Especially between Arabs and Israelis.

Open mic night Jordanian-style: President Shimon Peres on Wednesday confronted Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa during the Petra Convention in Jordan. The two exchanged accusations, inciting the audience.

There’s a new meme in town: namely, that things are improving in Iraq and in the GWOT.

WaPo:

While Washington’s attention has been fixed elsewhere, military analysts have watched with astonishment as the Iraqi government and army have gained control for the first time of the port city of Basra and the sprawling Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, routing the Shiite militias that have ruled them for years and sending key militants scurrying to Iran. At the same time, Iraqi and U.S. forces have pushed forward with a long-promised offensive in Mosul, the last urban refuge of al-Qaeda. So many of its leaders have now been captured or killed that U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, renowned for his cautious assessments, said that the terrorists have “never been closer to defeat than they are now.”

Funny, but I just wrote about the fact that things seem to be looking up in Iraq! I guess others have noticed—but not the MSM, as Engram notes repeatedly in this post.

Of course Engram has been bird-dogging events in Iraq for a long time, creating graphs and explaining over and over in painstakingly that the reduction in casualties (both Iraqi and American) means that the tide is turning. Admirably and stubbornly, he has continued to make this unpopular case. How he ties it all together:

It seems that we may have already won this unwinnable war. In so doing, we have disconfirmed the world’s most dangerous theory. That theory, which was shared by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein alike, was that America’s powerful military was not a force to be feared because the will of the American public could be easily broken with just a bit of bloodshed. That was the lesson these tyrants learned from Vietnam, and the actions of Barack Obama and Harry Reid seemed to confirm that 9/11 did not change anything. The lesson I have learned is that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were, to my great surprise, mostly correct. As they thought, most Americans do not have the will to sustain a bloody fight. But I’ve also learned that if the president alone does show that resolve, then that’s all that matters. Now that al Qaeda in Iraq has been crushed, I suspect that they have learned this new lesson as well (well, bin Laden has).

As it turns out, it was al Qaeda, not America, that launched a misbegotten adventure in Iraq. Their great mistake in an otherwise brilliant plan was to think that even George Bush’s will could be broken once the will of the American people began to flag. It was a monumental error on their part. Now, they have lost in Iraq, and they destroyed their reputation throughout the Muslim world because of the strategy they used in their unsuccessful effort to evict American forces. That strategy was to slaughter other Muslims (Shiites) to break the will of the American people instead of directly taking on the U.S. military. It almost worked, but the gamble appears to have failed.

There’s more: because of Al Qaeda’s abhorrent massacres of Muslims, jihadism is losing favor among the world’s Muslims. Newsweek is the latest to report:

Important Muslim thinkers, including some on whom bin Laden depended for support, have rejected his vision of jihad. Once sympathetic publics in the Middle East and South Asia are growing disillusioned. As CIA Director Michael Hayden said last week, “Fundamentally, no one really liked Al Qaeda’s vision of the future.” At the same time, and potentially much more important over the long run, a new vision of Islam, neither bin Laden’s nor that of the traditionalists who preceded him, is taking shape. Momentum is building within the Muslim world to re-examine what had seemed immutable tenets of the faith, to challenge what had been taken as literal truths and to open wide the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) that some schools of Islam tried to close centuries ago.

As Peter Wehner notes, this jihadism-is-on-the-wane meme has been building recently:

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a noteworthy interview to the Washington Post this week.

Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership. …

…  Hayden’s assessment comes on the heels of important essays by Lawrence Wright in The New Yorker and Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank in The New Republic arguing that the tide within the Islamic world is turning strongly against al Qaeda and jihadism.

Wisely, Wehner cautions against excessive optimism [e.a.]:

Progress, like setbacks, can be reversed. Georgetown University terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman is surely right when he says “Al-Qaeda’s obituary has been written far too often in the past few years for anyone to declare victory. I agree that there has been progress. But we’re indisputably up against a very resilient and implacable enemy.” And Hayden’s right to warn us that progress in Iraq is being undermined by increasing interference by Iran, which he accused of supplying weapons, training, and financial assistance to anti-U.S. insurgents.

