Friends don't Let Friends ...

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

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

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!

Canary in the Coal Mine

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.