I guess we can all breathe a sigh of relief now that Andrew Adler has resigned as publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times. His January 13 column, proposing that Israel might consider assassinating President Obama, was enormously embarrassing to Israel, its supporters and Jews everywhere. Removing him from his visible position makes life a lot easier for the rest of us, doesn’t it?
One could argue that Adler’s outburst shouldn’t cause Jews to cringe; after all, we know that supporting Israel and loving America are not incompatible. We can’t be blamed collectively for the blathering of one fool, even if he provided fuel for the fevered imaginings of those who believe Jews are disloyal. We should have outgrown the old habit of worrying about what others think of us. Proud Jews do what they need to do, not what the world tells them to do. On the other hand, we also worry that Israel is waging a war against delegitimization and isolation, fighting for its good name and legitimacy in the eyes of the world. That is, we sneer at the opinions of the world, but we’re also worried sick about the opinions of the world. I’m sure those two thoughts fit together somehow, though I’m not sure how.
Before we put the Adler incident comfortably behind us, though, let’s linger a moment to consider how such a thing might have happened. After all, this wasn’t just some lone nut talking—it was the owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times, the semi-official voice of one of the nation’s major Jewish communities. A fellow like that is supposed to have some feel for the mood of the community he’s covering, plus enough common sense to run a business and write coherent thoughts. Nor is Adler some self-inflated businessman who decided to purchase intellectual gravitas. He has a B.A. in journalism, according to his LinkedIn.com page. He reportedly worked in the past as the paper’s managing editor, then started up a smaller, independent Jewish weekly before acquiring the Times. What made him wander so far off the reservation?
The answer is, he didn’t. He was speaking for a community—or rather, an assertive subgroup of the community—that considers itself the true heart of the Jewish people and lives in fear and loathing of President Obama. Anyone who circulates regularly in organized communal circles knows what I’m talking about: the earnest denunciations of Obama as hostile to Israel, sympathetic to radical Islam, the worst president for Israel in its history, intent on weakening Israel and leaving it vulnerable to its enemies. Liberals like to dismiss such talk as Republican partisan smoke, but it’s not. It’s widely believed. Lots of people, Jewish and non-Jewish, are genuinely scared of Obama. They shouldn’t be, as we’ll see in a moment. But they are. that needs to be understood.
Recently retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan, fresh from calling a military attack on Iran “the stupidest thing I ever heard,” said at a conference in Tel Aviv that Israel should embrace the Saudi peace plan.
He also said he has been speaking out against the prime minister’s policies since leaving the Mossad in January because “when I was on the job, I, (ex-Shin Bet chief) Diskin and (ex-IDF chief of staff) Ashkenazi could restrain any dangerous adventurism. Now I’m afraid there’s nobody to stop Bibi and Barak.”
Here is an account from the Sydney Morning Herald with some quotes from Dagan on the Saudi plan. (Dagan retired in January after nine years as director of the Mossad, and is a legend among security hawks. Here’s an interesting profile that shows where his reputation comes from.
The comments on Bibi and Barak don’t seem to be on the Web - they appear in Friday’s Yediot print edition. Dagan made his comments, according to Yediot, during a “closed meeting” at Tel Aviv University. Besides discussing the Saudi plan and his fears of Bibi’s recklessness and Barack’s enabling, Dagan also repeated his contention from January that attacking Iran is “the stupidest thing I ever heard.”
By implication, Dagan also confirmed what I have been writing in the past few weeks, that Bibi and Barak have managed in the past six months to remove the entire top echelon of the Israeli security establishment and replace it with a more compliant leadership that won’t talk back or raise hard questions (hence “there’s nobody left to stop Bibi and Barak”). The outgoing leadership was unanimously opposed to Bibi’s saber rattling on Iran and overwhelmingly in favor of renewing talks with the Palestinians ASAP. What this means is agreeing to resume talks where Olmert and Abu Mazen left off in October 2008, agreeing to the 1967 lines as the basis for the talks (as Dagan implies in calling for the Saudi plan) rather than insisting on starting again from scratch and dismissing all the concessions mooted up to that point, as Bibi has been demanding.
I know I’m going to hear that there are ex-generals who disagree, like former IDF chief of staff Moshe Boogie Yaalon, now Bibi’s deputy prime minister. That’s a good point. I can name you another: former
chief of Northern Command Yossi Peled, now a Likud lawmaker. That’s pretty much the list.
A recent op-ed essay in the Washington Post dissects torture / “enhanced interrogation” and presents evidence that as repugnant as it is, it might work — that is, yield usable intelligence that otherwise wouldn’t have been forthcoming. The writer, M. Gregg Bloche, is a psychiatrist and teaches law at Georgetown. He was a health consultant to the Obama campaign and teaches courses on health policy and human rights. He writes that he’s against torture because it’s evil, but whether or not it’s effective is a separate and more complicated question.
I’ve examined the science, studied the available paper trail and interviewed key actors, including several who helped develop the enhanced interrogation program and who haven’t spoken publicly before. This inquiry has made it possible to piece together the model that undergirds enhanced interrogation.
