Health Care in Israel

I got a bit of flak for writing about the American health care issue, which must have raised my appetite for more. How else to explain my decision to talk about health care in Israel?

I'm aware - believe me, I'm aware - that Israel is smaller than the US. Why, the whole country has less of a population than the larger American cities, its geographical size is smaller than some of the American metropolises, and I'm not even talking about Houston which is slowly swallowing all of southern Texas. (Which raises the interesting question why Israel so fascinates most of the world, while Houston merely gobbles up the surrounding plain. You'd think we were a superpower). I also recognize that America has three or four separate layers of government while all we've got is one, and even that one is rather inept. So I'm not saying what works in Israel might work in the US. Probably not. This post is merely to be informative, and you needn't jump down my throat.

Israel has a social security system (bituach leumi) which serves as a safety net for various things. If you can't work for a while because of health matters it kicks in. If you're permanently disabled. If you're called up to reserve duty but would like to keep on getting your salary. if you've got children under 18 it pays you a monthly stipend. It even ensures a minimal pension once you've reached 65 0r 67 (women or men) though no one could live off it. And it offers many additional useful things. In return, every adult after military service must pay a tax of a few percent, depending on income, and employers also chip in; if you're a student or unemployed you still have to pay something like $50 a month.

It's nice to have, bituach leumi, it doesn't abolish poverty or anything of the sort, and all Israeli citizens have it. Even the Arabs of East Jerusalem who are somewhere between citizens and permanent residents have it- a word about them later.

About 15 years ago we also got universal heath care, though for many of us the difference from our prior condition was not dramatic. The universal tax for this is similar to the social security one, which means that the middle class pays about 5% for each, totaling 10% beyond income tax. Or more accurately, before income tax, since everyone pays, while some 50% of workers don't pay income tax.

In return for the tax, everyone must be a member of one of three Kupot Holim, which are exactly like HMOs but different. You choose which one you wish to join, and every six months there's a period when people are allowed to switch. The kupot are not allowed to turn you down. There aren't major differences between them by now (there were back when the law was first passed); each has slightly different nuances of service, and some have better infrastructure in different parts of the country. (The one we're in apparently offers fewer doctors outside of Jerusalem, I'm told). You more or less choose your doctors from a list; many doctors are on all lists. Medications are available for a small fee, which means expensive ones are essentially free. Each visit to a specialist (not a GP) is taxed at 18 NIS, or about $5. The types of lab tests and procedures you're likely to need in a normal state of health short of catastrophic ailments are mostly covered; sometimes you need to haggle a bit with the system, but at an acceptable level.

All of this is determined by the government. There's a committee of specialists which determines what the universal coverage is, and updates it annually; the government then has the final say. Some years there's a public outcry because some expensive new medicine isn't yet on the list; in most cases it then will be sooner or later because politicians like happy voters. The universal coverage is called Sal Briut - the basket of health. We're as good as anyone with euphemisms.

The sal briut isn't bad, but it's far from perfect. So each Kupa offers supplementary plans, which cover additional stuff. These plans aren't very expensive, though if you want the full monty and have a largish family it does accumulate. Middle class folks, so far as I can tell, all have the full supplements. Once you do, you really are covered to a reasonable extent, even in case of catastrophes. There can be waiting lines but not anything a Briton wouldn't find an improvement to their NHS. If you activate the supplemental coverage even those can go away, unless you want a specific procedure with a specific surgeon who only works 32 hours a day and can't fit you in right now - but you could go to a different specialist.

I've accompanied a family member through cancer treatment a few years back (she's fine, thank God), and the Kupa did make a mild hassle about this medicine not that one, but it was a hassle for us; the patient got the treatment she needed and there was never any doubt she would. A colleague a few years ago needed a brand new medicine that had just appeared on the market so her family bought it; a year later it was already in sal briut.

