Seven (non) Jewish Children

Caryl Churchill, a British lady who undoubtedly gets her news from the Guardian, has written a play titled Seven Jewish Children. She published it even as the Gaza operation was underway, and it is being performed at London's Royal Court Theatre. The Lede, a New York Times blog, has a round up of various responses to it so far; some think it's antisemitic, others think not. Ms Churchill herself states near the end of the text that

Caryl Churchill has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work

which, you'll just have to pardon me for saying, is really funny.

Someday, as I've already say, I ought to write a book titled "How to Tell an Antisemite" (meaning how to recognize one, and how to tell it, gently, that that's what it is, without hurting its feelings). At the moment my excuse not to is that I have to make a living. However, if anyone would like to support me for, say, a year or so, then my excuse might have to be that I'm probably not enough of a masochist to immerse fully in this filth. Still, if it's in a good cause... Nah. A futile cause.

Those Bad Settlements

In response to my assertion that Netanyahu was elected to be the rough lawyer in our divorce from the Palestinians, an anonymous reader wonders

But won't the continued expansion of settlements make an agreement more difficult to reach no matter who is in charge of negotiations?

The pithy answer is No, of course it won't, in spite of the unanimity of the world media, from the antisemites to the ignorant, all agreeing that it will.

A fuller answer goes something like this.

Continued expansion of settlements might tells us that the Israelis have no intention to allow partition; or that they won't be able to; or that the Palestinians who otherwise want partition will be so discouraged they'll drop the idea and prefer more violence.

None of these assertions is particularly reasonable, and none bears factual scrutiny.

1. Israeli intentions. A majority of Israelis supports partition of this tiny little place so as to achieve peace alongside the Palestinians. I'm not going to go into the full demonstration of this (I have done so already both on this blog and in my relevant book); suffice to state that even in the incoming Knesset, which if you believe the pundits is really really right-wing, there are easily 80 MKs of 120 who are in favour of partition; the number that will go along with it were it to happen in a constructive framework is even higher. The settlements play no role in this discussion, since we all know that most of them will be disbanded, and a few of them won't. Yossie Beilin says there will be swaps of good agricultural land for settlements; Lieberman says there will be swaps of Israeli-Arab towns for settlements, but most everyone accepts the premise of partition.

Why, you'll ask, if most everyone knows the settlements will be disbanded, are a few of them still growing? Most of the growth is in the few, large ones, that won't be disbanded. As for the rest: indeed, enlarging settlements everyone knows are destined to be disbanded is idiotic. But no more so than artificially holding down the price of water for farmers in the worst drought year in memory, which is also happening, or supporting hundreds of thousands of Haredi families in which capable adults don't work because of a warped ideology. Some folks figure out how to manipulate the system for their benefit, no matter what the majority wishes. Show me a country where this isn't true.

2. Israel won't be able to disband the settlements even if a majority wishes to do so and has reached an agreement with the Palestinians. So far, this proposition has been tested two and a half times. In 1982 the settlements in the Sinai were disbanded with the support of 117 members of the Knesset. In 2005 the settlements in Gaza were disbanded with the support of a rather narrow majority in the Knesset. In 2000 Barak offered to dismantle most of the settlements, there were no significant protests in Israel, but the idea was then foiled by the Palestinians for reasons of their own. Had they not foiled it, the sovereign state of Palestine would be preparing next year to celebrate its first decade of independence and ethnic cleansing of Jews.

When people tell that soon there will be so many settlements they won't be removable, ask them how they know, if there are any facts to support their thesis, or if they're simply talking.

3. The Palestinians are so discouraged by the Israeli settlements they've given up on peace. This statement is repeated again and again, but contravenes the facts. The violence of the second intifada began only after the Israelis agreed to dismantle most settlements. Then, in 2005 Israel disbanded the settlements in Gaza, and ever since the violence has been getting worse. I suppose if one wishes still to believe the war is about settlements one can do so, but only at the price of suspending rational thought.

