EclectEcon

Is the US Abandoning Israel?

The US has certainly been drifting toward a less supportive position, for sure. Carolyn Glick pulls no punches here.

After going through the tired motions of pledging support for Israel, "when it matters," [US ambassador to the UN] Power refused to rule out the possibility that the US would support anti-Israel resolutions in the UN Security Council to limit Israeli sovereignty and control to the lands within the 1949 armistice lines — lines that are indefensible.

Such a move will be taken, she indicated, in order to midwife the establishment of a terrorist-supporting Palestinian state whose supposedly moderate leadership does not recognize Israel's right to exist, calls daily for its destruction, and uses the UN to delegitimize the Jewish state.

In other words, the Obama administration intends to pin Israel into indefensible borders while establishing a state committed to its destruction.

A key to understanding this position is that the pre-1967 borders are, if not indefensible, certainly very difficult to maintain. Another key is that some Zionists favour continued expansion into the West Bank. But to demand that Israel give up its buffer zone is tantamount to asking it to commit suicide or, at the very least, to suffer continued huge losses trying to defend itself within those pre-1967 borders.

 

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Victor Davis Hanson on Munich and Iran

Victor Davis Hanson on Munich and Iran

I'm not always keen on things published in Townhall, but this piece by Victor Davis Hanson merits consideration. He warns that the intense desire by Obama and Kerry to get a nuclear agreement with Iran, any agreement at all, is dangerously similar to the agreement struck in Munich with Hitler by Neville Chamberlain and the West.

Most Westerners accept that the Iranian government funds terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas. It has all but taken over Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. Yet the idea of stronger sanctions, blockades or even force to stop Iranian efforts to get a bomb are considered scarier than Iran getting a bomb that it just possibly might not threaten to use.

The U.S. and its NATO partners are far stronger than Iran in every imaginable measure of military and economic strength. The Iranian economy is struggling, its government is corrupt, and its conventional military is obsolete. Iran's only chance of gaining strength is to show both its own population and the world at large that stronger Western powers backed down in fear of its threats and recklessness. ...

By reaching an agreement with Iran, John Kerry and Barack Obama hope to salvage some sort of legacy -- in the vain fashion of Chamberlain -- out of a heretofore failed foreign policy.

There are more Munich parallels. The Iranian agreement will force rich Sunni nations to get their own bombs to ensure a nuclear Middle East standoff. A deal with Iran shows callous disagreed for our close ally Israel, which is serially threatened by Iran's mullahs. The United States is distant from Iran. But our allies in the Middle East and Europe are within its missile range. ...

Finally, the Iranians, like Hitler, have only contempt for the administration that has treated them so fawningly. During the negotiations in Switzerland, the Iranians blew up a mock U.S. aircraft carrier. Their supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, did his usual "death to America" shtick before adoring crowds.

I hope Hanson is wrong; I fear he is not.

Sweden's Foreign Minister Condemns Saudi Record on Human Rights

From the Spectator:

A few weeks ago Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister, denounced the subjugation of women in Saudi Arabia. As the theocratic kingdom prevents women from travelling, conducting official business or marrying without the permission of male guardians, and as girls can be forced into child marriages where they are effectively raped by old men, she was telling no more than the truth. Wallström went on to condemn the Saudi courts for ordering that Raif Badawi receive ten years in prison and 1,000 lashes for setting up a website that championed secularism and free speech. These were ‘mediaeval methods’, she said, and a ‘cruel attempt to silence modern forms of expression’. And once again, who can argue with that?

 

The American Library Association Partners with Anti-Semitic Book Fair

From the Elder of Ziyon. The American Library Association recently partnered with the Sharjah International Book Fair in the United Arab Emirates. Some of the books promoted at this book fair are examples of extreme anti-semitism.

The anti-Semitic books for sale at the fair were listed along­side main­stream books in var­i­ous cat­e­gories. For exam­ple, The Pro­to­cols of the Learned Elders of Zion was listed in the “Polit­i­cal Sci­ence” cat­e­gory. Among the other anti-Semitic books fea­tured at the fair were:

• Blood for The Pie of Zion (The Jew­ish Dis­trict) by Najib Al Gailany. This novel tells a story of a Chris­t­ian priest from Dam­as­cus who was abducted by the Jews in order to use his blood for Jew­ish rit­u­als. The story details how Jews danced and celebrated while Rab­bis drain the blood of the elderly catholic priest. The book was listed in the “Nov­els” cat­e­gory and sold for 15 AED, or approx­i­mately $4.
• The Jews and the Secret Move­ments in the Cru­sades by Baha Al-Amir. The book, which sug­gests that the Jews played a role in the Cru­sades, includes an intro­duc­tion in which the author claims that “God the almighty declares in his state­ment to the peo­ple that all wars were started by Jews.” The book was listed in the “Inter­na­tional Affairs” cat­e­gory and sold for 50 AED (approx­i­mately $14).
• Human Sac­ri­fices and Tal­mu­dic Slaugh­ter­ing by Jews and Pagans by Fathi Muham­mad Zughbi. The book was listed in the “Faith” cat­e­gory and sold for 83 AED (approx­i­mately $23).
• Mein Kampf by Adolf Hilter. This book was listed in the “Gen­eral knowl­edge” cat­e­gory and sold for 20 AED (approx­i­mately $5).

The fair pro­vided sev­eral grants and awards in var­i­ous fields of lit­er­a­ture. In the past, it report­edly gave a grant to Gilad Atz­mon to trans­late his anti-Semitic book “The Wan­der­ing Who,” into Ara­bic. The other problem is that if you try to register for the fair, in the list of countries you can be from there is one that is missing. Take a wild guess....

The EoZ adds,

So the ALA is now explicitly partnering with an event that activley promotes anti-semitism and discriminates against Israelis,

In the past, when principled organizations and prominent personalities told the UAE that they would not participate in activities that excluded Israelis or Jews, the UAE was anxious to drop the ban and do whatever they needed to do in order to not be embarrassed.

Clearly the American Library Association has no such principles.

And the UAE is purportedly one of the more moderate, modern Arab-Muslim countries in the middle east.

Some Qualifications

Lest you think from my various pro-Israel posts that I am an uncritical supporter of Israel, I'm not. In addition to questioning the continued expansion of settlements into the West Bank, I find  some of the things mentioned in this article as disturbing as I would find them in any country.

The rest of the world was shocked, but the fact is that Israel has become a right-wing society where nakedly racist language is common. “Arab taste” is a well-known term for vulgar, ostentatious style, for example. Right-wing legislators have in recent years physically assaulted Arab Knesset members while they were giving speeches. There are many examples that would shock Western liberals but are shrugged off in Israel. Members of the Knesset have given speeches in which they referred to migrants from Sudan as “a cancer in our body.”

Right, left, it doesn't matter. What matters is the apparent racism.

There are many things in that article which seem stretched or slanted, but there is no excuse for racism nor for pandering to racism. That should apply in Israel (and the arab countries in the Middle East!), as well as the rest of the world.

