Conflicting Worldviews: Gershon Baskin vs.Yossi Klein Halevi: The Importance of Critical vs. Wishful Thinking

One of the casualties of the Jihadists' War against Israel and the Jews has been critical thinking. In their earnest efforts to promote 'peaceful co-existence' and to move things forward between the Palestinians and the Israelis, many in the 'peace camp' have turned a blind eye to inconvenient realities that fly in the face of their prescriptions for peace.
It has been the overriding contention of this blog that while we all strive towards a solution to the conflict that will bring peace to the two peoples, we will actually sabotage those efforts by not confronting the painful truths that underlie the conflict.
I have chosen two recent pieces, one by Gershon Baskin of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research & Information and the other by Yossi Klein Halevi, senior fellow at the academic research institute, The Shalem Center in Jerusalem to illustrate these differences.

According to Baskin, there is an ongoing 'cycle of violence' that must be stopped.
"The mutual calls for revenge continue to feed this horrific cycle of death and destruction. Many of our political leaders, on both sides, follow the mob response calling for more death, more blood, and more revenge. How many more families on both sides must bury their dear ones before we all wake up and realize that this must end?"
Both sides must come to their senses, put an end to the wanton killings, and realize that the only way forward is to come to mutually agreed upon political compromises. Baskin elevates Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to some sort of prophet of peace.
"Fortunately Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded to the recent violence positively stating: 'Despite all the circumstances we're living through and all the attacks we're experiencing, we insist on peace. There is no other path'." And again, at the end of his piece, playing the role of Israel's leader; I have a partner in President Abbas who continues to show his moral commitment and courage to lead his people to peace."

But this is sheer folly. Surely Baskin knows that there isn't really a cycle of violence between two rational, reasonable players but rather a cold, brutal and unprovoked attack by a Jihadist entity--Hamas--against a sovereign state, with the new weapons of terror, the unpredictable Qassam--and now Katyusha--rockets, calculated to hit at the heart of Israeli population centers in the south, in range of approximately a quarter million Israeli civilians. When the launchers of these rockets 'hide' in densely populated civilian areas--schools and hospitals are not off limits--of their own people, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the leaders of the Jihadists see a huge public relations windfall in the unavoidable deaths of their own people (Baskin's estimates, which he conveniently borrows from unnamed Palestinian sources, that of the more than 100 Palestinians killed last week, "more than half of them civilians," is viewed by Israeli authorities as grossly inflated, but either way, it points to the dilemma a democracy faces in battling an enemy that willingly uses its own people as human shields, if not human sacrifices).
And surely Baskin is aware that President Abbas is not the saintly figure he portrays him as. Even if his recent statements were more for internal consumption, to maintain some semblance of authority among his own people, they should still give us pause. In an interview in Jordan last week he reiterated his refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish State and noted that he reserved the right to return to resistance (code for terror); he also indicated that he has no problem with Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel's right to exist.
Abbas: PLO Taught Everyone How to Resist
Turning to Hamas, Abbas said he has no problem with their not recognizing Israel's right to exist; he simply wants them to join a unity government to negotiate the issue. Abbas added that he would never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. "We negated that concept in the Annapolis peace conference, and it almost ended because of it," he said. "They wanted us to state, in the closing statement, that we recognize Israel as a Jewish state, but we wouldn't hear of it," he said. Abbas also said that while he's against resuming an armed conflict with Israel at this time, he doesn't rule it out in the future.

But leaving all that aside, the fundamental reality is that Abbas, whatever his true intentions, is a weak and ineffectual leader. His Fatah party was decimated by Hamas in Gaza last June. Barely fighting back, they were toppled in a matter of days. Serious analysts of the current situation are fully aware that the only thing that stands in the way of Hamas executing a similar coup in the West Bank is the IDF. If Israeli forces (and intelligence on the ground) withdrew, Abbas and Fatah would fall to Hamas in no time. And what would that mean for Israelis? Nothing short of having Ben Gurion airport, all of Jerusalem, not to mention Tel Aviv held hostage to the Jihadists and their rockets.
To assess the situation in any less stark terms borders on the irresponsible.

Yossi Klein Halevi offers us the more unpalatable, sober assessment of where we truly stand, pointing out that we are not just battling Hamas and other Jihadist factions, but rather, Iran. The Iranians are employing Hamas, just as they continue to use Hezbollah, to wage a proxy war with Israel that started under Arafat, and continues unabated to this day.
"The Palestinian struggle is no longer about creating an independent state. It is about being a front-line participant in the Iranian-led jihad to destroy Israel, evolving from a nationalist to a religious war. The thousands of celebrants in Gaza who, following the yeshiva massacre, offered prayers of thanksgiving in the mosques and distributed candies to passersby weren't only indulging in feelings of revenge for Israel's recent military incursion but heralding the coming jihadist victory over the enemies of God. A real solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be reached by dealing with its primary instigator: Iran."
Halevi points to the importance of understanding, and naming what we are up against before we can effectively confront it.
"The jihadist war against Israel has shifted from one front to another--suicide bombings inside Israeli cities until 2004, Katyushas on Haifa in the north in 2006, and now Katyushas on Ashkelon in the south. All are battles in the same war. So far, it is a war without an all-encompassing name, and that linguistic failure reflects a larger Israeli failure to treat this as a unified conflict. We still refer to the suicide bombings of 2000-2004 by the Palestinians' misnomer, "the second intifada"--which falsely implies a popular uprising, like the first intifada, rather the orchestrated slew of terror attacks that it was. Awkwardly, we call the 2006 battle against Hezbollah "the second Lebanon War," a name that places the conflict in the wrong context--the first Lebanon War against Palestinian nationalist terrorism in the early 1980s rather than one more front in the Iranian war against Israel. And now we are calling the daily rocket attacks against southern Israel "the war of the Qassams," even as the Qassams are augmented by the far more deadly KatyushasIn contending with Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel is trying to treat the symptoms, rather than the cause."
Halevi prescribes a dose of realism: "To deal effectively with the jihad requires an awareness that Israel is in fact at war with the Iranian regime, which manipulates proxies along Israel's borders, supplying them with weapons and training, and energizing them with the promise of imminent victory."
The well-intentioned may persist in their fantasies that if only we were to negotiate harder and with greater flexibility, we could achieve what we all want; two states for two peoples living in peace. But Halevi cautions us against such wishful thinking. Without first dealing with the Jihadists, it's all pie-in-the-sky.
"Following the yeshiva massacre, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown speculated that the gunman was attempting to "derail" the peace process. Brown's implication, widely shared in the West, is that the best way to defeat the jihadists is to create a Palestinian state.But a viable Palestinian state living peacefully beside Israel will not be possible without disconnecting Iran from these groups who are attacking Israel on its behalf. This may require destabilizing the Iranian regime--hopefully through intensified sanctions against its nuclear program, and by military force against its nuclear installations if sanctions fail. Without stopping the momentum of the Iranian-led jihad against Israel, the appeal of Hamas among Palestinians will grow. So long as the international community tries to create a Palestinian state without seriously confronting the jihadists, Iran and its proxies will continue to make peace impossible--not by "derailing" negotiations, but by making those negotiations irrelevant."
david brumer
seattle

