Gilad Shalit's father Noam, For Israel's 62nd Independence Day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VH9xQbYJP8&feature=related

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The False Religion of Mideast Peace & Senior NY Senator, Schumer: Obama's Counter-Productive Israel Policy "Has to Stop"

Two important pieces. Aaron David Miller is a veteran intelligence analyst, policy planner, and advisor. Over the last 20 years he's been at the table of Middle East negotiations at the highest levels. When former devout believers like him are disabused of their prior convictions, it means that it's time for serious folks on the Left to reconsider their positions. Miller is no right-wing hardliner. His bona-fides as a left of center player are well established.

Readers should also take note of the senior DEMOCRATIC Senator of N.Y.'s remarks below. Schumer is about as straight a shooter as they come in politics. His advice to the administration is right on: we know your heart is in the right place, but your tactics are counter-productive. As long as the Palestinians see America as forcing Israel's hand, they'll sit back and sip tea, biding their time.

Miller's article is from Foreign Policy and worth reading in its entirety (16 pages). Nice read for a rainy Saturday morning (at least here in Seattle).
david brumer

Sen. Schumer: Obama's "Counter-Productive" Israel Policy "Has to Stop" - Ben Smith
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) harshly criticized the Obama Administration's attempts to exert pressure on Israel Thursday on a New York radio show. "This has to stop," Schumer said of the administration's policy of publicly pressuring Israel to end construction in Jerusalem. "I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk."
"Palestinians don't really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there. If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands, the Palestinians say, 'Why should we negotiate?'...You have to show the Palestinians that they are not going to get their way by just sitting back and not giving in." (Politico)




The False Religion of Mideast Peace and Why I'm No Longer a Believer - Aaron David Miller
I can't tell you how many times in the past 20 years, as an intelligence analyst, policy planner, and negotiator, I wrote memos to Very Important People arguing the centrality of the Arab-Israeli issue and why the U.S. needed to fix it. Today, I couldn't write those same memos or anything like them with a clear conscience or a straight face. The notion that there's a single or simple fix to protecting U.S. interests, let alone that Arab-Israeli peace would, like some magic potion, make it all better, is just flat wrong. In a broken, angry region with so many problems, it stretches the bounds of credulity to the breaking point to argue that settling the Arab-Israeli conflict is the most critical issue, or that its resolution would somehow guarantee Middle East stability.
A brilliant, empathetic president has made America the focal point of action and responsibility for the Arab-Israeli issue at a time when the country may be least able to do much about it. The painful truth is that faith in America's capacity to fix the Arab-Israeli issue has always been overrated. It's certainly no coincidence that every breakthrough from the Egypt-Israel treaty to the Oslo accords to the Israel-Jordan peace agreement came initially as a consequence of secret meetings about which the U.S. was the last to know. The writer, an advisor on the Middle East to Republican and Democratic secretaries of state, is a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center. (Foreign Policy)

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Seattle Times Editorialist Repeats Falsehood that Qassam Rockets from Hamas controlled Gaza have not Killed anyone: Please ask for Retraction

Seattle Times editorialist Bruce Ramsey is certainly entitled to his opinions when it comes to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One would expect no less from an editorialist at the city's only major daily newspaper. What he is not entitled to are his own facts. Last week he published an opinion piece Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza which has several questionable premises. The article is very short and provides scant context for some of his assertions. Most egregious though is his repeated insistence that the rockets fired from Gaza haven't killed any Israelis. This is a bald-faced lie. I (and no doubt many others) pointed this out when Ramsey made this pronouncement last September in an opinion piece regarding an interview with Attorney General Rob McKenna (see below).

Ramsey's antipathy towards the Israeli narrative is his prerogative. What is unacceptable is that he continues to peddle the falsehood that the Qassam rockets have not resulted in any Israeli deaths. It behooves the editorial board of the Seattle Times to make the appropriate retraction and offer the community an apology for this egregious lack of oversight on the part of the paper. Please send your request for such a retraction to the publisher,
Frank Blethen: opinion@seattletimes.com
and the Editorial page editor Ryan Blethen: rblethen@seattletimes.com

Note that B'Tselem, one of Israel's major NGO human rights monitoring organizations, counts at least 12 deaths resulting from Gazan Qassams just between June 2004 and May of 2007.
27 May 2007: Israeli civilian died of wounds inflicted by Qassam rocket

"B'Tselem again sharply condemns the Qassam rockets recently fired at Israeli communities by Palestinian organizations in the Gaza Strip, which had killed two Israeli civilians and injured several more in Sderot. Since June 2004, Qassam rockets have killed twelve Israeli civilians, five Palestinian civilians, and one foreign national. In addition, hundreds of persons have been wounded or suffered post-traumatic stress syndrome as a result of rocket fire.

Aiming attacks at civilians, regardless of the circumstances, is a "grave breach," a war crime, under international humanitarian law, and the perpetrators are subject to individual criminal prosecution. B'Tselem calls on the Palestinian Authority to impose its authority on the bodies engaged in firing rockets at Israeli communities, and to meet its obligations to prevent attacks against civilians. International humanitarian law requires the PA to take urgent and vigorous action to achieve this objective."