Peace between Israel and Palestine? Not Likely in our Time but Don't Blame Netanyahu

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent column in the Washington Post explaining the situation in the Middle East. It is brief, and hence misses many nuances I am sure, but it summarizes a lot of my own views about Israel.

If you grant that Israel has a right to exist (I do, but I am quite certain some of my friends do not), and if you grant Israel has a right and even an obligation to defend itself, then it is hard to blame just Israel for everything that happens there.

From Krauthammer,

I have news for the lowing herds: There would be no peace and no Palestinian state if Isaac Herzog were prime minister either. Or Ehud Barak or Ehud Olmert for that matter. The latter two were (non-Likud) prime ministers who offered the Palestinians their own state — with its capital in Jerusalem and every Israeli settlement in the new Palestine uprooted — only to be rudely rejected.

This is not ancient history. This is 2000, 2001 and 2008 — three astonishingly concessionary peace offers within the past 15 years. Every one rejected.

The fundamental reality remains: This generation of Palestinian leadership — from Yasser Arafat to Mahmoud Abbas — has never and will never sign its name to a final peace settlement dividing the land with a Jewish state.

But please, PLEASE read the entire column. It explains a lot of what lies behind my fairly strong pro-Israel views.

For my previous blog posts on Israel, click here.

Let's Get Everything Digitized...Soon!

With the burning of books and the destruction of so many historical items, it is important that archivists digitize everything they can, especially rare books and manuscripts.

A month ago, a fire ravaged a Moscow library. Most recently, in Mosul, ISIS burned 8000 rare books and manuscripts at the local library (h/t Jack):

While the world was watching the Academy Awards ceremony, the people of Mosul were watching a different show. They were horrified to see ISIS members burn the Mosul public library. Among the many thousands of books it housed, more than 8,000 rare old books and manuscripts were burned.

“ISIS militants bombed the Mosul Public Library. They used improvised explosive devices,” said Ghanim al-Ta'an, the director of the library. Notables in Mosul tried to persuade ISIS members to spare the library, but they failed.

The former assistant director of the library Qusai All Faraj said that the Mosul Public Library was established in 1921, the same year that saw the birth of the modern Iraq. Among its lost collections were manuscripts from the eighteenth century, Syriac books printed in Iraq's first printing house in the nineteenth century, books from the Ottoman era, Iraqi newspapers from the early twentieth century and some old antiques like an astrolabe and sand glass used by ancient Arabs. The library had hosted the personal libraries of more than 100 notable families from Mosul over the last century.

Taking high-quality jpeg photos of each page is a quick and easy way to preserve old texts. I've been doing this with my mother's letters written back in the 1930s. Here's hoping libraries will digitize their rare collections and store the digitized files in several locations.

Declining Fertility in Iran.... Due to STDs?

The number of births per female in Iran dropped from nearly 7 in 1960 to under 2 in 2000, and it has stayed there. See this [via Alan]

The linked article makes several interesting points:

• "Never before in recorded history has the birth rate of a big country fallen so fast and so far."
• As women become educated, fertility rates decline, even in Muslim countries. "Muslim total fertility rates correlate closely with female literacy rates: As soon as Muslim women have the means to make their own decisions, they reject traditional society and the fertility behavior associated with it."
• "Iran has the highest incidence of lifetime infertility of any country in the world, estimated at between 22% and 25% ... Roughly a quarter of Iranian couples, that is, are unable to bear children. By comparison, lifetime infertility ranges from 11% in Europe and 15% in India."

• "One explanation for Iran's strikingly infertility rate is the high level of consanguineous (cousin) marriages....This surmise probably is wrong. Iran's rate of cousin marriage is about 25%, lower than most of the Middle East."

• "A more probable cause of Iran's extremely high rate of infertility is sexually transmitted disease [STD], particularly chlamydia, the most common bacterial STD and one likely to go undetected in countries with poor public health systems."
• "Iran appears to have the world's highest rate of lifetime infertility because it also has the world's highest rate of STD infections."

The article then points out that like many countries with low fertility rates, Iran is facing a long-term problem of an aging society with a small productive demographic base.

 

Scandalous and Unacceptable

From Reuters:

The head of a U.N. inquiry into last summer's conflict between Israel and Gaza said on Monday he would resign after Israeli allegations of bias due to consultancy work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Canadian academic William Schabas was appointed last August by the head of the United Nations Human Rights Council to lead a three-member group looking into alleged war crimes during Israel's military offensive in Gaza.

In a letter to the commission, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Schabas said he would step down immediately to prevent the issue from overshadowing the preparation of the report and its findings, which are due to be published in March.

Everyone knew of this person's biases long before he was appointed head the group. He had done paid work for the Palestine Liberation Organization and had gone on record as referring to Israel as his enemy.

And what timing!

The commission had largely finished gathering evidence and had begun writing the report...

So this person who is known to have extreme biases against Israel was left at the head of a commission until its work was nearly completed? How unbiased do you really think the report will be?

As the Elder of Ziyon says,

Everyone knew Schabas was biased. He referred to Zionists as "enemies." He participated in a kangaroo court against Israel. Even he admitted he was biased, but he claimed that he - unlike every judge on the planet - would be objective despite his having already formed his anti-Israel opinions.

This attitude was widely criticized by prominent lawyers, as are listed at UN Watch.

However, the sheer nerve that he shows here takes the cake. He finally decided to step down after Israel was ready to show evidence that he was paid by one of the sides that he was supposedly investigating. Instead of apologizing for hiding this very salient fact about his history when he was appointed to the commission, Schabas instead lashes out at those who exposed his utter contempt for the concept of impartiality.

Who just happen to be his "enemies."

The late-date move is a farce anyway. The commission has already written the majority of not the entire report by now. All of the evidence and testimony has already been slanted by Schabas' anti-Israel bias. If anything, his taking his name off of the commission might end up giving the slanted report a little more credibility after he has already poisoned it.

Here's one final question: If Schabas had planned from the beginning to be a new Richard Falk, and to use this UN commission to do everything possible to demonize Israel while paying lip service to the idea of fairness, would he have acted any differently than we have seen him act?

Scandalous and unacceptable. But not surprising, given the biases rampant throughout the UN.

Update: Check out the NYTimes bias in how they report it:

Nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 500 children, were killed, according to the United Nations, with 100,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. On the Israeli side, six civilians and 67 soldiers were killed. 

No mention of all the tunnels from Gaza into Israel and scant mention of the rockets fired from Gaza. What a way to conclude the article. Don't tell me the NYTimes is unbiased and a legitimate news source.

 

More Tunnels in Gaza

The Elder of Ziyon links to a report from MEMRI [the Middle East Media Reports Institute] that as soon as the cease-fire was announced in Gaza, work on deeper tunnels was begun to prepare for renewed attacks on Israel.

A recent Al-Jazeera TV report took the viewers down into new tunnels dug by the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, after the Gaza cease-fire. "We are getting these tunnels ready for the next battle, in order to launch attacks and fire mortars and artillery. These tunnels will also have other uses, which we will not disclose," said a masked militant. The report aired on September 4.

