Smokey Bear at Haaretz

Can anyone explain why www.smokeybear.com has a bar up on the business section of the English side of the Haaretz website? I mean, like, it's admirable to prevent forest fires in, say, Wyoming or California, and the American Forest Service, one of the sponsors of Smokey's website, is an admirable agency, you can't say otherwise, but it does seem a rather far fetched idea, doesn't it?

Doesn't Israel Control Gaza?

According to the front page of Haaretz this morning, Israel is vexed over Egypt letting militants into Gaza. Apparently the Egyptians struck some sort of deal with Hamas in Gaza whereby the Gazans handed over to the Egyptians someone wanted, perhaps an Al-Qaida operator, and in return the Egyptians let some 80 Hamas figures into Gaza. Israel is vexed, but doesn't seem to have many options beyond kvetching. Actually, Haaretz reminds us, Israel hasn't controlled the main entrance to Gaza, from Egypt, since late 2005. (After the Israelis unilaterally left Gaza, they toyed with the idea of continuing to control its border with Egypt, but the Americans disabused them of that notion). Moreover, when in June 2007 Hamas forcibly took over Gaza, the EU observers who had been at the border crossing at Rafah also left, and this meant that Israel lost what little influence it still had. (The EU observers didn't work for Israel, but they did listen to its objections and could choose to act accordingly, or not).

Keep all this in mind next time you're told by whomever that Israel still bears responsibility for everything bad in Gaza, because Israel still controls Gaza.

Israel is Wrong. Period.

Friday's edition of Haaretz had a fascinating reportage by Gideon Levy, in his "Twilight Zone" series, from Nablus. Unfortunately, it's not available in English. (The original Hebrew travesty is here - and maybe, given it's viciousness, it's better for the world that it hasn't been translated).

However, his editors were so pleased with Levy's reportage that they gave him a spot to republish his story, admittedly in an abridged version, on the top of page 1 of the op-ed section - very choice publishing real estate. You can read the English version here.

A recap of the event: Levy is reporting from the so-called refugee camp near Nablus where an entire brigade of IDF infantry, hundreds of fighters, spent almost a week carefully identifying, fighting, and eventually arresting a very active cell of Hamas terrorists who had already smuggled a belt of explosives into Tev Aviv, had already designated the murderer who was to set it off, and were about to dispatch him; the soldiers also found and destroyed a weapons laboratory. All this took place during a battle: Palestinians were shooting at the Israelis, Israelis were shooting at the Palestinian fighters. The neighborhood was hostile to the Israelis. At the end of it all there were three dead Palestinians, and one dead Israeli (Benzion Hanemann, see my post about him here).

There is no other army on the planet capable of such a surgical operation, with such full operational success with such minimal loss of life. No, not the Americans nor the British in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nor is there any other army with such a determination to get its job done without collateral damage. And there never has been such an army in the past either - feel free to correct me in the comments and I'll retract my statement if needed, but I won't have to.

So, what does Levy do with this? He tells us about the physical damage. A building was destroyed. Was it the building with the weapons workshop? We don't know, because he forgets to mention that particular aspect of the operation. He tells about the pain in the faces of two children whose bicycles were destroyed in the battle, without telling us if the father or brother of the children had perhaps put the bicycles in the way of damage, say, by building a weapons lab in the same building, or perhaps shooting from its windows. The IDF didn't go to all the effort, and demolish one sole building in the entire area, just because it had bicycles parked in it. Finally, Levy warns us that by destroying the bicycles we have planted the seed of hate in the minds of two children, and this may one day come to haunt us, as happened also to the children of all the other 11 families whose apartments were in the same building. You see, if the IDF hadn't come by to stop those murderers, it would never have occurred to the children to hate Israel. Never.

I really am sorry Haaretz didn't put up the longer version of the report, which was far more damning, but you get the general picture.

A Report from Gaza

A long report in today's Sunday Times of London. Depressing reading.

I have no doubt that Israel's involvement in Gaza these past 60 years is part of the story, but what is described in the article cannot plausibly be attributed simply to Israel, as some would like. Israel didn't "force" the Hamas thugs to be brutal murderers, nor did Israel invent any of the components of the society systems that Hamas is putting in place in Gaza. On the contrary: the Palestinian ability to do this to themselves must serve as a constant warning to us that what they would do to us if only they could would be far worse. That's not to say we shouldn't be seeking peace - we should. But we need to remember who it is we're seeking peace with, and make sure it's a safe peace.