People I know who enjoyed top-notch American health care tell me what they had was better than what we have; mostly they seem to be talking about the bureaucracy of being ill. There's no Mayo Clinic in Israel, and indeed some procedures at the very top of the profession can't be had here. (They can't be had in Kansas, either). But not that many. As a general rule, it's probably better to be ill here than even in most of the developed world, and certainly no worse.

Israel-Palestine conflict: can't have a post without that, can we. You did notice that I said all Israeli citizens enjoy sal briut coverage, and I'm not going to add the obvious. It's needless to say. Foreign workers, not being citizens, aren't covered; it's my understanding that if they're here legally their employers are supposed to insure them; if they're here illegally, not. There's an organization named Physicians for Human Rights. On the Israel-Palestine topic they're about as anti-Israel as you can get, but they also deal with health issues of foreign laborers, and you've got to admire them for that.

East Jerusalem's Palestinians. If they claimed Israeli citizenship before the late 1970s, they're Israelis. A large majority of them didn't, so Israel unilaterally foisted permanent residency on them, and gave them bituach leumi and health care. One of the best kept secrets of the Israel-Palestine conflict issue is that each time anyone seriously talks about partitioning Jerusalem, the Arabs of East Jerusalem get a strong case of jitters. A Palestinian state would be a great thing to have, and they agree East Jerusalem must be in it, but relinquishing Israeli social security and health coverage is something no sane person would want to do. Which is one reason some theorists of human-rights-as-a-way-of-sticking-it-to-the-Jews now claim that even once Israel leaves East Jerusalem, it must continue to pay for the locals' health care until the end of their natural life span. I spoof you not.

What the Conflict is Really About

Ethan Bronner has a forgettable article in yesterday's NYT, about how things look good in Israel these days but the Israelis are worried. Or rather, that's what the first four fifths of the article says. Near the end it veers off in the opposite direction when he approvingly cites Aluf Benn in Haaretz last week, who posited that when Israelis feel secure they see no reason to make compromises for peace. (That wasn't my reading of Ben's article, but I see how Bronner could have read it that way).

The opening of Bronners article is useful for my purposes:

Rocket fire from Gaza has markedly declined. The Lebanese border is quiet. Terrorist attacks from the West Bank are rare. The national airport processed a
record number of travelers in the first week of August. The currency is so strong that the central bank has bought billions of dollars to keep the exchange rate down.
Israel is flourishing this summer, and one might imagine its people and leaders to be breathing a sigh of relief after nearly a decade of violence and unease. That, however, is far from the case. On every front, Israel is worried that it is living a false calm that could explode at any moment. Its airwaves and public discourse are filled with menace and concern.

So Israel has managed to beat off its many foes, once again, but it still feels threatened. Perhaps because the foes are still there, nursing their wounds and brooding over their thwarted plans to get rid of us. Which is, in a way, the thesis of the unlikely Hussain Agha-Robert Malley duo, in their NYT op-ed of two days ago, or, as Jeffrey Goldberg describes it, in the latest of "their never-ending series of provocative and thoughtful op-eds".

Agha-Malley, in the unlikely case you've never heard of them, are the fellows who double-handedly saved the day for the Palestinians and their myriad appolgists at the height of their war against school-children and bus riders earlier this decade. At the time Bill Clinton's rueful but public recognition of the fact that it was the Palestinian side that had thwarted peace, was forcing the more sane among Israel's haters to admit weakness in their case. Then, in August 2001, Malley and Agha published a seminal article in the New York Review of Books which claimed that actually, no. Ehud Barak had been mean to Arafat; he hadn't really intended on letting the Palestinians have anything; and while Arafat's negotiating style wasn't pretty, the talks failed because of the Israelis. Any number of well-informed people refuted this narrative, including Malley's boss Bill Clinton, but facts interest Israel's enemies only to the extent they can be used against it; otherwise they're not important.

Jonathan Tobin has more on this here.

Perhaps they're incorrigible contrarians; perhaps they derive special pleasure from poking American Presidents in the eye. Whatever the motivation may be, over the past year the duo's line has been inching towards an acceptance of reality. In this week's op-ed the factual part of their analysis is roughly the same as mine is, believe it or not.

