Seven Other Children

Carol Churchill's antisemitc little skit continues to make the rounds. I've already commented that a play is better than an op-ed or blogpost for disseminating ideas, right or wrong, because it's shelf-life can be longer, especially if it's got a constituency. Which is why it's neat that there are now two plays out there. Churchill's antisemitic one, and a counter-one by Richard Stirling, called "Seven Other Children". Stirling, like Churchill, is not Jewish.

Since there are two plays, and they're both short, one can now demand that both be played together. After all, Churchill's piece purports to want to "encourage discussion", and what better a way to do so than by having two 11-minutes pieces which deal with similar materials from differing perspectives?

This story indicates how the discussion might play out. One side won't allow stirlings' play to be shown because it's new:

In explaining the rejection of Stirling's play, the festival's development
coordinator Madeline Heneghan said: "The program is planned months in
advance." The request was "unrealistic at this point", she added.

Churchill's play about events in Gaza four months ago, you understand, managed to get onto the program. The other side, however, now has a tool, and in this case the careful politicians are cutting funding for the event because only one side of the "discussion" is being granted a platform. An interesting dynamic, based upon the fact that although antisemitism is widespread, at least in the West it's also something one ought to be a bit embarrassed by.

I haven't read Stirling's piece yet.

Lefty Colonialists

Max Julius in Haaretz puts the Guardianistas in a context I hadn't thought of: the snotty Englishmen who can't really be cajoled to take the natives seriously when they act out:

These modern-day British imperialists, the vast majority of whom are on the
left, by the way, see Palestinian terror as a sort of ineffectual
temper-tantrum; much as their forebears in African and the subcontinent saw
their subjects' occasional acts of hostility toward them as childlike bouts of
rage. The fact that Hamas' plots are so regularly thwarted by Israel, which
often responds with far greater force, only goes to further the sense these
Britons have of the group as something that only seems malignant to those
without a true understanding of the Arab: Their poor American cousins and, of
course, the hysterical, persecution-obsessed Eastern European Jews who now call
themselves Israelis.

The fun of his explanation lies, of course, in that there's no crime greater for a Guardianista than being colonial. Delicious.

Education With Vodka

A while ago I told of a new book, King of Vodka. The author has called my attention to a list of venues where she'll be presenting it, and at least some of the places will also offer Vodka, not only talk about it; sounds proper to me. So for the Californians among you, and also the Illinoians, here's the list. I know some of you are New Zealanders: no hope, sorry.

A Pope at Yad Vashem

On March 23rd 2000 Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem. At the time I was the head of archives there, and thus managed to be at the ceremony.

From what I've heard, the visit of the present Pope this week was not particulalary memorable. John Paul's, was. It was also historic, of course.

Just this evening, totally by coincidence, I stumbled across something I wrote the evening after that first visit. So here it is:

John Paul II at Yad Vashem

The security measures were severe even by the paranoid standards of our goons. The roads leading to Yad Vashem had been cleared of all parked vehicles the evening before. The entire mountain had been ringed off, and for the first time anyone could remember, Yad Vashem was closed to the public on a workday. Not that it was empty, mind you, what with the throngs of press, VIPs, and multitudes of security types. Visits of Heads of State are routine at Yad Vashem, and often call forth no more than a mildly curious glance, but the Pope, contrary to Stalin's derisory scepticism, is no mere Head of State.

The few hundred of us who were allowed into the Hall of Memory, Ohel Yizkor, had to be inside 45 minutes before the ceremony started. There were a handful of government ministers, a gaggle of ambassadors, a pride of high-ranking officers and civil servants, the inevitable donors, not to mention the journalists, technicians, participants, and sycophants. The cardinals, 15 of them or so, were allowed to come late, merely ten minutes before the Pope himself.

