An Imaginary Mega-City

Last month's edition of The Atlantic had an interesting story by Richard Florida about what the recession may do to different American cities. Counter-intuitively, he says the places that sinned the most may still come out on top, and above them all, New York. This is because NY is the most important of the mega-cities, clusters of megalopolises:

The University of Chicago economist and Nobel laureate Robert Lucas declared that the spillovers in knowledge that result from talent-clustering are the main cause of economic growth. Well-educated professionals and creative workers who live together in dense ecosystems, interacting directly, generate ideas and turn them into products and services faster than talented people in other places can. There is no evidence that globalization or the Internet has changed that. Indeed, as globalization has increased the financial return on innovation by widening the consumer market, the pull of innovative places, already dense with highly talented workers, has only grown stronger, creating a snowball effect. Talent-rich ecosystems are not easy to replicate, and to realize their full economic value, talented and ambitious people increasingly need to live within them.

Big, talent-attracting places benefit from accelerated rates of “urban metabolism,” according to a pioneering theory of urban evolution developed by a multidisciplinary team of researchers affiliated with the SantaFe Institute. The rate at which living things convert food into energy—their metabolic rate—tends to slow as organisms increase in size. But when the Santa Fe team examined trends in innovation, patent activity, wages, and GDP, they found that successful cities, unlike biological organisms, actually get faster as they grow. In order to grow bigger and overcome diseconomies of scale like congestion and rising housing and business costs, cities must become more efficient, innovative, and productive. The researchers dubbed the extraordinarily rapid metabolic rate that successful cities are able to achieve “super-linear” scaling. “By almost any measure,” they wrote, “the larger a city’s population, the greater the innovation and wealth creation per person.” Places like New York with finance and media, Los Angeles with film and music, and Silicon Valley with hightech are all examples of high-metabolism places.

Later, he sums it up: dense and intense means creative and successful.

Let's run with his idea for a moment. Each of his mega-cities is larger than the State of Israel. However, if you postulate a cluster of cities from Beer-Sheva at the south of Israel's metropolis, up north to Beirut then east to Damascus and down to Amman, you've got an entity that does compare, in size and population, to some of his examples. Its diversity could easily equal many of the others, what with the kaleidoscope of Jews in Israel; Palestinians (not very monolithic they, and apparently the most enterprising of the Arabs) in Israel, Jordan and (sigh) Palestine; the crazy ethnic quilt of Lebanon, and the traders of Damascus if only someone would let them be part of the rest of the world.

I know, Shimon Peres already wrote a book about the "New Middle East", and we rightfully all made fun of him for it. But his underlying point was legitimate. If the Arabs who surround us were to decide competing with the modern world is better than hating it, and living with us is preferable to futilely trying to get rid of us....

Oh well. Just a thought.

War Crimes in Gaza?

As anyone who knows me will tell, I'm not one to shy away from allegations of Israeli wrong-doing. When we do things wrong we need to recognize, understand, own up, learn for the future and move on. This in one of the most important ways to ensure our overall morality at war, since we're going to be at war for a long time yet.

Haaretz has just launched a series (so they say) of articles in which soldiers who fought in Gaza tell of wrongdoings. I'm linking to the first article here, and may link to the next. As war crimes go, these stories published so far are not particularly horrendous; they tell of lax orders and lack of care, not of an intention to kill civilians, but let's see what the next installments tell. I expect Haaretz will publish the whammies in their weekend (=Friday) edition.

"Prisoners aren't bargaining chips"

Israel's far-left activists are not always the sharpest minds around. Predictably, earlier this afternoon I received an e-mail update from ACRI, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, in which they proudly told of (and attached) a letter they'd just sent to the prime minister, deploring the willingness of the government to look into legal ways of depriving incarcerated convicted Hamas murderers of some perks. According to media reports, these perks include cable TV sets in each cell so the inmates can watch al-Jazeera and al-Manar, the right to take mail courses at the Open University (an accredited Israeli university), and family visits.

ACRI thinks one of its main tasks is to bolster the rule of law over arbitrariness, but in this case they seem to have dropped that line. If the government finds legal basis to make the murderer's conditions less comfortable, then it's legal, and what is ACRI deploring? If it's not legal, as they claim, the government is unlikely to decide on the new measures, and if it does will be blocked immediately by the High Court of Justice (which, unlike the Supreme Court in the US, responds to such things swiftly, sometimes even immediately). It seems to me a rather clear case of ideology trumping not only common sense - that's standard for these folks - but even their own principles.

The position of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) is more fun.They aren't a bunch of lawyers, as ACRI largely is, so they took a different line, calling on Olmert to disband the committee he's just formed to search for legal ways to make life less pleasant.

"The forming of this committee and the mere deliberation of this matter constitute a dangerous premise… Using prisoners as bargaining chips goes against moral values and international law, and against a Supreme Court ruling on the matter"

Let's step back a moment and run over the issue. The inmates under discussion are convicted murderers of civilians. Most of them prepared and dispatched suicide murderers, which means they operated cold-bloodedly and in a calm and calculated way. Many of them murdered more than once; as a general rule, the reason they eventually desisted was that they were lucky enough not to be shot in clashes with the IDF; I doubt a single one of them had a change of heart and was arrested, say, in the monastery to which he had retreated to atone for his sins.

They were convicted in a court of law. Israel has no capital punishment (alas, I sometimes think, and sometimes don't), so the maximal sentence they can get is life imprisonment, multiplied by the number of their victims.

The present discussion has nothing to do with justice. By any reasonable measure of justice, they should spend decades in jail, perhaps to be let out as doddering old men. Nor is it a discussion of politics, in which the war between Palestinians and Israelis has truly ended, and Israel sets free convicted murderers because its erstwhile enemy percieves them as fighters in the now concluded war. Hamas, you remember, is deeply antisemitic, its charter calls for killing of all the Jews, and its spokesmen proudly proclaim there can never be any recognition of Israel's right to exist.

The entire discussion is about extortion. Israelis can't stand the thought of their single soldier losing his sanity in the hands of beasts who allow him no communication with the world, and eventually may kill him and chuck his body in an unmarked grave as they did to Ron Arad. Hamas knows these emotions of ours will over-ride our sense of justice, and will even force us knowingly to endanger lives of unknown innocents who will undoubtedly be murdered down the line; their knowledge of this is what reinforces their decision not to allow the Red Cross to see Gilad Shalit, because if his mother knew he was alive and he knew we care, it might be easier not to be extorted. His captors are, among other things, callous, scheming bastards.

So ironically, the fools at PCATI got it right: Using prisoners as bargaining chips goes against moral values and international law.

Three additional comments.
1. PCATI's very name is a willful distortion. They know perfectly well that by anyone's standards, Israel doesn't use torture.

2. If ever there was truly to be peace, Israel really would free the Palestinian murderers, as part of putting the past behind us and moving on. If the Hamas truly wished to free all its men (and women), their way forward is clear. The reason they need to kidnap soldiers, torture them and their families, and use them all as bargaining chips, is because they're never going to spring them through peace.

3. Forcing Israel to set free convicted murderers so they can continue murdering, whether the deal goes through or not, is a perfect way of generating additional hate from our side. Just a thought, for all those pundits who never stop preaching about how Israel isn't nice enough to the Palestinians.

