Implications of Swedish Newspaper's Blood-Libel: The New Anti-Semitism: the State of Israel as the "Jew" of the World

 Take Them to Court - Yossi Klein Halevi

The crucial point about the accusation, raised by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet, that Israeli soldiers murdered Palestinians for their body parts, is that the current discourse in Europe on the Middle East conflict allows the most outrageous lies about Israel to appear credible. No real proof is required to accuse the Jewish state of crimes that seem to be dredged from Europe's oldest and darkest fantasies about the Jews. Indeed, just as it was once possible, not so long ago, to attribute the most vile traits to Jews, so it is now to the Jewish state.

Most of all, Israel needs to use this affair to challenge the general climate of demonization in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe, and expose the conceptual links between classical anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  Accusations like the Swedish blood libel aren't just a threat to Israel's good name, but could become a physical threat to Jews everywhere, by encouraging the fantasies of genocidal jihadists. Terrorists could take "revenge" for the kind of Israeli "crimes" raised by Aftonbladet. In the current atomsphere, where the most inconceivable conspiracy theories involving Jews are readily believed by millions in the Muslim world, Aftonbladet's recklessness is potentially an incitement to murder. 

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Palestinian Cinema: A Critical Look thru the Lens of "Cineaste": "America's Leading Magazine on the Art and Politics of the Cinema"

Cineaste is a thoughtful American journal on "the art and politics of cinema."
It's last issue featured two articles on Palestinian cinema as well as an editorial, "Cinema on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict."
I responded (below), but unfortunately, the editors voted to pass on the piece, which did not conform to their format or content requirement for articles. Plus, their copy deadline had long-passed--so it would have been a stretch.
--In the interest of giving this piece an audience, I've posted on my blog. I've tried to offer a balanced look at the subject, expressing my enthusiasm for Palestinian cinema, while at the same time challenging misrepresentations of Israeli society, culture, politics & history.
david brumer

Cineaste's last issue featuring Palestinian cinema both heartened and disappointed. It heartened because film is a powerful tool in a nascent people's national expression; it disappointed because a lack of scrutiny of film’s capacity to stage, distort, and lie.

Nana Asfour's "Reclaiming Palestine, One Film at a Time" is a thoughtful and mostly objective history of Palestinian cinema. Ms. Asfour allows for the self-critical voices of Palestinian filmmakers like Hany Abu-Assad and Michel Khleifi, who wants “cinema to reflect the complexities of Palestinian life." Khleiffi notes that "our weakness ....derives from Arab society's archaic structure: tribalism, patriarchy, religion and community life." He is willing to illustrate "Palestinian society's own oppressiveness" in films like "Wedding in Galilee" and even in earlier works like "Canticle of the Stones," where he "employed a female character, whose attempts at emancipation are smothered by family and community, to highlight the dysfunctional aspects of Palestinian society."
"Paradise Now" by Mr. Abu-Assad shows that Palestinian film has come a long way towards demonstrating a mature willingness to confront one’s own demons, instead of blaming all ills on the "occupation".

Less heartening was Cineaste's editorial, and Rebecca Romani's fatally biased piece, "The Hazards of Occupation." Cineaste’s editorial falls prey to misplaced presumptions, prejudices and in some instances, falsifications of the historical record. The section on the "New Historians" of Israel is a prime example. At least two of the five historians listed, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe are considered by many to be disgruntled ex-patriots, whose credibility, not to mention scholarship, is seriously questioned. A third, Benny Morris, the supposed father of the "new historians," has had a major sea-change in his world view since the eruption of what he would now refer to not as the Second Intifada, but as the Palestinian Terror War unleashed upon Israel's civilian population. He has written extensively about the conflict over the past decade, and his newest book, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, shows just how much his perspective has shifted. Morris makes it clear that the conflict is not over borders: “Put simply, the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement, from inception, and ever since, has consistently regarded Palestine as innately, completely, inalienably, and legitimately ‘Arab’ and Muslim and has aspired to establish in it a sovereign state under its rule covering all of the country’s territory.” (In case this be misconstrued, “Palestine” means all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, including Israel). Morris gloomily concludes that the current prospects for a two-state solution are bleak “because the Palestinians, in the deepest fibers of their being, oppose such an outcome.” Perhaps this should be dubbed the "post" post-Zionist mentality alluded to in your editorial.