This model holds that harsh methods can’t, by themselves, force terrorists to tell the truth. Brute force, it suggests, stiffens resistance. Rather, the role of abuse is to induce hopelessness and despair. That’s what sleep deprivation, stress positions and prolonged isolation were designed to do. Small gestures of contempt — facial slaps and frequent insults — drive home the message of futility. Even the rough stuff, such as “walling” and waterboarding, is meant to dispirit, not to coerce.
Once a sense of hopelessness is instilled, the model holds, interrogators can shape behavior through small rewards. Bathroom breaks, reprieves from foul-tasting food and even the occasional kind word can coax broken men to comply with their abusers’ expectations.
He talks to some of the researchers who developed the techniques apparently used by U.S. forces and shows how they would work. It came out of Chinese techniques for extracting fake confessions and was studied by U.S. researchers originally to train troops in resisting it, until some bright guys figured out that if it helped the Chinese get prisoners to lie, and helped American soldiers resist, it could also help American interrogators extract real stuff, with some tweaks. If he’s right, he says, the “possibility poses the question of torture in a more unsettling fashion” than it’s been addressed up to now,
by denying us the easy out that torture is both ineffective and wrong. We must choose between its repugnance to our values and its potential efficacy. To me, the choice is almost always obvious: Contempt for the law of nations would put us on a path toward a more brutish world. Conservatives are fond of saying, on behalf of martial sacrifice, that freedom isn’t free. Neither is basic decency.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Stanley Fischer, governor of the Bank of Israel,
is examining a formal bid to head the International Monetary Fund, said an official familiar with his thinking, and figures he has an outside shot at the job if there is a deadlock in the voting.
Mr. Fischer, a former deputy managing director of the IMF, is a long shot. While he’s widely respected among central bankers and finance ministers, his current position as Israel’s central bank governor would make it tough to win the support of Arab nations and other emerging-market countries, said an Arab official who has worked with Mr. Fischer…
The odds-on favorite, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde, is widely supported in Europe, which has about 35% of the votes in the IMF. A simple majority is needed to win the job. She told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday she expects shortly to tour major emerging-market countries, including China and Brazil, to build support. …
In 2000, Mr. Fischer, then the IMF’s deputy managing director, made a run for IMF managing director and picked up substantial support from Africa and the Middle East, including from Mr. Manuel of South Africa. Mr. Fischer was born in what is now Zambia and positioned himself as an African candidate despite his U.S. citizenship. But the U.S. balked, trying to preserve the tradition of the top IMF job going to a European and the second position going to a U.S. citizen.
Eventually, Germany’s Horst Kohler, who was president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, got the managing director’s job, and Anne Krueger, an American economist, got the No. 2 slot.
The currrent reports don’t spell it out, but part of the U.S. objection to Fischer is his left-leaning outlook, which he shares with Socialist party stalwart Strauss-Kahn. He was named IMF deputy chief at the beginning of the Clinton administration, when the Robert Reich left faction was still in charge, before Robert Rubin became top dog after the 1994 elections. After that Fischer was unpopular in D.C. The African group nominated him in 2000 as a friend of the working man. As a kid in Zambia and Zimbabwe he was a member of Habonim and made aliya to kibbutz after high school, departing pursue a career as an economist when he unexpectedly got accepted to London School of Economics. He’s close to Shimon Peres and his post-industrial, high-finance New Socialism.
Stephanie Flanders at BBC reports from the IMF conference in Rio that the Lagarde candidacy is leaving a lot of insiders cold:
They don’t like the symbolism of the job going to yet another French citizen; they worry that she will not be able to inject fresh thinking into the management of the eurozone crisis, and more than a few still harbour hopes of a last minute revolt.
And so many are fantasizing about an outsider, and Fischer is a favorite fantasy:
The way the fantasy plays out, there would be a major fight in the board over the decision, with Fischer then emerging at the last minute as the compromise candidate to break the deadlock.
Stan Fischer would be an extremely good choice: born and raised in Africa, he has friends across the developing world and, as a distinguished economist, he’s both liked and respected within the Fund. He’d also be good at banging European heads together.
Unfortunately, the fantasy has little chance of coming true, not least because he has been a US citizen for much of his working life.
If he came in as number one at the Fund, the Americans would lose not just the number two slot at the Fund, currently taken by John Lipsky, but the job of running the World Bank as well.
The Americans like Stan Fischer a lot, but not enough to give up two senior posts in the international financial system in exchange for just one.
Shaul Mofaz, the chairman of the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee, wrote an op-ed essay on the Ynet Hebrew website on Wednesday May 25, savagely summing up Netanyahu’s American visit. Strangely, it doesn’t appear on the English site. In fact, it’s not so strange—the English site’s opinion section carries mostly right-wing material (Obama vs. the truth, Obama’s skewed worldview, Beware fake humanitarians, Say no to a Palestinian state etc. etc.) while the Hebrew opinion page is fairly balanced between left and right and varied in theme as well.
The failure to translate Mofaz is particularly telling — the Iranian-born ex-soldier has more credibility on defense matters than just about any other critic of Netanyahu right now, given his background as IDF chief of staff (appointed by Bibi), defense minister and ally of Ariel Sharon and reluctant convert to Kadima (he first mulled running for head of Likud after Sharon bolted). He’s someone the security minded would have to take seriously.
