Love of the Land: Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Robin Shepherd
The Commentator
12 May '11

http://www.thecommentator.com/article/154/guardian_delusions_over_the_palestinians_can_t_change_the_hard_facts

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is a tragedy of their own making. Guardian columnists need to learn the basic facts

It takes a lot these days to raise hackles among decent and reasonable people at anything written in the Guardian about the State of Israel.

This is a paper, after all, that back in January slated the Palestinian leadership for being “weak” and “craven” after it was revealed they had accepted – as any sane and normal person would – that practically all the so called “settlements” in east Jerusalem would become part of Israel under any real-world peace agreement.

So after you’ve effectively described even the most obvious concessions in meaningful negotiations as the actions of surrender monkeys, the sheer fanaticism of your antipathy to the Jewish state is established once and for all.

Thursday’s piece on the paper’s flagship Comment is free website by the Belgian-Egyptian writer Khaled Diab plumbs no such depths of depravity. It’s just an exercise in pathological self-delusion.

The central point is that with all the revolutions taking place across the Middle East it’s surely time for the Palestinians to rise up in a peaceful uprising to bring unity and democracy to Palestinian society in order to end the occupation. Palestinian youth would join hands with Israeli peaceniks and the conflict would finally be resolved.

“Being the dreamer that I am,” says Diab, “I cannot shake the vision in my head of the joint Israeli-Palestinian activism infecting the masses, with large-scale joint action as the most effective way to end the occupation and bring about peace”.

Diab calls himself a “dreamer” so I suppose he at least has a defence for his ideas in that he came up with them when he was asleep. Those of us who try to generate our thinking in the cold light of day can tell him the following:

1. The Palestinians don’t need a revolution to get a state. They just need to accept Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people and put aside dreams – that word again – of annihilating it. It’s really that simple. The rest is detail.

2. A Palestinian state has been on offer from day one of the conflict. The Jewish/Israeli side accepted a Palestinian state under UN Resolution 181 – the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine, which was adopted in November 1947. The Arab/Palestinian side rejected it and opted for war and violence. That’s why there’s a conflict.

3. Up until the Six Day War in 1967 the so called “occupied territories” were ruled by Jordan and Egypt. “Occupation” took place after the Arab armies again went to war with the aim of destroying Israel.

4. Since 1967, Israel has tried numerous times to give the Palestinians statehood, only to be rejected, as in 2000 and 2001, by the Palestinian leadership.

5. The Palestinian leadership inculcates hatred of Israel on a daily basis in schools, in the mosques and on television. That is why the large majority of Palestinians oppose a two state solution.

6. A comprehensive poll by the Israel Project in November 2010 showed 60 percent of Palestinians supporting the proposition that: “The real goal should be to start with two states but then move to it all being one Palestinian state”. 66 percent supported the proposition that: “Over time Palestinians must work to get back all the land for a Palestinian state”. And 71 percent said Yasser Arafat was right to reject Bill Clinton’s peace proposals in 2000 and 2001.

Amid all the complexities in this conflict, these are the hard facts that simply won’t go away. And the hardest fact to internalise, and the one that encapsulates all of the above, is that the tragedy of the Palestinians is a tragedy of their own making.

Khaled Diab and his friends at the Guardian can “dream” and “hope” all they like. But until the Palestinians put aside their delusions and see the world for what it is, their national tragedy is destined to continue.

Robin Shepherd is owner/publisher of the Commentator. His book, A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel, is out in paperback.


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Love of the Land: Guardian delusions over the Palestinians can't change the hard facts

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Distorting Israel

Distorting Israel

One of the many ways our radical left uses to slander their country for the amusement of its enemies is by telling quarter-truths in a way that makes us look outlandish, while refraining from telling the three-quarters of the story (or the 95% of it) that would honestly explain what's going on. In the past I've mentioned their claims that we're passing all sorts of laws meant to shut them down and stifle free speech, end democracy and generally destroy the Zionist dream. The Guardian dutifully and gleefully runs with the story, of course.

Here's what I mean about dishonest lack of context. Yossie Verter, the top political correspondent at Haaretz, pokes serious fun at Netanyahu for blocking a law that's just beginning its meandering through the legislature. The sense of the fun is that everyone - even the legislators trying to push the law through - knows fully well that from here to there, from inception to law, the road is so long and twisted that the current stage is hardly more than grandstanding. Maybe it's a fine law, maybe it's foolish, but in any case, why in the world is the prime minster getting all worked up about it? He wants it stymied? Fine. Pull a string and have it die in committee. Or re-word it so it says the opposite of what it was intended to say. Or use any one of 3002 other tricks, all standard procedure, so that it never becomes law. Why squander political capital on making such a fuss?