Along with the chastened Benny Morris, a cursory look at such historians like Michael Oren or Efraim Karsh would paint a very different, and I would aver, much more realistic picture of the conflict. And the same would apply to the choice of documentaries. For every "Checkpoint" and "Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land" there is another perspective, one that allows for the contextualization of the conflict, giving added dimensions and a fleshed out humanity to the Israelis caught in a dysfunctional dance with a co-dependant partner who just can't quite let go. Films like "Decryptage" (France, 2004; Jacques Tarnero and Philippe Bensoussan), "To Die in Jerusalem" (Israel/US; 2007, Hilla Medalia), or Under Fire: Personal Stories from the Scorched Summer of 2006 (Israel, 2009; Avi Naiman) allow audiences to see a more nuanced look, from different sides of the divide.

Rebecca Romani gives her bias away in the first column of the first page of her diatribe against Israel and Israelis, citing the supposed "confessions" of Israeli soldiers to the murder of Palestinian civilians during last winter's Gaza war, which Romani refers to only as an "invasion" as if 8 years of unrelenting Kassam rocket attacks (over six thousand) into Israeli civilian population centers were of no consequence. Of course, these "confessions of murder" were nothing of the kind; rather, they were private conversations, the conscientious deliberations of veterans who had to shoot to kill as part of an unwanted war. They were not confessing murder but rather heartsickness. The reports were prematurely seized upon by a media (including Israel's) only too eager to find Israel guilty of war crimes in "Operation Cast Lead."

Romani then refers to notorious Israel-bashers of the first order to make her case. Tanya Reinhart, a serial distorter of the record is her first witness, followed in short order by shamelessly biased journalists Robert Fisk and Alisa Solomon, topped by the grand-daddy of Israel demonizers, Noam Chomsky. Romani's thesis is by now a tired trope, trotted out with great fanfare by Walt & Mearsheimer, who claim in The Israel Lobby and U.S Foreign Policy that Americans remain largely ignorant of what their government is doing in their name on behalf of “evil” Israel, because of a muzzled press. Right. A press so muzzled that Walt & Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter, and legions of other Israel bashers can't get from one studio to the next quickly enough to promote their latest bestseller on the subject. Romani apparently can’t be bothered by the thorough drubbing the bashers’ arguments have taken.
That Israel is a self-reflective and thoughtful democracy struggling with its own identity is evident from its cinema. The last two years alone produced two Oscar nominations for best foreign film. Both Israeli entries dealt with the 1st Lebanon War, "Beaufort" and "Waltz with Bashir." Israel is far from perfect, but the romanticized version of Palestinians who can do no wrong and Israelis who can do no right is a disservice to those on both sides who work indefatigably towards reconciliation and honest self-examination.

Cinema can be a powerful tool to help Palestinians find meaningful expressions of their national longings and aspirations. It should not be co-opted for propaganda purposes, and thoughtful journals like Cineaste should be promoting nuanced coverage, not one-dimensional pieces like Romani’s with its simplistic rendering of a complex human drama.
David Brumer
David is co-chair of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival
He is also a geriatric social worker and psychotherapist

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6 Ways Obama can Regain Israeli Trust: YK Halevi & Aluf Benn on Why Obama Needs to Reach out to Israelis

How to mend the unnecessary--and counterproductive--rift between the Obama administration and Israel.
Israelis welcomed Barack Obama when he visited here in July 2008 and many responded enthusiastically to his election. But Israelis sense that Obama has placed the onus for restarting negotiations on Israel. Worse, he is perceived as showing weakness toward the world's bullies while acting resolutely only toward Israel. Many Israelis--and not only on the right--suspect that Obama actually wants a showdown with Jerusalem to bolster his standing in the Muslim world. If those perceptions aren't countered, the Israeli public will reject Obama's peace initiatives.--YK Halevi