"I wouldn't want them to listen to me..."

The soul-destroying saga of the Shalit family drags horribly on. Yet, literally right next to the protest tent they've put up in Jerusalem, is another one, with the opposite message.

Hagit Rayan, the mother of Maj. Benia Rayan, killed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, arrived at the Shalit tent Monday to support the family, but upon leaving said she firmly opposed the prisoner exchange.

"If it happened to me I'd do the same thing as the Shalit family, but I wouldn't want the government to listen to me. A government shouldn't operate based on the weeping of mothers"

Rockets and Perceptions of Them

Bradley Burston is noticeably further to the left than I. Yet I've often noticed that when such people get angry about the Palestinians, they often express positions to the right of mine. This is the case in his recent column, in which he takes a well-meaning ignorant American Jewish writer to task for totally not understanding what's going on. His thesis, in a sentence: Saddam's missiles in 1991 convinced Israelis they didn't need to control the West Bank; the Hamas ones since 2005 convinced Israelis never to relinquish any more territory to the Palestinians. It's an interesting column, and I recommend it (tho the copy-editing is horrendous. Haaretz is getting ever sloppier).

The American Jewish writer who sent him fuming, by the way, is Anne Roiphe, and an extract of her column is here. He has dealt well with her column, but I'd add a different observation. Let's assume, for sake of the argument, that half of Lieberman's voters grew up in the Soviet Union before coming here in the previous decade, and their appreciation of Ms. Roiphe's sentiments of liberalism and niceness are lacking. Given the choice between leaving them where they were to be lost to the Jewish people but with a "nicer" Israeli electorate, or have them here, rejoined to the Jews but will a lesser "nice" Israeli electorate, my preference is stark. There isn't any wriggle room. Especially as far too many of the "nice" Jews Ms. Roiphe probably prefers are ever less Jewish.

Whatever Happened to that Slogan?

Netanyahu and Lieberman have initialed a coalition agreement. I haven't read the agreement itself, which by law will have to be made public as soon as it comes into effect, but if you believe the report in Haaretz, it seems Lieberman's main pre-election slogan, calling for legislation that would mandate Arab Israelis to swear fealty to the state as precondition for citizenship, has evaporated. What a surprise.

Given that this was practically the only piece of evidence (or better, "evidence") that Lieberman was far-right, far-far-right, and all the other epithets hurled at him and his voters, one wonders if any corrections will now be forthcoming.

Well, actually, no, one doesn't wonder.

And no, I don't support Lieberman. But I dislike him less than I dislike the myriad purveyors of falsehoods about Israel.

On Academic Boycotts

Stanley Fish at the New York Times has a long and convoluted column that eventually gets around to focusing on the question of academic boycotts of Israel. I'm chiefly linking because he's got lots of useful links in his column, rounding up lots of the key spokesmen these past few years, so that's useful. He also has a good summary of the arguments for boycotting Israel:

(1) The academic critics of neoliberalism complain that one effect of the neoliberization of the university has been the retreat by faculty members from public engagement, with the result that intellectual work becomes hermetic and sealed off from political struggle. “We need,” says Henry Giroux, “to link knowing with action, and learning with social engagement, and this requires addressing the responsibilities that come with teaching . . . to fight for an inclusive and radical democracy by recognizing that education in the broadest sense is not just about understanding . . . but also about providing the conditions for assuming the responsibilities we have as citizens to expose human misery and to eliminate the conditions that produce it” (“Against the Terror of Neoliberalism,” 2008)

(2) In the eyes of many academics, a great deal of human misery is being produced by Israel’s policy toward Palestinians. Eliminating it is everybody’s business.

(3) This includes academics who cannot stop at just talking about injustice, but must do something about it, must act.

(4) The political resources of academics are limited, but one way academics can show political solidarity is to put pressure on colleagues who are silent in the face of injustice: “The boycott or the divestment campaign is the mode of political protest that is left after all other forms of struggle have been tried”; it is “the politics of last resort” (Grant Farred, “The Act of Politics Is to Divide,” Works and Days).

(5) Therefore, it is appropriate and even obligatory to boycott Israeli academics and Israeli universities “that have turned a blind eye to the destruction and disruption of Palestinian Schools” (David Lloyd, Daily Trojan). “If, in the midst of oppression, these institutions do not function to analyze and explain the world in a way that promotes justice . . . but rather acquiesce in aggressive neocolonialist practices, then others may legitimately boycott them” (Mona Baker and Lawrence Davidson).

Fish himself then goes on, eventually, to state a position whereby any academic boycott is wrong, including the one on Apartheid South Africa. This is a reasonable approach, of course. I'd add to it that perverse as it was, that regime was no-where near being the world's worst, not even in the Post-WWII world; Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Nigeria all spring effortlessly to mind, and a systematic list would be far longer. So, contrary to Fish's comment, including Israel on anyone's list is, indeed, perverse; singling it out as uniquely evil is, quite simply, evil itself.

I also think calls to boycott Israel are deeply hypocritical and harmful to the boycotters. Israel is one of the most creative places in the world, compared to size or not. How many of the boycotters will forgoe on taking advantage of scientific or technological advances created by Israelis? Hands, anyone?

What's the BBC Policy?

A while ago I mentioned the clearly antisemitic short play penned by a British woman, Caryl Churchill, titled Seven Jewish Children, though there are no recognizable Jews in it at all. The play doesn't seem to be achieving earth shattering success, but perhaps it doesn't need to. The danger of antisemitism is that it permeates the Zeitgeist, not that one particular event or statement convinces lots of people - and I don't think there's any way to argue that isn't happening, since it clearly is.

The BBC has just decided not to air a radio version of the play. Not because its decision makers disagree with it - they actually think it's a brilliant piece - but because they recognize it's too one-sided for them to be able to balance with a second piece. After all, there's no one out there writing imaginary plays about celebratory tents set up for public commemoration of suicide murderers, say, or skits about women who bless their sons as they go off to die with Jewish teenagers or fathers who announce in the presence of their surviving sons that they hope they, too, will follow the example of their murderous brother. As the BBC chaps recognize, no Jew would write such a play.

I admit, not for the first time, that the BBC puzzles me. They have no compunctions in presenting the Israeli-Arab conflict in deeply slanted ways, but every now and then they balk at doing precisely that. What's their method?

Hamas, Too...

According to the Jerusalem Post, citing various Palestinian spokesmen converged in Cairo for yet another attempt to forge a Palestinian unity government, the talks are likely to fail, partly because Hamas rejects the Fatah demand that the unity government accept the agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority (PA). In other words, Hamas is not willing to join a unity government that would dramatically enhance the Palestinian's international standing, especially with the Americans, if the price is to recognize Israel's right to exist.

[Salah] Bardaweel [a Hamas spokesman] said that the Hamas negotiators were surprised when their Fatah counterparts told them that there would be no "unity government" unless it accepted the Oslo Accords and recognized Israel's right to exist.

"This is their way of foiling the talks," he charged. "They set impossible conditions."

Don't expect to read this in the Guardian any time soon, of course.

(h.t Powerline)

A Deal to Return Gilad Shalit?