Here’s some of what Mofaz had to say:
Like many Israelis I believe the prime minister gave an excellent speech in Congress, but unlike the prime minister I am not a great believer in the power of speeches. I was raised to believe that actions are stronger than words. The prime minister of Israel is good at giving speeches. Very good. If I were looking for a salesman, he would be the man. But Netanyahu sold air yesterday—promises without political backing in front of the wrong audience…
The state of Israel has come to the moment for action. Since the Six-Day War the state leadership has refused to take the necessary decisions. What began as a tactical consideration has become over the years a moral and existential decision that the jewish state can no longer escape. The quest for defensible borders is in opposition to the Zionist nightmare of a binational state. Electoral considerations, populism, seductive words and twisted language have become a replacement for national policy.
The principles of Obama’s speech aren’t new. The American president erred when he chose not to state clearly that there will not be a right of return, there will not be a return to the 1967 lines and that President Bush’s commitment to recognizing the settlement blocs is still in effect. The prime minister erred when he wasted two precious years. He erred in forming a government of national refusal, in relying on war-mongering extremists, in his inability to make a reality of the statement that it would be good for our Jewish state to give up parts of the land of Israel.
A leader is judged by his ability to lead. In the end, Netanyahu chooses to stand in place, to hand out promises that he can’t fulfill, to preserve the past, to muddy the present and to mortgage the future. This is a surrender to paralyzing fear and is the opposite of leadership.
Today Netanyahu returns to Israel. From here Obama looks less threatening. The echoes of the stormy applause in Congress will fade within hours, but the problems, challenges and threats will remain. Fine words are no replacement for leadership. Punchy sentences aren’t a replacement for deeds. September is only four months away and the reality is not going to change—the threats will become reality, the seeming quiet will turn to violent, bloody confrontation.
The press attention at AIPAC goes to the big speeches by prime ministers, superstar lawmakers and the occasional president. Most of the action, though, is in the less ballyhooed small-group workshops and “breakout” sessions, dozens at a time, where groups of delegates listen to experts expound on topics ranging from effective lobbying and working with estate planners to “Syria’s Destructive Behavior,” “Reducing Dependence on Oil,” “Saving American Lives With Israeli Military Innovations” and “The Modern Arab State: The Making of an Unstable Order.”
Every now and then, though, a session turns unpredictable and ends up offering an unexpected peek below the surface of the Israel-American Jewish family psychodrama. One of those moments came on the first day of this year’s conference, shortly after President Obama’s speech.
The session was titled “The West Bank Model,” touted to explore how West Bank’s economy “has grown rapidly for the past two years” with the “help of Israel, the West and some notable Palestinian leaders” — and whether the model can “provide a basis for improved Israeli-Palestinian relations, or founder on “the PA’s recent unity deal with Hamas.”
The speakers were Major General Eitan Dangot, coordinator of government activities in the territories, essentially the military governor of the West Bank and Gaza; retired Brigadier General Eival Gilady, former head of the army’s crucial Planning Branch and now CEO of the Portland Trust, a British foundation that finances West Bank start-ups; and Howard Sumka, former head of U.S. foreign aid programs in the West Bank and Gaza.
The generals’ presentations were eye-openers. Both talked at length about the effectiveness and professionalism of the Palestinian Authority under its prime minister Salam Fayad, the close and effective cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces and the ways in which both processes have allowed a West Bank economic boom, a sharp rise in living standards — and an easing of Israeli roadblocks and other security measures, which has cleared the way for even more growth. The standing room crowd, some 200 delegates, listened with seeming rapt attention.
Both generals peppered their talks with cautions, however, about the limits and fragility of the efforts. Dangot warned repeatedly that the progress could be set back suddenly by a terrorist incident “provoked extremists on either side.” Gilady warned that “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not an economic one — it is a national one that will only be solved by a diplomatic process.” He said Israel’s priorities must be maintaining security, encouraging further growth and “to help Fayad by rolling back the occupation.”
All three points represent sharp departures from the policies of the present Israeli government. None drew any visible reaction from the audience. It wasn’t clear that anyone noticed. Mingling and eavesdropping after the session ended, I couldn’t hear anyone mentioning any of these points.
What did stir the crowd was the third presentation, by the former U.S. aid official, and the response he drew from the generals. Sumka first detailed American efforts to encourage the West Bank economy. Midway through, though, his focus switched to criticizing Israeli restrictions, some security-based, some bureaucratic, variously “burdensome,” “illogical” and “unnecessary,” that frustrate Palestinian businesses and impede growth. He was especially passionate about Gaza, which he said was “not a humanitarian crisis” but “is a mess.” As he spoke, various members of the crowd shook their heads, shifted in their chairs and muttered “not true” and “he’s wrong.”
His comments drew angry retorts from Dangot and especially Gilady, who said that Palestinians in Gaza share responsibility for their hardships and that restrictions would not be eased at the cost of Israeli lives. “I don’t think there is another situation in history where a territory is shooting rockets on a neighboring country and the other side is feeding them,” Gilady said. Each of his statements drew loud applause and cheers—the only applause of the 90-minute session.