Over the past two decades, the origins of the conflict were swept under the carpet, gradually repressed as the struggle assumed the narrower shape of the post-1967 territorial tug-of-war over the West Bank and Gaza. The two protagonists, each for its own reason, along with the international community, implicitly agreed to deal with the battle’s latest, most palpable expression. Palestinians saw an opportunity to finally exercise authority over a part of their patrimony; Israelis wanted to free themselves from the burdens of occupation; and foreign parties found that it was the easier, tidier thing to do. The hope was that, somehow, addressing the status of the West Bank and Gaza would dispense with the need to address the issues that predated the occupation and could outlast it.

That so many attempts to resolve the conflict have failed is reason to be wary. It is almost as if the parties, whenever they inch toward an artful compromise over the realities of the present, are inexorably drawn back to the ghosts of the past. It is hard today to imagine a resolution that does not entail two states. But two states may not be a true resolution if the roots of this clash are ignored. The ultimate territorial outcome almost certainly will be found within the borders of 1967. To be sustainable, it will need to grapple with matters left over since 1948. The first step will be to recognize that in the hearts and minds of Israelis and Palestinians, the fundamental question is not about the details of an apparently practical solution. It is an existential struggle between two worldviews.
For years, virtually all attention has been focused on the question of a future Palestinian state, its borders and powers. As Israelis make plain by talking about the
imperative of a Jewish state, and as Palestinians highlight when they evoke the
refugees’ rights, the heart of the matter is not necessarily how to define a state of Palestine. It is, as in a sense it always has been, how to define the state of Israel.

This line is aggravating some of Israel's supporters. Even Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the most sofisticated and nuanced of them, is uneasy:

This reads to me like an unfortunate bit of pussy-footing. Events are moving
me into the camp of people who believe there isn't an actual solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, and it seems as if events are moving Agha and Malley
in this direction as well. But if they're arguing that the conflict will only
end when Israel ceases to define itself as a Jewish state, they should say it
outright. It's not an appealing notion -- that there is room in the Middle East
for twenty-three Muslim-majority states, but not room enough for one Jewish
state , but they should state it if they believe it.

Whether Agha-Malley come out and say what they think or not seems to me less important. Why do we need to care about their personal opinions? Jonathan Tobin's point is more important.

Though many will dismiss this piece as extremist fare, Malley has a history of being the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to anti-Israel polemics. Though the authors couch their article in terms that allow them to pose as peace advocates, what Agha and Malley are attempting to do is legitimize the theme that peace depends on the end of the Jewish state even within the 1949 armistice lines.

The lines of discussion are indeed becoming ever more clear, even if the team at the White House doesn't see it. The issue is the right of the Jews to sovereignty in their ancestral homeland. Not the right of the Palestinians; that has already been acepted by any fair minded person. It's the right of the Jews which is being discussed, evaluated, and in many cases rejected. This is what the Jews need firmly to keep in mind.

Ruining the World's Consensus

The Guardian's Comment is Free section hosts the Agha-Malley column published in the New York Times yesterday (post above). (Their URL is called israel-palestine-two-state-solution, which may indicate someone wasn't paying attention).

The comments start off with some very edgy statements from the small pro-Israel team that tries, valiantly and futilely, to combat the poison which infests the comments part of Comment is Free. Their task is so hopeless and frustrating that one can appreciate why they're losing their own ability to think calmly. After their comments, however, the usual irrational animosity kicks in. Irrational and dripping with malice it may be, but not necessarily incoherent. I especially liked this comment:

Justice here - the implementation of instruments of international law and respect for UN institutions (to which Israel owes its 'existential' incarnation and survival) - is not an essentially contested concept relative to any particular world-view, but carries universal precepts grounding global peace and common jurisprudence since the world started putting itself back together in 1945. The frustration of the emergence of a Palestinian state is due almost entirely to the gross delinquency of successive Israel governments and the UN Security Council in honouring the obligations of the UN's founding principles. Defaulting to the failed and destabilising formulae of partition and recidivist nationalism would constitute acknowledgement that a member state has been rewarded for wrecking the post-1945 consensus ... and it is no surprise that Israel takes all the awards in public opinion polls concerning the biggest threat to global peace.

