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.

Administering Silence

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

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

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

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 ...

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

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

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.