The bottom line: An important group of American Jewish activists was given a stark demonstration of the perception gap between the thinking of the generals in the field and the policy nostrums of the politicians and lobbyists — viewing the Palestinian Authority as partners and the occupation as the problem, versus blaming everything on the Palestinians and calling peace impossible. But the important insight went right over the crowd’s heads. The generals didn’t make a big deal out of it, because they take it for granted. The crowd was waiting to hear Israel defended against the Arabs. And the voice of American liberalism zoomed straight in on Palestinian suffering and Israeli sins, rather than Israel’s needs and the possibilities of progress, which drove the Israeli doves instinctively into the arms of the hawks. That’s why we’re stuck.
Barack and Bibi: An Optimistic Reading
According to a very reliable source, Abraham Foxman got an e-mail the other day, lamenting the fact that Hitler didn’t get him, apparently because of the Anti-Defamation League’s statement praising President Obama’s Middle East speech. I didn’t call for confirmation because I didn’t want Abe to ask me not to publish, and I regard my sourcing as pretty close to impeccable.
The Internet has been exploding lately with e-mail slime about Obama and the so-called “Auschwitz borders,” which Abba Eban often said was the one moment in his life that he regretted more than any other. There’s an ugly mood in the land that ill serves us. This is not something orchestrated out of Jerusalem; it’s an expression of a psychological debility, some sort of post-Holocaust stress syndrome: Eban once said, “We are a wounded people.”
Nonetheless, Bibi could make things better if he moderated his own speech. He’s taken up a position that he knows is untenable, partly for domestic political reasons, playing to his right flank, and partly as a tactical feint to improve his eventual, inevitable bargaining position. Israel has run out of time for stalling; Bibi’s too smart not to know this, and besides, he’s hearing it from his security and intelligence people. He’s saying stuff that simply inflames the right and makes things uglier.
Now, assuming he’s saying the stuff he’s saying for tactical reasons, that’s not the end of the world. Politicians can’t always be telling the truth — they have to tell people what they want to hear in order to gain the running room to do what needs to be done.
The fact is, though, that his reaction to Obama’s speech is one giant whopper. Three giant whoppers, in fact. Call it the Three Whoppers of Blair House, in honor of the famous Three No’s of Khartoum.
Whopper No. 1: It’s unrealistic to demand that Israel go back to the 1967 borders, because they’re indefensible. Negotiations can’t be conducted on that basis. First of all, nobody asked Israel to go back to those lines. The demand is that those lines be the basis for the talks. And they have been the basis for nearly every round of Israeli-Palestinian talks up to now. That’s why we keep on hearing about 92%, 98%, etc. 92% of what? The territories as they were before 1967.
Whopper No. 2: The 1967 border isn’t a peace border, it’s a war border. Israel was subjected to constant war before it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. No — actually Israel had very little war on its borders before 1967, and lots and lots of wars on its borders and inside its “borders” since 1967.
Whopper No. 3: Israel can’t talk to a Palestinian government that includes Hamas, because Hamas doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist. By that logic, the Palestinians can’t talk to an Israeli government that includes Yisrael Beiteinu, which openly rejects peace, and HaBayit HaYehudi-The Jewish Home, which claims that the West Bank is part of Israel.
Some more details about these three Whoppers, plus a theory that Obama is endorsing the 1967 borders because he can’t get Bibi to do so openly and it’s the only way to get the Palestinians back to the table, after the jump:
Two thoughts about Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund and currently Riker’s Island’s most distinguished resident…
Before his arrest, he was considered the clear front-runner in France’s upcoming presidential election, set for next April. Were he elected, he would have been the sixth Jewish leader of France. Despite its reputation for anti-Semitism, France has elected five Jewish prime ministers. The only other country with a comparable record is Israel (10 Jewish prime ministers, nine Jewish presidents).
Here they are in chronological order: Leon Blum (1936-37, March-April 1938, 1946-47; Rene Mayer, January-June 1953; Pierre Mendes-France, 1953-54; Michel Debre (Jewish father), 1959-62; Laurent Fabius (Jewish father), 1984-86.
They don’t settle for halfway measures when they pick a French Jewish leader. Compare that to American Jewish leaders, who don’t lead America and don’t lead Jews.
If Strauss-Kahn manages to overcome his legal troubles and come back to win the election, France will become the second country to have a Jewish alleged sexual predator in its presidential palace.
Jon Stewart pointed out last night that Strauss-Kahn’s alleged victim is an African immigrant, which means that the head of the IMF was (allegedly) doing to an African woman what the global economic system is doing to Africa. “He’s posing for his own political cartoon,” Stewart said.
Yediot Ahronot obtained a copy of President Obama’s upcoming Middle East speech, its website Ynet reports. The speech, to be delivered at 6 p.m., will
call on Jerusalem and Ramallah to reignite the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, saying it is the only way to achieve viable peace.
Obama stands to demand the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as the Jewish state, and that the Palestinians unequivocally abandon terror.
He is also likely to stress Israel must cease any settlement expansion in the West Bank and further avoid any act which could be construed as changing the status quo on the ground.
The subject of Jerusalem also stands to be included in the American president’s speech: Washington sees the city as the capital of both Israel and the Palestinian state, with its east Jerusalem neighborhoods – which are largely populated by Palestinians – under the PA’s sovereignty, and its Jewish neighborhoods under Israeli sovereignty.
