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Obama sails between the Scylla of US voters who support Israel and the Charybdis of his ‘friends’ in the Arab world.

The NY Times, in an editorial published on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, calls for the imposition of a Palestinian state because allowing a UN vote would be ‘ruinous’:

A United Nations vote on Palestinian membership would be ruinous. Yet with little time left before the U.N. General Assembly meets, the United States, Israel and Europe have shown insufficient urgency or boldness in trying to find a compromise solution.

Although it would provide a peg to hang violent disturbances on, maybe even a new intifada, and enable Palestinian ‘lawfare’ against Israel, a GA vote would not be ‘ruinous’ for Israel. The ruin would fall upon Barack Obama, whose decision to veto (or not) a subsequent Security Council resolution would put him between the Scylla of  US voters who support Israel and the Charybdis of his ‘friends’ in the Arab world.

So in order to save the President, the Times thinks that the US and Europe should hold Israel down while the Arabs rape her:

The United States and its Quartet partners (the European Union, the United Nations and Russia) should put a map and a deal on the table, with a timeline for concluding negotiations and a formal U.N. statehood vote. The core element: a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps and guarantees for Israel’s security. The Security Council and the Arab League need to throw their full weight behind any plan.

Exactly what “mutually agreed” could mean here is unclear, since the Palestinians have said over and over “not one centimeter…” etc. The Palestinians rejected compromise offers in 2000 and 2008, so it’s hard to imagine that they would suddenly become more generous in the framework of a coerced settlement.

Regarding ‘guarantees’, can the Times possibly be serious? Did the guarantee Israel received from the US in 1956 that it would keep the Strait of Tiran open mean anything in 1967? What about the Multilateral Force in the Sinai that fled at Nasser’s request? Or the UN guarantee to prevent Hizballah from rearming after the 2006 war? If there is one thing that the Jewish people learned from the Holocaust, and from Israel’s wars that followed, it is that they must depend on themselves for their survival.

Since the Palestinians or the Arab league have never agreed to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or to give up the demand to resettle Arab refugees in Israel, would such a coerced settlement force them to do so? How?

The Times tells us whose fault it is that direct negotiations haven’t succeeded:

Both sides share the blame with Mr. Obama and Arab leaders (we put the greater onus on Mr. Netanyahu, who has used any excuse to thwart peace efforts).

This is so far from the truth that it’s breathtaking. Obama encouraged the Palestinians to not return to negotiations after the Gaza war of 2008-9 by demanding a freeze on construction inside settlements, something that had never been a requirement before. Netanyahu agreed and there was a 10-month freeze with no results (except domestic political problems for him). Then the Palestinians demanded the freeze be extended for three months, and this time he did not agree.  So who’s doing the thwarting?

Since 1993, Israel has moved very far in the direction of compromise.  ‘Left-wing’ Itzhak Rabin was elected on a platform of opposition to a Palestinian state. Now ‘right-wing, hard-liner’ Netanyahu favors it. Israeli offers since 2000 have been more and more generous. But Palestinians still refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, still demand 1949 lines as borders and still demand right of return to Israel for Arab refugees. So naturally, the Times thinks that Israel should be pressured to move even farther:

Congress has threatened to cut millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority if it presses for a U.N. vote. Instead of just threatening the Palestinians, Congress should lean on Mr. Netanyahu to return to talks.

The theme of “whatever you do, don’t stop paying them” is continued:

Mr. Obama in particular needs to show firmer leadership in pressing Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas to resume talks. If a U.N. vote takes place, Washington and its partners will have to limit the damage, including continuing to finance the Palestinian Authority.

Simply put, pressure Netanyahu and try to bribe the Arabs (who will — as always — pocket the money and do what they want).

But I’ve saved  the best for last. Apparently the Times’ editorial writer fancies himself a diplomat, choosing to express himself with careful ambiguity. Stuck in incongruously as the next-to-last paragraph we find this:

It is astonishing that this late in the game, America and Europe remain divided over some aspects of a proposal for peace talks — like Israel’s demand for recognition as a Jewish state.

There is no hint about which side the Times thinks we should take! Is the demand for recognition just another example of Netanyahu’s ‘excuses’ to avoid negotiations? It’s not hard to guess. I would be astonished myself to find the Times pro-recognition. The rest of the editorial makes its position very clear.

Ten years after 9/11, the pressure to crush the last outpost of Western civilization in the Middle East is greater than ever, and the New York Times is firmly on the dark side of the conflict.

