Entries Tagged 'Palestine' ↓

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.

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?

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?

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.

[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.

What would you do if your land were threatened with sinking into shit?

That lake, which itself holds sewage overflow, now contains almost four million cubic yards of water and human waste, covering about 100 acres, and it is again creeping close to the danger point. Its sand embankment was reinforced this summer, and two more outlet ponds have been dug in the sand. But more waste enters daily than is discharged, the lake is only six feet below the embankment and the winter rains are coming.

And yet a project to fix the problem is stalled by politics and conflict.

Wouldn’t you plan to build a $200 million dream factory to take people’s minds off their shit-threatened misery? If so, you’re thinking just like Hamas:

It’s a tale worthy of its own movie script: The Gaza Strip’s isolated and cash-strapped Hamas rulers plan to build a $200 million media city and movie production house that will be part tourist attraction and part effort to cement control of the territory it seized by force in June.

So far, though, the Islamic militants have raised only a tiny fraction of the money it needs for its own Hollywood, at a time when the Gaza economy has ground to a standstill and its people are struggling to feed themselves because of Israeli and international sanctions against the Islamic group listed as a terror organization.

Even so, Hamas envisions a glittering facility with production and graphics studios, satellite technology, gardens, water ponds, a children’s entertainment area and an array of cafes and restaurants, said the Felasteen daily, a Hamas paper.

Hussein Ibish, of the American Taskforce on Palestine, lays out the situation in Israel-Palestine:

The catastrophic division that has recently developed in Palestine, with the national leadership split between two fiefdoms and in a state of open conflict, has left Palestinians and their allies around the world dismayed, and struggling to reformulate a viable strategy for ending the occupation. As people search for guidance and try to make sense of a shocking turn of events, misleading and overwrought polemics have become more prevalent than sober analysis.

In the United States, a small but vocal and influential group of left-wing commentators, taking their lead from others in the Middle East, has reacted by defending the conduct of Hamas and heaping vitriol on Fateh and the PLO. Of course the Muslim religious right has its direct supporters, although in the United States for legal and other reasons straightforward identification with Hamas tends to be more subterranean and muted than overt. As a result, this small faction of leftist writers, who cannot in any sense be accused of being Islamists themselves, has emerged as the principal public defenders of Hamas’ actions and its struggle to seize power in Palestine. However sincere or well-intentioned, this rhetoric could have a decidedly negative influence and, if taken seriously by enough people, might significantly undermine efforts to help to end the occupation.

One cannot simply support any and every party or organization just because they are Palestinians, even though this is the understandable instinct of a great many friends of Palestine.*** Instincts, however genuine, are no substitute for an informed and effective political strategy designed to achieve specific goals – in this case, to end the occupation. To work effectively towards ending the occupation, there is no need for supporters of Palestine to become partisans of Fateh, defenders of all of their actions and methods, or fans of their personalities. However, important choices need to be made and there are serious consequences to all of our words and deeds. The stakes could hardly be higher.

Four vital questions need to be addressed. What explains the counter-intuitive phenomenon of Arabs nominally on the left coming to the defense of the Muslim far-right? What exactly have these left-wing sympathizers with the far-right been saying in recent months? What actually happened in Gaza and the West Bank? And, most importantly, what should friends of Palestine in the United States do now?

Read the whole thing. It’s worth your time.

———————-

*** I’ve quoted him before, but I’ll quote him again—the British journalist Nick Cohen, that is, who once made a very shrewd and sharp assertion along the same lines to his left-wing cohort:

It’s not radical, it’s barely political, to turn a blind eye and say you are for the Palestinian cause. Political seriousness lies in stating which Palestine you are for and which Palestinians you support. The Palestinian fight is at once an anti-colonial struggle and a clash between modernity and reaction. The confusion of our times comes from the failure to grasp that it is possible to have an anti-colonialism of the far right.

While we’re at it, don’t excuse Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest by saying the foundation of Israel and the defeat of all the Arab attempts to destroy it made them that way. Anti-Semitism isn’t a local side effect of a dirty war over a patch of land smaller than Wales. It’s everywhere from Malaysia to Morocco, and it has arrived here. When the BBC showed a Panorama documentary about the ideological roots of the Muslim Council of Britain in the Pakistani religious right, the first reaction of the Council was to accuse it of following an “Israeli agenda”. The other day the Telegraph reported that Ahmad Thomson, a Muslim lawyer who advises the Prime Minister on community relations of all things, had declared that a “sinister” group of Jews and Freemasons was behind the invasion of Iraq.

