iran's nuclear development, and sanctions or war to stop it, rests on the premise that the Iranian regime is irrational, aggressive, and seeking to destroy Israel. Cole's translation casts doubt on that premise.

An Islamic leader wishing that formerly Muslim-controlled lands cease to be controlled by Jews is not a radical concept. The Israeli religious right wishes that Muslims would not control the Temple Mount, or any part of Greater Israel for that matter, and I'm sure it would not be hard to find a quote of some rabbi making an analogous metaphorical statement to that effect. Muslim antagonism to Zionism is something Israel will have to accept and deal with; it is legitimacy by Muslim and Arab states that Israel needs for security, not theological acceptance by Islam of Jewish rule.

The notion that Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons is also not radical. Iran has its national sovereignty and strategic interests, which the United States directly threatens. Particularly after Iraq, the development of nuclear weapons is extremely rational from Iran's point of view. (Hence the obvious wisdom of Joe Biden's proposal.) The Bush administration constantly threatens military action or regime change; the "Axis of Evil" concept in the 2002 State of the Union made the pursuit of regime change official policy. (Note also that Iran's alleged threats against Israel are also about regime change.) Is it crazy that Iranians / the Iranian government want to protect themselves with a nuclear deterrent? Israel does the same thing. If the mere protection of national defense justifies military action by the U.S., then Chomsky's whole theory of America as "the Godfather" of the world (in the Mafia sense) is absolutely true.

The concern that Chomsky did not adequately address, in my opinion, is whether Iran would consider giving nuclear weapons to Hezbollah or Hamas to use for nuclear blackmail (e.g., "withdraw all forces from the West Bank or the nuke somewhere in Tel Aviv goes off.") I think anyone would agree that this would be an unacceptable situation for Israel and the U.S. alike; any nuclear attack is unlikely because of Israel's nuclear deterrent, but Chomsky wants Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons (as far as I understand), so that would be nullified.

More broadly, my view of Chomsky's historical analysis is mixed for a few reasons. First, He seems to apply double standards to the U.S. or Israel versus other states; for example, America is an aggressive, imperialist power, despite also doing good in the world, but Iran is a peaceful, rational state despite also doing bad in the world. On what basis is the final verdict issued? Second, he paints broad brush strokes for some cases (for example, depicting a whole era of American foreign policy in terms of client states obeying or disobeying Washington's orders), but then offers more nuanced explanations when the simple narrative doesn't work; this makes me wonder why a more nuanced explanation shouldn't be applied to everything, making the world more complex (and morally ambiguous) than he makes it out to be. Third, he was asked (by an antagonistic questioner) which of America's enemies he's "rooting for"; he replied that he supports the wishes of the people of the world, and gave polling data to explain that most Americans oppose our government's policies, and the same for other nations. But that only works when the people want something good; it didn't work, for example, when most Americans supported the invasion of Iraq.
I read one of Chomsky's articles from the 60s (on the responsibility of intellectuals in society) and the same problems seemed to remain there. On the whole, though, his illumination of critical facts that the press ignores is vital; on the overall view of America as an unjustly aggressive imperial power, I completely agree; it's the details where I'm not so sure. I plan to read more of his writings this summer to gain a better understanding.

Update: Professor Chomsky explained to me in another email that he [as an American] focuses on the U.S. government, and expects dissidents of other countries to focus on theirs; he also referred me to his frequent condemnation of the Iranian regime, support for Iranian dissidents, and his discussion of the [real] threat of non-state nuclear proliferation in his book, Hegemony or Survival. I happen to have that book out now - I took it out for an unrelated research project - so I will read it as soon as I have time.

Media bias about Israel

I've had a very interesting discussion over the last few weeks with a colleague about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would like to describe the nature of the discussion in more depth some time. In the meantime, however, he sent me an article that is worth reading. It's about media bias about Israel; not, as is normally argued, against Israel, but quite the contrary. Quote:

Days before the advertisement appeared on April 8, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights had been arrested while participating in nonviolent civil disobedience against Israeli demolition of houses. "Palestinian homes are being systematically bulldozed all over the West Bank," said a bulletin from Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia. "In this case, there isn't any pretense of 'security interests' or 'military targets.' The houses destroyed yesterday and today belong to ordinary Palestinian citizens whose only crime is the wish to have a roof over their heads."

Groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, and Jewish American activists like Rabbi Waskow who vocally oppose Israeli policies, get short shrift in U.S. news outlets. Meanwhile, the reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian cycle of violence is badly skewed by an endless cycle of media bias.

Searching the Nexis database of U.S. media coverage during the first 100 days of this year, I found several dozen stories using the phrases "Israeli retaliation" or "Israel retaliated." During the same period, how many stories used the phrases "Palestinian retaliation" or "Palestinians retaliated"? One.

Both sides of the conflict, of course, describe their violence as retaliatory. But only one side routinely benefits from having its violent moves depicted that way by major American media. The huge disparity in the media frame is a measure of the overall slant of news coverage.

To help maintain pressure for a favorable media tilt, supporters of Israel have a not-so-secret weapon, brandished most effectively as a preemptive threat — the charge of anti-Semitism. Any Americans who speak out against Israel's extreme disregard for human rights are liable to be in the line of fire.

Middle East Dealings

Jimmy Carter visits Hamas in Syria; Israel doesn't like it. The Syrian government claims an Israeli offer to return the Golan Heights; Israel denies it. Israel claims a secret U.S. deal allowing settlement expansion; the U.S. denies it. Congress holds hearings on a possible North Korea-Syria nuclear site which Israel bombed last year; Syria denies it. The U.S. arrests a man accused of spying for Israel in the early eighties.
I don't know how it all fits. I'm just trying to keep track.

Israel and Iran

Via the Guardian: the Israeli press has recently revealed (Hebrew stories here, here) that Israel buys oil from Iran, using European intermediaries and a joint Iranian-Israeli pipeline front company created in 1968. This despite Israel's official policy of sanctions, its condemnation of Switzerland for buying Iranian oil.
I think it's pretty clear from this and many other indicators that Israel's portrayal of Iran as Enemy #1 (and similarly by AIPAC and the Bush administration) is a lot more nuanced and complex than it appears. This should be a warning for anyone who is eager to go to war with Iran, such as a certain presidential candidate.

The theocrats lose a round

An Israeli judge dismissed indictments against store owners for selling bread during Passover. The law bans displaying of "leavened bread" in public places during the holiday, per Jewish [religious] tradition, but the judge ruled that the private property of a store does not constitute a public place, and the law does not ban sale. It seems a reasonable compromise to me, respecting the traditional culture in public, but not forcing it into people's private affairs. With the Knesset facing increasing haredi power and the private sector buckling under its boycotts, it's heartening to see some institution in Israel that stands up for freedom from religion.

What happened in Gaza

This article has been online for a few weeks, but I just finished reading it. David Rose in Vanity Fair uncovers the Bush administration's behind-the-scenes policies in Gaza: first demand elections, despite warnings that Hamas would win; then, when Hamas did win, deliberately support and provoke a Fatah coup. Like so many of the administration's policies, both policies backfired horribly. Quote from The Gaza Bombshell:

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by [Fatah strongman Muhammad] Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza. ...

[Former Middle East advisor to Dick Cheney David] Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says. ...

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council. ...

On October 4, 2006, Rice traveled to Ramallah to see Abbas. ... Isolating Hamas just wasn’t working, she reportedly told Abbas, and America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections. ...

Weeks passed with no sign that Abbas was ready to do America’s bidding. Finally, another official was sent to Ramallah. Jake Walles, the consul general in Jerusalem, is a career foreign-service officer with many years’ experience in the Middle East. His purpose was to deliver a barely varnished ultimatum to the Palestinian president. ...

The memo left no doubt as to what kind of action the U.S. was seeking: “Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: … they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform.”

Walles and Abbas both knew what to expect from Hamas if these instructions were followed: rebellion and bloodshed. For that reason, the memo states, the U.S. was already working to strengthen Fatah’s security forces. “If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically,” the script said. “We will be there to support you.” ...