Barak's Offer at Camp David, Summer 2000

After it was all over, and the Palestinians had responded to Barak's offers at Camp David in summer 2000 by launching the 2nd Intifada with all its violence, the Palestinian's Western apologists invented an elaborate narrative to ensure that the blame be placed squarely at Israel's doorstep. Barak hadn't really made an offer, and if he did it was far stingier than he or Bill Clinton said; any Israeli offer, if made, was intended to perpetuate Israeli domination of the Palestinians; the whole thing was a chimera, never intended to be more than theater. etc. etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Today or yesterday the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, gave an interview to the Washington Post. Near the end, he relates to a question about the negotiations in 2000. The Post asked about Clinton's offer of 98% of the West Bank (this refers to Clinton's attempt to dictate final terms to both sides on December 24th 2000, which were accepted by the Israelis and rejected by the Palestinians). Abbas deflects the question by relating to Barak's offer of July 2000: it wasn't 98%, he says, only 92%.

Perhaps. I wasn't there, and the record is indeed not fully clear. However, if Abbas says Barak offered 92% of the West Bank (and, by the way, 100% of Gaza), then this is the minimum that was offered; the historical truth must lie somewhere between 92%, as stated by Abbas, and 96%, as stated by some Israelis at the time or shortly thereafter.

All territories being offered would have been free of settlers.

So according to the Palestinian president, the 2nd Intifada was launched in response to an unprecedented offer by Israel's prime minister. It would have been legitimate to continue negotiating so as to achieve more - but that was not what happened.

Religious Belief vs. Empiric Evidence

Reminder: this string began with an explanation, here.

Rabbi Yochanan was expounding on the future glory of Jerusalem: the Lord will bring jewels of 30X30 Amah (roughly a foot), and will cut and polish them to 10X20 gems, and place them in the gates of Jerusalem. One of the students scoffed: who has ever heard of jewels of such size? Later, the student was sailing on the sea and saw angels in the heavens polishing 30X30 jewels into 10X20 gems. What are the gems for, he asked, and was told that in the future the Lord would have them set in the gates of Jerusalem. He returned to the Yeshiva he told Rabbi Yochanan what he had seen, and that Rabbi Yochanan had been right. "You empty (useless?) fool [the original uses one devastating word: reika], if you hadn't seen for yourself you wouldn't have believed? You allow yourself to mock the words of the scholars?" Immediately he penetrated him with his eyes and turned him into a pile of bones.
Baba Batra, 75a

Why Is Hamas Blockading Gaza?

As a postscript to the previous post, here's another Issacharoff report: The entity doing the most to ensure that supplies don't get into Gaza is apparently Hamas, whose men are aiming most of their mortars at the border crossings. Interesting, huh? But don't expect ever to read about this in, say, the Guardian. (Nor, I'd hazard a guess, even in the New York Times).

Is Marwan Barghouti the Solution?

We're having another long weekend, with no newspaper every second day, fewer reporters every day, newspaper editors who are filling their editions with commentary because that's easier to generate than reports from the field. This will continue for another ten days or so.

On Wednesday Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, mostly known as Fuad, gave an interview that supplied some excitement. At the moment Fuad is the Minister of Infrastructure, an unnecessary ministry that was created for coalitional reasons about ten years ago and will exist forever more; Fuad's importance, however, is that he's probably the closest ally of Ehud Barak, and Barak, we all know, intends to be our next prime minister (as do a number of other people, but Barak may actually succeed). Like Barak, Fuad is a hawk in the Labor party (and also an ex-general).

Anyway, Fuad's thesis is that Abbas will never be able to supply the goods, and the only chance for achieving peace with the Palestinians is to free Marwan Barghouti from jail and deal with him. Unlike Abbas, so Fuad, Barghouti will be able to win back Gaza from Hamas, and while admittedly he has been convicted on five counts of murder, no Palestinian is as bad as Arafat was, and since we dealt with him we can deal with anyone who's willing to deal with us.

There are two unarticulated assumptions here. The first is that Palestinian democracy will never come up with an elected leadership that will be able to cut a feasible deal with Israel- only a strongman can do that. The second is that Barghouti, born and raised in the West Bank, doesn't care about the Palestinian diaspora to the degree that Abbas does, and he'll be willing to reach an agreement with Israel without insisting on the right of return.

This morning Avi Issacharoff engages Fuad's thesis. I've mentioned Issacharoff in the past as the single most professional journalist at Haaretz - I'd call him world-class except that I don't think there are many journalists elsewhere with his professionalism - certainly not when it comes to knowing about the Palestinians. According to Issacharoff, Bargouti is in jail for good reasons, having been one of the central engineers of the Palestinian violence earlier this decade, and there's no indication that he has changed.