The Roughest, Toughest Divorce Lawyer in Town

Bradley Burston cites Elah Alkelai convincingly, to my mind, to explain that the voters didn't vote to block an agreement with the Palestinians but rather the opposite: they voted to ensure their representatives at the negotiating table were tough bastards in the best meaning of the term.

The Israeli public may have voted for the right not because it rejects the idea of peace deals, partition, and a two-state solution, but because it believes the right is better qualified to find a way to carry out that undeniably painful process...

Think of it as severance of an arranged marriage, and the vote Israelis cast last week was for what they perceive as the roughest, toughest divorce lawyer in town.

Had I thought Netanyahu would drive the hardest bargain, I'd have voted for him, too; the reason I didn't is because past experience indicates he's actually a poor negotiator, who loses control and capitulates the moment the going gets hard. Olmert was vastly his superior in that respect, but alas, Olmert allowed himself to be ousted for corruption.

Coded Election Campaign

The other day I had a meeting in a part of town I don't pass through on a regular basis. While passing through this time, I saw a campaign poster (actually two torn ones side by side) geared for voters who care not one bit about the issues you were led to understand were the ones they were supposed to be interested in. So here's a picture, then a translation, then a de-coding.

Translation:
(Only this once)
Because of him (picture of an unnamed Haredi fellow)
(picture of a skinhead, and superimposed the words) For me only Litzman
Litzman handed over the Holy City of Jerusalem to the seculars
[little letters]: Fewer funds fewer synagogues less Yiddishkeit
[in Aramaic]: because of Litzman there's another way and the clever will understand

Ah, and the letter gimal is crossed out from the word biglalo, because of him.

So far the translation. Any readers of the NYT, say, or any other media outlet, who might have any idea what this is all about? No?

It's actually rather simple. Litzman is representative of the Gur hassids in the Aguda party which runs under some other name. Voters in Israeli elections cast a vote with a slip of paper with a letter, a throwback to the early 1950s when not everyone could be expected to read long names in Hebrew (or Arabic, for that matter); Aguda's letter is Gimal. Back in November the Gur people refused to vote for the candidate of the Aguda in the Jerusalm municipal elections, thus contributing to the victory of the secular Nir Barkat, may the Lord protect us, especially as secular folks are hardly to be distinguished from skinheads. I don't know what place Litzman was on the Aguda list last week, but apparently some Haredi folks are so angry with him for reducing the municipal pork (I really do apologize for the word, but that's how you say it in English) that they're willing to vote elsewhere.

But not any old "elsewhere", of course. Which is why that last sentence in Aramaic tells them where to go: to Shas, of course. But only this once, of course, as the top sentence says. By next time we'll have gotten rid of Litzman and Barkat and Shas. And the skinheads too, god willing.

Did any of this make any difference? I doubt it. United Torah List (Aguda) got 5 MKs, Shas got 11, neither of them doing better than last time - actually, a bit worse. But as folklore goes, it's cute, isn't it?

Too Many Buildings Destroyed

The IDF continues to investigate its behavior in the Gaza Operation. While the number of dead Palestinian non-combatants seems considerably lower than the unanimous reports in the media, it appears the destruction of property was greater than planned:

A military source involved in the investigation told Haaretz, "It's clear to us that in a small portion of the combat sectors immeasurable damage was caused, and that is very difficult to justify from a legal perspective, particularly if such justifications are called for in legal proceedings with international organizations."

Call me hard-hearted callous evil and mean, but I'm not overly perturbed by this. Lost human lives are lost forever; buildings can be rebuilt. That's what Iranian funds are for, not to mention the PA being one of the top recipients of international aid worldwide. After Israel left Gaza in 2005 the Palestinians held democratic elections and a majority chose Hamas, a stridently antisemitic party that proudly calls for the anihilation of Israel; its men then shot thousands of rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians from among the populace. The citizens of Gaza never voiced any noticeable objections.

Whenever the Palestinians decide they'd like to live normal peaceful lives alongside us, we will reciprocate. If they prefer war, we can supply that, too. Though unlike them, we will try not to kill their civilians, and we'll painstakingly and meticulously publish the results of our post-war investigations. NATO, the British and the Americans don't investigate and publish, nor does anyone expect them to. As for the Russians, the Sri Lankens, the Ugandans, the Thais, the Rwandans, the Congolese, the Sudanians - to give a partial list of countries which killed larger numbers of civilians than the Israelis in 2008 - most people can't even say anything about them at all.

Iran and the Bomb

Remember the tremendous international glee late in 2007, when a muddled NIE report sort of said the Iranians had halted their nuclear program or perhaps not but then again who knows? At the time I took the highly unusual step of reading the document, and was surprised (or actually, not) to find that about 98% of the reportage was wrong.

Well, it now appears that the report was wrong. Or rather, since it didn't actually say anything, and thus couldn't be wrong, it was misleading.

Is the media world reporting on this change of mind (which is coming, I remind you, from the Obama administration, not the Likud)? Well, to be honest, now that you ask, umm, you know, I mean, hmmn... no, not really. I saw mention of it at the Jerusalem Post but decided they weren't a good enough source for what the American administration thinks. Soccerdad has pointed me to the LA Times, not one of my regular haunts, but since it's an important American paper I'm linking to them. As for the question, where is everyone else? I have no idea.

Who Was Killed in Gaza?

Haaretz cites an IDF report listing 1,134 Palestinian fatalities in the recent Gaza operation, 673 of whom were from Hamas or other fighting formations, 288 were non-combatants, and the rest have not yet been identified. Apparently the IDF is making lists by name, so as to know in each case who the dead person was.

My understanding is that the investigation is not yet complete.

Cole Chops Logic

Juan Cole gives his subjective and factually questionable take on the results of our elections. As regular readers will be aware, Cole is not the best place to go for informed content, in spite of the title of his blog, but it can be a fine place to go for the gags. Today's post contains this one:

Israel is 20% Arab, which should yield 24 seats in the Knesset, but only 9 were apparently elected, down from 12. Attempts were made to disqualify some Arab parties from running, but the Supreme Court struck them down.

Let's see: If 20% of Israelis are Arabs, while the Arab parties only gleaned 7-8% of the votes, and the point of our post is to make sure everybody understand how bad Israel is, let's create the impression that most Arabs were disqualified from voting. There, that ought to work, as long as no one really stops to think about what I just said...

By the way, the reality is even further from Cole's thesis. Something like one of the eight percent of votes garnered by the Arab parties came from the far-left Jews who voted for Hadash, a sort of communist party which has one Jewish MP on its list to prove its cross-national solidarity, and indeed he attracts cross-ethnic votes. Which means that at the very most 40% of the Arabs voted for Arab parties. The proportion of abstainers was a bit higher among the Arabs, but even so it looks like a majority of the Arabs voted for regular Zionist parties; they didn't even converge on the Left-wing Meretz party, which almost disappeared for lack of votes across the board. In the past, when the Haredi Shas party used to control the Ministry of the Interior and its control of funds for the municipalities, one of their MKs was voted in by Arabs, but that wasn't the case this time. Looks like the Arabs voted for Labor, Kadima, Likud.... Lieberman?

On the Futility of Tactical Voting

But first, a comment from the distant past. (For readers who joined recently and aren't familiar with my occasional "Daf Yomi" thread, the explanatory post is here). This morning's page, Bava Kamma tractate 46, contains a Talmudic discussion that is far fetched even by the standards of those early lawyers 2000 years ago. A cow has gored a bull, already a bit far fetched, and the owner of the cow probably should pay damages. However, the cow had been pregnant, yet by the time anyone arrived at the scene of the battle she had given birth, so we don't know if she attacked before or after. This could conceivably be significant, someone postulates, because if it was a pregnant cow who did the goring, and the calf had already been sold before birth, then the owner of the cow can perhaps claim that he must pay only part of the damages and the owner of the calf should pay his part since the calf participated in the goring. Or not, if the calf was already born: but we don't know because there weren't any witnesses...

Whether any of this is serious I can't say; it supplied the ten or twelve of us in the morning study group lots of giggles; the best part was when the speculation went so far as to postulate a hen attacking a rooster before laying an egg - though even the Gemara found that fanciful.

And how is all this relevant to Israel's elections, I hear you asking? Because Israeli Jews have been splitting logic like this for thousands of years, and you see it in their electoral patterns. First, in the fact that in any given election there are about 30 parties, ten to 15 of which can be expected to make it into the Knesset (apparently 12 this time). More significantly, you see it in their elaborate schemes of what's called tactical voting, which is when you vote for the wrong party in order to reach some secondary goal.

An example: let's say I wished Netanyahu to be prime minister, but was reassured by the polls that he probably had it sowed up already; I intensely dislike his ultra-orthodox partners, however. If I vote Likud, there will be a Likud-Haredi coalition whose foreign policy I will like but whose economic policies I won't like. Solution: vote Lieberman. He'll go with Netanyahu but he hates the Haredi and will protect us from them. Of course, I can't do that if I'm also pro-settlements, because Lieberman is willing to have many settlements disbanded so as to hand them over to the Palestinians along with the Israeli Arabs along the Green line, but that's what elections are about: you've got to make a decision, and you can't have everything, not even by voting tactically.

Another example: I want Livni to be prime minister but the polls indicate she won't. I assume Netanyahu won't want a coalition with all the folks on his side, because too many of them are crazies even by his standards and he'll want to be invited to the White House, so now I have to figure out who is more likely to be the center-left party he recruits, and vote for them. Kadima or Labor: which will he choose, and how can my vote effect his choice? Or perhaps it's the other way around: While I'd gladly vote for Livni, I'm afraid she might join Netanyahu so I must vote for Meretz to assure my vote doesn't support Netanyahu in any way possible?

(I remember a chap who in 1996 wanted Peres to be prime minsiter, but was afraid his majority would be so large he voted for Netanyahu so as to warn off Peres from following his Left allies; he ended up getting Netanyahu as prime minsiter though he neither wanted him nor could accept him once he was on the job...)

All you folks with only two parties don't have the faintest idea how complicated this democracy thing can be.

And futile, too, since if you voted Barak so that Bibi would choose him, you don't get him because Shelly (Yachimovitz) and her allies have managed to pull him out of the race, irrespective of what Bibi (and Barak) want. And Lieberman might bolt, if paid well enough, and enable Tzipi to set up a coalition, even though my tactical vote was meant to bolster Bibi from the secular side, not anoint Tzipi....

Which is why I personally have never voted tactically. I figure out which person I'd most like to have as prime minister, and I vote for his or her party. What a quaint idea, don't you think?

Scratching My Head

Some sort of analysis of the election results is called for, but - besides my need to get other things done, thus crimping my blogging time - I'm mostly scratching my head today. The broad outcome was predictable and predicted, of course, but there are all sorts of questions that cry out to be answered. Why does Kadima trounce Labor? Why was Meretz hit that bad? Why did Likud surge back - and why didn't it? What does the Israeli voter want, and why not?

I pride myself on being an adept though fallible long-time observer of the Israeli scene, but I admit no obvious answers spring to mind.

Final Observations before the Electoral Results

I'll be going offline in a moment: we have this custom of spending election night with relatives, in a convocation where the number of parties voted for is hardly smaller than the number of eligible voters: we eat popcorn and disagree about what the results might possibly mean, and agree to reconvene next time which is never far ahead. As the number of our voting children grows, the spread of parties seems also to grow.

I have been voting since 1977, and have switched party allegiances at least three times myself. Being a centrist means you've got to keep on your toes, and abandon whomever strays too far from the center. Of all the times I've voted, I can't remember an election in which I was so indifferent to the results. Not, as many pundits will tell you, because of disapproval of the politicians on offer - I've been around for a while and have long since lost any illusions I had on that score. My indifference (it's not apathy) stems, I think, from the understanding that it doesn't really make much difference. Peace isn't about to happen. Unilateral disengagement, which I supported a few years ago and support still has been knocked off the agenda by the behaviour of Hamas in Gaza, which took the opportunity to build themselves an emerging state and convince us to give more, and dedicated all their efforts to destruction. Using force will be inevitable and tactically necessary, but it won't solve anything. King Obama the First, aka The Messiah, isn't.

I've known for a long time that we're in for the very very long slog; at this particular moment it isn't even clear, however, who can manage it intelligently.

I voted for Tzipi, for those of you who asked. But she can't win. And it wouldn't make any difference if she did.

Lieberman: Ethnic Cleanser!

Juan Cole demonstrates his hazy grasp of Israeli realities, in a long post that contains this gem in its first paragraph:

Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu, [is] a far, far-right faction that advocates ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

Cole doesn't enable free comments on his blog, only the ones he chooses. However, I've noticed that when I address him as "Prof Cole" and sign off as a Dr, while keeping an even tone, he tends to allow my comments through. So if you go visit him you can also see my rather lengthy take on Lieberman.

An Antisemite at the Foreign Office

Top ranking British diplomat Rowan Laxton doesn't like Jews.

Middle East expert Rowan Laxton, 47, was watching TV reports of the Israeli attack on Gaza as he used an exercise bike in a gym.

Stunned staff and gym members allegedly heard him shout: 'F**king Israelis, f**king Jews'. It is alleged he also said Israeli soldiers should be 'wiped off the face of the earth'.

My italics.

Haaretz adds

The Daily Mail said that in response to a query on Monday, Laxton denied that his comments were anti-Semitic, but dodged answering whether they were anti-Israel.

He denied.

The Guardian and BBC websites haven't heard of the case, if you believe their search engines.

Report from Sderot and the Gaza Border

Michael Totten has put up a long report. Michael is refreshingly not top-notch international media outlet such as the BBC, which is why it's interesting to read his reports.

The BBC Reports on Lieberman

The BBC is one of the world's top media outlets; some would simply say it's the top. It's not some blog some fellow uses to bloviate. It's a serious place.

Here's what its website has to tell us about Avigdor Lieberman's party today:

Meanwhile, far-right winger Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu party may beat Labour into third place...

Mr Lieberman says he is opposed to the principle of "land-for-peace", on which the two-state solution is based. He wants a "land-for-land" swap - the transfer of areas in Israel currently populated by Israeli-Arabs to the control of the Palestinian Authority, in exchange for Israeli control of major Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank...

Although described as "far right", Mr Lieberman has backed giving some predominantly Arab areas of East Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority as part of a land swap deal, but says he is opposed to any sharing of the holy sites in the Old City...

Mr Lieberman lives in a settlement himself. His land swap plan would also involve Israel relinquishing parts of the West Bank - presumably including the settlers on them - but it is assumed this would be less than under Ms Livni or Mr Barak's two-state solution, as some areas would be kept in exchange for Israeli-Arab areas of Israel...

Mr Lieberman advocates totally severing links with Gaza - for example tightening the blockade by closing all the crossings in and out of the Strip and ending the transfer of humanitarian goods through Israeli ports and territory...

As Mr Lieberman is opposed to the concept of "land-for-peace", he objects to the type of deal Ms Livni and Mr Barak would pursue. He says Israel should hit back at Syria if it is attacked from Lebanon, and backs what he describes as a "peace-for-peace" deal where Syria would gain recognition and economic aid from the international community in exchange for accepting an Israeli presence in the Golan on a renewable 99-year lease...

Back when I taught 7th graders, I assure you I would have flunked any student who had written such a description. I'm not talking about adherence to facts, mind you, though one might expect that, too, from a reputable media outlet. I'm talking about simple coherence, such as if Lieberman is or isn't willing to hand over control of territories to Palestinians. Or if he is center, right, far right, or anything else, and what the criteria for the depiction are. Simple things like that: that's all I'd like to have from someone telling me stuff.