The irony of the blockade on foreign aid after Hamas’s legislative victory, meanwhile, was that it prevented only Fatah from paying its soldiers. “We are the ones who were not getting paid,” Issa says, “whereas they were not affected by the siege.” Ayman Daraghmeh, a Hamas Legislative Council member in the West Bank, agrees. He puts the amount of Iranian aid to Hamas in 2007 alone at $120 million. “This is only a fraction of what it should give,” he insists. In Gaza, another Hamas member tells me the number was closer to $200 million. ...

The Hamas leadership in Gaza is adamant that the coup would not have happened if Fatah had not provoked it. Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas’s chief spokesman, says the leak in Al-Majd convinced the party that “there was a plan, approved by America, to destroy the political choice.” The arrival of the first Egyptian-trained fighters, he adds, was the “reason for the timing.” About 250 Hamas members had been killed in the first six months of 2007, Barhoum tells me. “Finally we decided to put an end to it. If we had let them stay loose in Gaza, there would have been more violence.

The coup has had other costs. Amjad Shawer, a local economist, tells me that Gaza had 400 functioning factories and workshops at the start of 2007. By December, the intensified Israeli blockade had caused 90 percent of them to close. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population is now living on less than $2 a day.

Israel, meanwhile, is no safer. The emergency pro-peace government called for in the secret Action Plan is now in office—but only in the West Bank. In Gaza, the exact thing both Israel and the U.S. Congress warned against came to pass when Hamas captured most of Fatah’s arms and ammunition—including the new Egyptian guns supplied under the covert U.S.-Arab aid program. ...

How could the U.S. have played Gaza so wrong? Neocon critics of the administration—who until last year were inside it—blame an old State Department vice: the rush to anoint a strongman instead of solving problems directly. This ploy has failed in places as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines, Central America, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during its war against Iran. To rely on proxies such as Muhammad Dahlan, says former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, is “an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Its author, he says, was Rice, “who, like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton.”

With few good options left, the administration now appears to be rethinking its blanket refusal to engage with Hamas. Staffers at the National Security Council and the Pentagon recently put out discreet feelers to academic experts, asking them for papers describing Hamas and its principal protagonists. “They say they won’t talk to Hamas,” says one such expert, “but in the end they’re going to have to. It’s inevitable.”

It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better—for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America’s allies in Fatah—if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse.

Israel's culture wars

In Haaretz, Vivian Eden writes about the "superiority complex" of Israel's national religious public over the [majority] non-orthodox population:

Whoever chose the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva for the despicable terror attack of March 6, in which eight students were killed, chose his target shrewdly, achieving two destructive goals in one blow: Not only did he provoke more strife between Jews and Palestinians; he also added fuel to the divisive flames of resentment harbored by the national religious public toward secular Jewish Israelis. This emerged not only in the rude way Education Minister Yuli Tamir was treated when she tried to pay a condolence visit to the yeshiva (as usual, members of the yeshiva community blamed "outsiders" or "stray weeds" for the ruckus), but also in comments, voiced by students and rabbis there, that are indicative of the cultivation of a pernicious superiority complex. ...

If we Israelis allow ourselves, our elected leaders and our agents of law enforcement to behave even for one moment as though studying Torah is inherently superior to studying economics, Sanskrit or auto repair, we will be forced to relinquish values the majority of us hold dear - such as equal involvement by women and men in all intellectual and community activity, which is discouraged in Orthodox circles. ...

It is time to relegate the religious way of life to its proper place as one option equal to many others in Israel. It is time for all Israelis to work for real to resolve our differences with our Arab neighbors, who are facing a similar but already far harsher conflict within their own society between religious and secular views of the world. Not only the next Arab or Muslim terrorist from Hamas, Al-Qaida or anywhere else but also the next Baruch Goldstein or Yigal Amir might well be out there, ticking.

I had first-hand experience in Israel with this Orthodox superiority complex. There are contradictions inherent in Zionism - a secular state in divinely-ordained geography; a Jewish culture in which religion is [historically] central and inseparable yet [for modern Zionism] optional; political compromises on the role of religion at the state's founding - that have never been resolved sufficiently for a national consensus. Unless they are resolved, the culture wars there are going to intensify - especially as the ultra-Orthodox community grows in size and political clout - and the fragile peace between the communities could unravel. Or Israel will simply become another fundamentalist theocracy, and Herzl's dream will be dead.