So it was an unusual situation, with so much power - perceived, imagined or real - cooped up in a closed, dark and cold hall, waiting. At one point, one of our chief religious figures, so high-ranking that he was positioned down on the floor of the Ohel itself, sauntered across to exchange some pleasantries with a lesser luminary sitting in the front row of the gallery.
To my great astonishment, his path took him over the names of three concentration camps, engraved into the floor, his indifference to them total. Pleasantries completed, he sauntered back, this time trodding on two other camps. Looking closer, it became clear that others were disregarding the essence of the venue just as blithely.

John Paul II, when he arrived, did not allow himself to be led over the names.

Frail, bent, concentrating on each step and move, he eclipsed everyone present. Wearing plain white robes, his hair and skullcap white and his complexion pale, he seemed almost to glow in the dark surroundings. The structure of the ceremony had been outlined with representatives of the Vatican over months of discussions, so the fact that he was to walk back and forth from his chair to the eternal flame, to the laying of the wreath, to the survivors, to the podium, back to the survivors of his hometown of Wadovice, so unlike papal audiences where he sits and everyone else comes to him, must have been his own decision. And all in painful, mincing steps, bowed over his cane, deferential to the site, to the survivors, to the memory - and never stepping on the names of the camps, even when it would have been easier. It was that humble sign of respect, of acknowledgement of holiness, that made the greatest impression on me. A holiness not defined by canon, nor by halacha, but by the truest essence of holiness itself, of deference towards something that is greater than the mundane and ephemeral.

His words, of sorrow, of the need for silence (so different from the silence of that predecessor), bore the tone of a deep sincerity, strengthened by the situation, enhanced by his body language. The Head of the Roman Catholic Church, the single most important living figure in Christendom, bowed, sorrowful and deferential at the central Jewish site of memory to the Shoah.

The single figure in the hall whose aura was not totally eclipsed by that of the Pope was Ehud Barak. Attentive to the frailty of his guest, courteous and appreciative, he nevertheless stood ramrod straight. Courteous, but not deferential, he also was careful not to step on the words; he seemed also to be aware of the holiness, and by talking of his murdered grandparents, to be claiming it.

It was a fascinating twist: John Paul II, evoking with his age and aura of power and charisma the ancient lineage of his institution and its ongoing vitality, stooping - nay, rising - to an act of human weakness: to sorrow, to regret, to mourning; Ehud Barak, in the name of the even older Jews, appearing as the young host, gravely accepting the sentiments of his guest.

After the ceremony, Edith Zirer summed up the occasion poignantly. As a 14-year-old survivor at liberation, she had been assisted back towards Cracow by a young Polish clergyman. When he became Pope, she had visited him, to thank him. Now, he was her guest, and, as she told a reporter, "there is also sadness. I don't expect us ever to meet again". A 55-year circle had been closed.

Lots of Wars, Many Standards, Endless Hypocrisy

Warfare is a permanent part of the human story, unfortunately, and while it ebbs and flows in specific places and even continents, it's not about to disappear. A quick glance through the New York Times, which is only plausibly efficient at registering such things, tells today of wars in Iraq (worsening); Afghanistan (worsening); Sri Lanka (horrendous, in this bout, for about two years already); and of course Pakistan, where a mega-horror is developing, with well more than a million refugees so far. You won't find any speculation of the numbers of Pakistani civilians being killed by the Pakistani government in its war on (mostly) Pakistani terrorists, but if you read between the lines, they've got to be large. Neither fighting side is being even remotely scrupulous in its use of force.

As a matter of fact, none of the fighting sides in any of these wars - none - even dream of using their weapons with the care Israel routinely uses; I'd hazard to say none of them, not even the Americans, are even trying to learn as they go how best to be effective while limiting harm to non-combatants. And why should any of them? Beyond a feeble groan here and there, no-one's demanding it of them, and they obviously don't have the need to do so for their own sake.