Even if the Qassam's killed no one, they are clearly meant as weapons of terror, and in that, they function superbly. As Yossi Klein Halevi points out, part of the sinisterness of the rockets is their very primitiveness. They aren't intended against military targets but only to terrorize civilians.
The perverse genius of the tactic is that it’s not strong enough to justify, for world opinion, an effective military response, but it is just powerful enough to make daily life unlivable.
db


Qassam rockets killed at least 14
my published letter on Friday, April 2nd

Bruce Ramsey’s column repeats the lie that the Qassam rockets fired at Israel (more than 6,000) “hadn’t killed any Israelis, but they might have.”

The rockets fired by these “hotheads” —presumably the same hotblooded types who threw fellow Palestinians off Gazan rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed, during Hamas’ bloody coup in June 2007 — have in fact killed more than a dozen Israelis and wounded scores more. Less than two weeks ago, a rocket attack from Gaza proved fatal as a Thai farmworker was killed.

Downplaying the rockets’ deadliness by calling them “homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets” obscures the fact that the launching of these rockets at civilians is not only a war crime, but also a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, in addition to murdering at least 14 people on Israeli soil.

— David Brumer, Seattle

my full letter, before edited by the Seattle Times

To the Editor:

Bruce Ramsey is at it again, distorting the historical record, making facile generalizations devoid of any meaningful context (Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza, 3/31). Most invidiously, he repeats the lie that the Qassam rockets fired at Israel (over 6,000) “hadn’t killed any Israelis, but they might have.” Having gotten away with this journalistic malpractice back in September (McKenna's Middle East adventure, Opinion, Sept. 2), he reiterates the falsehood, referring to the Islamist terrorists who fire the rockets as “Gazan hotheads.” Let me remind Mr. Ramsey that the rockets fired by these “hotheads” (presumably the same hot-blooded types who threw fellow Palestinians off of Gazan rooftops, blindfolded and handcuffed, during Hamas’ bloody coup in June '07) have in fact killed more than a dozen Israelis and wounded scores more. Less than 2 weeks ago, a rocket attack from Gaza proved fatal as a Thai farm worker was killed (see: Gaza rocket kills Thai farm worker in Israel).

Downplaying the rockets’ deadliness by calling them “homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets” obscures the fact that the launching of these rockets at civilians is not only a war crime but also a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, in addition to murdering at least 14 people on Israeli soil. That Bruce Ramsey chooses to deny this can only be construed as moral depravity. That the Seattle Times publishes such bald-faced lies is scandalous.

David Brumer


AG Rob McKenna's letter about Israel's response to Gaza ignores broader issues
Ramsey's quote from article:
"I asked him whether 1,400 deaths were not excessive in response to rocket fire that had killed no one by the time the Israelis responded."

my published letter in response back in September

Times columnist is the one who ignores broader issues

Editor, The Times:

Bruce Ramsey has it exactly backward in his column ["McKenna's Middle East adventure," Opinion, Sept. 2] when he wrote, "AG Rob McKenna's letter about Israel's response to Gaza ignores broader issues."

In fact, the letter McKenna signed was quite narrow in scope, responding only to Israel's right to defend itself from thousands of rockets deliberately launched into its civilian population from Gaza, under Hamas leadership.

It is Ramsey who ignores the broader issues by avoiding any meaningful context that would shed light on Israel's actions.

Ramsey trots out the tired trope of disproportionality, displaying an ignorance of the rules of engagement in war. Legitimate self-defense is enshrined in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. Furthermore, attacks are only prohibited if they cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects that is excessive in relation to the anticipated concrete military advantage of the attack.

Ramsey's statement that "rocket fire had killed no one" is factually incorrect and morally repugnant, even if it were true. Thousands of rockets fired at civilians is not only a war crime but a weapon of terror that has traumatized thousands of Israeli children and adults, incidentally killing more than a dozen people and wounding scores more.

As to the so-called blockade, Israel's partial siege of Gaza following Hamas' putsch in June of 2007 still allows literally tons of food, fuel and medical supplies into Gaza through daily border crossings.

Finally, it is scandalous to suggest that "the Gaza incursion was part of an election campaign." In fact, Hamas miscalculated, assuming Israel would not respond to increased rocket attacks precisely because of the status of a lame-duck government.
In this they were proven disastrously wrong at a tragic cost to their own people.

-- David Brumer, Seattle


Congressman Brian Baird stands up for the people of Gaza
By Bruce Ramsey

Seattle Times editorial columnist

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The United States should break Israel's blockade of Gaza and deliver badly needed supplies by sea, a U.S. congressman told Gaza students.

The congressman was Brian Baird. Many of his colleagues go to Israel, few to Gaza, and none as often as he. The southwest Washington Democrat likes to see things for himself. He went to Iraq, and changed his opinion of U.S. strategy there.

