Intransigence is the best policy

June 16th, 2010

Caroline Glick (in a piece that is scary, even for her) wrote,

The Mavi Marmara demonstrated that on the one hand the IDF cannot enforce its blockade of Gaza without the use of force. On the other hands [sic] it taught Israel’s enemies that by forcing Israel to use force, Iran, Turkey and their allies incited a UN-EU-US lynch mob against Israel.

One thing that is clear about the lynch mob is that its members don’t believe the story that Israel acted ‘disproportionally’ or worse. It is certainly 100% clear to the intelligence services of the US and the European nations that the incident was a trap set at the highest levels of the Turkish government.

Therefore, we have to conclude that the incident is being used in the West to advance predetermined strategic goals: to prevent Israel from defending herself, to force more concessions to the Palestinian Authority, and — in the case of the European players (and we hope not the US) to legitimize Hamas.

Israel has already agreed to loosen restrictions on goods being transferred to Gaza and the US, in return, has made a statement that it really would be nice of Hamas to return Gilad Shalit to his family. Of course the US has zero leverage on Hamas. The loosening of restrictions will probably have little direct effect on security, but does reduce Israel’s bargaining power with regard to Shalit. So on balance, Hamas wins and Israel loses.

The UN’s investigation of the incident will certainly be a Goldstoning, and will be used in the same way as the Goldstone report. The announcement of Israel’s own investigation — even including foreign participation — predictably had no effect on UN plans.

The lesson for Israel is that it should not have tried to placate its critics for the Mavi Marmara episode. They already know Israel was attacked. Their complaints are disingenuous.

The appropriate response would have been to go on the offensive, to call for an international investigation of Turkey, and to offer to reduce restrictions on Gaza only in response to the release of Gilad Shalit.

Now that the flotilla has been shown to be effective,  there will be more flotillas — from Turkey, Iran, etc. — and there may be more attempts to provoke Israel. As Glick points out, this could be enormously dangerous, even providing pretexts for war. The thought of war involving Iran and Turkey in addition to the usual suspects of Hamas, Hizballah and Syria is more than just ‘scary’.

Such an eventuality would be very bad for everyone in the Middle East, and indeed for the whole world. And I think that all of the major players know this.

Which bring us to what I think is the real threat facing Israel today. Despite the bellicose rhetoric coming from Turkey, Iran and Syria, all would prefer to avoid a shooting war. Along with the Europeans, Russia and the US, they want to ensure that oil and natural gas keep flowing, although Iran would not be averse to the oil costing a bit more. And despite its size and relatively competent military, even Turkey would be badly mauled in a war with Israel.

In my opinion, Iran, Syria and Turkey want to bring the region to the brink, but not push it over. The real damage will be done by the more ‘responsible’ powers, in response to the crisis that the radical states will provoke.

I expect that they will spring into action to promote ‘peace in our time’: a mostly-Western diktat that will all but dismember Israel.

The sponsors of a latter-day Munich compact will not want to take Israel’s interests into account any more than Czechoslovakia’s were in 1938, but in the US it will be sold as an effort to ‘save Israel’ and world peace. I expect that the Turks, Iranians, etc. will make maximal, even crazy, demands and the US, Russia and Europeans will offer to split the difference, with the result being doubleplus ungood for Israel.

My suggestion is that Israel should respond to all of this — the flotillas and the diplomatic attacks — with strength, not weakness. Policymakers should keep in mind that acquiescence to demands will only bring further demands. Compromises will never be enough; there will always be another compromise required.

But Israel has a few more cards that it can play than Czechoslovakia did. For one thing, it is still the most capable military power in the Middle East.

Israel is always falsely being accused of intransigence, when in fact it is overly accommodating. I am suggesting that the best policy is real intransigence.

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Why the blockade must be maintained

June 15th, 2010

As a result of the attack on Israeli naval commandos by Turkish mercenaries, there is increased pressure on Israel from the US and other international actors to loosen restrictions on movement of people and materials into and out of Gaza.