To which I would add that this may be the reason he's so very popular among his public.

Juan Cole and Yaacov Lozowick

So far most of our exchange has happened on Cole's blog. I've now moved it here - or rather, since it's too long for a blogpost: here.

Ahmadinejad and Freedom of Speech - II

While I'm not particularly perturbed by his show at Columbia University (see previous post), I'm sceptical about the point of it all. The underlying assumption of many of the defenders of his being invited to speak at such an august university is that dialogue is important - even, perhaps, crucial to the avoidance of violence. This assumption, however, makes sense only if there is enough common ground between the discussants for them to be able to relate to one another. In reality, this common ground hardly even exists - or more accurately: it often doesn't exist - between people much closer to one another than Ahmmadinejad and his Western audience.

Two days ago I rasied this issue in a post titled "The End of Rational Discourse?". As an example I cited a German Blog with a Hebrew title, Shual. Sure enough, as happens with these things, Mr Shual (no real name given) came by to see who I am... and left a series of comments, mostly in German. If your German isn't very good, you won't be able to understand him, since he writes in a style that is nigh-unintelligible even by German standards, but at the end of it all, his seems to be the mind of a conspiracy theorist. And try as I might, I can see no way to connect my cognitive processses to his, even though we probably agree on most of the basics such as the mechanisms of a free society, an agreement we do not share with President Ahmadinejad nor with many millions of the people who share his cultural and epistemologial world.

Have I mentioned Prof. Juan Cole, of Michgan University? I intend soon to post here an ongoing correspondence between us. Belive me, there seems hardly any way we'll ever be able to discuss our differences away.

But, we are assured, engaging with the Ayatollahs will definately be successful, if only we are nice enough, understanding enough, contrite enough for our crimes, and so on.

Ahmadinejad and Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is a fundamental, basic right in a democracy. It includes the right to be stupid, to say idiotic things, to lie, to wish ill on other people. It is not absolute, however. When it clashes with other basic rights it sometimes must give way.

For a while now there has been a major argument in the US about the invitation extended by Columbia University to the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to speak before the faculty and students of the university. Deborah Lipstadt, for instance, who knows a thing or two about Holocaust denial, has been against the invitation from the start. Denying the Holocaust falls beyond the limits of freedom of speech, and calling for the destruction of Israel from the position of the head of a government, even more so. Juan Cole, writing at Slate, predictably, frames the discussion in other terms. It's not about what you think, because "There is, in fact, remarkably little substance to the debates now raging in the United States about Ahmadinejad." (and anyway, "he allows Iran's 20,000 Jews to have representation in parliament". Wow!). Rather, Cole informs us, the real issue is the the Neocons and their ilk want to go to war with Iran, so they can't allow Iran's president to be heard. Katrina Vanden Heuval has a similar argument at The Nation. The scary (despicable?) things you're hearing from Iran aren't really serious; the real problem is what Cheney and ilk are saying - now that's evil for you (my paraphrasing).

Personally, I haven't had a clear opinion. It seems to me a pragmatic question: is the danger of silencing greater or lesser than the danger of hearing him? Winston Churchill knew how awful the Nazis really were from the very beginning, even when his was a lone voice in the wilderness, because he was listening to them - as were the appeasers all around him. He was listening and believing, they were listening and brushing aside.

Now that Ahmadinejad has been, talked, and moved on, I think, overall, that it was alright. The Coles of this world weren't listening anyway, because, as they say quite openly, they're too busy focusing on the Cheneyites. For Helene Cooper for the New York Times, on the other hand, the most compelling images were that Ahmadinejad insisted there are no homosexuals in Iran and that the Holocaust isn't fact, merely a debating point. If that's ultimately what remains in the public mind, then giving him the benefit of the doubt and allowing him the freedom to spout his rubbish was a good idea - as the framers of democracy thought it would be.

On the Responsibility of Judging

The Gemara is discussing the conditions in which there is an assumption of impurity that will prevent a woman from marrying a cohen (priest). Some young women who had been kidnapped and freed were brought to the great yeshiva of Nehardea, for their case to be clarified before the head of the Yeshiva, Shmuel - one of the greatest of the rabbis. And note that the rabbis function as scholars, and as judges, and as leaders of the community. Shmuel's father sent someone to chaperone the young women, to which Shmuel commented that it would seem a bit late for chaperones. His father responded sharply: If they were your daughters, would you be so careless with their reputations?

The rabbi of our daf yomi class says that in his opinion, this is the single most important statement in the entire Talmud.
Ktubot 23a

The End of Rational Dscourse?