To explain away a global phenomenon as a rational reaction to Israeli oppression, you have once again to turn the Jew into a supernatural figure whose existence is the cause of discontents throughout the earth. You have to revive anti-Semitism.

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.

But in Gaza, “weekend” means different things to Hamas and Fatah, which in turn means, naturally, that gunfire erupted over the dispute:

GAZA, July 5 (Reuters) - Palestinian civil servants said they came under gunfire from a Hamas-led force as they tried to report for work on Thursday, which Hamas has decreed a day off. …

Guidelines for the working week by President Mahmoud Abbas’s emergency government set Sunday to Thursday as working days with a Friday/Saturday weekend.

But the Hamas-led government, which Abbas dismissed after the Islamist movement seized Gaza in a civil war three weeks ago, has set a Saturday-Wednesday working week.

[[video removed from http://youtube.com/watch?v=ic7H-xqXlp8 ]]

Gabriel Schoenfeld on what we might expect in Gaza:

When Israel withdrew from the security zone it had established in southern Lebanon in 2000, there were numerous predictions, noted the Israeli analyst Gal Luft in 2003, “that the radical Shiite group Hizballah, whose forces had relentlessly attacked the occupying Israeli troops, would close up military operations and henceforth focus solely on Lebanese domestic affairs.”

But what actually happened? First, wrote Luft, Hizballah declared that its “objective was the liberation of the entire land of Palestine and the destruction of the ‘Zionist entity.” It then seized control of the entire buffer zone that had been occupied by Israel and turned it into “a de facto state within a state.” Hizballahland” was what Luft christened this territory as he pointed to the fact that the terrorist organization had “managed to amass an impressive stockpile of weapons, including 10,000 rockets and missiles capable of hitting a quarter of Israel’s population.”

That was 2003. By 2006, Hizballah had 20,000 rockets and missiles, and its depredations led Israel and Lebanon into a massive and bloody war.

What lies ahead for Hamastan? It is of course conceivable—anything being conceivable—that the newly empowered Hamas leadership will move in the direction of pragmatism; that is what our own pragmatic logic suggests they should do. But perhaps these Islamic radicals operate under a different system of reasoning. The spectacle of the losers of the Gaza power struggle—their fellow Palestinians—being tossed from fifteen-story buildings and shot in the knees before being shot in the head suggests that sometimes it is not only history that goes in cycles, but illusions about history as well …

Haniyeh is feeling the heat, apparently.

Martin Indyk understands why:

The failed state of Gaza that Hamas controls is wedged between Egypt and Israel. Its water, electricity and basic goods are imported from the Jewish state, whose destruction Hamas has declared as its fundamental objective. One more Qassam rocket fired from Gaza into an Israeli village and Israel could threaten to seal the border if Hamas did not stop its attacks. Hamas would then have to reach a meaningful cease-fire with Israel or seek Egypt’s help meeting the basic needs of the 1.5 million Gazans. Hosni Mubarak’s regime turned a blind eye to the importation of weapons and money that helped ensure Hamas’s takeover. But would Egypt allow on its border a failed terrorist state run by an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood with links to Iran and Hezbollah? Or will it insist on the maintenance of certain standards of order in return for its cooperation?

Whatever transpires, Gaza has become Hamas’s problem. It’s a safe bet that the real attitude of Abbas and Fatah is: Let Hamas try to rule Gaza, and good luck.

This turn of events would free Abbas to focus on the much more manageable West Bank, where he can depend on the Israel Defense Forces to suppress challenges from Hamas, and on Jordan and the United States to help rebuild his security forces. As chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization and president of the Palestinian Authority, Abbas is empowered to negotiate with Israel over the disposition of the West Bank. Once he controls the territory, he could make a peace deal with Israel that establishes a Palestinian state with provisional borders in the West Bank and the Arab suburbs of East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in Gaza could compare their fate under Hamas’s rule with the fate of their West Bank cousins under Abbas — which might then force Hamas to come to terms with Israel, making it eventually possible to reunite Gaza and the West Bank as one political entity living in peace with the Jewish state. It’s hard to believe that such a benign outcome could emerge from the growing Palestinian civil war.

Yes, it’s very hard to believe that a benign outcome is possible. Which is why I don’t believe it for a minute.