That's the fist part of the article. The second says the same, from the opposite side. This time Netanyahu's bugbear isn't a talented lefty-MK, but rather a talented right-wing demagogue with almost no political base, whom Netanyahu just propped up by taking him extremely seriously, with no particular justification.

Now, take Verter's comments about Netanyahu and cut and past them so that it's the radical left, not the prime minister, and the acting out is happening in the foreign press, not in our internal discussion in Hebrew. Is there an occasional act of political grandstanding aimed against them? Yes. Is it likely to transform Israeli democracy into something not-recognizably democratic? Of course not. Do 100% of the participants in the grandstanding, from all sides, recognize this state of the matter? Yes. Is this the message being broadcast to the rest of the world? No. Rather the opposite. Is there any rational justification for spreading stories abroad which are palpably dishonest, in such a way as to besmirch your country? Not that I can see.

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Distorting Israel

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Deceased Tunnelers

Deceased Tunnelers

Four Palestinians died yesterday in a tunnel under the Egyptian-Gaza border.

Hamas says the Egyptians did it on purpose, and their spokesmen are livid. The Guardian doesn't say anything: no story here, move on. The BBC says the men died but can't figure out how. On the other hand, the item does note that Israel killed a Palestinian yesterday.

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Deceased Tunnelers

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Compulsive Antisemitism Syndrome

Compulsive Antisemitism Syndrome

Do Jew haters recognize their affliction? Are they purposeful about hating Jews, or do they think their ideas are the only possible way to understand the world? This is an important question, with serious implications, and I'm far too busy in the non-blogging world these days to engage in it. Still, Hawkeye at CiFWatch brings some interesting documentation to bolster the second explanation: systematic deleting of totally innocuous comments on a silly Guardian article. The only reasonable explanation I can think of is that these people are so totally detached from rational thought that they've, well, lost the ability to think rationally, and truly believe that disagreements with them must be expunged.

The problem, however, is that there are people around who do disagree with them. CiFWatch, for example. Which means the Guardianistas can't be unaware of dissenting positions, which in turn means they've made a conscious decision...

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Compulsive Antisemitism Syndrome

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Guardian of the Falklands

Guardian of the Falklands

The British and Argentinians are bickering about the Falklands, again. While no one expects them to start shooting, they are serious, not because of 2,500 Englishmen who live on the islands, nor because the islands are closer to Argentina than to the UK, but because there's oil nearby.

The historical claims of both sides stem from colonial pasts. The British have been coming and going since the late 16th century, perhaps, and the Spanish were in the picture since sometime in the late 18th century. The Argentinian claim flows from the Spanish one, apparently; no-one says they've been there from time immemorial or anything. If you're into damning colonialism - as some are - you're best bet is to wish for a pox on both their houses.

The Guardian is vehemently into damning colonialism. It's one of their favorite themes. On this one, however, they're a bit choosy: The British claim, they say, is a colonial vestige, so it should be dropped. (In favor of the Spanish colonial claim). Heh.

Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations: Guardian of the Falklands

Subtlety at CiF

Subtlety at CiF

Much of the antisemtism at the Guardian isn't very subtle. Yesterday, however, one of the CiFWatch team called my attention to this example: all the moderator did was to remove the link to MEMRI (which, by the way, is www.memri.org, and an important website it is). One little snip, one reduced chance that anyone will stumble across a resource the Guardian doesn't want people looking at.

www.memri.org. Visit them often. www.guardian.co.uk. Visit them less.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Broad Understanding of War

Broad Understanding of War

One Melanie Ried, whom I've never heard of before, thinks well of the Israelis for serving their own interests.

It is an unfashionable thing to say, but I have a considerable admiration for the Israeli way of doing things. They want something, they get it. They perceive someone as their deadly enemy, they kill them. They get hit, they hit back. They don’t waste time explaining or justifying or agonising; nor do they allow their detractors to enter their country and then afford them generous welfare payments. They just act. No messing. No scruples. Not even a shrug and a denial, just a rather magnificent refusal to debate anything.

This absolutism, based on their history, carries its own moral weight; one that is rather electrifying in a Western world grown flabby with niceties. Clearly, the Israelis could defend their policies if they wanted to, but they quite simply can’t be bothered. It’s a waste of breath. One admires them for that, too.