  • Israelis are viciously attacked by Hamas supporters while enforcing a legal blockade of the hostile Hamas regime
  • Therefore, the blockade should be ended in accordance with Hamas’ demands

Yes, I know it’s illogical. But never mind. That’s logic in the age of delegitimization: Israel is forbidden to defend herself, no matter what.

Israel has a good reason to keep access to Gaza tightly controlled. Here’s what Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel’s Internal Security Service told the Knesset Foreign Affairs Committee this week:

“Lifting the naval blockade on Gaza would constitute a very dangerous development for Israel…”

Diskin said terror organizations in the Gaza Strip “continue to arm themselves, both through production and smuggling.”

He noted that Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Strip have some 5,000 rockets with a range of up to 40 km. Most of the rockets were produced in the Strip, but dozens of projectiles were smuggled into Gaza as well, said Diskin, adding that the terror groups also have a few rockets which are “capable of reaching Gush Dan [the Tel Aviv area].”

“Even if vessels headed for Gaza will be inspected by foreign security personnel, this (lifting blockade) will be a major security breach,” said the Shin Bet chief…

“Lifting the naval blockade would constitute a very dangerous development. A port in Gaza would be a major security breach, despite the option of inspecting vessels prior to their arrival.”

“Sinai attracts al-Qaeda (terrorists) who come from Iraq through Jordan. Terror abettors from Gaza also make their way (to Sinai), as do people who are aiding Hezbollah. The Sinai Peninsula is a vast area, and it is very difficult to control who enters it…” –  YNet

His words have already been borne out. During the recent crisis, Egypt opened its Rafah crossing to Gaza (the subject of a recent NPR news report that I wrote about recently). And here is the result:

IDF Spokesperson:

On Wednesday morning (June 16), IDF forces identified a group of armed men infiltrating Israel from the Egyptian border, approximately 40 km north of Eilat. Israel Army Radio reports that one of the men was shot and killed by the IDF forces.

The other suspects left an explosive device on Israel territory and returned to Egypt. The explosive device is currently being identified and neutralized by IDF forces. The entire process is being carried out in cooperation and coordination with Egyptian forces.

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Why I have a problem with NPR

June 14th, 2010

By Vic Rosenthal

The following is on its way to the program director of KVPR, my local Public Radio station.

Dear Jim,

As you might remember, I stopped supporting your station in 2006, after becoming outraged at NPR’s biased coverage of the war in Lebanon. But a couple of years ago I “rejoined” because, after all, I listen to it.

So here’s my latest complaint (you can read a few of my previous ones here, here, here, here, and especially here).

NPR provides arguably the best, most complete radio news coverage widely available in the US. But it consistently portrays events in the Mideast with a steep anti-Israel tilt. And since one of the most important sources of funding for NPR is the fees paid by local stations, those of us who have a problem with NPR also have a problem with the local stations.

For example, this morning’s newscasts carried a piece by Peter Kenyon, reporting from the Egyptian side of the border between Egypt and the Gaza strip.  Kenyon slanted his story in several ways:

  1. He used the Emotive Bias Technique to ensure that the Arab side of the story would stick with the listener while the Israeli side would be forgotten
  2. He used the Selective Omission Technique to mislead without explicitly lying
  3. He quoted false statements without comment or challenge

Let’s look at some of it.

DEBORAH AMOS (host): The Gaza Strip doesn’t get many high profile visitors since the Islamism group Hamas took over three years ago and Israel imposed a blockade. But the territory is now back in the spotlight. International pressure has been building on Israel to end, or at least ease, the blockade. The head of the Arab League Amr Moussa was in Gaza yesterday to express solidarity with the people of Gaza. NPR’s Peter Kenyon traveled to the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, and sent this report.

PETER KENYON: Gazans were heartened by Amr Moussa’s visit and were glad to hear him repeat the Arab Leagues call for lifting the blockade.