Even Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, ahem, members do it—near Yasser Arafat’s grave:

According to Israeli security officials and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades sources in Ramallah, Shawish was arrested after the Israeli police stormed his jeep, which was parked in a lot outside the Muqata, about 200 feet from Arafat’s grave. The sources said at the time of his arrest, Shawish was having intercourse in the back seat of his jeep with a Palestinian woman, whose identity is being withheld by WND. The woman was not his wife.

The Brigades, founded by Arafat, largely considers the late PLO leader’s resting place to be a sacred site.

Indeed!

Anguish over abducted BBC correspondent Alan Johnston grew this week.

Dozens of foreign and Palestinian journalists held simultaneous demonstrations on both sides of Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, calling for the release of a British Broadcasting Corp. correspondent who was kidnapped by Palestinian gunmen six weeks ago. …

“We have not forgotten his plight and we will not stop until he is freed,” said Simon McGregor-Wood, chairman of the Foreign Press Association, reading a statement for the group. “There has been precious little reliable information as to his well-being or whereabouts.”

Here is a smattering of the headlines currently on Google News:

Abbas says knows whereabouts of BBC Gaza reporter
Swissinfo, Switzerland - Apr 27, 2007

Demand freedom for Alan Johnston
Arab American News, MI - 9 hours ago

EU lawmakers urge more efforts to release BBC reporter in Gaza
EUbusiness (press release), UK - Apr 26, 2007

Cyprus calls for release of BBC reporter kidnapped in Gaza
People’s Daily Online, China - 3 hours ago

Multi-faith appeal for BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston
Journal Chrétien, France - Apr 27, 2007

EU parliament calls on the PA to secure the release of BBC reporter
International Middle East Media Center, Palestinian Territories - Apr 26, 2007

This festering, unresolved situation is deeply damaging to the Palestinians. No matter how sympathetic people may be to the cause, no Westerner is going to forget about a kidnapped BBC reporter missing in Gaza for six weeks. It cannot be glossed over.

The top story quotes Abbas as saying that “the British journalist Alan Johnston is with a group of rebels.”

Rebels? That’s a new one on me.

Is that like the “deviant group” of that, according to Saudi officials, the 172 miscreants rounded up in Saudia Arabia? The NYT fills us in:

Saudi security officials said Friday that they had broken up a vast terrorist ring, arresting 172 men who planned to blow up oil installations, attack public officials and military posts, and storm a prison to free terrorist suspects.

The wide-ranging plot was uncovered over seven months, officials said, as one lead yielded another, allowing authorities to seize a cache of weapons buried in the desert and more than $5.3 million in cash.

The government referred to the ring as a “deviant group,” the phrase often used to describe the ideology of Al Qaeda.***

The Saudis now acknowledge that there is a war (against al Qaeda) going on inside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. And that’s not all. Tomorrow’s Times is reporting that the influence of Prince Bandar, who was called home to the kingdom a year ago or more, is on the wane. He was the lubricant of the Saudi-Washington relationship for 20 years (and a particularly close friend of the Bush family).

As for what it all means … who knows? After 50 years of stability in the Middle East (which Brent Scowcroft lauded as a success, because “we had peace”), there is no doubt but that we now face chaos and unpredictability. The cautious platitudes spouted by the Democratic candidates at the debates the other night were hardly encouraging if you’re looking for guidance from one of the people who might soon be president (November 2008 only seems like it’s far off in the future).

To me it looks like a chain of unpredictable events was unleashed in the Middle East by the toppling of Saddam—beginning with the liberation that turned into an occupation, which attracted an infestation of parasites, who feed on the carcass of that catastrophic debacle (which was most recently described by Hitchens thus):

I was among those who thought and believed and argued that this example [of the no-fly zone that enabled Kurdistan to blossom into a success story] could, and should, be extended to the rest of [Iraq]; the cause became a consuming thing in my life. To describe the resulting shambles as a disappointment or a failure or even a defeat would be the weakest statement I could possibly make: it feels more like a sick, choking nightmare of betrayal from which there can be no awakening.

The world is upside down. Everyone is searching for a historical template, a frame, a prism through which to view and thus easily explain the tumult and chaos and suggest a way forward. No one has a clue.
——–

*** see this post about the possibility of an al Qaeda angle in the Johnston kidnapping story.

On the 50th 59th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel, one Israeli has some novel advice for the Palestinians: Let them beat their Qassams into computers.

