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.

Poker and Management

The single best pundit of Israeli politics is, of course, Nahum Barnea of Yediot Acharonot. However, most of what he writes doesn't get put onto the Web, since his employers want people to buy their dead tree version, and even the articles that do find their way online more often than not don't get translated to English.

Yossie Verter of Haaretz, however, is pretty good, and he's easy to find online in English since Haaretz has a different business model (an inferior one but that's not my subject). Yesterday Verter tried to explain what's going on in the negotiations towards forming a government. No one really knows, of course, but Verter's description rings true. The essence of it is that Bibi and Tzipi are playing poker. She wants a power-sharing government with a rotating prime minstership, Bibi the first two years, then she for the next two years. Bibi wants a government with Kadima, but intends to bring along some of his natural (or not-so-natural) allies; and he extremely definitely decidedly completely determinately isn't in favor of a rotating prime minstership. Their sticking point is a declaration of acceptance of partition and the two-state solution: Tzipi demands such a declaration, Bibi refuses. Their reasons are that Tzipi expects that such a declaration will frighten off Bibi's more lunatic allies, such as Ichud Leumi, the far-right settler party which has four MKs; once they're gone Bibi will have lost his block, and he'll have to offer her the parity she wants. His position is the mirror image of hers, with the addition that he really doesn't want that far-right coalition, but he expects that in a week or two parts of her own party will begin clamoring for government posts because otherwise they'll revert to being mere mortal MKs, heaven forbid.

On the face of it, this is all pure spin, maneuvering and poker. After all, with the possible exception of Ehud Olmert, there is no individual in the entire state of Israel who knows better than Tzipi Livni that peace with the Palestinians is not in the cards for the time being. She and Olmert, after all, have spent much of the past 18 months or so dealing directly with the top two Fatah Palestinian leaders, the so-called moderates, Abu Mazen (Olmert) and Abu Ala (Livni). They talked and talked and talked, and no-one stopped them from reaching agreements, proclaiming peace, signing agreements, celebrating at the White House and getting Nobel Peace Prizes. I didn't stop them, and neither did you. The reason it didn't happen was that the distance between the positions of these moderate Israelis and moderate Palestinians are, at present, unbridegeable, and have to do with the Right of Return but also all sorts of other matters - and also, one might add, with the total inability of the Palestinian side to deliver, what with Hamas being actively hostile to the whole idea.

So why are Tzipi and Bibi fighting over such a demonstrably non-issue? I can think of three explanations. The first is that one or both of them are idiots. This could be the case, of course, one should never over-estimate one's political leaders, and history is chock full of political and military leaders who in hindsight at least must have been fools.

The second explanation is that one of them is bluffing, or perhaps even both, but no-one knows which of them (or both). In this scenario, one of them will blink, but not yet. The time for blinking will be during the last of the six weeks Bibi legally has to form a government. At that point, either he'll decide her version is better than the best he's managed to cobble together, or she'll decide what he originally offered is better than sitting in the opposition. Whichever of them blinks will, of course, have a rational explanation along the lines of "I've changed my mind for the Greater Good, Call of Duty" and so on.

The third explanation is actually serious, and has to do with opposing appraisals of reality. The fact that both know no agreement can be reached with the Palestinians doesn't mean they agree with the implications. Bibi looks at the situation and figures it isn't time to clash with his natural allies nor with his (very old and idealistic) father, nor with his own preferences, and will say that since the Palestinians don't want peace on terms any electable Israeli can offer, screw them and let's do what is most convenient. Tzipi, on the other hand, says that in spite of there indeed not being any Palestinian with whom to make peace, it's important that we preserve the impression that we're willing to walk the extra mile only there's no peace at the end of it. This position assumes the Obama administration will put pressure on both sides as the Bosh administration didn't, and prefers to go along with the American demands so that even the Americans understand who's being reasonable and who isn't. This is called "intelligently managing the conflict", and I'm reasonably convinced Livni's tactic for doing so is better than Netanyahu's. But maybe that's just me.

