The Argumentative Jew

Obama Caves Again

2009-09-23T00:04:00.004-04:00

CNN is reporting that Obama has dropped his demand to halt all settlement construction. Considering that Obama caves on everything, this was pretty predictable.

I have commented on the report below (in red) while also pointing out the bias in the CNN reportage.

The full CNN report is available here:

But the United States and Israel have publicly disagreed on Israeli plans to build more housing on land the Palestinians regard as theirs. Previous Obama administration demands for a freeze have been ignored by the Netanyahu government. (Ignored? Disagreeing is not the same as ignoring. The Obama administrations demands went counter to previous US govt agreements and guarantees.)

Abbas has so far rejected resuming talks with Israel until the Jewish state halts all settlement building in the occupied West Bank and in predominantly Palestinian East Jerusalem. Arab states also have balked at the U.S. request to take confidence-building measures toward Israel until Israel freezes settlement construction. (This was never a show-stopper until the twits in this administration made it one.)

Sitting with Netanyahu and Abbas, Obama softened his regular language on a settlement "freeze," saying that Israel has had meaningful discussions about "restraining" settlement activity. (Israel = 1, Obama = -5, Palestinians = 0)

"But they need to translate these discussions into real action on this and other issues," he said.

"Obama told Abbas that he couldn't get the settlement freeze and promised to keep trying, but that it shouldn't be a condition for talks and it was time to move on," one Palestinian aide to Abbas said.

Several U.S. officials said that Obama told Abbas that although the U.S. believe a settlement freeze would create a better atmosphere for talks to begin, the lack of one should not be used an as excuse not to talk.

"Let's not have the perfect be the enemy of the good," Obama told Abbas, according to the officials. (In other words, the Palestinians were the ones refusing to negotiate.)

"It's been apparent for some time that the Israelis were going to fall short of what is necessary on the settlement freeze," one senior U.S. official said. "But our view is let's get to negotiations and settlements will be addressed within those final status issues" (See previous comment.)

A senior Israeli diplomat said Israel agreed to not building any new settlements, no outward expansion of existing growth and to only build for "natural" growth within existing settlements. He said Israel also agreed not to encourage Israelis to move to settlements, which would increase the population. (i.e. what has been going on for a decade now.)

"A complete settlement freeze wasn't physically or politically possible, especially in the absence of any Arab or Palestinian concessions," the Israeli diplomat said. "There was a time the gaps had significantly narrowed, but now they were starting to widen. The administration recognized, rather than have them widen further, we should start negotiating." (It was precisely this imbecilic administration that caused the gaps to widen by giving the Palestinians false hopes and reneging on previous agreements while focusing on non-issues.)

The Palestinian aide to Abbas said Obama's failure to secure a settlement freeze has weakened him in the eyes of the Palestinian delegation, because it casts doubt on his ability to move Israel during final status negotiations. (Yeah, and the fact that he could not get even one lousy concession from the Arabs weakened him in Israeli eyes. That and North Korea, Iran, Russia, Afghanistan, etc. Besides, this assumes that Israel has to be moved, kicking and screaming into making concessions, when the reality is that the Palestinians have absolutely no track record of making concessions or sticking to their commitments.)

The Palestinians did win an important point, however, with Obama making clear that the peace talks would not start from scratch, which Netanyahu had favored. Rather the talks would take into account progress made in previous negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, the sources said. (Yeah and the US should take a look at the guarantees that the Bush administration gave Israel. They should also be held to that.)

The Israeli diplomat said that Israel would "take into account" the previous negotiations, but stressed his country's longstanding position that "nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to." (This is what is known colloquially as "negotiations". If you walk away from the table, as the Palestinians did, you can not expect to come back and get everything you already rejected on the first go around.)

Getting Prickly About Israel

2009-08-06T00:44:00.003-04:00

Though I never seem to have time to blog, apparently I have time to conduct online battles against anti-Israeli propagandists. Since I have been exchanging back and forth entries with people at this link, I figured I would share it with you all.

Here is just a sample of the debate that has been raging there:

A Palestinian named Hussein began with:

"Dear Mr. Grossman,

As a Palestinian man, I cannot help but sympathize with your situation. The tragedies that have befallen both our peoples are no laughing matter, and have yet to be fully addressed by those involved. The Europeans have yet to truly apologize for their involvement in the Holocaust (even France's faux-absolution of the matter is disgraceful), as is the case with the illegal immigrants that subsequently raided Palestine.

I call it "Palestine" because that is what it was called when my grandfather was there. It is stated on his Ottoman- and British- issued IDs, and was the home he always spoke of until his recent death. I think Ben Gurion said it best when he rhetorically asked why the Palestinians had to pay for the Europeans' atrocities. Then again, he still didn't show remorse.

But that is the past. What I fail to understand right now is the twisted logic within which the world operates, namely: how is it that a fresh convert to Judaism in Indiana has more of a right to be in the Holy Land than those who were expelled from their land (and still hold legal ownership to it)?

A state founded on the premise of religious entitlement is bound to fail. With that in mind, here's to a comprehensive, one-state solution.

And if not, may we senselessly slaughter one another until the victor retains what is left of this desolate land."

I responded with the following (the parts in quotations refer to Hussein's letter):

There were more than a few "dozen" thousands at the turn of the century. In fact, based on Ottoman census records, Jews were the largest community in Jerusalem (as well as in Tiberias and Safed).

"It is the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants who had no ties whatsoever to the land"

Herein lies the rub. The Jewish people have well over a THREE THOUSAND year tie to the land. Until Palestinians and Arabs publicly recognize that Jews are an INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, there will never be peace.

"or what they subsequently leeched from the US and Europe."

Really? How much do the Palestinians leech from the US and Europe? Ask UNRWA which supports the Palestinians with US and European money (so that they can have kids and live on the dole.) By law almost ALL of the US money "spent" on Israel stays in the US. It is basically a subsidy for the US military industrial complex.

"One can't "become" ethnically Pakistani no matter how hard he tries. I could, however, become a Jew in a year's time."

Good luck with that! Obviously you have no conception how hard it is to convert and be accepted by the Israeli rabbinate. I can assure you it will take you much longer than a year. In any case, every country can decide its immigration policies based on whatever criteria it wishes to use.

PS PAK-istani is a completely made up identity cooked up in 1934.

Here is Hussein's response:

Dear Seraph,

"There were more than a few "dozen" thousands at the turn of the century. In fact, based on Ottoman census records, Jews were the largest community in Jerusalem"

Jerusalem housed between 8 and 20 thousand Jewish people. Your argument is nonsensical. The total Jewish population in the entire region of Biblical Palestine was of about 50,000 to 70,000. Yes, in my book, that is a "few dozen thousand"- four to six dozens, actually.

As for the Native American claim, here goes:

Nothing justifies what happened to the indigenous Indian people of America. That being said, the remaining survivors capitulated and accepted the pilgrims' terms. We Palestinians have refused to do so. We are still here, voicing our opposition to our own Shoah.

Moreover- and more importantly, I must add- your theory of Jewish presence in the holy land is deceiving at best, and malicious at worst. A few dozen thousand Jewish people cannot squat and "save their brothers' seats" until they decide to come back 2000 years later.

Being Jewish in and of itself is not a valid certificate of ownership. Any nutcase can form a religion and claim the region of his choice as his "homeland". That doesn't make him 'entitled' to it.

Fact of the matter is that over 80% of Israeli Jews are the descendants of illegal immigrants who raided Palestine either to escape persecution in Europe or evade the wrath of the Arab countries. The Palestinians who were kicked out of their homes had owned and lived in these lands for at least several hundred years.

Moreover, many of the "Palestinian Jews" in the Holy Land converted to Islam since the 1200's, a fact documented by a notable Israeli historian. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/arti...

On a different note, have you heard of the squatter's rights in the US? A man living on an unclaimed property for 10 years can legally claim that property as his own. We've been there for 1900 years. I think we qualify as the land's legal owners. And today's Israelis can't make the same claim for themselves, as we are still demanding our Right of Return.

Oh, and one last thing: if Charles Taylor, the Liberian dictator, can convert to Judaism, I doubt it's as hard as you say it is.

And my retort:

It is more than malicious to compare the situation of Palestinians to the Shoah, it is a complete distortion of history on innumerable levels. When you uncover millions of dead Palestinians and gas chambers, then you can talk about a Shoah.

Based on your argument, then there really is no reason for Israelis to make peace with Palestinians. Instead we should opt for the complete capitulation of the Palestinians.(I guess there are some things we can agree on. I.e. no peace without victory.)

As long as you continue to deny the undeniable - that Jews are indigenous people with a longstanding and unshakable bond to Israel there will always be conflict.

To say that Jews abandoned their claim to their land clearly shows that you know next to nothing about Judaism. Moreover, to compare Judaism to some made up religion is just rude.

You may find this to be an inconvenient fact, but there was nothing illegal about the migration of Jews to Israel. It was enshrined under the League of Nations Mandate in 1922 and again by the UN in 1948.

Frankly, it is the height of audacity for the Palestinians, a people who NEVER ONCE in history had an independent state, to compare their situation to the Jewish people, who ruled Israel for over a thousand years.

PS Charles Taylor did not UNDERGO conversion. He simply announced one day that he is Jewish, but noted that he is still a practicing Christian! I'm sure the Chief Rabbinate in Israel is already scouting out a villa for him in Tel Aviv. LOL!

And again Hussein:

"Frankly, it is the height of audacity for the Palestinians, a people who NEVER ONCE in history had an independent state, to compare their situation to the Jewish people, who ruled Israel for over a thousand years."

Name one Jewish ruler over Palestine in the last 1800 years (pre-1910). One. Seriously...

That's what I thought.

The fact that Palestine was part of a supranational entity (the Ottoman empire) does not mean that it was not a distinct nation. Actually, in 1955, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg (and subsequently Germany) debated whether or not they should do the same. They ended up forming an economic community (the EEC), and decided to forgo the former option. Now, does that mean that France would no longer exist if it is a part of a larger political entity? Your denial of our statehood is pathetic- and visibly flawed.

"there was nothing illegal about the migration of Jews to Israel"... The fact that the League of Nations didn't oppose it doesn't mean it was legal- or moral. The international community said almost nothing when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed... were those justified?

"To say that Jews abandoned their claim to their land clearly shows that you know next to nothing about Judaism."

So are you really trying to sell me that your immigrant parents' ancestors left 1800 years ago with the intention of coming back in two millenniums? Wow, talk about patience.

"It is more than malicious to compare the situation of Palestinians to the Shoah"... I'm perfectly sorry- I didn't know tragedy had a minimum casualty threshold. Again, please excuse my 'foolish' comparison of the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians over 2 months with the murder of 6 million Jews over 6 years.

"As long as you continue to deny the undeniable - that Jews are indigenous people with a longstanding and unshakable bond to Israel there will always be conflict."

Actually, no. As long as the Holy Land is infested with ignorant, brainwashed behemoths (like yourself), then there definitely will be no peace.

Only in Israel will a nation PAY internet commenters to lie about their identities and defend their home state for propaganda purposes.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-374...

Because God forbid that people actually find out about your lunacy.

My response:

What a joke! Name one Palestinian RULER.

To compare "Palestine's" role in the province of Damascus to the EU, is a spurious argument. There was never self-rule in "Palestine", whereas under the EU there was always a local government. In Ottoman times the Turks called the shots.

"The fact that the League of Nations didn't oppose it doesn't mean it was legal- or moral. The international community said almost nothing when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed... were those justified?"

What are you talking about? The League of Nations voted in 1922 to CREATE the British Mandate on the sole condition that it would become the Jewish State. Other Mandates were also created (e.g. Syria, Iraq). To say that Israel has no legal right to exist is the same as saying that those countries have no right to exist.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Mandate_... )

"So are you really trying to sell me that your immigrant parents' ancestors left 1800 years ago with the intention of coming back in two millenniums? Wow, talk about patience."

We are a very patient people. My ancestors did not emigrate, they were forced out by the Romans. They had every intention of going back and said so, repeatedly and fervently, three times a day, every day in their prayers and commemorated it on days like today, Tisha B'Av when we fast to remember our exile.

"I'm perfectly sorry- I didn't know tragedy had a minimum casualty threshold. Again, please excuse my 'foolish' comparison of the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians over 2 months with the murder of 6 million Jews over 6 years."

There is no threshold to PERSONAL suffering, but you simply can not compare the Shoah to what the Palestinians have suffered. Otherwise, why not call 9-11 a Shoah? Or a car accident a Shoah? It has been not six, but SIXTY years since Israel was created and still no millions dead. Besides, "thousands" of Palestinians did not die in Gaza and a plurality of those who did, died with a weapon in their hand and a Hamas mask on their face. It's hardly a Shoah if they are shooting back at you. It's called self-defense.

"Only in Israel will a nation PAY internet commenters to lie about their identities and defend their home state for propaganda purposes."

I wish someone would pay me to refute your lies, but since it is Tisha B'Av it is a memorial day in Israel and ain't no one on the clock. You, on the other hand, "doth protest too much." Perhaps you are being paid by a Muslim "charity"?

Oh, and Taqiyya to you too.(http://www.islamreview.com/articles/lying.sht... )

Hussein Again:

"What a joke! Name one Palestinian RULER."

I just said that Palestine was part of a larger, supranational political entity. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a distinct state. My late grandfather was born in 1914, and his Ottoman ID clearly states he is "Palestinian".

"Other Mandates were also created (e.g. Syria, Iraq). To say that Israel has no legal right to exist is the same as saying that those countries have no right to exist. "

No country whatsoever has a "right to exist as a state of a certain religion". In other words, just as Iraq has no "right to exist as a Muslim state", and the Philippines has no "right to exist as a Christian state", Israel does NOT have a "right to exist as a Jewish state". The latter would mean that it can use whatever means necessary- including deportation and ethnic cleansing- to preserve that "right".

"My ancestors did not emigrate, they were forced out by the Romans. They had every intention of going back"

Well, first: Happy Tisha B'Av. Second, your ancestors had every chance to go back from the 1200's till 1910 and still didn't do so. After Saladin's final seizure of Jerusalem, Jews were allowed to live freely and unhindered in the Holy Land. Hell, you could have come WALKING and it still wouldn't have taken you 710 years to get there. Spare me.

"There is no threshold to PERSONAL suffering, but you simply can not compare the Shoah to what the Palestinians have suffered."

http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis...

Actually, if Matan Vilnai can threaten a Shoah against the Gazan people, I definitely think that the Nakba of 1948 can be considered one as well.

"Oh, and Taqiyya to you too."

I think it's sad that people like you resort to baseless religious-bashing to move the light away from Israel. Not once have I criticized the Jewish religion (although the Talmud does give me plenty of cannon fodder). So kindly do me the same justice.

What I find heart-wrenching is that a single minute event in history (namely: "who started it") can frame an entire people's perceptions on right and wrong. The Jews believe the Palestinians wrongfully attacked them during their early 20th century Aaliyah, while the Palestinians see it as a natural response to them being shoved out by hundreds of thousands of unwanted illegal immigrants.

Me Again:

Hussein wrote:

Palestine was part of a larger, supranational political entity. That doesn't mean that it wasn't a distinct state.

Certainly it does. And not only was it not a distinct state, it was part of the Damascus province (and to this day the Syrians would love to get their hands on it.)

Hussein wrote:

My late grandfather was born in 1914, and his Ottoman ID clearly states he is "Palestinian".

Yeah and my mother was born in 1946 and her birth certificate says Palestine. Does that make me a Palestinian too? According to UNRWA Palestinians are those who happened to be in the Mandate from 1946-8. This includes lots of Arabs who ILLEGALLY immigrated to the Mandate for work. Probably about 100,000 "Palestinians" including people such as Yasser Arafat's family.(Of course he was born in Egypt.)

Hussein wrote:

No country whatsoever has a "right to exist as a state of a certain religion".

Really? So are you telling us that Hamas does not seek to create a Muslim state? Will you not recognize an independent Palestine under Hamas leadership? Will you oppose it? Benny Morris tackled this canard well in the following article: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/full...

Hussein wrote:

The latter would mean that it can use whatever means necessary- including deportation and ethnic cleansing- to preserve that "right".

If you want to talk about deportation and ethnic cleansing, talk to the Jordanians, they are the ones currently revoking citizenship for Palestinians. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.a...

Hussein wrote:

"Well, first: Happy Tisha B'Av. Second, your ancestors had every chance to go back from the 1200's till 1910 and still didn't do so.

That's nonsense, they made every effort to do so. Perhaps you have not heard of David Alroy (ca 1160), Sabbtai Zevi's (1626-1676), the Vilna Gaon's (1720-1797) students, Judah ben Solomon (1798-1878), Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) and many, many others, but they certainly ACTIVELY encouraged Jewish migration to Israel and many did (often by walking).

Hussein: Actual ly, if Matan Vilnai can threaten a Shoah against the Gazan people, I definitely think that the Nakba of 1948 can be considered one as well.

Me: I see, so based on your logic, if someone suggests that a "catastrophe" (which is exactly what shoah, as opposed to HaShoah means) will befall the Palestinians if they keep indiscriminately firing rockets on the civilian population that a holocaust/genocide HAS happened in the past? Sounds a little loopy to me. Then again, every single day Palestinians preach hatred and murder, so I guess it must make sense to you.

Hussein wrote:

I think it's sad that people like you resort to baseless religious-bashing to move the light away from Israel. Not once have I criticized the Jewish religion (although the Talmud does give me plenty of cannon fodder).

First off, it is not baseless. Muslims are religiously sanctioned to lie, especially when it comes to war. Secondly, if you have something to say about the Talmud, bring it on. I am sure there will be more than a little that can be said about the Koran and the Hadiths. Third, I am sorry if I do not play the role of the good Dhimmi very well, but I do not intend to pipe down just because you say so.

"Palestinians see it as a natural response to them being shoved out by hundreds of thousands of unwanted illegal immigrants.

The Palestinians shoved themselves out. Even Abbas recently admitted this. See: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite... Also: http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/07/arab-responsi...

Turns out you guys are the ones who chose to emigrate.

Again, if you want to see the continuation of this exchange, or perhaps, add your voice, then: http://www.topix.net/forum/source/chicago-tribune/TL2EUA01TRKR7UO77/p2

Obama's First Test?

2008-11-29T19:01:00.004-05:00

It is probably no suprise that I did not vote for Obama in the recent presidential elections here. Like most everyone else, I found his youth, inspiring background and eloquence refreshing. However, I was worried that he was inexperienced and naive with regards to the nature of the threat that the world faces from ideological extremists and hard-nosed realists.

Though I did not vote for him, I admit that I was proud of America for showing the world that neither his skin color or foreign sounding name barred him from serving in the highest office in the land. Indeed, it could be reasonably argued that this helped him in many ways, a fact that no doubt has led to a great deal of consternation among those who are convinced that America is a racist and islamophobic society.

As the attacks on Mumbai over the past three days clearly demonstrate, this is unfortunately not enough for those committed to their radical causes. Several commentators have noted that in many ways, this is Obama's fist real test, i.e. the one that Biden famously predicted (See Here, Here and Here for example). Since he is clearly in no position to actually do anything at this point as the President elect, I thought it would be interesting to see if his comments might betray his sensibility regarding these heinous terrorist acts. Personally, I think that they do. Just compare Obama's statement vs that of Russia's President Medvedev:

"President-elect Obama strongly condemns today's terrorist attacks in Mumbai," said a statement by Brooke Anderson, Obama's spokeswoman on national security. "These coordinated attacks on innocent civilians demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism. The United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks."

vs.

"The monstrous crimes of terrorists in Mumbai arouse our wrath, indignation and unconditional condemnation," Medvedev said in a message to the his Indian counterpart Pratibha Patil and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "The inhuman terrorist attacks on hospitals, hotels and other public places aimed at killing civilians, taking and murdering hostages are crimes directed against the foundation of civilized society," he said. Russia supports the decisive actions the Indian government has taken to curb terrorist actions and those criminals should be severely punished, Medvedev added.

First of all, I find it odd that Obama could not find the time to make the statement himself. It is after all Thanksgiving weekend. Perhaps he was too busy stuffing himself with stuffing?

Let's Compare and Contrast the language used in each one:

Obama (through spokesperson) vs. Medvedev

strongly condemns vs. arouse our wrath, indignation and unconditional condemnation
coordinated attacks vs. inhuman terrorist attacks
urgent threat vs crimes directed against the foundation of civilized society
strengthen our partnerships vs decisive actions
root out and destroy terrorist networks vs. those criminals should be severely punished

Hmm. Which one seems like they get it? Which one inspires more confidence?

Do you think Medvedev would be willing to run in the US Presidential elections once Putin puts him out of a job?

Yehi Zikhram Barukh - Blessed be their Memory

2008-11-29T18:46:00.004-05:00

I have been closely following all of the tragic events in Mumbai and my heart really goes out to everyone who has suffered because of these terrifying and senseless acts.

I did not personally know Rabbi Holtzberg, but I corresponded with him on several occasions when I lived in India. He was gracious and kind and made sure that I was supplied with Matzohs and seders for the two Passovers I spent in Puri. He even extended a personal invitation for me and my family to come spend the holiday with him in Nariman House. We never did make it and now I truly regret not having had the honor to have personally met him and his selfless wife Rivka in person.

As a father to two young boys, I can also not help but feel anguish at the though of their son Moshe, who was orphaned a day shy of his second birthday, which is today. If any of you wish to help Moshe, it is possible to make a contribution by clicking on this link: Chabad India

The Reason for the End of Reason

2008-06-21T17:00:00.009-04:00

Edward Bernard Glick writes an interesting article on how academia became the way it is:

It's August 1968. Anti-Vietnam War demonstrators have just wrecked the Democratic national convention in Chicago and ruined Hubert Humphrey's chances to become President. So what did these Marxist demonstrators and their cohorts elsewhere do next?

They stayed in college. They sought out the easiest professors and the easiest courses. And they stayed in the top half of their class. This effectively deferred them from the military draft, a draft that discriminated against young men who didn't have the brains or the money to go to college. That draft also sparked the wave of grade inflation that still swamps our colleges. Vietnam-era faculty members lowered standards in order to help the "Hell No, We Won't Go" crowd.

So now I get it! Basically, a bunch of self-indulgent leftists radicals with an agenda took over and destroyed any semblance of thought or standards.

Forty years have passed since the 1968 Democratic national convention. During that time, American academia has been transformed into the most postmodernist, know-nothing, anti-American, anti-military, anti-capitalist, Marxist institution in our society. It is now a bastion of situational ethics and moral relativity and teaches that there are no evil people, only misunderstood and oppressed people. American academia is now a very intolerant place, As Ann Coulter, who has been driven off more than one campus podium because of her conservative views, has put it, "There is free speech for thee, but not for me."

Though I really can't stand Ann Coulter, she is right on this one. All is relative, no "truth" (always in quotes) exists, yet their utterances are pearls of wisdom and anyone else is wrong or stupid (or both). These folks regularly get themselves all worked up into this kind of pretzelled logic.

I think of these folks as the CTD Crowd (and no, CTD does not stand for cliterodectomy). It stands for "Curse the Darkness" - the only thing that they know how to do. This is what they call "Critical Theory" (!) and sadly, this is what passes today for reasoned thought.

After too many years in the CTD camp, I am happy to report that I am finally with the life-affirming LAC Crowd (and no, LAC does not stand for Legal Aid of Cambodia). Rather, it stands for "Light a Candle" - something that is kind of hard to do if you are debating whether or not fire is something that should ever be endorsed. After all, so many people have burned themselves with fire in the past.

Then again, as the geniuses will be quick to point out, there really is no such thing as darkness. It's ALL a social construct.

Which Would You Choose?

2008-06-14T02:06:00.008-04:00

Here are two articles that show the difference between living under Palestinian rule and living under Israeli rule.

The first one describes the human rights situation in Gaza over the past year.

Palestinian Mazen Shahin says the torture he suffered in a month spent as a prisoner of the Islamist Hamas in the Gaza Strip was worse than the several years he spent in Israeli jails.
He says he will never forget his time in Mashtal prison: "It was a lot worse than being in jail in Israel," he told AFP at his modest home in Khan Yunis refugee camp in the south of the Palestinian territory.

The Israelis arrested him four times and he spent "several years" behind bars inside the Jewish state, said Shahin, a member of the Fatah movement of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Sadly, the article buys the Hamas propaganda that this was carried out by rogue elements of the security forces and that the public can now complain if they wish. No doubt, those who dare to complain will be given their own private tours of the Hamas penal system. A place where:

He says he had the soles of his feet beaten with heavy electric cables. His captors also made him suffer the indignity of shaving his head and beard.

"They told me I was not a religious person and that I wasn't allowed to pray because God would not hear my prayers,"

By the looks of it, Meshtal prison makes Abu Ghraib look like a sanatorium.

The second article deals with Palestinian collaborators with Israel who now live in Sedorot - the same town that is constantly bombarded by missiles from Gaza. According to the Guardian - a newspaper that rarely if ever has something positive to say about Israel, these collaborators unanimously asserted like "Samir" that:

"I'm very happy that I helped the state of Israel. Here everything is straightforward, not like with the Arabs. Here there is a law and there are rights."

So basically, people prefer to live under a rain of deadly missiles rather than live in Gaza under Islamofascists. Ponder that the next time you hear about how some leftist, "peace-loving" organization or Carterite has expressed their solidarity with the Palestinians. Too bad Rachel Corrie did not live long enough to enjoy the type of hospitality reserved for Alan Johnson and Mazen Shahin.

Friends don't Let Friends ...

2008-05-26T17:45:00.005-04:00

Starting with this election cycle, I have noticed a recurring trope in the left wing's discourse surrounding Israel - the assertion that the Bush administration has hardly been a true friend of the Jewish state. As Jeremy Ben-Ami, the director of the new anti-AIPAC lobby J-Street recently stated in the pages of the Washington Post, the notion that Bush has been the best friend Israel has ever had is no less than a "myth". According to this political savant, this is:

Not even close. The president has acted as Israel's exclusive corner man when he should have been refereeing the fight. That choice weakened Israel's long-term security. Israel needs U.S. help to maintain its military edge over its foes, but it also needs the United States to contain Arab-Israeli crises and broker peace. Israel's existing peace pacts owe much to Washington's ability to bridge the mistrust among parties in the Middle East. So when the United States abandons the role of effective broker and acts only as Israel's amen choir, as it has throughout Bush's tenure, the United States dims Israel's prospects of winning security through diplomacy.

So, Israeli military strength is its diplomatic weakness? No matter that Ben-Ami's interesting algebra has no historical precedent in the Middle East world of realpolitik, he truly believes that a strong Israel is the root of the problem. Worse, he accuses Israel - the only country in the world that would show such restraint when its civilian population is being bombarded on a daily basis - of a diplomatic DUI in its dealings with the Palestinians:

Would a true friend not only let you drive home drunk but offer you their Porsche and a shot of tequila for the road? Israel needs real friends, not enablers. And forging a healthy friendship with Israel requires bursting some myths about what it means to be pro-Israel.

So apparently it is Israeli recklessness and not Palestinian or Arab intransigence that is preventing peace from gushing forth in the Middle East.

It does not take much to see this as none other than a brazen and self-serving attempt to stop the hemorhaging of Jews from the Democratic to the Republican party. As recent polling clearly shows, this is a real concern and may actually be the first time that the Republican party could get as much as 40% of the Jewish vote.

In practice this could mean that Obama's nomination could cost the Democrats "180,000 votes in the state of Florida if we drop 20 percent. It means 35,000 votes in Ohio. God forbid New Jersey's in play, 130,000 votes in New Jersey; 16,000 votes in the small state of Nevada; 25,000 votes in Colorado; 70,000 votes in Pennsylvania"

Yet, the oddest thing about Ben-Ami's argument (aside from the "false consciousness" angle) is that none of the respective parties seem to think that what he is saying has any basis in fact.