Indeed. This would be the “malign influence” that Iran casts over the entire region, according to Gen. David Petraeus’s testimony before Congress last week—a claim that was challenged by Sen Jim Webb, who apparently thinks we should go so easy on Iran that we should avoid using displeasing words like “malign. Petraeus disagreed [e.a.]:

WEBB: General Petraeus, there’s some language in response to questions that were submitted to you for the record that go to Iran that I would like to get some clarifcation or give you the opportunity to clarify. You use the word malign as an adjective, as someone who’s written nine books, I’m trying to struggle with how this fits in to what you’re saying here. You say ["]we will continue to expose you the extent of Iran’s malign activity in Iraq,” and then you say on the next page, “our efforts in regard to Iran must involve generating international cooperation and building consensus to counter malign Iranian influence,” and then you speak about its…”there are consequences for its illegitimate influence in the region.” Can you clarify for us…how are you using those words?
PETRAEUS: I can, Senator. What I’m talking about there I am characterizing that influence, it is malign and it is lethal and it is illegitimate. The arming, training, funding, and directing of militia extremists who have killed our soldiers…is very malign indeed it’s the same situation with what they’re doing…

But rather than get all caught up in Iran and other issues in the Middle East—Olmert’s extraordinary meltdown, anybody?—I’d like to reprint at length Peter Wehner’s conclusions about these extraordinary shifts in the geopolitics of the day, and the lesson we should all draw from them:

It’s worth recalling how widely the pendulum has swung in just the last two years. In 2005 and 2006, Iraq, it was said in many quarters, was lost; we either had to beat a hasty retreat or, as Joe Biden and Les Gelb counseled, we needed to separate Iraq into three largely autonomous regions (Shia, Sunni, and Kurd). For a time the Biden-Gelb plan was the “hot” one among commentators — the “third way” between leaving Iraq precipitously and foolishly attempting to repair a hopelessly broken and divided society. In fact, we are now seeing precisely the reconciliation and progress that many analysts believed was impossible to achieve.

It was also said by many analysts that as a result of the President’s misguided policies, al Qaeda was growing more popular, terrorist recruitment was up, al Qaeda had been handed great gifts by the Bush administration, and that America was less safe than prior to 9/11. The conventional wisdom was that the “Bush legacy” would be that al Qaeda was much stronger and America was much weaker than before the Iraq war.

Today the pendulum is swinging very much the other way. The reality is that things are much better now then they were at the mid-point of this decade. The cautionary tale in all this may be that we need to resist the temptation to take a snapshot in time and assuming that those things will stay as they are. Two years ago there were reasons for deep concern — but there were not reasons, it turns out, for despair or hopelessness. Events are fluid and can be shaped by human action and human will. While commentators were busy writing obituaries on Iraq, Bush, in the face of gale-force political winds, changed strategies –and Petraeus and company took on the hard task of redeeming Iraq.

Recent events are reminders, too, that equanimity and the capacity for some degree of detachment are important qualities to possess–qualities which are often lacking among those of us who inhabit the world of politics and government and comment on events on a daily or weekly basis.

Indeed.

But detachment and equanimity are, of course, the opposite of what sells on television—which is why cable “news” is 24/7 hysteria.

Maybe the New York Times is getting religion (no pun intended) in the face of the financial ruin or perhaps the timing is mere coincidence.

Today, in a shocker, the Gray Lady reveals (a few decades too late) that the Palestinians are running a vicious propaganda campaign against—surprise!—the Jews (all of them, everywhere):

Hamas’s Insults to Jews Complicate Peace Effort

Ya think?

Such incitement against Israel and Jews was supposed to be banned under the 1993 Oslo accords and the 2003 “road map” peace plan. While the Palestinian Authority under Fatah has made significant, if imperfect efforts to end incitement, Hamas, no party to those agreements, feels no such restraint.