Boycotting Durban 2

In the name of fairness: not long ago I posted an article criticizing the Obama administration for participating in the preparations for the Durban 2 hatefest. Yesterday the State Department announced that having tested the waters they'd decided not to plunge in, essentially continuing the policy formulated by the Bush administration of boycotting the conference. A number of European countries are mulling the same - after all, it's the Obama Americans who are boycotting the conference, not the Bush ones.

All in all, the process seems reasonable. The new folks inherited a rather unusual position - America doesn't often boycott things - so they went to check what it was all about. Having learned first hand, they understood the inherited position was correct, and they affirmed it. Can't do better than that, it seems to me.

Early Proto-Proto-Hobbsianism

Now and again the Gemara wanders off from its mostly legal discussions into legends, myths and stories. Aggadeta is the word for these excursions. Many talmudists rather dislike these detours for not being legalistic or practical; me, since I'm more of a historical mindset than a legalistic one, I think these sections are great fun. They give all sorts of fascinating insights into how life was lived, how it's still lived, and how it out to be lived.

Everyone's heard the story of the man who had two wives, one young the other elderly, and how the young one weeded out his gray hairs while the elderly one weeded out the black hairs, until he was "bald from both sides" (keraiach mekan u-mikan). I don't know where the story originated, but you can find it in the Gemara, where it was recorded at least 1,600 years ago, at Bava Kamma 60b. But I mention that one for the anecdote.

More interesting, further down the same page, is the story told by Rav Huna about a case where King David, warring with the Philistines, could only get at them by burning the fields in which they were hiding. He sent a question to the Sanhedrin (the high court in Jerusalem) asking if it is permissible to destroy property of non-combatants to save oneself. The Sanhedrin responded that as a general rule, one may not do so, but for the king it is permissible, because the King must forge a path for his army so as to face his enemies.

More than a millennium before Hobbes.

This thread began, and is explained, here.

Litany of Horrors

One of the frustrations of standing up to the liars about Israel is when they churn out statistics and facts (often, "statistics and facts") about how uniquely bad Israel is, and you absolutely know they're spouting nonsense, but you don't have counter facts at your fingertips, nor are you brazen enough simply to invent them (a tactic that actually does work, since your interlocutors generally don't know much about the world, but I'd advise against it none-the-less). So, since one of the points of this blog is to strengthen the resolve of our side, the following link is offered as a service to our public.

It's an article from the Economist about the eagerness of many combatants in many wars to aim specifically at women and children. It isn't pleasant reading. On the contrary: I wouldn't recommend it all, if it weren't for the insight it gives about how wars are often waged in the early 21st century. And note that the article isn't about local cases of loss of control. It's about calculated tactics, some of them even strategies, purposefully articulated and generally cold-blooded in their execution. If international human rights organizations have any right to exist, it is to stop these evil practices. Since they are mostly powerless to do so, it's legitimate to cast doubt.

Israel isn't doing any of this; as a matter of fact, in some 90 years of warfare, Israel has never done any of this.

Paul Berman's Must Read Interview

Michael Slackman has a troubling piece in today's New York Times. He's been wandering around Cairo, talking to regular Cairenes (nothing intrinsically wrong with that), trying to understand what the Obama Administration must do if they are really listening to the Arabs and wish to mend bridges to them. His answer, in a nutshell, is to abandon the American perspective on terrorism. According to the Arabs, terrorism is the word used by the Americans for what Arabs do, even though the real terrorists are the Americans themselves, and much worse than them, the Israelis.

I have no doubt this is indeed what most Arabs feel - nay: fervently and devoutly believe. They also believe Jews murder non-Jewish children for their blood, for example. The antisemitism the Arab world is drenched in these days can only be compared to the worst version of the Nazi form of it in its severity. It makes the antisemitism of the Guardian look like a mild case of benign and harmless distaste. I'm not saying this for the hyperbole. The Arab world really and truly is awash in Nazi-like hatred of the Jews; a fact Michael Slackman is totally unaware of (or he's aware and willfully disregarding, or he's aware and uncaring - so let's assume he's merely an ignoramus). So his article is totally lacking in context, lacking in history, but most peculiarly, it's also lacking in moral fiber. His thesis is "Hey, these people think we're hypocrites, so we're going to have to bend over backwards to prove to them we're not, including changing how we see the world and behave in it, otherwise they won't like us!"