Mr. AMR MOUSSA (Leader of Arab League): (Through translator) The position of the Arab League is clear: the siege must be ended. The Palestinian people deserve to be supported, not only by the Arab states, but by the whole world now.

KENYON: But on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border yesterday, international support wasn’t translating into much more than a trickle of Gazans making their way into Egypt. Those who did make it through, like Mohammed Awul Anane(ph), said the rest of the one-and-a-half-million Palestinians in Gaza were watching their economy and their society suffocate under the Israeli sanctions.

Kenyon and Amos have suggested that the “trickle” of traffic is due to the Israeli blockade. But this is the border with Egypt. What is omitted here is that Egypt has also closed its border with Gaza, because Hamas is aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is trying to subvert the Mubarak regime and install a radical Islamist one. These are the same folks that murdered Anwar Sadat for trying to make peace. This counts as selective omission.

The listener is also left with the assumption that Gazan society is ‘suffocating’, because  a Palestinian says so. But actually there is a huge amount of international aid reaching Gaza, plus a vibrant smuggling economy. Nobody is suffocating, but Kenyon doesn’t comment on this false implication.

Mr. MOHAMMED AWUL ANANE: (Through translator) How can I describe it? There’s no other word for it but tragedy, a tragedy. People are living as if they’re already in their graves.

KENYON: Israel defends the blockade, saying it has no intention of letting Gaza’s Hamas rulers acquire new weapons and military-style fortifications so they can resume firing rockets at southern Israeli towns. Israeli officials have also defended their decision to send an elite naval commando unit to raid a Turkish-registered aid ship two weeks ago. The raid left eight Turks and a Turkish-American dead and sparked an outcry that has evolved into mounting international pressure to at least ease the blockade and perhaps allow in items such as cement and steel to help rebuild Gaza’s shattered infrastructure.

This is wonderful! First, notice how the Palestinian complaint is put in the mouth of a real person, who speaks with emotional intensity, while the Israeli position is presented in one dry sentence. It’s a paradigm case of the Emotive Bias Technique.

Now look at the statement about the interception of a Turkish ship attempting to break the legal blockade of Gaza. Kenyon omits the most important facts about the incident, which are that the Israeli boarding party was viciously attacked by a group of thugs who boarded the ship separately from the other passengers, who did not undergo security checks, who were well-organized and armed with pipes, knives, axes, slingshots and other weapons, wore gas masks and ceramic vests,  who took over the upper deck of the ship and attempted to tear the Israelis to pieces as they landed (you can read more about it here and here or watch the video here).

Saying that the raid “left eight … dead” obscures the fact that the Israelis acted in self-defense — the dead were killed while trying to commit murder. That’s one hell of a selective omission!

The piece continues:

KENYON: Twenty-five-year-old Mohammed Howaja(ph) has a slightly dazed look as he steps onto the Egyptian side of Rafah. It’s the first time in his life that he’s set foot out of Gaza, he says, and he’s off to Alexandria to study law. When asked how he got approval to leave, he said as with many of his fellow travelers, he paid someone off.

Mr. MOHAMMED HOWAJA: (Through translator) Five times this month I tried to get a permit, and each time I was turned down. Finally, I brought money. I paid in order to come out.

KENYON: When asked how many Gazans would leave if they had the chance, he immediately said all of them. And it was hard to tell if he was joking.

Keep in mind that this is the Egyptian border. He paid Egyptians, Hamas people, or both; not Israelis. And we are not sure that he wants to leave because of the blockade: maybe he’s secular, Christian, a Fatah supporter, gay, or any number of things that would make life under Hamas quite literally impossible.

It concludes:

At the moment, support for the Palestinians of Gaza seems to be on a rare upward trend, while analysts say Israel is looking increasingly isolated. Israel’s defense minister canceled a trip to Paris – in part, officials said, because of difficult questions he might face. But as far as 35-year-old Palestinian Essam Ellion(ph) is concerned, Gazans have a long and forlorn history of trying to live on kind words of solidarity, and it’s not working.