Why Gaza? In an interview, Baird recalled a speech some years ago by Israel's current premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). To Baird, the speech was "thinly disguised racism" and he recoiled from it. When the crowd applauded, he and his wife walked out.

Then there was Rachel Corrie, who in 2003 was killed in Gaza while trying to block an Israeli bulldozer from wrecking a Gazan house. The Corrie family lives in Baird's district.

Many of his friends "are very distressed" with his criticism of Israel, Baird said. "But if they would see what I have seen and could meet the people I have met, they would change their position."

He recalled his visit to Gaza in February 2009, after Israel's invasion. The American International School had been "a beautiful school, with a Western curriculum." Israel had flattened it, Baird said, "using bombs made by us." A U.S. military man told him of finding a phosphorus shell from the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

By Israel's count, the final death toll of the war on Gaza was 1,166 Gazans and 13 Israelis a kill ratio of 90-to-1. By the Gazans' count the ratio was 111-to-1.

Israel said it was defending itself, against rockets, homemade pipe-bomb-type rockets. These had been fired by Gazan hotheads against the Israeli town of Sderot to protest Israel's quarantine. The rockets hadn't killed any Israelis, but they might have.
All sides in war claim self-defense. Maybe because Baird is a psychologist he is less inclined to accept such claims at face value. He recalled the reaction of Israeli generals and rightist politicians when he disputed them: How dare you question us?

Keep pushing on them, he said, "and something more pernicious comes out." They will say, "Don't lecture us about humanity after all you've done."

Netanyahu once reminded an interviewer who was pushing him that the British and Americans had firebombed Dresden. Years ago, on a radio show, when I condemned Israel for taking Palestinian land, my host asked if I would give New Mexico back to the Mexicans.

It is a telling argument. A conqueror's argument. You don't hear it, though, unless you peel off the wrapping paper of "defense." And Congress won't do that.

Baird recalled the vote on the Goldstone report, in which jurist Richard Goldstone listed human-rights violations on both sides of the Gaza war. Goldstone has big credentials from his work in Bosnia and Rwanda. And he is Jewish. But he criticized the Israeli military and the House quickly voted to dismiss his report. All of this state's representatives voted against the report except Baird and Seattle Democrat Jim McDermott, a psychiatrist.

"Colleague after colleague denounced a report they had never read, about a place to which they had never been," Baird said. "I read the Goldstone report. All of it. I found it credible."

Baird is not running for re-election.

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N.Y. Times Bias Towards Obama/Against Israel: Barry Rubin & David Harris

This is a disturbing development, to say the least. As ideology continues to trump thoughtful analysis and accurate assessments of the facts, well-meaning Jews who support Israel in their hearts are internalizing messages that further alienate them from the Jewish State.
david brumer

NY Times Defends Obama, Not U.S. Interests; Blames Israel, Not White House or Palestinians for All Problems
The New York Times has now crossed the line from being a grossly slanted newspaper in its Middle East coverage to being one so partisan, blinkered, and defensive as to lose its value altogether. I do not write this lightly and have no wish to exaggerate. But the newspaper's editorial of March 26 is so mendacious, so made up to suit the political purposes of the Obama administration without any reference to the facts that it is a work of politically tailored fiction.

Basically, the themes or omissions are as follows:

--Israeli policy is the result of extreme right-wing politicians.

--Most Israelis support Obama rather than their own government.

--The U.S.-Israel agreement of last October never existed.

--The Palestinians don't exist and one doesn't need to mention their actions or the administration's total catering to them.

--Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has done something so awful that it proves he doesn't want peace. What did he do? Precisely what he told the U.S. government he was going to do five months ago and which it then called a major step toward peace!

The Administration's and Times' goal is to portray the issue as not being one of Obama versus Israel but rather Obama plus the Israeli majority against a relatively small number of right-wing extremists who have hijacked the country.

If only such tactics were used against America's enemies.


Responding to the New York Times on Israel

David Harris
March 29, 2010

On March 27, the New York Times published a lead editorial entitled "Mr. Obama and Israel."

It was a bare-knuckled assault on Israel. That will bring joy to Israel's critics. But it did a disservice to the realities on the ground.

Of the editorial's twenty-six sentences, exactly one - "He [President Obama] must also press Palestinians and Arab leaders just as forcefully." - is devoted to Israel's neighbors.


That's the sum total given to other side of the peace-process equation. It reads like a throwaway line to cover that flank.

Of course, getting serious about peace, which is the editorial's nominal purpose, requires more attention to those who have rejected every serious overture - from the 1947 UN Partition Plan to the 2009 two-state proposal offered by Prime Minister Olmert.

And it necessitates a more thorough review of the past 14 months since President Obama took office - and of most of the Arab world's failure to respond to Washington's pleas for confidence-building measures.

Until early 2009, let's remember, direct Israeli-Palestinian talks were ongoing. No preconditions on settlements or anything else were set by either side. And, as suggested, Olmert offered a remarkable peace package, including a compromise on Jerusalem.