Knesset Speaker and Acting President Dalia Itzik called Thursday on Israel’s enemies to abandon the path of violence and seek the well being of their own societies.“Our advice to you is replace your Katyushas and Qassams with computers and loving education, the smile of a boy that has a future, and neighborliness,” Itzik said. …

“We hear the sharpening of swords and voices of war from near and afar. In distant Iran, in nearby Syria, in the Palestinian Authority at out doorstep, there still reside fiery zealots of hate-ridden leaders that believe in their ability to harm the state of Israel,” Itzik said in her speech, adding that “the citizens of Iran, Syria and the Palestinian Authority should think twice about why they are so thirsty for battles and blood.“Isn’t the blood that you have already spilled enough?” she asked.

Good question. I’m sure it won’t be welcome from the Zionist enemy.

Oh well.

This one tells the story (in the background, which is also where the eye falls first upon seeing this carefully composed photograph) of once-upon-a-time best friends Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat.

And it seems to have helped Mahmoud, because in a recent poll, Mahmoud (Fatah) Abbas was beating his new best friend Ismail (Hamas) Haniyeh by 9%, according to the AP.

The poll, conducted by the Ramallah-based independent polling company Neareast Consulting, was conducted by telephone among 759 Palestinians and quoted a margin of error of 3.56 percentage points.

“People have probably felt that (Abbas) did more to bring this unity government together than others,” said Jamil Rabah, who heads the polling firm.

Rabah said most Palestinians saw the unity deal as primarily a tool to put internal Palestinian affairs in order, with only 4 percent of respondents saying that making peace with Israel was a priority. The majority saw that ending chaos and infighting between Palestinians as the top priority of the new government.

This is drilling down into obscure details for most of my readers, but those of you who have been following along may remember that Hamas rose to power—and belligerently stated at every opportunity—on the platform of resistance (see this post for more details).

Here’s what one Hamas official told Spiegel magazine in the June 2006:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Now Hamas is no longer only a terrorist group or a resistance group, but also a governing party. Do you think — given all the chaos since the election success — that Hamas has carried out this transformation successfully?

Abu Marzook: Our task was not to change. The Palestinian people live under occupation, so we are still a resistance movement. The people elected us because they did not get the feeling that all the negotiations by Fatah had brought them closer to having their own state. We respect their choice, but we did not seek to be in the government.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: But now that Hamas is in the government: Should it not handle its conflicts with negotiations rather than attacks?

Abu Marzook: Of course. On the other hand, we are not a government like any other independent state. We are a government under occupation. And the task of such a government is to carry out resistance, in every possible way. I think that every single Palestinian should resist, and should keep it up until there is an independent Palestinian state. [e.a.]

There is every reason to believe that the Palestinian people are more interested in the improvement in the conditions of their daily lives than in heroic resistance against Israel—except when they’re indoctrinated to believe that the only cause of all of their problems is the dirty Jews next door (along with the dirty Jews who rule the world in order to make everyone’s life miserable).

Let’s wait and see what happens. It’s all we can do. (Except for Dr. Rice, that is—and who knows what the hell her game is. It is almost certain that she herself has no clue.)

Rice is set to leave for the Middle East on Friday and will see both Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert as well as Abbas to try and get both sides to move closer to reviving stagnant peace initiatives.

 

She conceded the new Palestinian unity government, which was sworn in last weekend, “has provided something of a challenge.” But Rice said it was important for the United States to be stay engaged.

 

She reiterated a new U.S. policy that the administration would have contacts with members of the new government committed to recognizing Israel, agreeing to past Israeli-Palestinian accords and who renounced violence.

And how will this be determined? Do they pass muster if they’re “cosmopolitan” (see this post, which links to a piece in the NYT that refers to “cosmopolitan figures with whom the West is used to dealing.)
 

(updated with a link, and clarified)

The fate of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza nine days ago, is still unknown. Tension is beginning to mount, though, judging by the headlines on Google News:

Hunt continues for BBC reporter
BBC News, UK - 2 hours ago
Efforts are continuing to locate the BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston, who disappeared more than a week ago and is presumed to have been kidnapped. …
PJS to Launch 2 Hours Strike Protesting Johnston’s Abduction WAFA - Palestine News Agency
Britain Working Feverishly To Locate BBC Reporter In Gaza All Headline News
Government ‘using every channel’ to free newsman Scotsman
BBC News - Swissinfo
all 124 news articles »

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Palestinian kidnappers link BBC correspondent …
DEBKA file, Israel - 3 hours ago
Ten days ago, BBC correspondent Alan Johnston was seized by armed men in Gaza (March