The Elder of Ziyon concludes,

Of course, any weapons Israel creates to destroy the deep tunnels will also cause severe damage to the surrounding areas, and the world will blame Israel....

Long-term Strategies, Israel, and the Status Quo

This is a very  lengthy piece but it is well worth reading. Here is a summary from Daily Alert:

• Israelis who spent this past summer dodging Hamas rockets and sending their sons to fight in Gaza must wonder why it is "critical" to implement Obama's solution to their problems rather than to defeat terrorism and more broadly the ceaseless Arab and Muslim assaults on the Jewish state. Why are these not the status quo that the whole world agrees is unsustainable?
• Today Israel has both peace treaties and close and cooperative security arrangements with Egypt and Jordan. Several of the most important Arab regimes (Kuwait, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), as well as the PA in the West Bank, share with Israel a common view of the major dangers facing them. For each, as Jonathan Rynhold of the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University describes it, "the key threats come from Iran and from radical Sunni Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. They seek to maintain and promote a balance of power against these forces."
• In the latest Israel-Hamas conflict, all of these states and the PA were clearly hoping for an Israeli victory and a real setback for Hamas. They are all fighting the same enemies - enemies who wish to overturn the regional order and establish either an Iranian hegemony or an Islamist caliphate. All this leaves Israel and many Arab heads of state eyeing each other as potential allies rather than as perpetual foes.
• Netanyahu might not have a magical solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, but the "solutions" on offer are dead in the water. After this summer's war, there is little taste for taking chances with national security.
• In 2005, when the PA still ruled all of Gaza, we drafted an "Agreement on Movement and Access," which provided detailed rules for how people and goods could pass into and out of Gaza. The lack of trust between the sides, combined with deliberate Hamas efforts to render implementation impossible, destroyed the agreement before the ink was dry. It's easy to say that, for instance, the cement now needed for reconstruction would be closely monitored for proper use and not diverted to building more Hamas tunnels. But who exactly would be the monitors, working inside Gaza and in the face of Hamas intimidation?
• Netanyahu may actually have a strategy for the Palestinian conflict, as Jonathan Spyer argues in explaining why he resisted conquering Gaza. Netanyahu's caution derives from "his perception that what Israel calls 'wars' or 'operations' are really only episodes in a long war in which the country is engaged against those who seek its destruction....In such a conflict, what matters is...the ability to endure, conserve one's forces - military and societal - and to work away on wearing down the enemy's will."
• "This view" is sensitive to "the essentially implacable nature of the core Arab and Muslim hostility to Israel. So it includes an inbuilt skepticism toward the possibility of historic reconciliation and final-status peace accords. At the same time, [it] does not rule out alliances of convenience with regional powers."

Related articles

Further Thoughts on Israel

Did George Orwell write the script for Hamas?

End of Gaza war doesn't translate into peace

Obama Enraged at Israel

From Bret Stephens at WSJournal Online [via MK]:

Now think about what, specifically, has enraged the president about Israel's behavior. "Its actions and its treatment of his chief diplomat."

Actions? Hamas began firing rockets at Israel in June, thereby breaking the cease-fire it had agreed to at the end of the last war, in November 2012. The latest war began in earnest on July 7 when Hamas fired some 80 rockets at Israel. "No country can accept rocket fire aimed at civilians," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the next day, "and we support Israel's right to defend itself against these vicious attacks."

On July 15 Israel accepted the terms of a cease-fire crafted by Egypt. Hamas violated it by firing 50 rockets at Israel. On July 17 Israel accepted a five-hour humanitarian cease-fire. Hamas violated it again. On July 20 Israel allowed a two-hour medical window in the neighborhood of Shujaiyeh. Hamas violated it. OnJuly 26 Hamas announced a daylong cease-fire. It then broke its own cease-fire. On July 28 Israel agreed to a cease-fire for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. The rocket attacks continued. On Aug. 1 Israel accepted a 72-hour cease-fire proposed by the U.S. Hamasviolated it within 90 minutes. On Aug. 5 Israel agreed to Egypt's terms for another three-day cease-fire. Hamas violated it several hours before it was set to expire, after Israel announced it would agree to an extension.

If Hamas had honored any of these cease-fires it could have saved Palestinian lives. It didn't. Mr. Obama is enraged—but not with Hamas.

As for Israel's supposed ill-treatment of Mr. Kerry, the president should read Ben Birnbaum's and Amir Tibon's account of his secretary's Mideast misadventures in the July 20 issue of the New Republic. It's a portrait of a diplomat with the skills and style, but not the success, of Inspector Clouseau. Mr. Obama might also read Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit's assessment of Mr. Kerry's diplomacy: "The Obama administration," he wrote in July, "proved once again that it is the best friend of its enemies, and the biggest enemy of its friends."

Both Haaretz and the New Republic are left-wing publications, sympathetic to Mr. Obama's intentions, if not his methods.

Still, the president is enraged. At Israel. What a guy.

Related articles

Israel and Gaza what about all the rockets?

Did George Orwell write the script for Hamas?

Bret Stephens: Obama's Curious Rage

Romney: Israel Has A 'Duty' To Defend Itself From Hamas Rockets

Biases, Enabling, Israel, and Hamas

I do not understand why or how people who claim to love freedom end up supporting groups and gubmnts (like Hamas) that are so opposed to freedom. For all its faults, Israel is by far the greatest promoter of individual freedom in the Middle East; and yet many writers oppose Israel and support Hamas. As David Feith said in a WSJ piece,

Diplomats consistently ignore the violent and anti-Semitic statements that Palestinian leaders make to their own people in Arabic, as long as those leaders speak soothingly in English to foreign audiences. Veterans of the "peace process" seek to legitimize Hamas with invitations to the international bargaining table, despite the group's clearly stated mission of eliminating Israel and Jews.

Such Western enablers emphasize many of the genuine tragedies of Palestinian life, but they elide whatever facts contradict their pro-Palestinian articles of faith. They insist that Israel won't compromise and a powerful Israel lobby steers U.S. policy, overlooking that Palestinian leaders rejected Israeli offers of statehood in 2000 and 2008. Their idea of progressivism means admiring the Palestinian "resistance"—and remaining silent about the illiberal horrors facing Palestinian women, religious minorities, gays and political dissidents.

This approach isn't simply a whitewash. Rather it portrays Palestinian leaders in purposefully limited fashion, as victims and pawns forever being acted upon by Israel and other outsiders, and not as decision makers choosing how to act toward Israel and their own people. This denies Palestinians' agency, treating them as if they have no responsibility for tyrannizing other Palestinians or terrorizing Israelis. ...