Technorati Tags: NY Times, Israel, Palestinians, Obama, UN

It is distressing when an honest person, or newspaper, speaks the truth and is bullied into taking it back.

On July 25, the Jerusalem Post published an editorial (“Norway’s challenge“) about the terrorist attacks in Oslo and Utøya, Norway.

The editorial — which at least for now still exists on the Web, but is no longer linked from the Post’s editorial pages — was quite clear in denouncing the murderous actions of Anders Breivik. But it included this:

While it is still too early to determine definitively Breivik’s precise motives, it could very well be that the attack was more pernicious – and more widespread – than the isolated act of a lunatic. Perhaps Brievik’s inexcusable act of vicious terror should serve not only as a warning that there may be more elements on the extreme Right willing to use violence to further their goals, but also as an opportunity to seriously reevaluate policies for immigrant integration in Norway and elsewhere. While there is absolutely no justification for the sort of heinous act perpetrated this weekend in Norway, discontent with multiculturalism’s failure must not be delegitimatized or mistakenly portrayed as an opinion held by only the most extremist elements of the Right…

The challenge for Norway in particular and for Europe as a whole, where the Muslim population is expected to account for 8% of the population by 2030 according to a Pew Research Center, is to strike the right balance. Fostering an open society untainted by xenophobia or racism should go hand in hand with protection of unique European culture and values.

Europe’s fringe right-wing extremists present a real danger to society. But Oslo’s devastating tragedy should not be allowed to be manipulated by those who would cover up the abject failure of multiculturalism. [my emphasis]

Negative reactions were immediate, with many accusing the paper of supporting Breivik’s goals or providing a “justification” for Breivik’s terrorist act.

Judge for yourself. It seems to me that the editorial makes a valid point: here you have a despicable individual committing a despicable act, who irrationally believed that his action would solve a problem. Does this imply that there is no problem, or, worse, that no one is allowed to mention the problem lest they inspire similarly deranged individuals to terrorism?

Let’s turn it around. There is Arab terrorism against Israel, supposedly because ‘Palestinian’ land is ‘occupied’. Are those who believe this and say it publicly therefore responsible for Arab terrorism? There are quite a few Norwegians that would fall into this category.

(Indeed, Svein Sevje, the Norwegian Ambassador to Israel has actually gone much further, and said that terrorism against Israel is caused by ‘occupation’! He has not apologized).

In other words, Breivik’s beliefs and actions are irrelevant to the question of whether or not Muslim immigration poses a problem to European culture. Despite Breivik, perhaps there is something to worry about. And this is what the Post editorial said.

But the Post apparently couldn’t take the heat, and unlike the Norwegian Ambassador, issued a craven apology — I can visualize the editor squirming as he wrote it — for writing the truth:

The editorial squarely condemned the attack, saying that “as Israelis, a people that is sadly all too familiar with the horrors of indiscriminate, murderous terrorism, our hearts go out with empathy to the Norwegian people.”

However, it also, inappropriately, raised issues that were not directly pertinent, such as the dangers of multiculturalism, European immigration policies and even the Oslo peace process.

To my reading, these issues were quite pertinent — especially in view of the vicious and irrational media reaction that followed the attack.

And that’s not all. Two columnists for the Post, Caroline Glick and Barry Rubin, also offended Norwegian sensibilities, apparently in part because they referred to Sevje’s obnoxious remark, and prompted an official response in the Post from Espen Barth Eide, Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway. Eide claimed that Sevje was misquoted, although his rendering,

many Norwegians see the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territory in the context of the occupation and religious extremism, and that this view would probably not change after the events in Oslo and on Utøya

is only more obscure (“in the context of”) and still implies that terrorism is a result of ‘occupation’.

In the case of Rubin, Eide quoted him out of context and severely distorted his meaning. And this is after — well, I’ll let Rubin tell it in his words:

After receiving a lot of positive mail from readers around the world, suddenly I started getting a few outraged letters from Norway angrily denouncing me for “spitting in the face” of those killed and calling them terrorists.

Astonished, I assumed it was simply because these people in Norway were understandably sensitive on the issue and their English isn’t as good as they thought since they misread my article.

Then I discovered that a newspaper in Norway translated — without my knowledge or permission — alleged parts of my article into Norwegian. It claims that I wrote:

“Ungdomsleiren han (Anders Behring Breivik) angrep var i bunn og grunn en terrortreningsleir.”

This means in English: “The youth camp (Breivik) attacked was basically a terrorist training camp.”

I should add though that the newspaper did link to the English-language original so anyone could check it, if they were good enough in both languages. But the newspaper also told its readers what to think. Every time I referred to Hamas or other groups as terrorists the newspaper put that in quotation marks, as if that is how it was in the original.

And it helpfully “explained”: “Rubin er avslørt som langvarig Israel-lobbyist, som får betalt for å fremme Israels sak.” And that means: “Rubin is exposed as a longstanding lobbyist for Israel, who is paid for promoting Israel’s cause.” There are a number of untruths in that sentence, but I think you catch the drift.

Nice. Rubin has promised to respond to Eide in Sunday’s edition of the Post. I look forward to it.

Update [5 Aug 2011 1429 PDT]: Rubin’s response is up, here.

Update [9 Aug 2011 0945 PDT]: And Glick strikes back here.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Norway, Jerusalem Post, Caroline Glick, Barry Rubin

Khaled Meshal (left), Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas PM Ismail Haniyeh pray in Saudi Arabia after agreeing to a cease-fire following the Gaza coup of 2007

Ethan Bronner of the NY Times created a sensation yesterday (or  the Times’ headline writer did) when his piece titled “Hamas Leader Calls for Two-State Solution, but Refuses to Renounce Violence” appeared.

Hamas calls for a two-state solution? Do you mean that Hamas has recanted its charter and now believes that Jews can be allowed a sovereign state of any size somewhere between the Jordan and the Mediterranean?

Hardly.

Bronner writes,

“The whole world knows what Hamas thinks and what our principles are,” [Hamas political leader Khaled] Meshal said in an interview in his Cairo hotel suite. “But we are talking now about a common national agenda. The world should deal with what we are working toward now, the national political program.”

He defined that as “a Palestinian state in the 1967 lines with Jerusalem as its capital, without any settlements or settlers, not an inch of land swaps and respecting the right of return” of Palestinian refugees to Israel itself.

In other words, today we want a Judenrein Palestinian state in the territories, plus an Arab majority in Israel. Tomorrow?

Asked if a deal honoring those principles would produce an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. Meshal said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

In other words, no.

He added: “When Israel made agreements with Egypt and Jordan, no one conditioned it on how Israel should think. The Arabs and the West didn’t ask Israel what it was thinking deep inside. All Palestinians know that 60 years ago they were living on historic Palestine from the river to the sea. It is no secret.”

Asked whether in his pact with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, he agreed to end violent resistance, he replied: “Where there is occupation and settlement, there is a right to resistance. Israel is the aggressor. But resistance is a means, not an end.”

In other words, all of the land belongs to them, and if it is ‘occupied’, they have the right to make war — even if we concede all of their demands!

According to this version of the ‘two-state solution’, Israel agrees to the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the territories and promises to take no action against Hamas. Hamas explicitly does not agree that a sovereign Jewish entity has a right to exist, but will stop active aggression until it feels strong enough to defeat Israel. Meanwhile, Israel agrees to allow millions of hostile Arabs to enter its country, end the Jewish majority and — undoubtedly — precipitate a civil war. What a deal!

Bronner continues,

He noted that Hamas had entered into cease-fires with Israel in the past and that it was ready to do so in the future. There is one in effect right now. But his broad principle, he said, was this: “If occupation [from the river to the sea — ed.] ends, resistance ends. If Israel stops firing, we stop firing.”

Hamas has offered cease-fires before, on the model of Mohammad’s famous hudna with the Quraysh tribe of Mecca, the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. The treaty called for a period of ten years of peace, like the cease-fire proposal made by Hamas official Ahmed Youssef in 2006. In the case of Hudaybiyyah, Mohammad found a pretext a year later, conquered Mecca and slaughtered the Qurayash.

I should add that previous short-term hudnas have foundered when Hamas, exercising its peaceful rights to dig tunnels under the border or plant explosives near the fence in order to execute operations to kidnap Israelis, has run into IDF opposition.

The concept of a ‘two-state solution’ has always been ambiguous. Even the supposedly ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas has never agreed to recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people, nor give up the claim to ‘right of return’. For the Arabs, the ‘two states’ have always been ‘Palestine’, where Jews can’t live, and a new Arab majority state where some Jews may live — for a while. This is quite different from the idea of ‘two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace’. The addition of Hamas to the Palestinian Authority makes the contrast even more stark.

Regarding Bronner and the Times: it’s hard to think of a more misleading title for this article.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Hamas, Khaled Meshal, Ethan Bronner, NY Times