State Department spokesman Mark Toner is quoted as saying Washington is “not so pessimistic.” Haaretz’s Yossi Verter suggests why. He writes that Bibi’s Knesset speech yesterday, despite its hawkish tone, moves in a dovish direction, explicitly offering to give up settlements outside the major settlement blocs and demanding Israeli military presence along the Jordan River — as opposed to full Israeli control of the Jordan Valley, his previous demand.
Given the evidently growing interest in the details of my biography, I’d like to offer a quick rundown of the most frequently questioned data.
I lived in Israel for six years during the 1970s, serving for several years as an Israel and Zionism educational programs specialist at the World Zionist Organization in Jerusaledm and then settling on a kibbutz, where I served a term as secretary. For the last several decades I have generally spent about three weeks a year there, visiting friends and immediate family, meeting with government officials and ensuring that my children have ties with their family and the country and are comfortable in Hebrew.
I did not wear the IDF uniform. I served in the civil guard as part of the kitat konenut (ready response unit) at my kibbutz under the command of the Border Police in our region. I was the designated sharpshooter of the unlt and was given regular training sessions at the regional Border Police post, both in tactics and to maintain my shot with an M-1 Garrand, Uzi and M-16 assault rifle. As some readers have hae correctly asserted, I did not sit on guard duty at night. I walked. The job was to patrol the perimeter of the kibbutz at night. I also served a number of times as an armed guard on youth tours of the Sinai.
I have spoken fluent Hebrew since childhood. My Hebrew literature studies at McGill University included, among other things, “advanced Hebrew style and composition.” The course requirements included translating passages from the Hebrew Bible (both Deuteronomy/Kings and the Hebrew of Isaiah and the later prophets) into modern Hebrew (both Maariv tabloid and literary Hebrew) and vice versa – translating passages of modern Hebrew into various periods of biblical Hebrew as well as rabbinic Hebrew of the Mishnah period. I served for a period at kibbutz meetings providing simultaneous translation of the Hebrew proceedings for new immigrants and volunteers, until I was elected kibbutz secretary and could no longer perform that duty. (I am still called on to perform such functions from time to time.) My first job in journalism was as a reporter at a Hebrew-language newsweekly published for the Israeli expatriate community in Los Angeles, where I interviewed and wrote (and touch-typed) in Hebrew. I have published numerous Hebrew-English translations, including an authorized (and well-received) translation of a previously untranslated Agnon story.
I admit that my Hebrew is not what it used to be; I easily follow the weekly Torah readings in synagogue, but I have to follow in a book during the Haftarah readings, as my command of the later Hebrew from the prophetic period is not as fluent as it once was. Mea maxima culpa.
It was the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan who once said that “everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.”
Our friends at the Republican Jewish Coalition have issued a strong statement criticizing Ron Paul, the Texas congressman and newly announced contender for the GOP presidential nomination. Paul is scored for espousing “a dangerous isolationist vision for the U.S. and our role in the world” and for having been “a virulent and harsh critic of Israel during his tenure in Congress.”
The RJC statement itemizes four specific statements and actions by Paul to back up its claim of hostility to Israel: He “likened Israel’s defensive blockade of Hamas-ruled Gaza to ‘a concentration camp’ “ (“Imus in the Morning” interview, 6/3/2010); “proposed an amendment to unilaterally cancel U.S. assistance to Israel” (Politico, 2/16/11); “was one of just 8 House members to vote against sanctions on Iran” (Govtrack.us rollcall report, 6/24/2010)); and he “published newsletters that included ‘rants against the Israeli lobby’” (CNN interview, 1/8/2008). The newsletters appeared in the 1990s between stints in Congress.
“We certainly respect Congressman Paul’s right to run, but we strongly reject his misguided and extreme views, which are not representative of the Republican Party,” RJC exec Matt Brooks is quoted as saying.
You could argue that RJC is sensationalizing positions that fit within a broad pro-Israel consensus to make them sound hostile. Opposing aid to Israel, for example, is consistent with his libertarian opposition to all foreign aid, period—and is endorsed by some respected Israelis (Then-Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu himself endorsed an aid cut-off in a largely forgotten 1996 speech to Congress, before he didn’t).
Comparing blockaded Gaza to a “concentration camp” might be a tad harsh (Paul actually said “almost like a concentration camp”) but even many Israelis believe the blockade goes too far. Likewise, criticizing the “Israel lobby” (“rants? Really?), which is often said to be counterproductive in protecting Israel’s real interests.
You could argue all those things, but you’d look pretty silly after you actually followed the RJC links to the sources. You’d find that RJC knows whereof they speak on this. It’s not that Ron Paul has any explaining to do. He’s an open book. It’s his Jewish endorsers who need to explain. I quote a couple of them after the jump. But first, his positions:
On aid, Paul’s proposal in February was not to end foreign aid in general, but to eliminate a piece of it, specifically $6 billion in aid to Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Israel—in response to the uncertain situation in Egypt. I guess he figured that with Mubarak toppled by the democratic masses, Netanyahu was next. Or maybe he thought Israel, like Pakistan, was sheltering Osama bin Laden.
Taliban and Al Qaeda members are fleeing northern Afghanistan in disarray, amid a “collapse of morale” following the death of bin Laden, Juan Cole reports on his “Informed Comment blog.
It appears that the Taliban were still linked to, and perhaps taking direction from, al-Qaeda, more than most analysts had suspected. It also appears that Bin Laden had more of an operational, strategizing role than we had thought.