For starters, President Bush stated during his recent visit to Israel that, "America is proud to be Israel's best friend in the world." and Israel's President Shimon Peres, someone who would hardly fit the picture of a hawk, "lamented the coming end to Bush's presidency in January, calling Bush's tenure a "moving" eight years."

Even Palestinian President Abbas asserted that Bush is "biased" towards Israel while Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri used less diplomatic language and stated that, Bush was "the leader of evil in the world".

So basically everyone agrees that Bush has been a true friend to Israel. In fact, even Ben-Ami implicitly agrees that Bush is a staunch supporter of Israel, though from his perspective this as a negative and Israel, the only country that to this day has made any concessions for peace, needs to be forcibly pushed into making peace with its neighbors. It should come as no surprise then that Ben-Ami and his organization openly endorse Obama and has gone on record to state that "From our pro-Israel point of view (!), he's right on the money."

This obviously begs the question - Who would you rather have as a friend - a person like President Bush who is committed to Israel's survival and opposed to all Arab attempts to delegitimize Israel or paint it as the source of all problems in the Middle East or those "pro-Israel" types like Ben-Ami and Obama?

The former believes that Israel is drunk on power and that it's strength and success are the root of the problem while Senator Obama has termed Israel a "constant sore" to the Arab world. Do I really need to point out that friends don't call friends "constant sores"?

The Obama Nation's Playbook

2008-05-25T22:55:00.006-04:00

The recent Clinton RFK flap reminds me of the Vilnai comment on Gaza that used the Hebrew word "shoah". Aside from the fact that the meaning of "shoah" as Holocaust is always "Ha Shoah", or THE Holocaust, like most words in any language, "shoah" has several meanings including "catastrophe" and "disaster".

No matter. The Arab reporters of Reuters (Adam Entous and Joseph Nasr) who broke the story took it upon themselves to translate this in the most negative way they could and the world press swallowed it up. Of course no one stopped to consider the chutzpah inherent in appropriating a Hebrew word and then telling the speakers of Hebrew what it really means. Hamas not only lapped it up, but declared this as incontrovertible proof of Israel's Nazi intentions. (e.g. see the Electronic Intifada article on this.)

It does not matter what Clinton meant, the liberal media are doing their part for the cause and the Obaminators have borrowed a play from the Hamas playbook while also doing their best to emulate Soviet-era thought police. Any statement that could remotely have anything to do with their candidate (e.g. Bush's remarks on appeasement) or could somehow be twisted to imply racism is latched onto as paranoid "proof" of the nefarious forces out there.

Unfortunately for Obama, this approach will certainly backfire, as there are few things that cause resentment as being constantly told you must be a racist (e.g. 1, 2, 3) just because you do not support his candidacy. After all, it is possible that someone simply disagrees with his positions. Of course that would just prove that they are "bitter".

Self Inficted Catastrophe

2008-05-08T15:30:00.004-04:00

Prof Ephraim Karsh's definitive and eye-opening article on the Palestinian refugee issue is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the events of 1948. Based solely on documents from that era, many of which have only recently been made available to historians, Karsh shows, what reputable historians have been saying all along - that the Palestinian refugee problem is one that was caused primarily by the venal Palestinian leadership and self-interested Arab parties.

To read the article in HTML.
To read it as a PDF.
To read the fully annotated version.

Which ever way, definitely read it!

Happy Birthday Israel!

2008-05-08T10:23:00.003-04:00

Canary in the Coal Mine

2008-05-04T12:16:00.007-04:00

Israel has often been called the canary in the coal mine - what happens in Israel tends to repeat itself elsewhere, usually sooner rather than later. Ironically, this is no where more true than in the Muslim world. The terrorism that was first tested out on Israeli children is now de rigeur in Baghdad. Suicide bombings - which were unheard of twenty years ago, are now common from Mauritania to Pakistan. The fighting skills that Hamas perfected against Israel was used to throw their brothers off of rooftops and to undemocratically maintain power in Gaza.

Moreover, while countless articles have been written about how the conflict has been bad for Israel, it seems to me the Arabs have fared much worse. Israel remains a vibrant democracy with an enviable economy and a strong legal system. Palestinian society is in shambles. When they remember the Nakba, they do not have to hearken back 60 years, but rather can just look around them. Sure, they blame Israel, but it is they - and not Israel - that has to endure daily suffering at the hands of their own brothers.

The Palestinians - who were once led by the secular PLO and famously included many Christians, has now been replaced by Hamas - which is rapidly weeding out Fatah along with the minuscule Christian community in Gaza. While Israel is roundly attacked for "human rights abuses" Hamas in Gaza has perfected its societal oppression and waiting for the chance to spread it to the West Bank and all of Israel. If it works in Israel, you can be sure this will impact Jordan Egypt and Lebanon.

Though I am opposed to the way Kossovars declared independence, I commend them for instinctively realizing this. Michael Totten, who usually reports from Lebanon is presently doing a series on the Balkans. Recently (April 30), he wrote:

Kosovo is the world’s newest country, and its unilateral declaration of independence is more controversial than the existence of Israel. It should be only slightly surprising, then, that many Kosovars, though most are Muslims, identify to an large extent with the Israelis. “Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land,” a prominent Kosovar recent told journalist Stephen Schwartz. “Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”

So, while columnists the world over are busy eulogizing Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding, they may want to consider also asking about the odds of the Palestinians surviving as one people for another 60 years. Or will the fault lines of Fatah and Hamas, Christian and Muslim, Secular and Religious, and Refugee and those living in the territories, West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Arab and non-citizen Arabs prove too much? The same could be said for most of the repressive Middle East states, where tribe, religion, ethnicity and politics are all regularly suppressed by the totalitarian regimes that rule the region.

Sure, Israel has its societal divides as well, but they are out in the open and are regularly discussed. As New York Times columnist Freedman noted in his book The World is Flat, the difference between India and Pakistan is that in India, when a poor boy looks up the hill and sees a mansion, he says "One day I will grow up and be that man." When a Pakistani boy looks up, he says, "One day I am going to kill that man." The only discussions that occur at present in Palestinian society and Muslim society as a whole, occur at the end of a rifle.

I doubt I will be around in 60 years and don't really know if Israel will be around in 60 years, but am pretty sure that Muslim dictators and the Palestinians should be the most worried right about now.

Administering Silence

2008-04-26T20:47:00.004-04:00

In a predictable and self-serving opinion piece that appeared in last week's Guardian, David Edgar writes of former leftist brothers-in-arms who have left the reservation and dared to think independently. According to him they have contracted the dread disease of conservatism.

As an anthropologist, this would likely be interpreted as an example of "segmentary opposition" i.e. when one group/kin stands in opposition to the other and defines themselves in this way in a typically tribal manner. By declaring his former brothers-in-arms as right-wingers, Edgars he is effectively placing them beyond the pale.

Yet, I think that in reality he is doing something else. He is, as Foucoult would say, "administering silence" - declaring what discourse can be heard and discussed and what can not. By labelling his ideological opponents this way, he is saying that they should not be allowed to be heard anymore.

It is actually quite ironic that quite often the best way to analyse the Left is through the writings of Leftist writers. Yet, the totalizing tendencies of Leftist thought lend themselves easily to their own critiques. Clearly, they are good at projecting.

Melanie Phillips, who is listed as one of the apostates in Edgar's article, forcefully and eloquently responds to his claptrap and comes to the same conclusion. To read her response and the interesting comments, click here.

For the left, to accuse someone of ‘moving to the right’ is akin to claiming they have put themselves totally beyond the moral pale. Anyone tarred with this dread brush instantly becomes an unperson, to be exiled from civilised society altogether and treated as a pariah.

So others on the left who harbour similar feelings of support for overthrowing the tyrant Saddam Hussein or horror at Islamist extremism (which in their innocence they imagine are progressive positions) and who read Edgar’s diatribe wouldn’t think ‘What a berk!’ They would think with a shudder of dread: ‘So would I also be denounced if I were discovered to be thinking this’.

The single most important thing for left-wingers -- what defines them in their own eyes as people of moral worth -- is the fact that they are not ‘right-wing’. For ‘the right’ is a place of unmitigated evil. Only the left is good. So this is how it goes in the left-wing mind.

To be not on the left is evil.
To be not on the left is to be on the right.
Therefore everyone who disagrees with the left on anything is automatically an evil right-winger.

The idea that there can be anything other than left-wing or right-wing – eg ‘liberal’, or ‘not really that interested in political ideology, thanks’, or ‘it’s just common-sense, surely?’ – won’t wash at all. Anything not left-wing is right-wing. Any other explanation is just… well, false consciousness.

So this is what follows.

The left believe a wide range of lies.
Others believe in the truth instead.
Therefore to the left, those people are ‘right-wing’.
Therefore truth is actually a right-wing concept.
Therefore truth is evil.
Therefore truth has to be relabelled lies while lies of course remain unchallengeable truth.

It is no exaggeration to say that, since the vast majority of the media and intellectual class in Britain are on the left, this mindset has quite simply poisoned British public debate and brought us to our current state of suicidal irrationality in the face of an unprecedented global threat. For examples of this pathology, and the viciousness to which it gives rise, see some of the readers’ comments posted under various entries on this very website.

The reflex reaction of a left-winger, when presented with a set of facts which challenge his or her assumptions about the world, is not to ask ‘Is this true?’ but ‘Will adopting this position make me right-wing?’ It’s not just that to adopt such a heresy would risk social ostracism and worse amongst friends and colleagues. More profoundly, the left-winger really does believe that to be left is good and to be ‘right’ is evil.

Fitna and Free Speech

2008-03-26T08:50:00.004-04:00

If you have been living under a rock you may not have heard about the imminent release of Geert Wilders film Fitna. While I personally do not see the utility in deliberately offending a group of people, I agree that we need to vigorously defend our Right to Free Speech.

As Peter Hoekstra, a native of the Netherlands and the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence wrote in a Wall Street Journal article:

I do not defend the right of Geert Wilders to air his film because I agree with it. I expect I will not. (I have not yet seen the film). I defend the right of Mr. Wilders and the media to air this film because free speech is a fundamental right that is the foundation of modern society. Western governments and media outlets cannot allow themselves to be bullied into giving up this precious right due to threats of violence.

No Civilians Killed in Tibet

2008-03-17T10:57:00.004-04:00

It is good to see that based on the news reports we are receiving, NOT ONE Tibetan civilian has been killed by Chinese forces. Contrast that to the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza where it seems that almost everyone killed was a "civilian".

Reuters, which has been particularly clear that Israel primarily kills "civilians" apparently does not believe that the Tibetans who have been killed are, in fact, civilians:

Tibet's self-proclaimed government-in-exile said up to 80 people had been killed in total, but Qiangba Puncog put the figure at 13.

Tsegyam, head of the Tibet Religious Foundation of the Dalai Lama in Taiwan, told reporters that more than 100 people had been killed and about 1,000 injured in the rioting.

The BBC reports that some people have "died". It's not immediately clear if they had a heart attack or succumbed to fright:

The exiled Tibetan government says at least 80 protesters died in the Chinese crackdown.

The According to the Washington Post bodies were "seen". It's not clearly if they were part of a public art performance or injured, or dead. Certainly, it is not clear if they are "civilians":

The Dalai Lama's exile organization, headquartered in Dharamsala, India, since his flight from Tibet in 1959, said Tibetans reported by telephone and Internet that they had seen about 80 bodies after the violence Friday, identifying them as Tibetans killed in the disturbances.

Actually, the only time the news reported that "civilians" were killed was when quoting the Chinese spokesperson who accused the Tibetan protesters of killing civilians. Do you think that this is so that they could justify the mayhem that they have unleashed? I guess that this is to be expected when you allow precisely those people from the places that do not have and do not believe in press freedom to control the message.

Multiculturalism & Dueling Discriminations

2008-03-10T02:51:00.005-04:00

You gotta love Mark Steyn - not only does he get it, he writes in an inimitable verve and style that is hilarious and smart. Here is an excerpt from an article about the competing guilts surrounding Clinton and Obama's campaigns:

Surveying the Hillary-Barack death match, Maureen Dowd wrote: “People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny? Do even Democrats really talk like this? Apparently so. As Ali Gallagher, a white female (sorry, this identity-politics labeling is contagious) from Texas, told the Washington Post: “A friend of mine, a black man, said to me, ‘My ancestors came to this country in chains; I’m voting for Barack.’ I told him, ‘Well, my sisters came here in chains and on their periods; I’m voting for Hillary.’ ” When everybody’s a victim, nobody’s a victim.
Poor Ms. Gallagher can’t appreciate the distinction between purely metaphorical chains and real ones, or even how offensive it might be to assume blithely that there’s no difference whatsoever. But, if her sisters really came here in chains, it must have been Bondage Night at the Mayflower’s Swingers’ Club.
On the other hand, Barack’s ancestors didn’t come here in chains either: his mother was a white Kansan, so was presumably undergoing menstrual hell with the Gallagher gals, and his dad was a black man a long way away in colonial Kenya. Indeed, Senator Obama would be the first son of a British subject to serve as president since those slaveholding types elected in the early days of the republic. As some aggrieved black activist sniffed snootily on TV, Barack isn’t really an “African-American” — unless by “African-American,” you mean somebody whose parentage is half-American and half-African, and let’s face it, no one would come up with so
cockamamie a definition as that.

In this article he makes an excellent point about multiculturalism and sharia creep:

In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

By the way, if you are wondering why his hat says "No Gooks", check out this article.

Mi SheNikhnas ...

2008-03-07T00:49:00.004-05:00

Just last week I was telling a friend how one of the happiest moments in my life was a Purim celebrated over 20 years ago in the company of hundreds of drunk revelers singing at the top of their lungs and dancing round and round in a large circle. That night, for the first time, I experienced an absolute joyous and expansive ecstasy - a type of out of body experience that you usually need to take drugs to induce. Yet, ironically, it was not that I felt limitless and part of infinity, but rather I lost all sense of my own body and felt as if my consciousness was one with the swirling mass.

That swirling mass is Am Yisrael and that place was Merkaz HaRav.

He Stole the Election

2008-03-05T22:25:00.005-05:00

It's funny how history repeats itself as irony and then as farce. I wonder what the Democrats would say if in the general election the Republican candidate won the election because it was decided not to count the votes of Florida and Michigan? What would they say or do if their candidate actually won those states? Well that is what is happening to the Clinton campaign in the primaries. From the New York Times:

Senator Clinton’s advisers were also discussing Wednesday how to add the delegates from Michigan and Florida to her column. The Democratic Party stripped the two states of their delegates after they moved their primaries to January. Mrs. Clinton remained on the ballot in each state (as did Mr. Obama in Florida); she won both.

While Clinton advisers have publicly opposed talk of a “do over” contest in either state, some of her advisers said Wednesday that they were now inclined to support such a vote. They believe that her strength with Hispanics, women and Jewish voters in Florida, and with union workers and women in Michigan, would be enough to overtake Mr. Obama’s advantage with black and young voters in both states.

Mrs. Clinton and her top aides continue to oppose such a do-over, which could deeply split the Democratic Party. The alternative is waiting until July for the party to consider allowing the Florida and Michigan delegates to count at the August convention. But the Clinton advisers who support a new vote said they expected conversations on the issue to intensify in her camp.

Frankly, if the Democrats are dumb enough to choose the candidate that LOST in: California, New York, New jersey, Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Texas, Massachussetts and Tennessee (all states with ten or more delegates), then they deserve to lose.

Remember, the general election is based on the electoral college and a winner take all system. Based on my calculation, Clinton already has 253 of the 270 delegates necessary to become the President to Obama's 176. Of course, those states could go Republican, but why in the world would you choose the guy who could not even carry the big states in the primaries?

Lost Innocence

2008-03-03T23:31:00.006-05:00

I can relate to Yossi Klein Halevi when he says that he is no longer a "guilty Israeli". Like Halevi, I supported the peace process in the 1990s in the hope that I would see peace in my lifetime. I realized that this was a gamble, but when I argued with friends who were more skeptical and less trusting, I would always trumped them by saying, "You make peace with enemies, not with friends."

Yet eight years ago, after the start of the second Intifada I could no longer pretend that among our enemies there was anyone who was sincerely interested in being a peace partner. Admitting that I was wrong was not easy and in retrospect it was a long time coming. Clearly it has taken Mr. Halevi even longer to reach this point.

For those of you who might think that I am happy about Mr. Halevi joining the ranks of the disenchanted and betrayed, nothing could be farther from the truth. Rather, I have long thought that one of the biggest tragedies of the conflict is that the Palestinian single-minded determination to choose violence and incitement over dialogue and concessions has alienated those of us who would be natural allies in finding a just solution and lasting peace.

Several weeks ago, I had an e-mail exchange with a friend who is a member of the ancient religion of Jainism. For those who are unfamiliar with this religion, it is "militantly" non-violent to the point where its adherents cover their mouth and sweep the ground in front of them in order to prevent the possibility of killing any living thing.

When she pressed me on the need for non-violence, I agreed with her in principle that non-violence is always better than violence. In fact, I told her that non-violence must always be the first, second and third choice. Yet at the same time, I noted that it should never be the only choice.

I think that the Talmud best expressed this in the axiom that, "Those who are kind to the cruel, end up being cruel to the kind." (Kohelet Rabah 7:16)

For anyone interested in social trends in Israel the article is a must read. Here are some excerpts:

In the early 1990s, while serving as a reservist soldier in Gaza, I became a guilty Israeli. ... More policemen than soldiers, we found ourselves enforcing an occupation whose threat to Israel's Jewish and democratic values had become unbearable.

Those were the years of the first intifada, the Palestinian uprising, and its great victory was the creation of a substantial bloc of guilt-ridden Israelis ready to take almost any risk for peace. As the Oslo peace process came into being under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the guilty Israeli became the most potent source of Palestinian empowerment. Many Israelis tried to understand for the first time how Palestinians experienced the conflict, in effect borrowing Palestinian eyes and incorporating elements of the Palestinian narrative into our own understanding of history.

By the end of the 1990s, a majority of Israelis were considering previously unthinkable concessions such as uprooting Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and redividing the city of Jerusalem. We moved in this direction anxiously. The Palestinians were already beginning to lose the goodwill of guilty Israelis by then. Under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, their media, schools and mosques inculcated a culture of denial that rejects the most basic truths of Jewish history, from our ancient roots in the land of Israel to the veracity of the Holocaust.

... The result of all this is that today the guilty Israeli has become nearly extinct. Just as we came to realize during the first intifada that the occupation was untenable, so we have now come to realize that peace is impossible with Palestinian leaders for whom reconciliation is a one-way process.

So far, the rockets aimed at Israel have been primitive and mostly terrorize and wound rather than slaughter. But it is only a matter of time before Hamas' allies in Iran and Hezbollah upgrade the rockets' lethal effect. Meanwhile, the psychological damage has been profound: Israelis perceive their government's failure to defend southern Israel as a collapse of national sovereignty. The political fallout has been no less intense: Gaza was a test case for Israeli withdrawal, and the experiment was a disaster. How, Israelis wonder, can we evacuate the West Bank and risk rocket attacks on Tel Aviv and Jerusalem?

Gaza's people are being held hostage to a political fantasy. And the international community is abetting the tragedy. The U.N. actually considers Palestinians to be permanent refugees, to be protected in squalid but subsidized camps even though they live in their own homeland of Gaza, under their own government.

And so we move toward the next terrible round of conflict. This time, though, for all our anguish, we will feel a lot less remorse. Because even guilty Israelis realize that, until our neighbors care more about building their state than undermining ours, the misery of Gaza will persist.

Yes He Does!

2008-02-28T19:50:00.006-05:00

Not surprisingly, few Western newspapers reported this story because they don't believe that Abbas could really mean what he said.

I believe that this denial stems from several factors: 1) A strong desire for things to work out; 2) An inability to appreciate the fact that not everyone in the world shares our humanistic and enlightenment values. This leads to what Salman Rushdie called "soft prejudice" or the inability to believe that the "other" could really mean what they say. It is prejudice because it stems from a patronising attitude. It is dangerous because it inevitably leads to cognitive dissonance.

This, in turn, leads Westerners to not report these stories or to write them off as sops for internal consumption that should not be taken too seriously.

Yet, the very fact that these statements are most often made in Arabic to Arabic news outlets and not in English to Western audiences should actually set off alarm bells.

For starters, it is much easier to lie in a language that is not your mother tongue. Foreign languages simply do not have the emotional resonance and are not as fraught with meaning as one's mother tongue. Anyone who has learned swear words in a foreign language understands this dynamic.

Secondly, the fact that these statements are primarily for internal consumption suggests that Abbas and others who employ this tactic are aware of what they are saying and how it will "play in Peoria"

So, without further ado, this is what the "moderate" Abbas said to the Jordanian newspaper Al Dustur (emphasis mine):

...Abbas said that he is against an armed conflict at this time, but things may differ in the future.

Abbas, a leading figure of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was quoted as boasting about the fact that he was the one to "fire the first bullet of the resistance" back in 1965, adding it was the PLO that taught many around the world "how to resist, when resistance is most effective and when it is not."

"I had the honor to lead… we taught everyone, including the Hizbullah, the ways of resistance. They were all educated in our training camps."

According to al-Dustur, Abbas does not demand of Hamas to acknowledge Israel, but rather wants it to join a government which will negotiate the recognition.

"I demanded that a unity government be formed, to negotiate with Israel… that is what I told Syrian President Bashar Assad – and he backed me up.

"Hamas entered an election based on the Oslo Accords, which recognize Israel. I am not the only one pushing for such recognition, the Arab initiative – which is a consensus in the Arab and Muslim world – calls for it as well."

The Palestinian president also said he objects to Israel's definition as a Jewish State: "We negated the concept in the Annapolis peace conference and it almost ended because of it… they wanted us to state we recognize Israel as a Jewish State in the closing statements, but we wouldn't hear of it."

So, please remind me what exactly is the difference between Hamas and Fatah? Clearly their differences are over tactics and strategy and not over substance.

Time to Start (Re)Producing

2008-02-26T21:24:00.008-05:00

While the Jerusalem Post seems to be heartened by the fact that Jews are the highest earning group in the United States, I think that the findings of the Pew Forum are actually quite discouraging. Jews are now the second most educated group (after Hindus) and Jewish birth rates are the LOWEST for all religious groups.

Aside from the obvious fact that this does not bode well for Jewish continuity in America it brings to mind a group of rich, spoiled people living lavishly in big empty homes.

According to the report the Mormons, followed closely by Muslims are the two groups most likely to have children in their homes. The above photo is of a Mormon family.

Jews are the highest-earning religious group in the United States, with 46 percent of the working population earning a six-digit figure every year, according to a study released this week.

In terms of annual earnings, the only other group to even come close to the average Jewish income was the Hindus, with 43 percent earning over $100,000.

The study, conducted by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life, also showed that, after Hindus, the Jews were the second most educated religious group in the US. 35 percent of Jews were found to have done at least some graduate work, as opposed to 48 percent amongst Hindus.

The survey found that Jews were aligned with the national averages in terms of marital status and divorce rates, but showed that the Jewish birth rate was the lowest among religious groups, with 72 percent of those polled replying that they had no children.

JTA Reports that "Jews are tied with Mormons as the sixth largest faith group, each claiming 1.7 percent of the country’s adult population." How long do you think that will last?

Not Stunde Null

2008-02-22T23:01:00.005-05:00

Stunde Null or "zero hour" is what the moment that the Nazis capitutated is called in Germany. From the German perspective, this reflects the sense that the Nazi era ended and a new era commenced from that moment.

A group of German academics are peddling a "manifesto" that they have written which contends that:

"... German responsibility toward the Palestinians is "one side of the consequences of the Holocaust which receives far too little attention." The paper goes on to argue that it was the Holocaust which Germany perpetrated that brought about "the suffering that has persisted [in the Middle East] for the last six decades and has at present become unbearable."

As I have already argued here in this blog, the notion that Israel was created as a consequence of the Holocaust is historically false. If you are bent on looking for ultimate causes, then the British Mandate from 1922 was set up with the express purpose of establishing a national homeland for the Jewish people. This, in turn, was the result of decades of concerted efforts by many Jews from across the political spectrum to regain our national rights over our land. And this was the result of several hundred years of politcal as well as several thousand years of religious Zionism.

If anything, the Holocaust did two things: 1) It proved definitively that the Bundist notion that rather than run away from our problems it was our responsibility to "Make Europe better for the Jews" was fundamentally flawed and; 2) It added to the sense of urgency on the part of Jews to regain our homeland.

The United Nations, which ALSO passed a resolution creating the state of Israel BASED ON the League of Nations Mandate specifically instructed members not to take the Holocaust into consideration during the deliberations.

So, sorry folks, but this did not start with you, and you should keep your noses out of our affairs.

Dubious Distinction

2008-02-22T10:19:00.007-05:00

According to Phillip Jacobson, who recently spent three days in Sderot and reports on the harrowing experience for the Daily Mail:

Sderot has a unique civic claim: on a rocket-per-head-of-population basis, it is the most targeted town in Israel, indeed the world.
It is more than six years since the first rocket was launched from Gaza.
Since then, well over 2,000 Qassams – named after a fiery Muslim preacher – have landed in or around the town killing 13 people (including four children) and injuring several dozen more. Since the beginning of this year, at least 300 rockets have been fired.

While the media has constantly asserted that the source of Palestinian anger is this, that, or some other Israeli action, it never asserts the reverse. When Palestinians were blowing themselves up on a daily basis, the media did its best to understand the phenomenon. Their conclusion? What did Israel expect when Israel was occupying Palestinian lands? What did you expect, when Israel had so "humiliated" the Palestinians?

Well, since then Israel ended the occupation and an entire Israeli population has had their homes turned into a battlefied. Where are the apologists now? Why is no one prognosticating dire warnings about what this may lead the residents of Sderot to do? Will anyone defend the residents of Sderot if they take the matter into their own hands? Or do they deserve what is happening to them and thus do not even deserve our compassion and comprehension?

The fact that almost no Western reporter has bothered to do what Mr. Jacobson did - spend three days in the line of fire - sadly leads me to the conclusion that this is, in fact, what most reporters think.

Hands-On Judaism

2008-02-21T22:16:00.003-05:00

One of my best Friday night Shabbat meals ever was in Thane, India about 5 years ago. After prayers at the local synagogue, I was kindly invited to dinner and had the unrivalled opportunity to learn more about the small Indian Jewish community.

Even better, I had the chance to eat delicious curried goat! When I asked where they had gotten Kosher goat meat, I was told by my host that he had shechted (ritually slaughtered) it himself earlier in the day.

Now that is what I call hands-on Judaism!

Here is a nice recent article on the Indian Jewish Community in the United States.

Here is an article Indian theater production of Fiddler on the Roof in Hindi!

Have You Heard?

2008-02-19T21:03:00.005-05:00

Here is something that will never make the evening news. From the website Ya Libnan:

The state-run National News Agency reported that Abbas Abbas, 13, was shot and seriously wounded by Syrian border guards ( Hajanah) at the Grand River borderline in north Lebanon. He died later from his wounds at the hospital in
Akkar.

Apparently, Lebanon is trying to get Syria to demarcate their mutual border and the Syrians are not too keen to do so. In fact. only yesterday Syrian troops invaded Lebanon:

The Syrian intelligence forces and Syrian border guards invaded Lebanon yesterday and stormed the house of Hussein Ali Aldedda and fired three bullets at him wounding him in his hand, elbow and hip, before withdrawing back to the Syrian territory according to the Arabic daily Al-Nahar

Aldedda ( 41) lives in the Bekaa region , inside the Lebanese territory near the Syrian border. No explanations were given for the Syrian actions.

