There are a lot of freelancers doing foreign policy these days, but there is none so reckless as this one:

Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU’s position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as “supine” and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as “embarrassing”.

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”

Then he went and “revealed” previously unknown “truths” that paint the United States as a party that is playing in bad faith in the Middle East:

Carter said the Quartet’s policy of not talking to Hamas unless it recognised Israel and fulfilled two other conditions had been drafted by Elliot Abrams, an official in the national security council at the White House. He called Abrams “a very militant supporter of Israel”. … “The Quartet’s final document had been drafted in Washington in advance, and not a line was changed,” he said.

Then, for good measure, he inserted himself in electoral politics:

Earlier, Carter, told Sky News that Hillary Clinton should abandon her battle to become Democratic presidential candidate after the last round of primaries in early June.

But that as as nothing compared to the hell he unleashed with another “revelation”:

Jimmy Carter says Israel had 150 nuclear weapons

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark, made at the Hay-on-Wye festival which promotes current affairs books and literature, is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence.

After a while, one really does begin to wonder whose side that shitbag is on.  However: it’s pretty obvious that he’s preaching to the European elite choir because he can’t get any traction here at home. And that’s a good thing. Still …

We hear a lot about the evil colonial power Israel. Do we hear about the hi-tech mecca Israel? Not so much … till this past week:

Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer:

“Microsoft is as much an Israeli company as an American company,” Ballmer said, adding that the proportion of Microsoft employees per capita in Israel was similar to that in the United States.
Over the past two years, Microsoft bought five companies in Israel, adding to its two R&D centers in Haifa, which employ a total of 600 people. …

Ballmer praised the IT sector in Israel for being very advanced, and said Tel Aviv, as the birthplace of many start-ups, was a type of Silicon Valley.

Google’s Sergey Brin:

How has Israel changed since your previous visits?

“It’s pretty impressive just to see how the tech industry has continued to grow. The development, kind of just looking at the city of Tel Aviv. I mean, there are a bunch of buildings. Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like there are lots of buildings that weren’t here when I was here last. And I’ve just seen some of the companies and their state of development, the levels developed here - it’s just incredible.”

Those are nice endorsements, of course. But something else is afoot in the Holy Land.
An unusual column from the Ha’aretz columnist Bradley Burston, usually a very low-key writer, tells me that things inside Israel are changing, too. Burston writes an open letter to his Palestinian friends:

I understand that you believe that rockets and mortars from the north, south, east, and, eventually, west, can depopulate and peel back and obliterate the borders of pre-1967 Israel until there will be no need to agree to a Jewish state on those borders, no need to compromise on refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, no need to talk, no need for self-scrutiny and reconsideration, no need to bend.

I understand that you believe that this is your right, religiously, morally, politically. I understand why you believe that you can wait.

But this month, three generations since 1948, since your Nakba, this is what I ask you to consider:

Your time is running out.

If you do not begin to act with all of your wisdom in moving toward statehood, you run the risk of becoming the Kurds of the Mediterranean basin, the Native Americans of the Middle East, permanently stateless, eternally denied.

If you do not begin to rethink the course which the Palestinian national movement has taken, you must begin to consider the idea of a world without a Palestine. The world is beginning to feel more and more comfortable with that possibility, and it is time for you to think hard about the reasons why.

We in the post-modern West have spent years educating ourselves to believe that all cultures are equally valid - with the possible exception, of course, of our own. We have taken it on faith that to criticize the culture of an indigenous people is obscenely imperialist, paternalist.

In short, we gave you a pass. And we encouraged you to give yourselves one. In respecting you for your steadfastness, we refrained from calling you on your passivity. In accepting and amplifying your contentions as to Israel’s acts of wrongdoing, we chose not to hold you accountable for your own, or to explain them away as a function of occupation,

You learned, over time, to hold Israel responsible for the whole of your plight. You learned, over time, to ignore, explain away, blame entirely on Israel, or otherwise deny the ways in which your actions and, in particular, your passivity, have deepened and fostered your misery. You learned to excuse your leaders their corruption, and their policy of foiling Israeli and foreign attempts to improve your conditions. You learned to excuse your Arab brothers their duplicity and their lip service and their exploitation and their cold shoulder and their contempt and their consummate failure to come to your aid.

In the process, you may have grown accustomed to a definition of time, and of indigenous peoples, that bears re-examination. There is, first of all, this:

The Jews are an indigenous people here, no less than you.

The Jews have every right to have a nation here, no less than you.

The Jews are stubborn and proud and fundamentally fierce as hell, no less than you.

You have dismissed the Jews as a foreign influence. You have dismissed their history, waved away their blood and sinew tie to Jerusalem, acted as though they have no business here but evil.

But in the decades you have spent misleading yourself about the true nature of the culture and the origins of the Jews, generation upon generation of Jews has been born here. They are natives. They are not going anywhere. And even the leftists among them are willing to die in defense of staying on this soil.

Food for thought … one hopes.

[spelling fixed]

The Overton Window is a theory that describes a range of acceptable ideas in political discourse and a (theoretical) way to make formerly unacceptable ideas gradually more acceptable . It’s a game of “Compared to What?” The idea is that by introducing ever more extreme ideas into the discourse, you reduce the feeling of menace from formerly threatening ideas. So: gradually, what was once totally unacceptable—say, openly gay couples living together in straight society—becomes utterly ordinary and unremarkable.

Jeffrey Goldberg, in today’s New York Times, opens up the Overton Window of American discourse about Israel with tough talk for the creaky, knee-jerking pro-Israel lobby groups.

The people of Aipac and the Conference of Presidents are well meaning, and their work in strengthening the overall relationship between America and Israel has ensured them a place in the world to come. But what’s needed now is a radical rethinking of what it means to be pro-Israel.

…

I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state — publicly, continuously and vociferously — to create conditions on the West Bank that would allow for the birth of a moderate Palestinian state.

In crisis there is always opportunity. There’s no doubt that Israel is in crisis [e.a.]:

[Olmert] was expansive, and persuasive, on the Zionist need for a Palestinian state. Without a Palestine — a viable, territorially contiguous Palestine — Arabs under Israeli control will, in the not-distant future, outnumber the country’s Jews.