Now look where we are. The Obama Administration called for a settlement freeze as a way to restart talks. Why? That had never been the case before.

Suddenly, settlements became the centerpiece of the discussion - not as an outcome of the talks, but rather as a precondition for resuming them.

When Washington and Jerusalem finally agreed on terms, including a ten-month freeze on new building in the West Bank that Secretary Clinton called "unprecedented," the Palestinian Authority dug in its heels and insisted on a total freeze everywhere, including Jerusalem, before returning to the table.

Meanwhile, true to form, the PA mainly sat on its hands. Wait, that's not quite accurate. At just about the time of Vice President Biden's visit to the region, it was involved in naming a West Bank square for a terrorist, Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for the 1978 murder of 37 Israelis and an American.

The New York Times overlooks all of this, while focusing laser-like on eastern Jerusalem.



Yes, a big mistake was made during Biden's stop in Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was unaware of the announcement of 1,600 new housing units, apologized to the vice president. The torrent of criticism from Washington that followed was striking.

But the truth is that the democratically elected Netanyahu had never pledged to stop building in eastern Jerusalem in order to restart talks. Moreover, the units are in an area that has thousands of Jewish residents and is placed inside Israel on every peace map, not in a new Palestinian state. And since 1967, each Israeli prime minister - right, left, and center - has strengthened the Jewish presence in a city that has embodied the Jewish people's physical and metaphysical center for more than 3,000 years.

The editorial also takes a big swipe at Netanyahu's commitment to peace.

Yet last year, the prime minister voiced his support for a two-state settlement, echoing the position of his immediate predecessors.

He has removed dozens of security checkpoints in the West Bank to ease Palestinian movement, even at risk to Israelis.

He has encouraged economic growth in the West Bank, arguing that peace is not a top-down process alone, but also bottom-up. The more Palestinians benefit from an improving economy - and the recent growth rate has been impressive - the more they are likely to have a stake in a new status quo.

And security cooperation between the Israeli military and U.S.-trained Palestinian forces is improving.

In other words, positive things are happening.

That said, if the prime minister doesn't believe an immediate peace deal is possible, it's not necessarily because of his "hard-line positions," as the Times asserts, but rather because he may deem the chances of reaching an accord now as slim.

With Palestinians divided between Hamas and the PA, and with President Abbas not showing sufficient courage, most Israelis don't see an agreement anytime soon. That doesn't make them anti-peace, only realistic analysts of the situation as it is.

Moreover, recent experience, besides the spurned Olmert offer, doesn't provide much hope.

President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak presented the Palestinians with a two-state deal. The response? A new intifada that claimed the lives of one thousand Israelis.

Barak withdrew Israeli forces from southern Lebanon. The response? Hezbollah filled the vacuum and posed a new threat to Israel.

Prime Minister Sharon pulled all soldiers and settlers out of Gaza in 2005. The response? Hamas stepped in and increased its attacks on Israel.

But again, the context and countervailing facts are missing from the editorial.

Another thing.

The Times finds it "refreshing" that President Obama "has forced public debate on issues that must be debated publicly for a peace deal to happen."

Really? Why publicly?

Were the Camp David Accords of 1979, the Oslo Accords, and the Israel-Jordan talks, all of which involved immensely challenging and sticky issues, thrust into the public realm for a "refreshing" debate before agreement was reached? They were not.

And finally, the difficulty that arose during Vice President Biden's visit was not the first tough moment in American foreign policy for this administration.

So far, China has rejected new Iran sanctions, even as the U.S. has told Chinese leaders that this is our highest international priority. New reports indicate that Turkey may do the same.

France's president, speaking at the UN Security Council in September, condescendingly chided President Obama for seeking a nuclear-free world, reminding the American leader that "We live in a real world, not a virtual world ... and right in front of us two countries [North Korea and Iran] are doing the exact opposite."

Scotland, with possible acquiescence from London, released a convicted Libyan terrorist in the Lockerbie bombing that killed, among others, 190 Americans. Despite the special UK-U.S. relationship, there was no consultation with Washington. To add fuel to the fire, President Obama warned Libya to "make sure he is not welcomed back," which is precisely what happened.

Meanwhile, the U.S. restored ties with Damascus. No sooner had a senior State Department official left Syria with what he believed to be progress to report, than the Syrian president invited the Iranian president and the Hezbollah leader for a powwow - the diplomatic equivalent of giving Washington the finger.

And though it has never been reported, there are rumors that Prime Minister Putin sought to convey a message to President Obama in Moscow last year by making the American leader wait for nearly an hour while swimming laps.

The list goes on.

The point is that none of these insults to American foreign policy elicited anything approaching the sustained tongue-lashing Israel received, not to mention the rough treatment the Israeli prime minister got at the White House last week. Not even close.

And, needless to say, none was the focus of such a hard-edged editorial in America's newspaper of record.