She goes a bit overboard, alas, but it's nice when a Scottish lady from another world gushes about us: unusual, too. Equally interesting are the comments. Quite a number of them are by the kind of reasonable folks who recognize that war is an unsavory phenomenon that calls for actions you otherwise wouldn't do, but if you're forced to be at war, there's no choice. From my perch here in Jerusalem it's hard to know how common such sentiments are or aren't.

Then there's this description (from the Guardian!), about the enemies of the West in Afghanistan, and how they're not nice and don't play fair. As I've said, the more such descriptions become common in Western media, the more reasonable people will begin to make the connection to Israel's enemies and challenges. Good.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Love of the Land: The Occupation Industry

The Occupation Industry

Israelinurse
CiF Watch
15 February '10

When I first came to Britain in late 2006, aside from the practical reasons for our being here, one other thing I was rather hoping to get from our stay was a little respite from the tumult of the Middle East. A few months previously we had spent over four weeks under constant attack from Hizbollah rockets and prior to that of course there had been the traumatic years of the Second Intifada. I was looking forward to a ‘time out’ from being a target of aggression simply because I am Israeli, and there was in my mind no reason to think that I could not achieve that in the small, quiet English market town in which we had come to live, where the biggest crises seemed to relate to the local council’s tardiness about collecting the recycling.

It took about six weeks before I encountered my first ever meeting with antisemitism – a verbally abusive PSC campaigner blocking the exit from the supermarket – and I must confess that I was so shocked by this totally unexpected experience that I had no idea how to deal with it. What I did understand however was that just like back home, I had been a target of aggression simply because of what I am.

Reading Yoav Shamir’s recent CiF article last month I could not help finding some of his statements very problematic precisely because I know exactly how insignificant a role antisemitism plays in day to day Israeli life. Because one does not experience it personally, even when hearing about an attack on Jews in France or reading an article about pre-war Germany, it is still very difficult to relate to it on a deep personal level. Until, of course, out of the blue, it happens to you too. But according to Yoav Shamir, we have only ourselves to blame. “[b]ut she is a reminder of the vicious cycle that Zionism became caught in – the state that was supposed to be a cure for what antisemitism started, as both Foxman and Finkelstein are actually saying, has ended up generating antisemitism.”

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: The Occupation Industry

Grandmothers can be Antisemites, Too

Grandmothers can be Antisemites, Too

This one's name is Jenny Tonge, she's a British politician from the Lib-Dem party, a Baroness in the House of Lords, she's got a history of animosity towards Israel, but this time she's gone overboard even by the sordid standards of British Lefties:

The latest row followed accusations in the online Palestine Telegraph – of which she is a patron – that members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had been harvesting body parts in Haiti. She subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle: "To prevent allegations such as these – which have already been posted on YouTube – going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti."

It's an interesting provenance: a Palestinian website invents an outlandish anti-Jewish calumny out of thin air. A British Baroness who's one of their ardent supporters picks it up and runs with it, while professing earnest concern for the objects of the calumny by recommending they must clear their name (since it's already being besmirched on YouTube). How touching.

In Hebrew there's a saying "Prove you don't have a sister", which was invented for this type of logic. Note that she doesn't suggest the Palestinians bring evidence that the Israelis might refute. That's not how calumnies work.

In this case, the allegations are so blatant her political boss has been forced to distance himself. Even her own group can't stomach her fanaticism. For all that, she's such a nice-looking grandmotherly type, the kind of nice lady you'd be eager to have over for tea. Antisemites - as I never tire of saying - don't generally have horns nor do they froth at the mouth. They can often be found deep in respectable society; what could be more respectable than the UK House of Lords after all.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Correct Comment is Free. Not the Other Kind.

Correct Comment is Free. Not the Other Kind.

Geoffrey Alderman is a professor of history. Amazon.uk has more than ten books of his on offer, and they cover an interesting range of subjects. He has published almost 80 articles on CiF; he also post comments there, unusual in that he uses his real name.

Not anymore, as he tells here.

In November, I accepted an invitation to write for CiF Watch a piece on Peter Oborne’s Channel 4 documentary Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby and on Tony Lerman’s defence of it on CiF.

I can now reveal that, within days of the publication of my critique, I received an email from the Guardian telling me that, if I dared to continue writing for CiF Watch, I would no longer be able to contribute to CiF. It was, I was summarily warned, “an either/or choice”.

I can further reveal that I have now been placed on a special list of persons whose CiF comments will be reviewed in advance of their online publication.

