Uninformed Comment

Long-term readers will remember that for a while I followed Prof. Juan Cole's popular Informed Comment blog, until I got tired of his silliness and stopped. (I even had a label in his honor, see below this post).

Though I no longer record his antics here, I still stop by his blog from time to time to see what his audience likes to hear. Yesterday he had a post that contained this fine nugget of non-truth:

Israel's war last winter on little Gaza achieved virtually none of its real (as opposed to its announced) aims. There had not been any rocket fire from Hamas against Israel during the period of cease-fire in 2008. Israel violated the cease-fire and even thereafter, no Israelis were killed in the lead-up to the invasion.

Unless perhaps there's another Gaza somewhere, from which prior to the war there was no fire at another Israel? And perhaps in that alternative universe, Hamas now does shoot at Israel in spite of the thrashing it received? That might explain it, because nothing else can.

Iron Dome is On Its Way

The anti-Katyusha (and kassam) system being developed in Israel is approaching completion. Not there yet, but advancing well.

Hopefully it will be in place before anyone attacks Iran's nuclear instalations, if that happens, because there's no doubt such an attack will provoke Hezbullah and and Hamas to fire whatever they have.

Free Speech

A month late, I've stumbled across a New York Times article about how different democracies deal with limitations on free speech. Apparently, only the United States really fully means it, protecting people's right to lie, offend, and be systematically nasty; Canada, at the other end of the spectrum, doesn't even allow merely insulting talk; the Canadians apparently feel one of the responsibilites of the State is to preserve harmony. Germany, Israel and others have specific limitations based on their particular historical pasts (you can't say Nazi things in Germany, you can't sell Nazi stuff in Israel).

Personally I lean in the direction of the American method. Speech that directly incites to violence is forbidden, but nothing else. Any other system will require the authorities to decide what's "nice" and what's "not nice"; that must by definition be a subjective evaluation, very much determined by the identity of the observer.

Or, to be more specific to my world: hatred of the Jews is embedded so deeply in much of Western culture, that many shades of antisemitism are totally unrecognizable by the antisemites, who sincerely believe they're merely saying things as they are. These sentiments are profoundly potent, and yet they're never detected by "guardians of free speech". Better to let the market of ideas combat the perniciousness than have some thought police do it; the thought police, after all, would soon be understood by the antisemites simply to be tools of the Jews.

Human Rights Watch Hopes No-one Is Watching

David Berenstein, a law professor at George Mason University, writes in the Wall Street Journal that an official of Human Rights Watch used the organization's anti-Israeli positions as a fund-raising pitch in Saudi Arabia.

Finally, some would defend HRW by pointing it that it has criticized Saudi Arabia's human rights record rather severely in the past. The point of my post, though, is not that HRW is pro-Saudi, but that it is maniacally anti-Israel. The most recent manifestation is that its officers see nothing unseemly about raising funds among the elite of one of the most totalitarian nations on earth, with a pitch about how the money is needed to fight "pro-Israel forces," without the felt need to discuss any of the Saudis' manifold human rights violations, and without apparent concern that becoming dependent on funds emanating from a brutal dictatorship leaves you vulnerable to that brutal dictatorship later cutting off the flow of funds, if you don't "behave."

Jeffrey Goldberg found the allegation hard to believe, since if it was true it would severely compromise HRW. So he did what fine journalists used to do but don't always anymore: he asked Kenneth Roth, the boss of HRW. And then asked again. And again. Quite persistently, and not allowing Roth to weasel out of the issue. He presents most of the correspondence, and eventually admits that, yes, HRW is essentially guilty as accused.

Read the whole thing, as Glenn Reynolds often says.

September 13th

September 13 1993 was the day on which the first Oslo Agreement was signed, on the lawn of the White House, amid great hopes for a better future that were eventualy to lead to great suffering and widespread death of innocents. How symbolic, then, that it was a September 13th, this time 2008, on which Israel's Prime Minster offered the Palestinian President more than he was mandated to offer; and the Palestinian turned him down.

I've written about this before, as the story has been coming to light over the past few weeks. Aluf Benn, however, has the most detailled description I've seen so far, and it should be widely read.

Political debate aside, the essential lesson from Olmert's proposal is that the parties' stances have hardly changed since the failures of Camp David and Taba. Nine years of war, diplomatic standstill and thousands killed on both sides have not softened them. The Palestinians have not given in and Israel has not broken. Apparently a compromise can be reached on borders, but Israel does not want Palestinians to return to its territory and the Palestinians want the Temple Mount. Neither side is prepared to give up its national symbols and tell its people that the pledges of the past - "we will return to our villages in Palestine" and "united Jerusalem in Israel's hands forever" - were just illusions.