Where Up is Down

2008-02-16T23:54:00.013-05:00

Clearly irony is something that is completely lost on the Syrians. The same group of thugs who have most recently systematically killed 10 politicians and journalists in Lebanon are lecturing the world about terrorism and peace. According to Walid al-Moualem, a Syrian government spokesman:

"Whoever wants peace does not commit terrorism..."

If only some of our politicians could be convinced to think this way!

Of course, then he goes on to say:

"The fighter Imad Moughniyah was the target of lots of intelligence agencies. He was a backbone of the Islamic resistance."

Killing an active fighter in the "resistance" can hardly be called terrorism. After all, when a soldier is killed in battle, that is not an act of terror - that is part of their job description.

The attempt to label the act a "crime" is even more absurd:

"As a state, we will irrefutably prove the party involved in this crime and who stands behind it. An investigation is ongoing,"

The real crime is that an individual who was wanted for his crimes by no less than 42 countries was walking freely in Syria.

The notion that he was somehow "off limits" because he was not in Lebanon when he was killed is also really rich. Especially coming from a group that blew up an Embassy and a Jewish Community Center in Argentina and has threatened to repeat these crimes in the near future.

Bush is a Terrorist

2008-02-16T14:14:00.008-05:00

According to Osama Bin Laden's son, his father is no more a terrorist than President Bush. As he points out, his father does not feel that he is killing innocent civilians. This is not because his father is a bloodthirsty madman, but rather stems from his reasoned position regarding the culpability of all Americans. After all, if they pay taxes to the American government they forfeit the right to consider themselves either innocent or civilians.

Worse, as Omar Bin-Laden notes, the American people voted for Bush twice, so what do they expect? That this ignores the minor fact that the team which carried out 9/11 attacks were already preparing in the summer of 2000 - prior to the US presidential elections - is completely inconsequential. Who can argue with retroactive guilt? (Actually I kind of want to agree with him on this one - "Down with the Tyranny of the Time-space Continuum!")

I also really liked the part where he compares Osama to Gerry Adams and the way the "hard-hitting" reporter nods in agreement with him about not only Adams, but about Bush being a terrorist. Check out the video).

You should compare this video with the one he gave a few weeks ago for CNN. In that one, he was interviewed with his well spoken and attractive British wife. They speak about their desire to promote peace by sponsoring a race across North Africa. There is nothing offensive in that video. Unless, of course you find it offensive that Osama Bin Laden's son seems to be living in the lap of luxury and not languishing in Guantanamo.

Coitus Interruptus

2008-02-16T13:43:00.002-05:00

Called "Sex in Sderot", the following link uses humor and shock value to get its point across.

All's Fair in Law and War?

2008-02-14T09:24:00.005-05:00

The next time someone begins to rant and rave about how Finkelstein or Walt & Mearsheimer have been "silenced" by the Israel Lobby, think about Mark Steyn and the many others mentioned in the following article who are really on the front lines defending Free Speech. Here is an excerpt:

The Islamist movement has two wings -- one violent and one lawful -- which operate apart but often reinforce each other. While the violent arm attempts to silence speech by burning cars when cartoons of Mohammed are published, the lawful arm is maneuvering within Western legal systems. Islamists with financial means have launched a legal jihad, manipulating democratic court systems to suppress freedom of expression, abolish public discourse critical of Islam, and establish principles of Sharia law.
The practice, called "lawfare," is often predatory, filed without a serious expectation of winning and undertaken as a means to intimidate and bankrupt defendants. Forum shopping, whereby plaintiffs bring actions in jurisdictions most likely to rule in their favor, has enabled a wave of "libel tourism" that has resulted in foreign judgments against European and now American authors mandating the destruction of American-authored literary material.

Like the commercial airliners that were turned into bombs on 9/11, these legal Jihadis are trying to turn our court system on its head and to use our own laws against us.

A MAJOR PLAYER on this front is Khalid bin Mahfouz, a wealthy Egyptian who
resides in Saudi Arabia. Mahfouz has sued or threatened to sue more than 30 publishers and authors in British courts, including several Americans, whose written works have linked him to terrorist entities. A notable libel tourist, Mahfouz has taken advantage of the UK's plaintiff-friendly libel laws to restrict the dissemination of written material that draws attention to Saudi-funded terrorism.

Of course Saudi Arabia - home to a majority of the 9/11 bombers - has officially been at the forefront of spreading the lie that the Mossad was behind the attacks. Unfortunately, it appears that the Saudi courts are not as open to libel cases. by foreigners. Apparently this is just one more example of the one-way street that the West is expected to traverse in order not to hurt Muslim sensibilities.

Faced with the prospect of protracted and expensive litigation, and regardless of the merit of the works, most authors and publishers targeted have issued apologies and retractions, while some have paid fines and "contributions" to Mahfouz's charities. When Mahfouz threatened Cambridge Press with a lawsuit for publishing Alms for Jihad by American authors Robert Collins and J. Millard Burr, the publisher immediately capitulated, offered a public apology to Mahfouz, pulped the unsold copies of the book, and took it out of print.

Shortly after the publication of Funding Evil in the United States, Mahfouz sued its author, anti-terrorism analyst and director of the American Center for Democracy, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, for alleging financial ties between wealthy Saudis, including Mahfouz, and terrorist entities such as al Qaeda. The allegations against Ehrenfeld were heard by the UK court despite the fact that neither Mahfouz nor Ehrenfeld resides in England and merely because approximately 23 copies of Funding Evil were sold online to UK buyers via Amazon.com. Unwilling to travel to England or acknowledge the authority of English libel laws over herself and her work, Ehrenfeld lost on default and was ordered to pay heavy fines, apologize, and destroy her books -- all of which she has refused to do. Instead, Ehrenfeld counter-sued Mahfouz in a New York State court seeking to have the foreign judgment declared unenforceable in the United States.

Ironically, Ehrenfeld lost her case against Mahfouz, because the New York court ruled it lacked jurisdiction over the Saudi resident who, the court said, did not have
sufficient connections to the state.

The article goes on to cite many other examples of lawsuits aimed at silencing critics. Oddly, neither Finkelstein - who just returned from meetings in Lebanon with Hizbullah, nor Walt & Mearsheimer - who have made a fortune out of being "silenced", have been dragged through courts.

It's All Your Fault!

2008-02-13T13:34:00.005-05:00

The Danish Police uncovered a plot to kill the cartoonist who displayed the above image of the Prophet Mohammed with a turban bomb. There is nothing terribly surprising in this development. In fact, even the local Islamic community is not at all surprised by this. As their spokesman noted:

``We have warned that the situation could get out of control,'' Kasem Said Ahmad, a spokesman for a Muslim organization, the Islamic Community in Denmark, told TV2. ``We want a decent tone between Muslims and Danes. But we maintain our view that the cartoons were provocative.'' (Quoted in Bloomberg)

Nowhere in this statement is there even one iota of self-reflection or (heaven forfend) condemnation of this plot. Rather, Mr. Ahmad clearly believes that the Danes brought all of this upon themselves. Even worse, there is self-righteousness, victimhood, and a not so veiled threat. I am definitely not hearing an appeal to cultural relativism or a spirited defense of Danish national traditions (such as Freedom of Speech).

Of course, this will all be a moot point once Sharia is imposed.

(Hats off to the Danes who have chosen to print the cartoons today in their newspapers to protest this very real provocation.)

Please be Considerate

2008-02-12T10:20:00.000-05:00

I could not help but think of this cartoon when I read in the Telegraph that the Iranian envoy to Spain appealed to Human Rights organizations to show some cultural sensitivity. Specifically:

"Our laws allow for the amputation of the hand that steals. This is not accepted by the West, but the field of human rights should take into account the customs, traditions, religion and economic development," he said in comments reported by the newspaper El Mundo.

"Some laws are needed to preserve the health of society, if not, it would be in danger."

No doubt there will be many cultural and moral relativist that will heed his call.

For those who feel that Sharia is "unavodable", they may want to ponder the fact mentioned in the article that:

Iran has the second highest number of recorded executions in the world after China, according to Amnesty International.

In fact, as Amnesty reported just last month:

As nine women and two men in Iran wait to be stoned to death, Amnesty International today called on the Iranian authorities to abolish death by stoning and impose an immediate moratorium on this horrific practice, specifically designed to increase the suffering of the victims.

Going Whole Hog

2008-02-12T10:03:00.000-05:00

OK, so they are probably not riding around on Hogs in Gaza (mostly because Hamas would not allow such sacrilege). Yet here comes some independent Palestinian confirmation to my earlier contention that some expensive purchases were made by Palestinians while they were in Sinai. Clearly not everyone is poor and starving:

Hundreds of motorcycles were reportedly brought in from Egypt by Palestinian teenagers after the border breach in January. Most of the motorcycles are still unregistered and the drivers untrained and unlicensed.

Sadly,

Abdel Salam Haniya, a traffic police officer in the allied police, said that eight people have died and more than 70 others have been injured since the toppling of the Egypt-Gaza border wall.

Being Conned

2008-02-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

Barry Rubin offers some important insights on how things look and how they play out in reality. He interestingly suggests that the lens through which much of Middle East posturing can be understood is that of the con man. Compare this to what I wrote about Roger Cohen below:

In a con-game, a malefactor gains the mark's confidence in order to rob him. Classic examples include selling swampland as vacation homes or the internet scam of posing as a distressed African official who promises rich rewards in return for a loan.

The victim is fooled by the promise of big gains if he only trusts his partner and gives up his own assets. Contrary to folklore, the best way to cheat someone is not to offer them something for nothing - that's too obvious - but to pledge something dreamy tomorrow in exchange for getting something very real right now.

THE PATTERN goes like this:

Step One. They say: We have been your victims so you must make up for it. Our violence has been due to our grievances. You must deal with the root causes of problems. In short, you owe us big time. Pay up to show you have changed your ways.

A common Western response: Following our usual style of self-criticism and trying to do better, we acknowledge fault and do nice things to build credibility with you. Then you will like us better, trust us more, and make a deal.

Proper analysis: Such behavior not only convinces the Middle East side that the West is weak, scared, and surrendering but it is also taken as an acknowledgment of guilt. Grievance and outrage, in this context, are bottomless pits. Playing this game establishes a terrible relationship along the lines of˜probably the worst thing Shimon Peres ever said - our task is to give, their job is to take. This pattern never gets broken.

Correct response: If you have grievances, have suffered, and root causes must be resolved then it is in your interest to make and implement an equitable, workable deal. You are not doing us a favor by making peace, stopping terrorism, or being moderate. It is in your interest and you must show credibility, too. If it is true that you are so terribly suffering, then you are the ones with an incentive to compromise.
Things are the exact opposite of what you say.

Step Two. The con-game's siren call goes this way: If you only take risks and build confidence through concessions you will gain great rewards.

A common Western response: What do we have to lose? Since we don't remember what happened last time this will probably work. We can alleviate suffering, prove we want peace, there's no harm in talking. We can be the great heroes who brings peace, and so on.

Proper analysis: I do remember what happened the last half-dozen times I fell for this trick. In addition, a careful examination of your ideology, regime interests,
statements to your own people, media incitement, and power structure show me
what to expect: little or nothing.

Correct response: If you won't acknowledge all the times I took risks before and they came back to bite me (Oslo agreement, withdrawal from south Lebanon, withdrawal from the Gaza Strip) and you didn't keep your commitments (or act the way I expected) why should things be any different now? I've proven good faith now it is your turn.

Manchurian or Mensch?

2008-02-11T17:03:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman and Roger Cohen fight it out over Obama on the pages of the New York Times.

In an article titled "Hate Springs Eternal", Krugman accuses the Obama camp of verging on a cult of personality and implies in the process that there is no substance there. Even worse, he compares Obama to President Bush, which in Obamaland (read the article) is probably the worst epithet that he could come up with short of comparing him to Mississippi's civil rights era Governor Wallace:

Why, then, is there so much venom out there?

I won’t try for fake evenhandedness here: most of the venom I see is coming from supporters of Mr. Obama, who want their hero or nobody. I’m not the first to point out that the Obama campaign seems dangerously close to becoming a cult of personality. We’ve already had that from the Bush administration — remember Operation Flight Suit? We really don’t want to go there again.

Cohen, in his article, "No Manchurian Candidate" demonstrates once again that he is not only living in la-la-land, but that he can not help but be patronizing.

I believe Barack Obama is a strong but not uncritical supporter of Israel. That is what the Middle East needs from an American leader: the balance implicit in a two-state solution.

He implies that Israel does not know what's in its own interests and needs armchair intellectuals like Cohen or foreign policy (idealists? novices?) such as Barak Obama to sort it out and put it on the right path. Aside from the fact that this stinks of Marxist notions of "false consciousness" that permeate the "progressive" mindset, Israel has repeatedly demonstrated that if a peace partner emerges it can and will make difficult and painful concessions for the sake of peace. In both the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties Israel gave up hard-won territories for the sake of peace - even though it was clear from the start that it would be a cold peace.

What exactly did the Egyptians give up? Their claim to Gaza? Well they are most welcome to it. Israel withdrew over two years ago and Hamas seems interested in such an arrangement. For some reason the Egyptians have not been so keen.

Cohen is not only implying, but also saying that if only Israel were pressured a bit more by the United States to soften its stance and sign a peace with the Palestinians (at all costs) that the conflict could be brought to closure. This is not only naive, it is discriminatory because it holds Israel to a different standard than it holds its neghbor, and it is patently wrong because it is based on the false premise that Israel, by virtue of its unnatural existence, lacks legitimacy and is the root cause of the conflict. Otherwise, why should Israel be the one forced into making concessions? Worse than patronizing, Cohen's article is offensive.

If this is Obama's position and these are the people supporting him, then you can be certain that if he is elected President, there will be rejoicing in the Arab street the likes of which we have not seen since 9/11. Who knows, perhaps someone will even have the perspicacity to put up a sign that says, "Mission Accomplished"?

Settlers or Residents?

2008-02-10T22:52:00.000-05:00

The Jerusalem Post reports that:

Sheikh Abu-Hader Ja'abri, the head of a prominent Palestinian clan and a relative of a former mayor of Hebron, and the head of the Abu Sneinah clan, Haj Akram Abu-Sneinah met with the head of the Kiryat Arba settlement council, Zvi K'tzubar, and the heads of Jewish settlers in Hebron. The two sides declared their goal was to restore peace and security to the city, known to Jews as Hebron and to Palestinians as Al-Halil.

"We don't see you as settlers but as residents," Sheikh Ja'abri, the head of a prominent clan in Hebron, is quoted as telling his Jewish interolocutors. "Hebron is ours just as it is yours."

Interesting that a Muslim leader in Hebron recognizes the historic Jewish connection to Hebron. A connection that goes back to the days of Abraham - who is buried there. Now if only the media outlets who insist on calling for a Judenrein West Bank would change their tune.

Not surprisingly:

"In response to news of the meeting, Fatah's military wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, released a leaflet calling for Ja'abri's assassination, according to Army Radio."

Please note that this threat emanates from the West Bank and from a Fatah organization. Are we really supposed to believe that the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas is so different from Hamas, when such threats emanate from territory under his control and from forces loyal to his organization?

The Devil Marches

2008-02-10T20:13:00.000-05:00

The Forward ran an article this week on the carnival activities in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. It is a long-standing tradition to parade in the town dressed up us Jews while mimicking supposedly Jewish character traits such as peddling, haggling and stinginess.

The festival usually involves a parade or circus, with attendees in masks and costumes. But in Vilnius — commonly known to Jews as Vilna — participants traditionally dress and act “as Jews,” a feat that generally calls for masks with grotesque features, beards and visible ear locks and that is often accompanied by peddling and by stereotypically Jewish speech.

During the festivities children go door to door asking for treats and reciting the following rhyme:

"We’re the little Lithuanian Jews/We want blintzes and coffee/If you don’t have
blintzes/Give us some of your money.”

According to the author, it rhymes in Lithuanian.

In Kaunas (Kovno to Jews) there is even a "Devil's Museum" where thousands of masks of devils are displayed. It was only then that I realized that the archetypal image of the devil - crooked nose, beard, horns, tail, and large pointy ears - is a caricature of what some would argue are quintessentially Jewish traits.

The devil's horns and tail? Yes, the devil's horns can be interpreted as either originating in Michaelangelo's Moses or one could attribute it simply to seeing a Jew from behind during prayer. Devout Jews often cover their head with a large prayer shawl (Tallis) which would make the phylacteries that stick out look a lot like a horn from a distance. Anyone who is familiar with what happens to a Tallis kattan (small prayer shawl that is worn as an undergarment) when it bunches up in the back will have no problem imagining where the notion of a tail comes from.

Clearly there is an entire discussion regarding ethnocentrism, cultural relativity and national traditions that I will defer for another time.

What do the Terrorists Really Think?

2008-02-10T15:46:00.000-05:00

If you want to know what people think, one way to go about finding out would be to actually interview them. While this seems like a no-brainer, it is rare to find many articles on the Middle East where this is actually done.

Here is a review of a new book called Schmoozing with Terrorists by Aaron Klein that brings up some good points and raises some important questions. Some excerpts:

The Arab Palestinian leaders with whom Klein spoke are very candid about their dreams not only to wipe out Israel, but to establish a worldwide caliphate. Their plans for American society should awaken anyone who thinks the Arab terrorists are only Israel's problem. And it should also smack awake all the moral relativists who equate Israel's security measures with hegemonic brutality.

A deputy commander of Fatah's al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Nasser Abu Azziz, explained to Klein that when sharia law is imposed in Western countries, "these sick people [homosexuals] will be treated in a very tough way," explaining that the Islamic leadership will "prevent social and physical diseases like homosexuality." All the terrorists whom Klein interviewed agreed that homosexuality would not be tolerated in the US once Islam rules.

And homosexuality is not all they condemn. The failure of western women to conform to Islamic standards of dress will reap harsh responses including, if necessary, torture. Sheik Hamad, a Hamas cleric, said those women who refuse to cover themselves in conformity with Islamic values would be punished either by imprisonment, whipping or stoning.

The "Halal Hippies" and "Cafe Latte" crowd would do well to at least consider the possibility that these leaders are not being misunderstood but know exactly what they are saying and really mean what they are saying.

Our mass media - whether it be news or soap operas - are everywhere in the world and there are many in the Muslim world who are dismayed by what they see. To me this not only implies that they have a better sense of us than we have of them (albeit through the distortions of the media lens), but that they feel that their way of life is endangered and are motivated to defend it - even if that means taking the battle to the enemy. Add to that Muslim millenarian visions of the inevitably that the entire world will eventually accept their faith and you have a pretty scary cocktail.

Klein was told by Abu Ayman, the commander of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, that Muslims are strictly forbidden from becoming suicide bombers if they are motivated by anything -- including desperate poverty or revenge for Israeli wrongdoing to this individual -- other than love of Allah. When Klein pointed out to a young man in training to become a "martyr" CNN's claim that suicide bombing was motivated by poverty and despair, Abu Ahmed was visibly affronted and called it "Israeli propaganda."

The most bizarre and brazen interview Klein describes is with Sheikh Taysir Tamimi, the chief Palestinian Justice and one of the most important clerics in the Middle East. Tamimi lectured Klein that "there is no Jewish historic connection whatsoever to the Temple Mount or Jerusalem," and that the "Jews came to the [Temple area] in 1967 and not before."

Tamimi responded to Klein's recitation of archeological findings and historical connections: "These archeological things you cite are lies." Tamimi simply erases Judaism's connection to the Holy Land by ignoring irrefutable and concrete evidence of inconvenient facts.

This only goes to show that the notion that economic development will dampen ideological fervor is misplaced. I am all for economic development, but humans are not automatons who respond blindly to cost-benefit analysis. Economics is a social science and this false assumption about the root causes of Palestinian militancy is one of the reasons there has been no peace and also one of the reasons economic sanctions literally never work as an instrument of foreign policy. That is true no less in the case of Gaza than in the case of Iran.

The second point raised here also demonstrates that Facts have no bearing on ideological worldview. In fact, it is a great testament to the human mind that ideology trumps reality.

If these murder merchants happily speak at length about their desire to murder and torture those who don't fit their religious profiles, why are the rest of the hundreds of journalists who call Israel their beat unable to obtain the same information? Do they prefer to stick with the standard mendacious narrative, either because they believe it or because they are too afraid to approach the terrorist leadership? Neither answer says anything favorable about the press corps.

Second, why are all those on the political left, those who identify themselves as advocates for minorities, so convinced that Israel is the villain and the Arab Palestinians are the victim? Anyone who claims to favor women's rights, gay rights, ideological tolerance, freedom of the press, of speech, of association, of religion, in fact, nearly all of the icons of the political left, should logically support the Israeli narrative. Instead, most of those in this country who fit the profile of the left support the Arab Palestinian narrative. Yet Klein's interviewees freely articulate their categorical rejection of the ideas these groups hold dear. And when these people categorically reject an idea, we're not talking polite disagreement over cocktails: we're talking beheading in the town square, as Klein's interviewees state in plain English. Yet these groups -- QUIT (Queers Undermining Israeli Terror) is my own personal favorite -- continue to support terrorists who would happily slaughter their western advocates if they attained the power they seek.

These are often the same people who supported Communism - even after they were confronted with Stalinist atrocities or the killing fields of Cambodia. It goes back to my point above regarding ideology trumping reality but also has to do with an obsessive insistence on supporting the underdog - regardless of whether they are right or wrong. That this is a natural consequence of post-modernist and relativist thinking goes without saying.

Surprise, Surprise!

2008-02-10T14:25:00.000-05:00

To kick off the new format, here is an interesting article that I think should call into question some of the prevailing assumptions regarding Palestinians and Gaza. According to the AP story "Travel Brings Surprises to Gazans":

A little travel has gone a long way toward changing perceptions in Gaza.

After excursions to Egypt across a border breached by Hamas militants, some Palestinians pepper their local Arabic dialect with Egyptian expressions while others say they are shocked by the poverty there.

In fact, the economic situation in Gaza and the West Bank is not only better than in Egypt, it is better than in many Arab countries. From 1967 to 1993 (the period of Israeli occupation) the territories had the fourth fastest growing economy in the world.

Thanks to the Second Intifada and a Palestinian leadership bent on confrontation, the economy has deteriorated considerably since Oslo. Nonetheless, it is still better than in countries such as Egypt. Even with the Israeli economic blockade. Check out the UNDP HDI stats if you do not believe me (Palestinian Territories rank 106 and Egypt ranks 112).

Said Mohammed stood in a Gaza City market, next to his pickup truck with red Egyptian license plates. From the back of the truck, two men, who had paid Mohammed to deliver the cargo, sold Egyptian-imported smoked herring to curious residents. ...

"I've always wanted to see Palestine anyway," said a smiling Mohammed, a slight dark man with black eyes. Pointing to cars crowding a nearby street, he said: "I thought conditions here would be harder than this. I thought people would be starving."

The fact that Mr. Mohammed thought he would witness starvation in Gaza is a testament to how effective the Palestinian propaganda machine is and how well the Arab and Western media play along with it. Even worse, I would argue that this is a symptom of the disease called "Holocaust inversion" - an attempt by Israel's enemies to paint Israel as the Nazis and the Palestinians as no different than wartime Jews trapped in concentration camps and slowly dying of starvation.

A common quip is that Hamas should drop its "Save Gaza" slogan, coined in response to Israeli border closures, in favor of "Save El Arish" - in this case, from Palestinian shoppers.

Still others jest that Egyptians will storm Gaza if the breach is sealed because the Palestinians have picked them clean.

For seriously impoverished and starving people, it appears that Gazans seem to have had no problem coming up with the necessary funds to go on a shopping spree.

Change in Direction

2008-02-10T13:57:00.000-05:00

Clearly, I have done a poor job of maintaining this blog. Partly it is because I was incommunicado in India for six weeks in December and January, but mostly it is because I have been thinking about how much time I want to spend blogging and what kind of blogging I want do.

What I realized was that, whether or not I post to the blog, I am constantly scanning the web for articles that address the issues that interest me or articles that I feel are not getting widely distributed. In particular, I always have an eye out for insightful and in-depth articles that question the prevailing wisdom and its underlying premises.

Often I send out or receive such articles and find that I end up discussing their contents over e-mail with my close friends. So, rather than produce original articles for the blog or carry out private conversations over e-mail, I decided to switch over to the tried and true method of posting a news digest (with my occasional comments) for your review.

Hopefully this will prove to be a better way to share ideas and perhaps even spark some discussion!

Islamo-Fascism in the Time of Nazis

2007-11-09T01:15:00.000-05:00

Considering the current controversy and debate over the term "Islamo-Fascism", it is interesting to read that such an association was noted over 60 years ago - at a time when Fascism was still a political force in Europe. As Jawarhalal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, noted in his semi-autobiographical history of India, The Discovery of India (1946), written during his internment at Ahmednagar Fort prison camp from 1942 to 1945:

"I had made a close study of Nazi methods of propaganda since Hitler's rise to power, and I was astonished to find something very similar taking place in India. A year later, in 1938, when Czechoslovakia had to face the Sudetenland crisis, the Nazi methods employed there were studied and referred to with approval by Muslim League spokesmen. A comparison was drawn between the position of Sudetenland Germans and Indian Muslims. Violence and incitements in speeches and in some newspapers become marked. A Congress Muslim was stabbed, and there was no condemnation of this from any Muslim League leader; in fact it was condoned. Other exhibitions of violence frequently took place.

I was terribly depressed by these developments and by the general lowering of the standards of public life. Violence, vulgarity, and irresponsibility were on the increase, and it appeared that they were approved of by responsible leaders of the Muslim League. I wrote them and begged them to check this tendency, but with no success." (pp. 310-1)

"There was a regular rampage on the part of members or sympathisers of the Muslim League to make Muslim masses believe that something terrible was happening and that the Congress was to blame. What that terrible thing was nobody seemed to know. But surely there must be something behind all this shouting and cursing, if not here, then elsewhere. During by-elections the cry raised was, "Islam in danger," and voters were asked to take their oaths on the holy book to vote for the Muslim League candidate."

All this had an undoubted effect on the Muslim masses. ..." (P. 311)

Unlike Nehru, most of us do not have first-hand knowledge of Fascism with which to compare political Islam. Even if we did, modern-day political correctness works to prevent us from making this link.

Islam + Fascism?

2007-10-23T23:02:00.000-04:00

Two recent articles highlight the need to be clear about the nature of the threats facing the world from radical Muslim ideologists, or what Christopher Hitchens rightly terms Islamofascists. Rejecting criticism that this term is ahistorical (fusing ideologies from different eras) or unjustly singles out one religion, Hitchens defends the term:

The most obvious points of comparison would be these: Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression—especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"—and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.

Interestingly, he does not shy from noting that Islamofascism, while a right-wing and religious movement also regularly appropriates the language of the Left.

Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.

No doubt this - combined with a desire to see the collapse of the US and the Western capitalism that it represents - explains in part why many in the Left have secretly rooted for a group whose game plan and values they would normally excoriate. Sadly, these generally well-meaning and liberal leaning people, do not realize to what extent their support and inability to confront this threat endangers all that they hold dear. Worse, it sacrifices to totalitarianism precisely those who the liberals think they are helping.

As Bernard Lewis recently noted, Islamofascism is first and foremost a threat to Muslims in the same way that both Bolshevism and Fascism were a threat to their societies. Unfortunately, it did not take long before these ideological "deformations" threatened the rest of the world as well. (See article in The Sun)

Hitchens echoes this and points out that both radical Islam and Fascism:

...evidently suffer from a death wish. It is surely not an accident that both of them stress suicidal tactics and sacrificial ends, just as both of them would obviously rather see the destruction of their own societies than any compromise with infidels or any dilution of the joys of absolute doctrinal orthodoxy.

Characteristically, Lewis is even more blunt:

"It's misleading to say we are engaged in a war against terrorism," Mr. Lewis said. "If Churchill had told us that we were engaged in a war against submarines and war craft, we'd be in a different world today. Terrorism is a tactic, it is not the enemy."