If you seek the honor of writing for the Guardian, you can't also write for their guardians. It's a democracy, not a free-for-all.

Or as Mondoweiss might put it, it's a war of ideas. You have to choose which side you're on. Truth? Independent thought? Diversity? Wot?

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Thought Experiment

Thought Experiment

Here's a mildly nasty thought experiment: What would happen if you exchanged Global Warming with Zionism?

The idea of the experiment is to take two issues which are dear to the same group of people, while switching the positioning of Good and Bad. It's an experiment, mind you, not a real comparison! For the purpose of following thought patterns. I'm not making a statement about global warming one way or the other. Not.

The rules of the game are that there's an accepted truth which any reasonable person can see and understand and accept and even defend were the need to arise. Global warming, say, or the right of the Jews to have a state in which to live their national lives. Each of these truths, however, does imply some practical positions: don't heat your home with the windows open, for example, or don't travel in airplanes; don't support Hamas, for example, or don't boycott computers. You get the idea.

Now, imagine there's a group of Bad People who've decided to disagree with the accepted wisdom. They'll go to any length to chip away at your beloved beliefs: they dig up old documents to prove your leaders have been conniving bastards all along. They cherry pick weaknesses in your generally impregnable defenses and use them to undermine the entire edifice. They're demagogues, populists, conniving sneaks, propagandists and generally Awful People. Oy oy oy oy.

Again, I'm not saying the comparison is in any way valid for anything - but do try to read any of the endless items at the Guardian, and especially the comments, using these experimental rules: Global Warming is like the Zionists; global warming skeptics are the enemies of Zionism. You may find it's fun. Here, start with this one, then go to this one for comments.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Fisted Iran

Fisted Iran

President Obama's policy of offering an open hand to clench-fisted regimes was plausible, to my mind, if it strengthened the sinews of determination, not if it allowed the clenched fist to intimidate. It always had to be clearly temporary; if by a given time the fist was still clenched it would be met accordingly. If the Iranians were arming because they felt threatened, they might desist if they felt respected; if however they were arming because they're truly bellicose, it will still be possible to stop them, one way or another, once this has become clear. The determination to stop them will be strengthened by the comprehension of their bellicosity and the inevitable need to curtail it.

It was a policy with two targets: the Iranian hawks were to be encouraged to loosen up; and the Western doves were to be shown - if need be - the necessity of being resolute, even to take hawkish actions, convinced that the nicer options had failed.

Obama said the crucial date would be September 2009; he finally began acting at the end of January 2010, so the Iranians got an extra four months. Whether his actions will be effective remains to be seen; the amount of Iranian nuclear development completed under cover of the year given to them is also not yet publicly known.

What is clear, however, is that at least some of the home-team doves have no intention of being swayed by the exercise. For them, any saber rattling by the Americans is wrong, always:

In Iran, after 12 months in office, Obama has got nowhere by making nice. He didn't try that hard. He didn't try for that long. And now it seems the US is reverting to type.

Yes, the Guardian. How did you guess?

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Disappearing Dead Civilians

Disappearing Dead Civilians

From time to time I think back to those faraway days at the beginning of the century, when the Israelis were at war and everyone else thought they were crazy for it; then things started changing. Remember the immortal report by Robert Fisk, a New Left stalwart with a popular column in The Independent, when some Afghan men beat him up and he justified them for it, since he's an evil White Man and they, the poor downtrodden Natives? Here, in case you've forgotten: a document of one possible permutation of the idiocy the human mind is capable of.

These days, in spite of the fact there really are Americans and Europeans (not all white....) killing people in various corners of the Muslim world, it would take a potentially lethal dose of credulity to maintain that Muslims need infidels around for to engage in violence. Some of them seem quite proficient all on their own.

Yesterday the Guardian supplied some numbers: 4,500 dead civilians in Iraq (with very little connection with American troops, I'd add); more than 2,000 dead civilians in Afghanistan in ten months (I wrote about this here), and 3,021 deaths in terrorist attacks (note the T-word!) in Pakistan. Or maybe that's 12,600 dead. Or is it 2,000 or so? Confused? Me too:

Pakistan saw 3,021 deaths in terrorist attacks in in 2009, up 48% on the year before, according to a new report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based defence thinktank. Researchers counted a total of 12,600 violent deaths across the country in 2009, 14 times more than in 2006.At least half of the dead were militants who were killed in US drone strikes or, mostly, sweeping army offensives against their mountain strongholds of Swat and South Waziristan along the Afghan border. Another 2,000 or so Pakistanis died in bloodshed unrelated to militancy: political clashes, tribal feuds and border skirmishes.