Why Obama needs to reach out to Israelis
Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama's stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle - not guilt over the Holocaust - brought Jews a homeland.--Aluf Benn


Family Feud
Six ways that Obama can regain Israeli trust.
Yossi Klein Halevi , The New Republic : Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Jerusalem, Israel

Are we in the early stages of an American-Israeli crisis? Or are the growing and public disagreements between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government over settlements and Jerusalem merely arguments "within the family," as President Obama insisted in his recent meeting with American Jewish leaders?
According to one poll, only six percent of Israelis consider Obama a friend. That perception of hostility is new. Israelis welcomed Barack Obama when he visited here in July 2008 and many responded enthusiastically to his election. But Israelis sense that Obama has placed the onus for restarting negotiations on Israel. Worse, he is perceived as showing weakness toward the world's bullies while acting resolutely only toward Israel. Many Israelis--and not only on the right--suspect that Obama actually wants a showdown with Jerusalem to bolster his standing in the Muslim world. If those perceptions aren't countered, the Israeli public will reject Obama's peace initiatives.
On the assumption that the pessimists among us are wrong and the Obama administration isn't seeking a pretext to create a crisis in American-Israeli relations, here are some suggestions for Washington about how to reassure increasingly anxious Israelis.

1. Make clear that renewing the peace process requires simultaneous Israeli and Arab concessions.
The impression conveyed by the administration's relentless public focus on the settlements is that a settlement freeze is the sole prerequisite toward jump-starting peace talks. After the disastrous consequences of the Oslo process (which led to more than five years of suicide bombings in Israeli cities) and of the withdrawal from Gaza (which led to three years of rocket attacks on Israeli towns near the Gaza border), the Israeli public is in no mood for unilateral concessions.
The administration insists that its intentions have been misunderstood, that it expects the Arab world to offer gestures of normalization to Israel. But unlike its hectoring tone toward Israel, there has been little public rebuke directed toward Arab leaders. True, Secretary of State Clinton recently did note that America expects a more forthcoming Arab attitude toward Israel. But that statement has hardly resonated, and the media focus remains on the settlements as the main obstacle to renewing the peace process.

2. Reaffirm the Israeli status of the settlement blocs in a future agreement.
In weighing the future of the settlements, Israelis will be looking not only for tangible signs of Arab goodwill but also of American goodwill--specifically, a reiteration of the Bush administration's endorsement of Israeli sovereignty over the major settlement blocs as part of a peace agreement. In return, a future Palestinian state would receive compensatory territory from within Israel proper.
The administration is right to insist that the current Israeli government must be bound by the commitments of previous Israeli governments (a position that Prime Minister Netanyahu has in fact upheld). But that same principle should also apply to Washington. Obama should not dismiss previous administration promises to Israel--even those made by George W. Bush.

3. Actively confront Palestinian demonization of Israel.
In his Cairo speech, Obama called for an end to Palestinian incitement against Israel. A systematic culture of denial--denying any historical legitimacy to the Jewish presence in the land of Israel--is being nurtured not only by Hamas but by the Palestinian Authority. In recent months, for example, the Fatah media has promoted a campaign denying the historical attachments of Jews to Jerusalem.
Challenging that campaign of lies would be a good way for the administation to begin proving its seriousness on incitement. Negating any Jewish rights to Jerusalem reinforces the very rejectionism among Palestinians that led to the collapse of the Oslo proces--surely no less a threat to peace than building 20 apartments in East Jerusalem.