Bad News

2007-10-19T20:37:00.000-04:00

I wanted to bring everyone's attention to a new blog in the hopes that they will pass on this information to their friends. The blog is called "Bad News from the Netherlands" and is part of a campaign to present only bad news from different places in the world.

This blog and nascent movement is the brainchild of Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Dr. Gerstenfeld, who is himself originally from Holland, created this site to highlight how the media can negatively brand a country with selective reporting.

"This blog states up front that it provides only negative facts. It shows that by using real news stories without context, one can make any country look bad."

To check out the site: http://badnewsfromthenetherlands.blogspot.com/

Academia Amok

2007-09-23T15:31:00.000-04:00

Once again, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is right on target. Check out his recent Jerusalem Post article on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to Columbia University (click here). Here are some of his important points:

In reference to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger's assertion that the invitation was in keeping with, "Columbia's long-standing tradition of serving as a major forum of robust debate."

Shmuley notes:

Of course, that is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that Columbia would invite a politician or scholar who denied that American slavery took place, or alleged that its effects on African-Americans was benign or exaggerated? Would Columbia host a Grand Wizard of the KKK who called for African nations to be wiped off the map?

And yet, Ahmadinejad is far worse. Not only has he denied the Holocaust and called repeatedly for Israel's destruction, he has gone beyond words and worked hard to put his plan into action.

As for double standards, he recalls that:

TWO YEARS ago, Harvard President Lawrence Summers lost his job for insinuating that women were not as intellectually competent in math and science as men. Yet Ahmadinejad presides over a government that brutally suppresses women, inflicting corporal punishment if they so much as go out in the street without a head covering. But none of this has prevented him from being feted by American academia.

Most interestingly, he clearly shows that the world (and sadly, in this particular case, academics) are directly complicit in providing cover for this nutcase and his dangerous viewpoints.

When I read about the Holocaust, I often ask myself how the world allowed Hitler to rise to prominence. After all, humanity bore continuous witness to the hatred and venom that spewed from his evil tongue against Jews. Did the nations of the world not isolate him as soon as he began frothing at the mouth?
But in light of Ahmadinejad being invited, on his last visit, to address the Council on Foreign Relations, and to speak at Columbia University on this trip, I now get it. Whatever Hitler said, nobody took him seriously. They treated his rantings as a tasteless form of benign entertainment. They found him darkly amusing. It took the incineration of six million Jews and the destruction of much of Europe to discover that, ultimately, the joke was on us.

I guess I should no longer be surprised that Abu El-Haj was recommended by Barnard (Columbia's sister institution) for tenure.

Gmar Hatima Tova!

2007-09-21T14:30:00.000-04:00

As we approach the fast of Yom Kippur and conclude the 10 "Days of Awe", I want to wish everyone a Gmar Hatima Tova or Good Final Sealing! (Believe me, it makes sense and sounds better in Hebrew.)

And for those who are fasting, Tzom Kal ve Naim - An Easy and Enjoyable Fast!

The Problematics of Anthropology

2007-09-17T13:36:00.000-04:00

Here is another egregious example of how Anthropology is used to change the discourse on the Middle East and to undermine Israel's legitimacy that I received by e-mail.

"Esmail Nashif of Birzeit University is organizing a session on Palestine and anthropology at the international Union for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 16th world congress, which will take place in Kunming, China. He welcomes paper proposals.

"Palestine: An anthropologically imagined site". The aim of the panel is to discuss the anthropological practices that focus on Palestine. By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site. While engaging critically with the
current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion
will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research
on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

Allow me to translate:

"By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that
dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site."

This is a sophisticated way of saying, "How do Anthropologists get around the fact that Palestine does not exist as a political entity?" He could have asked, "How do anthropologists study the Palestinian people?" but that would not accomplish the political goals of his proposed session. This is clear from the sentence that directly follows:

"While engaging critically with the current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

The "current problematics" is basically a euphemism for "The existence of the State of Israel" and the "colonial condition" does not refer to the Ottoman or British periods, but rather to the present-day "neocolonialism".

This is confusing to me because my 2007 Textbook for Intro to Anthropology Window on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Anthropology (2nd ed.) clearly defines "colonialism" as, "the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power." (p. 405) Since every State dominates its territory politically, economically and culturally the keyword in this definition is clearly "foreign".

By implying that Israel is a colonialist state, the session organizer is ipso facto arguing that the Jewish people are foreigners and hence no different than the British or Ottomans who preceded them. Unfortunately, this historical fiction is becoming a more and more common view - spread by precisely such people as Nashif and Abu El-Haj in their supposedly "neutral" and "academic" guises.

Since the conference is being held in China, the IUAES should consider doing a similar or joint session on Tibet. I think that such a forum would be a good place to discuss the "problematics" surrounding the desire and efforts of the Tibetan diaspora to "colonize" Tibet.

The Nadia Abu El-Haj Debates

2007-09-07T13:54:00.000-04:00

Since my friends and family often ask me some variation of, “What is this Anthropology “stuff” that you are interested in and what do you guys talk about?” I thought I would share an example of a current e-mail debate that I had with two other of my fellow colleagues. The debate ostensibly centered on the question of whether or not Dr. Nadia Abu El-Haj should receive tenure at Barnard, but branched out to touch other issues including the role of academics, the importance of Anthropology and even touched on the nature of Truth (the one with a capital "T").

To learn more about the debate surrounding Dr. El-Haj, I direct you to the website of those who are seeking to deny her tenure. I was planning to direct you to the Wikipedia article, but it has recently been gutted by editors with the names Malik El Shabazz and Tiamut (over 65 edits between them). If you click on their names you will probably get some idea as to what their worldviews are. For now I can at least recommend the Wiki on Dr. El-Haj’s book (though Shabaz and Tiamut have been over this as has Huldra). Other articles and links are included below in the actual discussion.

My interlocutors have kindly permitted me to reprint our exchange in its entirety in this blog. Nonetheless, in the interest of anonymity, all names have been removed. I have tried to make this easy to follow, but am not sure how well I have succeeded. I have labeled my colleagues with the exceedingly bland monikers Writer X and Writer Y while maintaining the right to publish under the name Seraph. I apologize for the excessive length, but Anthropologists are kind of notorious for their prolixity.

Letter #1 by Writer X:

This is an issue that some of y'all may find interesting. Of course I don't know anything firsthand about the quality of work in question, and I understand that there exists a dramatic diversity of opinions about Israel's place in the world through history and so forth. But it appears that in this case a collective of politically-motivated alumni may succeed in getting tenure denied to an established and academically sound archaeologist. It might help to compare to our own situation - would we want our students here at UGA passing judgement on our careers based on their political opinions? Just $.02, but you should follow the links and form your own ideas. All best, .
Quoted e-mail:

A group of Barnard alumni have drafted an online petition to deny professor Abu el-Haj tenure because of her work examining the relationship between the discipline of archeology and the construction of Israeli nationalism. Attached is a link to an article in the chronicle about it as well as a petition in support of professor abu el-Haj. Please forward widely.

please pass along, with the Chronicle article:

Seraph Response #1:

Which one is it? Do you not, "know anything firsthand about the quality of work in question" or do you think that Dr. El-Haj is an "academically sound archaeologist"?

For those who would like to read more about this issue, please consider taking a look at this link.

If you prefer a more polemical approach.

Writer X rightly asks whether we would want, "our students here at UGA passing judgement on our careers based on their political opinions?" Hopefully, no more than we would we want our professors to be the type of people who use their scholarship to pass judgments based solely on their political opinions.

Letter #2 by Writer X:

Seraph asks: Which one is it? Do you not, "know anything firsthand about the quality of work in question "or do you think that Dr. El-Haj is an "academically sound archaeologist"?

It can be both - I haven't read the work, nor am I an archaeologist qualified to judge it, but since it's passed peer review at various journals and University of California Press, I feel justified in calling it "academically sound." That's my point: me, Seraph, politically-motivated former undergrads - none of these folks are qualified to judge or doing so from a place of good faith. Now, if someone were to hold a professional forum on El-Haj's work full of critical arguments, that might be awesome - but hardly cause to deny her tenure.

There are lots of tenured academics who are widely disagreed with and still considered "academically sound." The links that Seraph provides are a perfect example of attempts to subvert the academic review process for political purpose - just like what the creationists do, or David Horowitz, or the College Republicans and the "Guard Dawg" here at UGA, and etc. Peer review and our other methods of academic self-policing are imperfect of course, but they're a hell of a lot better than the transparent lobbying of non-academics.

Seraph Response #2:

I agree that neither you nor I can judge the quality of her work. For that reason I would not sign a petition either against of or in favor of her - nor for that matter would I advocate (read: lobby) others to do so by distributing a petition.Clearly there are some of her peers who are qualified to judge this matter who feel that her scholarship is not "academically sound". That is unless, of course, you feel that Jacob Lessner's review falls into the category of the "transparent lobbying of non-academics". (To learn about Dr. Lessner)

Writer X states:

"... since it's passed peer review at various journals and University of California Press, I feel justified in calling it "academically sound. ... The links that provides are a perfect example of attempts to subvert the academic review process for political purpose - just like what the creationists do, or David Horowitz, or the College Republicans and the "Guard Dawg" here at UGA, and etc."

Frankly, it is more than slightly disingenuous to believe that publishing houses such as California Press would not publish a polemic - peer reviewed or otherwise. They are in the business of selling books and controversy sells books. Moreover, to imply that somehow the peer review process at publishing houses or the academic review process is somehow "a view from nowhere" that is (or can be) unaffected by money, power, politics (academic and otherwise) as well as narrow self-interest goes against what we have been taught (and experienced) in our studies. I also think it smacks of elitism a la "Ivory Tower".

Personally I say let Barnard College decide the matter internally. At the same time, I think that academics can not have their cake and eat it. You can not claim to be an objective observer and yet at the same time get into the ring and then be surprised when the other guy punches at you. If you want to impact (our understanding of) the world by publishing under the pretense of objectivity, do not be shocked if people call you on that point. In short, I don't see why would one think that being an academic means that you are immune from having to publicly defend your points of view? Why should the public be expected to leave this in the hands of academics?

To me this sounds a lot like leaving the cat to guard the milk.

Letter #3 By Writer X:

Hi Seraph, and you other poor suckers. These are good points, for the most part, but I think they misrepresent my argument and that of those defending El-Haj. Since Seraph agrees that he wouldn't sign a petition against her tenure or advocate doing so, we don't really have any points of disagreement left - that's what the whole discussion was about.

And yet...An academic press, even the most highly regarded academic press in the country, might publish a politically-charged piece in hopes of stirring controversy and hence, selling more books. This is no surprise. It doesn't follow, though, that therefore the book in question is less worthy than other, less controversial volumes. If the book meets the standards of a reputable academic press, than it is - by definition - academically sound. Soundness is defined by the approbation of the relevant peer group. Is El-Haj's book good, morally acceptable, or True? Dunno. Doesn't matter.This is precisely the opposite of a "view from nowhere." Peer review is a composite view assembled from several very specific places. That compiling effect defines what we do as academics - we are a public sphere. The fact that self-interest and "politics" enters into it in no way calls its validity into question, because we are not after Truth or Quality but the consensus of the relevant public. This is not a "pretense of objectivity" by any means - it's an explicit acknowledge of the imperfect quality of everyone's knowledge.

Which is what is lacking in the argument of the movement to block El-Haj's tenure, as it is lacking in the movement to remove evolution from the curricula, "politics" from the lecture hall, etc. The folks behind the petition claim that the Truth (in this case about Israel and its use of the archaeological record) is a knowable thing, that El-Haj _doesn't_ have it, and therefore shouldn't be able to pursue her career. They are attempting to bring a specific form of politically powerful influence to bear on a sphere (academia) that carefully insulates itself against that kind of influence. You could call that insulation the "Ivory Tower," or you could call it academic freedom, intellectual autonomy, etc.

Which is why this argument of Seraph's:

"In short, I don't see why would one think that being an academic means that you are immune from having to publicly defend your points of view? Why should the public be expected to leave this in the hands of academics?"

...makes no sense. Publicly defend one's points of view, share the debate about an important issue with any and every taker? Absolutely. But the people circulating this petition aren't trying to debate El-Haj's work, they are explicitly trying to silence it. If they want to publicly critique her, write scathing reviews, heckle her at speaking events, that's all wonderful. But when they are using their political influence with a university's board of regents and so forth to stop an academic from doing her work, that's just censorship. I think we should all be against that, and I don't think it's elitist to think so.

Thanks!

At this point in the debate Writer Y interjected with their opinions:

Letter #1 By Writer Y:

I have a couple of points that I would like to interject:

First of all, I would like to clarify that El-Haj is not an archaeologist, but a socio-cultural anthropologist who studies relationships between scientific knowledge and things like politics, power, identity and nationalism. If I had to put her work into a sub-disciplinary niche within anthropology, I'd say that it would be "science studies".

Secondly, El-Haj's claim to scholarship is not based simply on the publication of one book, as the anonymous authors of the petition against her tenure case claim. I have not read the book that they question, but I am familiar with some of her journal publications and her research seems pretty main-stream for anthropology. If the case against her tenure is going to be based on a rejection of a "positivist commitment to scientific methods" (see above-linked petition), then it's a sad day for many in anthropology. For the anonymous authors of this web petition to claim that El-Haj's claim to scholarship (and by extension, tenure) lies in a single publication is patently ridiculous as well.

Third, I'm not sure that I actually understand the following passage from a previous message on this thread:

Seraph states: "Personally I say let Barnard College decide the matter internally. At the same time, I think that academics can not have their cake and eat it. You can not claim to be an objective observer and yet at the same time get into the ring and then be surprised when the other guy punches at you. If you want to impact (our understanding of) the world by publishing under the pretense of objectivity, do not be shocked if people call you on that point. In short, I don't see why would one think that being an academic means that you are immune from having to publicly defend your points of view? Why should the public be expected to leave this in the hands of academics?"

I mean, I understand that a scholar should be willing and able to publicly defend his or her research (and am in fact an advocate of public scholarship), but how exactly should we go about letting the public decide who does and does not get a fair shake when their tenure comes up for consideration? Anonymously-penned web petitions? Maybe I'm being naive, but should tenure really be based on the political popularity of the/your research focus, or on the quality and quantity of your research as judged by the standards of your discipline? I don't see the movement to deny El-Haj tenure as a call to publicly defend a point of view, but to restrict a scholar's access to professional advancement based on interesting reasoning about the nature of the research and the objectivity of the research.

Here's a question, bearing in mind that anything dealing with politics and power in Israel/Palestine can set off a firestorm: If El-Haj's research was the same, but dealt with relationships between scientific knowledge and Chinese, British, or Icelandic nationalism and state power, would the situation be the same?

Seraph Response #3:

According to Writer X:"If the book meets the standards of a reputable academic press, than it is _by definition_ academically sound. Soundness is defined by the approbation of the relevant peer group. Is El-Haj's book good, morally acceptable, or True? Dunno. Doesn't matter."As I am sure you are well aware, books are notoriously easier to publish than articles, so I disagree that just because something is accepted for publication it is "by definition" academically sound. Indeed, the fact that it is published by an "academic" press does not make the academics of the work more "sound". As I noted before, even an academic press needs to publish some books that will "pay the bills".I can not judge her work, but I think that one can not simply ignore the fact that many of El-Haj's colleagues who were not consulted before the book was published have found her research to be lacking. In short, I think that it does matter if El-Haj's book is, "good, morally acceptable, or True?" (to use Writer X's words).

Having said this, I admit to being of the minority that is emphatically not relativist and believe that there are in actuality "Truths" out there that can be known. For this reason alone, I suspect that in the end we will probably have to "agree to disagree". Personally speaking, I have little respect for people who shoot arrows and then draw bulls eyes.

Which brings me to my second point. El-Haj is asking for admittance into a group of her peers. This is not only a closed group, but one that provides status and bestows the one who is accepted with a certain air of authority. She will be representing her university and her discipline. In the end, receiving tenure is not a "right" but rather a privilege.

Hence, I see nothing wrong with either her peers or the the Board of Regents at the university at which she is requesting tenure taking a close look at her scholarship to see if it meets their standards. It is also for this reason that I don't think that the academic review process should be influenced by petitions FOR or AGAINST her - regardless of the strengths/weaknesses of those petitions.

Writer X states that, "we are not after Truth or Quality but the consensus of the relevant public" and Writer Y asserts that research should be judged "by the standards of your discipline" i.e. the relevant public. I wonder what is the worth of standards not based on "Truth or Quality" or why we would think anyone else would take such findings seriously? That both Writer X and Writer Y mean "real" standards does not make it any better nor does it do much for Anthropology's credibility. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that Anthropology as a field has become more irrelevant than ever. And this precisely when it is needed more than ever.

Writer X’s point:"...makes no sense. Publicly defend one's points of view, share the debate about an important issue with any and every taker? Absolutely. But the people circulating this petition aren't trying to debate El-Haj's work, they are explicitly trying to silence it. If they want to publicly critique her, write scathing reviews, heckle her at speaking events, that's all wonderful. But when they are using their political influence with a university's board of regents and so forth to stop an academic from doing her work, that's just censorship. I think we should all be against that, and I don't think it's elitist to think so."Sorry, but this just a bit melodramatic (e.g. "explicitly trying to silence it"). As noted above, tenure means that you are being admitted into an elite club of "tenured" academics. You can still be an academic and there are many people both academics and others who do not have PhD's who conduct research, write books and even interesting and insightful papers. This is not censorship, but rather holding people accountable for what they write and say.Finally, to Writer Y:"Here's a question, bearing in mind that anything dealing with politics and power in Israel/Palestine can set off a firestorm: If El-Haj's research was the same, but dealt with relationships between scientific knowledge and Chinese, British, or Icelandic nationalism and state power, would the situation be the same?"I am tempted to say that the answer to your question is "The Jewish Lobby". Since I am afraid that there are those out there who would take me seriously, I will try to do what we are supposed to do whenever we try to understand something in Anthropology - i.e. "contextualize". This work comes in the context of a continuous assault by Palestinians to de-legitimate Jewish historical claims to the land of Israel and hence the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their homeland. If Icelandic nationalism was constantly de-legitimized and if Icelandic nationhood were under constant existential threats, then I suspect a similar work would raise a few hackles in Reykjavik and Door County. I suspect it might even cause problems for someone writing such a work to get tenure at the University of Wisconsin.

Response #4 By Writer X:

Seraph wrote: “Hence, I see nothing wrong with either her peers or the the Board of Regents at the university at which she is requesting tenure taking a close look at her scholarship to see if it meets their standards.”

Writer X: That's the tenure review process that the petition is trying to disrupt!

Response #2 By Writer Y:

According to Seraph: "Since I am afraid that there are those out there who would take me seriously, I will try to do what we are supposed to do whenever we try to understand something in Anthropology - i.e. "contextualize". This work comes in the context of a continuous assault by Palestinians to de-legitimate Jewish historical claims to the land of Israel and hence the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their homeland. If Icelandic nationalism was constantly de-legitimized and if Icelandic nationhood were under constant existential threats, then I suspect a similar work would raise a few hackles in Reykjavik and Door County. I suspect it might even cause problems for someone writing such a work to get tenure at the University of Wisconsin."

I would like to reply that I do not see what the issue at hand has to do with "Truth"; relativism; the rightness or wrongness (morally speaking) of El-Haj, the Israeli state, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, etc. To me this issue is about freedom of academic inquiry being directly and indirectly hindered by popular politics. If a research topic is "hot-button" and causes controversy or debate, the researcher should definitely be prepared to meet the challenges put to him or her by public and peer alike because challenges will surely come. However, to be denied promotion or even the option of getting a fair shake at the tenure table when your review comes up because somebody's politics, religion, or personal passion clash with your analysis is unjust and stinks of censorship and blacklisting.

Seraph wrote: "Writer X states that, "we are not after Truth or Quality but the consensus of the relevant public" and Writer Y asserts that research should be judged "by the standards of your discipline" i.e. the relevant public. I wonder what is the worth of standards not based on "Truth or Quality" or why we would think anyone else would take such findings seriously? That both Writer X and Writer Y mean "real" standards does not make it any better nor does it do much for Anthropology's credibility. In fact, it is precisely for this reason that Anthropology as a field has become more irrelevant than ever. And this precisely when it is needed more than ever."Is it possible for one to speak of objectivity and contextualization, yet advocate evaluation of research on standards of "Truth (capital T???) and Quality"? Once again, I must say that I really do not understand this paragraph. Especially the link between the need for Truth being related to the alleged irrelevancy of anthropology. And, given the context, I would wonder what exactly is meant by the statement that "[anthropology] is needed more than ever"?

Seraph Response #4:

According to Writer Y, “I do not see what the issue at hand has to do with "Truth"; relativism; the rightness or wrongness (morally speaking) of El-Haj” AND “Is it possible for one to speak of objectivity and contextualization, yet advocate evaluation of research on standards of "Truth (capital T???) and Quality"?”

Frankly, I am not sure that I could have made my case much better than you have. The answer is: Yes. Yes, you can judge a work's quality and be objective and speak of standards and truth. I do not see why one can not talk about objectivity and Truth. That is unless, of course, one believes that there is no “Objective Truth”. Of course that would mean that you believe Truth (with a capital T) to be subjective (and no doubt relative).

As for the contention that this is a case where someone is being denied, “promotion or even the option of getting a fair shake at the tenure table … because somebody's politics, religion, or personal passion clash with your analysis is unjust and stinks of censorship and blacklisting”

First off it is too soon to tell how all this will pan out. Secondly, as I noted before, I have no problem with her peers AND the Board of Regents making this decision based on standards*.

Personally, I think that an Anthropology or (to use your words) an “analysis” that is not based on objective truths - or an “analysis” that is wholly theory driven - is akin to Creative Writing and not something I am interested in. Since a tenured Professor in Anthropology at a prestigious school represents the discipline, I think that this scrutiny is hardly censorship (after all, she already wrote what she wrote AND her ideas are getting a lot of press) nor is it blacklisting (you realize that it is actually possible to keep teaching without tenure). If anything, it would be a non-promotion - something that can happen when your work does not meet the existing standards*.

Third, I would like to take your argument and make it ad absurdum. Would you say that someone who denies Evolution should be tenured because they have an interesting “analysis”? How about someone who espouses racist or hateful ideologies – should they get tenure because their ideologies are based on a (warped) theoretical perspective? Would denying them tenure be tantamount to blacklisting and censorship?

As for your final two queries regarding what is, “… the link between the need for Truth being related to the alleged irrelevancy of anthropology. And … what exactly is meant by the statement that "[anthropology] is needed more than ever"?

I am not sure if you have been following the news lately, but there is a great deal of suffering in the world that stems to a great degree from different groups not understanding one another. What happens in a distant corner of the world has repercussions on our lives and vice versa. In my humble opinion, Anthropology is more needed than ever so that we can better understand one another and the processes that affect all of our lives.

Of course, to do so there need to be some “standards”* or the rest of humanity that is not living in “creative writing land” will find our work irrelevant (or at least not more relevant to decision-making than creative writing). In fact, the hallmark of Anthropology has been the relentless drive to understand human diversity by living in the cultures we study while actually ground-testing our theories and hypotheses to see if they conform with observed and objective reality.

Seraph

* Refer back to previous discussions on “standards” vis a vis Truth, objectivity, quality and relativism.

Response #5 By Writer X:

Hi Folks - aside from the various serious epistemological problems, there's some logistical problems.

Seraph says: “First off it is too soon to tell how all this will pan out. Secondly, as I noted before, I have no problem with her peers AND the Board of Regents making this decision based on standards.*”

As far as I know, a Board of Regents never ordinarily gets involved in tenure cases. The department takes a vote based on strict analysis of the candidates record of teaching, publishing, community work, whatever their previously published standards* stipulate. They take a vote and pass that vote to the appropriate dean. The dean, taking into account disciplinary issues, budgetary issues, the public image of the university and so on, makes a final decision. Most often this reflects the department's vote, except in extreme cases.

To bring in the Board of Regents, as this petition proposes to do, essentially says, "We don't care about the due process you usually use, or your disciplinary standards - we're going to raise a stink and threaten to take the money away." That's what the BoR is for - the money. They get involved when they think that a university's faculty-and-dean-and-President approved activity jeopardizes the funding stream from the state and private donors. If that’s where this controversy is headed, it's nothing but bad news for educators of any political orientation.

Now, regarding Seraph’s claim that being denied tenure is really no big deal at all, well - talk to a professor. One can continue to teach w/o it, but not at that university. One has to leave one's job, classes and students, pack up the house, and hope to get work somewhere else, with the lingering smell of failure hovering over one's head.

Sure, people do it - but it sucks and is generally considered the next-worst punishment to being fired. If every publication and lecture we gave carried that threat, none of us would ever write or teach anything controversial, and that would also suck. That's why I call it 'censorship,' and say that El-Haj is being silenced, and I don't think that's melodramatic, I think that's pretty explicitly what the petitioners are after.

Response #3 By Writer Y

I think that Writer X’s last post was very well-stated.

That being said, I think I need to clear up a little misunderstanding on Seraph’s part. I never said El-Haj should get tenure, but that her work should be evaluated in a fair manner (the same way that anyone's tenure case would be evaluated at her university). Your evolution analogy is little more than a straw man argument, and I still fail to understand how useful or feasible standards based on "Truth" might be. Truth (with a capital T, of course) tends to be very problematic when it comes to issues of policy.

I think that the deeper issues that have emerged in this discussion (Truth, subjectivity, relativism, etc.) may best be saved for debate over coffee at a later date.

Seraph Response #5:

Again, while I do not support either petition, I think that a university has the right to decide who it will promote. That includes ALL those who are decision makers at a university.

A quick search for the mission statement for Barnard College’s Board of Trustees did not yield results, but I did find the one for Columbia University:

“Overall governance of the University lies in the hands of its 24-member Board of Trustees. The Trustees select the President, oversee all faculty and senior administrative appointments, monitor the budget, supervise the endowment, and protect University property. (See: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/secretary/trustees/index.html)

This is pretty standard stuff for universities and while it does not mean that they get involved in every decision, every case is under their purview.

As for tenure … Sure it sucks not to get tenure, but why should someone get tenure if their work sucks i.e. does not meet standards? In the meantime I was only suggesting a “wait and see” approach.

In any case, I suspect that this thread has maxed out its utility and I am signing off. Besides, I need the time to sort out my “various serious epistemological problems”!

At this point, the debate continued off of the listserve:

Seraph’s Letter to Writer Y:

As promised, I will let you have the last word and am not sending this out to everyone. Nonetheless, I thought to write to make it clear that there may actually have been a misunderstanding on your part regarding what I was prescribing. I never said that the Board of Trustees should get involved, but certainly they could if they wanted to and I would not see that as censorship or unfair since: 1) it is under their purview and; 2) the image of the university is something that they are entrusted to maintain.

As for the "straw man analogy" ... Is it? I mentioned evolution precisely because Writer X mentioned it in one of his first posts (regarding the, "movement to remove evolution from the curricula") in the same breath he derided the notion that "Truth … is a knowable thing". This naturally begs the question of what is so wrong with the "movement to remove evolution" if Truth is really something that is not knowable.

Obviously, in practice, Writer X does not believe that it is not knowable, regardless of what he may think theoretically. Otherwise, why would he care – either in this case or the case of El-Haj? After all, if the Truth is not knowable, then Evolution is just another ethnoscience and should at most be taught along with Creationism. Moreover, based on this and paraphrasing your previous arguments, couldn't one then logically contend that the fact that we as Anthropologists do not see the need to teach Creationism is tantamount to censorship?

In any case, I will happily take you up on your offer to discuss these important and interesting matters in a more social setting.Finally, I would like to suggest an op-ed published in The Forward yesterday that addresses this whole issue of "censorship" and the debate that will certainly surround Walt and Mearsheimer's soon to be released book. Here is the link.