The custom now is a pro-Palestinian neo-Orientalism that glosses over the real conditions of Palestinian life, focusing instead on condemning Israel. Yet the effect of this neo-Orientalism isn't pro-Palestinian. By ignoring the pathologies of Palestinian politics, it condemns Palestinians to live under leaders who would rather impoverish and endanger their own people than compromise with Israel. [emphasis added]

Whatever their intent, neo-Orientalists provide cover for a political structure in Palestine that they would never accept for themselves—which is a form of bigotry. Countless articles are written about intricate details of Israeli coalition politics, typically with hand-wringing conclusions about the election of this or that hard-liner. Seldom do you read about Palestinian politics, where hard-liners throw their rivals from rooftops or shoot them in the street. Perhaps journalists consider such savagery the unremarkable fate of Palestinians who aren't entitled to politics as Westerners are. Textbook Orientalism.

Neo-Orientalist thinking treats both Israelis and Palestinians unfairly. A better approach would expose and reject the terrorist thugs claiming the mantle of a nationalist movement that deserves accountability and sobriety from its leaders. Then popular discussion of the Middle East may regain some humane sense of right and wrong—and the Palestinians may finally achieve security, prosperity and statehood.

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Further Thoughts on Israel

What Does Hamas Want to Accomplish?

Did George Orwell write the script for Hamas?

From today's Daily Alert:

In Gaza, Cease-Fire Celebrated with Massive Gunfire - Mohammed Daraghmeh and Karin Laub
Israel and Hamas announced Tuesday that they agreed to an open-ended cease-fire in the Gaza war after seven weeks of fighting. In Gaza, massive celebratory gunfire erupted after 7 p.m. Chants normally reserved for Muslim holidays could be heard from mosque loudspeakers.
    The details of the cease-fire would effectively mean Hamas and Islamic Jihad settled for terms that are similar to those that ended more than a week of fighting with Israel in 2012. Under those terms, Israel promised to ease restrictions gradually, while Hamas pledged to halt rocket fire from Gaza at Israel. Even though it apparently had little to show for it, Hamas declared victory.  (AP-Washington Post)
    See also Cease-Fire Extended, But Not on Hamas' Terms - Jodi Rudoren
Israeli and Palestinian leaders reached an open-ended cease-fire agreement on Tuesday. Hamas declared victory even though it had abandoned most of its demands, ultimately accepting an Egyptian-brokered deal that differs little from one proffered on the battle's seventh day.
    "The human catastrophe is just very immense, it's getting worse and worse every day, and I think that's one of the reasons Hamas took into consideration in accepting the cease-fire," said Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. "The mood is very critical of Israel, but they are also asking questions of Hamas: Why did we have to go through all this? Why is there no cease-fire? Why did we provoke Israel into this war? More and more questions are in the minds of the Palestinians, especially in this last week."  (New York Times)
    See also Hamas Calls to Extend Its "Victory" to the West Bank and Jerusalem - Khaled Abu Toameh and Herb Keinon
Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar appeared on the streets of Gaza on Tuesday for the first time since the beginning of the fighting to declare celebrations for the "victory" against Israel. He called for copying the Gaza experience in the West Bank and Jerusalem in order to prepare for the "project of liberation."
    Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the Palestinian achievement was in "paving the way for the next phase of liberating Jerusalem and ! the land of Palestine. Today, we are closer to Jerusalem."
    Israel Channel 2 TV reported that the cease-fire deal was foisted upon Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, who lives in Qatar, by Hamas' leadership living amid the ruins of Hamas' victory. (Jerusalem Post) [emphasis added].

Typical war-time propaganda, reminiscent of "newspeak" from George Orwell's 1984.

Elsewhere, Foreign Policy and many other sources including Business Insider have noted that Benjamin Netanyahu's ratings were dropping in the polls.

One can only hope that war-weariness will lead to compromises and peace. But with the extremists in Gaza and the West Bank on one hand and the extremist expansionists in Israel on the other hand, I'm skeptical that peace will be lasting there.

Questions for Journalists in the Middle East

MA sent me this link (also here) of 40 questions to ask journalists reporting on Gaza/Hamas. Here are a few:

18.   Russia Today journalist Harry Fear mentioned rocket-launching sites near his hotel. Have you noticed any terrorists or terror bases near your hotel?

19.   How do you feel about Fear’s expulsion from Gaza, for tweeting about the rocket launches from civilian areas? Are you worried that you might also be expelled from Gaza?

20.   Did you see any Hamas terror personnel inside Al-Shifa hospital?

21.   Have you interviewed a Hamas spokesperson inside Al-Shifa?

24.   Hamas’ command and control bunker is underneath Al Shifa hospital. Is this worth reporting? Have you asked to gain access to it, so you can interview Hamas commanders?

25.  French newspaper Liberation reported that Hamas’ Al Qassam offices are next to the emergency room at Shifa hospital, before deleting the article. Was the reporter right to delete the article, and will the information appear in the media at some point still?

26.   When the missile hit Al-Shati hospital where children were killed, did you see Hamas operatives collecting the debris of the fallen Palestinian rocket, as Gabriel Barbati reported? Did Barbati pick up on something you missed?

27.   Barbati prefaced his tweet by writing “Out of Gaza, far from Hamas retaliation.” Will you also report differently about Gaza when you are out of Gaza, far from Hamas retaliation?

28.   Can live journalism by reporters who are scared of retaliation from the authorities they are reporting about really count as pure journalism, or is journalism in that context fundamentally compromised?

37.   When Hamas breaks a ceasefire with Israel – as it has done 6 times – how easy is it to report on this from Gaza?

38.   Is there any anti-Hamas sentiment in Gaza, and how is it expressed?

39.   Were you aware that Hamas chose to execute dozens of anti-war protesters in Gaza, and did you not consider this to be worth reporting?

40.   Is international media reporting from Gaza free from pressure and intimidation, or is there a real problem – and if so, how will you address it?

Let me add to this list: now ask the same questions of journalists reporting from Israel about the Israel-Hamas war.

My bet about the results: there is one heck of a lot more freedom of the press and one heck of a lot less intimidation in Israel than there is in Gaza.

And, if that is the case, it should raise questions about the news reports about the war, especially those filed from Gaza.

 

Some Additional Considerations about Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank

Eric, my friend from BISC, sent me this link. It explores six possible reasons Israel is losing a war it is winning.

I find #5 particularly worth considering:

5. Israel’s political leadership has done little in recent years to make their cause seem appealing. It is impossible to convince a Judeophobe that Israel can do anything good or useful, short of collective suicide. But there are millions of people of good will across the world who look at the decision-making of Israel’s government and ask themselves if this is a country doing all it can do to bring about peace and tranquility in its region. Hamas is a theocratic fascist cult committed to the obliteration of Israel. But it doesn’t represent all Palestinians. Polls suggest that it may very well not represent all of the Palestinians in Gaza. There is a spectrum of Palestinian opinion, just as there is a spectrum of Jewish opinion.

I don’t know if the majority of Palestinians would ultimately agree to a two-state solution. But I do know that Israel, while combating the extremists, could do a great deal more to buttress the moderates. This would mean, in practical terms, working as hard as possible to build wealth and hope on the West Bank. A moderate-minded Palestinian who watches Israel expand its settlements on lands that most of the world believes should fall within the borders of a future Palestinian state might legitimately come to doubt Israel’s intentions. Reversing the settlement project, and moving the West Bank toward eventual independence, would not only give Palestinians hope, but it would convince Israel’s sometimes-ambivalent friends that it truly seeks peace, and that it treats extremists differently than it treats moderates. And yes, I know that in the chaos of the Middle East, which is currently a vast swamp of extremism, the thought of a West Bank susceptible to the predations of Islamist extremists is a frightening one. But independence—in particular security independence—can be negotiated in stages. The Palestinians must go free, because there is no other way.