Benn is not being accurate. Israel - or rather, Olmert, speaking within his legal brief but well beyond any public one - did change Israel's position. He was willing to relinquish Israeli control over any part of the Old City in Jerusalem, a position taken by no one previously. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are still exactly where they were when they rejected having a sovereign state in the summer of 2000: There has to be a Right of Return (=no Jewish Israel), and they must be in full control of the Haram al-Sharif because it isn't the Temple Mount (=no Jewish historical legitimacy, and rejection of the fundamental tenet of Zionism).

Clarity.

The CIA Kills People (or not, actually)

There seems to be a new issue for folks to get worked up about: the CIA wilingness to discuss assassinations of Al-Qaeida leaders after 9/11.

I admit to being a bloodthirsty barbarian. Having said that, it seems to me the whole discussion is an exercise in hypocrisy. As even the summary in the NYT correctly notes, such assassinations aren't necessarily so horrible:

Current and former officials said that the program was designed as a more “surgical” solution to eliminating terrorists than missile strikes with armed Predator drones, which cannot be used in cities and have occasionally resulted in dozens of civilian casualties.

I liked that euphemism: drone attacks have "occasionally" resulted in "dozens of civilian casualties". As regular readers will know, the numbers are more likely to be thousands, and not so occasionally, either. Still, the reality of war is far removed from most people's world, while theorizing about it can be done by anyone with a propensity to chatter:

But any targeted killings make many international law specialists uneasy. Hina Shamsi, an adviser to the Project on Extrajudicial Executions at New York University, said that any calculation about inserting a kill team would have to consider: the violation of the sovereignty of the country where the killing occurred; the different legal status of the C.I.A. compared with the uniformed military; and whether the killing would be covered by the law of war.
“The issue is a complex one under international law, and it encompasses all
of the contentious issues of the years since 2001,” Ms. Shamsi said.

International law. The ultimate arbiter of human relations.

Pushing back

Has anyone noticed this new formulation? No one argues anymore, or disagrees, or begs to differ. The term used to describe these age-old activites is now "to push back". I don't know when the term first appeared; I've been noticing it for a few months at the most. As long as it was one possible formulation among many, so be it. Recently, however, I get the feeling it's becoming the only permissable formulation. How lazy.

Obama's Still Got it Wrong

This item from a New York Times blog, about a meeting Obama recently had with a bunch of prominent American Jewish figures, is a pretty clear indication he's not making his Jewish supporters happy. For a man touted for his high intelligence and sophisitication, he's managing this pretty strangely. How complicated is it to accept that even if peace in the Middle East were to be possible (it probably isn't), it won't be achieved unless the Arabs make some fundamental changes to their positions?

I found this part of the story especially interesting:

Participants said some of the toughest questioning of Mr. Obama came from Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Two said that Mr. Hoenlein told the president that diplomatic progress in the Middle East has traditionally occurred when there is “no light” between the positions of the United States and Israel. But Mr. Obama pushed back, citing the administration of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
“He said, ‘I disagree,’ ‘’ said Marla Gilson, director of the Washington action office of Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization. “He said, ‘For eight years, there was no light between the United States and Israel, and nothing got accomplished.’

Nothing got accomplished? Let's see. The Palestinians launched the worst wave of suicide murders anyone had ever seen (the various factions in Iraq later outdid them). Israel figured out how to beat them, in spite of the 100% of contemporary observers worldwide who said this couldn't be done and Israel must cave in. Later on, Israel unilaterally left Gaza, disbanding all its settlements on the way out. The Palestinians responded by democratically electing Hamas to govern them, and cheered as Hamas and it allies (including some Fatah elements) escalated the rocket attacks on Israel.

Seems to me there was quite a bit going on, much of it very instructive. It's unfortunate none of the President's interlocutors thought to point this out to him; the deeper problem, however, is that he doesn't seem to be aware of it on his own.

Obama's Got it Wrong

While I was prancing around the US last week, not reading any of my usual time-sinks, life went on. So today I saw this item by Barry Rubin which called my attention to this article from last week by Aluf Benn.

I suppose you might perhaps classify Rubin as right-of-center; not Benn, writing in Haaretz. No way. Which is why his analysis of all the things wrong with Obama's current "settlements must stop" policy is so interesting and compelling. Benn is not merely describing. He's describing and agreeing.

The administration's pathetic attempt to deny the existence of understandings with Israel on construction in the settlements only bolstered this impression. It was possible to blame Israel for violating its promises, or to say that the policy had changed and to explain why, but not to lie.

I'm of the camp willing to cut the Obama administration some slack on their diplomacy of winning hearts by respectful gestures. I doubt it will work, and I hope that once it doesn't they'll recognize the significance of the failure, but I don't see the harm in trying. Learning through experience is the best way there is. At the end of the day, however, the purpose of the new diplomacy is to have results. By alienating the large segment of Israeli society who are his natural allies, Obama is needlessly reducing the chances of his own success.