Writer X’s Letter to Seraph

Hi Seraph, I was just thinking that when you get around to blogging up the El-Haj stuff and etc, you might want to look at or include this discussion about Ward Churchill.

It offers some (much-needed;)) support for your argument - a popular professor exposed as a fraud only after a right-wing lynchmob went after him for a tasteless remark. Until then, peer review and tenure etc had (un)wittingly passed over his shoddy or faky scholarship. One might call it good results from bad practices, but in any case a good comparative example. $.02, as they say. Cheers.

Seraph’s Response to Writer X:

I finally had an opportunity to read the link you sent. I have been enjoying three days at home with a feverish child and no Internet access.

I.

I enjoyed reading the musings in Savage Mind and generally agree that this case is, in fact, indicative of a larger problem. If I agree with anyone, it is with Orson Buggeigh who has commented on the article. I mentioned this in our exchange as well - i.e. that we should not be rewarding scholarship that is based on shooting arrows first and bulls eyes later with tenure. I personally do not want to be associated with such a discipline since it makes the discipline a laughingstock and hence irrelevant.

So, if anything, I am advocating a balance between being totally theory driven and completely fact-focused. At the moment (in Anthropology) I think the pendulum has swung too far to the theory-driven side of things so that many people think of data collection as an imposition devised by people suffering from OCD.

II.

There are some interesting similarities between Churchill and El-Haj that do not come out of the article that I wanted to mention. I think in both cases many people want to believe what they are saying since it is only polite to do so in "progressive" circles. Of course Native Americans (and Palestinians) have suffered (and are suffering), but this certainly does not absolve anyone of the need to base their arguments in fact.

By not doing so we end up with a caricatured and essentialized view of people in history. Did whites/settlers infect Native Americans in 1763? They must have. After all we know that they were genocidal and evil.

Unfortunately, history is far more complex and not as neat precisely because people and culture is complex and far from neat. This is why I think it is so important to avoid presentist historical analysis and why it is also so important to question our own motivations.

III.

For some reason everyone seems to assume that they know my motivations and clearly to some degree it colors what they think I am saying and what they say to me. For example, I am thinking of Writer Y’s's question about whether this would all be a big thing if it did not touch on Israel/Palestine issues.

Actually, I think the same question in reverse is screaming to be asked. Would El-Haj receive such support if she were not an Arab intellectual? Would Ward Churchill's shenanigans be put up with if we did not think that his defense of an oppressed people was essentially just? Why else would people who should know better put up with such a tangled skein of lies that he has woven? To me this just smacks of a reverse discrimination and yes, a soft form of racism.

IV.

I wonder if you were aware that, much like Ward Churchill, Edward Said - the anti-Orientalist, professional refugee and anti-Oslo campaigner - invented large portions of his own life. If you don't believe me, check out the article by Justus Reid Weiner in the September 1999 issues of Commentary. In fact, when confronted with the facts Said admitted that his "autobiography" was not really. Instead he argued that it did not matter because what he had written had "really" happened to many Palestinians and was thus even more "representative"!

IMHO the fact that he was never held to account for numerous lies is a silent testimony to the acquiescence of the more "progressive" members of "respectable society". After all, he wrote what many people wanted to believe. That all of this matters can be seen in the extensive damage that his works have done to our understanding of the Middle East as well as to Israel's standing in the world.

You may think that this is an academic debate or sour grapes on my part, but in reality people's lives (both Israeli and Palestinian) are hanging in the balance. That is why I think that, regardless of whatever epistemological reservations you may have about my reasoning, that in the end truth and standards are important.

V.

Finally, if Savage Minds made my points better than me it is because I was never trying to make those points. I am smart enough to know that if I were to try to present arguments against El-Haj and her various "theories" that my arguments would be written off as the arguments of a "true-believer" or those of the Jewish Lobby. (Maybe you don't have to think in these terms, but I can't help but to think this way.)

In fact, that is why I tried to argue the law rather than to argue the actual case. Based on this I contended that the tenure review could rightly be influenced by the Board of Trustees and that the entire matter is under their purview. That is precisely why I found your point about whether or not this is usually done to be completely immaterial.

Should the Supreme Court have intervened in the 2000 election? Whether they should or shouldn't have, the fact is that they did and they do actually have the right to rule on this issue based on our constitution and system of laws. Should the person who won the popular vote be the one sitting in the Oval office? These are philosophical questions and questions regarding a particular system. The fact remains that our electoral system is not set up that way.

For recent articles on this issue: The Jewish Advocate, The New York Times

An Update to "What I Did Last Summer"

2007-09-04T12:26:00.000-04:00

(Continued from the Previous Post)

The Sudanese Refugees

The police did indeed start rounding up Sudanese refugees and sending them to a refugee camp that was built on the grounds of Ketziot prison. The government's rationale was that this would allow them to provide services for the refugees without the need to incarcerate them. So, instead of taking the opportunity to get some good press out of a bad situation, the decision-makers chose to do the worst thing possible – take a group of refugees and put them in a tented refugee camp in the parking lot of a prison that is located in the heart of the Negev desert.

Luckily, the refugees who were camped out in the Wohl Garden were whisked away by the university students and volunteers before the police could round them up. All of them were taken to private homes and many were then provided with apartments or taken to Kibbutzes that are now hosting them. I am still in touch with one of them and they seem to be making a go of it for now.

These folks are actually the lucky ones, since the Israeli and Egyptian governments have joined hands to prevent any more Sudanese from crossing the border. Israel, as the official government spokesman is not interested in being the, “dumping ground for Africa’s problems” and Egypt is afraid people might ask why the Sudanese are so desperate to forego “Egyptian hospitality” that they prefer to sit in a prison parking lot in an enemy state. To illustrate the seriousness of this agreement, the Egyptians have taken to firing at any refugee who will try to leave Egypt. So far they have killed several refugees including a mother who was trying to free her young daughter who got stuck in barbed wire.

Sadly, the Olmert government announced that it would send most of the refugees back to Egypt and immediately turn back those caught at the border. Unconscionably, they are even trying to whip up the “terrorist” fear factor by saying that the refugees may include members of Al Qaeda who are infiltrating the country or, even more conspiratorially, that Arab governments are paying for their passage so that they overwhelm the country with Muslim immigrants. Frankly, both contentions are so ridiculous and separated from the reality on the ground that they hardly merit a retort. Children are clearly not Al Qaeda members and Arab countries who think that sending Christians (half of the refugees are from Southern Sudan) will get a really poor return on such an investment. To read about this disgrace: Click here.

Musings

In general, I found it therapeutic to be in Israel. Following the news about Israel from over here is often unnerving precisely because there are very few good things to report and very few ways to get actively involved. Also, being there one finds a certain degree of normalcy that is quite reassuring. No matter how bad the situation is, people still get up in the morning and go to work or school, spend time with their kids and have fun with their friends. Actually, most of the country is free of the day to day strife that makes the headlines and most people are not living "the conflict" every moment of their day.

On the other hand, it became sadly clear that there is an ever growing disconnect between the public and the elected authorities that is even deeper and more pervasive than what Prime Minister Olmert’s 5% approval rating suggests. In fact, there is a widespread and profound “crisis of confidence” surrounding the governmental institutions and the nation’s foundational mythos.

First of all, the President was forced to resign while I was there because he was found to be a serial sexual molester who terrorized the women on his staff. Though he never admitted to doing the things he was accused of, he left his office as part of a deal where he would not be prosecuted for his actions. This infuriated the Israeli public to the point where over 100,000 came out to protest the decision. That this did not prompt any introspection on the part of the politicians is clearly indicative of a larger trend. They felt that they could ignore those 100,000 people in the same way that they ignored the 100,000 people who came out to protest the (mis)handling of last year’s Lebanon War.

This has become part of a sadly familiar pattern that goes something like this: incompetent, corrupt and self-absorbed (take your pick) government officials make short-sighted, self-serving and disastrous decisions that cause many other people to get hurt (or die). When confronted by the public’s anger and indignation, said officials hunker down, deny responsibility, blame their political opponents for opportunism and pretend like their actions were above reproach. Not only does no one resign in disgrace, no one resigns anymore. And if, for some strange reason they do, then it is because they are using it as their “get out of jail for free” card.

Even more disturbing is the general breakdown in social solidarity (bordering on anomie) stemming from the sense that everyone is out for themselves and all alone. Contrast this with the idealism and socialism of the founding fathers and you get a clearer picture of how unsettling this shift is to most Israelis. Olmert’s volte face regarding the kidnapped soldiers and the government’s abandonment and inability to defend the residents of the city of Sderot from Palestinian rocket attacks are often cited by the man on the street as symptomatic of this mindset.

Netanyahu’s dismantling of the last vestiges of socialism and embrace of neo-liberal economic policies has also eliminated the last vestiges of what was once quite a large social safety net. That this appears to have revitalized the Israeli economy is no consolation to the thousands of homeless and 1.5 million Israelis who are currently living below the poverty line. That 19 families presently control one third of the economy and that only five of those families control 61% of the country’s wealth underlies the growing social inequalities while adding insult to injury.

Nonetheless, I would be lying if I did not say how wonderful it was to be in Israel after such a long hiatus. Jerusalem was overflowing with tourists from all over the world and has a much more cosmopolitan flavor than it once had. Today you can sample food at world-class restaurants and enjoy a rocking nightlife that even rivals Tel Aviv’s. Moreover the numerous divisions between Jews, while still there for everyone to see, no longer revolve around questions of ethnicity (e.g. Ashkenazim vs. Sephardim). At least on this point Israel can pride itself that the grand “social experiment”, which involved bringing Jews from all over the world to live together to forge a modern nation-state in their ancestral home, has been a success. Now, if only this cynical administration would get out of the way.

After Thought

On my first morning in Jerusalem, I made a beeline for the Wailing Wall to deposit some notes into the cracks of this ancient and imposing wall. Since it was a Thursday morning, the expanse was filled with families celebrating Bar Mitzvah’s. There were secular Ashkenazim and Haredim in black clothes as well as Yemenite Jews banging on drums and Sephardim with their beautiful silver-gilded “standing” Torahs. Just as I was starting to take in the raucous scene, a large group of Russian–speaking Bukharan Jews in Kaftans and large colorfully embroidered yarmulkes announced their arrival with ululations and the blowing of long “dung chen” style trumpets.

The tears welled up in my eyes as I observed this spectacle of Jewish continuity. After all, if a people who had endured 80 years of Communist repression had withstood and outlasted their oppressors, then I felt there is still hope that 80 years from now there will be Jews practicing our traditions in our land.

What I Did Last Summer

2007-09-01T14:46:00.000-04:00

Since Labor Day traditionally signifies the end of Summer, I thought it would be proper to provide a report – especially since I disappeared for a while there. In July I received the Legacy Heritage Scholarship to study at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and was thus able to visit Israel after almost 14 years. While I was there I briefly wrote about my experiences as an informal article for a synagogue newsletter which in the end was not published.

The following is a slightly abridged version of that article:

My time at the Conservative Yeshiva has been wonderful and I have learned a great deal as well as met people from all four corners of the earth. My learning involves three hours of Talmud in the morning, two hours of Bible in the afternoon and then alternating days of studying Job and Torah Reading. Interspersed are also special guest lectures from prominent Rabbis specifically for the Legacy Heritage Scholarship people, of which there are 35 of us.

In Talmud class I have really enjoyed learning tractate Yebamot and in particular all the laws concerning the injunction to be "fruitful and multiply". Apparently, it is not so simple as it seems, as there are many debates among the Rabbis as to what constitutes fulfillment of this mitzvah: two boys? A boy and a girl? Two boys and two girls? Each side brings scriptural evidence, but, as usual, it is Rabbi Hillel who wins out and I am happy to inform my wife that she is off the hook, as we have been blessed with the required minimum of one boy and one girl.

The afternoon Bible class is an in-depth reading of Scripture where we analyze the major themes in the Torah by looking at the lives of such giants as Joseph and Moses. For example, we learned about the ways in which Joseph and Moses are almost mirror images of each other. Joseph epitomizes the outsider who rose to be the Pharaoh's right hand man, while Moses was an insider who tied his destiny with the lowest of the low - Pharaoh's slaves. Joseph was a lover of order and hierarchy, whereas Moses had to be convinced by Aaron to set up a system of communication between the leadership and the tribes, etc.

Jerusalem as a city has changed a great deal since I lived there 14 years ago. Clearly the religious Jews have won the demographic argument and are flexing their political muscles accordingly. The mayor of the city (Uri Lupoliansky), is in fact from the Haredi community, and their needs are being directly addressed from the municipality. Other interesting changes have to do with the presence of Palestinians in the new city. Aside from those who worked for Israeli businesses, one certainly never saw young women from East Jerusalem just hanging out in the center or families doing their weekend shopping in Mahane Yehuda. It is a pleasant and welcome change that I hope augurs some more normalcy for this most cherished and contested of cities.

In general, summer in Israel is best spent outdoors and in the numerous festivals that are constantly going on in all quarters. Over the past week I have been to four films as part of the 26th annual Jerusalem Film Festival. On Tuesday night I went with a fellow scholarship recipient to see a stark and disturbing documentary on the genocide in Darfur called the The Devil Came on Horseback. The film describes the tireless efforts of Brian Steadtle - US citizen and former African Union monitor in Sudan - to bring to light the atrocities that have been going on in that corner of the world. Brian is the "whistle blower" who provided Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times the damning photographic evidence of what has been going on there for the past four years.

Amazingly, Brian was at the screening and we had the opportunity to meet with him to discuss the possibility of inviting him to screen this must-see film. At the same time, we were informed about the growing refugee crisis in Israel involving hundreds of Sudanese refugees who have entered Israel illegally from Egypt. To our dismay, we learned that the Beer Sheva municipality dumped 44 Sudanese refugees in front of the Knesset to highlight the fact that the central government has not come up with a solution to their plight and has not forwarded to the municipality funds that were promised for their upkeep. With nowhere to go, the group was camping out in the adjacent Wohl Rose Garden.

When we learned this, we decided to try and help these refugees in any way we could. The very next morning we collected over 1300 Shekels (over $300) from the students at the Yeshiva to purchase much-needed supplies such as diapers, baby formula, wipes, towels, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, shoes and underwear. With the help of Rabbi Gail Diamond, we contacted Rabbis for Human Rights and are doing our best to get these people tents so that they do not need to sleep outside in the cold Jerusalem nights. Also, since Wednesday, we have been there every day after classes to show our solidarity and to try our best to raise their spirits. While they are obviously worried about their future, they are also grateful that many Israelis have shown them kindness and treated them with respect.

It is not yet clear what the government will do to address this pressing issue, the rumor mill says that they will be forcibly evicted on Sunday and taken to Ketziot prison. The idea is to set up a refugee camp in the parking lot of this remote Negev prison and then separate out those from Darfur and those from Southern Sudan who are escaping a much older conflict. Those from Darfur will receive temporary residence permits and the others will probably be sent back to Egypt. Not surprisingly, the ad hoc group of students and citizens that is assisting these refugees is unhappy about this development because it means that they will be removed from the public eye and placed in a distant corner where access and transparency will be limited.

In the meantime, we are doing our best to make their stay as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. The city government reported with great fanfare that they were sending teams of social workers and doctors to asses the situation on the ground, but as of last night they have yet to arrive. Every day the situation in this camp becomes more perilous and only yesterday the Beer Sheva municipality sent up five more people including a woman who is half way through her eighth month of pregnancy. She and her family are now also sleeping in the Rose Garden under the Jerusalem stars.

To read a recent article on the plight of Sudanese refugees in Israel: Click here.

Sudanese refugee camp in the Wohl Rose garden - Jerusalem, July 2007.

Taking Offense

2007-08-30T17:47:00.000-04:00

Daniel Pearl's father Judea Pearl has recently published an interesting Op-Ed piece in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that suggests a "novel" way to combat the de-legitimation of Israel or what is being euphemistically termed the, "long-term threat[s] to Israel's standing". Specifically, and in response to Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz's assertion, "that American academics are at the forefront of those denying Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state" Pearl suggests that the time has (finally) arrived for pro-Israel advocates to take offense.

He writes:

"I also noticed that personal indignation has the magic power of shifting the frame of discourse from arguing Israel's policies to the very core of the Middle-East conflict -- denying Israel's legitimacy -- an issue where Israel's case is strongest and where Israel's adversaries find themselves in an embarrassing and morally indefensible position.
More pointedly, I felt invigorated by practicing what I have been preaching for months: Religion has no monopoly on human sensitivity, Zionophobia is no less revolting than Islamophobia.
Here I have exercised my right to be offended not against abusers of my religious beliefs -- this I can stomach -- but in defense of a more pivotal part of my identity -- my people, our history, our collective memory and our collective aspirations -- in short, in defense of Zionism."

I agree that more offense needs to be taken when confronting the systematic and sustained attack against Israel's legitimacy. After all, there is no other country in the world that has been subjected to the level of scrutiny or held up to the standards that Israel is expected to maintain. No other country has its legitimacy regularly and publicly questioned and no other country faces such a continued existential assault. Certainly no other country is so regularly demonized in the mainstream press.

While Israel's detractors no doubt feel that the "stranglehold" of the American Jewish community has prevented honest debate on the Middle East, I have long felt that the American Jewish community has largely sat idle while secretly hoping that "all of this" will just go away. Many have preferred to remain silent because they think that both Israel as a country and Jews as a people are strong enough that we do not need to dignify every bit of nonsense that is uttered or reported with a response. As Pearl rightly notes:

"We, as Jews, have been grossly negligent in permitting the dehumanization of Israel to become socially acceptable in certain circles of society, especially on college campuses. Our silence, natural resilience to insults and general reluctance to confront colleagues and friends have contributed significantly to the Orwellianization of campus vocabulary, and the legitimization of the unacceptable. Most of our assailants are even unaware of the shiver that goes down our spines with utterances such as "apartheid Israeli regime" or "brutal Israeli occupation"." (Italics added)

As an anthropologist who is interested in network studies, this certainly rings true. Many studies have shown that individuals are so embedded and impacted by their social networks that the very notion of agency or free will is compromised. As Jacob Moreno showed back in the 1930s, the impact of one's social network (i.e. your society - in the most limited sense of the word) is so subtle and pervasive that even one's most prosaic decisions are being affected by their social web. During his study of a sorority, Moreno discovered that many of the housemates were purchasing the same shampoo even though they claimed never to have discussed the matter.

Basically, Pearl's point is that by not speaking up and taking offense, we are all actually complicit in the shift in discourse and stigmatization of Israel that is undermining the country's security. In fact, this can and should be seen as Israel's greatest long-term threat.

Sadly, Pearl's analysis reminds me of the "History of Anti-Semitism" class that I took at Hebrew University in Jerusalem back in the early 1990s. At the time it was my great privilege to have been a student of Prof. Robert Wistrich - a real "mensch", scholar and visionary thinker - who is currently at the helm of the Vidal Sassoon (speaking of shampoo!) International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism. The take-home message of this class was that the real threats facing the Jewish people are precisely the long-term ones.

In a series of studies which has culminated in his latest offering, Laboratory for World Destruction: Germans and Jews in Central Europe (2007), Wistrich has demonstrated that the ideological underpinnings of Nazi anti-Semitism were being planted in the 1870s. That the incredibly talented Jewish community of that era (think Freud, Kafka and Einstein) failed to properly gauge the nature and depth of this loathsome ideology should send a chill down the spines of American Jews who have regularly failed to confront the recent wave of Zionophobia (to use Pearl's terms).

So, at the sake of being accused of seeing a Holocaust around every corner, I agree with Pearl that we can no longer be complacent or assume that reason will necessarily prevail in the end. As someone who has spent the greater part of the last six years on a college campus, I can report that reason is a much maligned notion and should not be counted on to prevail. Even worse, the panjandrums of post-modernism espouse a moral relativism that questions whether such a thing as right and wrong exists in a world where all truth is hegemonic and socially constructed.

Yet, I must also share some reservations that I have with Pearl's suggestion:

1. This approach echoes the tactic taken by the "politically correct" crowd. In practice this means that people keep thinking terrible things, but are afraid to say them in public. Sometimes it is better to have this out in the open rather than quietly festering into radicalism.

2. In the case of Judea Pearl it would be downright rude to argue with him when he says he is offended. Aside from his celebrity status and ongoing efforts to bridge the divide that separates Jews and Muslims, he is the father of a brutally slain son whose last words were "I am a Jew". When I say that, as a Jew, I am offended by the demonization of Israel, there is the distinct possibility that this will only open me up to even more scorn and derision.

3. Many American Jews are woefully unfamiliar with the specifics of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Indeed, many Jews resent the conflict as an impediment to their ongoing assimilation efforts. Even worse, there are a growing number of "progressive Jews" who have indiscriminately adopted the Palestinian narrative.

4. Finally, though I often prefer to be feared rather than loved, I find that many Jews have a deep-seated desire for approbation and acceptance from their non-Jewish neighbors that I suspect stems from generations of disenfranchisement and social isolation . Contrast the Jewish obsession with, "What will the Goyim think?" with the reaction of many Muslims to the "Cartoon Controversy" or African-Americans to the Don Imus affair.

So, while Pearl's approach has merit, we need to first educate Jewish people about their historic and national rights and then get them out on to the streets when we feel offended. Sure, this approach may not win us many friends, but if the recent history of the Jewish people teaches me anything, it is that if we fail to act now, we will live to regret it later. Besides, many of these offenders will never be our friends or allies. It is fine by me if they crawl back under the rocks that they came from.

To read Pearl's article in its entirety - Click Here.

Alan was Released!

2007-08-27T11:14:00.000-04:00

In the extremely unlikely case that you get all your news from this site, you will be happy to learn that Alan Johnston was in fact released from captivity on July 4 after nearly four months of captivity. Since I was studying in Israel at the time and decided to get "off the grid" for a while, I did not even bring my laptop with me and took a blogging break. Now I'm back with plenty of stories and a bunch of new articles to share and review. But first let's wrap up the Alan story...

So, yes, Alan Johnston was indeed released as I predicted he would be – a little later than I thought, but released unharmed nonetheless. Apparently Hamas was so certain that this would bring them some credibility and international recognition that they paid $4 million to have him released.

I doubt that we can hope the same for Gilad Shalit who has no doubt been brutally tortured and will not see the light of day for a long time to come. Somehow the fact that he is an Israeli soldier cancels out the fact that he was on the Israeli side of the border fence when he was captured. His uniform makes his captivity acceptable in the same “respectable circles” around the world that were appalled at the capture of Alan Johnston. Of course, if he were not wearing a uniform then he would be a legitimate target by the sole virtue of his being Israeli and if that were not enough being a Jew has proven in the past to be quite a legitimate reason to target someone when in a pinch.

For all of Hamas' efforts to get some political capital out of his release, I can report that it has not really worked. Surprisingly, even the Russians and the Norwegians have seen fit to sever ties with them following their June putsch. Fortunately, they have not been able to capitalize on this “kind act” of theirs and are pretty much personae non grata in most of the world.

I was disappointed but hardly surprised that Alan Johnston did not see fit to denounce his captors after his release. Sure, he spoke of the psychological torture he endured, but he should have said clearly that what was done to him was patently unfair considering how committed he was to positively portraying the Palestinian struggle. There might have been a bit of introspection and even a sense of betrayal. Then again, this might cause cognitive dissonance and it is simply easier to continue to blame Israel for the suffering of the Palestinian people and the situation in the Gaza strip.

Another Week for Alan

2007-06-22T15:39:00.000-04:00

Give it a couple more days. As I predicted, Hamas seems pretty determined to polish it's public image and see releasing Alan Johnston as a great way to ensure that the liberal media will continue to mislead its readers. I can already see the British journalist and academic who voted to boycott israel saying -"After all, they did let Johnston go, they couldn't be that bad could they?"

In fact, they are so desperate to solidify their hold on Gaza and so anxious for good press that they have even allegedly offered Israel a 10 year truce (hudna). Here is the latest from the JPost:

"Since last Saturday, the sources said, dozens of Hamas militiamen have been surrounding the area where the Dughmush clan lives in Gaza City's Sabra neighborhood. Hamas has warned that it will use force unless Johnston is freed
by Monday. ..."."

Of course this is all preceded by acts of carnage that are meant to drive home a point:

"On Wednesday, a member of the clan, Munir Dughmush, was shot by unknown gunmen in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood. His killing raised fears that the clan might try to kidnap another foreigner."

Of course the logic is impeccable.

Good News for Alan Johnston

2007-06-15T12:54:00.000-04:00

The Hamas takeover of Gaza is good news for Alan Johnston. In fact, I predict that he will be released within a week. Hamas need good will and good press and hence it is a good for business if they let Johnston go in the next few days. Let's wait and see.

Of course, the Guardian feels otherwise. See this article.

The Alan Johnston Syndrome

2007-05-31T11:09:00.000-04:00

As an anthropologist, I find the emerging social phenomenon of British anti-Semitism to be an interesting and ironic twist on one of the world's oldest irrational hatreds. Unlike past manifestations of this scourge, which emanated from religious myths surrounding the death of Christ and represented the lowest of the social classes, this is being lead by the well-educated British intellegentsia.

Here is a must read article by Bradley Burston on the decision yesterday by the British Academic Union to boycott Israeli academics.

"Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're a British academic. You believe strongly that the occupation must end, that the Palestinians should have an independent state, that Israel's military and diplomatic policies are wrongheaded to the point of immorality.
What to do? Simple. Find the one group within Israeli society which has consistently, vigorously and courageously campaigned against the occupation since its inception.
Then attack them.
Single them out for professional ruin. Do your best to get as many of their colleagues around the world to shun them. Yes, just as if you were in seventh grade and had decided to alleviate your own feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, panic and lack of requisite cool by cutting another victim from the middle school herd and lobbying your equally insecure colleagues to abuse the chosen victim.
Choose your victim with care.
Select the one group in Israel which has taken substantive physical, professional, legal and personal risks, which has defied the spirit of Israeli nationalism and the letter of Israeli law, in order to seek out Palestinians to search for equitable solutions.
Select the one group which has, from the very beginning, spoken out eloquently for the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination, to freedom from Israeli domination, to freedom from disproportionate and often indiscriminate use of force, to freedom from social injustice.
Then denounce them. Decide that your moral vision fully empowers you to declare Israeli professors and other university and college faculty to be unworthy of practicing their calling.
All of them.
That is, perhaps, the real beauty of the British campaign to declare a quarantine over Israeli academics. You really must envy the U.K. far-left for its blindness. Its consummate inability to see more than one side, which is to say, its demonstrated refusal to see Jews as fellow human beings, is only exceeded by its exquisite sense of timing.
No matter that in the whole of the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein managed to
hit all of Israel with a total of 39 missiles, and that two weeks ago, Hamas sent 40 rockets into the Sderot area in the space of a single day.
No matter that Sapir College, Israel's largest public college, has for years been a primary target of Qassam crews.
No matter that in boycotting all Israeli academics on the basis of their being Israelis, the measure is patently racist, a grotesque reprise of the history of curbing academic freedom.
No matter that Israeli Arab academics who are staunchly opposed to the occupation are vehement opponents of the boycott as well.
No matter, even, that opposition to the boycott runs strong within the British University and College Union itself.
In fact, all the more reason to press on. For the genuine elitist, the unpopularity of an opinion is the best assurance of its real value.
Perhaps this is why the whole boycott campaign smacks of a uniquely far-left British brand of moral masturbation, a desperate, delusional, sterile, supremely self-contained form of non-activism that risks nothing even as it changes nothing.
There must be some reason why no one in this world does condescension better than the British far-left.
There must be some reason why the British far-left manages to satisfy itself with a uniquely public, uniquely self-congratulatory form of ideological self-abuse.
Leftists abroad would do well to respect their Israeli counterparts for defying societal norms to work for the rights of people with whom their nation is at war.
Perhaps the Israeli left deserves respect, as well, for having to do this while enduring the racist abuse of leftists abroad."