"Who's good for Israel"

South Jerusalem has a very good post about who among the presidential candidates and Israel lobbyists are really good for Israel.

Fundamentalist demographics

The ultra-orthodox community in Israel is increasingly using its massive size for economic pressure on businesses that don't comply with their demands. YNet reports the latest:

The Committee for the Sanctity of Shabbat has released an announcement in the ultra-Orthodox press stating that from now and until further notice, companies owned by businessman Dudi Weissman should not be traded with or shopped at, following his refusal to close the AM-PM chain on Saturdays.
The scope of the consumer ban is of an extremely large scale, which could harm the commercial activity of 35 AM-PM stores, 45 branches of the Shefa Shuk supermarket (some of which specifically target the haredi audience) and dozens more businesses under the brands of Blue Square, Mega, Mega Ba'ir and the petrol company Dor Alon.

This is a community with a high birth rate, low employment rate (by choice), very low participation in military service (by legal exemption), that shuns secular education and the secular state in general. In other words, to be absolutely blunt, as a bloc it is a parasitic community that employs its disproportionate political clout at the expense of the rest of the country's money and freedom.

As a businessman, this Mr. Weissman will have to weigh the revenue lost by closing on Saturdays versus the revenue lost from the boycott. As a society, however, giving in to this boycott will only encourage others. The haredim want a state in which no one works on Saturday, religious freedom or property rights be damned, and as their community grows they will get closer to this goal. The only way they will be stopped and religious freedom will be preserved in Israel, in my opinion, is for a politically aggressive, secular bloc to counter the haredi parties. Eliminate their military exemption, phase out their welfare benefits that encourage huge families, use economic pressure to force them to adapt to the modern world. Their whole political agenda is a declaration of political war on the secular state; if Israelis want want that state to survive, and not become a fundamentalist theocracy, they will have to respond in kind. The haredim may have a right to boycott businesses, but they have no right to the freedom and labor of everyone else at the same time as they undermine the foundations of a free society.

The fruits of the Palestinian struggle

Youssef M. Ibrahim implores his Palestinian brethren to give up to "declare defeat and save what’s left":

The Hamas-run republic of Gaza is a basket case. Jam-packed like a box of sardines with 1.5 million procreating at dizzying rates, it boasts the world’s highest population density. Half its people live below $2 a day. All are dependent upon the kindness of strangers, mostly the U.S. and the UN, which pour in millions of dollars daily along with tons of food and drugs. Israel supplies power and fuel.

In 2006 I published an open letter op-ed addressed to my Palestinian brethren, imploring them to declare defeat and save what’s left. Had they done so back in 1948 after their first “liberation war” against Israel they would have had their independent state.

Five wars later they live on a fraction of it. Glorious struggles are fine if they land someplace. But 60 years of highfalutin wars reduced that Palestinian homeland to a set of negative returns. If anything can still be carved out, it shall be far smaller. If truth were told, the deal Bill Clinton offered Yasir Arafat at that Wye Plantation in July 2000 after 20 days of exhausting mediation was startlingly generous, given the balance of power between Israelis and Palestinians.

It isn’t going to get better with or without rickety homemade missiles.

Terror

Jerusalem today:

A Palestinian gunman entered the library of a rabbinical seminary and opened fire on a crowded nighttime study session Thursday, killing eight people and wounding dozens of others before he was killed, police and rescue workers said. ...

Yehuda Meshi Zahav, head of the Zaka rescue service, entered the library after the attack. "The whole building looked like a slaughterhouse. The floor was covered in blood. The students were in class at the time of the attack," he said. "The floors are littered with holy books covered in blood." ...

In Gaza, Palestinians poured into the streets to celebrate, firing rifles in the air.
“We bless the (Jerusalem) operation. It will not be the last,” Hamas said in a text message sent to reporters. ...