Anti-Missile Defenses

Lesslie Susser at The Jerusalem Report has a lengthly and rather technical article about the multi-layered systems Israel is buying (from the US) or developing (with the Americans and partially alone) to protect the country from all sorts of malicious projectiles from morter shells to ballistic missiles:

Barak advocates what he calls a "multi-layered" missile defense, with a
combination of complementary systems affording protection against attacks from
just a few kilometers to over 1,000 miles. Ideally, the Phalanx would cover
threats up to around 12 kilometers; the Iron Dome, being developed by Israel
Defense Industries' Rafael and scheduled for operational deployment early next
year, would deal with Qassams and Katyushas fired from between 4 and 40
kilometers; the American-made Patriot Advanced Capabilities or PAC-2 already in
operation, and David's Sling (a.k.a. Magic Wand), being developed jointly by
Rafael and Raytheon and scheduled for deployment in 2012-13, would meet
medium-range threats like the Iranian-made Fadjr 3 and 5, Zelzal 2 or the Syrian
Scud-C from 40 to several hundred kilometers; and the Arrow, which could also
provide cover against the Zelzal or the Scuds, would take it from there for
longer-distance missiles, like the Shihab.

Barak sees the creation of an anti-projectile shield around Israel as a "strategic goal." Not only would it protect civilians and strategic installations, but the knowledge that their missiles might be intercepted could deter potential aggressors from using them.
An effective missile shield could also give Israeli policy-makers added
options: For example, they might feel more confident about withdrawing from the
West Bank if they believed strategic installations like Ben-Gurion Airport were
adequately protected against rocket attack.

Waging war is a complicated matter, including technologically. But it looks like within a few years Israel will be better protected from these sort of nasties than anywhere else in the world.

Because it's more threatened, one might add.

Christians Emigrating

What with the Pope wandering around the Holy Land, the New York Times offers a recap on the story of the Christian Arabs in the Middle East: There are hardly any left. All across the Arab world, Christian Arabs were often more modern, better educated and more affluent than their Muslim neighbors, all of which made it easier to emigrate. Once they began to do so, there were also communities of them outside the Arab world to which it was then easier to immigrate. Also, being Christians, it was often comparatively easy to put down new roots.

It might also be useful to mention that the Muslim world has less and less patience for minorities, even if they're Arabic-speaking, ethnically Arab and have been there for thousands of years, in many cases longer than some Muslims who arrived in various waves starting in the 7th century. So there's a push and pull dynamic.

None of this is new, of course; it's an old and worn story. Still, it's worth repeating, if only because quite often people note the diminishing Christian-Palestinian population and chalk it up as yet another crime of Zionism.

An Important Addition to Man's Creation

Some bloggers use their blogs, I've noticed, to promote their books. Juan Cole is an extreme, almost nauseating example, but cooler heads do so too. Which is fine. I don't do it because where I'm at in life, I either blog or I write books, but not both; it takes too much time from other things. By any measure I can think of I ought to write books, but blogging is lazier, so I do it.

Anyway, just the other day an article of mine was put online. I won't make any money from your buying it because it's there for free, but hey, it's there, so I ought to plug it, no? So, go yee all, and read.

Though there is a twist, I must warn you.

Guardian: No Smear Tactics or Misrepresentations Allowed

Georgina Henry is the editor in chief of Comment is Free (CiF), the part of the Guardian website where articles are posted 24/7 and the readers have their say. No analysis of the state of today's Left nor of the evolvement of contemporary antisemitism can afford to overlook this extremely important trove of data.

Earier this week Ms. Henry announced new rules of behavior, and then wrote a column about them. I especially liked this part:

I hope you'll agree that the talk policy is clearer and more direct. It boils down to what we've always tried to say: help make Cif a welcoming, intelligent place for discussion; take some responsibility for the quality of this community; don't be abusive; don't be offensive; don't be unpleasant; keep on topic.

One new bit is to clarify our approach to comments about us, ie the Guardian and its writers/bloggers – basically, criticism is fine (we're used to it by now), persistent misrepresentation and smear tactics are not.

I do believe the lady is sincere. Not rational, mind you, but sincere.