I'm not certain what "bloodshed unrelated to militancy" is, and the elaboration isn't helpful. I'd go so far as to say it's probably bogus, since political clashes, tribal feuds and border skirmishes all sort of fit into the same general drama, don't they?

So I went to the source of the Guardian reporter (this can be done quite easily these days, raising the question what the added value of reporters is). It's over here: the Report by the Pakistani think tank. (But note that the link leads to a PDF file which will soon be moved elsewhere on their site, so this link will lose its accuracy in a week or two). Table Nr. 2 contains the following data:
Terrorist attacks: 3,012 killed
Operational attacks: 6,239 killed
Clashes between security forces and militants: 1,163 killed
Political violence: 210 killed
Inter tribal clashes: 1,209 killed
Border clashes: 700 killed.
None of these lines say who's killing whom. The paragraph preceding the table, however, clarifies that it includes US and NATO attacks. Spectacularly, to my mind, nowhere is there a distinction between fighters and terrorists and regular civilians. True, the Guardian fellow misled us a bit in implying that the terrorists are killing civilians while the security forces are killing militants, but the source doesn't say that. It merely counts bodies.

The rest is left to our imagination. Or, in the case of world opinion, media interest, speechifying politicians and pontificating bloggers: it is left to our general disinterest. So long as it isn't Palestinians, no-one really cares who they are, those dead people.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Poor Logic From a Guardian Reader

Poor Logic From a Guardian Reader

CiF Watch has documented a humdinger. A bloke who calls himself William Bapthrope is troubled by Israeli transgressions against international law as he understands it, and suggests the situation could be rectified by slaughtering every man woman and child.

Seems a bit radical, don't you think, to correct a transgression against a law (if transgression there is at all) by genociding the transgressors. I'm a bit puzzled by the logic.

Anyway, I dropped a note to the editor of the Guardian 'alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk' and to the editor of CiF, 'georgina.henry@guardian.co.uk'. Sadly, my position is not fully aligned with that of my friends at CiF Watch, but I expect they'll forgive me:

Documenting the Malice

Ms Henry, Mr. Rusbridger

My friends at CiF Watch have alerted me to the recent case of a reader of yours, one William Bapthrope. Mr. Bapthrope is troubled by Israel's disregard of international law as he understands it, and advocates various methods to inform them of the seriousness of the matter. His third alternative is, and I quote, "they must be slaughtered, every last man woman and child". The staff of CiF Watch demands you ban Mr. Bapthrope from commenting at CiF.

I’m of two minds, I admit. If you assume murderous hatred of Jews is a contagious malady, rather like suicide, then having all mention of it disappear might make sense: people won't think of it on their own, or if they ever do they'll be ashamed of expressing their sentiments for fear of general ridicule and opprobrium. Assuming the media is the only venue where people communicate, which is probably not the case.

If, on the other hand, you're of the opinion that the excitement generated by dreaming of a world with far fewer Jews wells up from deep cultural sources reinforced by incessant lies about many things Jewish and constant reiteration of how uniquely evil Jews are, then of course the occasional censorship of an unusually crass expression of the Zeitgeist will have no positive impact on anything and will merely serve to cloak the pervasiveness of the hatred. Since the Guardian is one of the more important standard bearers of the animosity and purveyor of systematic and consistent lies, my inclination is to request that you desist from banning the worst examples of what you spawn, since your actions are merely an attempt to sanitize your own record.

The existence of the Jews and their well-being is fortunately not something the Guardian can impact on one way or the other. The full record of your malice, however, should not be tampered with.

Sincerely,

Dr. Yaacov Lozowick

Jerusalem

Update: Matt Seaton responds:

Regarding the post in the Blincoe thread which you respectively have complained about, let me assure you that – contrary to the impression Cif Watch chooses to give – the comment was deleted promptly by moderators, and as per our standard moderation protocol the user has been placed in quarantine as 'untrusted'.

I'm not convinced he read my comment.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

The Egyptians? Why?

The Egyptians? Why?

Yesterday there was a bloody clash on the Egyptian-Gaza border. An Egyptian policeman was killed, and there were a number of injured people on both sides- it's not clear how many. These are straightforward facts, as far as they are.