“We now have the Palestinians running an Algeria-style campaign against Israel, but what I fear is that they will try to run a South Africa-type campaign against us,” he said. If this happens, and worldwide sanctions are imposed as they were against the white-minority government, “the state of Israel is finished,” Mr. Olmert said in an earlier interview. This is why he, and his mentor, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, turned so fiercely against the Jewish settlement movement, which has entangled Israel unnecessarily in the lives of West Bank Palestinians. Once, men like Mr. Sharon and Mr. Olmert saw the settlers as the vanguards of Zionism; today, the settlements are seen, properly, as the forerunner of a binational state. In other words, as the end of Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy.

Will those in crisis seize it as an opportunity? It means investing—money, time, effort, PR—in the West Bank, turning it into a local success story, and the faster the better.

Will anyone have the imagination to turn things around in this way?

At least Goldberg took an important first step, by making it okay to talk about it in polite society.

Or perhaps it isn’t okay to talk about this in public. Indeed, perhaps it’s “jewidice”  “jewicide”   [emphasis in original]:

Read that again. Prods (as in pressures) Israel to surrender Jewish land to Islamic jihad. That’s what this kapo is saying.

Sheesh.

Terrified that their name and reputation have been besmirched by the casually anti-Semitic shitheads Walt and Mearsheimer (and by the big bad pro-Israel Jews of AIPAC), some “good” pro-Israel Jews launch a competing lobbying group:

Some of the country’s most prominent Jewish liberals are forming a political action committee and lobbying group aimed at dislodging what they consider the excessive hold of neoconservatives and evangelical Christians on U.S. policy toward Israel.

The group is planning to channel political contributions to favored candidates in perhaps a half-dozen campaigns this fall, the first time an organization focused on Israel has tried to play such a direct role in the political process, according to its organizers.

Organizers said they hope those efforts, coupled with a separate lobbying group that will focus on promoting an Arab-Israeli peace settlement, will fill a void left by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and other Jewish groups that they contend have tilted to the right in recent years.

Good Jews, bad Jews—we’re all one people. And some of our people are in a pretty shitty situation in Israel. That is what we should be working to resolve, not our own penny-ante status-anxiety concerns here at home.

And there’s no place on earth that can use a makeover more than Israel. So Israel is launching a rebranding effort, starting in Toronto:

Residents of Toronto shouldn’t be surprised if they soon start hearing and seeing a lot of references to Israeli wine, art and music in the next year or so. The city has been selected by the Foreign Ministry as a North American test city for its rebranding project.

Lest this be thought of as just a snow job, one of the principals behind the project explains:

“There’s a lot of confusion about branding,” said Aharoni. “People hear it and they think of advertising campaigns and PR. But it’s mainly it’s an attempt to change the mindset of people when it comes to Israel - it’s not putting on a spin. It’s about communicating through more than one channel. Right now we only communicate through the conflict.”

As for why Israel is undertaking such an effort:

[T]he hope-for result is a change in peoples’ perception of Israel, explained Aharoni.

“That’s the whole point - people don’t understand that Israel has a wonderful brand, and we need that opportunity to communicate that brand on more than just that one conflict channel,” he said.

“There are experts who have told us, ‘first you have to resolve the conflict.’ Well, thank you very much, that’s very nice. We don’t need an expert to tell us that.

But what we’re saying is that given there’s a conflict - or despite the conflict - we can still improve Israel’s performance on these other fronts of trade, tourism and cultural connections.”

Yes indeed, there’s a lot of room for improvement. And every little bit helps.

Saying it was a “routine” operation, Hamas claimed responsibility for the horrifying attack on a Jerusalem religious school yesterday, in which 8 students were killed:

ABC News reports:

An emergency worker who was one of the first on the scene described how the shooting was still going on in the building when he arrived. He told ABC News that when he got inside he discovered a horrific scene with many of the young religious students lying on the ground, covered in blood, some of them clutching their books.

“There was lots of blood over there,” he said. “It was a terrible scene to look at – they were all young guys in there.”

Amnesty International, while condemning the attack, warned Israel not to retaliate:

“The Israeli authorities must adhere to international humanitarian law and human rights standards in any action they take in response to last night’s attack, even though that attack demonstrated a disregard for the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian law.

“Abuses by one side, no matter how serious, cannot ever justify abuses by the other side,” said Smart.

AI’s spokesperson seems to forget that, well, Jews are not Christians. Jews don’t believe in turning the other cheek.

However, since the biens-pensants of the world make such a fetish about the nobility of turning the other cheek, the Israeli government has decided to do what they have never done before—distribute photos from the scene of the crime, where their martyred young men died for their religion.

Israel has decided to take advantage of Thursday’s bloody terror attack in Jerusalem in order to launch an aggressive campaign against Hamas.

Yedioth Ahronoth has learned that the political echelon instructed the Government Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying shawl and the terrorist’s body inside the yeshiva.

I await the world’s outrage.

Will pictures like this help the Palestinians’ cause?

 

 Palestinian guerrillas celebrate in Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp near the port city of Sidon in south Lebanon March 6, 2008, A Palestinian gunman opened fire in a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem on Thursday, killing at least eight people and wounding about 10 in the most lethal attack in Israel in two years, emergency services said.

Everyone (except Hamas) is trying desperately to keep things under control between Hamas and Israel.

The Israelis are openly debating their horrifying dilemma about how to deal with rocket fire launched from heavily populated civilian areas in Gaza:

The defense establishment hopes to settle one of the most divisive questions concerning urban warfare. In a special meeting convened by Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday evening, the country’s leading jurists deliberated the legality of allowing the army to strike populated areas used by terror groups to launch rocket attacks against Israel.

Meanwhile, Condi Rice will reportedly tell the Israelis to watch their step—as if they didn’t know that the world is watching.

The trouble is this: the biens-pensants of the world are only watching the Israelis, to make sure they don’t misbehave, as if the bad actors in the region weren’t stirring the pot with their murderous machinations.

Hamastan: another great democracy project from the people who brought you Iraq.

Yes, the Israelis—strong, mighty, and militarily powerful though they are—can be and are victims of Palestinian aggression.