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Four (Make that Six) Perspectives on Current U.S.-Israel Imbroglio

For Israel and America, a Disagreement, Not a Crisis - Michael B. Oren
(New York Times)
Even the closest allies can sometimes disagree. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had no desire during a vice presidential visit to highlight longstanding differences between the U.S. and Israel on building on the other side of the 1949 armistice line that once divided Jerusalem. The prime minister repeatedly apologized for the timing of the announcement and pledged to prevent such embarrassing incidents from recurring. In reply, the Obama administration asked Israel to reaffirm its commitment to the peace process and to its bilateral relations with the U.S. Israel is dedicated to both. Israel's policy on Jerusalem is not Mr. Netanyahu's alone, but was also that of former Prime Ministers Ehud Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and Golda Meir - in fact of every Israeli government going back to the city's reunification in 1967. Consistently, Israel has held that Jerusalem should remain its undivided capital and that both Jews and Arabs have the right to build anywhere in the city. Israel's policy on Jerusalem did not preclude the conclusion of peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan. Nor did it prevent the Palestinians from negotiating with Israel for more than 15 years after the Oslo accords of 1993. Consistently, Israelis have demonstrated remarkable flexibility as well as generosity to any Arab leader genuinely offering peace.
Michael Oren is Israel's ambassador to the U.S.

American Credibility at Stake in Showdown over Jerusalem Construction - Hillel Halkin
Four months ago, Israel and the U.S. concluded an argument regarding Israeli construction in the West Bank and former Jordanian Jerusalem with a compromise that neither government was particularly happy about: Israel reluctantly agreed to suspend all new construction in the West Bank for nearly a year, and the U.S. reluctantly accepted Israel's refusal to do the same in Jerusalem. Yet however reluctant this acceptance was, America made it clear that it considered the Israeli position enough of a concession to push the "peace process" forward and that it was willing to live with it. On that basis, the Netanyahu government declared a West Bank freeze and began to enforce it, despite the anger this caused on the pro-settlement Israeli Right from which many of Mr. Netanyahu's voters come. Now, America has reneged on its word. Using the Ramat Shlomo incident as a pretext, it is demanding once again, as if an agreement had never been reached, that Israel cease all construction in "Arab" Jerusalem. Basically, it is saying: "We agreed to a compromise? So what if we did? Now you've insulted us and we're taking our agreement back." This is a grave mistake. And it is gravest of all for the "peace process" that President Obama claims to be so eager to restart. The next time an American president asks Israelis to count on America, he might ask himself: Why on earth should they? (New York Sun)

How About an Arab "Settlement" Freeze? - Ruth R. Wisse
It is unfortunate that Arabs obsess about building in Israel rather than aiming for the development of their own superabundant lands. Ramat Shlomo, the neighborhood at the center of the present altercation, is actually in northern Jerusalem, west of the Jewish neighborhood of Ramot, home to 40,000 Jewish residents. Why does the White House take issue with the construction of housing for Jewish citizens within the boundaries of their own country? Any peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict will begin with a hard look at the map of the region in which 21 countries with 800 times more land are consumed with their Jewish neighbors' natural increase. (Wall Street Journal)

Was Obama's Confrontation with Israel Premeditated? - Yossi Klein Halevi
(New Republic)
Ramat Shlomo, located between the Jewish neighborhoods of French Hill and Ramot, will remain within the boundaries of Israeli Jerusalem according to every peace plan. Building in the established Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem defines the Israeli national consensus. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem at the center of the peace process, President Obama has inadvertently challenged the Palestinians to do no less.
Every Israeli government over the last four decades has built in the Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem; no government, let alone one headed by the Likud, could possibly agree to a freeze there. Obama made resumption of negotiations hostage to a demand that could not be met. Obama's demand for a building freeze in Jerusalem led to a freeze in negotiations. It is pique disguised as policy.
In turning an incident into a crisis, Obama has convinced many Israelis that he was merely seeking a pretext to pick a fight with Israel. The popular assumption is that Obama is seeking to prove his resolve as a leader by getting tough with Israel. Given his ineffectiveness against Iran and his tendency to violate his own self-imposed deadlines for sanctions, the Israeli public is not likely to be impressed. According to an Israel Radio poll on March 16, 62% of Israelis blame the Obama administration for the crisis, while 20% blame Netanyahu.
Now the administration is demanding that Israel negotiate over final status issues in proximity talks as a way of convincing the Palestinians to agree to those talks - as if Israelis would agree to discuss the future of Jerusalem when Palestinian leaders refuse to even sit with them. To the fictitious notion of a peace process, Obama has now added the fiction of an intransigent Israel blocking the peace process.
The writer is a senior fellow of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem.