Mr. ESSAM ELLION: (Through translator) As far as I can tell, it’s just empty talk, just words piled on words. I’m without hope right now. There’s nothing real, nothing we can touch or see on the ground when it comes to ending the siege.

KENYON: These Palestinians who have just walked out of a tiny, overcrowded coastal strip where 80 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, say that kind of pessimism may be one of the few things growing in Gaza these days.

Israel’s Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, canceled his trip to Paris not because of  the possibility of “difficult questions,” but rather because anti-Israel activists were planning to embarrass him by filing trumped-up “war crimes” charges against him in French courts.

Regarding the long-suffering Gazans, keep in mind that all Hamas would have to do to end the blockade (it is not a ‘siege’, there is plenty of food, medicine, etc. getting in) is to stop the continuous attempts to infiltrate and tunnel into Israel in order to kill Israelis and take hostages, to stop firing rockets into Israel — yes, they are still doing that — and last but not least, release Gilad Shalit, who has been held incommunicado in an underground bunker by Hamas for four long years.

Jim, I think this makes it clear why I have a problem with NPR. I am suggesting that you and the station take it up with the network, because they certainly don’t care what I think.

But I hope that you do.

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Neighborhood Bully

June 14th, 2010

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A Bob Dylan fan site has blocked users inside Israel from accessing the site in what the site operator calls a cultural boycott in response to Israel’s interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla.

Users with an Israel IP address are directed to webmaster Eyolf Ostrem’s blog.

His message to Israeli users reads: “As a contribution to a cultural boycott of the state of Israel — a long overdue reaction to the absurd inhumanity that is demonstrated in its actions and that goes against everything that I and this site stands for — access to dylanchords has been blocked for visitors from Israel…”

Ostrem, a Danish music expert, continues the discussion on his blog, calling Israel “a fascist, belligerent regime.”

Neighborhood Bully, by Bob Dylan

Well, the neighborhood bully, he’s just one man
His enemies say he’s on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully just lives to survive
He’s criticized and condemned for being alive
He’s not supposed to fight back, he’s supposed to have thick skin
He’s supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He’s the neighborhood bully

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He’s wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He’s always on trial for just being born
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize.
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, the chances are against it and the odds are slim
That he’ll live by the rules that the world makes for him
’Cause there’s a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He’s the neighborhood bully

He got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don’t get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won’t be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He’s the neighborhood bully

Well, he’s surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn’t hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He’s the neighborhood bully

Every empire that’s enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He’s made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one’s command
He’s the neighborhood bully

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract he signed was worth what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He’s the neighborhood bully

What’s anybody indebted to him for?
Nothin’, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits to feed
He’s the neighborhood bully

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully

Copyright © 1983 by Special Rider Music

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Antisemitic craziness for beginners

June 13th, 2010

Question: which Hamas leader wrote the following this past week?

… the full lunacy and vileness of this latest Israeli war crime is becoming clear to all who can read. Israeli propaganda has worked overtime, based on the kidnapping of the activists, isolating them from the whole world, confiscating all their material evidence, on top of the brutalities of maiming and murdering many of them. This meant that for the last few days, only the the voice of Israeli propaganda was available to the international media. Fictional narratives, more complex than most Hollywood scripts, were woven and reinforced by what must be the largest propaganda machine anywhere.

Of course, this matter [sic] little now. The facts are now coming out, and many inquiries will be conducted and will establish the full horror of this murderous piracy. The world will not be fooled by this anymore…

The resolution of this conflict will only be reached by the annulling Zionism and its racism, its military and ‘civil’ racist machineries, the total removal of all settler communities, and the return of Palestinian refugees, as well as the payment of full compensation to all those who were hurt by the Zionist enterprise over the last few decades.