Read the original article and comments here.

The only thing I would add is that the British academics are taking one from the Palestinian playbook. Find someone (or a group) that unabashedly and openly supports your cause and then attack and alienate them because you are blinded by an essentialist racism. Can anyone say Alan Johnston?

Viva al Nakba!

2007-05-15T16:42:00.000-04:00

Although this time of the year should arguably be a time of reflection for what the Palestinians call al Nakba or "The Catastrophe" (i.e. the day on which the State of Israel was created), the Palestinians have once again shown their political maturity by killing at least 40 of their compatriots in the last four days. In running street battles that would not be out of place in Baghdad or war-torn Beirut, Fatah and Hamas are squaring off for the second time in less than a year.

Once again we are witnessing the complete dissolution of law and order in the Gaza Strip. As I have pointed out in other posts, this has been going on for some time now, but has only been sparsely covered by the media because most reporters have shied away following Alan Johnson's abduction back in March. With the resignation of Hani Qawasmeh, the Interior Minister, one can be assured that this situation will only continue to deteriorate.

I find it is interesting then that one would never know that all this chaos was going judging by the websites of such perennial whistle blowers as the International Solidarity Movement for Palestine (ISM) or Human Rights Watch (HRW). Of course this is not to say that these organizations have forgotten Israel/Palestine, rather that their attention is clearly elsewhere.

For example, the ISM is an organization noted for its history of using "human shields" to prevent activities that they oppose. In the past this has meant concerted efforts to prevent the bombing of Iraq and the positioning of activists in the path of backhoes laying the groundwork for the Israeli security fence. In fact, it was this type of activism that led to the death of Rachel Corrie, the American martyr and patron saint of the anti-Israel leftist movement in the United States.

So I find it interesting that the ISM website sees fit to decry the situation at Bir Zeit University, which is suffering under "...the full weight of Israel’s occupation" which has:

"...brought down on it intermittent months-long closures and restrictions that still threaten its existence today. Other Palestinian universities also face continual punitive action from the Israeli military, all deliberately designed to create fear and uncertainty in the students and academics in order to undermine the universities themselves." (See here)

Apparently it is irrelevant that Bir Zeit has long been a stronghold for radicalism that counts Marwan Barghouti and the Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayash as graduates or that the list of Palestinian universities they are refering to includes An-Najah University. An-Najah, which claims to be "the largest, oldest, and most prestigious university in Palestine" famously distinguished itself as the place where students took time out of their busy class schedules to memorialize the horrific Sbarro restaurant bombing. But this is ancient history and does not address the charge that Israel is "deliberately" creating "fear and uncertainty" to "undermine the universities".

Of course what the ISM fails to mention is that on Sunday, the same day that they issued this repudiation of Israel, Ali Sharif, a religious studies professor from Gaza, was kidnapped from his home and beaten up by masked gunmen who took him and drove off. As he was a Hamas supporter, it is assumed that those kidnapping him were from the Fatah or PLO. In fact, the ISM also fails to mention that all the universities in the Gaza strip have been closed down since the fighting started.

Human Rights Watch, which also has a checkered history with regards to both Israel and Jews (see for example) has usually been quick to expose what it has called Israel's "war crimes" or to condemn it for being on the wrong side of international law. For example, when Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the leader and co-founder of the Hamas terrorist organization, was assassinated in 2004, HRW chose to focus on the bystanders (some of which were his bodyguards) that were killed rather than the fact that he was basically using the civilian population as human shields. At the time, the head of HRW, Kenneth Roth decried, "Israeli indifference to the same body of international human rights and humanitarian law that prohibits deliberate attacks on civilians."

Yet now that Gaza has unravelled and mortars are flying in civilian areas, there seems to be no outrage and certainly no expectation that either Hamas or Fatah show restraint. It used to be said that higher standards were expected of Israel because it controlled the Gaza Strip and was a government and thus bound by international agreements. Well, Israel is long gone from the streets of Gaza and both Hamas and Fatah are the government yet the double standard continues.

So I will wait to see if either the ISM or Human Rights Watch bother to mention the shooting of an ambulance today that led to the brain death of the paramedic. Will they send out action alerts to their members to serve as human shields between Fatah and Hamas? And will they campaign against the numerous checkpoints set up in Gaza by the opposing sides on the grounds that they limit the movement of the Palestinian public and thus amounts to collective punishment?

Unfortunately, condemning Palestinians for the widespread and systemic human rights abuses does little for your "street creds" in the liberal "progressive" movement. Even worse, it could cost you your friends and funding. No, it is much better to close an eye to the catastrophe that is Gaza and blame Israel for everything. Viva al Nakba!

Biladi, Biladi!

2007-05-07T23:01:00.000-04:00

Clearly the exodus of reporters following Alan Johnston's kidnapping in Gaza has benefitted those who prefer to sow mischief away from the limelight. Here is an article from Haaretz that demonstrates that if it is not being reported for all intents and purposes it is not happening. In general, the fact that the media does not feel it necessary to relate this story conveys the casual racism that I have referred to previously - that Palestinians (or people of color) killing Palestinians is no more interesting than "dog bites man".

What is even more disturbing however, is that for some reason not even the human rights organizations seem particularly bothered by it. Could this be because it is bad for business?

Reporting this widely makes the Palestinians look violent and this means that they lose the mantle of victimhood and the cherished position of underdog. What bleeding heart will shell out money for a group that they see as aggressors?

Besides, shining a light on the tribal warfare that is going on at present risks being banned from the area. Since organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNRWA are already heavily invested and plan campaigns around the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, this is a non-starter. It effectively becomes an internal matter.

Of course, if one were to borrow the relativist logic that is so often yet selectively used by the Left, then one might ask what difference it makes if a Palestinian child is killed by a bullet fired from an M-16 or one fired from an Ak-47? Apparently it matters to some.

Here are some examples:

Several weeks now the Gaza Strip has been burning. This is not a matter of fighting between Hamas and Fatah activists or actions by the Israel Defense Forces, but battles between armed groups that for the most part are identified with large clans. Nearly every day for the past two weeks ,men, women and children have been killed in Gaza. Every day civilians are being wounded by deliberate or stray gunfire, the result of the unrestrained use of weapons. The number of armed men in the Gaza Strip, according to various estimates, is greater than 100,000. These men belong to security mechanisms, political organizations and above all to clans, and are trying to ensure the economic interests of their kinfolk. There is a tremendous amount of weaponry in the inhabitants' homes, the entire purpose of which is a potential quarrel with a neighbor, an acquaintance or a driver on the road.

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes.

But the world is ignoring this. The media in Israel and the West, which reported on every person killed or wounded in the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas or because of "the Israeli occupation," are not taking any interest in Gaza. Even before the release of the Winograd report, the television news broadcasts and the major newspapers focused on trivial matters and chose not to deal with the danger to the lives of every Palestinian living in Gaza.

(For those who are unfamiliar with Haaretz or think that this is just self-serving Israeli propoganda, I would point out that this is the most left-wing of the mainstream Israeli newspapers and has a long track record of favorable reporting of the Palestinian cause.)

The Pravda Moment - Lifting the Veil of Objectivity

2007-04-26T00:50:00.000-04:00

For several days now I have been meaning to blog about the recent decision by the British National Union of Broadcast Journalists that voted 66 to 54 to boycott Israeli products. Since this makes Israel the only country in the world that is being boycotted, it has been getting a lot of press, almost all of it bad.

While some prominent British journalists have publicly renounced their membership in the union, the Foreign Press Association in Israel has officially slammed the decision as, "counter to core journalistic values." Some have angrily called on Israel to respect the boycott by imposing one of their own on British journalists who want access to the story.

Most of those commenting on this episode have marvelled that the motion condemns Israel for the "savage, pre-planned attack on Lebanon" and calls for the end of Israeli "aggression in Gaza and other occupied territories". Aside from clearly being tendentious, it seems to willfully overlook the fact that Israel is was provoked by the kidnapping of its soldiers in the case of Lebanon and has been out of Gaza since 2005.

Others have questioned the timing of this decision, especially considering the fact that BBC reporter Alan Johnston has been held captive in Gaza for over 40 days and the motion does not even refer to his abduction. And this only days after the unsubstantiated report that he was beheaded by his captors!

In fact, the motion not only fails to mention Johnston's ordeal but refrains from censuring the Palestinians in any way. Perhaps this is for the best since it was the Palestinian government of Haniyeh and Abbas that were quick to announce that Johnston was safe and sound, quelling the rumors of his death.

For now, no one seems to want to ask the difficult question of how or why the government knows anything about Johnston's status and why they do not put an end to his captivity if they have access to his captors. Perhaps it is in bad taste to bring up such details when the Palestinians have undertaken such "concerted efforts" to have him released.

In any case, and in what must certainly constitute a first, even the hardly fair and mostly imbalanced Guardian felt obliged this week to publish a critical op-ed leader opposing the NUBJ decision. The author of the piece was perspicacious enough to note that the problem with the motion was that it oozes exceptionalism and has, "troubling editorial aspects" since it strays, "beyond the reasonable and traditional concerns of a journalists' union."

Yet a closer read of this article reveals that the Guardian's sudden change of heart has much more to do with the understanding that such a provocative act is counterproductive because it removes what may be termed the "veil of objectivity". Referring to journalists who cover the Arab-Israeli conflict, the article notes:

"It is doubtful that many of them will have welcomed a motion which will inevitably be seen by some as casting doubts on whether they can truly approach their work in a spirit of fairness and disinterested inquiry."

In other words, if it becomes clear that those who are reporting the news are really members of a bigoted, callous and editorializing organization that passes one-sided anti-Israel motions on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, then they will lose their ability to influence public opinion with the air of authority and pretense of neutrality.

This reminds me of a conversation I once had with an Armenian Jew who had recently arrived in Tel Aviv from Baku. After our conversation began touching on world politics, I teased him by saying that it would be difficult to have an intelligent conversation with someone who grew up brainwashed by the Communist propaganda of Pravda and Izvestiya.

Unfazed by my harsh words, he proceeded to tell me that the difference he noticed between former Soviet citizens and all the Westerners he had met since emigrating was that, growing up in Azerbaijan, everyone knew without a doubt that the media was lying. This forced them to seek out other sources of information and led them to develop their own critical judgment on world affairs. Westerners, on the other hand, had an abiding belief in a "free press" and uncritically swallowed pretty much everything that they were told.

Hostage Aftermath

2007-04-09T22:14:00.000-04:00

Between preparing for Passover and celebrating the holiday, the last few weeks have been hectic and I have not had the time to sit down and blog. I have been meaning to write about the Iran standoff and the hostages, but the truth is that there was not much to actually write about. Clearly the "press conferences" and "heartfelt" letters from Seaman Turney fooled absolutely no one in the West and for that reason I did not feel like perpetuating the farce by writing about it. And then, in what many took as a complete surprise, Ahmadinejad released the hapless Brits from their captivity with a well-timed, "Open Sesame!"

I have already spoken about the background to this entire episode in my last post, so I thought I would provide a summation in five parts in this one:

I. Iranian Actions

Personally, I found it interesting that from the first televised clip that was aired by Iran on their Arabic language TV station Al Alam, they focused in on the only female among the 15 hostages, seaman Faye Turney. Clearly, this was a bid for sympathy and an attempt at leverage in the negotiations with the British. No doubt the Iranians thought that spotlighting the lone female would pressure the British government to make concessions and apologize. No doubt they calculated that the British public would not be able to withstand either the humiliation that was being meted out to her nor would they have the stomach to stand tough when a woman was involved.

Basically, Turney became an Iranian weapon that was supposed to soften up the Brits. I think that this was a miscalculation on their part, because it only angered the Brits more and provided the sailors with more sympathy than they would have had otherwise. In effect, she became the poster child for this incident. That she was the centerpiece of the Iranian propaganda effort is evidenced by the fact that she was paraded in a headscarf and wearing baggy Iranian clothing. If ever there was proof needed that the wearing of the veil is a coercive act, then this was certainly it. The fact that she was presented with a chador was clearly the Iranian way of showing that she had been truly captured and was under their control ("domesticated").

It demonstrated that, like a bird being banded by biologists, she was the object of Iranian control fantasies and being used to send the message that the Iranians were calling the shots. This was further reinforced when she appeared the following day donning a Palestinian style headscarf - a potent symbol of the political theater that was being played out and representative of the degree to which the Iranians felt she was their most central propaganda tool.

Unfortunately for the Iranians their desire to show that they were in control backfired and came across as both heavy-handed and creepy. As an aside, I think that the fact that she was always shown with a lit cigarette in hand belies a desire to repulse the Iranian (and Middle East) people and to prevent them from overly identifying or sympathizing with her. One can only imagine how a male, let alone a female viewer in a place like Saudi Arabia or Pakistan digested those images. Perhaps as a morality tale of what happens to women when they occupy traditionally male roles?

II. British Reaction

It was as a Jew that I was particularly interested in what the British public's reaction to this entire episode would be. I say this because I believe that the British, perhaps more than any other group in Europe, have so completely turned their backs on their colonialist era and its legacy and embraced the notions of multiculturalism and the political correctness that goes hand in hand with it that they have became the epicenter - if not the source of - anti-Israel sentiment among the Left in Europe.

While Blair may have maintained the "special relationship" between Britain and the US, the British public has abandoned this path and are more likely to count Israel and the US as the source of all the world's evils than Iran. Unfortunately, the British public did not fail to disappoint. In editorial after editorial, the public and the media's ire was directed squarely at the Blair government and its "overly cozy" relationship with the Bush administration. As more than one British paper noted, none of this would have ever happened if the British had not gotten themselves involved in the "illegal" Iraq war and that no matter what the British hostages were going through it would most certainly never be half as bad as either Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.

Clearly it was too much to expect that the reader’s comments to these articles would espouse British pride and patriotism while addressing the manifold inaccuracies of moral equivalency and false comparisons. After all, those serving time in Guantanamo were not carrying out a UN mandated mission, nor were they even in uniforms, for the most part (and thus not covered by the Geneva conventions). Based on the many anti-British comments written by ordinary Brits, it did not even seem to matter that the British soldiers were forcibly abducted from Iraqi waters. This simple fact is far less surprising if you believe that all "truth" is relative or that all governments lie and therefore the actual facts of the matter are irrelevant.

In the end the British proved no better than the Spanish, who allowed a terrorist act to affect the outcome of their national elections or the Italians, who have proven that they will unreservedly negotiate with terrorists and pay handsome ransoms to release their captured citizens. Actually, in some ways the British were far worse, because they could not even muster a wee bit of indignation.

As an aside: None of this bodes well for Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter who now has the dubious distinction of being the journalist who has been held hostage for longer than any other foreigner in Gaza. That he lived in Gaza and supplied the West with unabashedly favorable reports about the Palestinians does not seem to have inured him from this sort of treatment. The fact the British public could care less about their kidnapped soldiers, would seem to imply that journalists should go at their own peril. Apparently the message has been assimilated by the press corps and they are no longer venturing into Gaza.

Latest reports state that Johnston may already be dead – a fact that would fly in the face of countless news reports and op ed pieces that attempted to downplay this incident as an attempt to obtain government jobs or loot. While one might think that such a kidnapping would turn British public opinion against the Palestinians, I will certainly not be surprised if in the end it will all be either Israel's or America's fault. Almost on cue, the British National Union of Journalists voted today to boycott Israel!

III. Diplomacy

More than anything else, the Bush administration is routinely accused of being incapable of conducting diplomacy. I think that this is a gross overstatement and over-simplification of how diplomacy works. Certainly, this administration does not engage in the kind of “feel good” diplomacy that was common of the Clinton era, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that there is no give and take in all of these crises. I also would point out that although the Clinton diplomatic style was more camera friendly and photogenic, it was no more effective at achieving its goals than the Bush method. Besides, Clinton was also not averse to committing ground troops or lobbing missiles across the world when deemed necessary.

In the case of the British hostages, there are clear signs that the Bush administration played the cards that it was dealt with a relative degree of aplomb. For starters, the US administration provided its British ally strong verbal support, yet the President said absolutely nothing until a week had gone by. If nothing else, this shows some discipline and an understanding that words could escalate matters precipitously. When the President did speak, it was at the point where the British had decided to ratchet up the pressure a bit. Perhaps for this reason it is unsurprising that he call the British soldiers by the politically charged term “hostages”.

Lest you think that I am giving Bush way too much credit for NOT saying something or for using the word that everyone was thinking, I think we should look at what was happening on the ground at the same time. First off, the Iraqi government suddenly chose to release the sole Iranian in its possession. While the Iraqis claimed that this had nothing to do with the ongoing crisis, this seems more than a little disingenuous. The timing was more than a little suspect and there was no reason that this person could not have been released at a later time. That the Iraqis were the ones to announce this provided the British and the Americans with the cover (plausible deniability) they needed to maintain that they were not negotiating with the Iranians on this matter. Together with an unwritten promise that the Iranians in American custody would receive consular visitation rights, this was the carrot.

At the same time, the US ordered the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf from the Eastern Mediterranean. For those unfamiliar with the Nimitz, it is the flagship of a class of supercarriers that are the largest warships ever built in history. Moreover, these ships do not just travel along alone with their airplanes, but are accompanied by a large armada of ships called a “strike group”. The announcement that the Nimitz would join two other supercarrier fleets in the Persian Gulf should clearly be seen as a message to the Iranian establishment that there was a time limit to their shenanigans. Clearly, this was the stick.

I would like to point out that this is not the first time that this type of dynamic has played out. One of Al Qaeda’s most consistent demands in the run up to 9-11 was that the United States needed to remove its troops from the Arabian Peninsula. For years the Saudis and Americans said that they would do this and that the US troops were only there to protect the Saudis from the Iraqis. Yet, on the cusp of the Second Iraq War the US moved its Central Command to Qatar – farther from the fighting. The only reason that I can think of is that this was meant to be a concession to Al Qaeda meant to undercut the argument that they were only acting out of defense of Mecca and Medina.

Incidentally, the British were also willing to play a bit of hard ball with the Iranians as was evidenced by the firefight that took place in the shadow of the Iranian consulate in Basra. The subsequent Iranian use of firecrackers in front of the British embassy in Tehran should also be seen as part of this same tango.

IV. Aftermath

Now that some time has passed between the benevolent “gifting” of the British hostages by Ahmadinejad, two things have become clear – this episode was meant to send a chill down the spine of the Western powers and that the stakes in any future confrontation are much higher.

Only days after the release, the Iranians cemented their position by stating that they had initiated large-scale uranium enrichment in defiance of the international community. Clearly the purpose of the hostage-taking was meant to serve as a reminder that if the West wants to confront Iran on the nuclear issue through international bodies such as the UN, that there will be a price to pay. I find it hard to believe that the Iranians were unaware that the British would undertake the revolving presidency over the Security Council that began on April 1 and that this will be immediately followed by the US presidency starting in May.

In terms of future confrontations, the death of several British soldiers in Basra on the day that the hostages were released was doubtlessly meant primarily to reinforce this point to those in decision-making posts while further undermining British resolve. Since then, it seems that both sides are happy to continue this covert war and both the actions and allegations streaming across both sides seem to indicate that we are closer to the beginning than to the end. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I think that events as disparate as the continued unraveling of Gaza, Hizbollah bravado, Syrian preparations for a summer war, protests in Basra and Moqtada al Sadr’s pressure on the Iraqi government all have many causes but primarily one root.

V. Philosophizing

I think that the Iranian willingness to once again take hostages can only be understood as representative of a worldview that is based on philosophical perspectives that Westerners find completely foreign. This is not meant to imply that Westerners or Western powers have not or would not be able to take hostages, but it does imply that hostage-taking has become the signature Iranian tactic and together with suicide bombing has become identified with the Middle East.

If anything underlines the difference between Western philosophic thought and non-Western philosophies, it has to do with ideas of liberty and the notion of individualism. Whereas in the West personal freedom is a value that needs to be cultivated and protected, in non-Western countries like Iran and much of the rest of the World, the individual’s desires are subsumed by the needs of the group. In fact, Mohammad Khatami, the former President of Iran has identified this distinction in his writings on political philosophy and criticized what he identified as the Western “unbridled individualism” and the, “belief that humans and their needs and desires are of central importance at all times.” From Khatami’s perspective, the very real threat of this philosophy lies in, turning “human beings into a new religion”.

Yet the danger inherent in the loss of individuality can most clearly be seen in the case of suicide bombers, who literally negate the individual for the sake of their societies in the way that certain species of ants and bees sacrifice themselves to protect the hill or hive. The taking of hostages actually accomplishes two interrelated goals – effacing the individual while using the individual as a weapon.

The former is the result of the hostage taking and effectively denies each individual their identity as they become subsumed to the group and are reconfigured as “hostages”, or the “the Americans”, or whatever tag their captors decide to pin on them. The latter results when the hostages are paraded before the "neutral gaze" of the cameras. Westerners watching on TV intrinsically identify with the hostages, imagine in their minds what they must be going through and feel empathy. For non-Western people who think in essentialist terms, the differences are chasms that far outweigh the similarities. Basically, tribalism trumps humanism.

From a strictly tactical point of view, the Western preoccupation with the well-being of individuals is a liability in a time of war. From a strategic perspective, it is the Western focus on each and every individual that is the source of its strength and innovation. After all, it is individuals unfettered by custom and tradition who will not only fight but also innovate to preserve their freedom.

Iranian Deja Vu?

2007-03-25T21:50:00.000-04:00

The L.A. Times ran an article yesterday about the recent capture of British troops in the Shatt-al-Arab titled, "Capture of British sailors is all too Familiar" that starts with the words: "A disconcerting sense of deja vu surrounds Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines on smuggling patrol Friday in the Persian Gulf." Of course, the only deja vu that the article relates has to do with the capture and detention of British soldiers in 2004. As the article goes on to explain:

Three years ago, eight British servicemen traveling in small boats up the Shatt al Arab waterway near the Iranian border with Iraq found themselves surrounded by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, arrested and subjected to a three-day ordeal that included mock executions and a visit to what they thought would be their graves. After a few days, they were released.

Well, it's been three days and the 15 Brits are still in Iranian custody. If anything, it looks like the Iranians are not stepping back and the latest development involved the Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki claiming their illegal entry into Iranian waters and the possibility of trying them for espionage in Iran. So far the British have not been granted access to their soldiers (as would be expected in the case of POWs) and it is not at all clear that they will be released anytime soon.

It will be interesting to see how Great Britain will deal with this crisis. So far, Prime Minister Blair has convened his COBRA team (an acronym for Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) and has told the Iranians that, "there is no doubt at all that these people were taken from a boat in Iraqi waters" and that he wants the Iranians to understand that the Iranian actions were, "unjustified and wrong".

There is plenty of deja vu in the recent events, but it has little to do with the capture of British soldiers three years ago. Three years ago, the Iranians were in a far weaker position strategically and were quite happy to assist the US and UK in making Iraq safe for Shias. Three years ago discussions on Iran's nuclear ambitions had started, but it was clear that after the fiasco of Iraqi WMDs everyone was going to play the Iranian round "by the book" - even if it means years of cat and mouse games and IAEA inspections. Three years ago Mohammed Khatami, the Iranian reformer was in power and now the hard-line Ahmadinejad is the President of Iran.

No, the deja vu stems not from 2003, but rather from last summer's kidnapping of Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border by Hezbollah. Like last summer, this recent kidnapping came on the eve of a United Nations vote for sanctions on Iran with regard to their non-compliance to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (of which they are signatories). Of course in the case of Israel, Hezbollah also managed to kill a few soldiers while lobbing a few katyushas into Israel. In both cases, Hezbollah and Iran crossed internationally recognized lines and captured soldiers in uniform. At the time Israel was roundly accused of over-reacting and using disproportionate force. It will be interesting to see how the British and the international community decide to handle this crisis.

In any case, I have no doubt that this accounts for the recent Iranian histrionics surrounding President Ahmadinejad's visa to attend the UN sanctions vote in New York. By blaming the US for being slow in getting his visa processed he has an excellent excuse for not going abroad at a time when he needs to be in Tehran to manage this crisis and leverage these British pawns into tangible concessions for Iran. No doubt the Iranians are sending a message with regards to the recent disappearance of former Iranian Deputy Minister of Defense, Alireza Asgari in Ankara or the detention and arrest of five Iranian mission staffers in Erbil for allegedly aiding Iraqi insurgents.

The decision to target Britain and not the United States is also hardly arbitrary. At this point the Iranians are still trying to avoid a confrontation with the US while at the same time demonstrating their military capabilities. Because the British are militarily stretched to the limit, it means that they have few choices but diplomacy. Moreover, the Iranians have probably rightly interpreted the British as the weaker link in the trans-Atlantic alliance. It is no secret that the British people have no stomach for war and are already finding ways to blame all of this on Bush and the "American embrace". On the other hand, it will be interesting to see if, together with the kidnapping of BBC reported Alan Johnston in Gaza on March 12, will initiate a sea change in British public opinion regarding the Middle East.

Then again, who knows? Maybe "Bush's poodle" can bite!

"In Beeb we Trust"

2007-03-25T00:00:00.000-04:00

The BBC is apparently so worried that a report on it's coverage of the Middle East conflict will be made public, that it has reportedly spent between ₤200,000 and ₤300,000 on legal fees to prevent it's release! The Balen Report, which was commissioned by the BBC in 2004 and written by a senior BBC editorial advisor (!) allegedly demonstrates that the BBC's coverage in recent years has been anti-Israeli.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestinian bias.
The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

If the BBC were not publicly funded and did not claim to be unbiased and independent, then it would not matter, but the fact remains that the BBC claims that it is impartial and therefore it's impact is greater than it would be otherwise. As the Beeb's own website states: "Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest".

While I find it interesting (and slightly Orwellian) that a news agency would value "trust" above "truth", this is consistent with Gramsci's brilliant analysis of how groups dominate in society without the need to resort to the threat of force. He called this "hegemony" and argued that it, "describes the process whereby ideas, structures, and actions come to be seen by the majority of people as wholly natural, preordained, and working for their own good, when in fact they are constructed and transmitted by powerful minority interests to protect the status quo that serves those interests." Basically, it "controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society." [My Italics]

A prerequisite for hegemony to have an impact on society is trust. Without trust, people reject what they are being told, seek other sources of information and threaten the status quo. While Gramsci's critique was directed against the Italian Fascists that had imprisoned him, he would have had a field day with the BBC, a "quasi-autonomous public corporation" owned by the British government, run by a board appointed by the Queen (on the advice of the government) and paid for by taxes (license fees) collected from the public.

To understand how hegemony works in practice, one need only compare the BBC to such documentary films as Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11. Most people are media savvy enough to realise that even though they are watching a documentary, it is being edited to present a particular viewpoint. This does not mean to suggest that Moore fabricated any of the footage in these films, rather that both the juxtaposition of images and what he chose NOT to present is as important as what he does present to the viewer. Most people realize this because they know they are watching a "movie" and not witnessing real life.

In the case of the BBC, people are much more likely to suspend their disbelief, because news footage is often so raw. If you add in the element of trust, then people begin to confuse what they are seeing on their TVs as "reality". If the only footage of Africa that people see is one of famine, poverty and war and the only Middle East coverage always centers on Israel and never about the serious social problems of the other states of the region, then it is not surprising if one's attitude towards Africa is one of pity and dismay while Israel is perceived as the biggest threat to peace in the world. That the media could have such a profound effect was succinctly explained by Marshall McLuhan as the phenomenon commonly known as "The medium is the message." As McLuhan pointed out, crime reporting does not necessarily change the amount of crime, but it does change our attitude toward crime and even contribute to a culture of fear (a point well made in Bowling for Columbine.)