Two Israelis were killed this evening by Palestinian gunmen.

Three important things to bear in mind when discussing Israeli willingness to trade many Palestinians for very few Israeli hostages.

The first is that the Palestinians (and Hezbollah) have a policy of holding hostages for years without ever allowing contact between them and their families. Twice this decade Hezbollah has had dead bodies, and throughout the years of negotiations they never admitted that's all they had, preferring to torture the families with the hope someday they'd see their beloved ones. Hamas has been slightly more accommodating with Gilad Shalit, probably because he really is alive, so about once a year they allow a note from him to reach his parents... and that's it. It's despicable, evil, and they're very proud of it. These are our enemies, and we should never forget it.

The second is that Palestinian terrorists, once they're set free by the hundreds for a handful of Israeli hostages, go back to their previous occupation of killing Israelis. International practice is that returned PoWs are not sent back into battle against their erstwhile captors, and most countries respect this. In the case of the Palestinians, each and every one of them must sign a document, before leaving jail, in which they give their word of honor not to return to terror. In some societies, ones' word of honor is binding; Arab culture indeed sets high value on honor (and many Arab women are killed for besmirching someone else's honor) - but Palestinian terrorists aren't bound by their word of honor. On the contrary: hundreds of Israelis have been murdered by Palestinian terrorists who were let out of jail as part of the so-called peace process or in return for Israeli hostages. These are our enemies, and we should never forget it.

Third, the dynamic of these things is that sooner or later, the Palestinians or Hezbollah will manage to capture an Israeli, and eventually they'll spring hundreds of Palestinians in return - either that, or a future round of negotiations in the "peace process" will be stuck until Israel releases Palestinians, because after all, we're making peace, aren't we, and peace means we let bygones be bygones. Which mean that Palestinian terrorists know they'll be set free after a few years, or a decade, and won't spend the rest of their lives in jail. The price of killing Israelis (unless in an act of suicide) isn't all that high.

And yet Israel repeatedly exchanges hundreds for one, or more than a thousand for three dead bodies, and so on. Even while knowing that other Israelis wll die, down the line, at the hands of those being let out now. Why?

First, because of that torture. Who would leave anyone in the hands of vicious beasts if there was an alternative? Who would tell a mother to reconcile herself to spending indeterminate years in uncertainty, not knowing if her son is even alive, and if so, fearing the tortures he's undergoing at the hands of animals, who eventually may kill him and discard him somewhere, as probably happened in the 1980s to Ron Arad, an airman shot down over Lebanon, who was still alive a year or more later, but has apparently been dead for many years?

Second, because of our cohesion. External observers are often startled by the vehemence with which Israelis often disagree with one another, in politics and in any other part of life. They fail to understand that this is the corollary of what ultimately is a family: Israelis regard themselves as "we" in ways that are quite lacking in any Western society I've ever encountered. True, as in any family, this doesn't mean there's equality and goodwill spread evenly in all directions. Look how we treat the folks down in Sderot, for example: They were shot at for years and we couldn't be bothered; eventually we went to war for them but didn't do the whole job (and maybe we couldn't have, I don't know), so now they're getting shot at again, daily, and we're back to pretending it isn't happening. I can think of lots of less dramatic examples - none of which change the basic fact that we really do empathize with the mothers of those hostages. We also know it could have been us, heaven forbid, since most of us send our sons to where such stories start.

Third, because of history. The concept of redeeming Jewish hostages is at least a thousand years old, and is deeply ingrained in our culture. Very deeply. It's part of who we are, for better and for worse.

Fourth, because of that "better or worse". No-one will admit to thinking this, but we hope that by being "better", and making the pain of that one family or few go away, along with reuniting hundreds of Palestinian families (who could of course visit their jailed relatives all along), maybe things will get better. Back in the 1990s as we were setting free most of the convicted Palestinian terrorists, we really did hope they, also, might be putting the past behind them, and letting bygones be bygones. Of course, there was not much evidence this was true even then, and there's essentially none at all now, but we like to hope. It's a nice, pleasant sensation.

I'm very glad, at moments like this, that I never accidentally became Prime Minister. Prime ministers are called upon to make life and death decisions, and sometimes they're called upon to make life and death and life and death decisions; me, I blog about their decisions.

And of course, I live in the realities their decisions create. Nothing funny about that.

Hezbollah Clarifies Things

Here's a really fun, short, news item from the BBC. I'd like simply to cut and paste the entire item, but my understanding of blogging etiquette (or is it copyright law?) is that one doesn't do such a thing. So I'm linking, and giving a quick synopsis:

The British recently announced they were going to try to engage Hezbollah in negotiations (codewords: We must engage, they're part of the landscape). The Americans, as in Obama Administration, were puzzled by this (codewords: they look like terrorists to us).

Hezbollah clarified things today, when their leader Hassan Nassrallah explained:

He was responding to a US suggestion that both Hezbollah and the Palestinian faction Hamas should recognise Israel before expecting any US engagement.

"We reject the American conditions," he said. "As long as Hezbollah exists, it will never recognise Israel."

But don't expect this to deter the British. Or at least, not for very long.

The Deadly Futility of International Law

Last week the Economist had a long article on the International Criminal Court's decision to issue a warrant against the President of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, for his role in the genocide of Darfur. As the article itself conceded, the chances of the ICC's action making much difference were not good, for many political reasons. While reading the article, I searched for the slightest indication that the Furis, the people who ive in Darfur, stood to gain anything from the decision, but the Economist didn't mention such a possibility. They did, however, have this to say:

The omens are not good. Hours after the arrest warrant, several of the main Western aid agencies were told to leave the country, some within 24 hours. This was at the extreme end of the reaction people expected: a worrying sign that Darfur’s civilians may again bear the brunt of the regime’s wrath. [my italics]

Why was this at the extreme end of what anybody expected? We weren't told.

At least the Guardian is following the story, unlike most of the world's media. After all, hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered, and more than two and a half million are in camps, but it's in Africa, the Jews can't be blamed nor can George Bush, at least not directly, so it's not an interesting story. But the Economist is telling. This week, their report is even bleaker, and is well worth reading in its entirety. Here's some of it [again, my italics]:

GIVEN the history of the Sudanese government’s brutal treatment of the population of Darfur, some adverse reaction to last week’s indictment of President Omar al-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) was expected—but nothing quite as bad as what happened. A dozen major international aid agencies and a couple of local ones were immediately expelled from Darfur, and many from the country altogether; staff were unceremoniously escorted to waiting planes while their computers, files and much else were confiscated by the authorities. The remaining aid agencies have been put on notice, and could be next.

The NGOs that were expelled from Sudan provided much of the food, water and medicine to the 2.75m refugees who live in temporary camps in Darfur. So this move is, above all, a huge blow to the fragile humanitarian lifeline that has been keeping the wretched victims of the Darfur conflict alive...

The Sudanese government has given no official explanation for the expulsions, but has made spurious allegations that all these aid agencies were involved in a conspiracy to supply the ICC with the evidence to prosecute Mr Bashir and his henchmen. More to the point, the Sudanese government evidently has no backup plan to replace the vital services the NGOs provided. Although it is clear that the expulsions were planned carefully in advance, it is equally clear that no thought was given to who would do the expelled workers’ jobs instead. This makes the action doubly callous. As usual, it is the ordinary Darfuris who will bear the burden of the government’s vindictiveness.