The Times (London) describes one view of the situation:

While many Gazans resent the rocket fire – which they acknowledge ultimately causes them far more harm than Israel – most are too afraid to stand up to Hamas and its thousands of devoted gunmen. Those who criticize the rocket-launchers are quickly branded traitors, a dangerous epithet in a lawless area racked by nationalist violence.

Hamas for its part is playing a game of brinkmanship, baiting Israel with its rockets and counting on nationalist sentiment to make Gazans back them when Israel attacks with deadly force.

The people of Gaza are caught in between two sides. Isolated economically and diplomatically, Hamas’s leaders appear to be trying to emulate Hezbollah’s 2006 withstanding of an Israeli onslaught while still continuing to fire their rockets, which brought the Lebanese wide-ranging support on the Arab street.

The Israeli response to this aggression was fierce and deadly over the weekend, as reported by the BBC:

On Saturday, at least 60 Palestinians were killed in one of the bloodiest days of fighting between Israelis and Palestinians in years.

The death toll from Israeli air strikes included at least 25 civilians, including nine children and three women.

The other fatalities were Palestinian militants - the majority of them from Hamas, the Islamic movement which controls Gaza.

Laura Bialis, living under rocket fire from Gaza, describes how it feels.

Saturday, Noon:
Helicopters. I get online. I can’t help it. What does it say in the news. Thirty-three qassams from yesterday until now. Twenty-six people killed in Gaza, including some civilians. Several IDF soldiers injured.

I look at the press from the West and get very angry. Its mostly about their injuries. Another article about Palestinian protests about our attacks. This is ridiculous. If there were no rockets raining on us the IDF wouldn’t have anything to do there. I don’t like the way we are portrayed. We don’t want this war. They are dragging us in. What can we do? There are rockets raining on us daily. But in the media we look like the aggressors. It feels so unfair to be sitting here and reading that. My entire perspective has changed. I used to think that Israel needed to take care of how it looked to the western world — that we can’t look like monsters. Now I know it doesn’t matter. They will paint us however they want. I just can’t read the news anymore, it makes me too angry. We need to move forward with our lives, protect ourselves. The government has a responsibility to protect its people. The question is, what is the best way to do that?

Indeed: what is the best way to do that?

I don’t know. No one knows.

It buys goodwill from the press—especially if you’re John McCain.

The “straight-talk express” also carries the connotation of getting the talk directly from McCain’s mouth rather than from the mouth of a spokesman. He is gracious, personable, and likeable (or so I’ve heard from those who know him), and he talks willingly to the press.

We know all about the Clintons’ horrendous relationship with the press.

What I find most curious is that Obama reportedly does not make himself readily accessible to the press. Despite this, he’s got amazing press. Of course it’s also because of this that he’s getting amazing press. He is also being managed and handled. And he is being presented as an old school-style celebrity. His stardom operates on the scarcity model—namely: look, but don’t touch.

The Politico picks up on this theme today.

I expect that Obama’s rapid-response team will in fact come up with an appropriate response.

I should also note that there is one constituency to which Barack Obama has paid attention lately: the Jooooooos. And the Joooooooos’ reps at the New York Sun are watching him like a hawk (you’ll excuse the expression) on Israel.

We might as well get used to it, because I think we’re going to be hearing stuff like this for a long time:

Egyptian FM threatens to break Palestinians’ legs if they breach border again

He blamed Israel for the humanitarian crisis and hardship that Gaza is experiencing, and for “responding to the Palestinian (Hamas) missiles with collective punishment.”

He also criticized Hamas for launching those missile attacks, describing the confrontation as a “laughable caricature” resulting in self-inflicted wounds.

Ridicule is not what Hamas wanted to hear:

Sami Abu Zuhri … called [the remarks] “inappropriate” and said he did not believe they reflected the official Egyptian stance.

We’ll see, I guess.

The Egyptian Sandmonkey is back to blogging, I see. He’s got a message for his government:

PLEASE

SECURE

THE 

BORDERS, 

BITCHES 

..before anymore bad shit happens!

That is all!

More from the Sandmonkey here and here.

From the Israeli perspective, things aren’t much better, of course. Ynet reports that the IDF has found evidence of Hamas having adopted Hezbollah-style tactics for using its rocket lauchers in Gaza to attack Israel indiscriminately.

Off in cloud cuckoo-land is Tony Blair, complimenting the Palestinian Authority for starting to get its shit together.

I guess he believes desperately in Fatah’s Abbas. Hamas, however, has a different message:

Hamas rejects Abbas proposal to broker cease-fire with Israel

And that’s because, at Iran’s urging, Hamas is now declaring all out war on Israel:

Israel can expect a wave of suicide bombings inside its 1967 borders, not just the West Bank, Hamas’ representative in Iran said Wednesday. The announcement came as Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip launched a barrage of Qassam rockets into Israel. …

[Israeli] Defense officials told Haaretz they view the announcement as a significant change because it comes from the organization’s representative to Tehran - which has in recent weeks been pressuring Hamas to escalate hostilities against Israel.

None of this is good.

Nobody can say that Hamas isn’t determined. But this doesn’t look like an organization seeking justice for displaced people, does it?

The Times (London) declares that Hamas just had the biggest propaganda coup in its history:

As tens of thousands of Palestinians clambered back and forth between the Gaza strip and Egypt today, details emerged of the audacious operation that brought down a hated border wall and handed the Islamist group Hamas what might be its greatest propaganda coup.

Hamas, which took control of the coastal territory last June after a stand-off with Fatah, has denied that its men set off the explosions that brought down as much as two-thirds of the 12-km wall in the early hours.

I agree that Hamas’s exploits and the rushing of the crossing into Egypt of an estimated 350,000 Palestinians doesn’t make for a pretty picture for the Israelis. But it’s only propaganda if it has an effect on the desired party. And we all know that the American media—presumably, those are the folks that Hamas wants to impress—are obsessed with only one thing: the campaign for the American presidency. We know this because they barely bothered to cover Bush’s Middle East trip.

Nevertheless, Newsweek and Time also both declare this a PR victory for Hamas, and seem to be pulling for Hamas over both Israel and the United States to boot.