How should they be explained? What's going on? That's harder to know, first, because much of the data isn't accessible. So far as I can tell, no one - that means, NO ONE - has any access to the decision making process of the relevant Egyptians and Palestinians, nor can they even say who made any decision. A man was killed when both sides were using real firearms, and no-one has anything whatsoever to say about who gave which orders, what they thought they were doing, how they understood their situation, or any other part of the story. These things are of course crucial, and no explanation can even begin to approach accuracy without them, but hey, we've not got them, it would be too much of a bother to try, and anyway we've all got pre-existing templates with which to explain such matters so why worry?

Mondoweiss simply disregards the matter. They're interested in Gaza only in two scenarios: when Israel can be blamed, or even better, when Israel can be blamed but they're saving the situation. This case fits neither template, so it didn't happen. Better to blame Israel for that Jordanian-al-Quaida chap who killed seven CIA men. And yes, I understand that Mondoweiss, being a mere blog, doesn't need to cover everything - I certainly don't, either. Yet they're a blog with a large number of contributors, and their editorial choices are instructive.

The BBC doesn't offer any explanation, though its report does contain this odd sentence:

Egypt and Israel impose a strict blockade on the Gaza Strip, which Israel says is aimed at weakening Hamas.

People are being shot as the Egyptians impose a blockade, and the only context offered is why Israel does it.

The Guardian does the same slight-of-hand:

Ehab Ghussein, a Hamas spokesman, said frustration about Egypt's new underground wall was fuelling the protests. "There was anger, and that's because of what happened, especially about the wall and [Egypt preventing entry of] the people who are coming to stand with us," he said. Israel's strict blockade of Gaza, which has been in place for more than two years, prevents all exports and limits imports to a few humanitarian items. Egypt has also kept its one border crossing with Gaza, at Rafah, largely closed.

So it's Israel's blockade, with the Egyptians merely tagging along. Why? The Guardian explains:

Under pressure from the US and Israel, Egypt has started building a vast steel wall along its side of the Gaza border to prevent smuggling. Hundreds of smuggling tunnels dug by Palestinians reach into northern Egypt and supply Gaza with a wide range of products from food and clothing to animals and cars. Israel and the US have said they are concerned about weapons smuggling.

They Egyptians are puppets of the Israelis and Americans. Why a nation of 80 million debases itself in such a manner is unexplained, though there's the implication that the puppeteers have awesome powers; at least with the Americans this has a rational grounding. The Israelis, however? Do they control the world? And if so, haven't we seen that theme somewhere before?

The New York Times offers no explanation at all. There's this context:

The demonstration, organized by Hamas, protested Egypt’s refusal to allow international aid and solidarity missions into Gaza as well as Egypt’s construction of an underground barrier to obstruct smuggler tunnels. Those tunnels supply both goods and arms to Hamas and Gaza.

But no explanation why Egypt might be doing what it does.

Then there's Haaretz. Like everyone else, Zvi Barel has no specific information, he can only tell about the larger picture. Still, in spite of being on the left side of Haaretz, as I've documented in the past, he's first and foremost an expert.

Egypt's stance does not arise from its desire to help the Israeli siege on Gaza or to respond to the United States' demand to prevent smuggling. It is intended to show both Hamas and Syria that just as it has the power to open the border crossings at will and relieve the siege, so it can twist Hamas' arm.

And also this:

Egypt is interested in Palestinian reconciliation and wishes to set up a Palestinian unity government. Egypt has assured Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas of its support if such a government is formed, mainly because it does not want to be responsible for the Gaza Strip. But Cairo is fed up with Hamas' foot-dragging and Tehran's meddling. In this Egypt is assisted by Saudi Arabia, which gave Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal an ultimatum to decide whether he is running an Arab organization or is under the "patronage of a foreign power," i.e. Iran.

Read the whole thing, as Glenn says. You begin to see why Israelis' understanding of the world is dramatically different from that of everyone else.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

An Opportunity to Bash Israel! Wow!

An Opportunity to Bash Israel! Wow!

The Guardian is engaged in a series of daily reports from Gaza, commemorating the Israeli operation of last year. Here's one of the series, predictably telling how awful Israel was and is.

Commemorating the anniversary of a news event is standard, especially if there isn't much else going on and you've got to fill your pages or time-slots. Revisiting an event day after day after day for the duration of the original event is, however, a bit odd.

2009 was a bloody year, as these things go. There was lots of violence in Sri Lanka, in various corners of Africa, not to mention big chunks of southern Asia. Pakistan ousted millions of its own citizens from their homes; no-one knows how many innocents they killed because no-one thought to ask. And the list goes on.