Since 2003 about 300,000 people have died as a result of the fighting in Darfur.

I apologize, but to me the story as told be the Economist, is, quite simply. weird. The Sudani government is waging a genocide against an ethnic group within its borders. This is so clear that the ICC has gone to the unprecedented step of issuing a warrant against the Sudani Head of State. In response or retaliation the Sudanis.... are stepping up the persecution! Who would ever have thought of such a possibility! They MUST be told to stop!

Do you begin to have the feeling someone is living in never-never land, and it's not the Sudanis?

Zvi Barel, an informed observer of the Arab world and beyond, tells in Haaretz this morning that the Arab World rejects the whole ICC move as Western Imperialism and intervention in the internal matter of an Arab state. These wold be the same Arabs who routinely use the terminology of International Law and its institutions to castigate israel, condemn it for its horrendous crimes, and generally couch their reservations about Israel in Western terminology knowing perfectly well that this will generate agreement.

If you wish, you may think the Arabs are a bunch of hypocrites, and of course you'l be right. But in a deeper way, there is a profound truth to Barel's story. Sometime in the middle of te 20th century, the European,s exhausetd by their own horrendous recent history, decided to radically change their modes of operation. The Americans, having been twice drawn into European wars, went along with them. The Soviets were also exhausted, and played along, probably insincerely.The creation of the very elaborate system of international law in institutions was the expression of this decision.

The rest of the world wasn't really asked. No-one tried to find out if the rest of humanity was willing to lay aside the murderous traits of 4,000 years of history, merely because the Europeans were exhausted. The imperialistic assumption was that if the West decided to call off human nature, the rest of the world would go along with it.

Apparently not.

Bibi Doesn't Want....

I announced a number of weeks ago that I wouldn't be speculating on the coalition negotiations, because 110% of what's reported is spin, misinformation, speculation, wishful thinking and so on. There are perhaps three people, at most, who really know what's going on: Yaakov Neeman, Gideon Saar, and Netanyahu, and it's a safe bet they don't know, either. There was never any doubt that near the end of the allocated period, there would be a second, serious attempt to forge a Likud-Kadima coalition: first, Bibi needed to show Tzipi he could set up a coalition without her, and she needed him to recognize the price he'd have to pay for doing so. Are we there yet? I don't know. The headline of this morning, whereby Netanyahu (in the Hebrew version it said Bibi) isn't yet ready to agree on rotating the prime-minister's job, indicates that's what they're talking about. Otherwise, how is it a headline? I mean, we assume Bibi isn't ready to jump off the Azriely towers, either, but that's not a headine.

And note the reasoning of Yossie Verter, in Haaretz: it's his job to know things and tell us, but he knows no more than we do; however, he deduces that there must be serious negotiations underway because... Tzipi ain't talking.

So, if the suspense is too much for you to bear, I wanted to tell you all that I consulted my tea leaves and coffee dregs this morning (my crystal ball has been sent to the lab for re-calibration after it insisted Obama would bring world peace, so I couldn't ask it). The tea leaves insisted Peres would run for prime minister next electoral cycle, and the coffee dregs agreed, but added he wouldn't win.

Economist Roundup

No time this afternoon for comments, but here's the roundup of interesting things at last week's Economist:

Why International Law is futile as a weapon against genocide (my interpretation): Sudan.

Why national interests may sometimes end genocides: Rwanda and Congo.

The ongoing and mostly unnoticed humanitarian disaster in Sri Lanka.

How genocide requires many perpetrators: Iraq.

How nasty colonialism can still be far better than the following rule of liberation movements: Zimbabwe.

Finally, on a lighter note: Why lots of comments at Amazon is a good thing for selling your book, and the future of a world online library. Light, perhaps, but interesting.

Enough Time to Read

Hardly a week ever goes by in which I don't meet a book - or five - that I'd really like to read. Alas, life being what it is, I'm currently something like a decade behind - assuming, say, 10 hours of reading a day. And the problem keeps getting worse.

Bernard Madoff, however, seems to have found a solution. In return for stealing lots of money from lots of people for lots of decades and using it to live in lots of style, the New York courts are about to arrange for him to have a full 150 years in prison, where he'll have lots of time to read. Here, I can expect to have great grandchildren reaching the end of their natural life spans, with only the dimmest hearsay recollections from the early 21st century, and Bernie will still be sitting there and reading. Hmmpf.

By the way, Powerline claims the 10 American President, John Tyler, born in 1790 (that's the 18th century), still has two living grandsons. Not certain how they figured the maths, but one does wonder if the Tyler family ran a ponzi scheme.

Disproportionate Hypocricy

A German firm which sold some industrial equipment to an Israeli factory is refusing to send the technicians to set it up, because it's in Kiryat Gat, and thus within range of Hamas rockets. Yes, those ineffectual tin-can homemade not-really-serious weapons Hamas has, which cannot be justification for Israeli attempts to make them go away.

So long as they're aimed at Israelis, that is. If you aim them at Germans the narrative changes.

But it's not only the Germans, it's the Americans, too. Powerline points out that Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence and thus an important and influential man, admits that although everyone agrees about the facts, the danger of Iranian nuclear weapons differs according to perspective: The Israelis take it seriously, the Americans not so seriously. Which is foolish of the Americans, because the single most salient fact about the world from an American perspective surely ought to be the aggravating propensity of the rest of the world not necessarily to behave as the Americans might like. If the Iranians and Israelis end up shooting at each other, it won't be helpful to the Americans that they were laid-back about the possibility earlier on.

The Jews Control the World

This post will have no links because I've only got a few moments.

The other day I went on record for not caring about this Chas Freeman character, one way or the other. In the meantime he has been forced not to take the job in the intelligence community he was hoping to have. Predictably, this is sending his fans ballistic (go look at Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan for starters). Their thesis is that the case proves (once again, I might add) that public discussion of Israel is censored in the United States, with large swathes of discourse being forbidden by the awesomely powerful Israelis and their stooges.

There is of course nothing new to this claim; it's been around for centuries (well, the power of the Jews. The United States as a target, that's newer). I admit to being puzzled by their line of reasoning, because for the life of me I can't imagine what might be verboten (Greenwald's word) to say? That Israel's policies are all wrong? That Israel commits war crimes and worse? That Israel is forcing the Palestinians into slavery? That Israel's behaviour is the source of the Islamic ire at America? That Israel muzzles free discussion and thought? That Israel shouldn't exist?

All of these ideas are broadcast widely and continuously not only in Arab World, nor in the Guardian, but also in the American public arena. If Israel were so good at blocking discussion, how come it's so bad at it? Andrew, Glenn, Juan and many others say these things with regularity, and no-one blocks them? True, the Freeman fellow, after being onthe Saudi payroll, was deemed unsuitable for that job, but that hardly proves the point. The entire case proves the opposite, it seems to me.