The Iranian-Israeli War - Yossi Klein Halevi
Regardless of the affiliation of the actual perpetrator of the massacre of eight students in a yeshiva library in Jerusalem last week, the ultimate responsibility for this attack, as for almost all the terror attacks on Israel in recent years, lies with Iran. The Palestinian struggle is no longer about creating an independent state. It is about being a front-line participant in the Iranian-led jihad to destroy Israel, evolving from a nationalist to a religious war. A real solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict can only be reached by dealing with its primary instigator: Iran. After Yasser Arafat launched a war against Israel in September 2000, he initiated an alliance with Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Until then, Iran's only client within the Palestinian national movement had been the Islamic Jihad, the smallest of the Palestinian terrorist factions. According to a former chief of Israeli military intelligence, Arafat promised the Iranians that he would turn Gaza into a second southern Lebanon, and Iran began providing weapons and funds to Arafat's Fatah. In January 2002, Israel intercepted the Karine A, a ship carrying Iranian-supplied Katyusha rockets and mortars and C-4 explosives for use in suicide bombings. Three years ago, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshal orchestrated a formal alliance and today Hamas is an integral part of the Iranian war against Israel. Iran has trained hundreds of Hamas operatives - and continues to fund individual members of Fatah's Al Aqsa Brigades. The writer is a senior fellow at the Adelson Center for Strategic Studies of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. (New Republic)




http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205162814624&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull


The moral majority for peace
Gershon Baskin , THE JERUSALEM POST
Mar. 10, 2008
Reaching a peace agreement by the end of the year seems almost impossible. The violence between the sides is once again in full gear and the rage on the streets of both Israel and Palestine is on the rise. Israel killed more than 100 Palestinians in the last "operation" in Gaza - more than half of them civilians, say Palestinian sources. Palestinian celebrations in Gaza after the murderous attack in Mercaz Harav and crowds of Israelis calling "death to the Arabs" once again demonstrates that we have not learned anything. Jews and Arabs have been killing each other over this land for 100 years. The mutual calls for revenge continue to feed this horrific cycle of death and destruction. Many of our political leaders, on both sides, follow the mob response calling for more death, more blood, and more revenge. How many more families on both sides must bury their dear ones before we all wake up and realize that this must end? Fortunately Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas responded to the recent violence positively stating: "Despite all the circumstances we're living through and all the attacks we're experiencing, we insist on peace. There is no other path."
Israeli leaders have been less explicit. This is most unfortunate. The leaders on both sides should sound a voice of morality recognizing that the violence on both sides of the conflict will continue as long as there is no political agreement that will lead us to the end of the conflict.
I find it completely beyond comprehension that people on both sides actually believe that the way to put and end to the violence of the other side is to hit them with more force and bring more suffering on them. How can any thinking person believe that if we kill more of "them" that they will simply surrender? Would we? If the Palestinians continue to kill us in a wholesale manner would we consider surrendering our rights? Would we lay down our arms and make concessions on our rights for liberty, freedom, statehood, and justice because we suffer losses?
Palestinians are no different than us on matters concerning their national dignity, dreams of statehood and demands for freedom, liberty and justice. If we were occupied and denied our freedom would we lay down our arms? Would we adopt strategies of non-violence? I doubt it.
NO, IT IS not easy to reach a negotiated end to this 100 year conflict. Both political systems are so weak, divided and dysfunctional that it is almost impossible for the political leaders to find the courage to make the leap that is necessary to give each other the minimum concessions that are needed to produce an agreement.
In our weak and divided political systems, the "spoilers" of peace on both sides have more power to destroy than the leaders have to negotiate. The public outcry for revenge by crowds and by politicians on both sides is the food that energizes the spoilers. The leaders have almost no support. They must stand against the tide of cynicism and the real sense of despair that peace is not possible.
Reaching a peace agreement, however; is possible. An agreement cannot be reached in any kind of public forum. An agreement cannot be reached by negotiating each of the issues separately. The issue of Jerusalem cannot be detached from the issue of borders, refugees, security or even economic relations. Each one of the issues is inter-connected and inter-dependent. The agreement will be a package deal with trade-offs on the various issues. The agreement will provide each side with at least the minimum of what is defined as their key national security and strategic interests. Both sides will need to feel that they got the most that was possible. Both sides will have to feel that they have achieved some sense of justice for their demands and for their people. Both sides will have to sell the agreement to their people in some form of democratic process.
If I were in the Israeli leadership I would be conducting secret negotiations since July 2007. I would engage only my closest confidantes in those talks. I would know that if even an inkling of the concessions being considered were to be known the coalition would collapse, elections would take place and under the current political mood, opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu and the right-wing would take over and lead us to more doom, death and destruction.
I would understand that I need until the end of the year gifted to us by President George W. Bush and his Annapolis summit. I would use each and every one of those remaining days to produce the best agreement possible.
I would even agree to a one year cease-fire with Hamas that would provide us with the quiet that we need to negotiate. The cease-fire would put an end to the rocket fire in the south. Yes it would tie our hands in our ability to respond militarily to potential dangers and risks in Gaza and in the West Bank. It would require that we significantly increase our security and even intelligence cooperation with the security forces of Abbas (which is in our interest to do anyway).
It would require us to understand that Hamas will continue to smuggle weapons into Gaza and that we would have to increase our cooperation with Egypt in the hope that the Egyptians will be more effective in finding and destroying the tunnels into Gaza. It means that we would have to end our strangulation of Gaza policy for the coming year. The cease-fire cannot be kept in place if the people of Gaza continue to feel under siege as the private sector in Gaza is brought to total bankruptcy.
I WOULD understand that once I have an agreement in hand, I would call for new elections in Israel. I would be convinced that the overwhelming majority of Israelis will support the agreement. I would know that because the silent majority of Israelis desire life and peace. I would hope that Abbas will also lead a democratic process in Palestine that even if limited to the West Bank would produce a moral majority that would be significant enough to demonstrate that the Palestinian people support peace. I would understand that the implementation of the agreement will take place over a number of years and that eventually the political situation in Gaza will enable it to be implemented there as well.
I would understand that we need to work together to create the conditions on the ground that will enable significant improvements in the daily lives of Palestinians. If security conditions did not allow for the removing of many check points right now, I would already work with the Palestinians to transfer to them all of the civil and administration control over all of the areas that I already know will no longer be part of Israel, including most of what is know as area "c". There is no need for Israel to continue to control planning and building, for example in most of the West Bank. I would understand that I hold the keys that open many doors of hope for the Palestinians and for the Israelis. No, I could not do it alone, but fortunately I have a partner in President Abbas who continues to show his moral commitment and courage to lead his people to peace and I would stand tall knowing that I too had the courage and the moral commitment to lead the people of Israel forward to peace.
The writer is co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. http://www.ipcri.org/

Weapon of Terror: The Kassam Rocket - Margaret Weiss
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy) Kassams and other rockets have transformed the strategic balance between Israel and the Palestinians, giving terrorist groups an alternative means of attacking Israeli civilians and raising the level of fear among a large fraction of the Israeli population. In the long term, the presence of these rockets will force all parties to rethink the security arrangements for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement, since this threat did not exist during previous peacemaking efforts at Camp David and Taba.

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Deadly Jokes: The Implications of Media and World Body Broadsides Against Israel

Dan Rather, Katie Couric & an Israeli Sergeant

Dan Rather, Katie Couric, and an Israeli sergeant were all captured by terrorists in Iraq. The leader of the terrorists told them that he would grant them each one last request before they were beheaded.
Dan Rather said, "Well, I'm a Texan, so I'd like one last bowlful of hot, spicy chili."The leader nodded to an underling who left and returned with the chili. Rather ate it all and said, "Now I can die content."
Katie Couric said, "I'm a reporter to the end. I want to take out my tape recorder and describe the scene here and what's about to happen. Maybe someday someone will hear it and know that I was on the job till the end." The leader directed an aide to hand over the tape recorder and Couric dictated some comments. She then said, "Now I can die happy."
The leader turned and said, "And now, Mr. Israeli tough guy, what is your final wish?"
"Kick me in the ass," said the soldier."
"What?" asked the leader? "Will you mock us in your last hour?" "No, I'm not kidding. I want you to kick me in the ass," insisted the Israeli. So the leader shoved him into the open and kicked him in the ass. The soldier went sprawling, but rolled to his knees, pulled a 9 mm pistol from under his flack jacket, and shot the leader dead. In the resulting confusion, he jumped to his knapsack, pulled out his carbine and sprayed the terrorists with gunfire. In a flash, all terrorists were either dead or fleeing for their lives. As the soldier was untying Rather and Couric, they asked him, "Why didn't you just shoot them in the beginning? Why did you ask them to kick you in the ass first?""What?" replied the Israeli, "And have you two jerks report that I was the aggressor?!