Fighting With Your Hands Tied Behind Your Back

The Americans and their minor Nato allies are killing civilians in Afghanistan. There's no doubt about that. How many, what the circumstances are, what precautions are being made, these are not subjects one discusses in polite society, apparently. The custom of calling in aircraft - planes, not helicopters - is a bit puzzling to me, but I don't profess to have enough data, given as it isn't being offered.

Don't get me wrong. As a general statement I'm in favor of military action against the enemies of mankind and especially womankind; I'm no pacifist nor do I harbor any doubts about the utterly evil intentions of the enemies currently being fought. But I am befuddled, a wee bit, by the dimensions of the double standards in force here; and also by the ability to wage war without the public thinking intelligently.

And then there is this, in a Guardian article about the events. I don't suggest you take the Guardian article too seriously; it contains too many of the usual unthinking tropes that serve as a shield from thinking. My point is the quotation from the American general:

Last week Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, called for all air strikes in
villages to be stopped, a view privately backed by many in the UN. Yesterday
Barack Obama's national security adviser, Gen James Jones, ruled out such a
change in policy, saying "we can't fight with one hand tied behind our back".

They can't be expected to fight with their hands tied behind their backs, says Obama's man.

Sources

The Pope is in our region for a while, visiting holy sites, praying, and apparently stepping on diverse political landmines. I'm not certain I have much to say about the matter, though if I decide I do, I'll inform you all, rest assured. Us bloggers, we don't keep our opinions to ourselves...

It is however a fine opportunity to poke fun at that most august of all media outlets worldwide, the BBC. They put up an item about the visit, and laid bare the idiocy journalists are willing to engage in.

Analysts say his words are likely to be heavily scrutinised during this week's trip.

Yes, well, analysts are a fine thing, aren't they? We're never told who they are, if they're reputable, knowledable, worthy of our attention, or even if they really exist. In this case, do you really belive the BBC chap took a cab all the way to the dusty book-case lined cubicle of an "analyst", to confer with her about whether people would pay attention to the utterances of some Catholic fellow who keeps on obstructing traffic? And how do you think the analyst (actually, the form used was plural, so there must have been a convacation of them) reached their learned conclusion whereby people would listen to the utterances of the Pope?

Then, there's this:

Pope Benedict, as a child growing up in Nazi Germany, joined the Hitler Youth, as was required of young Germans of the time, but he was not an enthusiastic member.

Now it just so happens there are methods of knowing such things, if young Ratzinger's lack of enthusiasim was pronounced enough at the time to have left a documentary trail and the BBC fellow had the tools to follow it. But that's unlikely on all counts. More likely, the BBC chap is spouting some hearsay he once came across, in which case he is - at best - no more trustworthy than some bloke writing on Twitter. More troubling is the question why he feels it important to foist his unfounded impressions on us in the form of news, unless perhaps he and his editors feel their task is to have us believe the correct version of reality as determined by them.

Characters

I'm back. Living offline has some distinct advantages. You should try it some day.

While I was immersed in the real world, I came up against some colorful characters. Here's a brief description of some easily recognizable "Israeli" types among them.

The Government Minister and His Fawning Voters: At the undisclosed location where I spent the past few days there was a newly appointed government minister. We've got dozens of them, and it's a tiny country, so the likelihood of running into one of them isn't very small; since they're not allowed to go anywhere without their security detachment (and I mean literally, not allowed to walk accross a large room without the goon behind them), and their security detachment is clothed so as to stick out like a sore thumb from a mile, with badly fitting suits, bulges behind their shoulders, and squigly-things protruding from their ears, well, it's hard not to notice the minister even if you're lookng the other way.