Meanwhile, the MSM barely pauses its campaign coverage—except when they’re descending ghoulishly on the body of a strapping 28-year-old actor, who died in SoHo yesterday, as ETP’s Rachel Sklar reports [e.a.]:

Cable news, too, reported on Ledger’s death — though only Fox covered it in the 5pm hour (MSNBC stuck with “Hardball” and CNN with “The Situation Room,” both of which seemed to stick with the Hillary/Obama spat and Thompson non-candidacy). We’ll see how those ratings stack up (indicator: The Ledger story was last night’s most-viewed clip on MSNBC, and #3 on CBS). …

The New York Times also covered Ledger’s death yesterday via its “City Room” blog; today’s comprehensive article by James Barron had no less than fourteen people listed as contributing reporters. …

The three nightly newscasts all ran segments covering Ledger’s death, with varying degrees of sensationalism: ABC teased it at the top of the broadcast with “First word is it could be drug related” and CBS’ website described the situation as “what authorities suspect is a drug-related death”; NBC stayed away from the cause of death in the tease and written description, and Ann Thompson noted that “police are looking at the possibility of an overdose,” noting the presence of bottles of “prescription drugs [and] non-prescription drugs.”

Though the day started out with the fed rate cut, Dem debate and Oscar nominations, the day’s big story was about Ledger’s death — and traditional media outlets could only run to catch up with the internet, particularly TMZ which, as usual, posted anything and everything in order to completely flood the zone. (Though I noticed the TMZ guy on with Greta Van Sustern didn’t correct her when she said TMZ had broken the story; from the looks of it, that one goes to Radar.) Not like we need any more indicators that the nature of the news cycle has changed, but this is once again evidence that the internet has muscled out the traditional media in covering — and driving coverage of — high-profile stories like this. For good or ill.

It’s definitely for ill, Rachel, if it excludes coverage of, you know, the news we actually need to know. But so it goes …

John Bolton accuses her of having ceded to Hezbollah under the pressure of its fauxtography campaign.

[T]he main reason for America’s retreat from its initial position was U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who “changed her mind fundamentally” after an Israeli aerial assault killed 28 civilians in Kana on July 30. “Rice exerted enormous
pressure on me to reach an agreement already,” he said. “Until Kana, the U.S. wasn’t interested in another typical Middle Eastern cease-fire. We thought we would exploit the fighting to fundamentally change the situation, especially in Lebanon and Syria. But under the influence of her shock over Kana, the secretary of state changed her mind and only wanted an immediate end to the fire. That was the policy Rice dictated.”

She wanted to get the pictures off the TV screens, regardless of the cost. What an incompetent dolt.

 I decried the lack of attention to fauxtography here.

I suppose we’re going to have to have a lot more experience with this new weapon in asymmetrical warfare before we get secretaries of state who stick to their guns rather than cave in to demented neanderthals like Nasrallah.

Carlos Edde, head of the National Bloc party which is part of the March 14 Forces in Lebanon, has criticized Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah for announcing that his organization was holding body parts of Israeli soldiers.

Edde said: “I never imagined that a Lebanese political leader… would shout before hundreds of children and before television cameras that he has body parts and is proud of it. The worst thing is his joy in trading in these body parts.”

Secretary Rice’s legacy:

“Your army left behind the remains of soldiers in our villages and fields,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said, addressing the Israeli people during a speech to tens of thousands of Shiites taking part in commemorations marking Ashura.

“They [Israeli army] were so weak on the field that they left behind remains not of one, two or three but a large number of your soldiers,” Nasrallah added.

“One body is almost complete,” Nasrallah said. “What did the [Israeli] army say to the family of these soldiers and what remains did they give them?”

The Hizbullah leader’s comments sparked outrage in Israel, which prides itself on doing everything to recover the remains of its soldiers from fields of battle and has in the past freed prisoners in exchange for remains of soldiers and civilians.

And now some Israelis are calling for his assassination. I’m sure that Secretary Rice—who finds it so inconvenient to hold Israel’s enemies accountable for their destructive behavior—will find some way to condemn the “cycle of violence.”

Prince Turki offers Israelis a peace deal if they withdraw from all Arab lands (the article doesn’t specify exactly what that means), and their reward is that they will then be considered “Arab Jews.”

Prince Turki, who was previously head of Saudi intelligence, said that if Israel accepted the Arab League plan and signed a comprehensive peace, “one can imagine the integration of Israel into the Arab geographical entity.”

“One can imagine not just economic, political and diplomatic relations between Arabs and Israelis but also issues of education, scientific research, combating mutual threats to the inhabitants of this vast geographic area,” he said.

Can one really imagine such a thing? If so, one must have quite an imagination! ***

As for the “Arab Jews” concept, I have a feeling it’s not going to go over so well. Yossi Alpher welcome the notion of a normalization of relations. However,

[he] said he hoped that once there was a comprehensive peace, Israel’s Arab neighbours would accept Israelis “as Jewish people living a sovereign life in our historic homeland” and not as “Arab Jews” or “European Jews.”

I dunno. Something tells me they’d like to be known as Israelis, since that’s what they are. But what do I know?

————

***On the other hand, it turns out the Saudis aren’t exactly lacking in imagination, as I learned in today’s New York Times. Apparently, they’re trying to give the Gulf Arabs a run for their money, with something called King Abdullah Economic City (seriously!):

Amid a forest of cranes, towers and beams rising from the desert, more than 38,000 workers from China, India, Turkey and beyond have been toiling for two years in unforgiving conditions — often in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees — to complete one of the world’s largest petrochemical plants in record time.

By the end of the year, this massive city of steel at the edge of the Red Sea will take its place as a cog of globalization: plastics produced here will be used to make televisions in Japan, cellphones in China and thousands of other products to be sold in the United States and Europe.

Pshaw, says Condi Rice. Rocket fire from Gaza and suicide bombers from the West Bank shouldn’t stop the Israelis from negotiating a peace deal with the Palestinians (and because she’s so even-handed, she says that Israeli settlements shouldn’t stop the Palestinians from negotiating a peace deal with the Israelis, either, of course) [e.a.].

Miss Rice also described, with greater clarity than either the president or National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley have so far, the Bush administration’s strategy on the peace process.