As I wander around the Internet and look into the minds of people who post their thoughts on it in all their glorious diversity, it is often striking to note how incompatible some lines of reasoning are to others. My post about Juan Cole's blog is one small example. He's a professor, I'm a PhD, but there's no fundamental common ground on which we can both agree.

Here's another small example. At the end of four days of extreme effort Israeli forces rolled up a Hamas squad of murderers in Nablus, and following their interrogations of the arrested members they uncovered the intended weapon, a belt of explosives, in Tel Aviv.

In response to which a strange German with a Hebrew-named blog called Shaul (fox) explains that the whole thing is a hoax. Part of his proof for this is the fact that the attempt was supposed to be against a Tel Aviv bus, but on Yom Kippur there are no buses in Tel Aviv.

Yom Kippur, 2007

At 11 am on October 5th 1973 I was sitting in a bus, lazily half-listening to the news on the driver's radio. I don't remember the first items, but the third or fourth mentioned that there was some tension with the Syrians. I even remember precisely where the bus was, and what I was looking at.

The reason I remember is that at ten to two the next afternoon, home for a couple of hours from the synagogue that day of Yom Kippur, when the sirens suddenly went off, I immediately recalled the item on the news and knew that the siren was serious.

Most of the intervening years I've lived elsewhere, but now I'm back in the same part of Jerusalem. This morning, close to 11 o'clock, I walked by the same spot. The gray asphalt of the sidewalk has in the meantime been replaced with reddish bricks. Fidel Castro still clings to life but communism is dead. The bus route has been repeatedly re-numbered, so that what was once number 15, then 6, is now 13.The youngest of my children is a few years older than I was on that morning. On page two of Haaretz an item of secondary importance tells of tension with Syria.

May we have a peaceful year.

A Creative and Original Thinker

Back when I was in elementary school, there were two really good students in our class, and two really really even better ones. Of the first two, one grew up to become a doctor but was killed in a traffic accident, and no-one has ever heard of the second since he went off to do a PhD in mathematics somewhere in the US in the early 1980s. Of the two real stars, one became a hydrologist at the Weizman Institute; since Israel is not blessed with anywhere near as much water as, say, Canada, hydrologists are important people.

The most brilliant kid in the class told me once, when we were about 11, that when he grew up he was going to be a rabbi, but an unusual one. How unusual? Well, for a start, he was going to be a rabbi on a kibbutz, and would wear short pants.

Sure enough, he became a rabbi. Not on a kibbutz, and I doubt he wears short pants in public. But yes, he's unusual.

For quite some years already he has been the head of a yeshiva, which is admittedly a sign of unusual seriousness but is after all what important rabbis kind of expect to do. In recent years I've been hearing rumours about him, but I haven't spoken to him for well over 20 years - no falling out, simply separate tracks of life. A few evenings ago he was to participate in the launch of his new book in a synagogue near us, so I cleared the evening and went to see for myself.

It was a very strange evening. Most of the audience were either his students or his graduates; there were a smattering of the intellectually curious. It was immediately obvious that his people have their own vocabulary, and that they indeed are not your usual run-of-the-mill yeshiva students (whatever those would look like). There was a lot of talk about mysticism, for example, but also about post-modernism, Hegel and Descartes got mentioned, and lots of talk about God and his presence in the world - which, you'll have to take my word on this one - is far from obvious with yeshiva students, strange as it may seem. (Or not: go read my Daf Yomi thread to get an idea). One of the speakers was a prominent professor of Jewish philosophy; he had read the new book and could talk about it. One of the other speakers was a well-known local rabbi: he had read the book but admited that he didn't understand what it was about. A third speaker was a rabbi I'd never heard of; if anyone understood what he was talking about, they didn't let on.

Finally, the Rav Re'em Hacohen himself got up to speak.

He was electrifying. Charismatic, compelling - and indeed, just as he promised me all those years ago, unusual. I think what he's doing contains some of the following componants. One, he doesn't buy into any of the shallow slogans common in many orthodox and ultraorthodox circles these days who insist on a rigid reading of the traditional texts - what would perhaps be called fundamental if they were American Protestants (Or not: what do I know about them?). He was decisive and outspoken in his rejection of that. He wasn't using post-modern terminology nor embracing it, but I could see why other speakers had brought it up. He's willing to take things from them.