This minister, predictably, didn't wish not to be noticed. Actually, it was very important to him that everyone notice him, which is why he positioned himself in the room the way he did, and looked around to make certain everyone was duly impressed by the honor of sharing a room with him. Since I didn't vote for any of the twelve parties that make up our ruling coalition, I wasn't blown away, but lots of the other folks there had; most of them had probably even voted for this guy's particular party, so he was their minister. So they proceded to fawn: but in a very Israeli way. No servility, decorum, or awe. Quite on the contrary. One by one they ambled over to him and held a whispered conversation, leaning towards his ear while he held their shoulder, or vice versa, depending on whose ear. All the while broadcasting to the rest of us mortals that "Me and the minister? We go w-a-a-a-y-y-y back; each time we see each other he always asks my personal opinion about Important Things, and I'm always willing to help him out with my sage advice".

Contrarian that I am, I managed not even to look his way when at one point I had to pass right near him on the way out of the room. But he was too busy whispering into someone's ear to notice my lack of proper manners.

The Real Powerbroker. The day after the government minister and his goons had gotten into his fancy car and sailed off to a government meeting, I was sitting in a public dining room eating breakfast. At the next table sat two scruffy-lookng men. One, probably in his late 60s, was wearing neat jeans and a plaid shirt. The second one, maybe ten years his junior, had a large potbelly, simple dark blue shirt, and could easily have passed for a bus driver (no offense meant). As they discussed snatches of their conversation wafted over, especially when the busdriver's mobile phone rang and he shouted into it for a bit. The old chap, it appears, runs some mildly important public organization. The busdriver, it became clear, is considerably more powerful than that minister: he's an important member of Likud's central committee or however you translate Merkaz HaLikud. Think Mayor Daley the First, back in the 1950s and 1960s: the kind of fellow who can get a young unknown senator elected President against the incumbent Vice President. This fellow made it clear that if he needed, he'd instruct the Prime Minister, and Finance Minster, and Sheldon Edelson to appear at his shindig and spout the party line, or whatever line he needed them to spout. And if you don't know who Sheldon Edelson is, that merely proves how far from real power you are. Security goons are nice things to have; real power is nicer.

The Two Scholars: sitting in a cafe, two men talking earnestly. One, the younger, wearing the black kippa that identifies him as being American, Orthodox on the outside rim of the Haredi world, and well educated. The older one, quite bald, secular, and Sabra. They sat there for at least an hour, talking about the Book of Joshua.

Interruption

I'll be offline for a few days. But you can always read The Guardian if you're bored.

Khaled Meshaal to the New York Times

Khaled Meshaal has given an interview to the NYT.

I'm on the record saying Israel should talk to Hamas, if they can find anything to talk about. Moreover, if Hamas ceases to be Hamas and is willing to make peace with Israel on terms Israel can live with, great. I'm all for it. The positions in this interview don't sound like them, however:

He repeated that he would not recognize Israel, saying to fellow Arab
leaders, “There is only one enemy in the region, and that is Israel.”

But he urged outsiders to ignore the Hamas charter, which calls for the
obliteration of Israel through jihad and cites as fact the infamous anti-Semitic
forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Mr. Meshal did not offer to revoke the
charter, but said it was 20 years old, adding, “We are shaped by our
experiences.” On the two-state solution sought by the Americans, he said:
“We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This
includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return
of the Palestinian refugees.” Asked what “long-term” meant, he said 10
years.

Regular readers will be able to read his codes without my help.

Victimhood

Glenn Greenwald seems not to like Israel much. It's not a major theme for him, at least not in the month or two since I started watching him, but it slips through from time to time. The other day he posted some comments which are useful for the insights they offer into his own Weltanschauung, even while not saying much about Israel or America's Jews. His title was The need of the most powerful to turn themselves into victims, and it was a critique of, in this order, Jeffery Goldberg, AIPAC, Israel, Republicans in general, and AIPAC.