Craven, silly, and of course dangerous. For the Americans, I mean.

Contrast his thoughtlessness to the long interview Michelle Sieff has just published with Paul Berman. (I was directed to it by Jefferey Goldberg's valuable blog). Berman is one of the last representatives of a politically Left worldview that was admirable, humane, and the sort of intellectual home a fellow could feel proud to be in. Alas, it's a dying breed. Anything he writes is always valuable; this interview is by far the most important thing anyone has formulated on the Israeli-Hamas war, on contemporary antisemitism, and on where we are. It's absolutely excellent. Long, but mandatory reading. It starts out excellent, then gets better. Here's a section from the middle:

Oh, as Irving Howe said, "There is no heart so warm that it doesn't have a cold spot for the Jews." We like to think of hatred of the Jews as a low, base sentiment that is entertained by nasty, ignorant people, wallowing in their own hatefulness. But normally it's not like that. Hatred for the Jews has generally taken the form of a lofty sentiment, instead of a lowly one - a noble feeling embraced by people who believe they stand for the highest and most admirable of moral views.

Unlike journalism, this one is by someone deeply immersed in historical context.

An Israeli at the Guardian

The Guardian allows Uri Dromi - a former IDF spokesman - to present Israel's version of the use of various weapons in Gaza. By this stage of the story, this is no longer enough to exonerate the Guardian from the accusation of fomenting antisemitism and being antisemitic in their editorial line and ethos, though as I've said in the past, the Guardian is indeed better than the worst Jew haters in the Arab world: they live in a democracy and still go through the motions of allowing multiple voices.

The readers of CiF, however, have no such compunctions. If you want to plumb the cesspool of Western Jew hatred, the comments at Comment is Free is a fine place to start.

Glennwatch 2

In the week or so I've been regularly visiting Glenn Greenwald's blog I've noticed he's a very wordy fellow. I'm one, too, but he far outstrips me. He also uses parenthesis in parenthesis, not a sign of a fine writer.

Today he has posted on Israel, or actually, on the hope the Obama administration will put lots of pressure on, and distance itself from, Israel. Personally, I think if Israel ends up with a coalition dominated by our far right, Netanyahu will deserve a modicum of pressure, and for that matter, so will we, so as to force us to decide if settlements are important enough to face down our American friends over. But there are various "ifs" in that scenario. And either way, it has little to do with peace, since our war with the Palestinians isn't about settlements, of which there are none in Gaza.

In the meantime, Greenwald's main thesis, it seems to me, is that the Obamaites must put lots of pressure on Israel; the Palestinians, if I read correctly, don't even get mentioned. The implication being that the lack of peace is mostly the fault of Israel, and marginally the fault of the Bush administration for allowing this.

it's hard to believe that George Mitchell was willing to take on this assignment unless he has the authority to apply the pressure on Israel which is an absolute pre-requisite for any hope of success. For now, those who desire a serious change in U.S. policy towards Israel should welcome any signs -- even limited and preliminary ones -- that the U.S. is willing to forcefully and, when necessary, publicly oppose and condemn Israeli actions (as we do with all other foreign countries).

Alison Des Forges, Fighter for Human Rights

This obituary for Alison Des Forges shows what a real human rights activist does, in the parts of the world that really need them.