Belief and Responsibility

On Purim we read the Book of Esther. There's a program to kill all the Jews of the Persian Empire, backed by the emperor himself. Mordechai is trying to thwart the plan with a counter plan of his own, based on the position of his cousin and adopted daughter, Esther, the queen. Esther hesitates, given the mortal danger she'll need to put herself into. To which Mordechai responds (Chapter 4, 13-14):

13 And Mordecai told them to answer Esther: “Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. ¹⁴ For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

It's an interesting statement. The world's greatest power has decided to murder the Jews, but Mordechai is supremely confident they won't be destroyed; this confidence, however, doesn't prevent him from taking any measure to thwart the program, no matter how high the personal danger.

A Purim Contemplation

once upon a time in a shtetl in russia there were no eligible men, and 2 women who had reached marrying age. after much deliberation, the rabbi decided to write to his brother who was a rabbi in a distant village, described the situation and asked for his help. and luckily, in the brother's village there were 2 young men with no potential wives, and the solution was obvious.

the 2 young men set off and the young spinsters' village was all agog with excitement. unfortunately the road was long, the winter was cold and one of the young men died on the way. so after some months, it was only one young man who walked into the village, to be welcomed by 2 mothers of prospective wives.

needless to say, the 2 mothers started arguing, each claiming that the young man was destined for her daughter. no one knew how to deal with this dilemma, and the rabbi, who had made the match, was called in to mediate. he listened to the argument for a while and then declared: the young man must be cut up, a half for each bride.

'no no' said one mother 'let the other one have him! he is such a nice boy, it will be a crime to cut him up!'

said the other 'are you crazy? of course he must be cut up, half each! we were both promised a son in law, its both or neither!'and they carried on along this vein.

'that settles it' said the rabbi 'now i know'.

the entire village stood in silence, waiting for his verdict. what will the rabbi say? how will he decide?

very quietly he pointed and said 'that one, who wants to cut him up, she wins. without any doubt, she is the real mother in law....'

and a happy purim to all

(thanx to Tova for the e-mail)

Greewald: Ad Hominem as The Method

There's this story going on about Chas Freeman, who has been appointed to some highfalutin advisory position somewhere within the Obama Administration. Lot's of people are cheering, others are groaning and kvetching. I haven't been following it too closely. My understanding is that it's not an executive position, nor is it top-tier. If here and there in the Administration there are people with nutty viewpoints, the United States of America is a big enough place to contain them. If the fellow challenges any potential groupthink, that can't be bad, either.

One of the advantages in being deeply and fundamentally right is that you can afford to be questioned by skeptics, contrarians, fools and snakes, all. So long as the the decision makers themselves are rational, there isn't much to be fearful of. In the long run, the skeptics may make some legitimate criticisms here and there, but they won't be able to cast serious doubt on a position that's fundamentally correct.

So far so good. Now you might want to cast a glance at Glenn Greeenwald's thoughts on the matter. They're long and wordy: Greenwald's like that. My understanding is that the central objective problem with Freeman is that he has been in the pay of the Saudis, who have a record of knowing why they pay nice sums to former American diplomats. In spite of everything Greenwald and others will imply, the vocal friends of Israel in Washington haven't been on Israel's payroll. They've made up their minds for whatever nefarious reasons, but being paid for them wasn't one. Greenwald, however, has this revealing comment to make:

There is, by design, definitely a chilling effect to these smear campaigns. Freeman is being dragged through the mud by the standard cast of accusatory Israel-centric neocons (Marty Peretz, Jon Chait, Jeffrey Goldberg, Commentary, The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb, etc. etc., etc.), subjected to every standard, baseless smear, as a warning to others who think about challenging U.S. policy towards Israel in a similar way...
Ultimately, the greatest weapon to defeat these campaigns is to highlight the identity and behavior of their perpetrators. Just consider who is behind the attack on Freeman; how ugly and discredited are their tactics and ideology; and, most importantly, how absurd it is, given their disgraceful history, that they -- of all people -- would parade around as arbiters of "ideological extremism" and, more audaciously still, as credible judges of intelligence assessment.

The argument, in other words, must be resolved by "highlighting the identity" of the discussants saying things we don't like. Not "let's refute their claims", but "let's paint them in garish colors".

PS. And no, I hope I don't do the same. Follow the tags and you'll see that when the Guardian or Juan Cole (rarely) say thoughtful or valuable things, I've taken note. They don't do it often, true, but it can happen. What's wrong with them is how they use their cognitive facilities, not the fact that they are who they are.

Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick

Roger Cohen, a columnist at the New York Times, has a political agenda. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, of course. I've got a political agenda; most people who care about the unfolding story of humanity do. Being open about it is important, of course; holding up your positions and sources to scrutiny is even better.

Recently, Cohen visited some Jews in Iran, and deduced all sorts of far-reaching things from his visit. Jeffery Goldberg facilitated a visit for him with a community of Jews from Iran, now in Los Angeles; one assumes the narrative he'll hear in LA will be mildly different than the one he heard in Teheran, and we hope Cohen will tell us about this in a reasonable manner. You can follow this story as it unfolds either at the New York Times or at Goldberg's place, whichever.

Yesterday, Cohen published what he called a "reality check" about things in the Mideast.

The United States should follow the British example. It should initiate diplomatic contacts with the political wing of Hezbollah. The Obama administration should also look carefully at how to reach moderate Hamas elements and engineer a Hamas-Fatah reconciliation.

A rapprochement between the two wings of the Palestinian movement was briefly achieved at Mecca in 2007. The best form of payback from America’s expensive and authoritarian allies — Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan — would be help in reconciling Gaza Palestinians loyal to Hamas with West Bank Palestinians loyal to the more moderate Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas.

Now, I'm going to surprise some of you, or perhaps not, by being in favor of talks with Hamas. I don't think enemies need to pretend they aren't there, and if they can find anything to talk about: by all means, why not. Perhaps they'll stop being enemies, which would be great. If not, there's always the possibility one can wrangle some practical benefit from talking. The Zionists wrung some interesting concessions from the Nazis in the mid-1930s Haavara agreement; in 1944 and 1945 there were some marginal things that could have been achieved from talking to the SS, and even were achieved in April 1945.

No talking to the Nazis, however, would have prevented the Shoah. The Nazis murdered millions of Jews because they wanted to, not because the Jews weren't talking to them or weren't being nice.

I've got some arguments with Cohen about his facts, but my real argument with him is about this:

Israel, from the time of Ben Gurion, built its state by creating facts on the ground, not through semantics. Many of its leaders, including Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni, have been on wondrous political odysseys from absolutist rejection of division of the land to acceptance of a two-state solution. Yet they try to paint Hamas as irrevocably absolutist. Why should Arabs be any less pragmatic than Jews? (my italics)

Why indeed? That's the fundemental question, indeed, one of the most important questions facing mankind in the early 21st century. Cohen believes the answer is that Arabs aren't any different from Jews (or Americans, or Brits, or even Chinese far that matter). Since they're just like us, yet some of them behave so nastily, it must be because we're doing things to them that make them nasty; since we're responsible, we need to be better.

I, on the other hand, am stuck with the question. Why is it, indeed, that Arabs (or at any rate, many of them, and many of their regimes), are less pragmatic than Jews (or Americans, or Brits, or even Chinese, for that matter)?