If it is true that radicals are fleeing Qunduz, and indeed other provinces as well, and heading for safe havens in places like North Waziristan in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt, it is likely primarily because they had direct contact with Usama Bin Laden and now fear that information about them is in American hands, since the SEALS captured his hard drives and thumb drives.
Speaking of disarray, there are more and more signs of alarm within Israel’s defense and intelligence establishment regarding the cliff toward which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is resolutely leading the country.
Meir Dagan, the long-serving former Mossad director who was a close ally of Ariel Sharon, told a conference at Hebrew University on Friday that a military attack on Iran’s nuclear project, an option cherished by Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak, is “the stupidest idea I ever heard.”
Dagan was immediately lambasted by Barak and finance minister Yuval Steinitz, a frequent Netanyahu surrogate. Both said he should have kept his mouth shut. But a string of top security honchos sprang to his defense, including former Mossad directors Danny Yatom and Ephraim Halevy. So did Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee chairman Shaul Mofaz, a former IDF chief of staff and Ariel Sharon’s defense minister.
Dagan has been in this movie before. The day after he stepped down as Mossad chief in January, he testified before the Knesset foreign affairs and defense committee and said Iran could not acquire a nuclear bomb before 2015 at the earliest. He said that Western sanctions and various accidents plaguing the Iranian project were continually pushing the date further and further into the future. (Here is the latest Iranian public acknowledgment of the serious threat that last year’s Stuxnet virus posed to the computer guidance of their centrifuges. They say it’s mostly under control, but it’s not. Here’s the head of the Iranian miltary’s cyber-defense unit in the Iranian army describing yet another virus they found in their nuke computers just two weeks ago.)
That drove Bibi ballistic, according to numerous press reports (including this piece by Ari Shavit in Haaretz, who agreed with Bibi that Dagan was irresponsible.
Dagan sheepishly backpedaled a week later, allowing as how maybe Iran could have a bomb sooner than 2015. It seemed clear at the time that he had been bludgeoned into recanting. Now it’s obvious.
I participated in a group blog called Rethinking Religion at Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture & Public Life. They asked me to go and hear comedian Lewis Black get interviewed by the institute’s director, Mark Taylor, and then write a reaction. The interview took place at the Kraft Center for Jewish Life, which has nothing to do with processed cheese, being Columbia’s version of Hillel. The session was a laff riot and a half; no surprise there.
In preparation to blog I read Black’s 3 books, which were not quite as funny as the real thing but actually more enlightening on his views of religion and specifically Judaism, which rarely comes up in his act but is by far the most consistent thread in his writing, though he constantly claims he’s not interested in it. Anyhow, here is what I wrote, significantly edited (weird feeling - I’m not used to being edited).
The whole experience has had an uncanny resonance. Black grew up in Silver Spring, Md., the heavily Jewish suburb of Washington where I spent most of my weekends hanging out during my high school years in D.C. (Coincidentally, he and I graduated from high school the same year, 1966. He was bar mitzvahed at Temple Sinai in D.C. around the corner from my house, where he fell under the spell of Rabbi Balfour Brickner and thought about becoming a rabbi, until Balfour moved on and was succeeded by Rabbi Gene Lipman, who quickly cured him of the ambition. Not long after that Lipman was my draft counselor and quickly cured me of my ambition of being a conscientious objector by asking if I would fight for Israel. But I digress.) Black went to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, where my father went in the 1940s, and developed an almost mystical attachment to the place, as he discussed at some length, and which I then blogged about (and now I’m blogging about blogging about it, which feels a little like the old Burns and Allen show where George would sit in his study and watch the Burns & Allen show on TV).
Black also talked at length and passionately about his contact with a friend who has psychic skills that he can’t explain and can’t get his mind around but can’t deny. This got me thinking, having been exposed to such things myself once or twice and been similarly confounded. My father spent much of the rest of his life traveling back and forth to the South as legal counsel for the southern department of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. I guess when you go to Chapel Hill you get a thing for the place. Here’s what struck me most strongly: my son Coby, who is 13 and never met my father, decided several years ago that he was a passionate Carolina Panthers football fan, for no reason that he or anyone else can discern. And now, this summer he is going to a summer camp in North Carolina that he heard about and instantly fell in love with, sight unseen.
Does this count as religion? I’m just asking…
The statement by Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh mourning Ben-Laden and condemning his killing is getting a lot of internet traffic. It’s instructive; optimists make much of the group’s occasional hints at softening and its conflicts with Al Qaeda. Worth remembering that it still sees itself as part of Jihad International. Here is Ynetnews.com’s report of what Haniyeh had to say.
By contrast, the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority is calling Ben-Laden’s death a good thing. Ghassan Khatib, director of the Palestinian Authority’s Government Media Center (and co-editor with Yossi Alpher of bitterlemons.org), is quoted on Ynet as follows:
Eliminating Ben-Laden is good for the peace process. We need to overcome the violent methods that Ben-Laden created, together with others around the world.
I’ve seen a few references already to the Hamas statement as showing how you can’t trust Fatah, including one in a comment on my last post. Strangely enough, I haven’t seen any references in English to Khatib’s statement on behalf of the P.A., which puts things in a very different light. I guess it’s too off-message.