4. Affirm Israel's historical legitimacy to the Muslim world.
In his Cairo speech, Obama rightly noted that the key obstacle on the Arab side toward making peace is the ongoing refusal to accept Israel's right to exist. Crucially, he has made clear that he intends to carry the issue of Israel's legitimacy into his dialogue with the Muslim world. This presents an unprecedented opportunity for Muslims to hear Israel's case. So far, though, the president has failed to make it. By referring only to the Holocaust, and ignoring the historical Jewish attachment to the land of Israel, the president has inadvertently reinforced Muslim misconceptions regarding Jewish indigenousness. The Holocaust helps explain why Israel fights, not why Israel exists. It doesn't explain why thousands of Ethiopian Jews walked across jungle and desert to reach Zion; nor for that matter why some Jews leave New York and Paris to raise families in a Middle Eastern war zone.

5. Make clear that the impending nuclearization of Iran, and not the Palestinian problem, is the region's most urgent crisis.
Continuing to publicly reprimand Israel over settlement building while only reluctantly and belatedly criticizing the Iranian regime for suppressing dissent has further alienated Israelis from the Obama adminstration. In one recent cartoon in the daily Maariv, Obama is depicted as a waiter serving Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Obama offers him two plates: On one is a carrot, and on the other--a carrot.
Israelis need to know that there is no substantive difference between Obama and Netanyahu on the need to prevent an Iranian bomb at all costs--or to put it more bluntly, that there is as much urgency over a nuclear Iran in Washington as there is in Riyadh and Paris.

6. Don't treat the Netanyahu government as a pariah.
For weeks Israelis have been reading in their newspapers about a near-total breakdown in trust between Washington and Jerusalem. For his part, Netanyahu has repeatedly praised Obama's friendship for Israel, and refused to attack his Iran policy. During his meeting with Jewish leaders, Obama reaffirmed his friendship for Israel but seems to have mentioned no words of friendship for Israel's prime minister. Israelis need to hear some words of warmth from the White House toward their elected leader. That's what one expects from friends, to say nothing of family.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a contributing editor of The New Republic and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Why Won't Obama Talk to Israel? - Aluf Benn (New York Times)
President Obama has spoken to Arabs, Muslims, Iranians, Western Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Russians and Africans, but he hasn't bothered to speak directly to Israelis. All they see is American pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu to freeze settlements, a request that's been interpreted in Israel as political arm-twisting meant to please the Arab street at Israel's expense
This policy of ignoring Israel carries a price. Though Mr. Obama has succeeded in prodding Mr. Netanyahu to accept the idea of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, he has failed to induce Israel to impose a freeze on settlements. In fact, he has failed even to stir debate about the merits of one: no Israeli political figure has stood up to Mr. Netanyahu and begged him to support Mr. Obama; not even the Israeli left has adopted Mr. Obama as its icon.
Mr. Obama's quest for diplomacy has appeared to Israelis as dangerous American naivete. The president offered a hand to the Iranians, and got nothing, merely giving them more time to advance their nuclear program. And he failed to move Arab governments to take steps to normalize relations with Israel.
Mr. Obama seems to have confused American Jews with Israelis. We are close emotionally and politically, but we are different. We speak Hebrew and not English, we live in the Middle East and have separate historical narratives. Mr. Obama's stop at Buchenwald and his strong rejection of Holocaust denial, immediately after his Cairo speech, appealed to American Jews but fell flat in Israel. Here we are taught that Zionist determination and struggle - not guilt over the Holocaust - brought Jews a homeland.
In the past decade, repeated peace negotiations and diplomatic statements have indicated that the "settlement blocs" will remain in Israeli hands under any two-state solution. Why, then, insist on a total freeze everywhere? And why deny with such force the existence of previous understandings over limited settlement construction? There is simply too much evidence proving that such an understanding existed. To Israelis, the claim undermined Mr. Obama's credibility.

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Ehud Ya'ari: Regime Change in Iran: The Real Message Behind the Disputed Election

Ehud Ya'ari, one of Israel's most astute observers of the Middle East, offers an anaylsis of recent events in Iran that challenges some prevailing notions of Iran's power structure.
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seattle

At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.

Here's the real message behind Iran's disputed election
Ehud Ya'ari July 7, 2009 -

WHAT we have witnessed in Iran in recent weeks is a military coup conducted through the ballot boxes. Policymakers and analysts have been talking for a long time about the possibilities and prospects of a change of regime in Iran. Well, I have news for everybody — change of regime in Iran has taken place.