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FLASHBACK - ISIS linked organization takes responsibility for alleged kidnapping of three teenagers including one American in Israel

Is Israel Losing the Long-Term Propaganda War?

In the 1960s, most of the people of my generation supported Israel. Israel was the "David" in the midst of "Goliath" neighbours who had vowed to destroy Israel.

Most (or at least many) of us were probably influenced by Israel's struggle for existence from 1947 - 1973. We hoped that after 1973, treaties and peace would emerge.

But in the 41 years since then, Israel, in an attempt to defend itself against suicide bombers, rockets, and continued threats, has been losing the propaganda war. The continued expansion of settlements in the west bank has not helped Israel's position. And even though Israel withdrew from Gaza, hoping to promote more of an atmosphere of peaceful co-existence with the Palestine Authority, Israel is once again struggling in the propaganda wars.

Here is what I mean. Older people still support Israel's actions. But the younger ones, generally less aware of the 1947-73 struggles, oppose Israel's actions. From Gallup,

This table concerns me. Compare the responses of those 49 and under with those 50 and older. Clearly I am in the latter category, and I really find it difficult (if not impossible) to understand how people do not see Israel's actions as justified. But maybe that's simply a sign of my age and historical experience.

But what will happen as we old farts tire and die out? If Israel cannot persuade younger people of the justification of its actions, in another decade or two, it could lose the support of many countries that strongly support it now.

Opportunity Costs: Guns vs Butter; Tunnels vs Schools

Edited from something sent to me by MA. For all economics students (and others, actually), please note that the poster should say "COST" not price.

Is There ANY Hope for Peace in the Middle East

Quite frankly, I doubt it. Not for a loonnnnggg time.

But you might find this article by my friend and former colleague, Salim Mansur, of interest. Excerpts:

The Arabs were not prepared then, as they are not prepared even now, to recognize the Jews – the "other" – as being equal. The Jews also thought they had their own legitimate rights to statehood, which could not be denied on either a religious and political or a moral basis.

It is this denial of the "other," the refusal to recognize that the "other" also has equally legitimate rights and claims in history, which has made the history of Arabs and Muslims in dealing with "others" – regardless of whether the "others" are ethnically or religiously different – a hideous travesty right into our time. This history, with its ancient tribal roots, is unfolding right before our eyes as Islamist warriors or "jihadis" rampage across the lands of the Fertile Crescent, and as tribal wars with modern weaponry consume Arabs and Muslims. Ancient animosities of Sunni-Shi'a sectarianism are revived and minorities, such as the Christians in Iraq and Syria with their history going back to the time of the Apostles, appear doomed in the face of the whirlwind of Islamist bigotry sweeping across the region.

This denial of the "other" also makes any claim of moral righteousness, or historical justice by Arabs and Muslims sound specious and self-serving. When Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, goes public in stating that the actions of the Israeli government, in dealing with the indiscriminate firing of rockets from Gaza by Hamas, exceed Hitler in barbarism, what we have is a demonstration of how unhinged Muslim leaders have become – or have been for a very long time – when it comes to understanding the history of the "other." ...

The Jews – as a people with a history that might be described as the "mother of history of the Semitic people" – have consistently recognized the "other" as they sought recognition from "others" of their own rights.

Arabs and Muslims need only to read sincerely the Quran, which they believe is God's Word, to find for themselves how clearly the history of Jews has been laid forth in their sacred text. Sincerity of reading, however, requires as a prerequisite a cleansing of the heart. The Quran states, "Not blind are the eyes, but blind are the hearts within the breasts" [22:46]. In other words, without a heart illuminated by sincerity, any strivings for peace and justice – as Arabs and Muslims claim their struggle against Jews amount to – is not only a futile exercise but also making a mockery of what is sought by denying the same respect to the "other."

etc.

 

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Why the Double Standard?

Why the Double Standard?

From Tarek Fatah:

... While Israel's Operation Protective Edge is making the lead story around the world, few are aware of Pakistan's Operation Zarb-e-Azb (Strike of Prophet Muhammad's Sword) underway against the Taliban inside Pakistan.

Israel's military operations have killed about 200 and displaced about 17,000 Palestinians from their homes in Gaza.

Pakistan's military operations, on the other hand, have killed over 400 and made over 900,000 Pashtun Pakistanis homeless and destitute in their own country.

While the 17,000 Palestinians are finding shelter in United Nations Relief and Works Agency structures, nearly one million Pakistanis are facing a catastrophe that has triggered neither media coverage, nor international aid or protest.

On Monday, a day after an Israeli missile killed 18 family members of the Hamas police chief in Gaza, Iraqi men in Baghdad slaughtered 28 Iraqi women.

There was plenty of fury over the dead family, almost none for the women, for they were alleged to be residents of a brothel, as if that mattered.

Allah's "best of peoples, evolved for mankind", clearly live by a double standard, the one that triggers mammoth support for Palestinians but absolutely none for Pashtuns.

Here's why. It is not the race or religion of the victim that counts, but the identity of their tormentor.

As long as it's an Arab army annihilating fellow Arabs or a Muslim military murdering fellow Muslims, too many Muslims simply shrug away our responsibility and say, "leave it to Allah" as the Qur'an supposedly commands.

However, if the Muslim falls victim to the "kuffar" — meaning the Jew, Christian or Hindu — then many of our clerics take to the pulpit and deliver fiery, end-of-times lectures, using the tragedy as a reason to ignite hatred against the other, in most cases "The Jew".

I wonder if God has heard this mosque sermon by a prominent Pakistani cleric.

"And a time is about to come when Allah would bestow such a success on Islam that there would not be a single Jew left on the face of the earth. … And when the last Jew will be killed from this world, then peace would be established in the world …"

 

Please Remember: Israel Fought Its Own Citizens to Withdraw from Gaza

For all my friends who sympathize with Hamas in Gaza [from Charles Krauthammer]:

[Less] than 10 years ago ... worldwide television showed the Israeli army pulling diehard settlers off synagogue roofs in Gaza as Israel uprooted its settlements, expelled its citizens, withdrew its military and turned every inch of Gaza over to the Palestinians. There was not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli left in Gaza.

And there was no blockade. On the contrary. Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export. It opened border crossings and encouraged commerce.

The whole idea was to establish the model for two states living peacefully and productively side by side. No one seems to remember that simultaneous with the Gaza withdrawal, Israel dismantled four smaller settlements in the northern West Bank as a clear signal of Israel's desire to leave the West Bank too and thus achieve an amicable two-state solution.