The professor had made the distinction between the strand of religious thought that focuses on the infinite distance between man and God, and a second strand that focuses on the intimacy - he thought that Hacohen was trying to fuse the two. Re'em Hacohen himself spoke more about his life-long attempt to see God's "Shefa" (wealth? hardly) in the world, and told that his teaching is an attempt to show it, but that his teaching keeps changing because the Shefa is so great and unencompassible. Judaism contains three levels of learning the biblical texts - pshat, drash and sod (very roughly: what's in the literal text, what's the meaning of it, and what's hidden in it). Hacohen was moving effortlessly between all three.

Did I understand what he was talking about? Nope. But I came away with the conviction that he is charting his new waters in a creative and original way.

Although you'll never guess this from reading Haaretz, these are times of great vitality and growth in the Jewish world - very unusually so.

The Last Words of a Patriotic Goofy Warrior

Y-net has posted a short film made by a military film-maker who was with the unit of paratroopers that spent most of the week near Nablus hunting a Hamas squad that was trying to send a suicide murderer into Israel. In three or four days of skirmishes at least three Palestinians were killed, and one Israeli; if I understand correctly, earlier today the Hamas squad was caught.

The film was made at night inside the confines of some sort of troop carrier. The camera focuses for a moment on Benzion Hanemann, who grins into the lens and says: I'm Benzion Hanemann, I'm from Nov on the Golan heights, I've got 9 siblings of all sorts of ages, we've got a great country, a great army, good luck to everybody." Then an officer says something about how they're going into battle, they have a job to do, and if they don't do it no-one else will. Good luck. They then sing the national anthem, Hatikva, followed by some sort of teenager ditty about someone's aunt who raises chickens. And then they clamber off the vehicle, and an hour or so later Benzion was dead and his friends had killed the Palestinian who had shot him.

It's a shooting war, and the men fighting it believe in what they're doing and go into battle with big grins and goofy songs.

Two Albums from Auschwitz

The New York Times yesterday told of a photo album put together by Karl Hoecker, adjutant to the commander of Auschwitz, depicting scenes from the camp, but mostly, pleasant scenes from the daily life of the SS staff. From there you should go to the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where the newly discovered album is, and they've put up a very fine online exhibition. Take your time, because this is an incredible document. And then go to the website of Yad Vashem, which owns the only known other album from Auschwitz, and compare the two. The YV album depicts Jews arriving at the camp to be murdered.

Each of these two albums on its own is important, the juxtaposition is blood curdling.

Juan Cole is Unintelligible - II

Just tried to post a comment at Cole's blog, relating to his statement about Gaza, but it turns out he doesn't allow unvetted comments. You can submit, but he decides if it gets posted. So just in case he decides not to post it, I'm putting it here. Ruminations, alas, has far fewer readers than he does, but at least it'll be up and Google will find it. Here it is:

"Gaza is the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo."

I have been thinking about this statement for the past 24 hours, and still cannot make head or tail of it. What could it possibly mean? What were the criteria used to produce it? What set of hypothetical facts might refute it? (Using Karl Popper's method of verifying historical theses).

The best I can do is to suppose that it's a statement of an article of faith, a derivative of a set of religious beliefs whereby colonialism is the fundamental organizing principle in human relations, or at least in the relations between nations, and that the status of each group in the hierarchy of colonialism somehow confers a moral position irrespective of one's actions (shades of Calvinism, perhaps, with Grace but without God?)

If it's not that, I can't imagine what it might be. One way or the other, it certainly isn't an expression of any type of empiric thought that I've ever seen.

Update 25 hours later: Cole didn't have the guts to post my comment. I report, you decide

Juan Cole is Unintelligible

Prof. Juan Cole of Michigan U is a well-know commentator of many matters including the Mid East. Unlike many pundits, he speaks fluent Arabic. His blog, Informed Comment, is well known, oft cited, and has been awarded various prizes. Yesterday he posted the following sentence: Gaza is the worst outcome of Western colonialism anywhere in the world outside the Belgian Congo.

I truly and honestly don't know what this sentence might possibly mean. If anyone wants to educate me, I'm here.

How Should We Praise A Bride?

For the beginning of this thread and its explanations, see here.
Ketubot tractate, page 17a:
The rabbis asked: What praise do we sing of a bride? The school of Shamai say: praise her as she is. The school of Hillel say: Beautiful and coy. The school of Shamai asked the school of Hillel: What if she's a cripple, or blind, how can you say she's beautiful and coy? After all, the Torah has told us "Keep your distance from lies"? (Exodus 23 verse 7). The school of Hillel responded to the school of Shamai: by your method, when someone makes a poor purchase, should we praise their choice or mock it? We should praise it (implied: tell a white lie). Therefore the rabbis said: one should always strive to be engaged with all people. And Rashi adds: to encourage each person.

(My rather clumsy translation)