His post purports to be about the dropping of criminal charges against two former AIPAC employees, but it's actually about a much more fundamental subject, which is why it's interesting. First, he sets up his argument by quoting Jeffry Goldberg's post on the matter:

The Justice Department is asking a federal judge to dismiss all charges against Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman in the AIPAC leak case. It's about time. It was an idiotic case to begin with; the men were being prosecuted (under an ancient, seldom-used law) for receiving classified information passed orally -- not even on paper -- from a government stooge, and then passing it on to a reporter and to an official from the Israeli embassy. I'll gather up some reaction later, but suffice it to say that this day was long overdue. Rosen and Weissman did what a thousand reporters in Washington do everyday, hear about information that's technically classified. The only difference is that these two worked for a demonized lobby.

It's a sad day for the Walts and Mearsheimers of the world, who believe that AIPAC is a treasonous organization, and it's a sad day for AIPAC too, because it abandoned the two men to the fates when it should have stood by them. More to come.

The italics are Greenwalds', and straightaway he launches into Goldberg (another one of his pet dislikes):

The idea that AIPAC is a "demonized lobby" that is treated unfairly in the United States generally -- or by the Bush administration specifically, which commenced the prosecutions -- has to be one of the biggest jokes ever to appear in anything having to do with The Atlantic. What other lobbying organization can boast of summoning to its Conference half of the U.S. Congress -- as bipartisan a cast as possible -- along with the Vice President, following the visit last year by Obama, who read faithfully from the organization's script? With rare exception, Congressional action that AIPAC demands -- even on as controversial matter as the Israeli attack on Gaza -- not only passes the Congress, but often with virtual unanimity. Is there anyone who disputes that AIPAC is one of the most influential and powerful lobbying groups in the U.S., if not the most influential and powerful?

It's easy to point out two problems with Greenwald's argumentation. First, the assumption that being powerful contradicts being demonized, which is of course tosh. Logically there is no necessary connection one way or the other; factually, the powerful are often also demonized. Someday Greenwald might wish to learn a European language - German, say, or French, or British - and travel incognito through a land where it's spoken, and experience the extent to which his extremely powerful country is demonized irrespective of who its president is. The second is that being demonized can be objectively measured. I don't have the time patience or motivation, but it would be easy to pick a definition of demonization, and then use it to test if AIPAC is or isn't, if Israel is or isn't. (The former is easy, the latter is a no-brainer). Meryl Yourish sometimes does little research projects like that: be my guest if you wish, Meryl.

Greenwald continues:

Just ponder the depths of irrationality and pathological persecution complex -- the desperate need to self-victimize -- necessary to claim that AIPAC, of all entities, is "demonized" and treated unfairly by the U.S. Government. AIPAC. But that's the self-pitying, self-absorbed syndrome that drives so much of our political discourse (an amazingly high percentage of right-wing political dialogue in particular adheres to this formula: "I am X and X is treated so very unfairly" -- where X is virtually always among the groups wielding the most power: American, white, Christian, Republican, male, etc. etc.). It's the same mentality that leads people to insist that the true victim in the Middle East is the same country that, by far, possesses the greatest military might and uses it most often. It's a bizarre process of inversion where those who are most powerful insist on claiming that they are the weakest, most vulnerable and most oppressed.

Again, two comments. The first is that he seems to have his causes and effects reversed and his chronology backwards. I can't say about his vaguely described Republicans, but the Jews, who eventually invented both Israel and later also AIPAC, did so only after millennia of well documented persecution and demonization, and as a response to them. The real question is why it took them so long, far longer than most nations have existed, to decide that a bulwark against persecution might be to have power. First came the demonization, then the persecution, and only much much later the power to combat them.

The real reason I'm writing this post, however, is to comment on his extremely illuminating formulation "Just ponder the depths of irrationality and pathological persecution complex -- the desperate need to self-victimize". This is one of the more powerful themes of our age: the weak are victimized, victimhood commands the moral high ground, so everyone competes to have it, while pushing aside everyone else in their mad charge for its throne.