And how did the Gaza Palestinians react to being granted by the Israelis what no previous ruler, neither Egyptian, nor British, nor Turkish, had ever given them -- an independent territory? First, they demolished the greenhouses. Then they elected Hamas. Then, instead of building a state with its attendant political and economic institutions, they spent the better part of a decade turning Gaza into a massive military base, brimming with terror weapons, to make ceaseless war on Israel.

Where are the roads and rail, the industry and infrastructure of the new Palestinian state? Nowhere. Instead, they built mile upon mile of underground tunnels to hide their weapons and, when the going gets tough, their military commanders. They spent millions importing and producing rockets, launchers, mortars, small arms, even drones. They deliberately placed them in schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes to better expose their own civilians. And from which they fire rockets at Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Why? The rockets can't even inflict serious damage, being almost uniformly intercepted by Israel's Iron Dome anti-missile system. Even West Bank leader Mahmoud Abbas has asked: "What are you trying to achieve by sending rockets?"

It makes no sense. Unless you understand, as a Washington Post editorial explained, that the whole point is to draw Israeli counterfire.

This produces dead Palestinians for international television. Which is why Hamas perversely urges its own people not to seek safety when Israel drops leaflets warning of an imminent attack.

To deliberately wage war so that your own people can be telegenically killed is indeed moral and tactical insanity. But it rests on a very rational premise: Given the Orwellian state of the world's treatment of Israel (see: the U.N.'s grotesque Human Rights Council), fueled by a mix of classic anti-Semitism, near-total historical ignorance and reflexive sympathy for the ostensible Third World underdog, these eruptions featuring Palestinian casualties ultimately undermine support for Israel's legitimacy and right to self-defense.

In a world of such Kafkaesque ethical inversions, Hamas' depravity begins to make sense. This is a world in which the Munich massacre is a movie and the murder of Klinghoffer is an opera -- both deeply sympathetic to the killers. This is a world in which the U.N. ignores humanity's worst war criminals while incessantly condemning Israel, a state warred upon for 66 years which nonetheless goes to extraordinary lengths to avoid harming the very innocents its enemies use as shields.

It's to the Israelis' credit that amid all this madness they haven't lost their moral scruples. Or their nerve. Those outside the region have the minimum obligation, therefore, to expose the madness and speak the truth. Rarely has it been so blindingly clear.

[emphasis added]

What Does Hamas Want to Accomplish?

I sit in disbelief that Hamas has launched yet another barrage of over 700 rockets toward Israel. What do they hope to accomplish with this threatening of the civilian population of Israel?

Surely they do not hope to wipe out Israel with these ineffectual attacks. It must be that they hope to create more pressure on Israel via world opinion.

I am, quite frankly, flabbergasted that people blame Israel for the civilian deaths in Gaza when, in the first place, Hamas has been targetting civilians in Israel and, in the second place, Hamas has systematically used civilian sites for firing their rockets.

Apparently Hamas is right, and the rest of the world is falling for their ploy. If so, I despair.

A recent piece in The Atlantic has a slightly different take [via BenS]:

Hamas is trying to get Israel to kill as many Palestinians as possible.

Dead Palestinians represent a crucial propaganda victory for the nihilists of Hamas. It is perverse, but true. It is also the best possible explanation for Hamas’s behavior, because Hamas has no other plausible strategic goal here. ...

What if, nine years ago, when Israel withdrew its soldiers and settlers from Gaza, the Palestinians had made a different choice? What if they had chosen to build the nucleus of a state, rather than a series of subterranean rocket factories?

This thought is prompted by something a pair of Iraqi Kurdish leaders once told me. Iraqi Kurdistan is today on the cusp of independence. Like the Palestinians, the Kurds deserve a state. Unlike most of the Palestinian leadership, the Kurds have played a long and clever game to bring them to freedom.

This is what Barham Salih, the former prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, told me years ago: “Compare us to other liberation movements around the world. We are very mature. We don’t engage in terror. We don’t condone extremist nationalist notions that can only burden our people. Please compare what we have achieved in the Kurdistan national-authority areas to the Palestinian national authority. … We have spent the last 10 years building a secular, democratic society, a civil society.” What, he asked, have the Palestinians built?

So too, Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, once told me this: “We had the opportunity to use terrorism against Baghdad. We chose not to.”

In 2005, the Palestinians of Gaza, free from their Israeli occupiers, could have taken a lesson from the Kurds—and from David Ben-Gurion, the principal Israeli state-builder—and created the necessary infrastructure for eventual freedom. Gaza is centrally located between two large economies, those of Israel and Egypt. Europe is just across the Mediterranean. Gaza could have easily attracted untold billions in economic aid.

The Israelis did not impose a blockade on Gaza right away. That came later, when it became clear that Palestinian groups were considering using their newly liberated territory as a launching pad for attacks. In the days after withdrawal, the Israelis encouraged Gaza’s development. A group of American Jewish donors paid $14 million for 3,000 greenhouses left behind by expelled Jewish settlers and donated them to the Palestinian Authority. The greenhouses were soon looted and destroyed, serving, until today, as a perfect metaphor for Gaza’s wasted opportunity.

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Further Thoughts on Israel

Israel and Gaza what about all the rockets?

Apartheid in the Middle East? Look at how the other arab countries discriminate against the Palestinians

Whenever people accuse Israel of practicing apartheid, I am flabbergasted. What about all the serious discrimination that goes on in all the other countries of the middle east?

From this column [via MA]:

The dirty little secret is out. It is the Arab countries, not Israel, that have to be considered apartheid states. ...

It is easy to illustrate the general behavior of denial of rights by Arabs by specific reference to racial, ethnic, religious, and gender discrimination against black Africans, the Kurds, Christians and Jews, and women. It is more potent to illustrate it by actions or non-actions regarding the Palestinians, the very people regarded as being “oppressed” by Israel.

One telling feature is the frequent refusal, usually for financial reasons, of Arab hospitals to provide medical treatment for Palestinians, compared with the hospitality of Israeli hospitals that have treated thousands of Palestinians every year, even wounded would-be suicide bombers, from the West Bank and Gaza.

The policy of Arab apartheid was made clear by the Arab League's Resolution 1457 of 1959. Though there is supposed to be an “Arab nation,” the Arab countries would not grant citizenship to applicants of Palestinian origin deliberately in order to prevent their assimilation into the host countries.

A statement by Mahmoud Abbas, published in the official PLO journal in March 1976, complains of this policy. The Arab armies that invaded Israel “forced [the Palestinians] to leave their homeland, imposed on them a political and ideological blockade and threw them into prisons similar to the ghettos in which the Jews used to live in Eastern Europe.” [emphasis added]

In Syria, Palestinian refugees in 1954 were granted partial rights, though not political rights. For many years they were not allowed to hold property, and they have never been allowed to become citizens. The Assad regime, controlled by the Alawites, 14 percent of the population, are in charge not only of the government, but of a considerable part of business.

The Kurds have traditionally been excluded from the political, economic, and cultural life of the country and have been subjected to denial of basic human rights, to persecution, to mass murder, and to arbitrary police behavior. ...