Why Is Obama So Upset with Israel? - Marty Peretz
The Israelis will not allow the future of Jerusalem to be decided by a riot-backed fiat of the Muslims, whose claims on the city are inflated. OK, I will concede that Muhammad did ride his winged steed Al Buraq on his Night Journey to Jerusalem and, from there, ascended on a ladder to see Moses and Jesus in heaven. Otherwise, however, Jerusalem is to Islam what any other city with a big mosque is. And this particular city was ignored over the many centuries and especially when it was under the dominion of King Hussein of Jordan. But it lives centrally and vividly as the City of David to his people and to the faithful of Jesus who walked there - that is, in the two traditions whose cardinal books are centered in Zion. Jerusalem becomes sacred to Muslims when it is governed by Jews or Christians, Jews in particular. The fact is that neither George Mitchell nor Hillary Clinton nor the president himself has wrangled a single concession from the Palestinian Authority, not one. In fact, the whole structure of the talks is built on yet another concession from Israel. Proximity talks are a big retreat from reality, when the Palestinians want only to talk with the Americans. Obama seems to think that he is the superego of the conflict and that his function is to hand out dicta on how to end it. But he has no dicta for the Palestinians and plenty for the Israelis. The fact is that he does not particularly like Israel. (New Republic)


Crime and punishment
By DAVID HOROVITZ
By deliberately inflating the Ramat Shlomo issue into a public crisis of faith in its ally, the Obama administration has encouraged Israel’s enemies.

By deliberately inflating the Ramat Shlomo issue into a public crisis of faith in its ally, the Obama administration has given encouragement to Israel’s enemies, turned more of Israel’s dwindling ranks of friends against us, and potentially put every Israeli’s life in a little more danger.The original Ramat Shlomo sin was Binyamin Netanyahu’s. And it was serious.Not the “sin” of pursuing an Israeli government policy to build in Jerusalem. Agree with it or not, assert that it is Israel’s sovereign imperative or foolishly antagonistic, but either way it’s Israel’s decision.No, the sin lay in announcing that you’re expanding a Jewish east Jerusalem neighborhood on the very day that one of your very best friends in the problematic administration of your most important strategic ally is in town for a goodwill visit. The sin lay in announcing the move when you know it runs counter to American policy, announcing it without warning, having assured the administration that you won’t surprise it with controversial actions as it struggles to mediate a resumption of the negotiations you seek with the Palestinians. And the sin was exacerbated because you’d already made exactly the same blunder before – releasing plans for the expansion of Gilo immediately after meeting with the president four months ago – and when you’d promised the president, after that screw-up, that you’d taken steps to prevent a recurrence.Only those who lack so much as a passing familiarity with the running of the current Israeli government would question the authenticity of the embarrassed prime minister’s apology to Joe Biden, and his pleading assurance that he’d had no idea, ahead of time, that the Interior Ministry’s local planning committee was formally approving the construction of 1,600 homes in Ramat Shlomo at the very height of the Biden visit. Only those who lack so much as that passing familiarity find it impossible to believe that Eli Yishai, the interior minister, was not routinely alerted to such sensitive decisions in advance, and that Netanyahu had himself failed to put the appropriate warning systems into place, even after the November precedent. Of course such foolish incompetence is plausible. It can happen in some of the most efficient and best-run hierarchies, and few would describe the Israeli government as one of those.Only those who insistently think the worst of Netanyahu, furthermore, could so much as contemplate that he would have done this deliberately. The last thing he would have wanted to do is embarrass Biden.The last thing he would have wanted to do is provoke a major controversy over construction in east Jerusalem, having resisted US pressure to halt all building there, and being thoroughly aware of the incendiary nature of the issue. He’s not a pyromaniac. Only days before, he had telephoned Nir Barkat to quash the mayor’s plans for a controversial redevelopment plan in Silwan, just outside the Old City, that would have involved the demolition of dozens of illegally built Arab homes: “Drop it, Nir, it’s the last thing we need right now,” he essentially told the mayor in a telephone call shortly before Barkat was to address a press conference announcing the project.The last thing he would have wanted to do was draw presidential and international attention to Ramat Shlomo, a neighborhood founded by the would-be peacemaking Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 that hardly anyone outside Israel had even heard of before last week, where 20,000 Israeli Jews had made their homes, hitherto headline-free.All previous prime ministers in recent decades have built in east Jerusalem, Netanyahu noted accurately in the Knesset earlier this week, in a plaintive attempt at defense that amounted to an inadvertent admission of incompetence: Yes, all previous prime ministers had built in east Jerusalem – without incurring the incandescent fury of Israel’s best ally, without bringing the roof down. And you, Mr. Netanyahu, who merely wanted to add more homes to an existing, large, thriving neighborhood – in an area of the city, between French Hill and Ramot, that Mahmoud Abbas would never have contemplated coming under Palestinian control – managed through spectacular ineptitude to bring that long-term enterprise to a juddering halt.

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WELCOME TO AJC'S ANNUAL *ISREEL*UNREEL*SUREEL*WHOLE SHPIEL* 15th ANNUAL SEATTLE JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

Seattle Jewish Film Festival Website
Films
FilmTalks
Special Events
Ticket info
Meet the filmmakers
Tom Douglas pre-Opening Night Party w/Music & Film



Welcome to the SJFF 15th ISREEL/UNREEL/SUREEL/ WHOLE SHPIEL

Wow! For the 3rd year in a row Israel has a film, AJAMI, on the short list of Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Film. And SJFF is proud to be presenting AJAMI as our opening night feature!