Binyam Mohamed, Litmus Test

Binyam Mohamed is an Ethiopian fellow with a strange story. When in his teens he apparently entered the UK and requested asylum, was turned down, and stayed anyway. At some point he converted to Islam, and later on went to Pakistan and Afghanistan to see - if you wish to believe it - if the Taleban had managed in setting up a proper Islamic state. While there he engaged in something or other, perhaps joining an aid organization, perhaps recruiting in al-Qaida and being trained in ferociousness. It depends which version you choose to believe in, and I certainly can't say, not having been there at the time. By and by he was arrested boarding a plane to the UK with a false passport; this seems the last moment in the story all versions agree upon. He probably disappeared into a Moroccan interrogation center, where he says he was tortured - a credible tale in itself, given what is known about Moroccan police procedures: the last thing you'd want is to be treated to them. A year or two later he reached Guantanamo. So far as I can make out, the authorities there didn't have enough credible evidence to indict him, but nor could they set him free unless someone was willing to take him. Recently the British authorities have accepted him, and this week he was flown to London and set free, though he must come to a local police station regularly until the British authorities decide what to do with him.

All in all a pretty sorry tale for all involved. I suppose, if you were so inclined, you could see his lawyers as glorious champions of human rights, but I'm not inclined to. They're the people who invented for him words he never said, such as:

And I have to say, more in sadness than in anger, that many have been complicit in my own horrors over the past seven years...
I am not asking for vengeance; only that the truth should be made known, so that nobody in the future should have to endure what I have endured. Thank you.

Touching, isn't it. Eloquent, too. Christian-style noble, second-cheek-for-slapping sentiments, suffering so that humankind be redeemed. Almost exactly what you'd expect coming from a fellow with his story.

Anyway. The London Times has been following the story, and trying, it seems, to be factual. David Aaronovitch is less convinced, and suggests the treatment of Mr Mohamed is hard to condone, but not without losing his ability to recognize the reality it's part of; a reality in which even worse things are happening.

And then you have the Guardian. They offered Mr Mohamed to write an article about his thoughts, and his lawyers duly did so for him, as cited above. The whole issue has nothing to do with Israel or the Jews, so one might cite the cluelessness or the malice of the Guardian in this case as proof their general outlook is sick, but not antisemitic. It seems to me, however, as if the topics are connected, and together go part of the way towards creating a Weltanschauung, a totality of understanding the world which is broader than a mere ideology. In this Weltanschauung, the Islamists, their fellow travelers and anyone involved with them are thoughtful misunderstood and wronged souls; the power brokers in the West who confront them, meanwhile, are inexplicably evil, cruel, and generally reprehensible.

Boycotting Israel, and Not

The Forward has a story about a co-op in Brooklyn with 15,000 members, one of whom has proposed a boycott on Israeli products - it's a greengrocer's co-op. If you read the whole article you'll see the boycott will never happen:

Michael Barrish, a 48-year-old Web developer who was shopping on February 17, said the ban is absurd. He believes it would be shouted down by Jews who support Israel, and laughed at by those who find a ban of this nature preposterous. But, Barrish said, “I like being a member of a place in which you can propose what you believe.”

Meanwhile, as part of my other, professional, life, today I came across the interesting tidbit of information that the British Library (not a British library: THE British Library) not long ago migrated its many systems into a single one, the Israeli-made Aleph system. (You can see the marketing propaganda here, if you insist). This means that each and every time one of the Guardian types uses their national library for whatever purpose, including online, they're benefiting from... oy, I don't even want to complete the sentence.

Edu-Speak

Here's a an off-topic post; if you come here solely for the Guardian-bashing, feel free to skip it.

The Economist tells about two reports about to be published in the UK dwelling gravely on the sorry state of schools. One, the product of a collaborative effort of lots of experts, suggests that perhaps school-children need be inculcated with knowledge. The other, written by a serial report writer who was carefully primed in advance, suggests that children be taught literacy, maths, and how to use Google. Lots of knowledge vs. knowing how to find stuff: guess which strategy is going to be adopted?

Alongside that article is a quick annotated dictionary for the language spoken by the officials who deal with such matters. It's hilarious.

Satisfactory. One of the four possible judgments of the schools inspectorate (the other three are inadequate, good and outstanding). It means “unsatisfactory”. (“Inadequate” for its part means “dire”.)