This grim humor reflects a world where Israel, a sovereign country which has endured literally thousands of rocket attacks on its southern territory over the last few years, is still bizarrely seen as the aggressor when it fights back in self-defense. Since evacuating Gaza of every Israeli, dead and alive, back in the summer of 2005, Israel has borne the brunt of Qassam missile attacks on Sderot and adjoining Negev communities almost without interruption for over 2 1/2 years. Several thousand of these crude weapons of terror have landed in southern Israel, and this week, the coastal city of Ashkelon has been bombarded as well. Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 residents, is also home to power plants that supply 1/3 of Israel's electricity needs. And Ashkelon is over 11 miles from the Gazan border. Hamas has launched both a more sophisticated version of its Qassam rockets with a longer trajectory and the more advanced Katyusha rockets. To date, over a dozen Israeli civilians have been killed by missile attacks, hundreds have been injured, and thousands have been traumatized, including many children already bearing the scars of PTSD. And what does the world say?

I awoke this morning to a report on NPR radio describing casualties that the IDF inflicted on Gazans in air and land strikes today. No mention of the unrelenting barrage of missiles being shot into southern Israel by Hamas, with over a dozen rockets again hitting Ashkelon. No mention that the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal called Israel's military response to the rocket attacks in northern Gaza a 'real Holocaust' while he also accused Israel of exaggerating the Holocaust and using it to blackmail the world.

Earlier this week, a report commissioned by the United Nations noted that Palestinian terrorism is the "inevitable consequence" of Israeli occupation. The report went on to say that while Palestinian terrorist acts are deplorable, "they must be understood as being a painful but inevitable consequence of colonialism, apartheid or occupation." John Dugard, South African attorney, long time critic of Israel, and rapporteur on the UN's Human Rights Council, made this mind-boggling qualification about terrorism: "Common sense dictates.... a distinction must be drawn between acts of mindless terror, such as acts committed by al-Qaida, and acts committed in the course of a war of national liberation against colonialism, apartheid or military occupation... As long as there is occupation, there will be terrorism."

And the media is filled with accusations of collective punishment that Israel is meting out, how Israel is responsible for a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and why Israel is responsible for the welfare of Gazans. Below, NGO-Monitor does an excellent job of exposing the vacuousness and farcical nature of these accusations. Yet, in the topsy-turvy, post-modern world we inhabit, the joke I started this posting with rings all too true. Let's hope the West starts to understand that Israel is the 'canary in the coal mine' before it's too late.
david brumer
seattle

False Claims of "Collective Punishment" in NGO Campaigns on Gaza
February 28, 2008
NGO Monitor's January 2008 report: "Analyzing the NGO Campaign on Gaza – Beyond the Rhetoric," focused on the role of NGOs in promoting false claims of "collective punishment" and "war crimes" regarding Israel's responses to the Hamas attacks from Gaza. However, the NGO manipulation of the language of international law in this and other cases, is being increasingly recognized and critiqued.
Following Erik Schechter's January 2008 op-ed in The Jerusalem Post, which challenged the double-standards of NGOs such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Gisha, Avi Bell (Bar-Ilan University, Visiting Professor at Fordham University Law School), Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal, and Michael Kraus, Professor of Law, George Mason University have also analyzed and discredited these NGO claims.
Avi Bell's February essay, "Is Israel Bound by International Law to Supply Utilities, Goods, and Services to Gaza?" refutes the NGO argument that Israel is failing to fulfill its obligations under international law:

"Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention … only requires Israel to permit passage of food, clothing, and medicines intended for children under fifteen, expectant mothers, and maternity cases. Moreover, Israel would be under no obligation to provide anything itself, just not to interfere with such consignments sent by others. Article 70 of the First Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 creates a slightly broader duty …,but it does not list fuel and electricity as items for which passage must be permitted.
Dependence on foreign supply - whether it be Gazan dependence on Israeli electricity or European dependence on Arab oil - does not create a legal duty to continue the supply. …
There is no precedent that creates legal duties on the basis of a former military administration. … Furthermore, control of airspace does not create a legal duty to supply goods either. "

Bret Stephens' February 26, 2008 article, "The Sderot Calculus" explains the farcical logic of NGO calls for a "proportionate" response to rocket attacks:

"Conditions in Gaza, in so far as they are shaped by Israel, are a function of conditions in Sderot. No Palestinian Kassams (or other forms of terrorism), no Israeli 'siege.'…. The more vexing question, both morally and strategically, is what Israel ought to do about Gaza. The standard answer is that Israel's response to the Kassams ought to be "proportionate." What does that mean? Does the "proportion" apply to the intention of those firing the Kassams -- to wit, indiscriminate terror against civilian populations? In that case, a "proportionate" Israeli response would involve, perhaps, firing 2,500 artillery shells at random against civilian targets in Gaza. Or should proportion apply to the effects of the Kassams -- an exquisitely calibrated, eye-for-eye operation involving the killing of a dozen Palestinians and the deliberate maiming or traumatizing of several hundred more? Surely this isn't what advocates of proportion have in mind. What they really mean is that Israel ought to respond with moderation. But the criteria for moderation are subjective. Should Israel pick off Hamas leaders who are ordering the rocket attacks? The European Parliament last week passed a resolution denouncing the practice of targeted assassinations. Should Israel adopt purely economic measures to punish Hamas for the Kassams? The same resolution denounced what it called Israel's "collective punishment" of Palestinians. Should Israel seek to dismantle the Kassams through limited military incursions? This, too, has the unpardonable effect of resulting in too many Palestinian casualties, which are said to be "disproportionate" to the number of Israelis injured by the Kassams."

Michael Kraus's "Collective Punishment and Newspeak" article appeared in the "American Thinker" on February 24, 2008. He responds to the charge by "Israeli and Palestinian civil rights groups" that Israel's reduction of fuel and electricity exports to Gaza constitute collective punishment.

"But this claim is nonsense, and makes a mockery of international law. This is so for the following reasons: It conflates failure to aid with active criminal harm. ……The bar on collective punishment forbids the imposition of criminal or military penalties (imprisonment, death, etc) on some people for crimes committed by other individuals. But ceasing trade with a country is not inflicting a criminal or military penalty against that country's citizens, not least because those citizens have no entitlement to objects of trade that they have not yet purchased. If Canada tolerated and celebrated car-bombings of Buffalo from Fort Erie, Ontario, the United States could cease exporting cars to Canada - such cessation of trade was never contemplated as collective punishment, because it is not a military or a criminal sanction. The United States quite legally froze trade with Iran after that country committed an act of War against the USA following the 1979 Revolution. Even prevention of access of goods coming from third parties is not collective punishment: the U.S. blockade of Cuba after they installed nuclear missiles directed at the United States was not a collective punishment of the Cuban people, it was a non-violent act of war in self-defense. In any case, Israel has made no effort to prevent Gaza from receiving electricity from Egypt; it has merely declined to furnish this assistance itself. Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions clearly does not outlaw such acts. The current misuse of the term in the Security Council would have exactly that effect. The electricity withheld from sale was a military tool. Article 52 of the 1977 Amendment to the Geneva Convention explicitly countenances attacks on legitimate military objectives, which are "those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage."