Jordan has been the only Arab country to grant citizenship to Palestinians, but since 1988 it has arbitrarily withdrawn that nationality without notice from thousands. In 1983, Jordan introduced different color-coded travel cards for Palestinians to and from the West Bank.

This has created different levels of citizenship rights, in access to education at all levels, and in fees for drivers’ licenses. Above all, Palestinian non-nationals require a residency permit, thus suffering in the job market. They still are generally not allowed to practice some of the organized professions.

The claim that Israel is an apartheid state has always been a malicious falsehood.

 

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Israeli Apartheid? To Arabs, It's a Model Democracy

"The Delectable Lie" Wins Hoffer Prize

Several years ago, Salim Mansur published a book that challenges the holus bolus endorsement of multiculturalism. In fact, it refers to multiculturalism as The Delectable Lie.

The book, The Delectable Lie, was quite well-received by many people who knew about it. Current reviews on Amazon.com give it about 4 1/2 stars, pretty much in line with my own impression of the book.

For some reason, the major media didn't pay much attention the carefully reasoned volume. I suspect that most members of the major media didn't like his message, if they bothered to find out what it was.

Despite this notable lack of attention from the media, The Delectable Lie has been awarded the Eric Hoffer award. From the award's website,

Each year, the Eric Hoffer Award for books presents the Montaigne Medal to the most thought-provoking book(s). These are books that either illuminate, progress, or redirect thought. The Montaigne Medal is given in honor of the great French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, who influenced people such as William Shakespeare, René Descartes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Eric Hoffer. This is an additional distinction beneath the Eric Hoffer Award umbrella.

Isn't it interesting that the panel of judges who made this decision to award the book are Americans, and that an American award was given to a book whose subject is of particular and immediate concern for Canadians.

It would be fitting if the Canadian media recognized this award. It would also be fitting if Salim Mansur were recognized for this accomplishment by The University of Western Ontario, where he teaches political science.

Salim is a classical, 19th-century-type liberal or what might these days be called a quasi-libertarian. Appropriately, he has agreed to run for a seat in the next provincial election for the Freedom Party of Ontario.

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Another Example. Why I Am Concerned about Jew-Hatred.

Every once in awhile someone asks me why I am such a strong Israelphile and why I frequently raise the issue of anti-Semitism here on the blog. Things like this are one reason. From the article quoted there,

In another stage of the Passover celebrations, [the Jews] combined the preparation of matzas and the offering up of sacrifices with their enmity towards non-Jews, especially Christians, and mixed the blood of one of their victims into the matza [dough. This was done] especially on Passover, Purim and circumcision rituals. They also used blood in acts of sorcery and witchcraft...

...The draining of the victims' blood is done in [several ways. One method is] by means of a barrel lined with needles. This is a barrel the size of the victim's body, with sharp needles that stick into all his limbs when he is placed in it, so that his blood slowly trickles down from every part of his body. This entails excruciating torment, which gives pleasure to the Jews who become drunk with joy at the sight of the blood dripping from the victim's [body] to the bottom of the barrel and into a container placed there to collect it. [Another method] is to slaughter the victim like a sheep and collecting his blood in a vessel, or else slashing the victim's veins in numerous places so that the blood flows from the wounds into the vessels. Then the blood is handed to a rabbi who prepares a matza laced with human blood in order to please the Jewish god, Jehovah, who thirsts for blood. The Jews can rejoice in their holidays only if they eat matza laced with the blood of non-Jews. [emphasis added]

I once had a friend tell me all about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as if that fabrication was factual. So I did some internet searches, discovered it was a fraud, printed off the results, and took them to him. His wife looked at him critically then as if to say, "See, I told you so."

Further Thoughts on Israel

It looks as if the attempt to get the peace talks restarted will continue to be unsuccessful. I am not surprised.

... Abbas doesn’t have the legitimacy. With half of Palestine (namely Gaza) controlled by his rejectionist mortal enemy Hamas, he doesn’t have the authority. And he doesn’t have the intention. Abbas openly refuses to (a) recognize Israel as a Jewish state, (b) yield the so-called right of return (which would flood Israel with millions of Palestinians, destroying the state demographically), or (c) ever sign any agreement that ends the conflict once and for all. Any one of these refusals makes a final peace impossible. All three make the entire process ridiculous.

So here are some thoughts (edited) that I wrote to a friend last week about Israel and the Middle East:

---

As I may have written at one time, historical and biblical claims to the land mean nothing to me; it seems to me lots of people live on land that was taken from someone else at some point in time.

The Ottomans lost; the Brits got to decide what happened to the territories. The Brits buggered it up most places throughout the world but likely couldn't have done much different in Israel/Palestine.

Once Israel was created and acknowledged, and once it had successfully defended itself in the late 1940s, that is pretty much where I start from. It exists; it thrives; it champions freedom and human rights more than any of its neighbours. These points, not biblical history, are the main reasons I am an Israel-phile, I think.

The wars of 1967 and 1973 made it very clear that so long as Israel's arab neighbours were allowed to live next to the pre-1967 borders, Israelis would not be safe. Hence the need for a buffer zone ("need" being from the perspective of Israel, not from the arabs, of course). I saw this same thing, trivially, in my war against the geese last month. If I just drove them off the lawn, they came right back. I had to drive them out of the buffer zones as well.

Quite clearly, relinquishing control of Gaza and forcing Jews to leave the settlements there did nothing to further "the peace process", whatever that means. There has been a rain of thousands of rockets onto Israel from Gaza which has been menacing and murderous. It is intriguing that Egypt has many policies that isolate Gaza more than Israel does. And it is maddening that Palestinian refugees from the 1940s (most of whom left at the urging of the neighbouring gubmnts, not because they were forced out by the Jews) were not integrated into the neighbours' countries.

I know there are politically important groups in Israel who believe Israel should include the entire west bank. But their reasoning seems to me to be more historical and religious, not political in a real-politik sense. I don't buy it.

Friends who have visited the settlements on the west bank understand both the need for a buffer zone AND that the expansionism rampant in some settlements is troublesome. As a result, I am left confused. I recognize Israel's need for the buffer areas, the fences, and the checkpoints. At the same time it is not clear to me that there is much, if any, justification for further expansion of settlements into the West Bank areas.

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The Wall

Some notes about The Wall between Israel and the Palestine Authority from Melanie Phillips. [via MA]

·      The ‘wall’ does not surround Bethlehem.

·      For most of its length it is not a wall at all but a simple chain link fence.

·      It has been constructed not to oppress Palestinians but solely to prevent Israelis from being murdered by Arabs.

·      This security barrier has had to be built as a wall alongside one area of Bethlehem because a fence here – cheek by jowl with Jerusalem ­– would be insufficient to prevent the very real threat of some of its inhabitants murdering large numbers of Israelis.

·      The undoubted hardships caused by this barrier are solely the result of the ever-continuing attempts by some of those living behind it to murder yet more Israelis.

·      Since this security barrier was constructed, the number of Israelis murdered in terrorist attacks has decreased by some 70 per cent – while the number of attempted attacks remains high.