The response to which is that victimhood is not a moral category. Morality is a function of the decisions we make, which is why being perpetrators of crimes is evil, and choosing to be inactive bystanders can also be, but being a victim doesn't automatically convey anything. The only way being a victim can carry moral weight is when the victims can choose how to respond - and the ones who choose wrong are... wrong. Not right.

In Greenwald's Weltanschauung, however, choice isn't the issue; one's identity is; the group one belongs to; and the degree of blame that can be apportioned to it. Victims are right by virtue of belonging to the correct group. Moreover, since he sees the world this way, he assumes we all do. Since being victims is so positive, he's convinced we're all striving for the victim's mantle.

We're not. I can't speak for all Israelis nor all AIPACians, but I think most of them would agree with me that Israel is indeed powerful and will remain so, while facing diverse enemies some of whom are obscenely evil because of their decisions. We're not victims, we're at war, and what makes us right isn't our status on some non-existent scale of victimhood, but rather the decisions we make.

In Hebrew we've got a saying that al rosh haganav boer hakova, which can be roughly translated to mean that too much protesting indicates a bad conscience. When Greenwald and his ideological comrades protest loudly about our striving for victimhood, they tell nothing about us, but speak volumes about themselves and their understanding of morality.

Leaving Rajar

Haaretz tells that Netanyahu is preparing a "concession" for the Americans as he prepares for his first meeting with Obama later this month: Israel will evacuate the northern part of the town of Rajar (spelled Ghajar in the article):

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to announce this week that Israel is interested in withdrawing from the northern part of the village of Ghajar on the border with Lebanon.

A senior political source in Jerusalem said on Saturday that Netanyahu wants to respond to the American request on the matter; the move would also be a goodwill gesture to the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora ahead of Lebanese parliamentary elections in early June.

So far, so good. Except there's an unexpected snag:

The withdrawal from the northern part of the village is not expected to take place before the Lebanese elections because of the high number of petitions village residents are expected to file with the High Court of Justice against the pullback.

Huh? Aren't Arabs supposed to be deeply offended and humiliated by cruel Israeli colonial Occupation? Aren't they persecuted, forced to live as second class citizens? Don't they all uniformly yearn to be free of the oppressive Israeli yoke? What kind of poor joke is it to claim some of them might go to the (Israeli) High Court of Justice to force the Israeli government to keep them inside Israel?

Many Palestinians undoubtedly feel this way, though probably not tens of thousands or more of the ones in East Jerusalem. And the townspeople of Rajar are an even stranger story.

Until 1967 Rajar was a village at the meeting point of Syria, Lebanon and Israel, on the Syrian side. Yet even then it was cut off from Syria by the shoulder of Mount Hermon, and its neighbors were the Lebanese villages of Marg Ayoun and its surroundings - and also the Israeli villages just across the line. During the last hours of the Six Day War the town elders sent a delegation to the Israelis calling their attention to the fact that they were notionally part of the Golan, and thus must now be under Israeli rule.

In 1981, when Israel effectively annexed the Golan, it's people were offered full Israeli citizenship. Most of the Druze on the Golan rejected the offer (some accepted); the townspeople of Rajar, however, mostly accepted. Many of them even joined Likud. Between 1982 and 2000 the Lebanese side of the border was also controlled by Israel. Rajar, sitting right on the line, grew northwards because that was topographically the easiest direction to build in. In 2000 when Israel asked the UN to draw the exact line to which it should draw back its forces when unilaterally leaving Lebanon, the UN surveyors drew the line right through the middle of Rajar. (I was there after the removal of Israel's troops from Lebanon, and we crossed the line without ever noticing it; only after we'd left the town and I looked at a map was it clear).

I wrote about this in Right to Exist, and summed it up by telling of the Syrian Likudnik Israelis who live in Lebanon.

I'm not certain what Netanyahu is proposing to do, beyond putting on a show. Israeli troops don't go into the northern part of Rajar since 2000, because it's in Lebanon. So what's the "concession"? That a wall be built through the middle of town, along the Lebanese-Golan border? Turn over the whole town to Lebanon including the Syrian parts of it? And what will happen to the Israeli citizens who live there? Complicated.