The “road map” for peace, conceived in 2002 by Mr. Bush, had become a hindrance to the peace process, because the first requirement was that the Palestinians stop terrorist attacks.

As a result, every time there was a terrorist bombing, the peace process fell apart and went back to square one. [What a surprise! No peace, no peace process! --ed.] Neither side ever began discussing the “core issues”: the freezing of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the rights of Palestinian refugees to return, the outline of Israel’s border and the future of Jerusalem.

“The reason that we haven’t really been able to move forward on the peace process for a number of years is that we were stuck in the sequentiality of the road map. So you had to do the first phase of the road map before you moved on to the third phase of the road map, which was the actual negotiations of final status,” Miss Rice said.

Miss Rice said that what the U.S.-hosted November peace summit in Annapolis did was “break that tight sequentiality … to say, you can do these in parallel, you can do road-map obligations and negotiation for the final status in parallel.”

“You don’t want people to get hung up on settlement activity or the fact that the Palestinians haven’t fully been able to deal with the terrorist infrastructure and prevent that from moving forward on the negotiations,” she said.

Negotiating the core issues, Miss Rice said, brings “force and power … status to help people really pay attention to their road-map obligations, and that’s what we’ve needed.”

Proving that Ms. Rice has her head up her ass and that she, like all her precedessors, is addicted to a process and not to peace (which requires that Palestinian “resistance” be extinguished and that the Palestinians accept the reality of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state), the Israelis managed to kill yet more “militants” and civilians in Gaza today.

I hope Ms. Rice and her godfather Scowcroft are very proud of themselves today for the vaunted stability (and fifty years of “peace”) they are reintroducing into the region.

The Israelis, meanwhile, are preparing for a siege. They are not going anywhere. Indeed, they are not even going to spend money to reinforce the houses under attack from across the border in Gaza [e.a.]:

Acting on behalf of the State Prosecution, attorney Dina Silber claimed that “since other parts of Israel are already, or will be in the near future, subject to rocket fire - Qassams, Katyushas, shells or mortars - the state could not afford to work under the false impression that this policy would be applicable to the Sderot area only.”

Silber also said that “the question that the government should address and focus on is that of the stamina of the residents in confrontation areas. Their endurance, and not reinforcement of houses, is the main feature of the issue at hand; reinforcement is all but one element of the protection of the home front against rocket fire.”

The state also maintains that if a decision to reinforce Sderot houses is taken it will send “shockwaves” that would “constitute a significant precedent as to homes in numerous other parts of the country, which are or soon will be subject to rocket fire.”

More about this from Jeff Jacoby and Eric Trager.

Where are Walt and Mearsheimer to trumpet realism and the death of the Bush Doctrine? Well, only a week ago, they were bemoaning America’s continued unqualified support for Israel at the hands of the Lobby.

Since my primary topic on this blog is media coverage of events and pseudo-events, I am well aware of the fact that Bush’s trip to the Middle East has gotten almost no media and/or blogospheric play. Everyone would rather do horse-race coverage of an election campaign that has been under way for a year and still has almost a year to go—because it’s way more entertaining.

However, the silence from the usual suspects (that is: all pundits) about Bush’s trip to a part of the world that is perpetually on fire has been astonishing even for me.

Now Matthew Yglesias hints at something that may be going on in PunditWorld^TM. He would love to rip Bush on Israel-Palestine, he says [e.a.],

but I’ve been convinced by people active in these issues that it’s important to provide positive reenforcement. Bush is moving in the right direction and deserves to secure some credit for his troubles.

Enquiring minds want to know all about this conspiracy of silence suggested by an unnamed cabal that has had such a powerful influence on young Mr. Yglesias.

In the past, he has not been so shy with his opinions. Why, he knew it all!

Were Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians resolved, other challenges like Hezbollah would soon melt away. The idea of firing rockets into Israeli towns would appear absurd. Iran and Syria would have nothing to gain from supporting groups that behaved in that manner. Arab public opinion would no longer applaud the firing of rockets at random into Israeli cities.

Who is offering the advice to young Mr. Yglesias to say nothing if he hasn’t anything nice to say? Do they believe in the same fairy tales that he believes in?

Hey! Somebody noticed that Huckabee, great performer that he is, doesn’t know anything about anything. So his team has just hired some help:

Huckabee has risen to become one of the GOP’s top presidential contenders almost completely by virtue of his own rhetorical talents and retail political skills. But he has written most all of his speeches, and his bare-bones campaign has been woefully lacking in terms of policy ideas.

Pinkerton will help fill that void.

A Newsday columnist and Fox News contributor, Pinkerton worked in both the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses as well as the presidential campaigns of each. As a respected voice among right-leaning pundits, he’ll bring instant credibility to a campaign that has drawn scorn from the conservative establishment.

And he’ll ensure that Huckabee suffers through no more moments like last month when he hadn’t heard about the NIE report on Iran a day-and-a-half after it was made public.

Well, if Brad Pitt can bone up on his “knowledge” of the world so that he can be a more credible and effective celebrity, then the least one of the guys running for president can do is figure out which end is up after you turn right at the Atlantic Ocean.

Though John Podhoretz loved what Huck had to say about Israel the other day …

We’ve got one true ally in the Middle East, and that’s Israel. It’s a tiny nation. I’ve been there nine time. I’ve literally traveled from Dan to Beersheba, and I understand something of that nation and the vulnerability of it.

And for us to give the world the impression that we would stand by if it were under attack and simply say, “It’s not our problem,” would be recklessly irresponsible on our part.

And if I were president, you can rest assured that we would not let an ally be annihilated by those enemies which is surround it, who have openly stated it is their direct intention to destroy that nation. It would not happen under my presidency.

Take that, Jimmy Carter! (Apparently, the two fellas have differences about how to be a good Baptist, too.)