The re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a second term as Iran's President represents the emergence of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corp as a military dictatorship — pushing aside the clerics and mullahs. It's a new Iran in many ways. It's an Iran in which the Supreme Leader, despite what you will read in most of the Western press, is not the real victor in the election. He manipulated the elections in such a way as to have Ahmadinejad re-elected. Now, however, the Supreme Leader works for Ahmadinejad, rather than the other way around.

It's a new Iran because it's no longer the Islamic Revolution regime as we have known it since Khomeini took over in 1979. Ahmadinejad's Government is already 60 per cent Revolutionary Guard, and the Iranian parliament is 40 to 50 per cent ex-Revolutionary Guard officers. This election sees the takeover by this group and their allies completed.
Everybody has heard Ahmadinejad's statements — his regime's very clear views on eliminating Israel and the very aggressive and confrontational foreign policy.
The three other candidates, each in a different manner, objected to the way Ahmadinejad ran Iran's nuclear program, hinting very strongly that they did not necessarily see an advantage in the short-term acquisition by Iran of nuclear weapons.
One of them suggested they negotiate with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and with Germany, and offer guarantees that the country would not be "going the military way".
This very fierce debate had never been heard in Iran before. But the debate is one point and the declared result of the election is something else — which is that two-thirds of Iranian voters are said to have supported Ahmadinejad. Those other voices — from within the ruling regime — will now be marginalised.
We have a few years in which to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear arms. The reason is Iran will never stage a nuclear "breakout" from the non-proliferation regime for a bomb or two. If Teheran goes for a breakout, it will only do so for an arsenal — it doesn't make sense otherwise.
The efforts are not just focused on uranium enrichment. They are building a heavy-water reactor in Arak for plutonium. But they are not yet at the point where they have enough material for an arsenal — at which time a political decision will be made about whether to build nuclear weapons or not. The Arab states have made it clear that if Iran has a bomb, they will follow.
Egypt has reignited its nuclear program for peaceful purposes, such as medical isotopes. Saudi Arabia will acquire nuclear weapons from the Pakistanis. It has a long-term understanding with Islamabad regarding this.
I think we in the Middle East are sentenced to a long period of ambiguity in which it's quite unclear what Iran's nuclear status is.
I believe that this ambiguity is the preferred policy of the Iranians at this point — playing their own game of ambiguity while moving as fast as they can to develop nuclear technologies in both enriched uranium and plutonium.
They want as soon as possible to be as close to the nuclear threshold as Japan currently is.
In the Middle East, Iran and its regional and nuclear ambitions define the only political and diplomatic game in town — overshadowing all other issues. It's the only game for the Arab states as much as for the Israelis.
At the moment, US President Barack Obama is not going to get very far in his dialogue with the Iranians. But I believe that, down the road, there will be the possibility of some understandings between the US, the Europeans and the Iranians. And it is the Arab states, not the Israelis, who are telling Obama to please not cut a deal with Iran behind their backs or at their expense.
Ehud Ya'ari is the Middle East commentator for Israel's Channel 2 Television and the author of eight books on Middle Eastern affairs.

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Deafening Silence: Where are all the Israel Critics when it comes to Iran? Two Veteran Israeli Journalists Weigh In

Where is the outcry over the gross injustices, brutality and squashing of freedoms in Iran? Where are the demonstrations? The solidarity with the victims? Ben Caspit and Ben-Dror Yemini draw some inescapable conclusions below
david brumer
seattle



העימותים האלימים באיראן: למה העולם שותק?

All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world -- could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computers? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?

This appeared in Hebrew in Ma'ariv. This translation (in full) has been circulating:
From the blog, Solomonia

Tell us, where is everyone? Where did all the people who demonstrated against Israel's brutality in Operation Cast Lead, in the Second Lebanon War, in Operation Defensive Shield, or even in The Hague, when we were dragged there unwillingly after daring to build a separation barrier between us and the suicide bombers, disappear to? We see demonstrations here and there, but these are mainly Iranian exiles. Europe, in principle, is peaceful and calm. So is the United States. Here and there a few dozens, here and there a few hundreds. Have they evaporated because it is Tehran and not here?

