A New Blog You Needn't Read

Some months ago I offered the Argentinian fellow who hides his true identity behind the title Ibrahim ibn Yusuf the option of sharing a blog. The idea - or at any rate, my part of it - was to have a thoughtful, systematic discussion between two people who radically disagree about Israel. I intended to look into Ibrahim's methodology, his thought processes, his relationship to facts and sources, and eventually also his motives. I don't know what his intentions regarding me were, but it was a free platform and he could have taken his part of it in whatever direction he wished. Theoretically, he could have bested me, though I admit I didn't think he would. The little I'd seen of hs work and the much I'd seen of others of his ilk left me mildly confident that most careful readers of our blog would find him to be the second most convincing of the two of us.

Shortly after we started some serious doubts began to accrue regarding Ibrahim's honesty in presenting himself. He himself admitted that it would have been easy to dispel the doubts, had they been based on falsehoods, but he was adamant in his refusal to do precisely that, eventually telling me that in the meantime the whole exercise no longer interested him. Personally I felt at the time and feel still that he feared he'd gotten into something he hadn't reckoned on so he ran, but I can't prove that, obviously.

What I can do, however, is to point you at his new blog, The Hasbara Buster. In one of his recent comments he said he's glad he has pro-Israeli readers and commentators, because that way he gets to understand how they think. Interesting comment, given his past behavior, and I'd suggest that what he really means is that he looks forward to talking to such people in an environment that he controls.

There's a pro-Israeli blogger named Yitzchak Goodman, author of Judeopundit, who is doing an admirable job of responding to the Buster's posts. I wish him luck, though I ask myself if he's not wasting his time. The Buster is way out there on the fringe of anti-Israeli bloviating, and it's unlkely that he makes any difference in the world. People such as myself, and also Goodman, need to ask themselves each year if any of the following three things are happening:

1. Are there more Jews in Israel than there were the previous year?
2. Is Jewish cultural (or religious) creativity as strong as it was last year, or perhaps even stronger?
3. Is Israel's economy, and with it the condition of the Israelis, better than it was last year?

In any year where the answer to any one of these questions is positive, we're doing alright, no matter what the Busters of the world do. Since most years all three questions have positive answers, why care about what those feverish folks think or say? Enemies of the Jews have been spewing their ire for millenia, and the Jews keep on doing their thing; these days, their thing is pretty miraculous, all in all, in spite of the blemishes.

The question that does remain, however, is why. Why should an instructor of language (Catalan, I think) in Rosario have this urge to "bust" things Israelis say about themselves. It's not because he has a good case - you're free to go visit and see for yourself how sloppy and often silly he is. It can't be because Israel is uniquely worse than other societies, because it isn't. Sometimes he tells that he's compelled to unveil Israel's crimes because the Israelis claim they're better than others. OK: and the Israelis are the only ones in the world who claim they're better? And even if they were the only ones, why should this be such an obsession in faraway Rosario?

In a recent post the Buster said I'm engaging in character assassination for posing this question. I don't agree. Not given the history of the Jews and their detractors these past few millenia.

Inventing Reality

Not long ago the man who hides behind the deceptive name Ibrahim ibn Yussuf stated in a comment that "according to the UN, Israel broke the truce seven times before the first Palestinian breach". This puzzled me a bit, because it was the first I'd heard of it. But then again, I was in Australia at the time, mostly not connected to cyberspace, so perhaps I'd missed something? I challenged Ibrahim in the comments to cite his source. He didn't, so I sent him an e-mail about this and other matters. He responded about the other matters but not this, so I asked again. He never responded. Eventually I informed him I'd write about his failure to substantiate his own serious allegation, but he was silent. So I went looking myself, and think I've identified his source: a person who hides behind the name Lawrence of Cyberia, here. I know that faux-Ibrahim regards faux-Lawrence as a reliable source because he's told me so in the past. I also admit that I'm becoming ever more baffled by what is apparently a widespread phenomenon of people who engage in intensive criticism of Israel while insisting on remaining anonymous. But that's a subject for another day.

Faux Lawrence offers no more substantiation for his statement than faux-Ibrahim does, which is interesting because his blog gives the appearance of being well footnoted. It's also a strange statement on its own: what does it mean, "according to the UN"? That's sort of like saying "according to the British government", except that the UN is far more diffuse than the British government. Who in the UN said? When? If there were precisely seven Israeli infractions, what were they? When? Where? Who did the counting? How do we know they're really infractions and not something else, such as, perhaps, Palestinian men approaching the border fence, being warned away and eventually being shot at when they refuse to stop their menacing maneuver?