Two big nights in a row for Obama – White House correspondents’ dinner followed by the bin Laden press conference.
In the TV chatter after the announcement, NBC reported that the big lead had come from Pakistani intelligence last. I passed it along in the initial version of this blog post. This morning, as I was alerted in a comment by reader “Guest,” the N.Y. Times reports that the tip-off came from a detainee at Gitmo, who gave up the pseudonym of Bin Laden’s courier a few years ago, leading to several years of hunting for the guy, who was found last August.
Assuming that the Times is better informed Monday morning than NBC was Sunday night, which seems pretty safe, this clears up two things: first, Pakistani intelligence hasn’t gotten more cooperative since Obama announced he was changing gears; if anything, relations on that front seem to be getting more strained. Second, it sounds like it wasn’t a change of policy from Bush to Obama that led to this break-through, as I had speculated last night, but the opposite: a continuation by Obama of previous Bush administration security policies.
Back to my Sunday night post: Brian Williams just interviewed one Rob Fazio, identified as someone who lost his father on 9/11. Did Fazio agree with the assessment that “the face of evil is dead”? I know people are thinking that, Fazio said, but the face I’m thinking about is my dad’s. It feels strange to be celebrating someone’s death. Next guest, former Bush-era Homeland Security director Tom Ridge, said the Special Forces “did what they had to do.” That sounds right.
There is a feeling in the air of snowballing change in the Middle East: revolution in Egypt and Tunisia, bloody deadlock in Libya, Yemen and Syria, reconciliation in the Palestinian Authority. Hard to put it all together at this point, but here is a usefully sobering analysis from the Washington Post: ‘Doomsday scenario’ if Syria fails. The gist: Syria is too big to fail. If Assad goes, it will lead not to a smooth democratic transition but to chaos that will impact the region and could even make Iraq look like a picnic. Well worth a read.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed his cabinet ministers to stick to a single message regarding the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, Israel’s Channel 10 News reports on its Nana-10 website. The message: “there is no possible positive component in the reconciliation agreement.” That’s right:Cabinet ministers are forbidden even to speculate on any conceivable upside.
You can tell he cares about this, because he rarely makes any effort to rein in his cabinet. His foreign minister, alert readers recall, got up in front of the United Nations General Assembly last fall and laid out a foreign policy vision radically at odds with the prime minister’s, including exchanges of population in a future peace agreement, which he said was decades away. He didn’t even get a slap on the wrist—just a laconic statement from Bibi’s office that the prime minister, not the foreign minister, articulates the country’s foreign policy. Which is a weird thought in itself. Moreover, the interior minister repeatedly attacked the settlement construction freeze that the prime minister had imposed last year.
So this is something Bibi cares about. Unlike gestures toward peace which he makes in response to American pressure, and which his ministers attack mercilessly without consequences. He really doesn’t want it suggested that there could possibly be an upside to the Palestinian reconciliation agreement.
It’s not like he can keep the lid on things forever. Abu Mazen, a.k.a. Mahmoud Abbas, has said repeatedly in the last few days that he, not Hamas, is in charge of foreign policy, that he still wants to negotiate and make peace with Israel, he still sees Bibi as his partner. He’s even said that the pact calls for elections in a year; if Fatah wins, it should end Hamas control of Gaza. Bibi can’t keep that from the Israeli public, but maybe he can prevent his ministers from smiling when they hear it.
Well, maybe you can’t keep Abu Mazen’s words totally concealed from the public, but you sure can try. David Bedein, an American-born settler activist and head of what he calls the Israel Resource News Agency (and very nice guy and good friend when he’s not talking politics), sent out a mass email tonight furiously attacking the JTA for its report on what Abu Mazen is saying. He’s mad that JTA reported the news without spinning like a good Jew should.
Boy oh boy, Jews say the darnedest things, don’t they? You’ve got to love it. We’ve been hearing for years now that the Palestinian leadership under Mahmoud Abbas isn’t capable of making peace with Israel even if it wants to because, among other things, it doesn’t speak for Hamas, which controls Gaza (see here, here and here, for example).
Now, with nary a moment’s notice, we’re being told that Abbas can’t make peace with Israel because he does speak for Hamas, which controls Gaza (here, here, here, here and here, for example).
It’s a bit confusing, I know, but life is like that. For the moment, the best response would be to make sure they put air-sickness bags in front of the seats in shul alongside the chumashim tomorrow morning, in case congregants start to experience vertigo from the sudden, abrupt shifts in position..
It’s like the old joke about the beggar who asks the rabbi for a ruble to buy a meal. Later that day the rabbi walks past the inn and sees the beggar eating a big slice of cake. “This is how you waste my money?!” the rabbi demands. “Excuse me,” the beggar replies. “Yesterday I couldn’t eat cake because I had no money. Today I have money but you tell me I shouldn’t eat cake. Tell me, rabbi, when can I eat cake?”
Now, as soon as the deal was announced yesterday, my mailbox started filling up with evidence that it had killed any hopes for the peace process, which presumably was thriving up to now. Exhibit A was this statement by Mahmoud a-Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister, who said it would “not be possible for the interim national government to participate or bet on or work on the peace process with Israel.” The morning after (today) reinforcements started arriving in the form of links to this statement by Zahar’s boss, Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh, calling on Fatah to renounce its recognition of “the Zionist entity.”