This year’s festival is loaded with top-notch, critically acclaimed independent films from around the globe, with a ‘sizable’ (after all, it’s A Matter of Size Closing Night) chunk hailing from the burgeoning center of Jewish creativity, Israel itself. Israeli cinema has truly come of age, and is increasingly recognized in serious film criticism, world festivals and the media.

At a time when Israel finds itself relentlessly under the lens of international scrutiny and criticism, it is both refreshing and inspiring to see courageous Israeli filmmakers creating and the Israeli Film Fund supporting self-reflective and at times transcendent films, capturing the complexities of everyday life. Perhaps no film in recent memory demonstrates so well the maelstrom of interconnectedness between Palestinian and Jewish life as Ajami, a film set in the inter-ethnic, eponymous neighborhood in Jaffa, jointly directed by an Israeli-born Christian Palestinian and a Jewish Israeli. The film exudes authenticity and immediacy, with Biblical and Shakespearean overtones in its universal themes of love, loyalty, hope and despair, as we watch Jewish and Arab (both Christian & Muslim) Israelis “swim in each other’s veins,” to capture the Israeli idiom.

Other featured Israeli films include Jaffa, Seven Minutes in Heaven, and Rabbi Firer. Yet SJFF (and Seattle AJC’s) role as a cultural ambassador to our region goes well beyond Israel, galvanizing public awareness to the multi-dimensional, multi-faceted aspects of the global Jewish experience. Films like Saviors in the Night from Germany look at how some ordinary Germans risked their lives to save their fellow Jews during the Holocaust, while films like Against the Tide (USA) show the raging intra-Jewish battles on the American front during the war years.

Meet acclaimed German filmmaker Michael Verhoeven (we will present Dr. Verhoeven with SJFF's first REEL DIFFERENCE AWARD) as he screens his new film Human Failure, indicting ordinary Germans in their participation in the expropriation of assets from their fellow Jewish citizens, and director Gaylen Ross as she talks about her film Killing Kasztner, the controversial Hungarian Jew Reszo Kasztner, who engineered the rescue of over 1,600 Hungarian Jews, but had to dance with the devil (Adolf Eichmann) to secure their release. Hero or traitor? Tragic victim or betrayer?

Film is a powerful medium that highlights AJC's larger goal: enhancing and safeguarding the quality of Jewish life around the world and protecting the dignity of all people. In these challenging times, we hope to bring individuals and communities of any faith, background or outlook closer together by promoting greater awareness and understanding.
We invite you to join us by contacting Wendy Rosen, Director of the AJC's Regional Seattle Office, at rosenw@ajc.org.
Come and get the whole SHPIEL at this year’s Is-REEL, Un-REEL, Su-REEL, Incredi-REEL 15th Annual Seattle Jewish Film Festival!

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On Responsibilites (that go along with Rights) in Vibrant Democracies: Gil Troy on the NIF, UC-Irvine, and the NY Times

Much has been made of the Im Tirtsu ad in the JPost, using the double entendre of the Hebrew keren (horn/foundation) in caricaturing Naomi Chazan of NIF. Given historical anti-semitic caricatures, it was a poor choice; at the least, it was in very bad taste. But this should not absolve the NIF from answering the more substantive criticisms levied against the human rights organization. To date, little has been offered as a response to the well documented critiques that the NIF, while doing noble and important work in Israel on human rights issues, has also been supportive of NGO's that help undermine Israel's legitimacy, and were major contributors to the 'evidence' drummed up for the Goldstone Report. See Understanding the Goldstone Report
As Gil Troy posits below, the left would only enhance its credibility by being more discerning in its choice of bedfellows. Too often in the toxic minefield of Middle Eastern politics, openness and self-criticism by Israel is abused and distored by the other side. The results can be lethal.
david brumer
seattle

But citizens have rights as well as responsibilities. Voices from the left should leverage their credibility - and ultimately enhance it - by condemning the cycle of demonization rooted in Arab anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, then rationalized and perfumed by the UN and the left, resulting in hooliganism on campus, vendettas against reasonable reporters and a one-sided, hysterical discourse that makes the dream of peace appear ever more distant.

The New Israel Fund would boost its credibility by refusing to fund organizations that single out Israeli leaders for war crimes allegations. It would increase the credibility of the organizations it funds if it demonstrated some sense of proportion, some sensitivity to the disproportionate, hysterical demonization of Israel emanating from the Arab world and, I regret to say, rationalized by the left.