Also, if I'm already in the business of recommending off-topic reading, there's an article in the NYT which suggests that scientists have their own political positions, just like everyone else, and their scientific utterings can be influenced by them, also just like with mortal humans. What a shattering thought.

Durban 2

You might want to mark the date of the upcoming international hate fest: the so-called Durban 2 conference, scheduled for April 20th in Geneva. April 20th, as some people know, was Hitler's birthday, a national holiday in Nazi Germany, and a high-alert day for West German police forces after the war. The symbolism is apt.

According to this rather technical article, the Obama Administration has broken with the Bush Administration's admirable stand of having nothing to do with the event. The Obama people are participating in the preparations, and aren't even trying very hard to head off the damage.

I'm not an international diplomacy wonk, so I can't vouch for the details of the description, but it sounds pretty bad to me. Not that the conference will be all that important, mind you: the antisemites will celebrate, the others will avert their eyes, and the world will continue as before.

Judenstaatrein

Irwin Cotler, one of the more knowledgeable experts on human rights anywhere, has published a long but worthy article about the new form of antisemitism: denial of the Jew's right to have a nation state. The term Judenstaatrein seems to have been coined by Per Ahlmark, a former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister.

I'd have preferred the article to have been published in the NYT to the Jerusalem Post, which has a smaller and less influential readership, and also tends to hide articles after a few days, but I wasn't asked.

Cotler's article follows a meeting of the Interparliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism (ICCA), a new organization which just had its first meeting in London. So far as I can tell from the Guardian search engine, they had one single article on the conference (did I mention it was in London, and was addressed by Gordon Brown?); it's an article by one Antony Lerman, and on its own offers a legitimate tone of caution of getting carried away when discussing antisemitism. Had his been one of three viewpoints, say, it wold have been fine. But it wasn't.

And then there are the responses of readers, the article having been posted at the Comment is Free (CiF) section of the Guardian's website. My favorite response (before I gave up) was this one:

I'm gonna be real careful today and not get anyone too angry with me. But couldn't some aspects of anti-semitism be caused by the part of the torah that says the Jews are gods chosen people, therefore making everyone else second class citizens? Doesn't racism breed racism?

Guantanamo Fables

I've never blogged about the Guantanamo detention camp. It's not my topic, not something I know much about, and believe it or not, it's not even a matter I have much of an opinion on one way or the other. For many millions of people however, many of them with no more information or connection than mine, it was an article of faith, yea, even a central dogma, that Gitmo is a Very Very Bad Thing, and a Colossal Crime of the Bush Administration.

Well, apparently the facts are less conclusive. According to the New York Times

A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concluded that the prison complies with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions. But it makes recommendations for improvements including increasing human contact for the prisoners, according to two government officials who have read parts of it...

One Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved in challenging the White House plan to close the prison, argued that the report showed that the Bush administration had created a humane detention camp. Speaking of the remaining detainees, this official said the report showed that if the men were moved, they might “go from a humane environment to a less humane environment.”

Of course, the guardians of the dogmas aren't going to take any of this lying down. True, they have yet to read the report, but they don't need to, since dogmas and articles of faith by definition are impervious to factual investigation; they function in other spheres.

Gitanjali Gutierrez, a lawyer for Guantánamo detainees at the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that she and other lawyers found that conditions have remained bleak since the start of the new administration.

Ms. Gutierrez said that a report by the rights center, to be released next week, asserts that two major Guantánamo prison buildings, known as Camp 5 and Camp 6, should be closed immediately. She said prisoners there continue to be held in isolation for as long as 24 hours a day, that psychological difficulties are treated as disciplinary infractions, and that many cells are windowless.

“This is really running the risk that the review is just a big whitewash,” Ms. Gutierrez added, “and we expect more of the new administration.”