All the peace-loving and justice-loving Europeans, British professors in search of freedom and equality, the friends filling the newspapers, magazines and various academic journals with various demands for boycotting Israel, defaming Zionism and blaming us and it for all the ills and woes of the world -- could it be that they have taken a long summer vacation? Now of all times, when the Basij hooligans have begun to slaughter innocent civilians in the city squares of Tehran? Aren't they connected to the Internet? Don't they have YouTube? Has a terrible virus struck down their computers? Have their justice glands been removed in a complicated surgical procedure (to be re-implanted successfully for the next confrontation in Gaza)? How can it be that when a Jew kills a Muslim, the entire world boils, and when extremist Islam slaughters its citizens, whose sole sin is the aspiration to freedom, the world is silent?

Imagine that this were not happening now in Tehran, but rather here. Let's say in Nablus. Spontaneous demonstrations of Palestinians turning into an ongoing bloodbath. Border Policemen armed with knives, on motorcycles, butchering demonstrators. A young woman downed by a sniper in midday, dying before the cameras. Actually, why imagine? We can just recall what happened with the child Mohammed a-Dura. How the affair (which was very harsh, admittedly) swept the world from one end to another. The fact that a later independent investigative report raised tough questions as to the identity of the weapon from which a-Dura was shot, did not make a difference to anyone. The Zionists were to blame, and that was that.
And where are the world's leaders? Where is the wondrous rhetorical ability of Barack Obama? Where has his sublime vocabulary gone? Where is the desire, that is supposed to be built into all American presidents, to defend and act on behalf of freedom seekers around the globe? What is this stammering?

A source who is connected to the Iranian and security situation, said yesterday that if Obama had shown on the Iranian matter a quarter of the determination with which he assaulted the settlements in the territories, everything would have looked different. "The demonstrators in Iran are desperate for help," said the man, who served in very senior positions for many years, "they need to know that they have backing, that there is an entire world that supports them, but instead they see indifference. And this is happening at such a critical stage of this battle for the soul of Iran and the freedom of the Iranian people. It's sad."
Or the European Union, for example. The organization that speaks of justice and peace all year round. Why should its leaders not declare clearly that the world wants to see a democratic and free Iran, and support it unreservedly? Could it be that the tongue of too many Europeans is still connected to dark places? The pathetic excuse that such support would give Khamenei and Ahmadinejad an excuse to call the demonstrators "Western agents," does not hold water. They call them "Western agents" in any case, so what difference does it make?
To think that just six months ago, when Europe was flooded with demonstrations against Israel, leftists and Islamists raised pictures of Nasrallah, the protégé of the ayatollah regime. The fact that this was a benighted regime did not trouble them. This is madness, but it is sinking in and influencing the weary West. If there is a truly free world here, let it appear immediately! And impose sanctions, for example, on those who slaughter the members of their own people. Just as it imposed them on North Korea, or on the military regime in Burma. It is only a question of will, not of ability.
Apparently, something happens to the global adherence to justice and equality, when it comes to Iran. The oppression is overt and known. The Internet era broadcasts everything live, and it is all for the better. Hooligans acting on behalf of the regime shoot and stab masses of demonstrators, who cry out for freedom.
Is anything more needed? Apparently it is. Because it is to no avail. The West remains indifferent. Obama is polite. Why shouldn't he be, after all, he aspires to a dialogue with the ayatollahs. And that is very fine and good, the problem is that at this stage there is no dialogue, but there is death and murder on the streets. At this stage, one must forget the rules of etiquette for a moment. The voices being heard from Obama elicit concern that we are actually dealing with a new version of Chamberlain. Being conciliatory is a positive trait, particularly when it follows the clumsy bellicosity of George Bush, but when conciliation becomes blindness,we have a problem.
The courageous voice of Angela Merkel, who issued yesterday a firm statement of support for the Iranian people and its right to freedom, is in the meantime a lone voice in the Western wilderness. It is only a shame that she has not announced an economic boycott, in light of the fact that this is the European country that is most invested in building infrastructure in Iran. She was joined by British Foreign Secretary Miliband. It is little, it is late, it is not enough. Millions of freedom seekers have taken to the streets in Iran, and the West is straddling the fence, one leg here, the other leg there.
There is a different Islam. This is already clear today. Even in Iran. There are millions of Muslims who support freedom, human rights, equality for women. These millions loathe Khamenei, Chavez and Nasrallah too. But part of the global left wing prefers the ayatollah regime over them. The main thing is for them to raise flags against Israel and America. The question is why the democrats, the liberals, and Obama, Blair and Sarkozy, are continuing to sit on the fence. This is not a fence of separation, it is a fence of shame.