Those like St James’s Church who want the barrier to be demolished thus inescapably imply that they are indifferent to the murder of Israelis. Is this what you meant, Archbishop, by

‘unconditional love received, love overflowing into a frequently love-lost world’?

There are other glaring omissions and distortions. The church makes no mention of the fact that, as shown here, Rachel’s Tomb, one of Judaism’s holiest sites which is very near Bethlehem and where many attacks have taken place against Jewish worshippers, really has been walled off and turned into a kind of fortress – to protect Jews from further attacks by Arabs.

It unaccountably makes no mention of the fact that, while the Christians of the Middle East are – ... as Michael Curtis details here – being persecuted and murdered, the only country in the region where Christians are thriving and increasing, in a society that allows them total freedom of worship, is Israel.

It unaccountably makes no mention of the fate of the Christians of Bethlehem and other areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority...

 

For Everyone Who Supports the Boycott of Israeli Scholars and Their Institutions

Guess who is valedictorian at a top Israeli medical school. via Steve Horwitz, who wrote:

Yeah boycott the Israeli universities. How DARE they allow a Muslim to be the valedictorian? The nerve of those tools of apartheid.

You go girl! "Rather than an academic boycott – which negatively impacts researchers who want to disseminate knowledge rather than restrict it – Ali-Selah suggests a more active stance: encouraging academic life within the Palestinian Authority, strengthening academic ties with Palestinian universities, and planning joint research projects with Palestinian scientists.

Furthermore, Ali-Selah says that those interested in advancing the cause of peace in the Middle East should focus their energies on supporting more of Israel’s success stories like her own, and pressuring Arab countries to emulate Israel’s academic freedoms and democracy."

On the Iran "Deal"

On Iran Deal, U.S. Lawmakers on Both Sides Question Administration - Anne Gearan (via the Daily Agenda)

More than two weeks after a landmark deal with Iran, House Republicans and Democrats called the Obama administration's approach to nuclear negotiations naive and signaled that they will slap more sanctions on the country. On Tuesday a bipartisan lineup of House lawmakers challenged Secretary of State John Kerry's assertion that punitive new trade measures would undermine fragile diplomacy with Iran's government.
    The chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Johnson (D-S.D.), said Tuesday that he would hold off "for now" on advancing a bill to impose new sanctions on Iran, giving the White House some elbow room. Many in Congress believe that applying further pressure on the Iranian government is the only way to ensure Iran never develops nuclear weapons.
    Kerry got no public support for the argument that the interim deal, or a potential final one, makes Israel and the world safer. He allowed that his dealings with Iranian officials leave doubts about whether they are willing to make the difficult concessions that a final deal would require. (Washington Post)

No foolin'. What took 'em so long??

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Be Careful; Be Skeptical

A column by a former Canadian ambassador [Michael Bell] in the Globe and Mail (behind a pay wall, unfortunately, but see below) from a few days ago blames Jewish settlers for an attack on a Jewish visitor. The Elder of Ziyon summarizes and quotes the G&M article and then sets the record straight:

The only problem is that Seidemann was attacked by Arabs. 

He was visiting a Palestinian friend in an Arab neighborhood of Jerusalem, Sur Bahir. He admits having been targeted previously for being a Jew in Arab neighborhoods. Representatives of the Arab community visited him and expressed regret. The Jewish doctors that treated him all pretty much asked what he was doing in a neighborhood where Jews are routinely attacked if they step foot. 

There are no Jews there.

As far as I know, outside of "ultra" religious idiots in Mea Shearim who hate people driving in their neighborhood on Shabbat, there have been very few instances of Jews throwing rocks at moving cars.

There are certainly no "established patterns" of Jews throwing rocks at Arab cars (or cars driven by Israeli leftists.)

However, incidents of Arabs throwing rocks at Israeli cars happen virtually daily. This rock throwing has caused serious injuries and deaths. 

Jews (and Arabs who look like Jews) who accidentally enter Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem have been almost lynched and subjected to barrages of rocks thrown by dozens of Arabs, egged on by photographers.

One rock throwing was caught on video just yesterday.

Seidemann freely admits it was Arabs who threw the rock that injured him.

But Bell, a former ambassador to Israel apparently is so obtuse, so suffused in his righteous anger to blame "settlers" for everything wrong in the Middle East, that he seemingly only glanced at the news about his "friend" Seidemann and filled in the blanks in his incredibly biased professorial brain.

There is a double bias here shown by the professor. Not only is he willing to exaggerate events to blame Jews, he is willing to ignore Arab violence that happens every day in Jerusalem.

The charitable explanation is that Bell is a complete and utter moron who cannot be trusted to read simple English sentences. The alternative is that he purposely chose to twist Seidemenn's words to blame his favorite bogeyman, the "ultras."

Bell's grasp of basic facts about Israel are no more accurate:

Such is the conundrum of Zionism today: The mainstream's goal being the establishment of a Jewish democratic national state; the religious nationalists' being the control of the land as the instrument of redemption, in some cases at whatever cost. The seed of defiance stems largely from the latter's drive to settle the densely Palestinian populated Samarian mountain ridge. Largely these high points but not only the ridge. [sic] Mr. Seideman has been most active respecting the Elad settlers' movement in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood just outside the Old City's walls, beneath which the earliest foundations of Jewish Jerusalem lie.

This is barely understandable English, further proving that The Globe and Mail's editor was asleep when this came in. Still, anyone who has driven in Judea and Samaria sees that Jewish settlements are generally not near "densely Palestinian populated" areas, the Arabs generally live in valleys while the settlers usually gravitate towards hilltops, and most of the area is quite empty. Well over 95% of Arabs live in Areas A and B where there are few if any Jews.

Also, Silwan was originally a Jewish neighborhood of Yemenite Jews The Jews were driven out, attacked in 1921 and again in 1929.

Who knows who attacked the Yemenites? Maybe Professor Bell can write an article blaming the settlers. I mean, who else could have attacked Jews when Arabs and Jews lived so peacefully together before "occupation" according to morons like Bell?  It makes just as much sense as what he wrote here.

The idea that such an ignorant person was an ambassador - a job that requires a tiny bit of knowledge about the host country - is nothing less than astonishing.

I've seen a lot of media bias over the past decade, but this is off the charts.

(h/t Daniel, This Ongoing War)

UPDATE: Yisrael Medad tweeted  Seidemann:

@ymedad Of course I didn't. I just saw the article now, and immediately notified him of his error.
— Daniel Seidemann (@DanielSeidemann) December 3, 2013

@DanielSeidemann It's not "an error" if it's predicated on an entirely bogus hypothesis blaming Jews based on "established patterns"
— ymedad (@ymedad) December 3, 2013

Also, a commenter writes:

I actually was a student under Professor Bell when I attended the University of Windsor, and I will attest that it is more out of bias than it is ignorance. As being, quite possibly, the only pro-Israel student in a class that had 25-30% Arabs, he certainly puts a lot of blame of the conflict upon the religious Israelis, but he's fully aware that the Palestinians are not saints either.