Mitchell brings good news and bad

July 27th, 2009

Israel’s President Shimon Peres met with US negotiator George Mitchell today, and if we can take Mitchell at his word, there is good news and bad news. First the good news that Mitchell understands that concessions on one side only are not enough:

“Israel has taken meaningful steps in the West Bank,” said Mitchell, alluding to the dismantling of 25 checkpoints, thereby allowing the Palestinians greater freedom of movement and easier accessibility to various destinations.

Referring to his visits with other leaders in the region, Mitchell said that he had conveyed the message that steps must now be taken by Arab States to fulfill the promise of the Arab peace initiative.

It’s also good news if the US understands the Arab (or Saudi) Initiative as a starting point for negotiations and not simply a ‘take it or leave it’ offer, because as it is it’s no more than a demand for Israel to accept all responsibility for the conflict and pay all of the price for a doubtful ‘peace’.

The bad news, though, is that the US is either remarkably naive about the Palestinians or doesn’t care about the ultimate outcome as long as Israel withdraws from the West Bank:

Anticipating the day when there would be “a state of Palestine” Mitchell envisaged that it would prove to be “a responsible neighbor to Israel…”

In discussions with US Security Coordinator for the Palestinian Authority and Israel General Keith Dayton, Peres said, Dayton had estimated that the Palestinians should be capable of self government by 2011.

The only kind of self-government the Palestinians are capable of today is the kind they have in Gaza, where Hamas has established totalitarian rule and maintains a state of war with Israel. Today,

  • The Fatah faction whose ‘security’ forces Gen. Dayton is arming and training has no popular support among Palestinians, who prefer Hamas if anyone.
  • Even this ‘moderate’ faction refuses to accept that Israel belongs to the Jewish people, demands a ‘right of return’ for Arab ‘refugees’ and in fact is now saying that they don’t really recognize Israel and that ‘armed struggle’ will continue. Some responsible neighbor they will be!

Dayton may think that by 2011 his pet Palestinians will have enough men under arms (the Palestinian authority already has a huge percentage of its population in police and ‘security’ forces) and enough weapons to challenge Hamas, but politically nothing has changed — except the rise of Hamas — since Arafat.

In fact, given the hostility to Israel displayed by Fatah officials when speaking in Arabic, and their political weakness vis-a-vis Hamas, one wonders whether arming them is a good idea.

Peres understood that US President Barack Obama has his own agenda calling for new facts on the ground at a somewhat quicker pace. But speaking with the hindsight of experience, Peres told Mitchell: “You need patience.”

President Kennedy made an audacious promise when he said that the US would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade, and of course we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of this event. Kennedy took the risk of appearing foolish because his competent scientific advisors told him that it was possible.

President Obama also promised that he would do something of monumental significance by ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He is risking more than Kennedy did, because the consequences of bad policy in the Mideast may be a lot worse than just looking foolish. As we have so recently seen, mistakes lead directly to dead Israelis and Palestinians.

But unlike Kennedy, either Obama does not have competent advisors in this area or what they are after is something other than peace with security for Israel.

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Offensive anti-Zionism in Berserkeley

July 27th, 2009

It seems that the Berkeley Daily Planet (yes, that’s what it’s called), the only daily newspaper in the city of Berkeley, California — which the late SF Chronicle columnist Herb Caen aptly referred to as ‘Berserkeley’  — has several contributors, staff members, and a whole raft of letter-writers who like to bash Israel and Jews.

My first response is to say “why am I surprised about this in a place containing the greatest concentration of extreme left-wing nutjobs in the known universe?”

Typical San Francisco Bay area demonstration

Typical San Francisco Bay area demonstration (courtesy zombietime)

But  if you live in Berkeley or you just want to support some local people who are tired of Planet owner Becky O’Malley using the local paper as a platform for ugly rhetoric, you can sign a petition here calling for “integrity and responsibility” on the part of the paper. And you can read about the controversy here.

My opinion is that it is not worth worrying about whether O’Malley and her friends’ anti-Zionism is or is not antisemitic — it is objectionable enough as it is.

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Nazi tactics at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

July 26th, 2009

In a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that there is a Jewish Zionist conspiracy, the San Francisco Jewish Film festival has chosen to show the film “Rachel”, about Rachel Corrie, the young American woman who lost her life in the unwitting service of Palestinian terrorism in 2003. Worse, they are hosting a talk by Rachel’s mother, Cindy, who has become a tireless campaigner for the Palestinian cause.

Cindy and Craig Corrie receive portrait of Rachel from the Original Terrorist

Cindy and Craig Corrie receive portrait of Rachel from the Original Terrorist

In response to an outcry from those who felt that a Jewish festival should not promote the destruction of the Jewish state, the festival organizers agreed to let pro-Israel activist Dr. Michael Harris speak for a few moments before the film.

When you watch the video of Dr. Harris’ talk, note the audience reaction as they try to shout him down. The forced laughter is a particularly juvenile manifestation of what is reminiscent of nothing so much as Nazi tactics of the pre-war era.

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Update [27 Jul 2009 0830 PDT]: You can read Dr. Harris’ own account of the event here.

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NPR anchor displays shocking ignorance

July 26th, 2009

NPR anchor Robert SiegelI was making a salad for dinner on Thursday (July 23) when I heard the following, on the NPR program “all things considered”:

The Israeli Ministry of Education has banned reference to the Arabic the word ‘nakba‘ from Arabic-language Israeli textbooks. The word ‘nakba‘ means ‘the catastrophe’ and it resonates for millions of Palestinians; it’s the word that they use to describe the creation of the state of Israel, when millions of Palestinians became refugees at the end of the 1948 war.

The anchorperson, Robert Siegel,  should know better, being an alumnus of one of the best high schools in New York, Stuyvesant HS. Of course he also went to Columbia University, where — if he were a student today — he could take courses from tenured professors Joseph Massad, who decries “the renaming of ‘Palestinian rural salad (now known in New York delis as Israeli salad)’ as an example of Israeli ‘racism'”, and Nadia Abu El-Haj, who — while rejecting “a positivist commitment to scientific methods” and accepting a methodology “rooted in … post-structuralism, philosophical critiques of foundationalism, Marxism and critical theory and developed in response to specific postcolonial political movements” — still expects us to believe her contention that Israeli archeologists deliberately falsify findings to show a Jewish provenance in the land of Israel.

To get back to the story, only about 650,000 Arabs became refugees in 1948 (reasonable estimates range from 550,000 to 700,000). The millions who today claim refugee status have ‘inherited’ it from their parents, or simply claimed it in order to get on UNRWA’s dole.

There is much to say about refugees, more than I can present in a blog post. Here are a few things for you and Robert Siegel to keep in mind when you think about Mahmoud Abbas’ demand that all 4.5 million have a ‘right of return’ to Israel:

  • The “1948 war” actually began in 1947 when the Jews accepted the UN partition resolution and the Palestinian Arabs chose to fight. It intensified in 1948 after Israel declared independence and was invaded by armies of five Arab nations. In other words, the Arabs bear responsibility for starting the war.
  • Of the Arab refugees from Israel, there were those that left in anticipation of war (many from of the upper classes of Arab society), there were those who left in response to exhortations from the leadership, there were those who fled as a result of exaggerated atrocity stories (e.g., the Deir Yassin incident in which about 110 Arabs were killed, many of them combatants, and nobody was raped), there were some that fled actual fighting, and there were some — a minority, mostly from hostile villages — who were actually expelled.

Israel launched a “build your own home” project in the 1970s that allotted a half dunam of land “to Palestinians who then financed the purchase of building materials and, usually with friends, erected a home. Israel provided the infrastructure: sewers, schools, etc. More than 11,000 camp dwellers were resettled… before PLO, using intimidation tactics, ended the program.” Israeli authorities contended that had the program been allowed to continue apace, “within eight years every camp resident could own a single-dwelling home in a clean and uncongested neighborhood.” Joel Bainerman, “Permanent Homes for Palestinian Refugees,” Christian Science Monitor, May 26, 1992.

  • UNRWA, the UN organization created specifically for the purpose of supporting Palestinian refugees, provides welfare services which encourage population growth and dependency without moving in the direction of providing permanent homes for refugees — precisely the most destabilizing policy imaginable.

That’s just a beginning.

The ‘nakba‘ concept is part of the Palestinian story that the situation of the refugees today is all Israel’s fault, which Israel should remedy by committing suicide. You can understand why the Israeli Ministry of Education doesn’t want to pay to print textbooks that promote this point of view.

The salad I was making? It was an Israeli salad.

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The road to the solution runs through Tehran and Riyadh

July 25th, 2009

Recently I heard that there will be a local ‘workshop’ that will bring Jews (Israelis and Americans) together with Palestinians, to engage in ‘dialogue’ and listen to each others’ ‘stories’. The idea is that ordinary people all want peace, and if we could understand where the others are coming from then we could get past the posturing and politics and become a force to influence our leaders to move toward a peaceful two-state solution.

Naturally, I don’t support the endeavor and would never participate.

But don’t I want peace? Don’t I think understanding — on both sides — is the key to peace? What could possibly be wrong about a dialogue in which both sides can express themselves? How can I say — as I do — that the very holding of such a dialogue constitutes propaganda for anti-Israel forces? What kind of fascist am I, anyway?

There are a number of problems here, including the fact that the deck is most likely stacked with left-wing Jewish participants who are already anti-Zionist, that the format suggests a moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas, etc. But those are small issues compared with the main one, which is this:

The premise of the workshop is that the conflict is primarily between Israelis and Palestinians. And it follows from this that Israel, which is much more powerful than the Palestinian Authority or Hamas or any other collection of Palestinians, is in control of the conflict. And therefore, the solutions suggested will naturally take the form of Israel giving up land and power, granting the Palestinians their ‘rights’. And the Palestinians in turn will naturally stop terrorism, because after all it is counterproductive in the face of an enemy with F-16s and Merkava tanks. And everyone will live happily ever after.

What’s wrong with this picture? Simply that the Palestinians are not driving the conflict from their side, although they are essential to it. The conflict is actually between Israel on one side and the Arab states and Iran on the other.

The Palestinian side — on which we also find Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and others — is lubricated by the enormous amount of money that the West has pumped into it by our purchase of Arab and Iranian oil. The huge missile buildups in Lebanon and Syria, the persistent rocket attacks from Hamas, the growing nuclear threat from Iran — all of these, and every kind of Palestinian terrorism, are encouraged, supported and financed by the major powers of the Mideast.

Suddenly, Israel — which is highly vulnerable because of its small size and concentrated population — doesn’t look so comparatively powerful. Yes, it has a nuclear deterrent, but the day it will be used will certainly be a day too late.

In my opinion, this is the most important single idea to get across to  those — like the organizers of workshops like this — who tend to see the conflict as a question of rights, and as something which can be fixed by more understanding between Israel and the Palestinians.

So I will not help support the idea that the problem is in essence a conflict between these peoples by sharing falafel and hummus with my Palestinian cousins, some of whom I’m sure do want peace, at least on some terms.

Instead, I’ll be suggesting that the road to the solution of the conflict today runs through Tehran and Riyadh rather than Jerusalem.

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