So, while I'm in favor of talking to whomever is willing to talk to us, I insist on keeping the big stick within easy reach. Some of the people we'll be willing to talk to, after all, won't be willing to talk back. With others, there's nothing we can talk about. What could the Cambodians with eyeglasses have talked about with their Khmer Rouge murderers? (Yes, wearing eyeglasses was a capital offense). What could the Armenians have talked about with their Turk murderers 90 years ago? What could millions of Ukrainians have talked about with their Soviet murderers 8 decades ago?

Speak softly, but carry a big stick, as Teddy said.

Vatican Archives

Yad Vashem, my erstwhile employer, is hosting a meeting of Vatican and Israeli historians. I'm not at Yad Vashem anymore, and I neither know the details nor am I asking. If anything good comes of the meeting, great. In the meantime, however, I'm holding back on gushing good feelings:

Israel has encouraged the Vatican to open its wartime archives to allow researchers to look for concrete examples of Pius' actions. But the Vatican has denied access to major parts of its archives, including wartime papers.

Shalev said Sunday he was pleased to learn that Benedict instructed the archive to speed up the process of cataloging the material and hoped it could now be completed in three to four years.

Yad Vashem said Shalev was informed of the development by Vatican archive officials and people who were in direct contact with the pope.

I've been in archives before, and know a thing or two about how they think. Blocking access to documents until the cataloging is completed is the archival corollary of a government setting up a committee. It could lead to something someday. Hypothetically. Maybe. Perhaps.

An archives that wants people to know what in its collections can always find plausible ways around the lack of a catalog.

Divine Justice!

Football (soccer) fans in Israeli stadiums famously have a vocabulary of five (Hebrew) words: The Umpire's a SOB, when things are going bad, and God Exists, when their team is winning.

Well, here's the proof that God exists.

Though it does make one wonder. Israeli sports folk are pretty crappy. Could it be that antisemitism is God's way of improving them?

Aharon Karov, Still Getting Better

A while ago I wrote about the miraculous survival of Aharon Karov, who went to war the morning after his wedding, was critically wounded when a Hamas booby-trapped building collapsed on him, and then didn't die. Apparently he's still getting better. Reading between the lines you'll see he still has far to go, but he's going there. Looks like he's likely to have great grandchildren who will perhaps learn in school about the antisemitism of the early 21st century (see previous post).

Random Antisemitism Roundup

I once had a discussion with a fellow from the Guardian (this must have been, oh, six or seven years ago at least), in which I pointed out that one way of knowing if the Guardian was being antisemitic or not would be to wait a few decades or a century, and then see if the books being written in 2080 about antisemitism in 2000 would dedicate chapters to the Guardian. The problem with this method, of course, being that one must defer the satisfaction of being proven right by a rather long time.

My interlocutor, of course, was of the opinion that I was over-reacting to criticism of Israel, and there was no antisemitism involved. What would you expect him to think?

Unfortunately we didn't need to wait three generations; we didn't even have to wait until the end of that very decade. Here's a totally random roundup of antisemitism culled from the online reports on this Sunday, March 8th, 2009, in about 10 minutes of online rambling: I didn't even go googling.

Israeli tennis player Andy Ram responding to the violent demonstrations against an Israeli tennis team in Sweden.

Students at Oxford (Britains' top university) throwing anti-Jewish parties. I'm not really into worrying too much about sophomoric students and their drunken antics, but when their drunken antics reflect the Zeitgeist it's time to take notice. Also, my youngest son is their age, and is actually quite able to take life-and-death responsibilities upon himself as these kids never will have to - as did his older siblings at the same age. Being 20 does not inevitably mean being asinine.

Israel Apartheid Week, in New York. In which context look at this recent quote from Prof Cole:

you are a little unlikely to be denied a high government post in the US because you once criticized Milosevic or Bashir. But if we leave aside the question of how many people, exactly, they have killed, and just examine the mindset and the shape of the policy they advocate, Binyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman are also ultra-nationalists.

See that one? Some people are mass murderers, other merely talk nasty (assuming they really do, which is moot), but essentially they're all the same if we don't like them.

Guy Bechor comes back from Europe to report. I can attest to having the same experiences.

Economist Roundup

The Economist offers its subscribers the option of downloading a podcast version of the entire magazine (non-subscribers can purchase copies). This is a fine thing, since who has time to read the whole thing? Listening to it while doing other things, on the other hand, is an economic use of time, if you'll pardon the pun. I haven't yet figured out how to use my iPod while swimming, but I do a lot of walking (and almost no sitting in traffic jams, which was probably the original idea at the Economist).

So here's a roundup of some interesting stuff they offered this week.

Two very disturbing articles about the chaos that is Somalia, here and here. Somalia's an important place. Not because it's the world's worst basket case, even more than the Congo, Sudan, North Korea and of course Gaza - basket cases often don't bother the rest of the world. Somalia's important because it's a strategically situated basket case, which is being taken over by the Islamists; and the Islamist have already proven they know how to use far off countires we've never heard about to launch mischief in the ones we live in. Disturbingly, it's not only the Guardian that doesn't care about Somalia. Look at the list of special envoys appointed by the new Obama administration who are to deal with problematic parts of the world, and tell me which one has the Horn of Africa brief.

The UK has yet to figure out how to deal with its Muslim minority. There's no small amount of irony in this story, or Schadenfreude if you prefer.

There's a long Special Report on rubbish (that's really what it's about). This chapter of it explains how Mumbai is better at recycling than San Francisco, if you can believe it. Heh.

The Autonomy software company is doing just fine, in spite of the recession, thank you. They're doing fascinating things, too, or maybe I think it's so interesting because of my professional occupation and the rest of you will tell me it's b-o-r-i-n-g. Over here's a story about some folks who are giving Google a run for their money.

Ayn Rand is selling far better than stocks, these days. There may even be a connection. A bit of a pity, all those sales, because she's dead and can't appreciate her popularity, while lot's of deserving live authors don't have it (the popularity) but could enjoy it if they did.

Talking about books, we've all read the ones that tell how crowds and masses are bad, unthinking, stupid and so on. Apparently not, says this report. Crowds actually often police themselves and calm potential violent clashes. Apropos crowds, it turns out Facebook doesn't make for more friends, because our brain is wired to be able to deal with a limited number of human relationships, and technology can't change that. There's a profound moral to this tale, but I'm not going to get into it today.

Ronald Reagan, it seems, had very fine intuition - but ultimately it didn't make much difference.

Finally, an obituary for Christopher Nolan, a very brave man.

Rebbegeld

Rebbegeld is what one pays the rebbe for teaching the kids; figuratively it means the costs we bear to learn life's lessons.

Herb Kenion thinks he's sees a pattern of the Obama administration learning curve in matters of foreign affairs. First, assume Bush had it all wrong, and we'll do it better. Second, send some representatives to listen to the putative Bad Guys, to find a way of engaging them. Third, recognize that they really are problamatic, and revert to a stance that's quite similar to the previous one. (Fourth, he doesn't say, never ever admit that the previous gang more or less knew what it was doing).

So it was with Durban 2, with Iraq, now with Syria, soon to be with Iran... I can live with it. If it makes more Americans happy for having tried to play nice, while enough of their adminsitration are capable of admitting failure, I have no problem with the rebbegeld.