As Israel has pointed out, its (minor) reduction in electricity sold means that "Hamas will have to decide whether to provide electricity to hospitals or weapons lathes." Diesel will be allowed in to fuel ambulances, sewage pumps, generators and garbage trucks, but gasoline will be restricted. According to estimates, Israel still exports approximately US$500 million worth of goods and services into the Gaza Strip each year. The claim is Newspeak. The charge of collective punishment is appropriately leveled against one side in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute; but that side is not Israel.

As Joseph Klein recently pointed out in a Front Page Magazine article, the innocent Israeli women and children slaughtered while going about their daily lives in homes, schools, on buses and at shopping malls are not warriors against the Palestinian people. They are in large number the victims of the Hamas' measures of collective punishment against Jews -- intimidation and terrorism, which violate their most basic of human rights - life itself. Indeed, Israel has targeted the perpetrators of these atrocities individually, entirely in conformity with its international obligations. When Israel kills such targets, precisely the people who have individually committed acts of war against Israel, it highlights the difference between legal force and collective punishment."

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Film Review: "To Die in Jerusalem": When Worldviews Collide

The genesis for this blog stemmed from my desire to confront and expose uncomfortable realities that are under-reported or are too often minimized and misunderstood. While we all want peace and reconciliation to prevail in the Middle East and in the world at large, it has been my contention as a social worker and psychotherapist that only way to effect real and lasting change is to begin with an unsparing assessment of where we find ourselves at the starting gate and why.
The film I reviewed below, "To Die in Jerusalem," opens a window through which we can better understand the disparities in Palestinian and Israeli societies. Until there is a fundamental shift in the Palestinian worldview that this film so vividly depicts, hopes for a real solution to the conflict may, sadly, remain elusive.
david brumer
seattle, washington

From Congress Monthly, November/December 2007

To Die in Jerusalem: When Worldviews Collide

On March 29th, 2002, 18 year old Ayat al-Akhras left her home in the Deheisheh Refugee Camp in Bethlehem County. Instead of going to school, she traveled less than four miles into Jerusalem, and blew herself up outside a supermarket. Two Israelis were killed; the security guard and 17 year old Rachel Levy of Kiryat Yovel.

Two weeks later the two teenage girls were featured on the cover of Newsweek, under the banner: SUICIDE MISSION. The picture and story captured the attention of Hilla Medalia, a young Israeli working on her master’s degree in mass communication at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Already intending to do her thesis as a film dealing with some aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ms. Medalia saw an opportunity in the tragedy. She wanted her thesis to reflect hope and give voice to both sides of the conflict. The ensuing forty-five minute student film, Daughters of Abraham, was made despite any number of logistical complications. But Medalia’s desire to bring the parents of the teenage girls together went unrealized.

Her film won an award at the Angelus Student Film Festival in Los Angeles and caught the attention of John and Ed Priddy, up-and-coming film producers from Boise, Idaho. Together with Sheila Nevins, president of HBO Documentaries, whose earlier efforts to make a similar film had been frustrated, a new plan was devised. If it were not possible to get the mothers together in the same room, they could be hooked up by satellite.

The resulting HBO documentary film, To Die In Jerusalem, succeeds in bringing the mothers together for dialogue, but fails to meet Ms. Medalia’s more ambitious goal of finding “a story of hope, something that would break misconceptions” and hold out the prospect for a peaceful Israeli-Palestinian co-existence. Ironically, the film highlights why that reconciliation remains even more distant today. What we witness is more like parallel universes, where the most basic of human instincts and values could not be more unlike.

Abigail Levy, mother of Rachel, saw Ayat’s mother, Um Samir al-Akhras, on television following the suicide mission, handing out candies in front of the family’s mourning tent. Abigail yearned to ask her, “You’re a mother also; don’t you feel what I’m feeling?” She cannot fathom that those on the other side of this tragic divide can imagine something positive coming from such a violent act. To Die in Jerusalem traces Abigail’s four year journey to secure a meeting and finally ask the mother of her daughter’s murderer some questions that have weighed heavily on her heart.

Before that encounter, we see pictures, videos and testimonies from both families and friends. We hear from Rachel’s older brother Guy, who feels that “we are losing a lot of soldiers for no reason; we don’t want to be there (the territories); they don’t want us there. But nobody’s controlling the terror, and if nobody’s controlling the terror, we don’t have a choice; we have to be there.”

Ayat’s sister Sammar cries out in the women’s mourning room that she will kill 30 people for Ayat. Presumably, those 30 people would be more Israeli civilians. The father of Ayat, Abu Samir al-Akhras tells us that he always taught his children to love others but that “occupation practices like killings, demolitions and imprisonments have changed the way children think.”

This theme of occupation driving the Palestinians to desperate acts of violence is repeated throughout the film. Abu Samir goes on to say that the conditions that the Palestinians live under have forced them and their children to carry out “these operations” because it is “a duty to resist the occupation.” Then, defying most Westerners’ comprehension of the bonds of parenthood, he exclaims, “What is better than to be a martyr? You are going to die anyway…today, tomorrow, in 100 years. To die in dignity and honor is better than anything.”

Eventually, through the mediation of journalist Roni Shaked at Yediot Aharanot, a meeting is arranged between the two mothers. Abigail Levy drives from Jerusalem the few miles into Bethlehem, where the Al-Ahkrats live in the Deheisheh Refugee Camp (Earlier, with no appreciation of the irony, Um Samir bemoans the fact that she cannot travel unrestricted into Jerusalem, due to the irksome Israeli checkpoints--checkpoints that had they already been in place, might have kept bomb-laden teenagers like her daughter out of Israeli supermarkets). Now inside the West Bank, it is the Palestinian Authority who controls the checkpoints. Palestinian police stop the film crew and detain them at their headquarters for questioning. A frustrated—and frightened—Abigail takes refuge in the church of her Palestinian go-between, Reverend Mitri Raheb, pastor of Bethlehem’s Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church.

During the hours of waiting, Abigial shares her hope that Um Samir can admit what her daughter did is wrong, and that she will have the courage to stand up before the Palestinian people (and the whole world) and say so. The Reverend, who understands all to well the psyche of his co-religionists in Bethlehem, explains that this admission is highly unlikely, because this would mean that “their daughter died in vain; for nothing. The outcome is zero.”

By the time the film crew is released, it is late and dark and Abigail has no stomach to proceed with the rendez-vous. Driving back to Jerusalem, the Reverend informs her that they are passing the Deheisheh ‘Refugee Camp.’ Looking through the eye of the camera at the well-kept boulevards and middle-class apartments, shops and cars, one would have thought they were driving through many a neighborhood in Jerusalem.

An alternate meeting via satellite is finally arranged, and Abigail’s wish to meet the mother of her daughter’s killer is realized, if not face to face, at least person to person. Abigail asks Um Samir if she knew what her daughter’s plans were that day. Um Samir says she did not know and would have tried to stop Ayat if she knew.

But the conversation quickly goes downhill, with Um Samir turning defensive and angry, shouting at her Israeli counterpart. Rather than confronting the essential humanity of Abigail at her most vulnerable, Um Samir lashes out in contemptuous rage. She dishes out the usual litany of grievances, from oppression, to imprisonment; killings, and assassinations--all under the mantra of ‘occupation.’ Abigail tries to disabuse her Palestinian counterpart of this eternal victimization, imploring her to “think otherwise; the occupation is not the only reason you live the way you live,” she says. But Um Samir will have none of it. She repeats that “we live in misery. Occupation requires resistance.’

Um Samir’s husband expressed much the same viewpoint in an earlier interview. “Each person,” he said, “resists the occupation in his own way; some with bullets, by words or with art.” Of course, here is the crux of the problem. These methods are not at all equivalent, and they bring unequivalent responses from those who are met with bullets versus words or art.