Since Hamas took over Gaza last June, routing Fatah, Hamas sermons and media reports preaching violence and hatred have become more pervasive, extreme and sophisticated, on the model of Hezbollah and its television station Al Manar, in Lebanon.

In case any of the NYT’s readers thinks that Hamas’s complaints are legitimate, and that its charter, a “deeply anti-Semitic document” [you get extra points for that, NYT!  ---ed.]  is just politics [e.a.]:

Mark Regev, spokesman for Mr. Olmert, called on “Arab leaders who are moderate and believe in peace to speak out more strongly against extremist elements.” He called the “incitement to hatred and violence standard Hamas operating procedure,” adding, “In Hamas education and broadcasting they turn the suicide bomber who murders the innocent into a positive role model, and they portray Jews in the most negative terms, that too often reminds us of language used in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.”

The “serious question,” he said, “is what ethos are they promoting?”

Why, they’re promoting “resistance” against the eternally evil Jew, dontcha know?  And there are lots of Americans who want the eternally evil Jews of Israel to negotiate with those who look forward to a second holocaust.

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.

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?

On Saturday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was busy making claims for the Palestinians in Egypt. On Sunday, he was rebuffed:

“Egypt has made it clear that it does not want to be responsible for providing the Gaza Strip with fuel and electricity,” a senior Hamas official in Gaza City told The Jerusalem Post. “They have informed us that the Gaza Strip must remain Israel’s problem.”

The talk about economic separation from Israel is said to have enraged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who expressed fear that such a move would increase pressure on him to assume responsibility for the Gaza Strip.

The idea, which has been welcomed by Israel, was first floated by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh over the weekend.

In remarks published by the Hamas-affiliated Falasteen newspaper, Haniyeh said that “Gaza must maintain stronger economic links with Egypt as a way of economic disconnection from Israel.” He said Hamas was seeking to disconnect the Strip’s economy from Israel and receive food, fuel and electricity from Egypt.

“We said during our election campaign in 2006 that we are seeking to move toward an economic disengagement from the Israeli occupation,” Haniyeh said. “Egypt has a greater ability to meet the needs of Gaza.”

One would think that at least Egypt would show an interest in meeting the needs of Gaza. But one would be wrong.

That is among the tragedies of the Palestinians: after they fled (or were forced to flee) their land, their fellow Arabs shunned them, marginalized them, and kicked them to the curb—and used them as a cudgel with which to beat the Israelis.

Unable to solve its problems with Fatah and Israel, Hamas has now enlarged its entire problem—this time ensnaring Egypt in its trap.

While we’re enveloped in campaign excitement, the rest of the world goes about its business. Some three days after Palestinians blew their way through the border with Egypt, Egyptian soldiers are reportedly fleeing rather than confront the problem and close the border.

The BBC explains the problem:

Egypt is in a bind. It did not want the border breached.

The Egyptian government despises and fears Hamas. It fears opposition forces within Egypt, including religious fundamentalists, being strengthened by Hamas ideology.

But equally, Egypt does not want to be seen directly as “Gaza’s jailer”. So closing the border, amid scenes of Arab fighting Arab - Palestinian stones against Egyptian riot shields - is also very unwelcome.

Israel has moved to suggest that any failure to close the border by Egypt would justify Israel in handing over responsibility for the future welfare of the people of Gaza to Egypt - neatly ridding Israel of a problem, and the source of so much international criticism.

That will not happen, but the Rafah border breach and the extraordinary scenes of a mass Palestinian breakout for shopping or simply for fresh air may yet have profound political effects on the entire Middle East peace process.

Here are the two things that might happen, according to the BBC:

The downside could be a hardening of attitudes on all sides, further complicating or poisoning the climate for concessions in the dialogue which US President George W Bush is hoping to accelerate.

The upside could be a realisation that the present situation in Gaza, and the split between Hamas there, and Fatah in the West Bank, is utterly unsustainable.