Education is All in Your Mind

I spent eight years of my early adulthood teaching high school - long enough to prove I could do it without the students cowing me, a real problem in Israeli schools full of cocky adolescents with zero tolerance for their elders. Actually, once I got the hang of compelling them to listen long enough that they started to learn, I mostly enjoyed it, and in all the years since have never again encountered such a concentration of fine minds as the more unruly 11th or 12th graders I used to confront.

So I'm not automatically into educational policies based on what you might call touchy-feely tactics of making the students feel good about themselves and what have you. Find the way to challenge them, and then never stop doing it, if you ask me. Ah, and employ fine teachers, who know their material and know their trade (or art, more likely).

Still, Richard E. Nisbett's op-ed column in the NYT explains why with some groups, a little bit of that is exactly what's needed - and not the large expensive and grandiose programs. I think his point is that with some groups, there's a societal handicap that convinces the kids they can't learn and succeed, so they don't; remove that by suggesting it's all about their efforts, not their identity, and they'll flourish. Sounds reasonable to me: set it up so they decide to learn, and they will.

Just Journalism

While I'm linking to stuff without seriously reading it, Gavin sends us to the Just Journalism report on the Gaza Operation. Just Journalism is an outfit that has taken upon itself the hopeless and thankless task of holding British journalism to its own professional standards on issues of Israel and its neighborhood. I get bellyaches from doing this as a hobby; these folks deserve either a medal or a straitjacket, or both. Anyway, their Gaza report is here; if you ever get up in the morning with a feeling of unwanted elation, this will do the trick to get you back to normal.

UNRWA

John Lindsay, who was apparently the top lawyer at UNRWA from 2002-2007, isn't exactly the type of person you'd expect to find at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Still, someone had the inspired idea of hosting him, and the result seems to have been worth the effort. He has recently published a paper about what UNRWA does and what it could do better. I have so far only read the first few pages, in between other more pressing activities, but it certainly seems an item we need to be looking at (p. xi):

The most important change, the one most
required and least subject to rational disagreement,
is the removal of citizens from recognized states—
persons who have the oxymoronic status of “citizen
refugees”—from UNRWA’s jurisdiction. This would
apply to the vast majority of Palestinian “refugees”
in Jordan, as well as to some in Lebanon. If a Palestinian
state were created in Gaza and/or the West
Bank, such a change would affect Palestinian refugees
in those areas. Meanwhile, for those who are still
defined as refugees, UNRWA’s move toward greater
emphasis on need-based assistance, as opposed to
status-as-refugee-based assistance, should be accelerated.
No justification exists for millions of dollars
in humanitarian aid going to those who can afford
to pay for UNRWA services. In addition, UNRWA
should make the following operational changes: halt
its one-sided political statements and limit itself to
comments on humanitarian issues; take additional
steps to ensure the agency is not employing or providing
benefits to terrorists and criminals; and allow
the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), or some other neutral entity, to
provide balanced and discrimination-free textbooks
for UNRWA schools.
With the above changes, UNRWA would be better
aligned with what should be its ultimate objectives.
For the Palestinians it serves, this means ending their
refugee status and returning, after nearly sixty years, to
what most of them so desperately seek: normal lives.

According to Haaretz, the report is predictably raising hackles at UNRWA itself:

An UNRWA spokesman slammed the report, accusing the author of bias and a failure to employ a sufficiently wide range of sources.

"The agency is disappointed by the findings of the study, found it to be tendentious and partial, and regrets in particular the narrow range of sources used," Andrew Whitley, director of the UNRWA representative office at UN headquarters in New York, said.

"The study ignores the context in which UNRWA operates and the tight line the agency walks due to various pressures," Whitley said. "Someone reading this paper with no background would assume that the Israeli government was a benign actor. No mention is made of the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip."

Here's a proposed translation: Lindsay doesn't realize we're beholden to the Arab version of the story ("various pressures"), and his starting point isn't that Israel is the source of all evil. Sniff.

If I ever find the time I'll read and report, but now you know it's there, feel free not to wait for me. Go ahead, by all means.

On Having an Opinion, and Publicizing One

Well, it looks like I'm getting flak for that previous post: do you mean to say, Yaacov, that one needs truly to be an expert and know the right languages before having an opinion? So here's some clarification:

First, there's a difference between having an opinion and publicizing it in a public forum, such as the BBC. The larger the forum, I'd argue, the greater care one ought to take when expressing one's opinion. Yes, I stand by that - and the BBC is one of the most public of forums the world can offer, and it even comes with a mantle of respectability that was acquired, sometimes at great price, over generations.

Second, if you read my response, it contained a twist: Not only was I castigating the ignorance of the BBC person, who lacks the qualifications to educate us on her topic; I was also saying that even after I had spent something like 15 years on acquiring the qualifications, some experts still felt I was wrong (and they may have been right).

Third, I pointed to the silliness of her methodology: in order to say something about the Israelis, she asked some Palestinians.

I was not saying one must have a PhD in order to have an educated opinion, nor that academia is necessarily better at reaching the truth than journalism. Actually, academia is often a poor way - look at Prof. Juan Cole. And journalism can be a very reasonable way for understanding reality - keep in mind the number of times I have praised Avi Issacahroff, a journalist who really knows what he's talking about.

That was my point. That some people take the time, acquire the languages, and make the effort - a never-ending one, by the way - to become experts. Other people don't. The first group are worth listening to, whether we like their opinions or not. The second are harmless if they talk to themselves, and an affront to our intelligence if they pontificate from a public stage.

To Shaul who reproves me for doing the same, my response is that I try not to. At times I link to things other people write, but as a general rule, I talk about the things I've acquired some expertize about: Jewish things, German things, American things. I'm told the Spanish are virulent antisemites these days: yet I haven't written about this, because I lack the language, the background and the context; so I leave that to others. Nor, to my best recollection, have I written about the Iranians, the Kurds, the Turks, or the Iraqis, even though they all touch upon the story I do tell. The two exceptions are the Palestinians and the Islamists. But even then, I try to be careful. Not knowing Arabic, the most I can say about the Islamists is that according to what I can see and read, they have patterns of cognition and behavior which resemble earlier patterns I actually do know a lot about, as an expert. As for the Palestinians, I really don't know what makes them tick, but unlike the BBC lady, I've been watching them from close up for my entire life, I read lots about them that comes from experts who know more than I, I read translations of things they say - and after all that, I try to limit my statements about them to what I feel competent to say.

It's a free world (part of it, though not the Gazan part), and people can say what they will. Even BBC folks can. But by putting themselves in the public square, they also put themselves up to our scrutiny - and to our derision, if justified.

How We Know What We Know (Again)

A friend writes to tell me about a conversation he had with a BBC correspondent:

Having seen the destruction [in Gaza] and interviewed survivors, she is in little doubt that the Israeli intention was to punish the Gazans for having had the temerity to vote for Hamas.

To which I responded:

That’s what she’s convinced of, is it? Seems par for the course for the BBC.

About when I was finishing my undergraduate studies, when I already knew more about the Holocaust and Nazism than the BBC person probably knows about Israel, I decided the time had come to figure out for myself what the Nazis had thought they were doing. So I moved to Vienna and learned German, and then moved back and spent more than a decade reading tens of thousands of pages of Nazi documentation and many thousands of pages of historical research about them, and then I wrote that doctorate we alluded to; it was only at that stage that I felt confident in speculating about what the Nazis intentions had been. Once the book was published, some experts agreed with me, and others didn’t, and they were all knowledgeable about the topic.

It would seem to me that if the BBC correspondent wanted to speculate about Israeli intentions, the least she could do would be learn Hebrew and spend some time figuring out how Israelis understand the world; interviewing Palestinians seems to a peculiar method of comprehending Israeli intentions, don’t you think?