The purely anecdotal evidence I came across in the States last week was that it's not only Israel's Left he's alienating. A number of American Jews who voted for him told me they're uncomfortable with what he's doing. Or, as one of them said, "I wonder if Rahm Emanuel has different positions than I thought he had". Regarding America, this is purely anecdotal, at this stage. Regarding Israel, perhaps not.

The Economist on the Economy

Yishai, a reader who's ahead of me in the reading of this week's edition of the economist, writes in to say

I think the economist heard you kvetching

Yup. That's the power us bloggers wield over the MSM.

On the Determination to Succeed

The top Economist correspondent to America,who writes a weekly column about the country, has gone back home. His (or her? You can never know with the Economist) final column is here. The thesis: America is somtime admirable, othertimes not. Yet it has a genius for climbing out of the bad spots and creating great things.

But there is fortunately a more solid reason for optimism. That is the country’s
taste for entrepreneurial capitalism, a taste that arrived with the first
settlers and is becoming an ever greater resource, as the global economy is
shaken by wave upon wave of disruptive technologies. America still has a genius
for incubating entrepreneurs and giving those entrepreneurs the wherewithal to
turn bright ideas into global behemoths. America’s biggest company, Wal-Mart,
was founded only in 1962; its sexiest, Google, was conceived in a Californian
dorm room at about the time that your columnist arrived on these shores. Even as
de Tocqueville despaired about the future of his half-adopted country in the
1840s and 1850s, the likes of Carnegie and Rockefeller were about to unleash the
greatest productivity miracle the world has seen. That is the America that still
promises much.

I've been wandering around the US for an intensive week now; tomorrow I'll make my way home,though given the distance this will take a bit. America is a rather glum place these days - though, if my anecdotal impressions have any value, it's not a terminal glumness. The people I talked to were all pessimistic in the short term but I didn't see anyone desist from making plans for the mid- and long-term. If you wish to see a society which has lost its fundamental vitality, go to Germany, or Austria, and probably many other places in Western Europe (not Poland).

This profound determination to work things through and come out intact on the other side seems to me a source of America's firm support for Israel: both sides recognize cultural commonalities, and these create affinities.

Don't Tell, So We Won't Be Bothered

Look at this report, from the BBC. It's about how the Pakistanis have perhaps won this round in their war against the Taliban; then again, perhaps they haven't.

See if you can spot what the reports isn't telling us.

That's right. Not a word, not a single word, about the possibility that any civilians were harmed. True, two million of them (2,000,000) fled their homes and are still refusing to go back, preferring to live in tents than to brave living in their homes and towns; but this has nothing to do with any civilian casualties their own army might have caused. Not at all.

And in this case, the BBC is at least mentioning there was an event, even while willfully lying about its essence.The rest of your media isn't even noticing the event. After all, a foreign people in a faraway land, who can be bothered.

Murkier and Murkier

The case of the alleged AIPAC spies that eventually collapsed a few months ago was always murky and strange. Haaretz has now interviewed Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst who was convicted of leaking classified documents to the AIPAC staffers Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman; the story just keeps getting wierder. Franklin, a Catholic, was set up to trip the AIPAC men by feeding them a false document telling about an imminent threat to Israeli agents in Iraq; the way he tells it, this was the culmination of years of investigation which can only be decribed as antisemitic.

The case, as long as it was active, was used by many in the Walt-Mearshiemer section of the American public (and blogosphere), as an indication of the pernicity of the Israel Lobby and the danger it poses to America. If they were intellectually honest, those people, they might now want to engage in a spot of investigation in the opposite direction, and ask themselves if it's possible that antisemitism can still be a motivating force for an American federal agency - a very serios allegation, I would think.

Can't Find it on the Map

The admirable folks at Just Journalism have put up a spot of research comparing British media's covering of Israel's attack in Gaza and the Sri Lanken victory over the Tamil terrorists. Unsurprisingly, with the exception of the London Times, the British outlets surveyed all told their readers how horrendous the Israelis are to a far greater extent than they did about the Sri Lankens. And the sun kept on rising in the East, for that matter.

When I read the report, I had different comments.
1. the NGOs on the ground in Sri Lanka actually did their best to report. So the media had the information and made a purposeful decision not to do much with it.
2. The comparison between Israel and Sri Lanka is only of limited use. And, as everyone knows, the numbers of civilians killed in Sri Lanka was dramatically higher than the Palestinian casualties, partially because the Sri Lanken army never even pretended it was trying not to hit civilians. (Sri Lanken civilians, by the way). (What do you mean, "not everyone knows"?)
3. While I really have no argument with the Just Journalism gang, it is worth noticing the set they chose for comaprision. What about, say, civilians being killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Darfur, South Sudan, refugees being towed out to sea by the Thai navy and dumped there, and other such atrocities which somehow generated less attention than the Sri Lanken case?