What will happen?

Stay tuned. But not to the MSM.

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 …

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.

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.

Robert Baer claims that Bush walked away from his Iran mission because everything is going his way everywhere else and Iran is just too hard:

The real story behind this NIE is that the Bush Administration has finally concluded Iran is a bridge too far. With Iranian-backed Shi’a groups behaving themselves, things are looking up in Iraq. In Lebanon, the anti-Syrian coalition and pro-Syrian coalition, which includes Iran’s surrogate Hizballah, reportedly have settled on a compromise candidate, the army commander General Michel Suleiman. Bombing Iran now would upset the fragile balance in these two countries. Not to mention that Hizballah has threatened to shell Israel if we as much as touch a hair on Iran’s head.

Then there are the Gulf Arabs. For the last year and a half, ever since the Bush Administration started to hint that it might hit Iran, they have been sending emissaries to Tehran to assure the Iranians they’re not going to help the United States. But in private, the Gulf Arabs have been reminding Washington that Iran is a rabid dog: Don’t even think about kicking it, the Arabs tell us. If you have to do something, shoot it dead. Which is something the United States can’t do.

Right! American can’t do it so we should just forget about it.

We should at least be happy with the good news: Armageddon is postponed.

Norman Podhoretz, while revising his paranoid suspicions from yesterday (which were pointed out not by his son, as I incorrectedly suggested yesterday, but rather by Gabriel Schoenfeld; and let me extend my apologies to my readers for the error), still sees Armageddon:

even if the President is still intent on keeping the military option alive, and even if the fine print in the new NIE gives him room to do so, it will now be infinitely more difficult to persuade the Iranian leadership that military force remains a possibility.

I have for some time now been predicting that before leaving office George W. Bush will order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities. I have made that prediction with what the NIE would describe as “moderate confidence,” but the best I can do now is offer it with “low-to-no confidence.” For despite the President’s evident resolve to keep the military option on the table, the effect of the new NIE here at home will almost certainly make it politically impossible for him to take military action even if it becomes clearer than it already is that nothing else can prevent the Iranians from getting the bomb, or even if further investigation should reveal that the intelligence behind the NIE is faulty. Already, indeed, serious questions have been raised about the reliability of this intelligence.

In any event, there is one set of judgments I have made to which I am sticking: that neither diplomacy nor sanctions nor an internal insurrection can prevent the Iranian mullahs from getting the bomb, and that if they should get the bomb, deterrence would not work to keep them from using it.

I think Podhoretz has the right instinct about Iran—that it is unstoppable and udeterrable. (The pseudonymous Spengler at Asia Times has also been saying this for years.) I just don’t know if he’s got the right prescription for dealing with Iran’s attitude.

However, even Matthew Yglesias, who is allergic to unilateral military action, says that there’s still plenty of reason to be worried about Iran.

So I guess the Dems can’t quite take their eye off that ball yet.

One very popular Republic sure has been caught flat-footed , though.

Kuhn: I don’t know to what extent you have been briefed or been able to take a look at the NIE report that came out yesterday …

Huckabee: I’m sorry?

Kuhn: The NIE report, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Have you been briefed or been able to take a look at it —

Huckabee: No.

Kuhn: Have you heard of the finding?

Huckabee: No.

Pathetic.

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.

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.

Agence France-Press reports thatA’jad scolded Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah for consorting with the enemy:

“I wish the name of Saudi Arabia was not among those attending the Annapolis conference,” Ahmadinejad told the king late Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA.

“Arab countries should be watchful in the face of the plots and deception of the Zionist enemy,” he added.

Focusing on “the Zionist enemy” of course detracts attention from the actual state of affairs that has Iran in a tizzy:

The Islamic republic — which has made non-recognition of Israel one of its main ideological themes — has been left isolated by the attendance at the meeting of its chief regional ally Syria as well as Saudi Arabia.

This is the second time in two years that the major Sunni players in the Middle East have signaled their intense displeasure with Iran and its acolytes and clients. An interesting development.