But the Al-Ahkras want to have it both ways. While their claims of living in misery under the yoke of their Israeli oppressors are belied by Abu Samir polishing his fancy Audi automobile and fiddling with digital photos on his home PC, they wish to invoke their right to ‘resistance,’ even if it means that they ultimately bring more suffering (checkpoints, curfews, commerce restrictions, etc.) upon themselves. The circle of victimhood is never ending, and Um Samir complains to Abigail Levy--to Abigail Levy, mind you, the mother of the girl who her daughter blew up at a supermarket!--that her life is oppressive.

There can be no meeting of the minds, or hearts, in this encounter because the worldview of the two families—and, it would seem, the two peoples— remains at polar opposites. Abigail Levy is crushed by the senseless death of her daughter, and it is obvious that this devastating rupture in her life will never fully heal. By contrast, Um Samir, and her husband seem buoyed by their daughter’s death. Their position in the community is clearly elevated by Ayat’s violent act, evinced by the omnipresent backdrop of posters of martyrs plastering the walls of Palestinian villages. It is difficult to avoid drawing the conclusion that Abigail Levy represents a culture that sanctifies life, and profoundly grieves its loss, while what Um Samir expresses in this film is emblematic of a worldview that glorifies death through martyrdom, and the fast track to Paradise that it provides.

While the film ends with no satisfaction for either side, the dispassionate viewer better understands the formidable obstacles to a real solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

David Brumer

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What Passes Unchecked in 'Alice in Wonderland' Journalism

A blatant example of how bias and ideology trumps common sense. One of the authors of this absurdity is touted as a "political economist." But what of a major newspaper not catching this mathematical impossibility?
The article in full below, as well as some additional takes on media bias by Richard Landes.
--david brumer

Gaza Buried in Flour - Martin Kramer
The Boston Globe ran an op-ed on Jan. 26 under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza" by Eyad al-Sarraj of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program and Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The op-ed included the sentence: "Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99%." If Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day. A typographical error? Hardly. The authors copied it from an article in the Al-Ahram Weekly from last November. Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. (MartinKramer.org)


Gaza buried in flour
Martin Kramer
Monday, 28 January 2008
The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:
Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent. You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day. A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent." Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media food chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact. What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie. Sarraj is a psychiatrist, but his co-author, Sara Roy, bills herself in her bio as a "political economist." Her research, the bio reports, is "primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip." You would think someone with this claim to expertise would know better than to copy some impossible pseudo-statistic on the consumption of the most basic foodstuff in Gaza. Indeed, in a piece she wrote a decade ago, she herself put Gaza's daily consumption of flour at 275 tons. Did she even read her own op-ed before she sent it off to Boston's leading paper? If she did, what we have here is a textbook example of the difference between a "political economist" and an economist.

Richard Landes below on Media Bias
Hamas scored a major propaganda victory with its self-imposed blackout and tearing down of the wall between Egypt and Gaza. The MSM was complicit, featuring prominent pictures of Gazan women marching and washing dishes by candlelight. Not surprisingly, the articles about Israeli measures against Hamas-run Gaza featured the same slant. as Prof. Barry Rubin, Director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, writes in his latest article fisking the consistent spin of the NYT Middle East correspondent, Steve Erlanger, a favorite target of The Augean Stables:Erlanger gets a D in Jounalism 101: Palestinian Suffering via PCP1Listen to the hollo w man: Erlanger defends himselfErlanger on Israeli Soldiers: Where’s the Balance?Erlanger, Dupe of Demopaths: Does he really believe this stuff?