In English: The world healed itself in 1945 by creating a New World Order, based on justice, universal values and international law. Israel's existence contradicts all these. If the World Order doesn't fully work it's because Israel has been wrecking the consensus all this time. That's why Israel is so universally hated. You bet there shouldn't be a two state solution: that would mean the Israelis won.

There's no need to argue with this hallucinatory mishmash. We do need, however, to be aware of it, to understand that many people agree with it, and to accept that it's a worldview that regards itself as drawing on universal morality and a respectful reading of history, tied together in a rational system. It draws on the Enlightenment, in other words - as all of the world's worst monstrosities these past few centuries have.

Knowing What You're Talking About

Barry Rubin analyzes the results of the Fatah conference by taking a close look at each of the 18 members of the new Central Committee. He's not bowled over with optimism.

I don't know if he's right. On the one hand, he kows a lot more about this than I do. On the other hand, I remember watching Mikhail Gorbachow, back in the old days, doing precisely not what any of the experts said he would do, so I'm wary of experts knowing stuff in advance.

But it is refreshing to see what an expert can do. Have a look at his piece, then tell me when was the last time you saw any analysis of anything about the Palestinians that was remotely as well-informed as this? You know what? Tell me if you know of any Western journalist who even knows all the names of these fellows.

Jewish Identity in Politics

Adam Serwer thinks some American Jewish pundits are using identity templates borrowed from the African-American experience. Apparently he's being derogatory. I don't know enough about it to comment one way or the other, but I'd like to draw attention to some peculiarities on the edge of his argument.

The first is his thrice repeated allegation that Netanyahu called David Axelrod and Rahm Emanual "self hating Jews". This is very important to Serwer, and he gets quite worked up about it. Of course he has no source for the statement; nobody does. It's a cannard which fits lots of peoples' idea of how things should be, irrelevant of whether they are or not, and so gets repeated so many times it acquires the immunity of an article of faith.

Netanyahu's office has denied he made the statement (no, I have no link. It was on the radio). Also, contrary to what the media tells you, had he said it it would have been uncharacteristic of him, but as we say in Hebrew, try to prove you don't have a sister.

The second thing that saddened me was this

In the blogosphere, conservative Jews have a term for a group of prominent liberal Jewish bloggers who have been critical of Israel’s behavior in the region: the “Juicebox Mafia.” Two weeks ago, Jamie Kirchick, a blogger for Commentary and The New Republic, wrote that the “Juicebox Mafia crew” was motivated by “a visceral hatred” of its “Jewish heritage,” prompting Matthew Yglesias to assert his love of knishes and Woody Allen.

And so it has come to this. A prominent American Jewish blogger thinks there's a connection between knishes and liking Woody Allen, and being seriously Jewish; even if he was being facetious, Serwer takes him seriously.

Which, if you think about it for a moment, is far more damning than that "self-hating" line.

Things You Can Say With Impunity

A Dutch journalist says the Jews have invented Swine Flu as part of some conspiracy. This particular lie has a pedegree going back at the very least to the 14th century, and you'd think it would have disappeared by now, what with our being in the modern world and all that.

Upon reflection, however, why should it? Respectable and otherwise normal-seeming people routinely cast every action Israel takes as a conspiracy against the Arabs - say, designing the Oslo process as a way to strenthen its control over the Palestinians, or leaving Gaza in 2005 as another way of doing the same, and so on ad nauseum. True, not everyone subscribes to these halucinations, but they can always find platforms in respectable media outlets.

When it comes to Jews, sizable segments of Western society, and almost the entire Muslim world, routinely depart from their senses and jettison their capacity for empiric analysis. So why draw the line before stories such as this one? Scheming to murder Palestinian children, yes, but disseminating Swine Flu no? Why?