Memory of the Jews, in Berlin

Edward Rothstein visited some of the museums and memorials to the Jews one can find in Berlin (he missed the most poignant of all, at the train station in Gruenewald). His thesis, in a nutshell: bigger and bombastic is worse than small simple and focused.

He didn't find a case of big and focused, so that angle isn't tested, but for what he saw he's certainly right. Big and bombastic is bad. Which reminds me I have a review of Yad Vashem's new(ish) museum somewhere on my hard disk; maybe I should dust it off and post it someday.

On Genius

Last month I linked to an article in The Economist about autism and genius. The writer noted in passing that 10,000 hours of practice will give anyone a genius-like edge over the rest of us plodders. David Brooks at the NYT has read the books that Economist writer was alluding to, and reports that they've convinced him; indeed, 10,000 hours of practice will do the trick (along with a couple of other beneficial legs-up).

Coyle and Colvin describe dozens of experiments fleshing out this process. This research takes some of the magic out of great achievement. But it underlines a fact that is often neglected. Public discussion is smitten by genetics and what we’re “hard-wired” to do. And it’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior. As Coyle observes, it’s not who you are, it’s what you do.

Well, I certainly prefer "what you do over what you are" as a general proposition which puts moral responsibility solidly where it belongs - on people - and not where it doesn't. Society, genes, race, nationality and all those "other" places we don't control and thus can't be held to account for. Still, while I like Brook's sentiments, and unlike him I haven't read the books, I find it hard to accept it's only a matter what we choose to do. Some people are smarter than others. Some are way smarter. I know quite a few people who are way smart, and I've noticed they tend to be way beyond the rest of us in all sorts of fields simultaneously, including fields they never practiced in at all. I've also met folks who are hard-working and focused on what they do, but still they aren't intelligent. Live with it.

So my adaption to Brook's comment would be , it's not who you are, it's what you make of who you are.

Michael Oren!

Michael Oren, author of Six Days of War, and Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present, will tomorrow be officially confirmed as Israel's ambassador to the United States. I've known Michael, off and on, since he was a graduate student, and can tell of his engaging communications skills and wide knowledge.

It's not clear what ambassadors are for these days, but the Israeli ambassador in Washington plays an important role in explaining Israel's positions to the American political class, media, and public; I can't think of anyone better qualified to do this than Michael. Besides being an engaging speaker and a compelling writer, he knows more about Israel's history than about 99.9% of people, he knows more about American involvement in the Mideast than about 99.999% of people (he wrote the single most important book on the subject), and as an Arabic-speaking Mideast expert, he knows more about the Arab world than most Westerners (I'd say, easily 99.9% of them).

He was in the early stages of writting yet another an important book, which now will be suspended, alas, but if Netanyahu's government lasts a while and does anything of significance, Michael will have insights from the eye of the storm, so I expect we'll eventually get a fine book about that.

Good Luck Michael!

Quality or PR?

Back when I was a wee lad, quite some years ago, I was staunchly convinced quality beat public relations; I truly expected that if anyone was really good he (or she) would rise to the top based merely on the quality of their abilities. Since in the days of my wee-dom advertising executives enjoyed the status that Wall Street humbugs enjoyed in 2007, you can see that I was a contrarian even then.

Then life taught me otherwise. Quality is a fine thing, surely, but PR is better, and sharp elbows are bestest, especially when used to create fine PR to cover one's pushiness.

I have just finished reading the second book in a row that claims that quality is a necessary condition for success. The first, which I mentioned a while ago, was Guy Kawasaki's The Art of Start. The second is even more troubling, as it focuses entirely on how to get word out to the masses: Emanual Rosen's The Anatomy of Buzz Revisited; Real-life Lessons in Word-of-Mouth Marketing.

I must say this insistence on an idea I gave up on many years ago is disconcerting.