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Ari Shavit (and Bibi) get it exactly right: A Demilitarized Palestinian State next to The Jewish State of Israel

Ari Shavit sheds light on the real significance of Bibi's speech. You'd never know it, though, if you listened to NPR this morning: Netanyahu Puts Restrictions On A Palestinian State
Of course, Bibi was speaking to two main constituencies: the Israeli mainstream and President Obama. As Shavit points out, he took a gamble with his own coalition, but it was the courageous, and correct thing to do. Now the ball is back squarely in the Palestinians', and Arab world's court.
david brumer

The Unifier
Ari Shavit
Benjamin Netanyahu placed the spotlight squarely on one irreplaceable phrase: a demilitarized Palestinian state next to a Jewish State of Israel. He put on the table a clear, realistic and precise diplomatic formula that reflects the worldview of the Israeli majority. The root of the conflict is the Palestinians' refusal to recognize Jewish history, Jewish sovereignty and the Jewish people's right to a state in the Land of Israel.
Netanyahu's new move is dangerous. If he loses the right without gaining the left and Barack Obama, it could destroy him. But that is precisely why the Bar-Ilan speech was a courageous one. Netanyahu is well aware of the dangers ahead. Yet at the decisive moment, several days ago, he told his worried aides that he would do the right thing, even if it brought about his downfall. In that moment, he proved that he is not a politician but a statesman. He proved that he has matured. At the end of a long and painful labor, he has given birth to his internal truth.

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A Sane, Moderate Voice on Israel's proposed "loyalty legislation": Facing the real challenges ahead

Looking further into the future, we must not be naïve about the magnitude of the challenge: Ideas that deny the legitimacy of the Zionist project and the right of Jews to self-determination have indeed taken hold among many—often among the young intellectual elite—Israeli Arabs, or as they call themselves, the “1948 Palestinians.” The worry about their loyalty is not baseless. The point is, however, that the sledgehammer of legislation is probably the wrong tool here. A much more subtle, nuanced, and complex strategy is needed, one which would include the encouragement of moderate voices (and, following Obama, a clear message that we do not see Islam per se as an enemy, nor do we seek to deny Israeli citizens their rights) side by side with stern measures against those, such as the Hamas sympathizers in the “Northern wing” (the more extremist branch) of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who cross the threshold from expressions of collective identity and memory to active rejection of the authority of the state. --eran lerman