One reason I'm a historian by preference, even while presently trying to make a living as something else, is that history is so perpetually interesting. Look where we are right now, for example. Twenty years after Francis Fukuyama rather prematurely declared that rational thought and liberal democracy had ended history, we've got a virulent strand of Islam warring with mankind, a resurgent Czarist Russia, a non-democratic China just beginning to flex its muscles on the international scene in blithe disregard of the the entire political agenda of humanism, and significant sections of the liberal West, the parts that regard themselves as its elite, are abandoning their glorious but hard-fought for heritage in favor of a set of religious-beliefs-sans-God that takes the silliest part of religion and the silliest part of secularism while abandoning all the serious parts of both. What's to be bored by?

Glenn Greenwald: Next Target?

Regular readers of Ruminations will be aware that one of my main themes is the attempt to figure out what makes Israel's harsher critics tick. Yet I do make a distinction between individuals with blogs, and establishments such as The Guardian, which has been around for generations, has some 700,00 subscribers and a larger number of readers, and can plausibly be seen as representing a segment of society. The individual bloggers may reflect corners of society, but I don't think they're as significant for outlining social or historical trends. Or better, they are, perhaps, in the aggregate, but not individually. Which means I've got to look at a diversity of them.

So, here's hoping, Insha'allah, that I have the character not to waste any more time on Juan Cole, about whom I've satisfied myself that he's an ideologically-driven misrepresenter of facts and an embarrassment to rational intellectual inquiry, in addition to offering a haven to antisemties in his moderated comments section. Previously to him I had looked at others and then moved on; it's time to move on from him also.

A possible new candidate is Glenn Greenwald, who blogs at Salon. His present post is shrill and repugnant, but perhaps he had a bad day and got carried away, something that can happen to anyone; even I've had such days. Greenwald is a lawyer and author; I don't think I've focused on any lawyers so far. He's noticeably Jewish, by name, picture and content; I don't remember having focused much on anti-Israeli Jews so far, assuming that's what he is. Or isn't: let's follow him for a while.

Sleeping in Their Graves

The Gemara in Bava Batra, 121a, wonders why the 15 day of Av is a day of celebration, since it's not written in the Bible. A list of answers are given, one being that at the end of the war between the tribe of Benjamin and all the others (Judges 25) a vow was made never to intermarry with the sons of Benjamin; a later generation decreed, on the 15th of Av, that the vow had been for that generation, not all generations, and it was time to bury the hatchet.

Rashbam, a 12th century scholar and grandson of Rashi, fills Rashi's usual role of primary interpreter of the Gemara for this tractate. He brings the following story, from Midrash Eicha, itself a Talmudic-era exegesis:

The day the Israelites accepted the warning of ten of twelve scouts newly back for the Promised Land, whereby the Canaanites were too strong to be overcome, was the 9th of Av. Faced with this rebellion, God decreed that the 9th of Av would henceforth be a day of mourning; He also decreed that the people would wander an extra 38 years in the desert, and that none of the adults of the time would live to enter the Promised Land except Joshua and Kaleb, the two loyal scouts of the twelve.

Every year thereafter, on the night of the 9th of Av, all the adults would dig graves and sleep in them. The next morning a voice would call for them to rise, but a portion of them wouldn't - a 40th (actually, it should have been a 38th) would have died. On the 40th year, as preparations were being made to enter the Promised Land, the adults dug their graves and laid down in them; in the morning they were all still alive. Fearing they had miscalculated the date, they lay in their graves the next night, and the next, and the nex; each morning everyone was still alive. On the 15th there was a full moon (the Jewish calender is lunar), so clearly they hadn't miscalculated, and the 9th had passed without mass death. The curse had ended,and the 15th became a day of rejoicing.

This thread began, and is explained, here. Though it occurs to me to add another bit of explanation. In a way, one can say that the Jews as a group are the sum of their communal memories. Faced by thoughtless, ignorant but malicious types such as Caryl Churchill and the many millions of her fellow angry fools, these occasional Daf Yomi posts are meant to give glimpses into the richness and complexity of Jewish culture and memory.