Fewer Dead Civilians

In Afghanistan. This is good news. First, because killing civilians is bad. Second, because the world needs the Afghani populace to support the West's effort to beat the Islamists.

It's also a bit strange, the report. Read it carefully and tell me if you can figure out how many civilians ISAF has killed, in, say, 2009. I tried but didn't manage; the number doesn't seem to appear anywhere. Odd. Whenever Israel goes to war the numbers are splashed all over the media in advance, and the longer the fighting goes on, the higher the imaginary numbers get; they then keep on growing after the fighting is over, too.

I was also comforted by some of these sentences:

"When the Taliban are moving in our village, we are scared, but the good thing is there has been no bombing of civilian homes," said Baz Mohammad, a grape farmer from the village of Nilgham in the southern province of Kandahar. "A few months ago there was bombing every day in our district."
"You're starting to see a lot more emphasis now on using the least amount of force necessary to get the result we want," said Capt. Frank Harnett, a spokesman for U.S. Air Force Central Command. "There's an added emphasis about noncombatant casualties. That will drive decisions made out in the field."

Who Started This Time?

One of the perennial problems in following Israel's wars and their lulls, is that an isolated incident isn't obviously isolated until the following days or perhaps even weeks prove it so. Say there's a period of calm, and one side launches an act of violence. Will this shatter the calm and set off a spiral of violence, or will the lull continue after the brief interuption? (And of course there are then all sorts of subsidiary questions, such as what preceded the initial act of violence, were the casualties from the launching side or the defending side, and so on and on: the Israel-Arab conflict is fiendishly complex on this level and it's a rare outsider who can keep track, although they'll never admit it).

Anyway. For the past few months there has been calm on the Israel-Gaza front. The longer this goes on the more plausible Israel's justification for the operation last January: if it suceeded, it must have been proportional. Yet this must be stated a bit gingerly. Someday there will be another round of violence, and only then will we know (if we'll know) if the lull was a Hamas decision not to tangle with those mazhnoon (crazy) Israelis, or perhaps the opposite: a tactic of lulling Israeli civilians back to Sderot and vicinity and out of their shelters, so that Hamas can kill lots of them when it decides the time is right.

These are only some among many considerations. There are lots of other levels.

Having said that, it is worth noting and recording that following a few months of general quiet, and some weeks of complete quiet, the Palestinians yesterday started shooting mortars and one Qassam rocket; that Israel retaliated by bombing one Rafah tunnel; and then... now we wait to see what then. If the shooting escalates again, this wil have been the starting point and the Palestinians started it - so remember that because our critics will spin it otherwise. If there's no escalation, remember that also: the Palestinians started, we responded, and everyone went back to their regular occupations.

Ah, one more thing. The mortars the Palestinians launched yesterday? They were aimed at.... Palestinian civilians on their way into Israel for medical care. You couldn't make this up.

On Sunday, Gaza militants fired mortars at a crossing into Israel just as Palestinian patients were being transferred for treatment, a Palestinian official said. "It's a miracle nobody was hurt," Health Ministry official Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said.

Knowledgeable Israeli Voters

I never cease to wonder at the people who know far less than most Israelis about the issues most important to the lives of the Israelis, who never-the-less pontificate endlessly about how they know better.

This item poses an interesting question: if the Israelis are far more engaged in the political process than the electorate of any other democracy, is it conceivable they may even know more about their own affairs than some of their critics do, say, about theirs?

Another Leftie Against a Settlement Freeze

Regular readers will know the high esteem I have for Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz expert on the Palestinians, in spite of his politics being perhaps somewhat to the left of mine.

Issacharoff has a colleague, Zvi Bar'el, also at Haaretz, whose brief is the rest of the Arab world, perhaps even most of the Muslim world. Bar'el dosn't write much about the Palestinians, that's Issacharoff's job, and Issacharoff doesn't write much about the Arab World, that's Bar'els job. Both work mostly in Arabic, and both know a lot about their field. Bar-el is somewhat to the left of Issacharoff, meaning he's solidly left, but he tries and mostly suceeds to report first and slant things only second. (Just by way of rounding out the picture of the editorial board at Haaretz, Akiva Eldar knows a lot but mostly subordinates his knowledge to his politics, and Gideon Levy can't see any story about anything except through the prisim of his warped politics. So you get all sorts of lefties when you read Haaretz).