Not Even Pretending to be Fair: The New York Times On GazaBarry RubinJanuary 31, 2008
The New York Times coverage of the Middle East, especially Steven Erlanger (who will soon be leaving) has often been terrible. Naturally, the Times and Mr. Erlanger will dispute this, but they will not do so by examining the specific stories filed and what these articles do–and do not–say.
Anyone who analyzes the articles themselves will find many points which seem slanted, and all the slants seem to lean in the same way.
Consider, for example, the January 28 article, “Israel Vows Not to Block Supplies to Gaza.” By presenting this decision as a negative rather than a positive (Israel will let supplies flow; Israel wants to avoid any humanitarian crisis in Gaza, etc) it seems as if the newspaper is grudgingly admitting that Israel is doing something good but trying to minimize it.
Note that Erlanger is not responsible for the headlines. But given the content of the article, it’s not hard to claim that there’s a similar approach by both the journalist and his editors.
Then comes a spin slanted against Israel:
“Israel would no longer disrupt the supply of food, medicine and necessary energy into the Gaza Strip and intended to prevent a ‘humanitarian disaster’ there.”
The obvious and intended implication here is that Israel has been blocking three things, thus threatening to unleash a humanitarian disaster. In fact, Israel has never blocked food and medicine, and while it has reduced energy supplies slightly–to a level reducing the Gaza electricity by no more than 20 percent — it has not blocked “necessary” energy but only made a marginal reduction. Thus, in a masterfully crafted but factually inaccurate sentence, both newspapers accuse Israel of something it has never done and imply that it has committed inhuman crimes. (Or to put it another way, Congratulations, you have stopped beating your wife.)
Oh, we’re just getting started as Mr. Erlanger is a master of bias. Dig this sentence:
“Last Wednesday, the Hamas rulers of Gaza broke open the border to Egypt, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to seek goods that Israel had restricted in its clampdown on the region.”
Now it would be fair to say that Palestinians went to Egypt to buy lots of things and not just goods Israel has restricted–which, remember, we have been just falsely told include food and medicine. In addition, as other reporters have noted, it is not just availability but the fact that many things are cheaper in Egypt than in Gaza, a fact that was also true before the restrictions.
This point deserves particular attention. Indeed, Erlanger himself had previously noted that some of the Gazans were struck by the primitive conditions in Rafah [need link], a long-standing situation that explains why the last time the border opened (before Hamas took over), Egyptian brides came over to marry Gazans who were better off than Egyptian men. The media have presented the West with an image of Gaza as the hell-hole of the world. That’s not the case even after almost two years of disastrous rule by Hamas. (We sometimes fail to realize just how normatively impoverished the rest of the Arab world is. These are, after all, endemic cases of “prime divider” societies.) Note how many luxury items went back across the border.
Speaking about restrictions, it might be worth mentioning that there are no such Israeli restrictions on the West Bank. Why is that? It is because the Palestinian Authority regime there doesn’t systematically encourage and facilitate terrorist and rocket and mortar attacks on Israel. This, then, is the central issue pertaining to the Gaza Strip, and not the apparently motiveless meanness that much media coverage makes it seem to be Israel’s reason for so acting.
This is the key point to understanding why Erlanger is a travesty of an honest reporter. Any comparison with the West Bank reveals that the more insanely vicious the Palestinian leadership, the more hostile the Israeli response. If you don’t understand that over 1000 rockets have rained down on Israeli civilians near the Gaza border since Hamas took over a 18 months before, then you can’t understand why the Israelis are making life miserable for these poo Palestinians. (No European country would tolerate a neighbor systematically bombing its citizens over the border… or is that what’s in store?)
If you don’t know this — which Erlanger will barely mention — you can’t understand why, in all fairness, the Israeli response is actually extemely mild. There are Israelis who reasonably ask, why are we helping them bomb us? But note how virtually none of the coverage, and correspondingly little of the diplomatic language, addresses the goal of getting Hamas to stop. Why?
There are 16 paragraphs remaining in the New York Times version. Do you think that we will be told that some of the restricted goods Palestinians bought in Egypt are guns, ammunition, explosives, and material for making rockets? Of course not.
Every paragraph is a gem. Here’s the next one:
“As an indication of the altered Israeli attitude the government told the Supreme Court, which was meeting to hear a petition against Israeli efforts to cut electricity and fuel to Gaza, that industrial diesel fuel needed to run Gaza’s main power station would be supplied regularly, although in amounts that would not meet Gaza’s needs for uninterrupted electricity.”
This, too, is a well-crafted lie. For even if the proposed Israeli cuts were implemented, any blackouts would be minimal at most. It would be fair to say that Gaza’s total electricity supply would be reduced but certainly not far short of what is required for “uninterrupted electricity.” Moreover, in a further flaunting of bias we are never told that Israel supplies directly 70 percent of Gaza electricity. After all, a reader might think that is pretty humane to give power to an entity next door whose leadership openly states its intention of destroying Israel and killing its people, while that same leadership permits daily attacks on Israel.
I’m not sure I’d call that a lie, so much as heavy spin. Any time it presents the picture, this article consistently does so by spinning against Israel and for the Palestinians, even as it gives the Israeli “side.” Indeed, an examination of this article’s consistent spin reveals that it operates essentially as a kind of public relations for the Palestinian. While not engaging in the violent anti-Israel invective of Palestinian Arab, a subject about which Erlanger has a long tradition of conspicuous silence, it nonetheless, systematically presents the situation in as favorable a light as possible, skimming over Hamas’ negatives and Israel’s positives and focusing on Israel’s negatives and Hamas’ positives.
What’s interesting is that the spin is not so much pro-Palestinian, as pro-Palestinian leadership. And in this case, the favored subject, the sly victor, is the most badly behaved of all Palestinian leadership. Hamas’ regime in Gaza displays all the least progressive qualities one can imagine. These are, after all, people who adhere to a charter with genocidal intentions, refuse even the palest expressions of a willingness to let Israel exist, whose liveliest industry is the manufacture of cheap homemade rockets to fire randomly and constantly at the neighboring Israeli town of Sderot, even if that means sewage disasters for their own people. These folks are a combination of Machiavelli’s “e conomy of violence” and apocalyptic fanaticism. They are perfect illustrations of why the Palestinians suffer. Why on earth would a responsible journalist want to spin so hard in their direction?
And yet,
The author goes out of his way not to tell us about Israel’s direct supply. Consider for example the next paragraph:
“The government also said that supplies of gasoline and regular diesel fuel to Gaza would be resumed although in diminished amounts.” But no mention of direct electrical supply which is almost four times larger than the total amount made using fuel.
There follows several paragraphs about the meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Abbas and some material about the situation on the Egypt-Gaza border. What ensues, far down in the article, is the closest thing to explaining why Israel is acting:
“Israeli has restricted supplies into Gaza, which it has labelled a ‘hostile entity,’ to try to push Hamas to stop any militant group from firing into Israel. But the move backfired when Hamas breached the border, letting Gazans cross to buy supplies.”
Two points on the above paragraph. First, it is amusing that the reporter doesn’t say what Hamas has been firing–rockets and mortar shells in large numbers–so the reader could be forgiven for thinking it might be an occasional burst of automatic weapons’ fire.
Second, it is not clear that “backfired” is the right word here. But the reason for the phrase becomes clear in the next paragraph:
“The Israeli statement to the court on Sunday was a kind of concession that the policy had failed, but it made clear that Israel would continue restrictions to keep Gazans uncomfortable.”
The problem here is that Israel had been backing off the limited restrictions before the border breakthrough took place. Moreover, if the reporter is going to be balanced he would say that if the policy had “backfired” it was because Hamas was left in a position in which it could continue to incite and implement attacks against Israel; gain some international popular sympathy (thanks to misleading media coverage like this one); maintain a policy of seeking Israel’s extermination; and still get everything required to conduct that military campaign and avoid pressures that might turn Gaza’s population against it.
The author will not do this, however, because he wants to minimize the reasons why Israel needs to make Gazans “uncomfortable.” After all, at a time when there were no restrictions on supplies the Gazans were making Israeli civilians “uncomfortable.” But only the Palestinians are permitted to be portrayed as having a reason to be aggrieved and to be victims.
This brings us back to the issue of spin. Is it that what really moves Erlanger, is not so much his (misguided) concern for the Palestinian people expressed in his quiet admiration of Hamas, and his unofficial role as the Palestinians’ PR agent, as it is, his stong preference for the narrative that makes Israel look bad. Is he, in fact, not so much concerned for Palestinian suffering, as he is eager to feed anti-Zionist Schadenfreude — that seemingly inexaustible appetite among so many — Jew and gentile — for ways to look down on Israel, to condemn her, to feel morally superior to her?
Naturally, only one side within Israel is quoted on this issue:
“Sari Bashi, director of an Israeli advocacy group, Gisha, which was part of the court case, said, ‘This is part of a stop-start game that continually pushes Gazan residents to the brink, pushing them over, then pulling them back temporarily.” She said that ‘for the last seven months, Israel has been slowly reducing Gaza residents to desperation.’”
No one is quoted from Israel saying that residents of Sderot and the region are being hit by rockets, that their children are being terrified, that Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier as hostage, etc. (Yes, Erlanger has covered this occasionally in other articles but it also belongs here as a balancing quote.) It is fairly typical, of course, that Israelis are usually only quoted when they are being critical of Israel and supportive of the Palestinians.
This is classic: present the Palestinians blaming Israel, and Isaelis blaming themselves. Now how is an outsider going to understand what’s really going on here? You mean, it’s not Israel’s fault? How does one factor for self-criticism vs. demonizing tendencies in the discourse to which Erlanger exposes us. This really does fail the most basic principles of fair journalism.
Ah, but there is an Israeli quoted in the next paragraph which goes like this:
“Separately, as expected, the Israeli attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, said he would not indict police officers involved in the deaths of 13 Arab civilians in 10 days of Arab-Israeli demonstrations in October 2000. In a legal opinion, he upheld a decision by the Justice Ministry in September 2005 to close the investigation of the case.”
The reader would be left to think that this is a whitewash and that people who murdered Arabs are being let off the hook. The reader is not told that the report on the demonstrations (whose violence also goes unmentioned) said that the police acted reasonably given the difficult situation they faced at the time.
Now this spin is really interesting for several reasons. First, it’s a segue… “in other news.” But it clearly supports the anti-Israel thrust of the article, especially in how it is spun. Second, these riots were right at the start of the intifada, and specifically provoked by Enderlin’s footage of Muhammad al Durah. Israelis were stunned and terrified at the rioting that broke out among their own Arab citizens in response to those pictures. The thirteen killed represent, in proportion to the number of rioters and their aggression, a tiny fraction of what any other state in this region of “hama rules” would have done to rioters, even if they were their own people, much less a religious minority.
A detailed examination of this one article shows a pattern of one-sidedness that can be repeated in hundreds of others, showing clearly the bias in certain specific media outlets and by certain reporters.
To cite only one example, the Los Angeles Times ran an article simply transmitting false Hamas propaganda about the horrors of Israeli cutbacks. And this, to take the cake, was published–with no mention of this fact, after the far more limited reductions had been rescinded. Speaking of cakes, a Boston Globe op-ed piece lambasted Israel for starving Gaza of flour — though its estimate was somewhat skewed by the fact that the deprivation was based on the provision of a half-ton of flour daily for each Gaza resident. At any rate, there have never been any food shortages in Gaza that would lead to deprivation, as is admitted even by international institutions.
The Boston Globe piece is a really good example of the porous borders between journalism, “scholarship,” and advocacy. Did no one at the Globe do the simple math? Was it just too satisfying to read and run this diatribe against the Israelis to even bother to see if it were accurate? How is an unsuspecting reader to know that this is systematic misrepresentation. And that it comes from a hyper-self-critical Jew who believes that she is somehow doing her small part to redeem us all from the Holocaust. And she is formal in her position. 100% PCP:
Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians is the crux of the problem between the two peoples, and it will remain so until it ends.
Naturally, none of this critique is ever going to appear in the mainstream media which will, at most carry pieces ridiculing this critique and proclaiming what a great job they are doing. This doesn’t mean that many newspapers and other media aren’t doing a good job–they are–but the ones that aren’t will not engage in honest self-criticism or work hard to root out the bias they are showing.
The analysis here has really important bearings on how we think about issues, less substantively than in a sense unconsciously. It’s a tone, one that carries a great deal of weight, a mood setter. The PCP frame, which Erlanger consistently spins, holds Israel responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians. Reporting like this reinforces that impression, even as it reports information which, “spun” differently, might shed some harsh light on why the Palestinians are suffering. Instead, like useful idiots rooting for the wrong side, the media eagerly grant the award of PR victory to Hamas, when they are precisely the Gazans’ greatest problem. How badly and obviously do Palestinians have to suffer specifically and visibly from the se lf-destructive decisions of their leaders, before tone-setters like Steve Erlanger stop sneering at Israel, and decide to feed other corridors of our minds than the demeaning Schadenfreude of the “bien pensant’s” hostility to Israel and embrace of “Palestinian liberation”?