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.

Aretha sang about it a long time ago.

Now, the PLO’s ambassador to Poland shows it by visiting Auschwitz:

The PLO’s ambassador to Poland visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Wednesday. … After signing the camp’s visitors’ journal, [Khaled] Soufan told reporters he was there to convey his solidarity with the Jewish people’s suffering during World War II.

It would be easy to deride this as cheap political theater were it not for the fact that Holocaust denial is all the rage among some rather  prominent Muslims.

Which makes this gesture all the more powerful and resonant. So hat’s off to Khaled Soufan, and bravo.

The long road to peace begins with reconciliation. And there is no reconciliation without mutual respect.

By the way, the Pakistani ambassador to Poland also visited Auschwitz recently, I see from the same article. Nice of the media to report it, eh?

Condi Rice is consulting with all the wisemen and -women she can muster for the miraculous Middle East peace she plans to bring about:

Rice, who hopes the international conference in November will set the basis for negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state, met with former president Jimmy Carter on Wednesday and spoke by telephone with Bill Clinton weeks earlier, said spokesman Sean McCormack. …

The chief US diplomat also regularly meets with her predecessors, Madeleine Albright, Henry Kissinger and James Baker, said a senior US official who requested anonymity.

On another topic, the Flack writes [e.a.]:

As PR people, we’re often asked, “what makes a story most?” We typically answer with “the biggest,” “most expensive,” “first” or whatever superlative we can reasonably conjure up. But the biggest stories tend to be those that defy conventional wisdom, e.g., the child prodigy, the cancer-survivor who went on to notch seven consecutive Tour de France victories, the waif model whose career rose to new heights after her front page cocaine bust, the Asian-African-American pro golf superstar, and the list goes on and on.

Indeed it does, even—or especially—in politics and geopolitics.

Abracadabra! I see another “Mission Accomplished” banner in the Bush administration’s future.

Philip Weiss has read Walt and Mearsheimer’s book [emphasis in the title is in the original]:

‘The Jungle,’ ‘Silent Spring,’ ‘Unsafe at Any Speed’–And Now, ‘The Israel Lobby’

Walt and Mearsheimer’s book on the Israel Lobby is being published today. I finished it last night. I said before that it was historic, but I did not realize quite what it was till I put it down: a great work of American muckraking in the tradition of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (the meatpacking industry), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (pesticides), and Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed (Detroit). An overkill moral beauty aimed at an outrage, some day this book will be legendary and dated. [e.a.]

Legendary And dated? As in superseded by even greater works of moral beauty by the same authors, something like, say, Our Kampf? or perhaps Our Jihad?

But that’s putting the cart before the horse. Meanwhile, Wess dares to dream:

So [The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy] will be passed around, it will be taught. Serious people will press it on other serious people. Political aides will hand it to other political aides. It may have to wear brown-paper covers in Congress, at the State Department and at Hillels, but it will be read hungrily. Young progressive Jews will read it. Arabs will translate it into Arabic. It will go like lightning around Europe. Israelis will snap it up (the book is actually very respectful of Israel; it’s America that has the big problem), and someday it will come out in Hebrew. It will work on people. It will show what independent people ought to do when they form ideas, and others will chime in. A politician will finally speak out, with Walt and Mearsheimer as his or her role model.

I can hardly wait. And I’m not alone.

Michael Gerson had a few choice words for Walt and Mearsheimer:

Walt and Mearsheimer are careful to say they are not anti-Semitic or conspiracy-minded. But their main inference [sic]– that Israel, the Israel lobby and Jewish neoconservatives called the shots for Bush, Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld — is not only rubbish, it is dangerous rubbish. As “mainstream” scholars, Walt and Mearsheimer cannot avoid the historical pedigree of this kind of charge. Every generation has seen accusations that Jews have dual loyalties, promote war and secretly control political structures.

These academics may not follow their claims all the way to anti-Semitism. But this is the way it begins. This is the way it always begins.