I think that there is another reason why the BBC pundits chose "trust" over "truth". It reflects a post-modern sensibility that eschews "simplistic" notions such as "truth" for the supposed "nuance" of relativism. The problem with this is that it is really a disarming technique that causes the reader to "trust" the reportage. What this supposedly nuanced approach accomplished is the illusion of balance. After all, how can the BBC be accused of "taking sides" if it does not believe that there really are "sides"?

Interestingly, in all my years of writing complaints to the BBC about their skewed and partial coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I have only received one e-mail in response. When I complained that an IRA "militant" was termed a "terrorist" and a PLO "terrorist" a "militant", I was told that this was not accidental. In fact, I was informed that the official BBC policy was that only members of the IRA were considered terrorists while everyone else were "just" militants! While this exchange pre-dated September 11, it certainly does not appear that the events of that tragic day have changed much at the Beeb. It also shows that there are more sides to the BBC than appear at first glance.

Cultural Relativism and Liberal Universalism

2007-03-13T00:50:00.000-04:00

Phyllis Chesler, an Emeritus Professor in Psychology and Women's Studies from City University New York has written a critical piece in the Times Online that questions the cherished Anthropological notions surrounding imperialism (e.g. "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism) as well as cultural and moral relativism. She writes this article from the personal experience of having lived in purdah during her marriage to an Afghan in the early 1960s. In the article she uses very un-PC words such as "barbarism", "evil" and "feudal" to make her point. For example:

Individual Afghans were enchantingly courteous — but the Afghanistan I knew was a bastion of illiteracy, poverty, treachery and preventable diseases. It was also a police state, a feudal monarchy and a theocracy, rank with fear and paranoia. Afghanistan had never been colonised. My relatives said: “Not even the British could occupy us.” Thus I was forced to conclude that Afghan barbarism was of their own making and could not be attributed to Western imperialism.

Long before the rise of the Taleban, I learnt not to romanticise Third World countries or to confuse their hideous tyrants with liberators. I also learnt that sexual and religious apartheid in Muslim countries is indigenous and not the result of Western crimes — and that such “colourful tribal customs” are absolutely, not relatively, evil.

Although Anthropology emerged as an Imperial endeavor - as an attempt by the conquering powers to better understand and rule their new subjects - the field has long ago turned its back on Empire and any ideological encumbrances it may have once had in this regard. If anything, the Anthropology of the post-WWII era has been the font of some of the most scathing critiques of the colonial imperative and a champion of national rights for those who were once colonized. Based on anti-essentialist notions that undermined the worldview of those who believed in the "White Man's Burden", anthropology (as a field) was supportive of and deeply invested in the liberation movements of the 1950s and 60s.

Unfortunately, as self-rule spread from country to country throughout the developing world, these new states miserably failed at bettering the lives of their citizens and often descended into civil war and anarchy. To account for this unanticipated turn of events, anthropologists and other social scientists put forward explanations such as "Dependency Theory" and Orientalism. The former blamed the recently departed colonizers for economic and political emasculation of these societies and the latter argued that this behavior stemmed from, "old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples."1

According to Dependency Theory, the colonizers may have left, but what they left behind were nation-states that were either not viable states (because their borders did not take into account underlying ethnic rivalries) or so economically dependent on the departing imperial power that independence was effectively a ruse designed to benefit only a tiny comprador group serving external interests. This viewpoint, which stemmed primarily from communist and structuralist analyses became the accepted wisdom in the the 1970s, especially among liberals and academics. That these ideas are still quite potent is clearly exemplified by the anti-globalization movement, the modern-day inheritor of the anti-neocolonialist mantle.

That most of these colonies were pre-modern societies that suffered from long-standing social and economic issues prior to the advent of the first European is apparently irrelevant and does not fit the model of a "lost Eden". At the same time, it is apparently irrelevant that some of these former colonies have now been independent states for longer than they were subjugated to foreign rule. Even in places like India, where Empire stretched to almost 400 years, the fact that well over one billion people have been born since British Raj is discounted as irrelevant. As Chesler rightly points out, these theories do not account for failed states such as Afghanistan which were never colonized, yet have been unable to provide their citizens with basic necessities or a modicum of human rights. However, the notion that there may be something indigenous to these cultures that is disadvantageous or detrimental to development has been repeatedly rejected as racist.

I suspect that this actually stems from the wide-ranging philosophical impact of Anthropology's most cherished notion, "cultural relativism". This posits that the differences between people are just a question of custom à la "You say to-may-toe and I say toe-mah-toe." No doubt Franz Boas, who spent his life combating essentialist notions of race and hierarchical notions of superiority would be both pleased and chagrined at his legacy. The smug certainty of Western civilization or White superiority has been vanquished, yet Boas - who was well-known for his scientific temperament and an unwavering moral compass - would undoubtedly balk at the populist interpretation that everything is relative.

Boas clearly recognized the existence of evil and regularly spoke out against both racism and Nazism. Indeed, "When the Nazi Party in Germany denounced "Jewish science" (which included not only Boasian Anthropology but Freudian psychoanalysis and Einsteinian physics), Boas responded with a public statement signed by over 8,000 other scientists, declaring that there is only one science, to which race and religion are irrelevant."2 Scientists are supposed to base their conclusions on facts and not on ideology. Unfortunately , what started as a healthy corrective against prejudice and racism has morphed into an ideological albatross that effectively blinds us to the essentializing of our adversaries.

Unfortunately, many anthropologists confuse their role as ethnographers and become anthro-apologists. While it is certainly the role of an anthropologist to understand and explain other cultures, it has become the custom among anthropologists to explain away the excesses of all cultures but their own. Rare is the anthropologist who can explain without condoning. While anthropology emerged as the science which embraced the "exotic" and rightly called into question the civilized nature of the industrial or "developed" world, it has too often taken sides while suffering from a bad case of the Stockholm syndrome.

Moreover, an unforeseen outcome of these critiques and "deconstruction" is that they have intellectually undermined the foundational notions of Western civilization. Frankly, if this were aimed against other cultures it would be considered "politically incorrect" and run the risk of being seen as bordering ethnocide. This begs the question of why the same person who will travel half way around the world to experience a "colorful tribal custom" has only scorn for the long-standing traditions of their own culture? Why is it that the same person will eloquently defend the "right" of cannibalism, wearing of the burqa or female genital mutilation but bristle at Western hegemony when equality, human rights and democracy are suggested? This is because cultural relativism is often confused with moral relativism. If every culture is "adaptive" in its own way, then who are we to judge which one is better?

Chesler rejects this view and instead proposes:

Now is the time for Western intellectuals who claim to be antiracists and committed to human rights to stand with these dissidents. To do so requires that we adopt a universal standard of human rights and abandon our loyalty to multicultural relativism, which justifies, even romanticises, indigenous Islamist barbarism, totalitarian terrorism and the persecution of women, religious minorities, homosexuals and intellectuals. Our abject refusal to judge between civilisation and barbarism, and between enlightened rationalism and theocratic fundamentalism, endangers and condemns the victims of Islamic tyranny.

I share Chesler's wish that those Western intellectuals who support tyrants and murderers would no longer be so blinded by ideology that they embrace anyone professing anti-Western or anti-capitalists rhetoric as a "progressive". I am old enough to remember that at one time Pol Pot was the cause célèbre of the Left and I will not be terribly surprised in the future if people start disappearing and concentration camps are uncovered in Chavez's Venezuela. No doubt, twenty years from now legions of university professors will make their careers arguing that the Bush administration really should have invaded Venezuela instead of searching for WMDs in Iraq. Somehow the fact that the same people would be the most vocal opponents of any such action today does not seem to be a contradiction. After all, if all truth is relative, then one can certainly advocate one thing today and something else tomorrow.

The problem with Chesler's neat "solution" of a "universal standard of human rights" stems from the same totalizing place that it opposes. Chesler is basically proposing a liberal universalism that is the opposite pole of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. In my opinion, it is a morbid fear of liberal universalism, more than the existence of American bases in Saudi Arabia, that causes Bin Laden to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night. As globalization continues to extend it's inexorable grip on the planet, more and more cultures and customs will bump up against each other with all the potential for conflict that this entails. It is precisely for this reason that "minimum" if not "universal" standards of human rights should be adopted.

The Basis for Hope

2007-03-05T23:38:00.000-05:00

In his most recent dispatch, "A Country Called Hope", Daniel Gordis reflects on Last Summer's war with Hizballah, the sense in Israel that the country is rudderless at present while another war is brewing for the not too distant future. Gordis correctly recognizes the malaise as greater than a simple reaction to Israel's poor performance in the war or the loss of faith in the country's leaders and public institutions. I think he is correct in saying that the root of this unease stems from a loss of faith in Zionism - the country's stated raison d'etre. As he notes:

I was speaking with an Israeli Army general the other day and our conversation turned to the recent government scandals.
“How do you explain this country?” the general asked me. “In any normal country, people would be in the streets, burning tires, protesting by the thousands. But here, nothing happens. People are going on as if there’s nothing to get worked up about.”
Maybe, I said, but I look at it differently. Burning tires would suggest that a change in the government would be enough. But that would be delusional. The reason Israelis aren’t protesting, I think, is that they understand this problem is much deeper than the government or the corruption. It’s Zionism. No one frames it that way, but that’s the real issue. One hundred and ten years after the First Zionist Congress, people are beginning to wonder if Zionism hasn’t begun to fail.

As he rightly points out, this is not meant to imply that Israel as a State has been a failure. If anything, the State has prospered and has proven itself viable in more ways than one. To take only the Israeli economy as an example, Israel's GDP is greater than that of it's neighbors combined and the standard of living that it's citizens enjoy is unmatched by its neighbors. In fact, the economic opportunities are such that over 100,000 Palestinians have made their way into Israel since 1994 either through marriage or illegal immigration (If you don't believe me, check it out). Rather:

But Israel is not doing for the Jews what the original Zionists had hoped for. And that’s what accounts for the national funk.

A century ago, the early Zionist ideologues promised that if a Jewish state were created, there would finally be one place on earth where Jews would be safe. It might not be big, it might not be beautiful, but it would be safe. In Israel, it was said, Jews would be able to defend themselves. In Israel, it was said, they would be spared the capriciousness of the world.

While I do not disagree with Gordis that this was the goal of early Zionists and of Herzl in particular, I think it is long past due for Israelis and Jews to question the assumptions under which these hopes were formulated. Zionism developed as a political philosophy in Europe during the rise of the European nation states and is a product of that historical cauldron. The majority of Europe's Jews were living in close proximity with neighbors who strived for their own imagined states. In Europe of the 1880s there was no Poland or Hungary, no Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania nor Serbia, Slovakia or many other of the nations we presently take for granted.

To be fair, the modern world has not been terribly kind to tribal peoples - whether Gypsies in Europe or Native Americans in the New World. The Jewish people have long seen themselves as a "Tribe" and combined with a sense of chosenness, there is perhaps nothing that has infuriated our detractors more than this fact. The creation of a modern nation-state, was supposed to resolve this "problem" by leading the Jews into modernity and acceptance. Once the Jews had their own country, the Jews living in the diaspora would finally have a country of their own that would be responsible for them. Zionist Jews believed that if they could get the world community to agree to let the Jews have a state of their own, the Jews could finally be masters of their own fate and become "normal" in the eyes of their neighbors. As Herzl stated, "The resolution of the Jewish difficulty is the recognition of Jews as a people and the finding by them of a legally recognized home to which Jews in those parts of the world in which they are oppressed would naturally migrate". Zionism was conceived as the antidote to European Anti-Semitism.

With the birth of the State of Israel, Jews did finally have a say in the making of laws and governance that affected them and others. Yet the notion that this would spare the Jews from, "the capriciousness of the world" was unrealistic and I suspect that stems from a millenial mindset that confused the beginning with the end. I am not suggesting, as some have, that Zionism was a messianic movement - rather that the founding of the State of Israel following the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel's unexpected military victory in the '48 War after 2000 years of exile and oppresion seemed so unexpected and unreal - that the Jewish people can be excused for confusing this with the "birth pangs" of the Messianic age.

Actually, I think that the early Zionists knew that to truly be a master of your own destiny, you had to be able to grapple with capriciousness. Unfortunately, they failed to pass this knowledge onto their children. Instead they sold them false hopes of an imagined time when there would be no more need to struggle and suffer or of a time in the future when the Jewish "problem" would be resolved. It is hardly a wonder that so many Israelis have sought out normalcy elsewhere - moving to the United States, Australia and Europe when the capriciousness proved to be too much for them.

Unfortunately, the "capriciousness of the world" does not spare anyone and normalcy has always been an ephemera. The root of the problem actually lies in an approach that treats the Jewish people as a "problem" that needs to be resolved. The founding of the State of Israel should not be in order to solve some "problem", but rather because of Jewish self-determination and a historic right to a homeland - to their own homeland. If you make the raison d'etre of the Jewish state contingent on the resolution of a problem, then you get what we have today - either despair that the problem has not been "solved" or emigration to countries where Anti-Semitism is not tolerated and Jewish safety is no longer seen as a problem.

At a time when the State of Israel has been singled out among the nations and publicly villified to the point that the right of the State to exist is constantly being called into question, it is time that we reject the Zionist approach that seeks to solve the "Jewish Question". We should stop worrying about what our patrons might think and we should definitely not expect guarantees, approval or legitimacy from the international community. As long as we think of this as a "problem", we delude ourselves into thinking that if only we did this differently or conceded that point we would finally have the "solution". Let us publicly reject an approach that makes Jews a problem that needs to be "solved" and instead demand what are our natural rights as human beings.

To insist on Jewish rights implies that we are clear-headed and have the knowledge and conviction to demand sovereignty in our historic homeland with neither guilt nor hand-wringing. This is precisely what most of the world's nation states have done and no one questions their right to exist. Our enemies do not doubt that they have rights and are willing to unapologetically fight for these rights. It is time we abandoned the naive dreams of a bygone era, truly accept that we also have inherent rights while demonstrating our willingness to vigorously claim those rights. Frankly, this is the only basis for hope.

The Holocaust-Israel Non-Link

2007-02-26T22:21:00.000-05:00

The recent "Review of the Holocaust" conference held in Iran (12/11/06) was a shameful attempt at holocaust denial that is symbolic of the growing union of Islam and fascism. To their credit, even the Iranian leadership realized that this conference and the loonies that it attracted hurt their cause and made them look like unreasonable and unlettered fools. It was at this point that they adopted the insidious "fallback" position that they were not actually questioning the existence of the Holocaust, but rather pointing out the use of the Holocaust to justify the establishment of the State of Israel. Perhaps because this was the position presented by the anti-Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jews who shamefully attended the conference, the Iranian hosts hoped that this would provide them with a stamp of authenticity.

The reality is that the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the area of the British Mandate was agreed upon in 1922 by the international community through the League of Nations. That this was 17 years before World War II started and was 23 years before the full extent of the Holocaust was known, demonstrates how chronologically challenged this contention is. Yet this does not address the underlying implication that in 1947, when the United Nations voted on Resolution 181 and the partition of Israel into a Jewish and Arab state, that the Jews were "given" a state because of European guilt regarding the Holocaust.

A recent translation by David Aisner of, “Hama’avak al Eretz-Yisrael” (“Struggle for Palestine”), by Shmuel Dotan (Published by Israel’s Ministry of Defense, 1973. 7th Edition 1988) uses primary source material to definitively prove that this linkage did not exist at the time that the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) made the recommendations that led to UN Resolution 181. Here is an excerpt from pp 370-1:

The UN decision [of November 29th 1947] provided international sanction to the idea of a Jewish state and aided in the complete victory of the Jewish people in that endeavor. The decision encouraged the Yishuv (Jewish settlement) to remain strong in the face of an impending war, and spared her from having to wage a long struggle with Britain. It was a victory of at least one, perhaps two elements of the Zionist information campaign to influence the UN – “need” and “ability”.
Proponents of partition generally believed that it was within their power to prevent a bloodbath in Palestine and save the small developed Jewish Yishuv from the hands of an underdeveloped and hostile Arab majority. They were convinced that the small Jewish state would provide a haven for a few hundred thousand displaced Jews, thereby solving the “Jewish problem”. The Jewish demand for recognition of Jewish historical rights to Palestine was not authorized in the decision; the results of this refusal on the part of the UN will surface in future UN-Israel relations, especially after 1967. The UN also refused to adopt the Zionist claim that there is a permanent link between the “Jewish problem” around the world and the Palestine question. To the contrary, it turns out that the Holocaust of European Jews had very little influence on the members of the UN, and was almost never mentioned during deliberations on the Palestine question, save for the representatives of the Soviet Union and Poland, whose primary motivation was their desire to distance Britain from Palestine.
Of course, the Holocaust provided an easier “climate” for the Zionist information campaign to try to influence the UN, but it did not succeed in influencing the considerations taken into account by UN statesmen. In the end, it was the Latin American block of the UN that was the overriding factor in securing the results of the UN vote of 1947. This UN block did not view itself responsible in anyway for the tragedy of Europe’s Jews. It seems then, that the extra emphasis found in literature regarding the supposed link between the Holocaust and the renewal of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine, is an attempt to create a myth and the results of that myth.
This attempt flows from the difficulties endured by the generation that witnessed the Holocaust, and that generation’s inability to examine this traumatic event in its entirety. This is especially the case when considering how that generation bore witness to the very weak condition of the Jewish people before and during the Holocaust and how difficult it was for that generation to then recognize that they now posses some measure of strength to be considered or reckoned with by other nations. Support for Zionist interests by the “world’s nations” after WWII has been naturally described, and with great exaggeration, as a type “compensation”. In truth, the Holocaust did not advance the Zionist cause, but rather it undermined one of its core philosophical arguments – its right to speak on behalf of Jewish millions who either wanted to or were being forced to leave their countries of origin due to anti-Semitism.
The Holocaust weakened the Jewish state which arose after termination of the British mandate and reinforced the Zionist decision to relinquish claims to a larger territory in order to save the Jewish people, since the vast majority of potential Jewish immigrants were murdered. The Jewish refugee question did not play a major role in the decision making process at the UN as thought by some researchers. The countries in which Jewish refugees were located and which sought to have them removed, were not members of the UN. The role of the United States in the UN vote has always been greatly exaggerated.
In 1947, the US had already been “entangled” in what was transpiring in Palestine and was subjected to internal political pressure from American Jewish groups influenced by the Yishuv’s struggle against the British. At the same time, a political vacuum formed in the international community due to a feeling of doubt as to whether or not the UN can actually resolve international issues of the day. Under these circumstances, UNSCOP took upon itself a far more decisive historic role than was intended with its inception. Among the considerations of whether or not to support UNSCOP’s recommendation, was the desire to stand behind a successful
international resolution that would strengthen the UN’s integrity.
UNSCOP recommended partition, which under the circumstances of 1947 was a pro-Zionist solution, because it evaluated that Britain was failing in its ability to govern the region and also because it considered the Yishuv ripe for independence and that it would be wrong to place it under the rule of a hostile and underdeveloped Arab majority. The collaboration between the Arab leadership and Nazi Germany during WWII was also considered in the decision and proved to impact the Arab interest negatively. But this consideration was related specifically to WWII, not the Holocaust. The fact that Yugoslavia did not support the pro-Zionist plan, even though Haj-Amin Al-Husseini tried to enlist the Muslim minority there at the time to assist the Nazis, shed light on how difficult it was to try and link WWII to the Palestine question after the war.
The Jewish refugee issue did influence the United States, but primarily between 1945-1946 during the first winter after the war. It also influenced the Anglo-American committee after its visit to the displaced persons camps. Even so, the refugee situation was prevented from being used as a reason to adopt a clear pro-Zionist position to the point of recommending the rise of a Jewish state. UNSCOP was influenced very little by the Jewish refugee situation.
In the mean time, the refugee situation underwent significant changes. Many of the refugees scattered or left the displace persons camps to illegally immigrate to Palestine. In 1947, generally speaking, the camps were populated with new displaced persons, most of which were “escapees” from Eastern Europe. These refugees were in better physical condition and more resilient than their predecessors. UNSCOP was influenced by the illegal immigration phenomenon. But it was justly viewed by the committee (UNSCOP) first and foremost as a revelation of the Jewish struggle for independence, not as a derivative of the Holocaust. A number of witnesses claimed to UNSCOP, and very convincingly so, that illegal immigration to Palestine would have been even stronger if not for WWII or the Holocaust, because in their opinion there was no doubt that the distressful condition of Europe’s Jews in the 1930s would have only worsened in the 1940s even had the attempt to genocide or WWII not occurred.
Under these circumstances, it would seem that the reservoir of candidates to attempt illegal immigration to Palestine would have been far greater in number and in strength than what it was after the war. More than that, in 1947 the Holocaust was far less needed by the Zionist information campaign to make its case to the UN, than just one or two years prior. Conciseness of the Holocaust among the Jewish people and worry expressed by the “nations of the world” over the fate of the Jewish state will only arise in the 1960s. Even the Zionist push for statehood did not “need” the Holocaust. In fact, the push for statehood was sufficiently strong in 1937 and even more solidified in 1941, in essence before the Holocaust even began.

Putin's Path

2007-02-18T12:31:00.000-05:00

The Washington Times in a James Zumwalt opinion piece has raised the heat in the debate started by Putin in the recent Munich security forum. At the forum, Putin stated that,

"almost uncontained use of [U.S.] military force" is causing other nations to seek out nuclear weapons to defend themselves.

This is a bit ironic if you consider the fact that Russian nuclear scientists have been instrumental in helping Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea develop the necessary technology to make weapons-grade uranium while the Russian government has kept these countries supplied in the scud missiles that could be used to deliver their payload. This too at a time when the Russian government has all but announced its intention to opt out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) so that it can once again threaten Central Europe in a balance of power game that directly threatens American interests.

As Zumwalt rightly points out:

Turning to the substance of Mr. Putin's charge, it is clear he is uninhibited by facts. His suggestion that nuclear weapon-seeking countries like Iran have felt intimidated by U.S. use of force ignores an issue of timing. Iran's quest for this capability was ongoing for 18 years before we knew about it -- when there was no basis for such intimidation. Despite Islamic extremists having taken U.S. diplomats hostage in Tehran, America's sword of retribution was never unsheathed. Similarly, there was an absence of intimidation when North Korea mounted its latest nuclear push years earlier as the United States failed to even bare its teeth.

Iran certainly has not suddenly developed the urge for nuclear technology - it has been playing cat and mouse with the IAEA for the better part of a decade. The fact that it's research facilities are scattered and buried deep underground and far from prying eyes, is a testament to the fact that the Iranians learned the lessons of the 1981 Israeli bombing of the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq. The US was unable to prevent Pakistan and India from developing nuclear arsenals and was systematically duped by the North Koreans who were clearly working on their own timetable all along.

If anything, it seems that the world is heading into a period of instability as America's misteps in Iraq and the War on terror catch up with an American public clearly lacking a desire to continue the fight. This not only emboldens America's enemies to start acting out in new new and frightening way, but creates bedfellows and threatens to solidify the international system. The outline of these emerging fault lines are becoming clear, but only time will tell how seismically destabilizing they will be.

As for the article's contention that Russia will soon be overun by Muslims, I completely disagree with the author because, for starters, I don't believe that Islam is any more monolithic than Communism was. There are definitely many Muslims in Russia, but they are the type that can be found drinking vodka and enjoying sala (fatback) with their Russian neighbors. If anything, Chechnya has proven the futility of Muslim "resistance" in Russia and clearly demonstrates that "even Muslims" have a pain threshold. It also shows that Russians are more determined and are far less inhibited than Western Europeans and Americans when confronted with existential threats.

Peace at all Costs?

2007-02-18T10:48:00.000-05:00

So it took a little while for the actual outlines of this deceit to come through, but here is how the Palestinian spinmeisters have decided to try to get around thew incontrovertible fact that the Hamas government has not met the minimum requirements of the international community or the Quartet.

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat noted that Abbas, not the Palestinian government, would lead negotiations with Israel. In asking Haniyeh to form a new government earlier this week, Abbas reiterated his commitment to all agreements signed with Israel, including the pact of mutual recognition, Erekat said.

"Since the negotiations ... are under the jurisdiction of the president and the PLO, it should be noted that the president reiterated the commitment to these principles," he said. (See here)

So, as I predicted here, Abbas would, "run cover for Hamas". Is there anyone who is fooled by this in any way. Hamas has reiterated that it will never recognize Israel's right to exist or cease from the murderous activities they call "resistance". And, just in case anyone doubted that Hamas was going soft, the recent homicide bombing in Eilat showed their commitment to this type of dialogue. Sure, the act was carried out by Islamic Jihad and the Fatah spin-off Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, yet it was denounced by Abbas and lauded by the Hamas government.

"So long as there is occupation, resistance is legitimate," said Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.

In case you have not been following closely, the Eilat bombing happened in a local bakery during regular work hours - hardly a military target. Eilat has never been "occupied territory" and to be frank, it can hardly have ever been considered "Palestinian". Yet this is what falls under the category of "legitimate resistance" the kind which Hamas is loathe to abandon for the sake of peace.

The conventional wisdom was that if only Israel left the territories, then it would be possible to sit down with the Palestinians and reach an agreement. Finally, Israel said let's test this premise and leave part of the territories - the Gaza strip. The Palestinian response to this overture has been the election of Hamas, rocket attacks, weapons tunnels and incitement to violence. Worse, they have made it clear that they would not be satisfied with anything less than ALL of the territory that presently comprises Israel. If the Eilat attacks are not a definitive proof of this mindset, then I don't know what is.

If the world community accepts the new Palestinian coalition government without agreement to "honor" (and not just "respect") former agreements, without recognition of the right of the State of Israel to Exist and without any renunciation of terrorist violence, then those Israelis who have all along said that it was foolish to trust the International community were right. Though I personally hope these naysayers will be proven wrong, yet for some reason I am beginning to suspect that they won't.

Hug a Paestinian Today

2007-02-15T00:58:00.000-05:00

In the Jerusalem Post article "Not With my Money", Lori Lowenthal Marcus points out the shocking fact that some of the money that American Jews contribute to the Jewish Agency for Israel actually ends up funding anti-Israel organizations.

The New Israel Fund is a non-profit organization which focuses on eliminating any special role for religion in either Israeli society or government. NIF grants reflect that orientation. One of the largest grants the NIF gave in the latest year for which information is available was to an organization it co-founded: the Mossawa Center.

An NIF document states that organization's belief that efforts should be expended to prevent efforts to "judaize the Galilee and Negev." In other words, there is no part of Israel the NIF thinks should be, or remain, officially "judaized." More than 33 percent of NIF grants go to programs that exclusively serve Arab Israelis, and fully 40 percent of Shatil, NIF's "empowerment center" money is used for assistance to Israel's Arab minority. Those programs actively promote the erasure of any special status for Jews in Israel.

I have absolutely no problem with the ideas of "empowering" Israeli Arabs or funding programs that focus on addressing the needs of Palestinians living in Israel or even needy Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza strip. As a Jew with American sensibilities, I don't even feel particularly comfortable with the notion of a "special status" for Jews in Israel. Perhaps I am hopelessly naive, but I believe that if you that if you treat people as second-class citizens they will resent you.

Admittedly, Kahane had a point when he said that you should not expect the Palestinians to hug you because they now have flush toilets. After all, even the jihadis desire all the comforts and accouterments of American life, only without the Americans and their iconoclastic social ideas. What scares them about Americans is not that they have neat gadgets and creature comforts, but that, unlike a revolving door that just spins in one direction, America's strength actually lies in pull and not push.

In any case, the fact that money sent by Jews to Israel is being shunted to anti-Israeli groups seems counterproductive to say the least. Yet, apparently even in the community where I live, the Union for Progressive Zionists is collecting money and medicine for Mustafa Barghouti - former candidate for President and running mate of Edward Said. The self-same Edward Said who invented his own Palestinian past and then amassed a personal fortune on the lecture circuit decrying Israel and the Oslo Accords.