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Bush, Israel, The Middle East & Even the Best of Intentions...

President Bush reiterated some core realities and assurances to the Israeli people over the past two days, most importantly, that Israel remains "a homeland for the Jewish people," and that "any peace agreement between them [the Israelis & Palestinians] will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities."
But a disreality also permeated the visit. As Calev Ben-David points out below, "without first changing some of the current harsh realities on the ground," grand visions of peace and a two- state solution can be at best naive and disingenuous and as Ari Shavit notes, at worst, dangerous. Shavit gives President Bush credit for understanding the real dangers facing Israel and the West, and applauds him for having the courage to take on the big issue of radical Islam. He cautions though, that "the United States does not have the safety margins for another mistake such as the one that brought Hamas to power. A mistake of that kind will not only endanger the future of the State of Israel, it will endanger the ability of Western civilization to confront the forces of September 11, 2001."
Martin Peretz reminds us that while "America is the only country with the power to induce Israel to make perilous concessions and, therefore, it is the only country whose government Arabs - both in Palestine and in the surrounding countries - are motivated to influence; there are some realities that neither the American president nor the best laid plans of other mice and men can influence or affect." Peretz notes , "The fact is that the great impediment to peace with Israel is the fanatic obstinacy of the Palestinians" and then asks, "Does anyone have a strategy for negotiating with that?"
And lastly, Hillel Halkin, in this month's Commentary, suggests that even if the Palestinians were granted all of a contiguous West Bank within which to establish their state, "that [the] British Mandate Palestine never was, and is not today, big enough to accommodate both a Jewish and an Arab state. The “two-state” solution never could succeed and never will." His solution is for Israel to pull back to its self-determined borders (including a united Jerusalem) and leave the Palestinians to re-establish a federation with the Jordanians.
Into such quicksand has President Bush descended. Will he rise out of the desert yet and leave a lasting legacy?
david brumer



Bush: Israeli-Palestinian Peace Agreement Must Ensure "Defensible Borders" for Israel
President Bush said in Jerusalem on Thursday: "There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent." "While territory is an issue for both parties to decide, I believe that any peace agreement between them will require mutually agreed adjustments to the armistice lines of 1949 to reflect current realities and to ensure that the Palestinian state is viable and contiguous. I believe we need to look to the establishment of a Palestinian state and new international mechanisms, including compensation, to resolve the refugee issue." "I know Jerusalem is a tough issue. Both sides have deeply felt political and religious concerns. I fully understand that finding a solution to this issue will be one of the most difficult challenges on the road to peace, but that is the road we have chosen to walk. Security is fundamental. No agreement and no Palestinian state will be born of terror. I reaffirm America's steadfast commitment to Israel's security." (White House)

Bush's Friendly Nudge
If there was a body language of President George Bush's visit to Jerusalem and Ramallah, it was that of the friendly nudge. "The only way to have lasting peace, the only way for an agreement to mean anything, is for the two parties to come together and make the difficult choices," Bush said with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday."
At best, engagement means pushing both sides, or even attempting to impose agreement. At worst, it is a euphemism for mainly pushing Israel, the more compliant party, while ignoring the Palestinians' failure to abide by their commitments - even those under the PA's complete control, such as ending official glorification of suicide bombers and incitement against Israel.
This week, Tawfik Hamid, a former disciple of arch-terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, told The Jerusalem Post that any Israeli concessions should be conditioned on the "demonstrable sustained abandonment of incitement in the media, the mosques, and the educational system." This is what Bush should be telling the Arab world, and what the US should be closely monitoring and pressing to make sure it happens.
The first prerequisite for peace is ending Arab incitement to terrorism, hatred and war. (Jerusalem Post)

Strategy Needed to End the Jiha Against Zion
Marty Peretz
How many times have I heard this refrain? "This president is the best friend Israel has ever had." Hundreds of times. About Ronald Reagan. About Bill Clinton. And now about George Bush. I suppose, it is true in a certain abstract sense about each of them. They probably also understood that the prime impediment to a peace between the Israelis and those who now call themselves Palestinians (this nomenclature is relatively new to the Arabs of Palestine) is fanatic resistance to the non-negotiable reality of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. America is the only country with the power to induce Israel to make perilous concessions and, therefore, it is the only country whose government Arabs - both in Palestine and in the surrounding countries - are motivated to influence. Yet there are some realities that neither the American president nor the best laid plans of other mice and men can influence or affect. You can force this bloc of settlements to close down and draw the border here rather than there and even color code Jerusalem to allow the Arabs to control the Temple Mount (which would be a terrible affront to Jewish history that the Muslims want especially to affront) and to hand sovereignty over Palestinian neighborhoods in the city to the Palestinians and contrive some cynical and unprecedented formula for allowing some "refugees" (they are almost all dead actually) to "return" and creating a fund for compensation of zillions of dollars (to which Israel should not contribute because it has absorbed since 1948 a larger number of true Jewish refugees from the Islamic world) - yet not even all of this would end the jihad against Zion. The fact is that the great impediment to peace with Israel is the fanatic obstinacy of the Palestinians. Does anyone have a strategy for negotiating with that? (New Republic)

Bush Vision of Peace Still Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Calev Ben-David
Asked this week how a two-state solution can be implemented while Hamas controls Gaza, Bush responded, "There's three tracks going on during this process. One is the vision track. Let me make sure everybody understands, in our delegation, the goal. The goal is for there to be a clear vision of what a state would look like, so that, for example, reasonable Palestinian leadership can say, here's your choice: You can have the vision of Hamas, which is dangerous and will lead to war and violence, or you can have the vision of a state, which should be hopeful."
US National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was more specific, saying "When the people of Gaza are presented with this vision, they can make a choice and invite the Palestinian Authority back in to administer Gaza."
Really? Entranced by a final-status agreement that involves painful concessions, the people of Gaza somehow "invite" Fatah back, and Hamas and its radical Islamic allies simply lay down their arms and pass on power peacefully to Mahmoud Abbas?
Unfortunately, the problem with those Palestinians who oppose a two-state solution isn't that they lack a vision of a Palestinian state - it's that they lack a vision for a Jewish state existing alongside it.
If simply attaining a vision of a final two-state agreement were all, or even most, of what was needed to bring peace, than the Clinton Camp David proposal, or the Geneva Initiative, would have had far more influence on the situation here than they have had so far (which is none).
This isn't to say that having a vision of peace isn't a good or necessary thing. But it is naïve, or disingenuous, to think it can be implemented, or can even move the process of implementation forward, without first changing some of the current harsh realities on the ground.
And all this, of course, is predicated on the belief that two very weak leaders of two shaky governments can arrive at the vision sometime in the next year.
Bush is to be commended for his sincere belief in the power of a vision of peace, and on his dedication this week to try to make it happen.
During his time in the White House, though, he has sometimes confused rhetoric with reality, and overestimated the power of simply having a vision - such as "Bringing democracy to the Middle East" - with the ability to make it actually happen.
It's nice, and right, to dream, especially of peace. But as the US president saw this week in Jerusalem, sometimes the skies here are not blue - and when you're not in Kansas anymore, or in the Wonderful Land of Oz, dreams and visions shouldn't be confused with reality.