On second thought, though, this actually indicates that stopping the peace process was not part of deal. If it were, Haniyeh wouldn’t need to be asking for it now.
Well, here it is, Saturday night. Some time around 8:30 I observe that Shabbes is over, so I crank up the old laptop to see what’s new and catch up with my Forward fan mail. My latest column on Palestinian statehood had some pretty lively back-and-forth going on as of Friday evening, and I’m eager to see what new pearls of Torah have been shared while I was off-line.
One comment sort of took my breath away, I must admit. A faithful reader named Howard informs me that I am “an enemy of G-d, Torah and Judaism.” This comes as a shock. I take the Good Book pretty seriously, as those who know me are aware, and I go to considerable lengths to stay on the right side of the Big Guy. It would be a drag to discover that all my efforts were so unappreciated.
But then I look again, and I see that Howard’s comment was posted 22 hours ago, or about 10 or 10:30 Eastern Time. Unless Howard lives in Hawaii, he’s been posting on Shabbes. So now I’m wondering, what Torah is he such big friends with that I’m not?
The truth is, I sort of know the answer. It’s no big secret that much of today’s Judaism consists not of Judaism per se but of political support for Israel. But not merely support for Israel. It’s the right kind of support for Israel. It’s commonly described as support for the government of Israel and its policies, but that’s not it either. The same mentality that attacks you if you criticize the policies of the Netanyahu government just as vehemently attacked you if you supported the policies of the Olmert government.
The bottom line is, you are judged not by how much you love Israel but by how much you hate its enemies. If you can see common cause or shared interests between Israel and the Arabs, you are a traitor.
Jeffrey Goldberg blogged the other day about Richard Goldstone, speculating on what made the judge recant. Among other things, Jeffrey asks, rhetorically, whether Goldstone was “really naive enough to believe that people in ‘his community’ wouldn’t be upset with him” for the accusations in the Goldstone report. To shed some light on this, take another look at Howard’s comment to me. There’s upset, and then there’s loony-upset. We all expect robust debate, even sliming, but as a wiser man than I once said, Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Say what you will, the guy has class. Ynetnews.com reports that Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman took his contrarian, defiant behavior to new heights, or perhaps to new depths, on Monday by flushing the toilet during a radio interview.
The report on Ynet’s Hebrew website, here, includes a 14-second clip of the event, plus an outpouring of reader response at the bottom, about evenly divided between readers who are furious at Ynet (the website of Yediot Ahronot) for attempting to demean the foreign minister, mostly in potty-type invective suggesting that Lieberman has given the media what they deserve, and readers who think he showed his true colors.
A few choice selections:
No. 2: Nu, really. How low can you get? Maybe it was a noise from another room?
No.3: Maybe this is the ringtone on his cellphone.
No. 10: He was showing us what he thinks of the media here and he was right.
No. 60: Showing that Ynet is not CNN
No. 69: Get used to it, he’s the next prime minister
Recently published analyses teach the following lessons:
Lesson 1. The Arab uprisings are not necessarily democratic in nature, and liberal readiness to back them — morally or with arms and material aid — is at best foolhardy romanticism. We should stand back and avoid getting involved. Why undermine existing regimes when the replacement might be no better and possibly much worse?
Lesson 2. The Arab uprisings show that ruthless dictators are finished, and proves the wrongheadedness of previous administrations’ willingness to work with them rather than seek their removal. The failure of the Obama administration and the rest of the liberal West to back the brave Syrian rebels shows the liberals’ hypocrisy and unwillingness to stand up to tyranny.
Lesson 3. The uprisings show that the Arab street never cared about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What Arab citizens care about are their own lives and welfare, not the Palestinians. It is misguided and reckless to assume that granting concessions to the Palestinians will improve Arab attitudes toward America or the West. Palestinian rights are just not on the minds of ordinary Arabs.
Lesson 4. The uprisings show that peace agreements are foolish because any regime that signs an agreement with Israel could be gone tomorrow and you can’t expect the replacements to honor the agreements. Successor regimes will be under more pressure from the Arab street to turn against Israel, if only to gain popularity with the public. Not that the Arab public cares about Israel (see 3 above). Agreements with Arab governments are unreliable because Arab governments are unstable. Successor governments will be more vulnerable to popular moods and less able to defy public hostility toward Israel.
Sub-Lesson 4(a). The Palestinian Authority’s refusal to commence negotiations with no preconditions is unreasonable. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is naturally unwilling to resume talks where they broke off during the former government of Ehud Olmert and rejects the terms that Olmert had already put on the table — including a future border based on the 1967 Green Line, the Jordan Valley under Palestinian control and a divided Jerusalem. Netanyahu has a different assessment of Israeli security needs and is not bound by his predecessor’s assessments. The Israeli electorate repudiated the Olmert concessions when it chose Netanyahu as its prime minister in 2009. Elections have consequences (except U.S. elections, which should not affect undertakings by previous presidents — they’re supposed to be sacred).
Note: All of the linked articles making the above arguments are taken directly from the Daily Alert, a comprehensive digest of news and commentary chosen to discredit Palestinian moderation and maximize fears of Israeli vulnerability, prepared daily for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Your charity dollars at work.
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