Ron Rosenbaum called bullshit on Walt and Mearsheimer’s alleged “realism”:

To me, the real problem is not whether The Israel Lobby pleases this Grand Kleagle or that, or the one-sidedness of its depiction of Israel and its supporters, so much as the profound failure of the moral imagination that the book reflects. A failure to connect with the historical experience of Jews that motivates their support of Israel. A failure to empathize with the real danger the 6 million Jews of Israel face: the threat of a second Holocaust.

Leslie Gelb excoriated them for roiling the waters purely to gain vindication for their views about Iraq:

The inevitable last question is this: Why have two such serious students of United States foreign policy written so weak a book and added fuel, inadvertently, to the fires of anti-Semitism? The answer lies in their treatment of the Iraq war.

Mearsheimer and Walt should feel very proud, indeed, for their foresight in opposing the Iraq war. Their writings were more on target than anyone’s, and they are justifiably mystified about how the United States could have been so stupid and self-destructive. They appear to have reasoned that a mistake of this magnitude could have been fostered only by some irresistible force. And the only such force they can conjure from the landscape of the powerful is the Israel lobby, as embodied by neoconservative gladiators like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle. In the authors’ words, “the lobby did not cause the war by itself. … But absent the lobby’s influence, there almost certainly would not have been a war. The lobby was a necessary but not sufficient condition for a war that is a strategic disaster for the United States and a boon for Iran, Israel’s most serious regional adversary.”

Their vitriol about the Iraq war — about being so right while others were so wrong — is so overwhelming that they minimize two key facts. First, America’s foreign policy community, including many Democrats as well as Republicans, supported the war for the very same reasons that Wolfowitz and the lobby did — namely, the fact that Hussein seemed to pose a present or future threat to American national interests. Second, the real play-callers behind the war were President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. They hardly have a history of being in the pockets of the Jewish lobby (more like the oil lobby’s), and they aren’t remotely neoconservatives. The more we know, the clearer it is that the White House went to war primarily to erase the “blunder” of the elder Bush in not finishing off Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

The authors, however, are feeling so satisfied with themselves, if their remarks to the Los Angeles Times editorial board are any indication, that Walt now blames the limitations of language—”lobby” is a “crude” term, Walt admits—for their inability to get their point across.

In this formulation, it’s not their intemperate blanket condemnation of anyone who supports Israel that’s to blame for the hostile reaction to their so-called “argument”; rather, Walt suggests, Americans have been so thoroughly brainwashed by Israel supporters that we no longer have the language to describe such a magical group as the “lobby”—or, more precisely, “the Lobby,” as it was forever imprinted on the minds of those who follow such arcane debates.

What’s crude here is not just the insult “Lobby.” It’s Walt and Mearsheimer’s continued slippery reluctance to define this amoeba-like group that they claim has “too much power” (by what measure?) and is asserting undue influence over American policy against the national interest. This group, they say under skeptical questioning by the L.A. Times’s editorial board, is forever changing its shape and its dimensions to include this person or that; this organization or that; this group of people or that. And all the while, Walt and Mearsheimer keep insisting, they’re not talking about a “cabal,” so what’s the problem?

Here’s the problem: when you describe a group with the mystical powers of a “cabal” but keep insisting that it isn’t a cabal because you’re not referring to it as a “cabal,” it gives off the unmistakable odor of skunk, and weasel.

Read this exchange and see if you don’t agree [e.a.]

Mearsheimer: … if you have a policy of unconditional aid, if you have a policy where you can’t criticize Israel in the United States without getting smeared, you’re going to give that state a lot of room to get itself in trouble. And our argument again is that it would be better if that aid were conditional and we were allowed to have an open debate about Israeli policy and the Israeli-U.S. relationship.

Walt: That is, something similar to the debate that happens in Israel itself, where you have a very wide-open debate about what their policies are and whether they make sense, and where you find lots more people willing to take positions similar to ours than you would here in the United States.