Michael Oren notes [$$ ?] that Israelis are feeling both stumped and betrayed by Bush’s mystifying new “policy” toward the Israelis and the Palestinians:

No wonder Israelis are stumped. While the old George Bush deemed the end of terror as imperative for peace and the containment of Iran as the prerequisite for eliminating terror, the new George Bush focuses on Israeli settlement-building and hesitates to confront Tehran. It is uncertain which of the two is visiting Israel today and what policies he may pursue. …

Presidential visits are always characterized as “historic,” but Mr. Bush’s trip to the Jewish state is marked by a lack of momentousness. Cross-signals and contradictory policies have clouded a celebration for one of Israel’s firmest friends. Israelis will greet Mr. Bush exuberantly, but his departure may leave them grappling with terror largely on their own.

Meanwhile, Walt and Mearsheimer are still pissing all over Israel and its American “false friends” who (conspiratorially, through the media and the power of money) insist that America support Israel without qualifications. This time they’ve added to the conspiracy Jewish voters, who are heavily represented in states with many electoral votes [e.a.].

Such pandering [by all presidential contenders] is hardly surprising, because contenders for high office routinely court special interest groups, and Israel’s staunchest supporters — the Israel lobby, as we have termed it — expect it. Politicians do not want to offend Jewish Americans or “Christian Zionists,” two groups that are deeply engaged in the political process. Candidates fear, with some justification, that even well-intentioned criticism of Israel’s policies may lead these groups to turn against them and back their opponents instead.

If this happened, trouble would arise on many fronts. Israel’s friends in the media would take aim at the candidate, and campaign contributions from pro-Israel individuals and political action committees would go elsewhere. Moreover, most Jewish voters live in states with many electoral votes, which increases their weight in close elections (remember Florida in 2000?), and a candidate seen as insufficiently committed to Israel would lose some of their support. And no Republican would want to alienate the pro-Israel subset of the Christian evangelical movement, which is a significant part of the GOP base.

What would Walt and Mearsheimer suggest as a solution to the vexing problem of the sinister influence of Israel, Zionism, and American Jews on the American voter, citizen, and imagination? Allow only a certain number of Jewish voters into polling places, perhaps? Or none at all?

So, yeah, it’s all about the election.

In other news, though, Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, the best tealeaf reader to come out of Israel in the last few decades, was telling it like it is on Tuesday:

 Olmert Hints Jerusalem Division Is Inevitable

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert signaled on Tuesday Israel might have no choice but to share Jerusalem with the Palestinians in a peace deal, citing international pressure for compromise over the holy city.

“The world that is friendly to Israel … that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the ‘67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem,” Olmert said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

Olmert was telling it like it is again on Friday, with a twist:

 [Olmert] conceded that settlement construction continued. “There is a certain contradiction in this between what we’re actually seeing and what we ourselves promised,” Mr. Olmert said.

But he cited a letter by President Bush to the Israeli government in 2004 in which Mr. Bush said that in the American view, final borders should reflect the realities of existing population centers. The letter “renders flexible to a degree what is written in the road map,” Mr. Olmert said. …

Mr. Olmert also praised Mr. Bush, saying that no other American president had been as “systematically and consistently” supportive of Israel.

But Israelis need to understand, Mr. Olmert went on, that the part of the world that is “friendly to Israel,” including the United States, “speaks of Israel in terms of the ‘67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem.”

In one of my favorite episodes (it was a while back) of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry and Cheryl argue about whether it’s enough to say “I love you forever” or whether you have to commit to loving your spouse forever and beyond.

That’s what came to mind when I read this report about a study about the nightmare scenario of nuclear war in the Middle East (by the U.S. Center for Strategic and International Studies), in which it was predicted that Israel would probably survive*** in some form but that Iran would be obliterated: [e.a.]

Anthony H. Cordesman, explor[ing] just such a nightmare scenario, not[ed] that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis. …

Given certain conditions, Israel could potentially survive such a nuclear scenario, the study found. Iran, on the other hand, would be completely and utterly obliterated. “Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of term, though Israeli recovery is theoretically possible in population and economic terms,” wrote Cordesman, who compiled this study entitled “Iran, Israel, and Nuclear War”

And a happy Christmas season to you, too!

—————

*** Wasn’t I just saying yesterday that the Jews should be renamed? that they should be called the Survivors?

Below the radar, something is happening on the Israel-Palestine front post-Annapolis. Earlier this week in Europe, Tony Blair succeeded in getting more than $7 billion in (promised) aid for the Palestinians, which will be channeled–if it comes through, and that’s always a big if—through Abbas’s Fatah.

I’m guessing that Hamas wants in. Duh.

Big cheese Ismail Haniyeh, the deposed Palestinian prime minister, is reportedly looking for a truce with Israel, the NYT reports.

A scan of Google News, which lists 1,495 news articles related to this story, indicates the response to Hamas’s offer of a truce:

Peres: Haniyeh trying to divert attention from Hamas crimes
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007
COM STAFF AND ELI LESHEM Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh’s announcement that his group is willing to hold cease-fire negotiations with Israel is a …
Hamas leader’s truce offer dismissed Sydney Morning Herald
Ministers split on ‘hudna’ offer Jerusalem Post
Hamas leader says he’s open to talks CNN
International Herald Tribune - The Associated Press
all 1,495 news articles »

Peres: There’s ‘no need’ for negotiations with Haniyeh
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 19, 2007

I wonder if these headlines from just a few days ago have anything to do with Israel’s coolness toward Hamas’s offer:

The Associated Press

Hamas Supporters Rally to Show Strength The Associated Press - Dec 15, 2007 Leader Ismail Haniyeh vowed in speeches on the 20th anniversary of the movement’s founding that Hamas will not compromise its hardline views despite growing …

Hamas warns of new intifada
Gulf Daily News, Bahrain - Dec 15, 2007
Hamas leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh said the movement was growing more popular because of its stance against the US and Israel. “Today is the day of Jihad, …

Hamas: We’ll never recognize Israel
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Dec 16, 2007
Haniyeh waves a Palestinian flag in front of Hamas supporters during the rally in Gaza City. Photo: AP Tens of thousands of Palestinians participated in a …

 

On 20th anniversary, Hamas vows never to recognize Israel

Ha’aretz, Israel - Dec 15, 2007
In a fiery speech, Haniyeh cited the achievements of Hamas and “the resistance” throughout the region. He cited Israel’s withdrawal from south Lebanon in …

Then there was this a few weeks ago:

Haniyeh: Annapolis conference is stillborn
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 22, 2007
By AP Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Thursday called the upcoming US-hosted conference on the Middle East “stillborn,” and predicted it would not bring any …

Haniyeh: Annapolis deal won’t be binding
Jerusalem Post, Israel - Nov 26, 2007
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh: “The people believe that this conference is fruitless.” “Any settlement that does not include the return of the …

There’s more about the Israelis vs. Gaza at Contentions, here and here.