Arabs in Israel

Yesterday I received a letter from the local court in a minor matter that has essentially no impact on my life except as a very minor distraction. Anyway, the letter announced a change of date of some session. Since I don't normally get such letters I had to peer at it closely for about 18 seconds to figure out what they wanted, during which time I noted that it was a bilingual document, Hebrew and Arabic. Now this isn't all that surprising, given that Israel has two official languages, but it occurred to me to glance at other documents regularly sent by the authorities, which I normally don't even see, tho I do look at them. The water bill, for example: bilingual. A recent letter from the National Insurance (Bituach Leumi): Hebrew, with some Arabic at the bottom which includes various contact data. And that's as far as I investigated the matter; the other old bills are at the accountant's.

The Jerusalem Post this morning has an interview with Haneen Zoubi, the first Arab woman ever to have been elected to Knesset by Israel's Arabs. There have been other Arab women elected to the Knesset, but as representatives of Zionist parties such as Labor and Meretz. In 60 years no Israeli Arab party has ever sent a woman to the Knesset, until Ms. Zoubi, now. (The Jewish Orthodox parties often send women to the Knesset; the Haredi including Shas, never).

Ms. Zoubi doesn't much like us, as you'd expect with a representative of the Balad party of Arab nationalists. The founder of her party, Azmi Bishara, exiled himself a year or two ago when the police began investigating charges of treason against him. The allegations were that he had assisted Hezbullah in its war against Israel, the country in which he was a member of parliament; during the war Hezbullah's indiscriminate shelling of northern Israel had killed 10-15 Israeli Arabs, I don't remember the exact number. Rather than prove his innocence Bishara removed himself from Israeli jurisdiction, though apparently he still draws an Israeli pension.

It seems to me some of Ms. Zoubi's declarations are contradicted by her own story:

"In Israel, Arabs - men and women - are virtually excluded from government positions. They don't go to the army so entire areas of post-military jobs, such as the field of high-tech, are closed to them. There are numerous examples."

Born and raised in predominantly Arab Nazareth, the northern city which serves as the unofficial capital for Israel's Arab citizens, Zoubi, a Muslim, grew up amid a large, well-known family. Some members of her extended family have been part of Israel's establishment, including cousin Abd-El-Aziz E-Zoubi, a one-time mayor of Nazareth who, as a representative of the Labor Party, was the Knesset's first minority minister (deputy minister of Health from 1971-1974 ), and Nazareth District Court judge Abd El- Rahman Zuabi, who served as a temporary Chief Justice for nine months, but was not appointed permanently to the bench.

Just for the clarification: being temporarily on the Supreme Court is standard for the worthiest of district court judges as the customary prerequisite for a permanent appointment; many temporary appointments, however, don't turn into permanent ones; there have, of course, been Arabs with permanent appointments to the top bench.

Ms. Zoubi's statement about hi-tech being closed to Israeli Arabs is of course wrong. Hi-tech in Israel is mostly private sector, not public, and entrepreneurs can do whatever they manage to raise money for. Here, for example, is the website of an entire hi-tech enterprise predicated on Arab technicians in the Galilee being cheaper than the ones near Tel Aviv. They're a business, not a charity or NGO; I myself have had a bit to do with them and they seem quite good.

The bottom line, however, is that Ms Zoubi and her rather distasteful party ran in the elections, in spite of a pathetic attempt by some politicians to thwart them, they didn't do very well because not that many voters like them, and now she's in; she's a member of Israel's Knesset.

Pathologies about Israel

The BBC has a story about an Israeli admiral who was sighted in a den of iniquity. Not admirable, indeed, but is it newsworthy? Personally, I doubt this needs to be in the Israeli press. But the BBC? I mean, if it were the British Deputy Undersecretary of Fisheries and Salt-Mining from the Tory party, I can see why it would get into the Sun. If it were the very top American General, it would perhaps get into the National Enquirer. But the BBC? Can you see them reporting on the sexual escapades of, say, the French Minister of Finance, assuming they know his name? The top admiral in the Russian Navy? What's going on?

Then we've got this one, also at the BBC today, on the traumatized children of Gaza. I asked the BBC's search engine of it could tell me about anyone traumatized in Israel, and it had to go all the way back to August 2001, where it quoted a British woman whose Israeli grandson was traumatized - says the grandmother, mind you, not the reporter - after both his parents and some of his siblings were shot, and I quote:

It is not yet known why they were attacked but Israeli radio were reporting they were the victims of a "terrorist cell".

So I asked for trauma in Somalia, and got a story from 2005 about Somali refugees in the UK who are having a hard time. Trauma in Sri Lanka (there's this real brutal war going on there, with lots of civilians in the middle): to be fair to the BBC, they did have a recent story on that. Trauma in Georgia? One item which just barely makes the grade.

Handing Out Water

Until about ten days ago we were having the driest winter in decades, if not since measuring began late in the 19th century. You might chalk this up to global warming, I suppose, if it weren't for Europe having a rather cool winter, and North America being buried under snow down into Mexico or somewhere. About ten days ago, at the tail end of winter, it started raining seriously, and it now looks like the winter of 2009 won't be a record-breaking catastrophe, merely a decidedly dry year. Bad, not awful.

In which context, someone at Y-net went to look at the subject of water we supply to our neighbors. (In Hebrew). This is a toxic topic, on which most people know very little though many think they know lots. Remember, for example, how until 2005 the "accepted wisdom" was that those evil Israeli settlements in Gaza were drinking 25% of the local water? This, at a time when Israel was piping water in for the Palestinians, while a Palestinian inability to construct better pipelines was limiting the quantities Israel was prepared to supply. As they say: Lies, damn lies, and accepted wisdom about Israel.

I'm not going to do justice to the topic in a blog post. But the figures in the Y-net news item are interesting. Israel's treaty with Jordan stipulates that Israel must give Jordan 35 mcm (million cubic meters) of water annually. In addition, Israel may pump water out of the Yarmouk river upwards into the Sea of Galilee, but the Jordanians may request 20 mcm of that water for itself since it borders on the Yarmouk. In reality, Israel supplies those 20 mcm even in years such as 2005 and 2007 in which there was little rainfall and the Syrians, further up the Yarmouk, essentially pumped it dry. Meaning Israel supplies Jordan with the extra 20 mcm at its own expense, or from its own (dwindling) reserves.

Israel and Jordan are at peace, so maybe this makes sense (and maybe not). The policy of supplying water to the Palestinians is stranger, given the rather tortured relationships which, whatever they are, are not peace. Until a final-status agreement is reached, Israel must supply the Palestinians with 28.5 mcm water annually, 5 mcm of them to Gaza. In reality, Israel has been supplying the Palestinians with 65 mcm (some of it through authorizing new Palestinian well-drilling from the common underground reservoirs).

In total, Israel's contracts mandate it to supply 80 mcm to its neighbors, but in reality it supplies 120 mcm. In 2009 there is a projected 80 mcm shortfall of water for Israel itself, which of course raises the question if perhaps we should revert to the letter of the treaties and stop the gestures, and save half of our own shortfall.

If we do so, prepare yourself for the reports on the new Israeli crime against humanity of drying up Palestinian faucets.