"Loyalty Legislation" and Israel's Arab Minority
Dr. Eran Lerman, Director, AJC's Israel/Middle East Office
Within the last few days, three different members of Knesset put forward proposed bills dealing—in effect—with the interrelated questions of loyalty and legitimacy: Are Israel’s Arab citizens “loyal,” and if not, can their political role be diminished? Two of the movers behind these bills belong to Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu Party, another to the Jewish Home Party, a reconstituted version of the National Religious Party; both parties are members of the governing coalition and their ideas seem to resonate with some within Likud and many outside it. They advocate:
Swearing an oath of loyalty—a pledge of allegiance—as a prerequisite for citizenship, and refusal to do so as reason enough to deny citizenship to those who already hold it. Military service would be another key criterion. Although the latter issue would apply to Israel’s sizable population of ultra-Orthodox Jews who find ways to avoid the draft, the main thrust of the loyalty law is clearly aimed at the Arab minority.
Making acts of disloyalty, such as disparaging national symbols, punishable—a position reminiscent of the U.S. debate over flag burning;
Prohibiting the practice of mourning Israel’s independence (which almost immediately came to be known as the “Nakba Law,” after the word—meaning a catastrophe, in Arabic—used by Palestinians to describe, from their point of view, what befell them in 1948).
Once again, Arabs are not the only ones in Israel for whom the “Zionist” Independence Day is a bitter moment; similar displays are common among radical Haredi groups, such as Neturei Karta. And for most Arabs, the moment of grief is marked on “Nakba Day,” May 15 on the Gregorian calendar, and not by the Hebrew date. It is clear, however, that this is another attempt to disqualify the legitimacy of Israeli Arabs. As it happens, pieces of legislation moved by members of the coalition require prior approval by the Cabinet Committee on Legislation; and there these particular initiatives were brought to a halt, for the time being, amid great public debate. Advocates argued that the U.S. administers a pledge (yes, but only to new citizens); denigrators drew dark parallels with Europe in the twenties. Former Meretz leader Yossi Beilin publicly threatened to challenge the loyalty tests and even go to jail, if need be (a somewhat grandiose posture, since no such sentences are envisioned—“just” the denial of the right to vote). Labor Party activists urged their leader, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, to take a stand, even though in other respects, such as commitment to the Road Map and ultimately to the two-state solution, he has found common ground with Foreign Minister Lieberman.
At the end of the day, the resistance is set to grow; Lieberman will be able to tell his voters that he did his best—but the laws are unlikely to pass. This will not make the dual problems go away, however. They are bound to linger even if the present bout of “loyalty legislation” dissipates. On the one hand, there are real and serious questions that arise as to the basic loyalty of Israeli Arabs—or rather, of their political leaders, who often invest most of their efforts in supporting the cause of Hezbollah or Hamas rather than in obtaining better terms for their fellow citizens. This pattern has done much, in recent years, to undermine the position of Israeli liberal voices. On the other hand, there is an alarming aspect to the very fact that some Israeli political figures are willing to play for popular sentiment and, in the process, seem to lose sight of basic international—and Jewish—norms of civic conduct.

The challenges are real, but the political reactions on both sides are, to a certain extent, designed to exacerbate the conflict. Can useful lessons be learned, over time? Possibly—if Israeli Arab politicians, beyond their shrill response (“fascists!” “racists!”) to the proposed bills, do give a thought to the deeper causes that made such initiatives popular among many Israeli Jews; and if politicians on the Jewish political right, who claim to speak for the Jewish people, stop and ponder that by taking such a stance against a minority, they undercut the very legitimacy of Jews as a minority group elsewhere. Sadly, the growing insularity of Israelis, and their blindness toward the existential condition of the other half of the Jewish people, do play a role in creating the present crisis.
Looking further into the future, we must not be naïve about the magnitude of the challenge: Ideas that deny the legitimacy of the Zionist project and the right of Jews to self-determination have indeed taken hold among many—often among the young intellectual elite—Israeli Arabs, or as they call themselves, the “1948 Palestinians.” The worry about their loyalty is not baseless. The point is, however, that the sledgehammer of legislation is probably the wrong tool here. A much more subtle, nuanced, and complex strategy is needed, one which would include the encouragement of moderate voices (and, following Obama, a clear message that we do not see Islam per se as an enemy, nor do we seek to deny Israeli citizens their rights) side by side with stern measures against those, such as the Hamas sympathizers in the “Northern wing” (the more extremist branch) of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who cross the threshold from expressions of collective identity and memory to active rejection of the authority of the state.
Busy as it is with the burdens of the Iranian threat, a problematic debate with the Obama Administration over the settlements, and the uncertain future of the economy, the Israeli leadership cannot put this issue on the back burner and leave it to wait for better days.

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