The toxic context of 'the Israel debate
Gil Troy


We have become so used to it we take it for granted, but one of the great scandals of modern politics is the way Palestinian negationism and terrorism have been facilitated by the UN and championed by the left, cloaking lethal desires to wipe out Israel in the language of human rights.
Moreover, as Professor Shalom Lappin of Kings College, London testified to Britain's All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Against Anti-Semitism, which issued its report September 2006:
The Israel-Palestinian encounter has been largely denaturalised and removed from its political and regional context. It is no longer seen as a political and military struggle between two nations with a long and complex history.... Instead, it has been endowed with the peculiar status of an iconic clash between good and evil. Israel has increasingly come to be construed as the purest embodiment of imperialism, racism and oppression whose sole national purpose is to dispossess the Palestinians."
This inaccurate, Manichean misreading of the conflict encourages perverse behavior. Again and again, institutions violate their own core ideals. Again and again, the blinding bias against Israel obscures facts, precedents, common sense itself. In this toxic context, the distinguished scholar and Israel's Ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, was shouted down repeatedly while speaking at University of California, Irvine. The Muslim Student Union "strongly condemn[ed] the university for co-sponsoring, and therefore inadvertently supporting, the ambassador of a state that is condemned by more UN Human Rights Council resolutions than all other countries in the world combined."
Note how the libels get recycled. The UN's bias against Israel legitimizes the Muslim Student Union protest - which escalated into shouting and hooliganism, resulting in eleven arrests.
Fortunately, at least one academic with a conscience defended Oren. "This is beyond embarrassing...," Professor Mark P. Petracca proclaimed. "This is no way for our undergraduate students to behave. We have an opportunity to hear from a policy maker relevant to one of the most important issues facing this planet and you are preventing not only yourself from hearing him but hundreds of other people in this room and hundreds of other people in an overflow room. Shame on you! This is not an example of free speech."
Meanwhile, across the continent, a 20-year-old's personal decision to join the Israeli army triggered a brouhaha in New York because his father is the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. Ethan Bronner, despite a distinguished decades-long record of reporting which includes some hard-hitting reports criticizing Israel, was accused of "pro-Israel bias" because his son enlisted in the IDF. Even the Times's public editor Clark Hoyt suggested reassigning Bronner - although Bill Keller, the executive editor, refused. Bronner's response, "I wish to be judged by my work, not by my biography," is perfect. But the operative assumption fueling the controversy is disturbing. The arguments against Bronner assumed the son's actions reflected the father's wishes and would bias the father in favor of Israel. Twenty-year-olds frequently defy their parents. And many Israelis criticize Israeli policy even more intensely because their children serve in the army. Especially given even very Zionist American Jews' ambivalence about their sons enlisting, why assume young Bronner's decision will make his father more sympathetic to Israel? Yes, reporters have personal lives. Who knows how many Times reporters have army-age children serving in Iraq and Afghanistan? Journalists are not nuns, although they belong to a guild with its own assumptions, norms and narratives. Usually, reporters are judged but what they write, not who they are - until we get to Israel.

These two incidents put another raging controversy in context. The organization Im Tirtsu was called "McCarthyite" for issuing a report detailing "a staggering example of a self-propelled process: the very organizations that pressed for the establishment of the [Goldstone] commission provided the testimonies used by the Goldstone commission to justify its claims against the IDF and Israel, and most of these organizations are supported by the NIF [New Israel Fund]." The report also revealed that the Coalition of Women for Peace - also an NIF grantee - initiated the writing of a letter on December 22, 2009, to top British officials demanding they try top Israeli officials.

Israel is a vibrant democracy. I am proud that organizations like the New Israel Fund exist to support a full range of Israeli human rights organizations. However, I am frequently dismayed by these organizations' one-sidedness. The report notes that few of these organizations bothered supporting Sderot or reaching out to Israeli victims of Palestinian terror - don't Israelis have human rights too? Moreover, many of these organizations do not acknowledge the toxic context in which the discussion about Israel takes place, and take no responsibility for their role in further poisoning the atmosphere. The New Israel Fund would boost its credibility by refusing to fund organizations that single out Israeli leaders for war crimes allegations. It would increase the credibility of the organizations it funds if it demonstrated some sense of proportion, some sensitivity to the disproportionate, hysterical demonization of Israel emanating from the Arab world and, I regret to say, rationalized by the left. Typically, while attacking Im Tirtsu for daring to look at who the NIF funds, Ha'aretz and other critics looked at who funds Im Tirtsu. And while objecting to criticism of the NIF's chairwoman Professor Naomi Chazan, as well as making her a martyr to free speech, her supporters overlooked The Jerusalem Post's justification for dropping her column; because she threatened legal action against the paper.
None of us, reporters, academics, or politicians, can afford to turn our ideological battles into legal wars. Only the lawyers win. Of course Israel should not be immune to criticism, and Israel's democratic values must be maintained. Citizens should argue about the Im Tirtsu report, while the Knesset and Cabinet should keep away, demonstrating respect for free speech. But citizens have rights as well as responsibilities. Voices from the left should leverage their credibility - and ultimately enhance it - by condemning the cycle of demonization rooted in Arab anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, then rationalized and perfumed by the UN and the left, resulting in hooliganism on campus, vendettas against reasonable reporters and a one-sided, hysterical discourse that makes the dream of peace appear ever more distant.
Gil Troy is Professor of History at McGill University on leave in Jerusalem. He is the author of Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity and the Challenges of Today. His latest book The Reagan Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, was recently published by Oxford University Press.

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