So I went to the source: the UN website. Sure enough, there is a document there in which "the UN", or rather an official of the UN, tells what she thinks is going on:

But while calm had prevailed for several days, Palestinian militants fired one mortar and three rockets at southern Israel on 24 June, with the Islamic Jihad claiming responsibility for the rocket fire in response to the Israel Defense Forces killing of one of its members in the West Bank. A Palestinian farmer had been injured in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces on 23 June, and in a separate incident another farmer had been reportedly injured by Israel Defense Forces fire on 25 June. Another rocket had been fired from Gaza into Israel on the same day, and today, two mortar shells were fired. In response, Israel closed the border crossings for the past three days.

Let's look at that paragraph (and you're welcome to follow the link and read the entire document. I don't think I engaged in any cherry picking).

First, note that she puts the Palestinian infractions first. Then she adds two Israeli actions, one the day before the Palestinian quadruple breach of the calm, and the other, "reportedly" happening the day after the Palestinian breach. The single Israeli breach is depicted quite sparsely: A Palestinian farmer had been injured in Gaza by IDF forces. How? In what context? We're not told. So perhaps it was an Israeli breach, and perhaps it wasn't. Something must have caused the UN person to put it after the Palestinian breaches in her report.

The other six Israeli breaches of the calm? Well, according to this UN report, which deals with an entire month, they didn't happen.

So what does this tell us about faux-Ibrahim and faux-Lawrence? That they're gullible? That they pass on hearsay they picked up somewhere without checking it, because if it's detrimental to Israeli it must be true and certainly is valuable?

Judeo-Arab Conspiracy: Shut Down

I have just posted the following over at Judeo-Arab Conspiracy, explaining why the exercise won't work:

Judeo-Arab Conspiracy has been active less than two weeks, but we're shutting down. The reason for this is that I (Yaacov) raised doubts about Ibrahim's identity, and Ibrahim did not allay them.

I explained my motivation for inviting Ibrahim to join me in this exercise here. Already then we had a built-in problem, in that my identity is clear and transparent, and Google will tell you all about me, while Ibrahim ibn Yusuf is not the person's real name. I was willing to accept this, since I know from experience how hard it is, perhaps even impossible, to find an Arab willing to engage an Israeli in dialogue between equals. Israelis who start by beating their breasts are alright, but not the ones who are comfortable with their country. Apparently, Arabs who talk to that sort put themselves in danger in their own communities.

In my eagerness to engage in this dialogue I was obviously not careful enough. I asked Ibrahim some questions, and decided to accept his word when he responded. Perhaps this was a leftover from my "peace camp" years: we like to assume that the folks facing us are like us, their motivations are similar to ours, the only difference being that they're on the other side of the argument. Anyway, I didn't see any real danger in setting off on this joint project, so set off we did.

The next thing that happened was what anyone who understands the Internet could have foreseen: I began to get responses from readers who thought they knew who Ibrahim really is, readers whom I otherwise would never have encountered. Some of them supplied me with telephone numbers, creating a deeper level of contact than mere e-mails.

When I confronted Ibrahim with the information I was getting, he refrained from disproving it. Faced with the likelihood that there is nothing particularly Arab about him, I don't see how we can continue blogging at a place that defines itself as "A joint blog of a Jewish Zionist and an Arab Anti-Zionist".

The Challenge:

I continue to believe that Israel's positions (though not every single action) are generally defensible, and am willing to stand up to anyone who feels otherwise. Should there be anyone out there who wishes to continue where Ibrahim was not, they know where to find me. They will, of course, need to be google-able, if there is such a word.

Until then, it is my intention to desist from responding to anyone who is not willing to stand forth and identify themselves with their positions.

Yaacov Lozowick

No Peace with Hamas

Yesterday I responded to Ibrahim's post of last week; now I've posted my first challenge to him.

Judeo-Arab Conspiracy

My response to Ibrahim on caricatures and antisemitism is up.

Judeo-Arab Conspiracy

For a number of years now I have been looking for a Palestinian partner with whom to co-author a book about Jerusalem. I've put out all sorts of feelers, using various well-placed connections I have. Some of them told me to forget it, no Palestinian would ever agree to the plan; others told me there would be no problem in finding such Palestinians, and then they sheepishly never got back to me with any names. Some were quite clear about the whole idea: No Palestinian will dare co-author a book with an Israeli whose basic premise is not that the Israelis bear full responsibility for whatever has gone wrong here; a book that would try to share two contradictory narratives, respecting one another within the same two book covers, would mean a death sentence for the Palestinian author.

So the book waits.

In the meantime an Arab reader of this blog, Ibrahim ibn Yusuf of Argentina, has agreed to a second-best scheme. This scheme is that we share a blog. It has rather elaborate rules of engagement, but I hope it will be interesting. You're invited to go visit, here.

Ruminations will continue to broadcast as usual, so you're welcome to stay here, also.