Don't expect daily re-screening of any of these events. Most of them didn't attract much of the Guardian's attention the first time around; re-visiting them a year later would be inconceivable.

Sorry for boring you.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

From Idiocy to Farce

From Idiocy to Farce

In the previous post I lambasted our narcissistic thin-skinned far-lefties who never tire of telling the world how awful we are, but have convinced themselves that a couple of irate murmurs by grumpy politicians who dislike them signify the end of freedom of speech in Israel.

One of the fellows cited in the Guardian article is Michael Sfarad:

"There has been a huge change in the way the government treats those who dissent," says Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer representing several human rights groups. This process, he adds, has accelerated in the year since the attacks in Gaza: "The gloves have come off."

(The man's name, of course, is Sfarad, not Sfard, which would be like a referring to Gordon Brawn, but why be nitpicky).

In a case of perfect timing, Sfarad demonstrates how his allegation has no factual base. Today of all days, while he's moaning to the Guardian that the nasty Israelis are blocking his right of free speech, Y-net - Israel's most popular news website, no less - gives him a platform to tell us that during the Gaza operation we finally rid ourselves of the yoke of morality, and we wallowed blissfully in wanton murder, barbarity and bestiality.

The mildly funny part of the story is that I could go through his litany of horrors and disprove them with quotations from the Goldstone Report, so outlandish is his tone. The hilarious part, though, is that he's forgotten that the way he tells it, our repression brigade should be blocking him from saying all these things. How inept of them.

Y-net, fortunately, doesn't see the need to translate this spite into English, so it remains an insider's joke.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

It's the Repression, Stupid

It's the Repression, Stupid

The Observer section of the Guardian website offers an innovative way to spin the weekend's story of violence in the West Bank. It starts just as you'd expect it to: Israel is shooting Palestinians, jeopardizing the cease fire and generally being its usual vicious self. Yes, there's a quick mention that the Israeli action in Nablus might be connected to the shooting of a settler, but the journalist races by that point in the fourth paragraph and never returns.

Then the fun begins. 14 of 20 paragraphs of the item report how Israel is clamping own on its own human rights organizations.

The shootings have come as Israeli human rights campaigners issued a stinging critique of how Israelis who opposed the war in Gaza have been treated by the state, claiming that they have been silenced, accused and vilified. In its annual report, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel states: "Instead of taking an honest look at its reflection, Israeli society and its institutions chose to smash the mirror."

I sometimes try to keep my language reasonable and civil. This line of argumentation, however, is so far beyond idiocy, that it can't be fudged. First, note that there's no news in the item: all the allegations are months old, and the threats of the politicians never led to any action, as any reasonable observer would have known in advance. Second, all these organizations (there are many dozens of them) have websites where they purvey their bile in English, even though the Israelis they're trying to educate prefer Hebrew; none of the websites is or has ever been censored in any way, nor could it be. Every one of these organizations can be found in the phone book (or its online version), and you can call them up, make an appointment and go visit them. They don't hide their addresses, as the Samizsdat publishers of the communist world once did. They routinely publish their opinions in the media. I can't think of a single arrest ever made of one of their members or staff, and certainly not of an indictment or court case. Of course not. No-one has ever been roughed up on a dark alley by thugs, nor been threatened by shady organizations with blurry lines to state organs. None of anything.

Instead, this tiny corner of Israeli society, perhaps two thousand people all told, busily churn out reams of reports and mountains of allegations about how awful we are, most of it in English, and enjoy an international exposure beyond any remotest relation to their size and more important, to the truth of what they say. After doing so for years (more than 30, in the case of ACRI, cited above), some politicians got peeved and sort of vaguely badmouthed some of them. Not nice, perhaps, but not a fraction of what they routinely dish out, either. This sent them into a paroxysm of narcissistic horror at the extent of their existential predicament as the last bastions of human decency in a society rapidly descending into bestial darkness.

The Guardian laps it up, predictably. Bahhh.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Jews Poison Wells. Again.

Jews Poison Wells. Again.

Their reason for doing so is that they're evil. (That's the motivation).

The proof that they're evil is that they do it. (That's the context).

Though, truth be told, at least some of the commenters object.

Also, such allegations, standard antisemitism as they are, aren't directed only ever against Jews. Remember how throughout the 1990s we were assured the Western sanctions against Saddam's Iraq had produced precisely 500,000 dead Iraqi children, a number that didn't rise as the years passed? Remember how after the American invasion of 2003 nary a single bereaved Iraqi mother was ever produced for the cameras?