Today Bar'el joins his (lefty) colleague Aluf Benn in telling the Americans they've got it all wrong at the moment. Remember, Bar'el couldn't find a good thing to say about the settlements if you threatened him with rotten tomatoes - yet look at this column:

It should be said from the onset: Do not freeze settlement construction, do not stop it in part or periodically, not for six months, not for a single day. As long as the U.S. administration does not present a comprehensive plan that explains its endgame - what the end will look like and what the shape and character of the Palestinian state will look like - the demand for a cessation of construction is pointless. It is a pathetic return to the doctrine of "confidence-building measures," which led nowhere. The demand to freeze settlement construction is like the demand to remove roadblocks or cease razing homes; all these demands and similar ones mean only one thing: making the continuation of the occupation a little more pleasant.

You really ought to read the whole thing. Especially if you work in the White House.

More Lawyers for Israel

An Israeli with dual French-Israeli citizenship is taking the EU to court to have them pay for rocket-proofing his Sderot home.

Is there any chance this will suceed? Offhand, I'd say about 1:1,000,000, perhaps less. Still, there's value in the attempt. Similar to the report on Gaza I wrote about last week, it's high time Israel wrested the legal realm out of the hands of our enemies and took ownership of it. The sure sign of success will be the moment our critics stop using legalese and move to some other field. We'll never get them to shut up, that's obvious. But we do need to chase them off whatever base they're on, and force them to be defensive.

Devastating Political Victory

Discalimer: I think it's crazy that the US - the richest large country in history - doesn't have health insurance for all. I also have not the slightest opinion on how this ought to be achieved, nor why it hasn't, nor which plan is the right one and how the other one is all wrong. I live very far away, am not impacted by the issue, and honestly haven't tried to educate myself about it.

The Guardian, on the other hand: now that's a topic I know something about. I read them every day to stay informed about their profound malaise (which health insurance can't cure). I don't read only what they write about Israel, since their malaise is much broader and I try to see it all.

Tooday they've got an article about how Obama seems to be in trouble selling his plan. Since they like Obama a lot, they need to spin this story. As a result, they've got all sorts of amusing lingual contortions, such as the one in the caption above. The meetings Democratic politicians are holding have been redifined by the Guardian: they're no longer town hall meetings, they're now "town hall" meetings. The worn trope of unidentified "commentators say" is trotted out:

The tactics of Republicans, conservative protest groups and healthcare lobbyist-linked organisations have been decried by many commentators.

And so it goes on. Yet another case where the Guardian drops any attempt to understand what reality is, and prefers to inform us what it ought to be.

Request to Readers

Generally speaking I'm not one to plug this blog. If you come and read, good. If you comment, even better. Since the whole thing is a hobby for me I don't do marketing.

The previous post, however, is - to my unobjective mind - one of the most important I'm likely to post. It presents Israel's report on the operation in Gaza. This report, in my reading, is a game changer, or should be. Yet as far as I can see, almost no one has noticed it, much less read it. So if you read it, or read my summary of it, and agree with the importance, please spread the word as far and wide as you can. Send word to bloggers, your pet journalists, whomever.

The enemies of Israel are well on the way to convince the world we're a serial transgressor of international law. The report shows how unfounded this is; we need to reclaim the position of legality that is so rightfully ours.

The Report is here. In PDF, it's here.

Israel's Incursion to Gaza: The Official Report

Here's the synopsis that opens my reading of Israel's official report on the Gaza operation.


Synopsis: Self anointed human rights organizations, followed by much of the media, have
cast Israel as a serial transgressor against international law. The most recent case of this was
Israel's incursion into Hamas-controlled Gaza in January 2009, which was widely portrayed
as criminal from inception to smallest detail. Defenders of Israel's actions, generally not well
versed in the minutiae of international law, have allowed themselves to be wrong footed,
claiming that facts are wrong, or mooting the unacceptability of international law itself if it
forbids Israel to defend its citizens.

The State of Israel has now published its legal and factual rebuttal. The authors of the report
emphatically embrace international law and insist that its principles guide the IDF as it trains,
plans, executes and investigate; they demonstrate all these actions on the case of the Gaza
incursion.

The report is serious and learned, which means it is open to discussion and disagreement.
Yet such a discussion must be informed and reasoned – precisely as much of the criticism
leveled at Israel isn't.

The full report, at 164 pages, is here. I urge anyone who feels the need to express an
opinion, to read it. My 20-page summary and commentary is a service for the hasty; it's here.

Human Rights Watch Watch

I have now completed a first draft of an article about Israel's report on the Gaza Operation. I hope to put it online today or tomorrow. Part of it - a small but significant part - deals with our own so-called "human rights organizations" (they are actually nothing of the sort in any meaningful way). But I admit I haven't been blogging much about the ongoing disgrace of Human Rights Watch.

Upon reflection, perhaps I don't need to. These guys (here and here) are doing a fine job, and what could I add?

America Doesn't Acknowledge

Somebody shot a missile at a house where a top Pakistan-Taliban leader may have been, and killed one of his wives. If they did all the due diligence and were convinced he was in there, and felt their chances of killing him elsewhere were limited, this was probably a legitimate act of war, and we should regret they didn't get their man, not only that they did kill his wife. Recent history supplies quite a number of demonstrations that killing top terrorists saves lots of innocent lives.

The part of the story where I grimaced cynically hwever, was this:

The U.S. Embassy had no comment Wednesday. Washington generally does not
acknowledge the missile strikes, which are fired from unmanned drones. In the
past, however, American officials have said the missiles have killed several
important al-Qaida operatives.

America, being big and powerful, doesn't see any need even to confirm when it carries out such attacks. Of course, there aren't any other forces in the area with the technical ability to fire missiles from drones, but that's not an argument for transparency.

Israel is packed with self-appointed so called "human rights organizations", and they routinely blame their country even for things it doesn't do. Their American counterparts, however, all the Andrew Sullivan's, Glenn Greenwalds, Juan Coles, Mondoweisses etc, can't be bothered. That is, they can't be bothered when it's their own country. They'll gladly pile on when it's Israel.

Maybe Distance Matters

A couple of days ago I speculated that perhaps distance matters, and well-meaning professionals such as Thomas Friedman and Jeffrey Goldberg really see our reality in different terms than we do. This then prompted an American woman with a Jewish-sounding name to reprimand me for being a far-rght obstructor of everything good that could happen in this region, but I haven't yet decided if she's real. I mean, anyone can invent any identity they wish to on the Internet.

Here's more grist for my thesis. Thomas Friedman, again, versus Avi Issacharoff. Both are fine professionals, much better than most of what passes for journalism these days. Both have been following the Israel-Palestine-Mideast story for decades. Both are well connected. I'm not certain Friedman knows the local languages, as Issacharoff does, but he has lived here. (Goldberg also knows the languages, by the way, but I'm not shooting at him this morning). And both, each in their respective context, are left-of-center in their politics.

Friedman reports from Ramallah. His thesis: the Arab World is in a serious mess, but the (West Bank) Palestinians, of all people, are showing signs of vitality creativity and general adaptibility to modernity that may yet serve as a model to the rest of the region. Sounds great, doesn't it. But then Issacharoff spoils the mood. The next violent explosion, he says, is already in the works. To be fair, he puts quite a bit of the responsibility for this at the feet of Israel, but I'm not going to argue with him here. My point is the disparity between the two journalists.

Richard Beeston of the London Times, by the way, tells that Hezbullah is well advanced in its preparations for the next war, in which it will rain rockets on Tel Aviv. This irrespective of the Palestinian issue, mind you; yet another reminder that we could abjectly give in to every single Palestinian demand and still the war against us would go on. So that's comforting.

The Diameter of the Bomb

I finished reading the report on the Gaza operation today; tomorrow I'll try to write about it. It's a fascinating document; if there was anyone out there who bases their opinion on Israel in facts, it would be a game changer. Since most no-one does that, however, preferring to base their opions on feelings or sentiments, the writing of it was probably mostly a waste.

So instead of blogging today, here's a poem by Yehuda Amichai:

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter oft he bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters
with four dead and eleven wounded
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometer,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won't even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making
a circle with no end and no God

from Yehuda Amichai, Poems of Jerusalem

On Being Subtle (Or Not)

Jeffrey Goldberg is an intelligent and knowledgable fellow. For that matter, so is Thomas Friedman. So when Goldberg starts his week by approvingly linking to a Tom Friedman column which he describes as "important", you follow the link to see what's so inspiring. Or anyway, I did.

Not inspiring. Not even particularly intelligent. Sorry guys.

Friedman would have us Israelis recognize that "the party's over", and that story of the settlements is up, and Obama's historic position is that he's going to enforce that. This is the Obama who, we were assured throughout the campaign, is intelligent, subtle, and comfortable with complex thought processes. Well if so, how come he and his supporters can't get their head around the reality that we're rather good at complexity, too?

A majority of us Israelis would walk away from the settlements in a heartbeat if there was anywhere to walk too. As recently as 2006 we elected Ehud Olmert on a specific platform to disband most of the settlements even without peace with the Palestinians, recognizing how the Palestinians have managed to turn the settlements into their most potent weapon against us. Moreoever, a majority of the settlers themselves would accept leaving some settlements if that would bring peace. (Starting with Avigdor Lieberman).

But not Modi'in Illit, not Beitar, and not, I repeat, NOT Jerusalem. As President Bill Clinton recognized in his diktat of December 24th 2000. As the Palestinian negotiators themselves have recognized, repeatedly (though they may have been fibbing, since said recognition was part of not reaching overall agreement).

Obama's credibility and support in Israel is plumetting because of that distinction. Not becasue he's being mean to our prime minster about Nokdim or Itamar. The more I hear (well, read) important American Jewish pundits such as these two talkng the way they do, the more I'm convinced one part of the present dynamic is the distance between American Jews and Israelis. We're really not seeing the same reality at the moment.

Though, to be fair, as Mark Landler tells us after having talked to George Mitchell, there may be whole parts of the story we don't see right now. That could change things. Perhaps.

Update: Barry Rubin argues against a settlement freeze. He, also, is hardly one to fit the Friedman-Goldberg template of obstinate Israelis.

Cease Fire of 2008

As one of my readers commented not long ago (I think it was Rashkov), the standard anti-Israel narrative about the ramp-up to Israel's invasion of Gaza earlier this year is that the Israelis broke a six month cease-fire with Hamas: the whole justification for the invasion, which was to put an end to rocket fire at Israeli civilians, was bogus.

A second, only slightly more subtle version, tells that the cease fire began in June 2008, and was broken by Israel in October (I think), when Israel suddenly killed six Hamas men; after that the Palestinians resumed fire, a bit, and the cease fire sort of unraveled.

Either way it's Israel's fault, of course.

At the moment I'm plowing through Israel's report on the Gaza Operation (I'm about half way through). It's fascinating, and I'm learning all sorts of useful things. I'm also following some of the footnotes and links. One link lead me to this document, which is full of of statistics about Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilians.

Indeed, for about three months there was a bilateral cease fire. The six dead Hamas men were preparing an assault on IDF forces, and thereafter there were ever more rockets and mortars - hundreds, all in all. So the first story is simply a lie. Then, on December 19th 2008 Hamas announced, officially and openly, that the cease fire was annullled; from then until Israel attacked they indiscriminately shot 66 rockets and 63 mortar shells at Israel.

Apparently that particular anti-Israel story is counter factual.