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From the Gulf News (George S. Hishmeh):

My niece, Irene, called me a few days ago indignant that some of her American friends, including some Jews, keep describing typical Arab foods such as falafel, hummus and shawarma, among others, as Israeli…

My first impulse was to tell my niece that Israel was almost 60 year old and these food items have obviously existed long before then.

Actually, these foods predate the arrival of the Arabs in the region as well. Chickpeas (the main ingredient in hummus and falafel) were eaten by the ancient Egyptians. And the roasting of lamb on a spit (shawarma) probably goes back to prehistoric times.

So why are these Arab foods, George? Is there any reason to doubt that the Jews that lived in Land of Israel before the founding of the state — indeed all the way back to Abraham — ate these foods?

They are Middle Eastern foods, and Jews are no less Middle Easterners than Arabs, to the latter’s great and oft-times violent chagrin.

Technorati Tags: Jews, Arabs, Middle East, hummus, falafel, shawarma

With all due respect to Anne Carr and to the bloody intractability of the conflict in Northern Ireland, Ms. Carr doesn’t get it:

A Northern Ireland peace activist told an audience of Arabs and Jews at the St. George Hotel in east Jerusalem on Friday, “If we Irish can solve our conflict, then so can anybody.”

Anne Carr, who opened the first integrated (Protestant-Catholic) school in Northern Ireland in 1986, was delivering the keynote address at a conference organized by the Bereaved Families Forum as a part of its “Knowing it the Beginning” project, which aims to bring together families who have suffered loss from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so that they can better understand each other…

“We have to work out a way of living together, respecting the dignity of each other, not creating a humiliating peace so we can feel contentment with our lot, and not resentment with our lot,” she said. — Jerusalem Post

There are of course some similarities between the Troubles and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in particular the employment of terrorism. But there are also fundamental differences.

The nationalists did not view the unionists as interlopers who must be killed or expelled from Ireland, as most Palestinians view the Jews in Israel. If they had come to power, they would not have ethnically cleansed the Protestant neighborhoods. The Roman Catholicism practiced in Ireland does not call for Catholics to hunt down and kill Protestants.

Although the British government may have sided with the unionists, they do not fire rockets into Catholic areas. Northern Ireland is not surrounded by hostile nations who wish to destroy the state using chemical or nuclear weapons, supposedly to help the Catholics.

There are not four or five million hostile Catholics in camps located in the Irish Republic who are not permitted to live normal lives, but are kept in a permanent state of limbo until they can be introduced into Northern Ireland to change the demographics (and incidentally, to wreak violent havoc).

The question in Northern Ireland is how the area will be governed. Will it be a part of the UK, the Irish Republic, or something in between? In the Mideast, one asks whether the Jews will keep their state or, after a bloody war which may become nuclear, the survivors will be dispersed again throughout the world.

The idea that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can be solved if only the two sides could sit down and talk enough is seductive but false. This is in part because the Palestinians have a wholly unrealistic view of what they are entitled to in any settlement. The Palestinian position is based on a narrative which distorts historical facts, perverts justice, and does not admit that they bear any responsibility for their actions.

I said ‘in part’ because the other part is the fact that in the Middle East the Palestinians are just the tip of the iceberg. Israel is under siege by the entire Arab world, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia, who are pumping large sums of petrodollars into support for Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas which directly confront Israel, and which shortly will be at war with her. There is nothing even remotely analogous to this in the Irish example.

So, while I am certainly in awe of the Irish, who may have ended a conflict that has been going on in some form or other for centuries, I suggest that there’s more than “working out a way of living together” that has to occur before there will be peace in the Middle East.

Technorati Tags: Northern Ireland, Anne Carr, Israel, Palestinians

Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel’s Chief of Staff since January 22 of this year doesn’t talk to the press. And he doesn’t allow his officers to do so, either. Or talk to politicians. And he prefers that they do not go to cocktail parties.

Ashkenazi himself wouldn’t have time for parties, since he normally arrives at his desk on or before 7 AM and doesn’t get home to his family until 11 PM.

His predecessor, Dan Halutz, tried to execute surprise inspections of various units. But somehow, the word would get out, and Halutz would arrive at a base and find everything in abnormally perfect order. Ashkenazi does this too, but he tells no one where he is going until he gets into his car and gives instructions to his driver.

Ashkenazi was drafted and joined the Golani Brigade in 1972. He fought in the Sinai in 1973, the Litani campaign in 1978, and the 1982 Lebanon war, where he commanded the forces that captured Beaufort Castle, Nabatiyeh, and Jebel Baruch — some of the fiercest fighting of the war. He has held almost every position there is in the IDF ground forces, and has a remarkable memory for detail. So it is impossible to bullshit him. He knows how everything is supposed to be, and who is responsible for everything.

Dan Halutz, an Air Force man, thought that it was possible to explain logically why something should be done and it would happen. Ashkenazi, a ground combat soldier, understands that it is also necessary for every individual to know with 100% certainty that failure to follow orders and procedures will be noticed and there will be consequences for the responsible party.

Combat soldiers tend to like him. His immediate subordinates learn quickly that they need to be very well prepared at all times.

It would be unfair to call his style ‘management by fear’, because this implies a degree of capriciousness, a situation where no one knows where the lightning will strike next. In the case of Ashkenazi, it’s more like management by total knowledge. There’s nothing arbitrary at all: whoever screws up will pay the price. Don’t screw up and you have nothing to worry about.

Unfortunately, the IDF let a lot of ‘little’ things slide in the period between the two Lebanon wars. We saw then that little things add up, but they are not sliding any more.

In my opinion, it’s very probable that Israel will see war on an even greater scale than 2006 within the next year or so. It looks to me as though Israel has put the right man in place for a very tough job.

Technorati Tags: Gabi Ashkenazi, Israel, IDF