OK, so this is guilt by assocation, and does not mean that Mr. Barghouti's organization should be boycotted. However, even a cursory reading of the Wikipedia reveals that Dr. Barghouti calls the separation fence - the one which has effectively prevented untold numbers of suicide bombers from entering Israel and blowing themselves up - the "Apartheid fence". During the last election cycle, Dr. Barghouti even campaigned in Jerusalem, even though by doing so, he courted arrest and implied that he does not recognize Israel's claim to the city. Believe me, I am not trying to gang up on Mr. Barghouti, but unfortunately, it just turns out that, try as you might, it is really not so easy to find a Palestinian to hug.

Occupation and Control in the Jewish Quarter

2007-02-11T02:02:00.000-05:00

Here is a classic example of what happens when you send someone to report on a part of the world they know little or nothing about. Perhaps not surprisingly it comes from the BBC -Deep Tension Over Jerusalem Holy Site by Matthew Price.

The report is a first person account of the recently inaugurated excavations near the Dung Gate in Jerusalem. After describing the exasperation of an Israeli colleague who declares that, "Its just a ramp", Price proceeds to disagree and writes an article to explain to the obviously dimwitted Israeli that it's really, "all about control."

That control lies at the root of the problem is glaringly self-evident because, as Price is quick to note, the whole of East Jerusalem (and hence the Old City) is territory (illegally?) occupied by Israel.

As far as Palestinians are concerned, and to be fair most of the world, the Old City - which lies in East Jerusalem - is occupied territory.

While the inherent irony of a Brit explaining the "real" intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict to an Israeli is totally lost on Price, he would do well to read some history or even just a map of the Old City. The Dung Gate is not only the way leading to the Wailing Wall, it happens to be the only gate leading directly into the Jewish Quarter - a part of the city "with a nearly continual Jewish presence since Roman times".

Why "nearly continual"? Because during the 1948 War, when Jordan illegally occupied the Old City, it proceeded to expel all the Jews. Perhaps this was because throughout the past 2,000 years the Jewish community was the largest community in Jerusalem. Perhaps it was simply ethnic cleansing to ensure that the city be judenrein. In any case, for 19 years, Jews were not allowed to pray at the religious sites and could do nothing as those sites were systematically desecrated. For 19 years there was no Jewish "control" of the Jewish Quarter. For Mr. Price to hearken back to those days demonstrates once again that there is nothing more dangerous than a little knowledge.

Finally, as the article approaches its denouement, Price waxes poetically:

The church bells began to ring out. Then the muezzins started up, calling Muslims to prayer. When I first came here I heard these sounds and felt hopeful.
Surely these were the sounds of co-existence? Now I just hear the sound of centuries of competing claims to this city.

Notice that the sound of church bells does not initially bring forth any negative associations in the writer's mind. Of course the Jewish component of this imagined Nirvana of coexistence is left up to the reader's imagination.

The AJC and "Progressive" Jews

2007-02-11T00:57:00.000-05:00

Here is another article concerning Jewish criticism of Israel by Stanley Kutler.

The American Jewish Committee has endorsed an article by professor Alvin Rosenfeld of Indiana University linking "progressive" Jewish thought to a rise in anti-Semitism. The article pointedly castigates Jewish critics of Israel's policies, and argues that such criticism questions the very right of Israel statehood. All this, Rosenfeld — and the AJC — insist, fuels anti-Semitism. It is a false proposition.

Not surprisingly, Kutler presents a "straw man" argument that makes one wonder if he bothered to read Rosenfeld's article or whether he is hoping that no one else will so that he can get away with this canard. Rosenfeld does not implicate ALL "progressive" Jews or even ALL criticisms of Israel.

In some quarters, the challenge is not to Israel’s policies, but to its legitimacy and right to an ongoing future. Thus, the argument leveled by Israel’s fiercest critics is often no longer about 1967 and the country’s territorial expansion following its military victory during the Six-Day War, but about 1948 and the alleged "crime," or "original sin," of its very establishment. The debate, in other words, is less about the country’s borders and more about its origins and essence. One of the things that is new and deeply disturbing about the new anti-Semitism, therefore, is precisely this: the singling out of the Jewish state, and the Jewish state alone, as a political entity unworthy of a secure and sovereign existence. (Bold Added)

Clearly, Rosenfeld, is not referring to ALL the critics of Israel (e.g. "In some quarters...") or ALL criticisms of Israel, but rather to criticism that the, "challenge is not to Israel's policies, but to its legitimacy and right to an ongoing future." Or critiques that, "single out" the, "Jewish state, and the Jewish state alone". I fail to see what is false about these propositions.

Critiques of the type that hold Israel by a different standard (whether a bad or a good standard) are racist. Racism against Jews is known by the term Anti-Semitism. As such, people (whether Jewish or otherwise) who promote the ideas mentioned above - i.e. advocating the destruction of Israel, or those who hold Israel solely accountable for all the problems in the Arab-Israeli conflict are without a doubt Anti-Semites. Being Jewish does not mean that they have been magically innoculated at birth.

Even stranger than Kutler's assertions above (yes, I know it is hard to believe possible) is the following paragraph:

The committee's real targets are "progressives" — which is their shorthand for Democrats and opponents of George W. Bush's dubious adventure into Iraq. Along with its favorite stable of commentary writers, the committee has been an ardent advocate for the Iraq war, fixed with a vision that it would bring forth a new Middle Eastern order. But the war and the vision have failed, and, ironically, at some cost to Israel's interests.

Aside from the fact that this comes off as what psychologists call "projection" , it has little to do with this paper and is verifiably false. In fact, Bush is never mentioned in Rosenfeld's paper and the only reference to Iraq is about a Turkish movie portraying Jewish doctors harvesting Iraqis for organs. This is a crass attempt to undermine Rosenfeld's argument by making the majority of American Jews feel that he is referring to them. After all, Kutler certainly knows that 86% of Jews voted Democratic and against Bush in the last election. (To read Rosenfeld's paper, click here.)

Finally, Kutler digs up "dirt" on the AJC from over 60 years ago and uses this to both psychoanalyze and tar the organization.

The American Jewish Committee's history reveals a convert to Zionism, one filled with the worst of proselytizing zeal. Before 1947, the committee was a powerful divisive force precisely because it so adamantly opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Its founders would marvel at the committee's evolution. ... Finally, the committee changed course in 1946, as its membership expanded with a substantial number of East European Jews and their descendants.

He has the chutzpah to say this as if nothing happened circa 1946 to forever silence the pre-war debates between Bundists and Zionists. For someone so obviously smart as the professor, it is kind of suprising that he has obviously never heard about the Holocaust. Perhaps that explains his "enlightened" perspective.

There is much more that is fundamentally wrong with this opinion piece, but I don't have all day to right these wrongs. Wait, was that last sentence meant as a swipe at Eastern European Jews?

Whither India?

2007-02-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

In the article "What Role for Emerging India as a U.S. ally?", Anand Giridharadas explores Indian-US relations in light of the upcoming air show in Bangalore and the US attempt to sell its military hardware. The article offers three basic models:

A question hovers over the United States' blooming friendship with India:
How good a friend will India be should it emerge as a great power?

Will it be a Britain — a loyal ally, a partner against terrorism, a fellow evangelist for free markets and democracy? Or will it be France — sharing Washington's bedrock values but ever willing to pursue its own interests at the expense of American ones?

Or will it be China — a competitive threat to the U.S. economy, using its influence to thwart American diplomatic pressure on nations like Sudan and Iran?

While I don't think that these are the only possibilities, I would vote for Number 2 - the French model. Unlike the French, this approach is not out of a desire to relive past glories or some notion of moral certitude and superiority, but rather from basic geo-political and strategic concerns regarding China and a nuclear-armed Pakistan. In fact, I believe that the United States is trying its best to prop up India as a counterweight to China as part of the US rediscovery of Central Asia and in linght of 9/11 attacks.

During the Cold War, India led the group of "non-aligned nations" but was quite close to Russia due to Nehru's love-affair with Fabian socialism and a fear that the US had replaced Great Britain as the World's leading hegemon. However, because of India's unique and isolating geography - it is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Himalayas, impassable jungles and desserts - it was relatively isolated and was of limited geo-strategic value. Thanks to the reasons noted above, as well as the rise of non-state actors and the diminishing importance of Geography, this has sparked a renewed interest on the part of Washington.

According to the article, the US administration is looking closely at arms sales to see if this signals a change in the Indian approach to the United States. Yet, after 50 years of relying on Russian arms, I am not sure that so much should be read into these decisions. Russian MiG factories dot the Indian landscape and generations of Russian engineers have worked on building weapon's systems in India. It is not so easy to just end a relationship of that depth and strength. Putin's presence on the dais with Prime Minister Singh on Republic Day is a clear testament to that fact.

I suspect that the Indian government will find a formula that will serve it's interests by being as ambiguous as possible. When asked last year to choose between Boeing (US-based) and Airbus (EU-Consortium) for airplanes to replace the government's aging fleet, in the the end BOTH were chosen. Boeing was chosen for Air India (international carrier) and Airbus was chosen for India Air (internal carrier). The fact that this was not presented as an option prior to the government decision certainly did not surprise anyone.

Frankly, if the US is looking for indicators to gauge future relations, I would recommend that they keep an eye on the arc of Maoist activity that stretches from Nepal south through Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. This arc represents the false hopes, broken promises and unfulfilled dreams of "India Shining". This partially explains why India does not feel that it has the luxury to denounce Sudan over Darfur. Yet, if these tensions are not properly addressed by the Indian government, parts of the country could quite possibly descend into civil war and chaos. If the United States is looking for signs, it may pay off to have one eye in the sky, but it would be foolish if it did not keep the other eye firmly trained on the Forest Belt.

Using Culture as Political Leverage?

2007-02-09T01:54:00.000-05:00

This article argues that Israel should leverage the fears of the minority Alawite community in Syria into a peace agreement.

This is the time to explain that the Alawite minority, which makes up some 12 percent of the overall Syrian population, is a pagan religious sect that worships the sun and moon. The sect is shunned by the other Muslim denominations, which advocate its death.

According to Islam, Alawites are worse than Christians and Jews. Because of the ongoing threat hovering above them, the Alawites' main goal is the preservation of their rule, and this is the prism through which their various acts towards Israel should also viewed.

Of course, couldn't Syria just use the conflict to rally the masses and build solidarity for its regime?

Excerpted from Here:

Suffer the Children?

2007-02-09T01:49:00.000-05:00

A Jewish school in Vienna expelled the children of a fervently Orthodox Jew who attended a Holocaust denial conference in Iran.

See "Friedman’s Kids Expelled from Jewish School"

An Agreement not to Commit but to Respect

2007-02-09T01:34:00.000-05:00

As predicted here, Hamas and Fatah have managed to find a way to share power thanks to Saudi arm twisting and the promise of a billion dollars. Of course Hamas has conceded nothing with regard to the right of the State of Israel to exist and will not eschew the use of violence. All they are are promising is to "respect" previously signed agreements rather than "committing to" them.

I find this a bit ridiculous because Hamas is in power as part of an electoral process that were agreed upon and set up as part of those previous agreements that they are only now offering to "respect". These guys had no qualms about participating in a process that was set up by an agreement that they reject, though now the are willing to openly "respect" it. This is like the PLO Charter that was ammended back in 1998 in Clinton's presence. The only problem is that no copy of the ammended Charter has ever been made available to the general public!

Jewish Anti-Zionists

2007-02-08T01:37:00.000-05:00

Here is another article to go with the recent slew of articles regarding Jewish leftists who oppose Israel. "The anti-Israel lobby" by Jonathan Spyer:

This week saw the launching of the Independent Jewish Voices initiative by a group of prominent left-of-center Jews in the U.K. The initiative intends, according to its founding statement, to "promote the expression of alternative Jewish voices." Its sponsors believe that "individuals and groups within all communities should feel free to express their views on any issue of public concern without incurring accusations of disloyalty." The signatories wish to contend that voices critical of Israel are receiving insufficient attention in British discussions of the Middle East. The claim is a strange one.

Do opponents of Israeli government policy in the U.K., Jewish or non-Jewish, truly feel that their arguments are not being heard? Is it really their contention that the British Jewish leadership is setting up "unwritten laws," which establish the boundaries of what may or may not be discussed? If the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main U.K. Jewish communal body, is indeed attempting to create unwritten laws and to foster anxiety to silence opponents of Israeli policy, it is doing a remarkably poor job. The public debate on Israel in the U.K. affords willing space to the most extreme of anti-Israel positions

These anti-Israel Jews are certainly entitled to their opinions - no matter how out of touch with reality and ludicrous they are. At the same time this brings up many interesting issues, such as:

Why do they feel that they have a right to criticize from a distance?
How representative are they?
Are they self-hating Jews?
What difference does it make that they are Jewish? (Especially since most of them are marginally so at best.)

Personally, I find the last question the most interesting. Why does it even matter that they are Jewish? Certainly it is sad to see a lack of solidarity among the Jewish people, but Jews are notoriously fractious and this is nothing new. You could argue that the majority of Jews were opposed to political Zionism until the Holocaust changed their point of view. Indeed, only last month, we were subjected to the shameful image of Jews participating in a Holocaust denial conference.

The reason it is newsworthy that a group of Jews is opposed to Israel has to do with the fact that as far as our detractors are concerned, a Jew is a Jew (by his/her very nature). This after all, is why Hitler's minions felt they had to destroy each and every last one of the Jews. This is also the view of the Arab street that speaks about what it would like to do to the Jew (rather than the Israeli or the Zionist). After all, aren't all Jews the same and aren't we all just part of the Jewish Borg? I believe that the the polite term to be used in mixed company is that Jews are "cliqueish".

It is thus with schadenfraude that I read about these Jews who think that they can talk their way out of this one. We have seen this movie in the past and I am afraid that we already know how it will end.

Tradition and Moderation

2007-02-07T21:33:00.000-05:00

Take a look at Mai Yamani 's article from yesterdays Guardian: "These Moderates are in Fact Fanatics, Torturers and Killers"

Politicians, especially in times of geopolitical deadlock, adopt a word or a concept to sell to the public. In 1973, at the peak of cold-war tensions, the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, coined the term "detente". Such words gain a currency and become useful political tools to escape policy quagmires. As the Middle East lurches from crisis to crisis, Tony Blair, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice compulsively repeat the word "moderates" to describe their allies in the region. But the concept of moderate is merely the latest attempt to market a failed policy, while offering a facile hedge against accusations of Islamophobia and anti-Islamic policies.

I agree with Yamani that calling the likes of the Saudis "moderate" is a subversion of the term and quite simply contradicts with reality. However, I disagree with the notion that there is anything new about this term. Since the early 80s, when the US decided to sell AWACS to the Saudis, this canard about them being moderates has been around.

For the US and UK governments there clearly is, because all departures from the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice are rooted in "tradition". Hence bribes, beheadings and the oppression of women and minorities are traditional, and because whatever is traditional is not radical, it must be moderate..

This is an interesting concept that hearkens back to the axiomatic anthropological notion of cultural relativism. Basically, this notion posits that, "an individual human's beliefs and activities should be interpreted in terms of his or her own culture". This means that if something is defined as "traditional", then it can't really be "bad" since it is "authentic". Of course, this becomes a subset of moral relativism and is why many anthropologists are actually anthro-apologists. I think that it is possible to understand a cultural practice without agreeing with it. Besides, I completely reject this notion of authenticity and agree with Hobsbawm's notion of the invention of tradition. Traditions are adaptive and constantly evolve and change to fit the needs of the moment. At the same time, unless they are challenged, they will continue unchecked.

I think that at any given time there are several strains of a tradition being practicd "out there". The more aggressive ones, the ones that are backed by those with wealth and power or those willing to use force to achieve their political ends are often the ones we are familiar with. This hearkens back to Foucault's "regimes of truth" or Marx's famous quote that, "the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. At the same time, other strains that are not "hegemonic" (to use Gramsci's language) exist and may come into play once the other tradition is no longer adaptive. However, as Edmund Burke rightly noted, "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing."

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the Middle East, where long-standing traditions are struggling to stay alive in the face of the onslaight that modernity has presented it with. Rather than completely crush the radicals in Islam so that the voices of moderation have some space in which to speak up, the West appears to have made a Faustian bargain to prop up the so-called "moderates" because they are "our sons of bitches" (To paraphrase FDR about Samoza). Having said that, I stand by my conviction that democracy is hardly the magic bullet that will miraculously solve all the region's problems. Based on recent signs, it looks like the Bush administration has come to this conclusion as well.

The use of moderate to describe such leaders is necessary to mask the death of Bush's "freedom agenda" in the Middle East, with its lofty goal of regionwide democratisation. Indeed, Rice's visit to Egypt in January emphasised the word moderate and completely ignored the word democracy.

Who's Orientalizing Now - "Soft Racism" in the Media

2007-02-07T20:38:00.000-05:00

Today the Palestinian arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal and his henchman Prime Minister Haniya are meeting in Mecca under Saudi auspices with Palestinian President Abbas to discuss a unity government and an end to the spiraling violence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. While I am not much of a betting man, I can say with certainty that a failure to reach some sort of compromise or accord will go down in Palestinian history as the second Nakba (Catastrophe). No doubt the Saudis are twisting arms and the Europeans are holding out an end to their economic embargo if a unity government is formed and Abbas agrees to run cover for Hamas.

Since the Hamas victory at the polls and Fatahs fall from grace last year, there has been increasing tension between the opposing factions which has developed into open warfare following Abbas’ threat to dissolve the government and call for new elections. The recent fighting has included mortar attacks on Abbas’ Presidential Palace, shots on Prime Minister Haniyah’s motor cavalcade (injuring one of his sons), attacks on rival institutions of higher learning, rival mosques and the turning of residential areas into battle zones as snipers and gunmen commandeer rooftops and apartments. Even ambulances have not been off-limits to the carnage and some of those injured in the fighting have even been kidnapped from their hospital beds. Both sides, it seems, have once again proven themselves as masters at brinksmanship - employing violence to achieve their political goals.

Of course, all of this begs the question of what the international reaction would be were Israel to have carried out any of the above actions. Undoubtedly the media would sanctimoniously editorialize about Israel’s “torpedoing” of peace efforts, “flagrant violations” of international law and “extra-judicial” kidnappings or killings. UN resolutions would be passed and EU fact-finding missions would be organized to “investigate” the matter at carefully pre-selected photo-ops. Perhaps even members of the International Solidarity Movement would volunteer to place themselves as “human shields” between the warring sides to prevent further bloodshed.

That none of this has occurred should really come as no surprise. After all, it is precisely when things take a turn for the worse that the reporters run for cover and start filing their reports from hotel rooms and the wire services provide stories by local stringers whose dedication to the truth is suspect at best. Even worse, when things become complicated and a clear good guy and bad guy are no longer easily discernible, world public opinion not surprisingly loses interest.

It is precisely for this reason that I have been following the ongoing media coverage of the Palestinian in-fighting and the language employed by the various news outlets. It is interesting that through the many “rounds of fighting” over the past two months no “cycle of violence” has yet reared its head. It appears that this merry-go-round theory of conflict which subtly posits the irrationality of “an eye for an eye” while broadly hinting at the futility of the ongoing conflict only has analytical value with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In fact, one might be excused for thinking that this implies that if the Palestinians are killing each other in reprisal shootings, they no doubt have a good reason to be doing so. At the same time, it implies that there is no sense in trying to comprehend this behavior since it is clearly irrational and should not be judged by the laws of reason. Indeed, there is no need to even posit an ultimate “root” cause or theory to explain this fratricide – rather it is widely understood and accepted that resorting to violence and bloodshed is just the local way of dealing with problems.

Unfortunately, I find this approach typical of a specific type of racism representative of an unquestioned worldview that underlies this reportage. Sure, this is not the kind of racism that leaves you lying beaten and bloody in an alley by a bunch of guys in white sheets, but it is racism no less. It posits that that, as rational-minded Westerners, we can never appreciate the irrational passions and emotions that have been unleashed and thus we also have no right to judge its morality.

This perhaps explains why there has been no mention in any of the reportage about the “innocent” civilians who have been wounded or killed while caught in the crossfire between the two factions. This absence is quite striking since errant Israeli bullets usually solicit banner sized headlines such as: “Innocent child killed by Israeli bullets!” When somewhere between 14 and 22 Palestinians civilians died in a battle that killed 23 Israeli soldiers in Nablus in 2002, the world press was quick to dub it the “Massacre of Jenin”.

Yet, as hundreds of innocent Palestinians have been killed or wounded over the past few weeks, the absence of similar headlines ascribing responsibility to either Hamas or Fatah becomes even more pronounced. This seems to imply that when Palestinians kill other Palestinians, it is too complicated to figure out who is innocent. Could it be that no one wants to ascribe “guilt” by proclaiming someone innocent? Once again, the logical conclusion is that this fighting is simply one of those irrational, Oriental things that defy simple Western notions of rationality and “right action”.

This may also explain why there is also a general avoidance of legalese and no attempt to judge the sides by the principles of international law. When Israel overturns a rock in Jerusalem or send its soldiers across the Green Line, the papers are almost unanimous in their contention that this violates long-held (yet undisclosed) principles of international law. While Palestinians have violated almost every single article of the 4th Geneva Convention over the past two months, not once has anyone questioned the legality of these actions.

Salman Rushdie has termed this attitude “soft racism”, since it essentially paints a smiley face where a Swastika really belongs. This is the kind of racism that does not believe that all those Ayatollahs and mullahs could “really” mean what they say. It is a vestigial colonial attitude that patronizes the “natives” and infantilizes them by treating them with kid gloves. It says, in effect, “We know you don’t really mean any harm by your actions, you are simply not mature enough to control your emotions or act rationally.” In essence, “You know not what you are doing and can not be held accountable for your actions.”

It is clear that the recent coverage of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict not only suffers of the Orientalism that Edward Said identified, but also from an essentializing and infantilizing of Arabs/Muslims that is clearly racist. It is time we recognized the long-standing and elaborate traditions and values that underpin Middle Eastern societies and start holding them accountable for their actions. At least no more or no less than Israel is held to account.

Welcome to Palestine

2007-02-04T02:31:00.000-05:00

Take a look at Caroline Glick's latest article Welcome to Palestine. Pretty Scathing stuff.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.

The Democracy Solution?

2007-02-03T22:39:00.000-05:00

Amir Taheri, the Iranian born Middle East commentator has an article in this month's Commentary magazine sets his sights on the Iraq Study Group (ISG) and presents what he believes are the "real" or root problems of the Middle East.

Fifteen years ago, after the first defeat of Saddam Hussein and the liberation of Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush and his Secretary of State James Baker faced the question of how best to exploit the American victory as a means of stabilizing the Middle East. The obvious course would have been to deploy the immensely enhanced prestige of the United States, backed by its unprecedented military presence in the Persian Gulf, to help create new and durable security structures in a region regarded as vital to American national interests.

How might this have been done? The U.S. could have urged its Arab allies to introduce long-overdue reforms as a step toward legitimizing their regimes and broadening their domestic political support. At the very least, the U.S. might have urged the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council to end their decades of intramural feuding and forge a broader alliance with Jordan and Egypt. This, with American support, might have helped create a new balance of power in the region to counter the ambitions of adventurist regimes like Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

But nothing of the sort was ever considered in Washington. Instead, as Baker declared in September 1991, the administration would go for “the big thing”: that is, finding a solution to the century-old conflict between the Jews and the Arabs. The result was the Madrid conference, an impressive show of heads of state but, as the decade’s subsequent events would prove, a wholly counterproductive exercise in peacemaking.

The two key analytical assumptions that led to Madrid were, first, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was the issue, the Ur-issue, of Middle Eastern politics and, second, that all the other issues in the region were inextricably linked to it. Despite everything that has happened in the interim to disprove these two assumptions, they still underlie the thinking of diplomats today. Most recently, they were repeated almost word for word in the long-awaited report of the Iraq Study Group (ISG) headed by the very same James Baker.

As Taheri rightly points out, this fixation on the Arab-Israeli conflict as the central or "Ur-issue" is a type of reductionism that borders on wish-fulfillment. Worse, it not only serves to divert attention from the very real internal problems that exist throughout this region, it privileges the discourse of those Arab elites who have made their careers by using the Arab-Israeli conflict to avoid much-needed introspection and reform. Moreover, the subtext to this approach is that it places the onus on the Israeli side, and is widely recognized as shorthand for "Israeli concessions". It presumes that an ever-shrinking Israel would suddenly bring peace and development to a region that British Prime Minister Blair has dubbed the "arc of crisis"

In this article, Taheri asserts that as pieces of former empires, none of the countries comprising this arc, "enjoys fully defined or internationally recognized borders" and then (quite didactically) goes about describing every contentious oasis or claim of suzerainty from Kashmir to Western Sahara. While it is certainly relevant to a more comprehensive understanding of the region that, "22 full-scale wars over territory and resources, not one of them having anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians" have been fought, in the end this is less than half of the story.

Taheri hints at irredentist claims in passing, but hardly does them justice. For example, the Kurds - which according to the Wikipedia article on them number some 35 million individuals - are mentioned only as part of a longstanding border dispute and cross-border guerrilla war between Turkey and Kurds in Northern Iraq. With all the attention focused on Israel's denial of "legitimate self-determination" to the Palestinians, one might be excused for not knowing that it is, "the Kurds [that] make up the largest ethnic group in the world who do not have a nation-state of their own." (See Wiki)

In the end, the solution that Taheri offers for the region is democratization as, "the only credible strategy ... and the only hope..." since,

"... with the exception of Israel and with the partial exception of Turkey, the entire Middle East lacks a culture of conflict resolution, let alone the necessary mechanisms of meaningful compromise. Such a culture can only be shaped through a process of democratization. Only democracies habitually resolve their conflicts through diplomacy rather than war, and only popular-based regimes possess the political strength and the moral will to build peace."

Taheri is certainly not the first or only one to promote this perspective. Condoleeza Rice and the Bush administration have made this point the primary thrust of their Middle East efforts. At her 2005 speech given at the American University in Cairo, Rice famously said, "For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither" (to read the speech in its entirety). Thomas Friedman points out in his book, The World is Flat, that the difference beween an impoverished Muslim in India and an impoverished Muslim in Pakistan is that when the Indian Muslim sees the house of a rich person, he says to himself , "One day I will BE that man" whereas the Pakistani Muslim thinks, "One day I will KILL that man". According to this argument, India's secular democracy, provides young Muslims with equal opportunities and the means to have their voices heard. While this "solution" to the region's myriad problems is clearly well-meaning and even based on solid research that has shown that democracies do not go to war against each other, it flounders upon close scrutiny.

If the experiences of Algeria, Lebanon and Gaza are any indication of how "Democracy in the Middle East" would look, then it is clearly a subversive force that promises even greater instability and bloodshed. In a region characterized by the rifts of tribalism, that is lacking in a tradition of minority rights or tolerance for dissenting opinions (let alone mechanisms for power-sharing), this approach promises to be disastrous. Moreover, while I believe that every heart yearns to be free of tyranny and oppression, what struck me most about the above statement (besides its reductionism), is that it is a classic case of cultural imperialism to assume that Western democratic institutions are the solution to this region's woes. Besides, if we are to believe Taheri that the, "the entire Middle East lacks a culture of conflict resolution, let alone the necessary mechanisms of meaningful compromise", then any Democratic undertaking will necessarily be a top-down imposition.

As such, it is hard to see why "free and fair elections" in Iraq would prompt Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq to lay down their arms and embrace each other as brothers. I find it also highly unlikely and naive to think that democratization in the Middle East will lead to the acceptance of the State of Israel. Frankly, as Taheri points out in this article, Israel is in most ways peripheral to the pervasive and deep-seated problems that typify the region. Nonetheless, as history has repeatedly shown ... at the end of the day, it IS actually more convenient and easier to simply blame the Jews for all of your problems.

(To read the entire article click here.)