For what it’s worth—and I think it would be a mistake to discount it entirely; see this post, where I noted that the NYT and Debka overlap somewhat in their reporting—Debka’s report is grimly sensational [e.a.]:

Our counter-terror sources disclose that Montaz Durmush, leader of the Army of Islam (Al Qaeda-Palestine), which is holding both hostages, is using the British journalist as a tool to drive up the price demanded of Israel for Shalit’s freedom. …

A team of 20 British agents, most of them from the MI6 secret service, is working in Gaza to make contact with the abductors, or just to obtain a sign of life from Johnston – so far without success. It is beginning to dawn on the group that the BBC reporter’s seizure was not just another short-lived kidnapping of a Westerner like the ones plaguing Gaza and the West Bank in recent months, but a drawn-out affair with no knowing how it will turn out. …

British and Israeli intelligence circles believe both hostages are caught up in factional rivalries in Gaza over who will dominate the Palestinian unity government. Neither Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas nor prime minister Ismail Haniyeh was in any position to deliver on their promises to work for Shalit’s early release.

As I said: no news is grim news.

Judging from the headlines on Google News as of 7 p.m., concern is mounting for BBC correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza eight days ago and still unaccounted for.

I’m still waiting to hear from moralizing big-mouth American pundits like Nicholas Kristof about Johnston, their professional colleague—missing without a trace, and without anyone even writing about him, for eight days.

PJS to Launch 2 Hours Strike Protesting Johnston’s Abduction
WAFA - Palestine News Agency, Palestinian Territories - 11 hours ago
… a strike for two hours on Wednesday protesting the kidnapping of the of the BBC reporter, Alan Johnston, by unidentified militias in Gaza week ago. …
UK presses Abbas on BBC reporter BBC News
Palestinian journalists strike over kidnapping Swissinfo
BBC correspondent Alan Johnston is ‘OK’ Gulf News
The Herald - BBC News
all 122 news articles »

Britain ‘using every channel France24, France - 4 hours ago Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Tuesday that Britain was using every channel it can to secure the release of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, …

Headlines for March 20, 2007 Democracy Now, NY - 9 hours ago In the Occupied Territories, Palestinian journalists are staging a work strike today to protest the kidnapping of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston. …

Alan Johnston on the front line BBC News, UK - Mar 17, 2007 Palestinian security services are still searching for the BBC correspondent Alan Johnston who was kidnapped on Monday by unidentified gunmen in Gaza. …

Beckett says she raised BBC abduction with Abbas Jurnalo, Germany - 6 hours ago The British government is using “every channel and opportunity” to secure the release of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston believed to have been kidnapped in …

The Palestinians get a unity government and the BBC gets word that its correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped in Gaza a week ago today, is “okay.” No word on his whereabouts, though. The representatives of the Beeb are, understandably, still nervous:

Middle East Bureau Editor Simon Wilson, in the company’s first news conference since the abduction, said the BBC had no direct contact with the kidnappers, and didn’t know what the abductors’ motives were.

“We are receiving assurances that people believe he is okay,” Wilson said. “We are grateful for those assurances, but we are disappointed that we still don’t have any firm knowledge of his whereabouts seven days after he was kidnapped.

The story is inching its way into the news cycle. ETP’s Rachel Sklar and CBS’s Public Eye both pick up the story that was in today’s Guardian.

Meanwhile, here are the headlines at Google News as of 4 p.m.

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston is ‘OK’
Gulf News, United Arab Emirates - 7 hours ago
Gaza City: The British Broadcasting Corporation said Monday it has received assurances that correspondent Alan Johnston, kidnapped in the Gaza Strip a week …
Pressure grows to free Johnston Guardian Unlimited
Johnston’s father appeals for his release Gulf News
Johnston, ‘almost a Gazan’ Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
CNN International - Ynetnews
all 86 news articles »

Gaza: BBC Reporter Now Missing a Week in Gaza
Carib Journal - 7 minutes ago
Alan Johnston, 44, was abducted at gunpoint by masked men last Monday. No ransom demand has been made and no one has claimed responsibility for the …

Gaza: Gunmen ambush UN convoy in bid to abduct agency chief
SomaliNet - 39 minutes ago
… Relief and Works Agency Gaza field office, was travelling came five days after the kidnap at gunpoint of the BBC correspondent in Gaza, Alan Johnston. …
Irish UN official escapes kidnap attempt in Gaza Unison.ie (subscription)