Is anyone surprised that Iran’s new nuclear “negotiator” turns out to be … well, to say he’s “intransigent” would imply that he could eventually be moved off his position in order to advance the West’s ”dialogue” with Iran. But that’s not the case:

The first hour-and-a-half of the London meeting was described as a monologue, with Jalili speaking about the will of the Iranian people to support uranium enrichment, theology, God, even his doctoral thesis, according to several officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic rules.

“Jalili said, ‘Everything in the past is past, and with me, you start over,’ ” an official said. “He said, ‘None of your proposals has any standing.’ ”

When Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that he was under the assumption that there would be continuity in the talks, Jalili told him that was wrong. After the meeting, Solana abandoned his habitual optimistic stance, telling reporters that he was “disappointed.”

Remember that quote from a year ago—that dealing with Iran was like playing chess with a monkey, because he wouldn’t follow your rules?

Well, here we are a year later, says the NYT:

Iranian Pushes Nuclear Talks Back to Square 1  

The hard-line position from the Iranian side was clear confirmation that Iran would not compromise on this issue, the French official said, adding, “We have in front of us the real Iran.”

An official involved in the talks put it even more bluntly, “We can’t do business with these guys at this point.”

This lesson about Iran is being learned the hard way by the Europeans, who, unlike certain hot-tempered Americans, are predisposed to dialogue.

Who knows what will come of these “negotiations” with Iran. “Talks” are going nowhere fast.

Meanwhile, there’s a growing chorus of calls for Israeli engagement with Hamas.

That proposal is shot down here by Noah Pollak.

[updated to fix typos]

I’m a travel nut. I enjoy having new experiences in places that are not quite familiar to me. Whenever I can get free, I like to go somewhere else and see it with my own eyes. There’s nothing like a firsthand view of unfamiliar terrain to sharpen your powers of observation. And those powers carry over when you get back home, too: you tend to see things with fresh eyes—at least for a while. So I recommend it.

But if you’re not free to travel—or if, like me, you’re not inclined to go too far afield when you do travel—there’s always armchair travel.

So, those of you who can tear yourselves away from more pleasurable distractions and are curious about what on-the-ground reality looks like in the Palestinian town of Bethlehem should check out this feature in National Geographic.

There’s a reported piece that goes along with the stunning pictures. I haven’t read it yet, but here’s a taste.

Bethlehem and Jerusalem are only six miles apart (ten kilometers), though in the compressed and fractious geography of the region, this places them in different realms. It can take a month for a postcard to go from one city to the other. Bethlehem is in the West Bank, on land taken by Israel during the Six Day War of 1967. It’s a Palestinian city; the majority of its 35,000 residents are Muslim. In 1900, more than 90 percent of the city was Christian. Today Bethlehem is only about one-third Christian, and this proportion is steadily shrinking as Christians leave for Europe or the Americas. At least a dozen suicide bombers have come from the city and surrounding district. The truth is that Bethlehem, the “little town” venerated during Christmas, is one of the most contentious places on Earth.

Be sure to check out the pictures.

The other day, Shankar Vedantam reported about a study on the effect of power on a person’s feelings—namely, that it inhibits their ability to feel for others:

Something happens to people once they acquire power, however, and the transformation appears to be psychological. … volunteers made to feel powerful, even in a trivial laboratory experiment, almost instantly lose the ability to see things from other people’s points of view.

A social psychologist elaborates on the paradox between what people seek in a leader and that leader’s behavior once he is chosen to lead [e.a.]:

“People in organizations and in hierarchies and in informal groups like college dorms want leaders to be socially intelligent,” Keltner said. “They will sacrifice all manner of things to have leaders who are thoughtful and engaged and give other people voice.”

But once socially gifted people rise to power, Keltner added, the paradox is that “power simplifies our thinking. We tend to see things in terms of our own self-interest, and it makes us more impulsive. We forget our audience in service of gratifying our own impulses.”

Although the study deals with the conundrum of how an otherwise empathetic person can become indifferent to the situation of others once he accrues personal power, it’s not too much of a stretch to extrapolate something about the effect of institutional power on individuals—namely, that when power becomes institutionalized, its effect is even stronger on both the powerful and the powerless.

Seen in that light, Ehud Olmert’s remarks at Annapolis, in which he validates the suffering of the Palestinians, are—or should be seen as—an important marker in the evolving nature of the dialogue between the Israelis and the Palestinians:

I wish to say, from the bottom of my heart, that I know and acknowledge the fact that alongside the constant suffering which many in Israel have experienced because of the history, the wars, the terror and the hatred towards us — a suffering which has always been part of our lives in our land
– your people have also suffered for many years, and some still suffer.

For dozens of years, many Palestinians have been living in camps, disconnected from the environment in which they grew, wallowing in poverty, neglect, alienation, bitterness, and a deep, unrelenting sense of deprivation. I know that this pain and deprivation is one of the deepest foundations which fomented the ethos of hatred towards us.

We are not indifferent to this suffering. We are not oblivious to the tragedies you have experienced. I believe that in the course of negotiations between us we will find the right way, as part of an international effort in which we will participate, to assist these Palestinians in finding a proper framework for their future, in the Palestinian state which will be established in the territories agreed upon between us. Israel will be part of an international mechanism which will assist in finding a solution to this problem.

There is way too much acrimony for anyone to notice this now, but when the history of our times is written, someone will note the olive branch that Olmert is extending, and will also note the visit of PLO representatives earlier this year to Auschwitz, where they paid their respects.***

These are the fragile foundations of a future … reconciliation. (I was going to say a future “peace,” but I don’t believe in fairy tales.)