The Wrong Government

The Israeli government that nobody wants, even the man forming it. Yossie Klein Halevy, in The New Republic. He's VERY good, Klein Halevy, normally and also today. You should read him regularly if you're interested in Israel.

The Good Book

Has anyone ever told you the blurbs written on dust jackets of books are actually written by the authors themselves? Shocking, huh? And here, they led you to believe someone had really read the book, and thoughtfully commented on it for the benefit of the browsers in the bookstore. Nope. The same goes for descriptions of books on publisher's websites. My apologies for the disappointment.

So there's this new book out, titled "The Good Book", and since David Plotz, its author, has so helpfully told us about it on the HarperCollins website, I'll simply cut and paste it in here, before going on to the blog-post part:

Like many Jews and Christians, David Plotz long assumed he knew what was in the Bible. He read parts of it as a child in Hebrew school, then at-tended a Christian high school where he studied the Old and New Testaments. Many of the highlights stuck with him—Adam and Eve, Cain versus Abel, Jacob versus Esau, Jonah versus whale, forty days and nights, ten plagues and commandments, twelve tribes and apostles, Red Sea walked under, Galilee walked on, bush into fire, rock into water, water into wine. And, of course, he absorbed from all around him other bits of the Bible—from stories he heard in churches and synagogues, in movies and on television, from his parents and teachers. But it wasn't until he picked up a Bible at a cousin's bat mitzvah—and became engrossed and horrified by a lesser-known story in Genesis—that he couldn't put it down.

At a time when wars are fought over scriptural interpretation, when the influence of religion on American politics has never been greater, when many Americans still believe in the Bible's literal truth, it has never been more important to get to know the Bible. Good Book is what happens when a regular guy—an average Job—actually reads the book on which his religion, his culture, and his world are based. Along the way, he grapples with the most profound theological questions: How many commandments do we actually need? Does God prefer obedience or good deeds? And the most unexpected ones: Why are so many women in the Bible prostitutes? Why does God love bald men so much? Is Samson really that stupid?

Good Book is an irreverent, enthralling journey through the world's most important work of literature.

Sounds reasonably interesting, doesn't it. Though I admit the thought of someone getting through a chunk of life, well into adulthood, before ever reading the Bible, saddens me. I won't say it astonishes me, because it doesn't, but it saddens me. It's the best book ever written, after all, besides being history's best seller (well ahead of Mao's Little Red Book, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Harry Potter, which follow it on the list so far as I know. The Koran must be on the list, too). Not to mention being the most influential book in history, with no contenders in sight. (Try to imagine Abraham Lincoln without the Bible). And bear in mind that Plotz is the editor of Slate, which means he's a figure of some significance on the American intellectual firmament; he's not some physics professor, recently fired Wall Street broker or a member of Congress.

Shmuel Rosner has posted an e-mail interview with Plotz:

4. You're an editor (and writer) with a political mind. You wrote a lot about politics, you thought a lot about politics. Did you find the Good Book politically relevant?

Yes, in a couple of ways. The Bible is the book that guides tens of millions of my fellow Americans. They make their decisions about gay marriage, economic policy, education, abortion, etc based on the words in the book. If I want to be able to understand them, and to engage with them, I need to know what they believe. Also, the Bible has many episodes analogous to political events. It's much easier to understand Bill Clinton having read about King David.

I'll bet Bill Clinton has read the Bible. Come to think of it, if you've got to choose between Plotz's Good Book and the real Good Book, I recommend the real one.

Reality is More Complicated than Logic

I said I'd stop reading and reporting on Juan Cole, since by now his methodology is clear, he's becoming boring, and my observations of him even more so. I expect to stick to my commitment, at least for a while, but one of you in the comments sent me to his post last week where he complains about the Guardian allowing an Israeli to speak. So I had a peak. Actually, it wasn't Cole, it was an anonymous "guest blogger"; and it was neat to see that Georgina Henry herself, executive editor of CiF, felt she had to defend herself. Broad sections of the (saner part of the) blogosphere regularly castigate the Guardian without Ms. Henry responding; it makes one wonder what particular chord Cole struck.

Cole's unnamed guest uses a standard but false trope: If Uri Dromi thinks he can get away with explaining the behavior of the IDF, he's wrong, indeed, he must be lying, since his allegations don't make sense:

My reaction to the content is that the piece attempts to blame the victims-- which is a well known sophist technique. As for the misleading explanations of what seems to be the use of legitimate weapons in inappropriate ways and contexts, my reaction can be summarised as "what absolute bollocks!”

The pictures of airburst phosphorous being used to set areas on fire are conclusive evidence of misuse.

Smokescreens use ground burst. If I had ever wanted a smoke point to cover a flanking movement then I wanted the smoke as a dense cloud on the ground at a height that exceeded the height of my people. Armoured Fighting Vehicle also have small smoke dischargers on the turrets and hulls designed to put a cloud of smoke in front of the vehicle to give time to reverse out of danger or to debus and engage the enemy.

Cole also often uses this technique: if the Bad Guys make a factual claim, we'll refute it not with counter-facts, which we don't have, but by ridiculing it with logic. It's a fun technique, because it dosen't require real acquaintance with the facts; it casts the original reporter as a fool and a liar for concocting such an obviously false tale; and since it does, after all, have a ring of logic to it, it can be refuted only by someone who really has the facts and can explain why the reality trumped the logic, or rather, why the logic of the reality was stronger than the logic of the arm-chair critic. The people with these facts rarely read Cole's blog, obviously, since they're on the field of battle and have better things to do with their time, while Cole's audience, most of whom have never been and cannot imagine, can join him in feeling smug and righteous.

So I waited a few days, and then asked the soldier when he came home over the weekend. I didn't show him Cole's screed, rather I asked him about this whole "white phosphorus and flechette" business. He started with the flechette topic. As he and I both know, flechettes are useless against hard targets such as tanks, APCs, or buildings; they are however quite effective against people - and remember, wars are waged by and against people; they are about killing, which is why they're such unpleasant things, even when they're necessary. Given the specifics of flechette shells, he told, they were used quite sparingly, and only in very specific cases: when Hamas fighters had been identified in specific places which were otherwise empty of civilians as far as could be known. Given their rather precisely knowable range of damage, this isn't so hard to do. The scenario of

The only mass of humans I could see were the women children and old men taking shelter in schools and hospitals and UN premises.

never happened. Nor would it have made any sense: even if one wished to kill civilians in a school, flechettes wouldn't work, not if the school had walls. Criticizing Israel for things it never did is, how to put this gently, potentially antisemitic.

The white phosphorus claim was used more often since it's a more dramatic weapon, I suppose. Achikam was very clear on how it was used: as a smokescreen, never on residential neighborhoods (in his section. He can't say what happened elsewhere). Very often, when his unit moved from place to place during daylight, they did so behind an artillery-laid smokescreen of white phosphorus; when I asked about the height above the ground, he was momentarily puzzled by the question: often there were many-storied buildings beyond the area, and in order to be hidden from spotters you need a smokescreen high enough to cover them, he explained. Obvious, isn't it, the moment you glance up from your laptop screen and think about the terrain of reality.