In a separate development, an Israeli airstrike killed four Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, the Islamic Jihad militant group and the Israeli army said.
The Islamic Jihad said four of its members were killed in the missile strike near the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis. It said they were planting an explosive device to target Israeli army patrols.

That First Shot

This is new information confirming an old event: an independent ballistics expert in France concluded that Mohammed al-Dura - a Palestinian child allegedly shot by the IDF on the first day of the intifada in September 2000 - could not have been shot from the Israeli position. The images of his death - played, among other places, on French TV - played a huge role in the early Palestinian propaganda of the Intifada. This report (requested by a French court for the appeal in a libel suit by the stations that broadcast the film) concludes what has been known for a while: he was either shot by Palestinian militants to be used for propaganda purposes, or he wasn't shot at all and the whole thing was staged.

The Right's "Pro-Israel" Nuts

An email thread has been spread around by AIPAC (Israel lobby) and neocon types, using Obama's endorsement by the anti-Israel, anti-semitic Louis Farrakhan against Obama. Well the Republicans have nuts on the other end, whose views, if put into practice, would be at least as destructive to Israel as any anti-semite on the left - but AIPAC likes them. Exhibit, John Hagee's endorsement of McCain. Yglesias, quoting Reuters, writes:

The article describes him thusly:

Hagee, who heads a 19,000-member church in San Antonio, is best known for his outspoken support of Israel and writings on the Middle East, where he envisions a blood-soaked clash between East and West leading to the return of Jesus Christ.

Israel, as you may have heard, is actually located in the Middle East and populated by Jews. Thus, it's not obviously in which sense envisioning a blood-soaked Middle East clash that leads to the return of Jesus Christ constitutes support for Israel. AIPAC has decided to embrace the guy, but what he stands for is the destruction of Israel:

He argues that a strike against Iran will cause Arab nations to unite under Russia's leadership, as outlined in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, leading to an “inferno [that] will explode across the Middle East, plunging the world toward Armageddon.” During his appearance on Hinn's program at the end of last March, for example, the host enthused, “We are living in the last days. These are the most exciting days in church history,” but then went on to add, “We are facing now [the] most dangerous moment for America.”

Ask yourself if uniting the Arab nations in an anti-Israel alliance under the Russian banner sounds like supporting Israel? To me, it sounds like a disaster.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald sensibly wonders why it is that an African-American politician is expected to deliver thirty lashes to a black Muslim leader with despicable views like Louis Farrakhan, while it's completely acceptable for a white politician to actively and successfully cour the support of a white Christian leader with despicable views like Hagee.

Now McCain is playing down the endorsement, saying he doesn't agree with Hagee on everything. Yglesias again sees the double standard:

Barack Obama never sought support from Louis Farrakhan, never appeared on stage with Farrakhan, never pronounced himself proud to be backed by Farrakhan, but was nonetheless asked on national television to specifically disavow the man. People don't want to put a political coalition that includes Farrakhan in office.

McCain and his staff actively sought out Hagee's endorsement, he appeared and campaigned with Hagee, he said he was proud to be backed by Hagee. Hagee is, in short, part of McCain's political strategy. Now he tells us he doesn't agree with Hagee about everything. Well, which things? Are we supposed to believe that McCain's not into the bigotry, or the foreign policy aimed at apocalypse, but just likes Hagee because of their shared opposition to gay marriage? Is McCain going to be courting Osama bin Laden's endorsement? It's reminiscent of McCain's on-again, off-again quest for the support of "agents of intolerance" like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. McCain's trying to wink with one eye to a segment of the electorate, wink with his other eye at his fans in the media, and somehow maintain a reputation for straight talk throughout all this.

This touches on a very serious problem with the religious far-rights of Judaism, Christianity and Islam alike: they all believe in an apocalyptic end-game. Christian fundamentalists believe Christ will emerge victorious. Jews believe Israel (led by the Messiah) will be victorious. Muslims (like Ahmedinejad) believe they will be victorious. So they're all eager to bring on the apocalypse. It's absolutely insane.

"It's natural to die in jail"

CNN reports on torture and human rights abuses by the Palestinian Fatah government. "Following in the footsteps" of the other pro-Western Arab governments in the region.