Give up?

Haim Bresheeth

Haim Bresheeth

No Hamas leader, not even a Turkish Hamas supporter! It was an Israeli Jew and a child of Holocaust survivors, Professor Haim Bresheeth (h/t, Israel Academia Monitor), Chair of Media and Cultural Studies, Deputy Dean of School, University of East London, formerly of Sapir College in the Western Negev — not far from Sderot, a favorite Hamas target. Maybe the din of Qassams landing addled his brain (in case you think he makes sense, the truth about the boarding of the Mavi Marmara is here, here and here).

Bresheeth is the author of several books, including one actually titled “Holocaust for Beginners,” (also translated into Turkish and Croatian!) and numerous articles.  Here is another example of his writing, from in article in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram (2006):

A sorry tale of collusion emerges from almost every leading newspaper, every hour of quality radio, every current affairs television programme. It is well known that many Jews front numerous media outlets and discourse on the continued Middle Eastern saga of pain, violence and propaganda, yet no one seems to think this strange. There are no Arabs, or even influential Muslims, in similar positions in the British or American media. That in itself is worrying, but would have been less so if we had examples of a wide variety of positions taken by influential Jews — if some were, for example, doing better than mouthing Israeli propaganda, and imaginatively representing the Palestinian, Arab or Muslim perspective, or being sometimes critical of Israel’s positions, especially when they are so obviously not just immoral, but counter- productive. That day has not yet come, it seems.

So the Jews control the media, there are no anti-Israel Jews among Jewish news personalities, and there are no Arab or Muslim commentators heard? The mind boggles.

In 2002, after literally hundreds of Israelis were killed in a series of bloody suicide bombings which followed Arafat’s rejection of the Camp David peace proposals — it seemed at times that every few days there was a new atrocity, 20 or 30 dead — Israel embarked on Operation Defensive Shield, in which the IDF entered the Palestinian-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria and rooted out the terrorists. One of the most effective counter-terrorist operations ever, it ended the string of bloody attacks.

Naturally, there were howls of protest and condemnation from Palestinians and their supporters who saw their best weapon taken from them. Bresheeth did his part, comparing Israel’s self-defense to Nazi genocide  in an article called “The ghetto is calling“:

At this time Jews who remember the Holocaust should stand up and be counted. They should clearly say that they are totally against Israeli occupation and totally for liberation of the Palestinians from the Israeli yolk [sic]. If the future life of people in the region is dear to them, they should help Israel to free itself from the diseased and debilitating cycle of brutality that they have plunged themselves and the Palestinians into. They should clarify that Israel has not got them on its side, and is not acting in their name. It is not the Palestinians who need to be under pressure after all these years of atrocities, but the short-sightedness of the Israeli public, and its refusal to face reality.

What must come now are sanctions of every kind, withdrawal of help and cooperation from Israeli organisations, up to the point of sending an international force into the region to force the evacuation of the territories. The time has come to take a stand.

If, despite the pressing need to force an end to the violence by ending the occupation, nothing will be done — well, we know well enough what will follow. We have seen it time and again on our screens in the former Yugoslavia. Do we want to wait until all is lost? Our Palestinian friends are calling out to us. Please, let us not abandon them as European society of the 1940s abandoned my own family to their fate.

But that’s nothing. Bresheeth wrote an article in 1989, which now appears on the viciously antisemitic “Radio Islam” web site, called “Zionism and the Holocaust.” In it, he argues that German Zionists colluded with the Nazis, that “Zionism agrees with the basic tenet of anti-Semitism, namely that Jews cannot live with non-Jews,” and that Zionists helped the Germans exterminate the Hungarian Jews. This one, and the site that it appears on, is so vile that I won’t link to it. Google it if you must.

Anti-Israel Jews aren’t news, especially when they are Israeli academics. But Haim Bresheeth is notable because he is also an antisemite, and because the rubbish that he writes is far out even for its genre.

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