Bush's Divine Mission
Ari Shavit
The person who is waking up this morning in the presidential suite of the King David Hotel is a God-fearing man. A man who believes that a hidden hand brought him from Texas to the presidency in order to carry out a Divine mission. The president cannot say so publicly, but since September 11, 2001 it has been clear to him that the role assigned him is both historic and religious: to save America from the new barbarians; to defend the West from the Huns who are attacking it from the East.
When the man from Texas looks at the golden halo of the Dome of the Rock, he has some time to think about everything that lies to the east of the King David Hotel: The Israeli occupation, Palestinian extremism, Arab dysfunction and Islamic zealotry, the struggle for Iraq and the threat of Iran, the disquiet in Afghanistan and the danger embodied in Pakistan. And the feeling that is spreading in the East that the West is in retreat. The increasing assessment that the 21st-century Crusades are about to end in defeat.
The man standing at the window this morning is a very lonely man. He is vilified in his own country and almost a leper in the international community. The America that he tried to save has turned against him, and the West that he wanted to defend is dismissive of him. But George W. Bush is not deterred, nor does he bend to public opinion, to the media and to trendy thinking. Unlike some of his friends, he is not an opportunist who changes his stripes. He conducts his dialogue with history and with God. And since he is a man of moral clarity and simple principles and character, he does not tend to give in. Even when the current turns against him he remains faithful to his truth. George Bush defined his truth concerning the Holy Land on June 24, 2002.
This was the essence of that statement: The solution to the 100-year-old conflict is a two-state solution, but before the two-state solution is implemented a Palestinian conversion must take place. Only after the Palestinian people undergo a conceptual, ideological and institutional conversion will it be possible to establish a Palestinian state that will exist alongside Israel in peace and prosperity. So when President Bush looks at Jerusalem this morning, the question he should ask himself is whether he has remained faithful to his truth. The question that he should ask himself is whether the present diplomatic course does not contradict his own vision. And whether it is reasonable to expect that during 2008 the Palestinians will undergo the profound reform needed. And what the consequences would be of establishing an immature Palestinian state before the Palestinian conversion is completed. And whether there isn't a danger that a virtual diplomatic process divorced from reality will distance peace instead of bringing it closer. The region spread out beyond the swimming pool of the King David Hotel is a gloomy one. President Bush can be proud of the achievements of recent months in Iraq, but he cannot deceive himself. The zealots still have the momentum, the moderates are finding it difficult to cooperate. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are putting out feelers toward Iran, Abu Mazen and Salam Fayyad are walking on thin ice. In this state of affairs, the United States does not have the safety margins for another mistake such as the one that brought Hamas to power. A mistake of that kind will not only endanger the future of the State of Israel, it will endanger the ability of Western civilization to confront the forces of September 11, 2001. The right formula is the Bush vision. To act with determination in order to create Palestinian capability before precisely defining the borders of the Palestinian territory. To promote Paris before devoting ourselves to Annapolis. To help the Palestinians bring about their conversion rather than pretending that the conversion has already taken place. In short: to return to George W. Bush's fundamental truths. Many people mock President Bush. But the president who is descending from the presidential suite of the King David Hotel this morning is a courageous man. A man with a mission. Even when he erred, he did so because he was trying to deal with a challenge that others had evaded. But now, on his way to Bethlehem, the Church of the Beautitudes and Capernaum, Bush must be true to himself. He must leave a seal of truth in the Holy Land.

The Peace Planners Strike Again
Hillel Halkin

The hard fact is that British Mandate Palestine never was, and is not today, big enough to accommodate both a Jewish and an Arab state. The “two-state” solution never could succeed and never will.
To assert as much is not to propose an “undivided land of Israel” stretching from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River. Change “land of Israel” to “Palestine,” and you have the solution of Hamas. A Jewish state entertaining any such idea would be engaged in a romantic form of suicide.
Israel will have to withdraw, for the sake of its own survival, from most of the West Bank. It should not do so, however, as part of a settlement establishing a Palestinian state that can only be a permanent danger to it. On the contrary: it should withdraw on its own and in such a way that a Palestinian state will not come into being. Pulling back to the security fence while holding on to all of Jerusalem, without which no Palestinian state is possible, would be the best way of accomplishing this. As I have argued before in these pages, Israel has only one responsibility toward the Palestinians of the West Bank: either to give them full equality as Israeli citizens or to give them full freedom without Israeli occupation or control. It does not owe them a state and has no interest in their having one.
What, then, would happen to them? As I have also argued, left to their own devices the West Bankers would sooner or later join up again with Jordan, a country of 90,000 square kilometers with which they were united between 1949 and 1967. Over half of Jordan’s nearly 5.5 million inhabitants are already of Palestinian origin. Physically and culturally, the western part of Jordan is a mirror-image replica of the West Bank. Palestinians have always felt at home in it, more than in any other part of the Arab world.
It is said in objection to this that King Abdullah and the Jordanian ruling class, whose Bedouin origins are not Palestinian, fear an eventual Palestinian takeover, do not therefore want the West Bank with its large and politically unruly Palestinian population, and cannot be forced to re-absorb it against their will. This is true. But the Jordanian ruling class has even more to fear from Islamic fundamentalists than it does from Palestinians, who are well integrated in Jordanian society, and the chaotic West Bank reality that would be left behind by an Israeli withdrawal may make Jordan or Hamas the only two alternatives. In such a case, it is not difficult to imagine Abdullah, with the agreement of Israel and moderate Palestinian elements, sending his army into the West Bank to take control of it. This would be in the Jordanian—as well as in the American and European—interest, not as a favor to Israel.
As for the Gazans, they can be left to stew in the juices of Hamas for as long as it takes for them either to revolt or for Israel to move in militarily and throw Hamas out. In the end, a Jordanian solution would be best for them, too. Transferred to Jordanian sovereignty with a corridor through Israel, Gaza would give Jordan a seaport on the Mediterranean, which would be an economic boon for both parties.
Needless to say, such a scenario has its own potential perils. If the Hashemite regime in Amman ever fell to Palestinian or Islamic radicals, Israel would find itself in a serious situation. On the whole, however, it is safe to say that Palestinian irredentism would be better contained within a Jordanian framework. As citizens of a large and potentially prosperous country like Jordan, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza would not feel cooped up in a miniature polity in which their opportunities were limited and their frustrations were great. Israel would no longer be the envied big neighbor next door. The grief and anger for what was lost in 1948 would be easier to manage. They might even, with the passage of time, be gotten over entirely.


A Jewish State
Gerald M. Steinberg
In response to the obsessive efforts to deny the Jewish people the right to national self-determination, Israelis have started to demand explicit public and unambiguous acceptance as a Jewish state, reflecting Jewish culture, holidays, language, etc., just as France is French, Italy is Italian, Iran is Islamic, etc. Fourteen years after the exuberance of Oslo, with the renewal of peace talks at the Annapolis meeting, Prime Minister Olmert put the recognition of the right of the Jews to sovereign equality squarely on the table. Unless the Palestinians, the Saudi leadership, Bashar Assad's regime in Syria, and others who claim to be interested in peace end their campaigns to delegitimize Israel, the conflict will continue. Similarly, as long as the demonization continues in the UN, and has strong support in the UK and Europe, these governments cannot be considered to be serious partners in peace efforts.
(Canadian Jewish News)

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