——————
*** The Palestinians’ disrespect for the Jews’ suffering in the Holocaust was noted in the New York Times in 1989, at the tail end of a report about an informal meeting between Israelis and Palestinians [e.a.]:

There was no shouting at the meetings, and harsh words were few. One problem arose when Mr. Abu Sharif was quoted in the newspaper De Telegraaf as saying Israel’s treatment of Palestinian protesters was equivalent to the mass killing of Jews at Auschwitz. The P.L.O. officials said he had been misunderstood, but many Israeli participants reacted quickly.

David Susskind, a Belgian Jewish spokesmen, took up the issue in his remarks. He said he had spent four years of his boyhood hiding from the Nazis, and lost 80 members of his family at Auschwitz. Looking directly at the Palestinians, he said: ”There is no comparison. Please do not do it. Please keep Auschwitz out of our discussions.” Speaking of the Palestinian uprising, Mr. Susskind said, ”I feel very guilty that in the name of my people we have to kill other people.”

Future historians will also note that this was the beginning of the Israelis=Nazis slander, which by now has become cemented in the minds of Israel bashers—particularly in Britain. See this cartoon.

update: I note that Eric Trager is rooting around to find out what the sudden turn of events running up to Annapolis means.***

As I write, at

9:45 AM ET, November 26, 2007

this story is nowhere to be found on Memeorandum, and it’s buried on p. A 11 of the dead-tree NYT, but it’s could signal a turn of fortune in the Middle East, too.

It looks like Condi Rice has managed to land not only Saudi Arabia but now also Syria for the heretofore mirage-like conference at Annapolis:

The Annapolis meeting, a major initiative pressed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, will begin negotiations on a peace treaty to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while simultaneously committing Israel and the Palestinians to carry out long-postponed obligations contained in the first stage of the 2003 peace plan known as the road map.

The presence of major Arab countries, now including Syria, is meant to provide Arab sanction and support for the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to make the concessions required for peace.

The NYT’s Steven Erlanger doesn’t allude to the implications, but this is huge. This means that Syria is allowing itself to be “peeled away” from Iran, leaving Hamas minus one sponsor.

The Israeli spokesman clarify what’s at stake here:

Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, said, “The Saudi and Syrian presence is very important and is an American success.” While the Syrians are not sending the foreign minister — a diplomatic distinction that has meaning — Ms. Eisin said that from Israel’s point of view, the rank of the representative was much less important than the Syrian presence.

“Hamas is appalled, which is why we have reason to be satisfied,” Ms. Eisin said.

About the results of the meeting, Ms. Eisin said, “We’re hopeful but not optimistic.”

Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, noted that Syria had agreed to cancel a planned “anti-Annapolis summit” meeting and attend instead. “If the idea of the meeting is Arab-Israeli dialogue, Syria matters,” he said. “It would be even more positive if this were an indication of a change in Syria’s orientation” — away from Iran and toward the Saudi- and Egyptian-led Sunni Arab consensus.

There is a steaming pile of bullshit about Rice’s supremely important role in this accompanying article in the NYT,  but even if you can believe only a tenth of what’s in the piece, there’s no question but that this is a coup.

I hate to sound optimistic, but I begin to see on the horizon a loose but fully international alliance that includes Muslims, Christians, and Jews—and it so happens that it’s a disruption of the so-called “Shia arc.”

At the very least, it seems as if a page is being turned.

————-
*** Trager writes:

Over the past few weeks, consensus has continually held that little should be expected from the Annapolis conference, which opens tomorrow. Op-ed after op-ed and poll after poll have dictated that Israeli and Palestinian leaders are too weak, if not too far apart in their positions, for any meaningful progress towards peace to take place.

Yet it’s hard to reconcile the notion that Annapolis is little more than an impressive photo op with the serious diplomatic capital that Arab states have invested in it. Over the weekend, Saudi Arabia announced that it would send Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, marking the first time that the Saudis are participating in talks with Israelis present. Representatives of Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, Tunisia, and Yemen will also participate. Indeed, the Annapolis conference has achieved such profound legitimacy that Syria—believing that it risked regional isolation by not attending—announced that it would send its deputy foreign minister.

Am I obsessed with blasting Walt and Mearsheimer? You betcha.

The Economist ’s review pretty much explains why I’m so obsessed:

FROM the forged “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” in the 19th century to the charter of Hamas, the Palestinians’ Islamist movement, a common claim by anti-Semites has been that Jews trick great powers into needless wars. That is why an article published in March 2006 by two American academics, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, caused such outrage. Writing in the London Review of Books, they argued that the activities of Israel and its supporters were the “critical” reason for America’s invasion of Iraq. George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld may have thought that they were acting in America’s interests, but were in fact acting in Israel’s. Like previous American governments, the Bush administration had been turned by clever lobbying into what Lenin would have called Zionism’s useful idiots.

This startling thesis is, to say the least, provocative. Since it implies that American boys are dying in Iraq for the sake of Israel, the authors must have known that it would stir up painful questions about the true loyalties of American Jews and therefore attract fiery criticism. But there is no evidence that Mr Mearsheimer and Mr Walt were motivated by any anti-Jewish prejudice.

It’s a fool’s game to say that the authors were motivated by anti-Jewish prejudice. Their motivation is beside the point, and in any case unprovable (much like the authors’ thesis that the cabal-like not-cabal called the Lobby has “too much” power [how much is too much?] and “undue” influence [how much is due influence]?).

What matters is that in order to attract attention to their cause—which is to separate Americans from their sentimental attachment to Israel—Walt and Mearsheimer were willing, even eager, to bait Jews by making the most foul millennia-old accusations against them. They did this promiscuously, and with defiant disregard for the consequences.

What were they thinking?

Were they clueless? Or did they simply feel confident and optimistic about the friendly reception they would receive from Americans who, like them, think that the power of American Jews is a boil to be lanced?

To be continued, I’m sure … to my regret.

Richard Just, writing in the Globe and Mail, gets to the core of what so irritates Walt and Mearsheimer that they’ve mounted a campaign to denounce it as a conspiracy—America’s natural sympathy for Israel:

Israel appeals to different Americans in different ways, including some theological ones that are obviously absurd, not to mention offensive. But at root, most Americans like Israel for two reasons: first, because they sense correctly that, whatever the country’s imperfections, the moral claim of Jewish statehood is fundamenta