Tim: Then why is the book called The Israel Lobby and not The Pro-Settlement Lobby or The Likudnik Lobby?

Mearsheimer: For the very simple reason that the lobby is not monolithic or homogeneous. There are groups inside the lobby that are opposed to settlements; there are groups inside the lobby that are in favor of settlements. Also you want to remember, we’re not arguing that this is a Jewish lobby. Despite our best efforts to make the case clear that this is the Israel lobby and not the Jewish lobby, people continue to talk as if we’re only talking about Jews.

Who’s in the lobby?

Tim: You mentioned the uh, the non…mono…lithicism of the lobby. And looking through the book, it’s weird to me to think that there’s some team that comprises Martin Indyk, Daniel Pipes, you know, I’m trying to think of a third…I mean, this is really a wide-ranging group of, you know, Abe…

Mearsheimer: Henry Siegman. Do you know Henry Siegman? He was head of the American Jewish Congress. But again, there’s no reason why people inside the lobby can’t be very critical of Israel. Let me give you an example: One of the best reviews of our book, one of the most favorable reactions inside the United States, came from M.J. Rosenberg, who used to work for AIPAC. He said very nice things about the book.

Nick: My, one of my, one of the things that confuses me as I read the book is that you are, you talk in these, often about the lobby. The lobby does this, the lobby does that. The lobby seems so broad as you’ve defined it that it’s hard for me to, to know if that’s a meaningful group that you’re talking about. The differences go broader than Martin Indyk…

Walt: Martin got his start working for AIPAC. He helped found the Institute for Near East Policy.

Nick: He falls clearly in the…

Walt: And that’s not to say that he hasn’t advocated positions, both in his official capacity and outside it, that John and I would agree with. He’s a two-state-solution person; he understands that getting this thing shut down is in everybody’s interest. We might disagree on some other issues. That said, he’s not someone who would ever say the United States should make its support for Israel conditional on ending the settlements. He’s never advocated that, he… [e.a.]

im: So that’s what defines your presence in the lobby, is unconditional support?

Susan Brenneman: Yeah, and not just support but by support you mean aid?

Stephen: Aid and diplomatic support. And again, you’ve got, the way we define it… I think we laid this out as clearly as… You’ve got to be actively working. It’s not just somebody who has an attitude toward Israel. You’ve got to spend some part of your daily life trying to advance that particular goal. I’d also point out, like all other interest groups, these are fuzzy groups, right? I mean, there are people who are clearly in the core: Abraham Foxman, nobody’s really going to argue whether he’s a member. But you’re going to have some people who are further out, to where you get to people who are clearly not in the lobby. And there are going to be some cases in between where you can argue back and forth, and they might change their minds. I acknowledge that the term “lobby” has a certain crude quality to it, but almost due to the limitations of language. One of the things we did was we often used phrases like “groups within the lobby,” “organizations in the lobby,” “organizations and individuals in the lobby…” Trying to underscore to the reader that this is not a monolith. This is not a Comintern that gives orders to the followers. That there are issues where they genuinely disagree.

These two still cannot explain what they mean by “the lobby,” and they blame the constraints of language. Get this: The phenomenon they discern is so unique that language cannot even properly describe it. But they know it when they see it, and they know it’s very bad for America!

And Philip Weiss is eager to spread the seed of these “scholars.”

The mind reels.

Oops!

Joe Klein:

This is uninformed [but politically correct; see here  --ed.] speculation, BUT…I wouldn’t be surprised if the Israeli strike on Syria two weeks ago had nothing at all to do with nuclear material. [e.a.]

The Times (London):

Israelis seized nuclear material in Syrian raid

Israeli commandos seized nuclear material of North Korean origin during a daring raid on a secret military site in Syria before Israel bombed it this month, according to informed sources in Washington and Jerusalem.

The attack was launched with American approval on September 6 after Washington was shown evidence the material was nuclear related, the well-placed sources say.

The plot thickens.