The Palestinians: Never Miss an Opportunity to Miss an Opportunity

Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel: Pressure from America on Israel? Well, perhaps, but not relevant. The Palestinians refuse to talk... to each other.

Israel: Economic Refuge?

Blogging from an airport, quickly:

The numbers in this item are rather small, but apparently there's a rise in the number of Jews immigrating to Israel this year. Countries of origin: France, UK, and the US. Reason for the uptick: economic. It's better in Israel.

The Messiah is almost here.

Traveling

I'm doing a spot of globetrotting, and will be offline more than usual. Blogging may be sporadic for the next 10 days or so. But anyway, it's summer. Why read depressing politcal blogs at all?

A First for an American President

Obama's policy is failing in Israel. He's strengthening the resolve of the wrong part of the nation.

I can't prove this, of course, and anyway, it's far too early days. But there is mounting anecdotal evidence, and now here's an inconclusive poll, to say that Obama's decision to single out Israel for high-profile public pressure in the Mideast is achieving the opposite goal. Israel's political center is hardening its positions.

The survey by Dialog, conducted Thursday under the auspices of Prof. Camil Fuchs of Tel Aviv University, found Netanyahu's approval ratings were 18 percent higher than Tzipi Livni's - a much larger margin than when they were competing for prime minister. Asked who was better suited to be prime minister, 52 percent said Netanyahu, while only 34 said Livni.
Netanyahu's approval ratings may have jumped 5 points since the last Dialog survey, on June 15. In the most recent survey, 49 percent of the 500 respondents said they were satisfied with Netanyahu's performance. The survey results have a margin of error of 4.5 percent. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman jumped 9 points since a May 14 survey, with a 40-percent satisfaction rate. Defense Minister Ehud Barak improved by only one point. Forty-six percent of respondents said Israel should continue construction in the West Bank even if this causes a confrontation with the U.S., and 44 percent said the opposite.

These are not decisive figures, but seen in historical perspective, they're rather startling. So far as I know, no Israeli prime minister, not even Ben Gurion in 1956, has ever faced down an American president with an explicit demand; because no Israeli electorate would tolerate such a thing. Moreover, the issue this time is one on which a majority of Israelis would usually agree with the American president's position anyway. There is no large political camp in Israel in favor of the settlement project anymore.

But there is a very large political camp which is exceedingly well versed in the issues including the minutiae. Non-Israelis who don't know us well cannot conceive the degree to which politics fascinate Israelis. I've never seen any Western electorate to remotely resemble us in this - probably because there's no other place where the issues are so immediately existential. Since we know the score, we can see the extent to which Obama's positions are detrimental to us. Pretending the Bush-Sharon agreements of 2004 didn't happen is dishonest but also cautionary. Insisting Upper Modiin is the same as Kiryat Arba, and perhaps also East Jerusalem, is not intelligent by any measure. Making believe pressure on Israel alone will bring peace is beyond childish.

Porkers

It's been a busy week, and it isn't over yet. Along with everything else going on, we've had an encounter with Swine Flu (everyone's fine now).

The reason I mention this is to tell that I was very impressed by the way the authorities are organized. Everyone involved knew exactly what was supposed to happen and by whom, and what wasn't supposed to happen. The procedures were clear and concise, there were leaflets with explanations, there was a no-nonsense approach with a seriousness about directives which is almost anti-Israeli. Can you imagine a situation where Israelis all do what they're told? Where they even accept who gets to do the telling? Where the tellers have their message honed?

Apparently if everyone knows what they're doing, it's simply a nasty flu, not a threat to humanity. So we seem to have decided to make it be that way.

Israel is the Only Conceivable Culprit

I'm way too busy to blog these days, as you may have noticed. This week, however, a gaggle of Israeli far left organizations published a document about the Gaza operation. It's not online yet, but it probably will be. In spite of being too busy for such nonsense I did take half an hour to race over it. Next week I've got some long boring plane trips ahead of me, so perhaps I'll decide to be systematic in my reading and then write about it.

In the meantime, the same coalition of organizations has put up a short video on how evil Israel is to the Gazans. You can see it here.

Things in Gaza really are bad. Don't you really wish the Palestinians would decide to be greedy and egoistic, like the folks in America, and put their personal gain and material goals ahead of their hatreds and grievances? If they did, Gaza might soon be on its way to being a fine place; why, many of the grievances might even simply disappear.

What a thought, huh?