The Next Prime Minister

Will be, of course, Netanyahu. Though it will take a while. Until then, I'm mostly not commenting on the process of constructing (or de-constructing?) our next government. Half of what you read or hear about the process is spin, half is trial balloons, half is negotiating ploys, half is bad faith and the final half is people talking through their hats. So there's no point in trying to comment on any of it.

What is clear is that there are only two possibilities. The positive one is that three of the four larger parties will set up a governing coaltion that will be stable, possibly efficient, and could serve us well. I think that's what the voters wanted in the first place: a large centrist coalition, perhaps right-leaning but not fatally so. (Of course that's what I'd say, what with being a centrist myself: but I do think that's what the numbers say). The negative possibility is that we end up with a narrow majority of everyone on the right, many of whom are incompatible with each other, where the agendas of the far right will dictate all sorts of foolishness, we'll be treated to to a year or two of high political drama, and the next elections will be in 2010.

It could go either way.

Hitler Can't Find Parking in Tel Aviv

There's all sorts of talk swirling around cyberspace about an Israeli spoof someone put up on Youtube, where a section from a recent German film about Hitler's final days has been dubbed with Hebrew subtitles, according to which Hitler can't find parking in Tel Aviv. (I never drive down to Tel Aviv. I take the bus and let the bus driver worry about parking).

Haaretz tells that Holocaust survivors are furious and demanding Youtube delete the clip.

Noah Flug, the chairman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors and a survivor of Mauthausen concentration camp, sent a letter to YouTube demanding that the clip be removed due to its sensitivity.

I've known Noah Flug for more than 40 years, and have great respect for him, but in this case I disagree. The clip isn't offending to survivors, it's side-splitting funny, at least in its original Hebrew version. The English one that has been put up "in response to public demand", so to speak, is merely quite funny. Both of them are embedded in that Haaretz link, so go judge for yourselves.

Tell Me Who Your Friends Are...

A few days ago Juan Cole had this to say:

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ruled out allowing needed goods into Gaza, which Israel has virtually surrounded from land and sea, until Hamas releases captured Israeli soldier Sgt. Gilad Shalit. Olmert is thereby committing a war crime. You can't collectively punish the general Gaza population if you are the occupying authority. It is not allowed to torture that wailing child in the video above by keeping out painkillers, just because some adult somewhere from the same territory captured an Israeli soldier. But Olmert will get a pass on his war crimes. Apparently you only get punished for them if you are weak or lose; it isn't the crime but the power of the criminal that matters.

This is more or less what the Palestinian representative at the UN says, too (and keep in mind that he's a PA, i.e. Fatah person, not a Hamas appointee)

The Palestinian UN observer, Riyad Mansour, stressed the importance of achieving a long-lasting cease-fire so that Israel does not go and attack our people as they want but said Shalit's release should not be linked to the opening of border crossings.

"These are two separate issues," he told reporters. "To connect them in this manner, it means that the Israeli government is not interested in a long-lasting cease-fire now, and not interested in opening the crossings and lifting the siege."

Not everyone, however, agrees. Among the dissenting voices one can find - mildly astonishingly - Robert Serry, the UN's top Mideast envoy (same link as Mansour):

Serry told council members that a durable cease-fire can only be achieved if there is broad progress including an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, who was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid, action to prevent the smuggling of weapons into Gaza, the opening of borders, and unity among rival Palestinian factions.

These steps, he said, would also pave the way for the longer term recovery and reconstruction of Gaza.

"I emphasize these points...because one month since unilateral cease-fires were declared, a proper cease-fire is still not in place, and there is an ever present danger of a return to the unsustainable conditions of last year, or even for renewed and more devastating violence," Serry warned.

Asked afterward about Israel's decision to link the border openings with
Shalit's release, the UN's special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said, "If you want to improve the situation in Gaza, you have to look at the other issues as well, and Shalit is a very important one."

So, on one side we've got Cole and the Palestinians, while on the other side we've got an important UN fellow and Israel. How very peculiar.