Then again, to a noticeable degree, anti-Americanism and antisemitism are related these days. They're aren't the same, not even twins or siblings, but they're easily cousins, the two phenomena. Why, even the column cited here has its anti-American undertones.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations

Freedom of the Press, at War

Freedom of the Press, at War

Iman Al Hams was killed in Rafah on October 5th, 2004. She was 13 at the time. For her and for her family the rest of the story will never make things better.

For a lot of other people, however, the circumstances of her death were very important: Was she repeatedly shot in cold blood, or was her death the result of a tragic mistake in a complicated war? Was it the story of a callous Israeli officer, or perhaps of a general atmosphere of contempt towards Palestinian lives?

There was no lack of people willing to tell the facts as they were convinced of them. Here, for example, you can read the Guardian's Chris McGreal investigation: he not only knew that Iman had been repeatedly shot in cold blood, but that the IDF would probably not seriously investigate the case, because they almost never do. Six months later, Iman was the poster figure for Ronnie Kasril and Victoria Brittain's call for a boycott against Israel, also in the Guardian. Wikipedia has lots of links to the story, here.

So clear cut did the story seem to be, so obviously bad, that the mainstream Israeli media joined the Guardian and its ilk in describing it. True, the agenda of such a prime-time investigative television program Uvda (Fact!), anchored by Ilana Dayan, a Doctor of Law by training and one of Israel's most respected journalists, was not that Israel is a fascist colonial monster, but rather that the potential rot of war was seeping into the IDF. Still, hers was a powerful voice of condemnation.

Then the story began to unravel. Some of the most damning testimony had come from the officer's subordinates; they eventually admitted they hadn't been accurate. The officer was eventually indicted on some minor charges, then exonerated in court. He then sued Ilana Dayan, the main purveyor of the damning narrative.

Yesterday the court gave a resounding decision in his favor, awarding him NIS300,000 in damages. Amos Harel, reporting in Haaretz, openly admits he doesn't like the court's decision:

Sohlberg's 131-page ruling will become a landmark decision in the history of journalism in Israel, due to the case's extensive publicity and Dayan's prominence. It will also be remembered because Sohlberg, considered a specialist in libel suits and strict when it comes to the media, went too far in dealing not only with the facts of the program, but also going into great detail about the editing process. (For the purposes of proper disclosure, it should be noted that I have been interviewed by Dayan on the radio and on television, and two of my reports on the affair are quoted in the ruling.)

Harel's column alludes to fundamental questions about how journalists cast their tales, and the liberties they sometimes take in editing the materials they have so as to be compelling.

Some of the other shortcomings the judge found and the weight he attached to them, will certainly result in another round in court. Had R. been so clearly damaged, in the mind of the reasonable viewer, by the scene with the jeeps? Was Dayan's leaving 10 months off the age of the 13-year-old victim, as the judge ruled, a flaw or a technical matter? Is the combination of an image of Palestinians removing the girl's body from the scene of the shooting, and a segment of field radio communication recorded on another occasion unacceptable, as the judge found?

Yesterday, watching the report again, I saw it differently than the judge. I saw that it was edited and broadcast somewhat hastily, in quite a dramatic and exaggerated tone. I also noticed mistakes, for example footage of machine-gun fire that was not taken during the actual incident. (Dayan admitted to this mistake, a week after the program aired.) Is the bottom line that the report deviated from the truth, as Sohlberg ruled? With all due respect, I am not convinced.

"Is the combination of an image of Palestinians removing the girl's body from the scene of the shooting, and a segment of field radio communication recorded on another occasion unacceptable, as the judge found?" Shouldn't the answer be a clear, flat, unequivocal, extremely obvious YES? The journalist took footage from two separate occasions which were in no way related, and strung them together to create a lie, and Harel thinks it's legitimate?

The troubling part of the tale - beyond the death of the little girl, of course - is that democracy really needs investigative journalists; it really needs a press corps that is intelligently and professionally skeptical of the authorities. A society at war really does have to have voices that don't automatically accept the narration of the powers that be; it even needs the knee-jerk contrarians, whose starting point is that the reigning narrative is all wrong. Even the contrarians, however, have to be able to recognize the supremacy of fact over ideology, of truth over agenda.

Then, there's the matter that the authorities often have better tools than anyone else to fully investigate what really happened. In this case, the stampede to convict briefly threatened to send an officer of the IDF to jail for behaving as he didn't.

Originally posted by Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations